Mag Fhearaigh, Críostóir, and Tim Stampton. Ogham.
Indreabhán, Ireland: Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 1996.
Mark DiCicco and Michelle M. Sauer
“O HAPPY DAMES” HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF
SURREY (1545) This poem, written while HENRY
HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY, was fi ghting in France, is one
of the earliest examples in English of a major male poet
writing in the voice of a woman. Eventually set to
music, it originally circulated in the Tudor court in the
Devonshire Manuscript, a manuscript verse collection
that was compiled by Surrey’s sister Mary (Howard)
Fitzroy, duchess of Richmond; Mary Shelton, a friend
of the duchess; and Margaret Douglas, niece of HENRY
VIII. While critics have disagreed over which Mary
actually copied the poem into the manuscript, the
poem’s authorship has not been questioned. Indeed,
the poem seems to give voice to Surrey’s personal
anguish at being separated from his beloved wife Fran-
ces, countess of Surrey.
In both its tone and the treatment of its subject, the
poem departs from the courtly poetic conventions that
characterize many of the other verses in the Devon-
shire Manuscript and TOTTEL’S MISCELLANY. The female
speaker, who laments the separation from her beloved,
uses the common Petrarchan image of a “ship, fraught
with remembrance / Of words and pleasures past” (ll.
8–9). Such an image alludes to her lover’s departure
across stormy seas, but it also stands as a symbol of
her fi delity and devotion: “He sails that hath in gover-
nance / My life, while it will last” (ll. 10–11). The lan-
guage is Petrarchan, but the relationship between
lover and beloved is warm and close. Furthermore,
her constancy sets this portrayal of woman apart from
SIR THOMAS WYATT’s satiric depiction of courtly
women, who change lovers as fashion and their own
fi ckleness dictate.
Surrey’s status in general and this poem in particular
seem to have contributed to the popularity of “ventril-
oquized poems” throughout the English Renaissance.
Even more importantly, however, “O Happy Dames”
may signal a new shift in the treatment of Petrarchan
lyric conventions. Although the poem was authored by
a male poet, its honest and painful treatment of female
longing may have opened the door for later female
poets such as MARY SIDNEY HERBERT to voice the experi-
ence of COURTLY LOVE from their perspective.
See also WYATT, SIR THOMAS.FURTHER READING
Sessions. W. A. Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey: A Life.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Southall, Raymond. “Mary Fitzroy and ‘O Happy Dames’ in
the Devonshire Manuscript.” Review of English Studies 45,
no. 179 (1994): 316–318.
Carol D. BlosserOLD ENGLISH LANGUAGE (OVER-
VIEW) Germanic peoples came to England in the
fi fth century, subsequently establishing a series of
kingdoms that in one form or another lasted until the
NORMAN CONQUEST. It became popular during the 16th
century to refer to both the people and their language
as Anglo-Saxon. Current usage restricts Anglo-Saxon to
refer to the people and their culture, while the lan-
guage is called Old English. These Germanic peoples
came from the Elbe-Weser region of Lower Saxony and
from Schleswig-Holstein. The language that they spoke
was a development of Proto-Germanic called North-
West Germanic, attested to in the earliest runic inscrip-
tions. With the settlement of England, North-West
Germanic split into North Germanic in Scandinavia
and West Germanic elsewhere. West Germanic began
to diverge into North-Sea Germanic (Old Saxon [> Low
German], Old Frisian, and Old English) and Upper-
German (> High German)–Franconian (> Dutch, which,
however, also shows signifi cant infl uence from North-
Sea Germanic).
The fairly uniform language of the Germanic settlers
began to diverge in its new environment so that when
Bede writes his History of the English Church and People
in the early eighth century, he claims that the English
descend from three separate continental peoples cor-
responding to the then current dialect divisions,
Anglian (Northumbrian and Mercian), Saxon, and
Kentish (Bede’s Jutes). Nevertheless, Bede recognizes
only a single language, which all three dialects refer to
as englisc.OLD ENGLISH LANGUAGE 297