The space in between. Creating meaning between Richard Fanshawe’s original and translated poetry

This article offers a reading of the relationship between original and translated poetry in the work of the seventeenth‐century author, diplomat, and translator, Richard Fanshawe. It argues that the physical space between original and translated poetry published in the same volume becomes itself a site of signification. It focuses in particular on the original poem ‘On the Earle of Straffords Tryall’ and the translated sonnet ‘The Fall,’ and on the two examples of self‐translation ‘The Escuriall / In Aedes magnificas’ and ‘On His Majesties Great Shippe/ Ad eximiae magnitudinis Navem.’ The relationship between the two sets of poems can be better understood by taking into account their relative positions in the 1648 volume in which they were published, examining them both as independent pieces and as a unit, resulting in a new and extended reading of both sets of poems. In the process, this article argues that in Fanshawe’s work, and in mid‐seventeenth‐century English literature more broadly, the relationship between original and translated literature occupies a space between independence and continuity, and that translators took to their task with the same energy and creativity as writers of original verse.


The space in between. Creating meaning between Richard Fanshawe's original and translated poetry
Tiago Sousa Garcia Richard Fanshawe (1608-1666), royalist, diplomat, translator, and poet, is not a household name, even for students of the seventeenth century. Fanshawe may have had many different roles: as the secretary to the Prince of Wales during the civil war; as the diplomatic envoy who finalised the negotiations for the marriage of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza; as ambassador to Portugal and Spain; as translator of Guarini's Il Pastor Fido and Camões' Os Lusíadas; and, finally, as a poet attached to an amorphous group sometimes known as the 'Cavalier Poets'. 1 Yet, the names of Thomas Carew, John Suckling and Richard Lovelace are the ones that we most readily associate with this group; Fanshawe is usually forgotten. When he is remembered by literary scholars today, it is usually for his translations: of Guarini and Camões, and possibly also Horace. Fanshawe did write original poetry -'A Canto of the Progress of Learning', 'On His Majesty's Great Ship' or 'On the Earle of Straffords Trial' -but his translations are unquestionably much better known than even his most famous original poem, 'An Ode Upon Occasion of His Majesties Proclamation'. In literary history, Fanshawe is first, foremost and, often, just a translator. His designation as such presupposes that there is a difference between being a poet and being a translator -that these are different activities that carry different value judgements. This article will focus on that distinction -or rather, it will focus on challenging the poet-translator dichotomy. It will argue that, for Fanshawe, translation constituted not an auxiliary, subservient form of literary work, but rather a fully-fledged original poetic practice in its own right. More significantly, it will argue that in Fanshawe's work the distinction between original poetry and translation is non-hierarchical, and that the space between his own original and translated poetry is a site in which he creates meaning: not only in taking translation as an autonomous creative expression but in establishing a meaningful dialogue between the translations and his original poetry. For the reader this means that, where translations and original poetry are published in the same volume, here the 1648 reissue of his translation of Il Pastor Fido with additional poems, it is necessary to read across both types of text looking for, recalling, and identifying connections -the same subjects, even the same lines -that shed a different light and offer new perspectives on both pieces.
In the 1648 Pastor Fido, readers are encouraged to read in this manner, between original poems and their respective translations, by the mise-en-page that places them on the same opening, in facing pages. This is the case for the two examples of self-translation ('The Escuriall / In Aedes magnificas...' and 'On His Majesties Great Shippe / Ad eximiae magnitudinis Navem...') discussed below in which their physical placement on the page contributes to the unstable relationship between original and translation already latent in the very concept of self-translation. More often than not, however, the relationship that concerns us here is not a direct one -that is, between one original poem and its corresponding translation -but rather between poems that are apparently unrelated: translations of continental and classic writers authored by Fanshawe, and Fanshawe's own original compositions. In these cases, as is the case with the other examples discussed in this article ('On the Earle of Straffords Trial' and 'The Fall'), this relationship is not reflected in the physical organisation of the volume. Rather than placing these poems on facing pages, or even grouping them in succession, they are deliberately printed apart, their distance in the volume becoming itself another layer of signification. In these cases, the connection between the original poem and the translation is established by repeated themes and, more clearly, repeated lines. The physical work of flicking through pages between these poems is left for the attentive reader to perform.
It is well recognised that the traditional binaries usually associated with translation -source and target language, faithful and unfaithful renderingsare not sufficient to describe the complex processes at play in the early modern period. Warren Boutcher suggests that it might be more productive to read 'Renaissance translations as "original" works by authors who happen to be translating'. 2 Marie Alice-Belle and Brenda M. Hosington stress the role played by translators in the book market, suggesting a new model that places early modern translators at the intersection of communication circuits for both the original and the translated work, highlighting 'their place among other mediators, such as travellers, booksellers, copyists, and members of international print networks and transnational reading communities'. 3 Earlier, A. E. B. Coldiron had demonstrated how translations have defined the patterns of literary transmission in Europe, 4 and how their physical presentation on the page can visibly carry their alterity -as in the case of John Wolfe's trilingual edition of the Book of the Courtier (1588) -or at the very least the 'foreign residues' that betray 'anxieties and ambivalences' 5 about the role of translation in English literature. In a more recent study, Coldiron has noted how early modern paratexts -in particular portraits of translators -have worked to cement their claim to authorship: 'The visibility of translators in these images not only suggests their importance in emergent constructions of authorship, but also conveys, in this condensed, paratextual shorthand, how their writing, sometimes depicted as "authorial" work, is to be understood and valued.' 6 Writing from a more theoretical perspective on translation, Karen Emmerich goes even further in her evaluation of the role of translation by calling attention to the fact that that which we colloquially call an 'original' and assume to be a stable and fixed text is anything but: 'The textual condition is one of variance, not stability.' 7 Emmerich attempts to reconcile two disciplines -textual studies and translation studies -that though aware of each other's existence rarely engage with each other. Translation, writes Emmerich, 'may be conceived as a form of translingual editing, by which a translator both negotiates existing versions and creates a new one of her own, in a language other than that (or those) in which the work was first (or previously) articulated'. 8 In this understanding of translation as an equal participant in the evolution of a text, Emmerich follows André Lefevere and Susan Bassnet's idea of translation as 'one of the many forms in which works of literature are "rewritten", one of many "rewritings" '. 9 This article builds on these recent developments by analysing Fanshawe's work through a perspective that, on the one hand, privileges translations as 'complex constructs, influenced by time, space, socio-historical and sociocultural contexts', and, on the other, recuperates the notion of translation as 'authorial' work that Coldiron alludes to. 10 In the case of Fanshawe's work, these complex constructs, as I have already suggested, are noticeable in the interplay between his original poetry and his translations published in the same volume. What this article proposes is the erasure of the self-imposed barrier between translated and original material in order to achieve a reading capable of crossing these categories towards a more holistic view of literary work. Fanshawe's work is analysed here as a unified creative expression, leading to both new interpretations of individual poems and a reconfigured perspective on his literary legacy.
