A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
B14 Here lyes the Lady Penelope Rich
Notes. Penelope Rich, separated from Lord Robert Rich and then illegally married to Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire, died in July 1607. The final two lines of this poem are sometimes found independently, which might suggest that an unspecifically bawdy couplet was appropriated for application to Penelope Rich’s notorious case. One source, however, has only the first couplet (V&A MS D25.F.39). All known variants are listed below.
Here lyes the Lady Penelope Rich
Or the Countess of Devonshire, chuse ye which
One stone contents her, low what death can doe
That in her life was not content with two.
Source. Folger MS V.a.345, p. 28
Other known sources. Bodleian MS Ashmole 38, p. 169; Bodleian MS CCC 328, fols. 43r and 76v; Bodleian MS Don. d.58, fol. 15v; Bodleian MS Douce f.5, fol. 9r; Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. d.152, fol. 154v; Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. e.14, fol. 94v; Bodleian MS Hearne’s Diaries 30, p. 212; Bodleian MS Malone 23, p. 5; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 26, fol. 15v; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 152, fol. 23r; V&A MS D25.F.39, fol. 67v; Folger MS V.a.97, p. 13; Folger MS V.a.103, fol. 21v; Rosenbach MS 1083/15, p. 126; Rosenbach MS 1083/16, p. 116
B14
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