Henry Constable’s sonnets to Arbella Stuart

Authors

  • Mª Jesús Pérez Jáuregui Universidad de Sevilla

Keywords:

Henry Constable, Arbella Stuart, Elizabethan sonnets, Succession debate, Elizabeth I's Court

Abstract

Although the Elizabethan poet and courtier Henry Constable is best known for his sonnet-sequence Diana (1592), he also wrote a series of sonnets addressed to noble personages that appear only in one manuscript (Victoria and Albert Museum, MS Dyce 44). Three of these lyrics are dedicated to Lady Arbella Stuart – cousin-german to James VI of Scotland–, who was considered a candidate to Elizabeth’s succession for a long time. Two of the sonnets were probably written on the occasion of Constable and Arbella’s meeting at court in 1588, and praise the thirteen-year old lady for her numerous virtues; the other one seems to have been written later on, as a conclusion to the whole book, implying that Constable at a certain moment presented it to Arbella in search for patronage and political protection. At a time when the succession seemed imminent, Constable’s allegiance to the Earl of Essex, who befriended...

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Published

2022-02-01

Issue

Vol. 19 (2009)

Section

Notes

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