The essay will set out to explain the relationship between Fanshawe's original work and his translations, first by examining points of contact and then by exploring specific examples of the interplay between them; it will then discuss the intricate cases of self-translation (from English to Neo-Latin or the other way around), and consider how self-translation itself puts into question the ontological relationships of author and translator, source and translation, original and derivative work. I argue that Fanshawe, as a poet and translator, was conscious of the complicated relationships between these categories and took advantage of their fluctuating nature, on the one hand, to use the space between his translations and his original poems as a place of signification, encouraging his readers to move freely between them, back and forth throughout the volume, reading across and between both types of poems, identifying connections, reflections and refractions that transform their reading of individual poems; on the other hand, and as a result of this, to make a series of nuanced interventions in the contemporary politics of England in an European context. This movement encourages readers to think of Fanshawe's work as a whole so that translation and original work are virtually indistinguishable.
This argument will need to be constructed from a reading of Fanshawe's original and translated poetry because, unfortunately, he never clearly articulated his approach to translation. On the rare occasions in which Fanshawe refers to it, his words are somewhat dismissive of translation work. In a letter to Edward Hyde, Fanshawe writes of studying foreign languages and translating 'other men's matter', naming Os Lusíadas and a Latin translation of Fletcher's Faithfull Sheperdesse, but confessing that he 'thought them both very unworthy of your lordship's sight, not only because ill written but ill print-edʼ. 11 The 'ill' printing is certainly true -The Lusiad is littered with printing mistakes -but the comments about translating 'other men's matter' betray an uneasiness with the literary validity of the work. Undoubtedly, Fanshawe's words are more likely the product of modesty and decorum rather than a true self-evaluation of his labour. And yet, although the implication in the letter is that Fanshawe's recent work would be less interesting for his learned friend because it is merely 'other men's matter,' these comments are more readily applicable to Hyde's literary taste than to Fanshawe's own position. After all, if Fanshawe really did consider that translating 'other men's matter' is an inferior literary activity, we are obliged to ask why he spent so much time translating and publishing it.
To get a better sense of Fanshawe's relationship with translation, we must turn to what his contemporaries wrote about his work. The central importance of translation in Fanshawe's work, for example, is attested by the memoirs of his wife, Ann Fanshawe, in which, despite acknowledging the importance of poetry in his life, she singles out only one of his translations in her narrative, and none of his original work. 12 John Denham, friend and fellow royalist poet, gives a more precise sense of Fanshawe's understanding of translation in the famous panegyric, 'To Sir Richard Fanshawe Upon his Translation of Il Pastor Fido', originally published with the title 'To the Author of this Translation'. 13 Denham opens his poem by pointing to his friend's modesty as a clear sign of his greatness: 'few but such as cannot write, translate / But what in them is want of wit, or voice / In thee is either Modestie, or Choice' (ll. 2-4). Denham also offers specific hints as to how Fanshawe might have understood the translation task, and its relationship with original creation: 'Secure of Fame, thou justly dost esteem / Less honour to create, than to redeem' (ll. 7-8). These lines frame Fanshawe's approach to translation in direct contrast to that of poetic creation, expressing the same unease about the relationship between the two that Fanshawe demonstrated in his letter to Hyde. In Denham's poem, however, the implication is that others might see translation as a lesser form of literary activity, but that Fanshawe does not. We can begin to piece together how Fanshawe saw his own translation efforts, and how these were observed by others: that Fanshawe chose to translate, rather than be forced to do so by a lack of talent ('In thee is either Modestie, or Choice', l. 4); that Fanshawe estimated translation as just as prestigious, if not more so, than original creation ('thou justly dost esteem / Lesse honour to create, then to redeem', ll. 7-8); that Fanshawe was the poetic equal of his sources ('Nor ought a Genius lesse than his that writ, / Attempt Translation', ll. 9-10); that despite poetic license, Fanshawe remains faithful to his source ('Thy spirit to his circle dost confine', l. 33); and finally, despite this fidelity to his source, his intervention is valuable enough to be mistaken for an original ('for we have known / Some thank't & prais'd for what was less their own', ll. 36-7). Denham's description of Fanshawe's translation practice is as close as we can get to an authorial statement: translation, for Fanshawe, was the equal of original creation. This parity is essential in enabling the reader to explore 12  Fanshawe's work across both his original poems and translations. Because translations are as significant as Fanshawe's original poems, the reader is invited to read across both types of text and, more importantly, to derive meaning from that relationship. Fanshawe's translations form the bulk of his output in print. By contrast, his original poetry appears appended to a reissue of one of his famous translations, Guarini's Il Pastor Fido. Fanshawe's translation of Il Pastor Fido was originally published in 1647, in quarto, by Ruth Raworth. This edition includes a letter dedicatory to the Prince of Wales, the translation of Guarini's play, and two original poems: 'Presented to His Highnesse the Prince of Wales, At his going into the West' and 'Presented to His Highnesse, in the West'. In 1648, however, Raworth transfers the rights to the book to another stationer, Humphrey Moseley, who proceeds to reissue the play with additional material: a second title page, a second dedicatory to the Prince of Wales, and, importantly, twelve new gatherings of additional poems: some are Fanshawe originals, but the vast majority are translations. In the 1648 reissue, Moseley reuses the leftover sheets from Raworth's original 1647 print, including its title page and letter dedicatory, and surrounds them with the newly printed additions: on one side, the new title page and other paratexts (letter dedicatory, table of contents, publisher's address to the reader) and, on the other, the new poems (originals and translations). In effect, the 1648 version of the translated play is physically the same as the earlier one, but it is framed with new material. Physically, therefore, the 1648 Pastor Fido places the translation at its centre and the original poetry at its margins; it is on this edition that we will focus our discussion, particularly on the poems included in the new material. 