THE DATE, AUTHORS, AND CONTENTS OF A HANDFULL OF PLEASANT DELIGHTS
The Handefull of pleasant delties, a miscellany of broadside ballads composed "by Clement Robinson and divers others," is extant in a single imperfect copy which was printed by Richard Jones at London in 1584.[1] The book possesses considerable interest because of Shakespeare's familiarity with it[2]; but since it contains nothing but ballads, most of which can be proved to have first appeared on broadsides, one is somewhat surprised to find how extravagantly critics have praised it. Usually, ballads are regarded as beneath contempt. Thomas Park thought the "Delights" far superior to the pieces in A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578), "being written in general with a modernised tone of versification, which must render them more pleasing to modern readers. Some few indeed may aspire to be praised for higher merit than mere smoothness of verse: particularly . . . [No. 17, below, beginning "Ye louing wormes," etc.], which claims commendation for apposite metaphor, sarcastic sportiveness, ingenious illustration, and moral inference"! Mr. Crossley called the Handfull "one of the most prized of the poetical book gems of the Elizabethan period"; Mr. Crawford considers it "a work of considerable merit, containing some notable songs"[3]; and Sir Sidney Lee (Cambridge History of English Literature, III, 249) speaks of it as a collection of "lyric poems." Few persons seem to have recognized that the poems are street ballads, pure and simple.
In 1566 the following entry was made in the Stationers' Registers[4]:
| R, Jonnes | Recevyd of Rychard Jonnes for his lycense for prynting of a boke intituled of very pleasaunte Sonettes and storyes in myter by clament Robynson [no sum stated] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
- ↑ This is now in the British Museum; sign. B.vj is missing. The work was reprinted by T. Park (Heliconia, vol. II) in 1815; in facsimile by J. Crossley for the Spenser Society (the edition followed in this article) in 1871; and by Edward Arber in 1878.
- ↑ See Anders, Shakespeare's Books, pp. 166, 169, 173–174, 181, 199, 269.
- ↑ Englands Parnassus (Oxford, 1913) p. xix.
- ↑ Arber's Transcript, I, 313. (Hereafter cited as Trans.)
