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Royal MS 15 A IX
- Record Id:
- 040-002107016
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x0000a6
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100172082348.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 15 A IX
- Title:
-
Jane Lumley, translations of Isocrates, Orationes, and Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis
- Scope & Content:
-
This volume is a commonplace book containing the Orationes of the Ancient Greek rhetorician Isocrates (b. 436, d. 338 BC), in a Latin translation composed by Jane Lumley (b. 1537, d. 1578), Baroness Lumley, and written in her hand. Two of the orations are prefaced by dedicatory epistles to her father, Henry FitzAlan (b. 1512, d. 1580), 19th Earl of Arundel, and were intended as New Year gifts.
The manuscript also contains Lumley's English translation of Iphigenia at Aulis, by the Greek playwright Euripides (b. c. 480, d. c. 406 BC). The text is the first known dramatic work to be written by a woman in English, and the first known translation of a Classical play into English by any hand.
Other extant translations completed by Jane Lumley include copies of Isocrates' Archidamus and Evagoras (now Royal MSS A I and II).
Contents:
f. 1r: An inscription, 'The doinge of my Lady Lumley dowghter to my L. Therle of Arundell', and the autograph signature of John Lumley (b. c. 1533, d. 1609), 1st Baron Lumley.
ff. 2r-62v: Isocrates, Orationes, translated from Greek into Latin by Jane Lumley, and arranged as follows:
ff. 2r-3r: Ad Demonicum, incomplete, beginning, 'Multis variisque in rebus perspiciemus, o Demonice, proborum sententias ab improborum opinionibus longe multumque dissidere…'
ff. 4r-11r: Ad Nicoclem, prefaced by a dedicatory epistle to her father (f. 4r-v), beginning, 'In more et consuetudine hominum positum est pater honoratissime', and subscribed, 'filia tua deditissima Joanna Lumleya'; the main text, beginning, 'Qui solent o Nicocles vobis regibus vestes aes aurum coelatum vel aliqua alia eiusmodi munera sponte exhibere…'
ff. 12r-22r: Nicocles, beginning, 'Sunt quam plurimi qui graviter reprehendunt oratores ac philosophos, dicentes eos non virtutis sed lucre ac commodi causa in eiusmodi studiis versari...'
ff. 23r-39v: Evagoras, prefaced by a dedicatory epistle to her father (f. 23r-v), beginning, 'Cicero pater honoratissime...'; the main text beginning, 'Quum videbam te o Nicocles patris tui cohonestantem sepulchrum…'
ff. 40r-62v: De Pace, prefaced by the Argument (f. 40r-v), beginning, 'Chares dux Atheniensium...'; the main text beginning, 'Omnes qui huc de rebus consulturi veniunt...'
ff. 63r-97r: Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis, translated from Greek into English by Jane Lumley.
f. 98v: A phrase in Latin, 'acerba audire tolerabilius, quam videre', written in Jane Lumley's hand, upside down in the lower margin.
ff. 99v-100r: Notes written in a legal hand, from the Charter Rolls for Yorkshire and Northumberland (41 Henry III-21 Edward I), relating to the family of Thweng, subsequently represented by the Lumleys.
f. 101v: 'De lapide aquilae', a prose extract and medical description of the eaglestone in Latin, from Matthaeus Silvaticus' Pandectae Medicinae, written in Jane Lumley's hand.
f. 102v: A phrase in Latin, 'Nemo poluto queat animo mederi', written in Jane Lumley's hand.
ff. 1v, 3v, 11v, 22v, 62 A r-68 B v, 97v-98r, 99r, 100v-101r are blank.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Medieval and Renaissance Women
Royal Collection - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107016 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 15 A IX : Jane Lumley, translations of Isocrates, Orationes, and Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1215]/040-002107016
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100172082348.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1550
- End Date:
- 1574
- Date Range:
- 3rd quarter of the 16th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Paper.
Watermark: A pot and flower; a glove and a five-point flower. On the watermarks and paper available at the FitzAlan home of Nonsuch Palace, see Wynne-Davis, 'The good Lady Lumley's desire' (2008), pp. 114, 121).