14 Fanshawe himself justifies the 1648 reissue with the inclusion of the new poems. The new dedicatory epistle to the Prince of Wales is primarily concerned with advertising the positive reception the first edition of Il Pastor Fido received from his royal master and introducing the new 'divers poems': 'gives [the faithful shepheard, i.e., Guarini's play and by extension Fanshawe himself] boldnesse at this time, not onely to come againe, but also (being ambitious to advance his Kindred with himselfe) to bring his Brothers (the Additional Poems) to partake the same honour.' 15 In this new dedicatory epistle, Fanshawe explicitly characterises his original poems as the siblings of his larger translation, Il Pastor Fido. The genealogical metaphor employed by Fanshawe in introducing the additional poems places originals and translations side by side, making them equals in fortune and prestige. 14  The relationship between Fanshawe's original poetry and his translations is further complicated when we delve deeper into the additional poems included in the 1648 Pastor Fido. There are six poems that can be unproblematically called original (five in English and one in Latin) and likewise 14 unproblematic translations (ten from Spanish, four from Latin, including a translation of the fourth book of the Aeneid). A third group of poems occupies a space between pure original and pure translation: two English poems attributed to 'Mr T.C. of his Majesties Bed-Chamber' (Kk1v-4r) are translated into Latin, and two others are clear self-translations (English and Latin). The two poems attributed to Mr T.C., identified by Davidson as Thomas Cary, gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles I, are themselves of dubious authorship, in particular in the case of 'Farewell faire Saint', which Davidson attributes to the Scottish William Fowler. 16 What separates these four sets of two poems from the others is their mis-en-page: they are all presented side by side on the book, in facing page translations.
The physical form of the book gives expression to Fanshawe's view of the parity between original and translated poetry, with a very clear expression of this parity evident in the four sets of facing-page translations. The other translations reinforce this parity differently by effacing any hard boundaries between what is an original poem and what is a translated poem. Although nearly all translations are clearly marked as such -mostly with a direct referent to the original author -there is no other intelligible distinction between translations and originals: the two are connected, sometimes even on the same page (for example in Qq1v-2r, with one of Horace's odes following 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall'). The thematic unity is more relevant than the origin of the poems, and the reader is compelled to look for relationships -in the process developing an understanding across languages, literary traditions and even geographical boundaries -that would not be obvious were the translations and original poems to be printed separately.
This interdependence and the thematic bond between translated and original verse goes beyond the simple proximity of the poems on the physical page and similarities of subject matter, however. The relationship is one of continuity and mutual influence in which the very space between them becomes meaningful: this can best be understood by closely examining two poems, one of which is a translation from Luís de Góngora, 'The Fall', and the other an original poem by Fanshawe, 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall,' two poems separated by a handful of pages in the published volume but brought together by a shared subject and, I argue, a connection that demands that they be read in conjunction with each other. As the title of 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall' suggests, the subject of the poem is the trial and execution of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, in 1641. On the surface, this is as localised and specific to the contemporary English context as one could wish; not only that, but Fanshawe had a personal connection with Strafford, having served under his command in Ireland in the late 1630s, a connection that seems to have survived past the Earl's execution and the civil war, as Fanshawe dedicates his 1655 translation of Os Lusíadas to Strafford's heir, William Wentworth, the 2nd Earl of Strafford.
Unsurprisingly, the poem is highly admiring of Strafford and his stance during the trial, while vilifying his opponents. The earl made a 'gallant stand, to be / Judg'd by one Kingdome' (ll. 1-2) and he is praised for refusing to flee or ask for royal assistance, not wishing to bring 'Powers Divine' (l. 6) into the realm of politics and justice. Strafford's trial is compared to Julius Caesar's assassination, his accusers to the conspirators, and Strafford himself is favourably compared to the Roman dictator -'A Caesar? or a Strafford?' (l. 29) -who 'chose' to be assassinated (because of his actions), while the Earl resolved to either be 'absolv'd / Or dye' (ll. 30-1) The Earl's moral high ground and willingness to follow correct procedure is consistently emphasised by Fanshawe, although with the constant implication that the game is rigged from the start, Strafford has no possible escape. For example, the Earl prefers to 'untye the Gordian knot' (l. 10) rather than cut it, eschewing a simple but morally dubious solution for his problem (by asking the King to intercede in his favour) for a nobler, more just, but ultimately impossible solution -to be acquitted of his charges.
The trial itself is figured as a play and Strafford as the central character, but its generic classification is uncertain and disputed. Depending on the personal allegiance of the contemporary reader, Fanshawe's description of Strafford's trial might hover between a comedy, in which the Earl's haughtiness and ill conduct will be punished by the strong arm of justice, and a tragedy in which the virtuous hero will succumb to the dreadful fate. Fanshawe's own position is not in question here -he is an unimpeachable Strafford supporter -but his poem demonstrates an awareness of other points of view in assuring readers that the trial will 'prove no Comedy' (l. 11). In suggesting that Strafford's trial may be seen by some as a comedy, Fanshawe introduces a generic uncertainty in the theatre of justice, which unwittingly gives the impression that perspective itself can be seen as a genre marker: a royalist's tragedy is a parliamentarian's comedy. This is further reinforced by the appraisal of Strafford's character who, like the trial in which he figures, veers between royalist hero and parliamentarian villain: 'for his life's last act, Times shall admiring read it, and this age, / Though now it hisse, claps when he leaves the Stage' (ll. 23-4). Clapping can be a fiendishly ambiguous sign and, again, while Fanshawe might be thinking of Royalist admiration for Strafford, parliamentarians happy to see the Earl depart for his execution are just as likely to celebrate his stage exit.
