Introduction xiii

Some readers might reasonably ask why spelling and punctuation have not also been modernized. Given that the texts were considered relatively flexible at the time, there might appear to be little cause to be so careful now, especially when that care may in fact reproduce clear scribal errors. This may appear at times nonsensical, or even perverse. But the counterargument, which seems too strong to ignore, is that the process of “correction” involves too many subjective, and possibly unsignalled, editorial decisions. In short, it becomes almost impossible, for editors and readers alike, to determine where this process should stop, and there is a risk that the experience of encountering these texts in their manuscript sources would irrevocably be altered. Instead, the best and clearest course, in this particular edition of these poems, is for the editors to perform the role of diligent and faithful (albeit at times somewhat mechanical and uncritical) scribes. Those who use the edition, either for research or teaching purposes, may of course wish to be more intrusive. One unquestionable benefit of the practice adopted here is that such users will be able to do so, while those wanting an accurate representation of the manuscript sources will equally be able to rely on the texts provided.

The edition is structured into sections, which are organized partly by topics and partly by chronology. Some of these are self-explanatory. The libels on the death of Cecil, for example, or those a generation later on the death of Buckingham, form discrete bodies of poetry. Indeed it is evident that such libellers were reading other libels, and had a sense of their participation in a distinct cultural movement. Others, due to the nature of the issues with which they engage, are not quite so clear. In the early 1620s, for instance, numerous poets, concerned by fraught relations between the court and parliament, tried to find new ways of representing such political struggles. For instance, the longest poem in the edition, “Fortunes wheele. or Rota fortunæ in gyro” (“Some would complaine of Fortune & blinde chance”), is unlike any other in its method and detail, but entirely typical of the period in its underlying motivation (McRae, “Political”). While some issues and individuals may be traced throughout more than one section, the structure is nonetheless intended to make the edition easier to navigate. As such, it follows the practice of a number of early Stuart miscellanies, which variously grouped, labelled and even indexed poems (McRae, Literature 36-44).