1

Henry Howard---- Earl of Surrey --- As a Poet

Introduction:- Henry Howard- Earl of Surrey was born in Hertfordshire in 1517. He was brought up in the Windsor Palace with Henry Viii 's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. Surrey was an able soldier and remained loyal to the crown. However, the fluctuating favours of the king put him in trouble some times. Losing favours of the king, he was arrested and executed on treason charges in 1547. Surrey continued the practice of the sonnet in English as instituted by Wyatt and established a form for it. Now it is known as English Sonnet because of the form and structure Surrey employed: three quatrains and a couplets, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. He was the first English poet to use in blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameters. This form of verse became a sensation with the poets of the next four centuries. The critics called it a "strange meter". Surrey had employed that kind of meter in his translation of Virgil's Aeneid. Surrey's poetry circulated in manuscript form in court circles. Most of his poetry appeared in 1557 ten years after his death when a printer and publisher, Richard Tottel collected his poems in a collection which is now termed as Tottel's Miscellany. Through the ages, Surrey's poetry has been admired for its form and structure. Sir Philip Sydney appreciated Surrey's lyrics for " many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind." His name is usually associated in literature with that of Wyatt. He was the younger poet of the two. His work consists of sonnets and miscellaneous poems in various metres. All of them are noteable for their grace and finish. Like Wyatt, he studies Italian models, especially Petrarch, and shared with Wyatt the merit of bringing the sonnet from Italy into England and lending it an English colouring of its own. In the development of English verse, Surrey shows a remarkable achievement. He exhibits a higher poetical faculty, increased ease and refinement. As Emile Legouis comments," His metrical innovations are important : he was the first to give to the sonnet its purely English form, less elaborate than the Italian but perhaps more suited to a language with fewer rhymes. His chief title to fame is his introduction of blank verse in his translation of Virgil's Aenied." This kind of innovation is typical of the Renaissance: Like Wyatt, Surrey traveled to Italy, and his imagination was captured by Petrarch's sonnets. Surrey has less strength but more polish than Wyatt. He is more successful in fitting the accent to the normal accent of the world in spoken language. However, he lacks the originality of Wyatt's creative touches. Of the two, Surrey is more of a craftsman; Wyatt, more of an artist. Surrey's verse handles the traditional Petrarchan theme of love, with typical Petrarchan conceits. However, he uses a natural imagery that is lovelier and more "English" than that is found in Petrarchan models. His language is often more "modern" than that of Wyatt. It makes his meanings clearer. His rhymes are also smoother and easier than those of Wyatt. He uses antithetical conceits more often. His autobiographical verse is an exponent of his true artistry. It is significant that his poetry was influenced by his chequered career like Wyatt. Abercrombie has summed up his career in the following words," Brought up in childhood with the King's son, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, received an excellent grounding in classical and Renaissance literature. But fortune soon turned against him, and his adult life was filled with anxiety and tumult. The greater part of his twenties was spent in fighting some unsuccessful campaigns. Inevitably such a career left its marks upon his writings. Even in youth , he tended towards a ruminative cast of mind." As a poet, Surrey is surely remembered as a sonneteer. Two obvious currents can easily be traced in his sonnets: One of Petrarch and the second that of Wyatt. Like Wyatt, started translating The Petrarchan sonnets. His early sonnets are considered awkward and uninteresting. When he followed Wyatt's model, he made significant improvement in it. Critics point out that his work displays " two incompatible approaches to writing--- one is that of the industrious but uninspired craftsman, imitating the technical devices of Wyatt with certain improvements, undergoing a phase of apprenticeship to the Italians. The other is the approach of a genuine poet whose verse has an appeal of its own despite lacking temperamental brilliance. Here he shows a true satisfying interplay of form and subject matter. He was able to complete the process of transformation of the sonnet form started by Wyatt and later on adopted by Shakespeare.

2 Surrey discarded the subject of romantic and sexual love and used his experiences of public life in his later sonnets. By using exact observation and shrewd judgment, he fashioned the sonnet into a medium for pointed satire, apt enology, concise aphorism and a powerful invective. Thus he extended the scope of the sonnet and refined it as an English form. We can say that his main contribution was to give the English sonnet flexibility. Lever has summed up his achievement in the following words," Surrey's cast of mind led him to deviate not only from Petrarchan romance attitudes but also from the introspective, traditionally English conception of love. He learned a medium whose chief merits were simplicity, elegance, concision, and all-pervading lucidity. It gave point to the lightest of themes and clarity to the most profound. For all who were capable of objectivity in their response to personal experience , this medium, with its logic of opposition, contrast, and final correlation, supplied a perfect instrument. During the last decade of the 16th century, it became the indispensable medium of Drayton, Daniel and Shakespeare." George Puttenham sums up Wyatt and Surrey's contribution, " In the later part of Henry Viii's reign , sprang up a new company of courtly makers (poets), of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder and the Earl of Surrey were the two chieftains, who having travelled into Italy and there tasted the sweet and stately measure and style of the Italian poesie as novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and style." G. H. Mair says," It is with these two courtiers that the modern English poetry begins" , and he declares the publication of Tottel's Miscellaney as " one of the landmarks of English literature." It is a truth that both Wyatt and Surrey gave English poetry a new sense of grace, dignity, delicacy, and harmony. They were highly influenced by the love poetry of Petrarch. It was a courtly kind of love poetry showing much of idealism, if not downright artificiality. David Daichess acknowledges their contribution and declares that their sonnets represent one of the most interesting movement towards metrical discipline to be found in English literary history. E. M. W. Tillyard praises them by saying that they" let the Renaissance into English verse" by importing Italian and French patterns of sentiment as well as versification. Surrey's work is characterized by exquisite grace and tenderness which we find missing from that of Wyatt. Moreover, he is a better craftsman and lends greater harmony to his poetry. A special kind of occasional lyrical melody and genuine looking sentiments are other qualities of his poetry. Arthur Compton Rickett writes," Surrey is seen rather as the disciple of Wyatt than an independent force; yet his sonnets are more effective than those of Wyatt. Surrey modified the form , and Shakespeare seized upon it. The Petrarchan form is perhaps the more impressive; the modified English form the more expressive." He further maintains," If the disciple excelled his master in ease and assurance , the master had the advantage of having opened up the way. " We can sum up that the pioneering work of Wyatt in the sphere of sonnet and modern techniques of writing poetry was polished , trimmed, modified and bettered by his disciple and friend Surrey in a graceful style that influenced and stamped the next generations to come. Prepared by: Prof. Saleem Raza Govt. College Gojra.