ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

FROM WROTH TO PHILIPS
Only our sense of how we think “women” should sound in “autobiography”
limits the interpretive latitude we might give to this passage, especially to the
third line, for instance. Is “Martha Moulsworth” speaking like one of
Shakespeare’s women of the world here?
Charitable as she is, she also makes good on an earlier promise to use this
occasion to bless the memory of each husband, which she does not simply by
recalling their names and her associations with each, but by drawing attention to
a coincidence that, in a sense, blesses them collectively: “My husbands all on
holly dayes did die/Such day, such waie, they to the Sts [saints] did hye” (ll. 73–4).
She then gives each his separate due in a way that happily illustrates her own wit:
“The ffirst, the ffirst of Martirs did befall/St. Stevens ffeast to him was ffunerall (ll.
77–8) …the second on a double sainted day/To Jude, & Symon tooke his happy
way” (ll. 81–2).
The Last on St. Mathias day did wend
unto his home, & pilgrimages ende
this feast comes in that season wch doth bringe
uppon dead Winters cold, a lyvelie Springe
His Bodie winteringe in the lodge of death
Shall ffeele A springe, wth budd of life, & Breath.
231
(ll. 89–94)
One can easily understand why the hospitable widow Moulsworth might have
been in demand as a wife. “All lovely, lovinge all, some more, some lesse,” she
reminds us that in heaven there are to be no favorites, citing in the margin as
her authority Matthew 22:18 (containing Jesus’s repudiation of the hairsplitting
inquiries into the logic of the Resurrection by the Sadducees):
In vayne itt were, prophane itt were ffor me
Wth Sadnes to aske wch of theis three
I shall call husband in the Resurrection
ffor then shall all in glorious perfection
Like to th’immortall heavenlie Angells live
Who wedlocks bonds doe neither take nor give.
(ll. 97–102)
And just possibly the marital latitude in heaven is to be extended a little further
on earth. The final eight lines, with their clever use of proverbs, describe a
woman who well understands her value in silver:
But in the Meane tyme this must be my care
of knittinge here a fourth knott to beware
A threefold cord though hardlie yett is broken