When read in isolation, then, 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall,' like much royalist literature on the event, turns Strafford into an early martyr for the cause and makes his conduct during the trial an example for all men: 'So stand or fall, none stood so, or so fell' (l. 25). However, in acknowledging that the events of the trial can be perceived with something other than royalist outrage, Fanshawe creates just enough ambiguity to accept a different view on the affair. In this Fanshawe creates a perfectly localized scene, which is aligned both with the contemporary context, and with English and particularly royalist poetic tradition. However, even if Strafford and his trial are specific to the context in which Fanshawe wrote, the overall trope of the fallen favourite is not. In fact, these very lines on Strafford's fall from grace and favour echo the title of another poem included in the additions to the 1648 Pastor Fido -'The Fall' -which, when read in conjunction with Fanshawe's own poem, offers a more nuanced perspective on Strafford's reputational after-life, confirms its unimpeachable Royalist partisanship, and clarifies some of the ambiguities left behind in 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall'.
Unlike 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall,' 'The Fall' 18 is a translation from the Spanish, an original sonnet by Luís de Góngora, 'En la Muerte de Don Rodrigo Calderon.' 19 When examined in isolation, 'The Fall' reads much like 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall': a lament for a disgraced favourite. The major difference is that, in the case of the translated sonnet, there is no clear referent that identifies its subject. This is a particularly significant point because there is an obvious discrepancy between Góngora's original title and Fanshawe's published version that points towards further transformations of the poem's subject and its expression. 'En la Muerte de Don Rodrigo Calderon', literally 'On the Death of Don Rodrigo Calderon,' is as localised to the Spanish context and its dedicatee as Fanshawe's poem on Strafford's trial is to the English one. The parallels between the cases of Strafford and Calderon are almost too good to be true, which further puts in question Fanshawe's decision to erase the Spanish name from his English translation: Don Rodrigo Calderon (1576-1621) was the favourite of the Duke of Lerma under Philip III, the archetypal favourite and, while widely despised during his life, in death he became nearly universally beloved for his conduct on the scaffold: 'Despite powerful prompting, the audience witnessed not the king's righteous justice, but instead the heroism of a brave and honourable hidalgo.' 20  If Calderon was a perfect analogue to Strafford, then why erase his presence from Góngora's poem? At least in part, this must have been motivated by Fanshawe's concern with Strafford's posthumous reputation. Those who were sufficiently aware of Calderon to trace the parallel with Strafford would also have been aware that Calderon's rehabilitation in death was virtually dependent on his impeccable Catholic conduct in the months before his execution. In other words, Calderon was as much a Catholic martyr as a political one. Associating Strafford with Catholicism, particularly when the Earl had been so thoroughly attached to a Popish plot during his downfall, would certainly tarnish his royalist martyr image. 21 Removing the name of Calderon from the translated sonnet, then, seems a wise decision by Fanshawe.
Significantly, we know that anonymising the Spanish favourite to avoid associations with popery was not all Fanshawe had in mind because, at an earlier stage of composition, that is all Fanshawe did. In a presentation manuscript composed sometime between 1637 and 1647 -and, therefore, potentially predating Strafford's fall -the original title of this translation was 'A great Favorit beheaded.' 22 The original title erases Calderon's identity and safeguards associations between Strafford and Catholicism. If that was all Fanshawe wanted from this poem, there would be no reason to change it for publication in 1648.
If Fanshawe had not changed the title of the sonnet there would be very little linking the beheaded favourite to Strafford's case. The original translated title, 'A great Favorit beheaded' very deliberately distances the sonnet from any specific favourite -it is not the great favourite, but a great favourite, any one. Allied to the uncertain date of composition is the near complete lack of details (biographical or otherwise) from the translated poem. The sonnet tells us only that this person was decapitated: 'The bloudy trunk of him,' (l. 1) that his tomb is not a big monument but a 'little stone,' (l. 3) that for 'Ten years the world upon him falsly smiled,' (l. 9) and that he fell from a throne to 'a Scaffold' (l. 13). These events can be virtually ascribed to any fallen favourite and it is therefore no wonder that some readers did not immediately associate the sonnet with Strafford but rather with Charles I himself, 23 even if the publication history of the sonnet makes it very improbable (though not entirely impossible) that the poem refers to the unfortunate king.
However, there is still one piece of internal evidence that can be tied to the Earl of Strafford, the line 'Ten yeares the world upon him falsly smild.' Góngora's original has 'El tiempo quatro lustros en la risa' (l. 10), literally 'Time laughs for four lustros,' with 'lustros' being defined as a period of five years in Spanish. That is, Góngora mentions Calderon as being fortunate for a period of 20 years before his downfall, which is true for the Spanish favourite but not for the English one; Fanshawe readjusts the period to ten years, which can be approximately mapped to Strafford's deputyship of Ireland from 1632 until his execution in 1641. Based on the ten years mentioned by Fanshawe and its rough correspondence with Strafford's tenure in Ireland and as Charles I chief councillor from 1640 onwards, commentators have almost unanimously judged 'The Fall' to refer to the fallen Earl. 24 In many ways, changing the title of this translation to 'The Fall' generalises the subject of the sonnet to any man of power fallen from grace into the executioner's arms. The line that refers to the ten years of success, though adequate in Strafford's case, is also vague enough to be read in a general sense -ten years not twenty, one decade not two -and can easily be understood to mean simply a relatively long period of time that is nonetheless finite. The references to the 'little stone' that encases the deceased body, as noted above, have no clear or identifiable referent in real life -and, in addition, have a clear poetic function in the imagery of the poem: a great man is now in a little tomb, so ends greatness betrayed: another common trope associated with fallen favourites. Read in isolation, 'The Fall' is a sonnet that meditates on the archetype of the fallen favourite, that favours human memory over physical monuments, and that criticises a world capable of falsely smiling for ten years before throwing someone 'to a Scaffold from a Throne' (l. 13).
