Burning the heretic: conscientious revision in Henry Constable's "Falslie Doth Enuie of Youre Praises Blame"

Abstract

The secular sonnets of the poet and courtier Henry Constable (1562–1613) circulated in several manuscripts in his own lifetime and were also printed in 1592 and 1594 under the title Diana . A significant number of these sonnets present textual variations in the sources preserved, as a result of the process of transmission and revision. The variants found in the extant copies of the sonnet “Falslie doth enuie of youre praises blame” are particularly remarkable. As it appears in the Marsh MS (1588), the poem, a love complaint, introduces the image of the burning of a heretic and is laden with anti-Catholic allusions. These disappear in the subsequent versions found in the Harington MS (1589), the Todd MS (early seventeenth century) and the two printed editions, which present a toned-down, more conventional text. This article analyses the process of revision of the sonnet in view of Sir John Harington's religious ambiguity and Constable's conversion to Catholicism.