Call for Papers: POLY-OLBION AND THE WRITING OF BRITAIN

10-11 September 2015

Royal Geographical Society, London

  Confirmed speakers include Alison Chapman, Andrew Hadfield, Bernhard Klein, Sara Trevisan, and Angus Vine. The conference will also feature presentations by the Poly-Olbion Project Team:  Andrew McRae, Philip Schwyzer, Daniel Cattell, and Sjoerd Levelt.

William Hole's frontispiece for the Poly-Olbion often attracts attention for its portrayal of lady Albion, with her beautiful robes, which in their pattern refer to Hole's maps contained in the Poly-Olbion, while the composition as a whole appears to echo the famous Ditchley portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.

The frontispiece is remarkable for another reason, too, however, and that is its portrayal of British history, with a remarkably sophisticated sense of archaeological detail: the four men who frame Albion's portrait are (top left) Brutus, the original ancestor of the Britons; (top right) Julius Caesar, the first Roman to rule Britain; (bottom left) Hengest, leader of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of Britain; (bottom right) William the Conqueror, the most recent conqueror of Britain (the final, Dutch, conquest of Britain was still to happen); each in period costume.

The four men are staring each other down in a way rather similar to the opening sequence of Once Upon A Time In The West; the point appears to be that Britain's past is a contested past.

Am I mistaken to think that the engraver, William Hole, applied the same principle in a later frontispiece he made, namely that for Ben Jonson's Workes (1616)? (Another connection between Ben Jonson, William Hole and the Poly-Olbion is discussed in our previous post). Here it seems to be Tragedy and Comedy personified who are staring each other down for the favours of Tragicomedy, who towers over them in the composition, accompanied by a satyr and a shepherd.

A year before his frontispiece for the Poly-Olbion, engraver William Hole made one for Coryat's Crudities (1611), an account of travels through Europe. Here is the reproduction of the Folger Shakespeare Library copy:

Several scenes from the work are presented, and on the following pages in the book, a key ('An Explication of the Emblemes of the frontispice') is given to the various passages, with verses written by Laurence Whitaker (later MP for Peterborough) and the famous playwright Ben Jonson.

The frontispiece and the verses make much fun of Thomas Coryat, no doubt on instigation of the author himself, who is often described as an eccentric. Thus, on one emblem, the author is presented as the fount of more than wisdom alone. 'Here, like Arion, our Coryate doth draw / All sorts of fish with Musicke of his maw':

But projectiles don't only emit from the author, they are also directed towards him, in abundance. 'A Punke [i.e., a prostitute] here pelts him with egs. How so? / For he did but kisse her, and so let her go':

'Here France, and Italy both to him shed / Their hornes, and Germany pukes on his head':

Among the many dedicatory verses which follow the key to the frontispiece, is also a verse by Michael Drayton (see below).

John Selden, who would around this same time be asked to contribute a prose commentary to Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (or be busy preparing it), was reputed to be a drinking buddy of Ben Jonson; thus, through Hole's, Jonson's and Drayton's participation in the publication of Coryat's Crudities we are reminded that London's literary world in the early seventeenth-century was a tightly connected network.

Incipit Michael Drayton.

Since we have been celebrating the work of William Hole, the engraver of the Poly-Olbion frontispiece and maps, we thought it appropriate also to show you another of his accomplishments. More or less the same time that he was working on the Poly-Olbion, he made the plates for Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the First Musicke that ever was Printed for the Virginalls. It was the first time in England that music was printed from copperplate engraving instead of movable type.

You can listen to and buy Parthenia in various recordings, for example here or here (the latter in Naxos Music Library, fully accessible through many local libraries in the UK).

The British Library held a celebration of the Parthenia in 2013; the image of the musical notation is from their blog.

William Hole, the engraver of the Poly-Olbion frontispiece and maps (see our twitter stream @poly_olbion for many examples), is better appreciated for his skill in scripts and musical notation than for his figurative work, which in his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is described as 'crude and wooden'. While we at the Poly-Olbion project believe the creative and vibrant Poly-Olbion maps are anything but wooden, we did think it was worth showing a little of what Hole did best: creating handwriting in print.

In 1618, six years after the Poly-Olbion was first published, Hole made the plates for Martin Billingsley's The Pens Excellencie or the Secretaries Delighte, a book of writing styles current in Stuart London.

Designed by Billingsley, but engraved by Hole, many of the plates are barely distinguishable from handwritten script.

And indeed, on the title page Hole subtly indicated that it was in fact his work: a conspicuous loop connects the description of the subject of the work, 'the Art of Writing', to his own name:

A complete scan of the Folger Shakespeare Library copy can be found here.

More famous long ago than for the salmon’s leap For beavers Tivy was, in her strong banks that bred, Which else no other brook of Britain nourished

- Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (1612), Song 6, ll. 56-58

The passage about the River Tivy [Teifi] Beavers from the Poly-Olbion can be read here.

Dolly Jørgensen's short history of Welsh beavers can be found here.

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The core purpose of The Poly-Olbion Project, based at the University of Exeter and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is to produce a new scholarly edition of the text. In addition, the project aims to generate some fresh critical work, including a conference at the Royal Geographical Society in September 2015, and culminating in the publication of an edited volume of critical essays.

We are also committed to bringing Poly-Olbion to a wider audience. Our website, in due course, will provide a gateway to a full text of Drayton’s poem, along with selected extracts modernized and introduced for general reading or teaching purposes. We are also delighted to be working in partnership with Flash of Splendour Arts, which will be running a programme of innovative workshops with selected groups of children, leading towards an exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society.