'The Fall', however, was not published, nor, as far as we know, did it circulate in isolation. On the contrary, it is an integral part of that tightly-knit group of 'additional poems,' siblings to the 1648 Pastor Fido. In context, then, the subject of 'The Fall' is very clearly the Earl of Strafford, precisely because of its new title that has, so far, received little critical attention. More significantly for our purposes, 'The Fall' is not only translated with Strafford in mind, but it is clearly associated with one of Fanshawe's original poems, 'On the Earl of Straffords Tryall,' specifically with line 17, 'So stand or fall, none stood so, or so fell.' The line clearly stresses the uniqueness of Strafford's case, even in the overcrowded field of the fallen favourite archetype. If no other courtier had fallen in the same way that Strafford did, then the title 'The Fall' -not a fall of any great favourite -could only refer to him.
When the new title is read in context, rather than in the more general terms suggested by the abstract theme of the sonnet, it uniquely and unequivocally identifies the Earl of Strafford as the subject of 'The Fall'. But it does more than that: it ties the two poems together, Fanshawe's original and the Góngora translation, and invites the reader to read between them. The line 'So stand or fall, none stood so, or so fell' in Fanshawe's original and the title of the translated sonnet connect the two representations. Despite that connection, the two poems are also physically separated by several pages in the published book, which creates a tension between unity and independence. In fact, the physical separation might itself become the stimulus to further investigation, forcing the reader to stop, turn back the pages and read once more the same poem. Because the translation appears before Fanshawe's original poem, the reader is forced to return to it, and to look at it again in a new light and fill in the anonymous blanks left in the translation. By physically separating the Góngora translation and his poem on the trial of Strafford, but clearly linking them by the uniqueness of Strafford's fall, Fanshawe obliges the reader to slow down and dwell on the case; in other words, Fanshawe creates an active reader who cannot but read between the translation and the original poem to fully understand Fanshawe's poetic reaction to the Earl's demise.
Reading across the volume but between these two poems opens new lines of interpretation. To be sure, the subject is the same, but the scenes and, importantly, the perspective, is different. The themes echo from one poem to the other, but they are refracted through a different lens. At a very superficial level, the poems focus on different stages of the same process -a 'before' and 'after' execution. Both focus on a single moment in time, but both look to the past and the future. In 'The Fall,' the central conceit is the 'little stone' (l. 3) that may be able to cover the Earl's physical body, but cannot 'stop the rowling of his fate' (l. 4). Fanshawe places a great emphasis on the contrast between the smallness of the physical stone that marks the Earl's final resting place and the 'Imaginary vault' (l. 7) erected by 'common pity to his vertues' (l. 6). This is not a Christian opposition of corporeal and spiritual life, but an opposition between the application of common-law justice and the true justice enacted in the minds of people. The real 'little stone' and the 'Imaginary Vault' are the symbols that correspond to being executed as a traitor and being remembered as a martyr. Likewise, 'On the Earl of Straffords Tryall,' there is a similar opposition between what is being acted in real life and what people will read: 'for his lifes last act, / Times shall admiring read it, and this age, / Though now it hisse, claps when he leaves the Stage' (ll. 14-16) Both poems, therefore, present an opposition between the events as they were constructed in history, and their future interpretation. Across both 'The Fall' and 'On the Earl of Straffords Tryall', memory after death is the real legacy, not the 'little stone' that covers the body of the fallen favourite, nor the hisses that greeted his 'lifes last act. ' Although both poems coalesce around the idea of memory as commemoration, time plays a very different role from one to the other. 'On the Earl of Straffords Tryall,' time is not only the guarantor of justice -its passage will ensure that the events of the trial will be seen differently and that the Earl's actions will be applauded -but is also deployed in a larger frame to establish comparisons and analogies between Strafford and Roman history. Strafford is compared to both Caesar and Otho, the Roman Emperor who committed suicide to prevent civil war; his accusers are compared to the conspirators who murdered Caesar -more so, in an alternative timeline in which Caesar would have been allowed to defend himself as Strafford did, his enemies would have been moved to spare his life, 't'have lov'd, / And pittyed him' (ll. 26-7) so Strafford's accusers are even worse than Caesar's assassins' for refusing to yield to the Earl's rhetoric. 25 'On the Earl of Straffords Tryall', time is the Earl's advocate -not so in 'The Fall'. If anything, in the translated poem, the role of time is diametrically opposed: not an advocate, not a guarantor of the Earl's vindication but an enemy that 'strives [...] to raze' (l. 8) the 'Brasse Tombes' (l. 5) and Strafford's 'Imaginary vault' (l. 7) from 'our minds' -though, the speaker assures us, it does so 'in vaine' (l. 8). In the translated sonnet, then, time assumes its traditional role of the enemy of memory, threatening the Earl's afterlife with the sole physical monument of the 'little stone' marking his final resting spot. Likewise, during Strafford's lifetime, time is treacherous, conspiring to heighten the fall: Ten yeares the world upon him falsly smild. Sheathing in fawning lookes the deadly knife. Long aymed at his head: That so beguild. It more securely might bereave his Life. (ll. 9-12) Rather than a period of glory, the ten years in which Strafford enjoyed his ascension become in 'The Fall' part of time's treachery -a ruse that makes the eventual and, it is implied, inevitable execution the more cruel.
