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Add MS 15232
- Record Id:
- 032-002086935
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002086935
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000052.0x00020e
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100145460997.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 15232
- Title:
-
Verse miscellany ('The Bright MS')
- Scope & Content:
-
Verse miscellany, containing songs and sonnets from ‘Astrophil and Stella’ by Sir Philip Sidney, author and courtier (1554-1586); anonymous autograph verses with authorial corrections; astronomical notes; and a signed autograph letter from Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621) to Barbara Sidney, Countess of Leicester (c. 1559-1621), from Wilton, 9 September 1591. Known as the ‘Bright MS’ after its former owner Benjamin Heywood Bright, antiquary (1787-1843).
Remains of front pastedown, with the names ‘Iohn woper’, ‘Hen fell’, and notes recording purchases from a tailor.
ff. 1r-2*v Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke: autograph letter to her sister-in-law Barbara Sidney, Countess of Leicester, dated 9 September 1590 (altered from 1591), Wilton. The letter concerns the nurse whom the Countess of Pembroke was sending to attend the Countess of Leicester, who was at Flushing expecting a child. Possibly inserted by Benjamin Heywood Bright, former owner (Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum 1841-1845, p. 116).
ff. 3r-9r Latin astronomical definitions.
ff. 9v-20v Eighteen anonymous poems, of which three contain authorial revisions (f. 9v, f. 10r, f. 12v):
f. 9v Anon: ‘A most careles content of favors or disgrace’: three copies with revisions.
f. 10r Anon: ‘The breath all < > ldeth fourthe’: with revisions; obscured by water damage.
f. 10v Anon: ‘Causeles caste of by < > disdainde’: obscured by water damage.
ff. 11r-11v Anon: ‘I loved a < > but all my love was loste’: obscured by water damage.
f. 11v Anon: ‘Unhappye youthe whome frowarde fate dothe vexe’.
f. 11v-12r Anon: ‘Moste happye hee which spendes his youthfull yeres’.
f. 12r Anon: ‘O happye age cleane voide of vaine delightes’.
f. 12r Anon: ‘With sadd retyres my sighthinge sorrowes shewe’.
f. 12v Anon: ‘O happ moste harde where truthe doth most beguyle’.
f. 12v Anon: ‘Love by the beames of beauty settes on fyer’: with revisions.
f. 13r Anon: ‘In a greene woode thicke of shade’.
f. 13v Anon: ‘Fare well thou courte the house of care & greeffe’.
f. 14r Anon: ‘O statly love why doeste thow stoope soe lowe’.
f. 15r Anon: ‘All my sensees weare bereaved’.
f. 16r Anon: ‘Time changeth < > at of noe mighte with me’: obscured by water damage.
f. 17r Anon: ‘My eyes devoutly < > when it will please your hande’: obscured by water damage.
f. 18r-18v Anon: ‘Peace sheppheard < > now heare Amintas’: obscured by water damage.
f. 19r-20r Anon: ‘He < > lives and dyes bye casting of your eyes’: obscured by water damage.
ff. 21r-38r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnets 1-20, 105-108, and songs viii and xi:
f. 21r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 1. ‘Loving in [truth and fain] in verse my love to show’: obscured by water damage.
f. 21v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 2. ‘Not at first sight, nor with [a dribbed shot]’: obscured by water damage.
f. 22r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 3. ‘Let daintie wits [cry] on the sisters nine’: obscured by water damage.
f. 22v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 4. ‘Vertew alas now let me tak some [rest]’: obscured by water damage.
f. 23r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 5. ‘It is most [true that] eyes are formd to serve’.
f. 23v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 6. ‘Some lovers speake when they ther Muses entertaine’.
f. 24r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 7. ‘When nature made her chief worke, Stellas eyes’.
f. 24v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 8. ‘Love born in Greece of late fled from his native place’.
f. 25r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 9. ‘Queen Vertues court which some call Stellas face’.
f. 25v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 10. ‘Reason in faithe thou art wel serv’d that still’.
f. 26r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 11. ‘In truthe O love with what a boyish kinde’.
f. 26v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 12. ‘Cupid because thou shynest in Stellas eyes’.
f. 27r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 13. ‘Phebus was judge between Jove, Mars and love’.
f. 27v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 14. ‘Alas have I not pain enough my friend’.
f. 28r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 15. ‘You that doo search for everie purling spring’.
f. 28v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 16. ‘In nature apt to like when I did see’.
f. 29r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 17. ‘His mother deer Cupid offended late’.
f. 29v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 18. ‘With what scharp checks I in my selfe am shent’.
f. 30r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 19. ‘On Cupids bow how are my hartstrings bent’.
f. 30v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 20. ‘Fly fly my friends I have my death wound, fly’.
f. 31r Anon: three and a half lines of prose, ‘Sweete Love voutesafe to see the lively picture’.
ff. 32r-34r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, song 8. ‘In a grove most rich of shad’.
ff. 35v-36r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, song 11. ‘Who is it that this dark night’.
f. 36v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 105. ‘Unhappy sight and hath she vanesht by’.
f. 37r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 106. ‘O absent presence Stella is not heer’.
f. 37v Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 107. ‘Stella sinse thou so right a Prinsesse art’.
f. 38r Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnet 108. ‘When sorrow [using] mine owne fiers might’. Obscured by water damage.
f. 39r Benjamin Heywood Bright: autograph note suggesting that the MS ‘belongs to Wilton’.
f. 40r Remains of rear pastedown, with the name ‘ffraunces Berington’.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002086935", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 15232: Verse miscellany ('The Bright MS')" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002086935
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002086935
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100145460997.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1560
- End Date:
- 1599
- Date Range:
- Late 16th century
- Era:
- CE
- Place of Origin:
- England.
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper.
Dimensions: 154 x 202 mm.
Foliation: ff. 42 + v.
Binding: Rebound in 1968. Remains of pre-1600 green vellum wrapper; remains of armorial binding of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), during his time as Baron of Halifax (1700-1714).
Script: 9 hands; secretary and italic.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax (1661-1715): former owner.
Benjamin Heywood Bright, antiquary (1787-1843): his sale, 18 June, 1844, lot 240.
- Information About Copies:
-
British Library Add MS 61822, ff. 91r-103r: Sir Philip Sidney, ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnets 1-23, 26-7, 29-34, 36, 38-39, 41-34, 47-108.
Edinburgh University Library, MS De. 5. 96: Sir Philip Sidney, ‘Astrophil and Stella’, sonnets 1-66, 87-108, and songs i, ix-xi.
- Publications:
-
Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum 1841-1845 (London: British Museum, 1850), p. 116.
Peter Beal, 'Additional MS 15232', Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700, online: http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/british-library-additional-15000.html [accessed 28 December 2018].
P.J. Croft, ed. The Poems of Robert Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 5-6.
Alexander B. Grosart, ed. The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, 3 vols (London: Chatto & Windus, 1877), vol. 1, pp. xxxix-xlviii.
Mary Ellen Lamb, ‘Three Unpublished Holograph Poems in the Bright Manuscript: A New Poet in the Sidney Circle?’ Review of English Studies, 35 (1984), 301-15.
Mary Ellen Lamb, Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), chapter 5.
William A. Ringler, ed. The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962).
H.R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)