Dimensions: 190 x 140 mm (written space: 155 x 110 mm).
Foliation: ff. 102 + 62 A-B (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 1 unfoliated paper leaf affixed with a parchment fragment after f. 2 + 1 unfoliated paper leaf after f. 99 + 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end); ff. 62 A and B are paper leaves.
Collation: Mounted on paper guards.
Script: 16th-century italic, written by Jane Lumley.
Binding: British Library in-house. Red half-leather binding, with the Royal arms gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers. Rebound 1984.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Jane Lumley (b. 1537, d. 1578), Baroness Lumley: inscribed, 'The doinge of my Lady Lumley dowghter to my L. Therle of Arundell' (f. 1r); the manuscript written in her hand and featuring dedicatory epistles to her father; completed after her marriage to John Lumley (c. 1550), as she signs one of the epistles using her married name, 'Filia tua tibi deditissima / Joanna Lumleya' (f. 4v); formed part of her father's collection before it became part of the Lumley Library.
John Lumley (b. c. 1533, d. 1609), 1st Baron Lumley, collector and conspirator: inscribed with his name (f. 1r); listed in the 1609 catalogue of his collection, no. 1920 (see Catalogue of the Library of John Lumley (1956), p. 222); his library acquired by Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.
Henry Frederick (b. 1594, d. 1612), Prince of Wales and eldest child of James I: his collection became part of the Royal Library; included in the catalogues of 1661 (Royal Appendix 86, f. 28v) and 1666 (Royal Appendix 71, f. 20v), and in the 1698 catalogue of the library of St James's Palace (see Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae (Oxford: Sheldonian, '1697'), no. 8504).
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Publications:
-
Iphigenia at Aulis, translated by Lady Lumley, ed. by Harold H. Child (Malone Society, 1909) [edition].
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), II, p. 144.
David H. Greene, 'Lady Lumley and Greek Tragedy', Classical Journal, 36 (1941), 537-47.
Frank D. Crane, 'Euripides, Erasmus, and Lady Lumley, 'Classical Journal, 39 (1944), 223-28.
Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 152-57.
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: Accedunt Alia Itinera: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other Libraries, 7 vols (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: Brill, 1963-1997), IV (1989), p. 203.
Ros Ballaster, 'The First Female Dramatists', in Women and Literature in Britain, 1500-1700, ed. by Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 267-90 (pp. 267, 269, 270, 272).
Lorraine Helms, Seneca by Candlelight and Other Stories of Renaissance Drama (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 48-75.
Stephanie Hodgson-Wright, 'Jane Lumley's Iphigenia at Aulis: Multum in parvo, or, Less is More', in Readings in Renaissance Women's Drama: Criticism, History, and Performance, 1594-1998, ed. by S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (New York: Routledge, 1998), 129-41.
Patricia Demers, 'On First Looking into Lumley's Euripides', Renaissance and Reformation, 23 (1999), 25-42.
Diane Purkiss, 'Blood, Sacrifice, Marriage: Why Iphigeneia and Mariam Have to Die,' Women's Writing, 6 (1999), 27-45.
Marta Straznicky, Privacy, Playreading, and Women's Closet Drama, 1550-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 19-47.
Marion Wynne-Davies, Women Writers and Familial Discourse in the English Renaissance: Relative Values (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 66-89.
Marion Wynne-Davies, 'The good Lady Lumley's desire: Iphigeneia and the Nonsuch Banqueting House', in Heroines of the Golden StAge: Women and Drama in Spain and England, 1500-1700, ed. by Rina Walthaus and Marugeurite Corporaal (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2008), pp. 111-28.
Brenda Hosington, 'Minerva and the Muses': Women Writers of Latin in Renaissance England', Humanistica Lovaniensia, 58 (2009), 3-43 (pp. 38-39).
Peter Davidson, 'Spatial Texts: Women as Devisers of Environments and Iconographies', in A History of Early Modern Women's Writing, ed. by Patricia Phillippy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 186-202 (pp. 195-96).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)