'The Fall' and 'On the Earle of Straffords Tryall' represent the same event, but from different perspectives; they can be read both together as a single unit and in opposition to each other. The original poem is not more important (nor better) 26 than the translated one. The title, of course, was not the only thing that Fanshawe transformed from Góngora. The poem would still be recognisable for seventeenth-century readers familiar with Góngora's work, but there are a number of small but important alterations that are Fanshawe's own, the two clearer ones being the insistence on the 'little stone' (l. 3) that is only suggested by Góngora's 'piçarra' (l. 4) and the 'quatro lustros' (l. 10) transformed into the ten years that Strafford spent in Ireland. Other alterations are structural and suggested by the translation of the form from a Petrarchan into an English sonnet. In formal terms, Góngora's sonnet follows the traditional structure of two quatrains introducing the theme -a decapitated body, commemorated with a luxurious imaginary monument in the minds of his friends -followed by a conclusion in two tercets -though he was fortunate for twenty years, his fate was always decided: falling from a high place to a scaffold; his case is an example for all. In translating the Petrarchan sonnet into an English one, Fanshawe extends the first half of Góngora into three quatrains and condenses the final two tercets into a single couplet, and in doing so necessarily transforms Góngora's overall sonnet into something slightly different. In expanding the exposition of the theme, Fanshawe extends the focus of the poem from the moment immediately after the execution -the favourite, fallen -to the ten years before, which led to the execution. This extended timeframe enlists the fallen's career as a necessary part of the fall itself, shifting the action of fate from the individual -Calderon was always destined to be executed, given the inconsistencies of 'su hado' (his fate, l. 3) -to his career trajectory. In other words, in Fanshawe's sonnet, Strafford was not fated to die on the scaffold, but anyone who had a similar career would necessarily fall.
The condensed final couplet, 'Then threw him to a Scaffold from a Throne. / Much Doctrine lyes under this little Stone' (ll. 13-14) is entirely Fanshawe's own invention, including the closing dictum. The first half of the couplet is suggested by Góngora in 'De'l sitíàl despues al cadahalso' (l. 12) but with two significant differences. 'Sitíàl' is a seat of honour, but a non-specific one -it could be just as easily a bishop's cathedra as a guest of honour's chair. There are no royal associations with a 'sitíàl,' but in translating it as a 'throne' Fanshawe ties the fallen favourite to royal power. Less generous readings of this poem might be tempted to see this as an admission that Strafford was guilty of overreaching, of trying to take the 'throne' -i.e., of unduly controlling the king -himself; but Fanshawe probably had in mind a more specific and legalistic definition of 'throne:' as the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Strafford was the representative of the King and the de facto wielder of the sceptre. In noting that the fallen had been removed from the throne to the scaffold, Fanshawe highlights the idea that executing his representative is paramount to executing the King, anticipating the execution of Charles I in 1649.
The second significant divergence in Fanshawe's line is more subtle but just as significant. Góngora's original line has no agency. 'De'l sitíàl despues al cadahalso' simply implies an autonomous, even inevitable, movement from the throne to the scaffold, but in Fanshawe's version this is turned on its head by the choice of 'threw'. In Fanshawe's version, the fall is no longer a necessity, but a forceful and, by implication, wrongful removal from power. The favourite has not simply fallen from grace, he was violently thrown into a grave. The agent responsible for throwing the favourite to the scaffold is not, as is implied in Góngora, fate but rather 'the world' that 'falsly smild' (l. 9) upon Strafford. Again Fanshawe reinforces the idea that Strafford's end was not the inevitable conclusion to his career, but rather an act of treason by those who smiled at the Earl during his ascendancy.
In translating 'The Fall' with an eye to Strafford's case, Fanshawe also demonstrates a political worldview that is essentially European in scope. Unlike the famous dictum that history is just 'one damned thing after another', for Fanshawe, like for many of his contemporaries, history is just the same thing over and over again. As Blair Worden notes, since 'all history was essentially alike, the writers and readers who sought contemporary instruction from it moved easily from one period to another', 27 and, one might add, in Fanshawe's case, from one country to another. It demonstrates a sense of connection between European countries -and literatures, and politics -that is further confirmed by Fanshawe's interest in translation from European vernaculars. Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who travelled often and who experienced more foreign societies than most of his contemporaries, Fanshawe's translations have a distinct European and cosmopolitan worldview, both in the variety of languages from which he translates (Latin, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, the last of which there was virtually no history of translation into English) and in the use to which he puts these foreign texts: to comment, reflect, criticise and intervene in his own contemporary English political context.
'The Fall' is typical of Fanshawe's translation practice: the changes are subtle, almost unnoticeable, but their effects transform the source text into something different, original. Fanshawe was a judicious translator, sympathetic and respectful of his source but attuned and sensitive to his own context. Crucially, he made good use of his creative freedom in translating. Fanshawe most noticeably differs from contemporary practice (and from some of his own contemporaries as well) in approaching translation not merely as a free vehicle for his poetic expression but to establish parity between translation and his own poetic creation, framing his work as a continuum made of both original and translated poems, each connected to, extending, and illuminating the other. The most illustrative example of this is not when Fanshawe translates others' works, but rather when he translates his own poetry, what is colloquially, but as I argue here, misguidedly referred to as 'original' work.
In version on the recto on the right. The mise-en-page of these poems reinforces once more the idea of parity between source and translation and reifies a relationship that Stephen Hinds, discussing the more famous case of Andrew Marvell's English and Latin poetry, calls a verbal diptych: 'individual pairings of English and Latin poems, probably conceived together and clearly [...] meant to be read together.' 30 In the particular case of these two self-translations however, and self-translation in general, the concepts of source and translation are profoundly challenged. As Rainier Grutman and Trish Van Bolderen assert, 'self-translators are often seen to have much more leeway in the decision-making process of translation [...] self-translators are routinely given poetic license to rewrite "their" originals.' 31 This 'poetic license' lent to self-translators by their readers unsettles the very concepts of 'original' and 'translation' in which it rests -the ontological relationship between source and translation no longer exists: self-translation exposes the implicit assumption that these concepts are based on an imbalanced expectation of authority. Hokenson and Munson argue that 'current concepts of bilingualism and translation are still largely the legacies of German Romantic philosophy of language' 32 in which language remains indissociable from Volk and that, therefore, 'the standard binary model of author and translator collapses. Theoretical models of source and target languages also break down in the dual text by one hand, as do linguistic models of lexical equivalence and foreign versus domestic culture'. 33 In other words, one cannot speak of original and translation with cases of self-translation because neither version of the text can claim to be more authoritative than the other. As Susan Bassnett points out, the term 'self-translation' itself is problematic because 'it compels us to consider the problem of the existence of an original. The very definition of translation presupposes an original somewhere else, so when we talk about self-translation, the assumption is that there will be another previously composed text from which the second text can claim its origin'. 34 Despite conceding that there is 'always some kind of a relationship between the two texts [of a self-translation]', 35 Bassnet goes further by suggesting that we should 'dispense with the terminology of self-translation altogether and look more holistically at a writer's work', 36 which is precisely the argument this article puts forward. In printing his two self-translated poems side-by-side, Fanshawe forces his reader to consider his work as the continuum already suggested by the commingled publication of translations and original poems in the 1648 Pastor Fido. That Fanshawe practiced self-translation is not particularly noteworthyself-translation, particularly between vernaculars and Latin is a relatively common practice throughout early modern period. It may even be thought of as related to a common method of language-learning widespread in Fanshawe's generation, usually referred to as double translation. 37 In England, Roger Ascham most famously called attention to (but did not create) the method in his teaching manual, The Schoolmaster: a student translates from a source from language (i) into language (ii); the source is removed from the student's view and, after some time, the student is asked to translate from language (ii) back into the source language (i); the student's translation is then compared with the source and mistakes (of style or grammar) are corrected. 38 Though double translation -which involved translating from a classical author -and self-translation are not exactly the same, the translating paths of English to Latin and Latin to English are the same. Translating one's own words, then, would be a familiar activity for any literate seventeenth-century man; moving from the school exercise to self-translation is a small and familiar step. The temptation would be to dismiss self-translation as an exercise of wit, an adult version of the schoolboy exercise. However, while self-translation in and of itself might just be boasting by an accomplished Latinist, printing it, particularly in a volume dedicated to the Prince of Wales at a critical time in history, suggests that there is something more pertinent afoot. Self-translation might be a literary game; printing it, is not.
Another way of understanding this phenomenon is through the perspective of the projected audiences: that is, the English versions would be directed at one group of readers, the Latin ones at another group. These are usually thought to be, almost by default, a domestic audience for the English poems and an international audience for the Latin poems. Realistically, it is true, the English versions could only be directed at a domestic readership -very few people could read English outside the British Isles in the seventeenth century. With this in mind, it is possible to read the Latin poems as part of a contemporary corpus of Neo-Latin poetry, in dialogue with contemporary 37 For more on double translation as a language acquisition method in early modern England see William If there is no obvious reason to publish 'The Escuriall' and 'On His Majesties Great Shippe' in facing-page Latin and English versions, there must be a reason of another kind: the publication of both versions of the same poems and their mise-en-page point towards a very deliberate act. One possible reason ties with the nature of self-translation itself discussed above, another with the first reader of the collection, the Prince of Wales, and both reasons relate to each other. Printing both poems side by side, Fanshawe makes a clear statement about the nature of self-translation and translation more generally: that, as Bassnett suggests, 42 there is no source and translation, that there is no original, that both versions of the same poem are interdependent and a complete reading must be made between both poems, or, to use Hinds' term, as a diptych. Implicitly, Fanshawe states what would take translation theory a few centuries to articulate: that translation is a creative act that happens between languages and not a utilitarian vehicle for a foreign text. In publishing these self-translations the point is made clearer and more forcefully than it could be done otherwise by the translation of other authors' works. Because they are printed side-by-side, the reader is invited to compare and contrast both versions of the same poem on equal terms, and a complete reading must necessarily incorporate both versions.
The parity between English and Latin versions of the same poems presents a curious paradox: Fanshawe seems to be making both a nationalist and cosmopolitan point at the same time: on the one hand, the self-translations imply that literature in English is the equal of literature in Latin; on the other, to be able to even comprehend this point, a reader must be capable of understanding literature written in both his own language and in the European lingua franca. More so, the subjects of both poems reinforce this paradox and commend it to its dedicatee, the future Charles I. On one side, 'His Majesties Great Shippe' is a poem about a triumph of human engineering and beauty designed to extend the British dominion over the seas -aptly named The Sovereign of the Seas. The ship is destined to rule other nations either by war -'To Martiall proofes thou powre on hostile Lands' (l. 85) -or diplomacy -'giv'n to softer tryumphs of faire Peace / [...] / Thou fetch for our young Prince a Princely Bride' (ll. 89-94). 'On His Majesties Great Shippe' is a poem celebrating a national symbol that will rule for England over the seas and over other nations. By contrast, 'The Escuriall' celebrates a similar achievement of another nation -and the perennial enemy at that -in an even grander scale. The Escurial is described as 'the best and greatest [Fabricke] but the universe' (l. 2) whose 'massy Towers' (l. 3) climb to heavens and whose monumentality scornes 'the idle battery of old time' (l. 4). Both poems, then, celebrate achievements of similar scale, and both the Escurial and The Sovereign of the Seas proclaim their respective nations as the chief among all others. At first glance, then, the subject of these poems reinforces the paradox implied by the self-translation.
Despite this, much like with 'On the Earl of Straffords Tryall' and 'The Fall', both sets of poems can be -and I would argue, should be -read not as separate pieces but in connection with and across each other. 'The Escuriall' and 'On His Majesties Great Shippe' are grouped together by a number of factors: they follow each other in the 1648 Pastor Fido; they are the only two examples of self-translation in the volume, and their mise-en-page visually separates them from the other poems by emphasizing this; as briefly discussed above, they share similar subjects; finally, there are clear textual links that unequivocally tie the two poems together: the opening line of 'On His Majesties Great Shippe' clearly references the poem on the Spanish monumental building complex, calling the great ship the 'Escuriall of the Sea' (l. 1).
Reading across these two sets of poems, the nationalist-cosmopolitan paradox starts to dissolve in favour of a more strongly international perspective. In 'The Escuriall', references to its multicultural construction become more salient. Fanshawe names contributions from Germans, 'Flemmings', Greeks, Danes, French, Spanish, Italians and English, as well as Native Americans, Turks and Indians (ll. 33-40): the Escurial, in Fanshawe's panegyric, is not Spanish but a truly international monument. The same is true for the construction of the Sovereign of the Seas, whose wood, the speaker asks, could come from 'Brittish Forrests', 'Denmarke or cold Norway' (ll. 20-1). This is not, of course, a support for multiculturalism avant la lettre: Fanshawe is closer to the discourse of Empire than that of united Europe, but Empire does not account for its cosmopolitan gathering of the best artisans and the best materials to create a great work. In both cases, the magnificence of the construction is made greater by the number and diversity of the nations that build them: rather than glorifying the exceptionalism of England or Spain, Fanshawe glorifies their place in the world -in relation to, and with, other nations.
From this perspective, then, the two sets of self-translations advocate for a cosmopolitan nation and a cosmopolitan literature -they serve to remind the Prince to look beyond the current intestine conflict into the wider world, and to consider the nation's position within that world. The Latin versions of the poems facing the English ones are a visual reminder that England is not isolated, but is part of a literary community that extends beyond its borders. The 1648 Pastor Fido, with its heavy mix of original poetry and translation, makes the same point by erasing the dividing lines between what is natively English and the foreign artisans that were brought in by Fanshawe to build the edifice of the book, as in the construction of the Escurial, presented almost as the anti-Babel: The fine Italian there doth emulate Our English joyn'd with Spaine by Mariage late All tongues are met, yet no confusion there Because this Pile to Pious end they reare. (ll. [39][40][41][42] Significantly, in Fanshawe's description of the Escurial's construction, the confusion of languages -the babble of Babel -is not an obstacle for understanding: rather, it is the very reason why the finished building becomes so impressively beautiful. Its beauty comes from the exchange of cultures, not from its birthplace in central Spain. Different languages work side by side to produce it, bringing their own influences and contexts to create something new. Fanshawe's description of the Escurial's construction could have just as easily have been his own ars translationi for the 1648 Pastor Fido: poets from different languages working side by side to create something unique. For Fanshawe, then, translation is an edifice constructed by many hands, and just as creativeif not more -as those that boast a single author.
Fanshawe left us with no clear statement on his approach to translation, no ars translationi and no clear rationale behind his choices, but it seems that the seventeenth-century poet had a clear sense in his mind of what translation should be, and how translation relates to original literary work. As we've seen, Fanshawe's original poetry cannot be divorced from his translations without a loss: by reading 'On the Earl of Straffords Tryall' in connection with his translation from Góngora, 'The Fall', we were able to introduce new perspectives on both poems and form a new image of Fanshawe's literary reaction to the execution of his former master, Thomas Wentworth. The close analysis of Fanshawe's translation of Góngora illuminated the techniques and preoccupations at the forefront of his mind: re-naturalise the poem, divorce it from any Catholic echoes that could tarnish Strafford's name and, crucially, introduce a different understanding of the role of fate in the narrative of the Earl's fall from grace. Similarly, the two self-translations exposed the unconscious assumptions of original and translated poetry for what they are, and what Fanshawe understood them to be: arbitrary constructions rather than, as Bassnett argued before, rewriting. The self-translations are the clearest embodiment of Fanshawe's view of translation as a creative, original, poetic work.
Was Fanshawe unique in his understanding of translation? Probably not. In fact, as Denham's panegyric implies, this might have been a common approach amongst contemporary poet-translators. Literary history, however, has long struggled with this hybrid category of author. Those who wrote mainly original poetry (Milton, Marvell) are taken up by nationalist literary histories as heroes of English letters who happen to also have translated; those whose work is remembered mostly for translations (Chapman, Harrington) are the foundations of historical translation studies; in both cases, with few exceptions, one type of work is privileged over the other and the relationships between originals and translations are lost. As mentioned above, recent developments in translation studies are redressing the divide by highlighting translation's role within the wider context of early modern print culture and communication networks, 43 but an examination of the place of translation within a single author-translator's work and its relationship with their literary output still needs further theorisation and investigation. 44 The critical focus on original creation is, at least to some extent, the product of English literary history's development as a discipline, with its strong roots in ideas of a national literature that celebrates the native genius over foreign borrowings. As Warren Boutcher recently wrote, '[t]he institutionalisation of English literature as an independent school and university discipline in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has had a distorting effect on the study of the literary past in early modern England'. 45 While critical ideas have long since moved on from nativism, the discipline remains 43 See the works of Hosington and Coldiron mentioned above. 44 Emmerich, quoted above, is one welcome exception to this. organised along lines more political than linguistic. In part this might be the result of a lack of critical vocabulary to describe the relationship between original and translation. Thinking about translation and original work as a continuum that invites the reader to read between them has several consequences for our understanding of literature in the period: it establishes parity between original and translation; it promotes complex readings across the two types of works, at the same time that it safeguards their individual characteristics; it emphasises a complete view of an author's work without privileging one type of literary activity over the other; it illuminates the points of connection between them, which results in a more complete understanding of an author's literary work and early modern literature more broadly; and, perhaps more importantly, it recuperates a more accurate picture of what literary production in the seventeenth century looked like: 'At this crucial moment, when orthodoxy has it that English literature was being invented, humane letters was still as much an Englished as an originally English phenomenon.' 46 We have long recognised the mid-seventeenth century as one of the golden ages of translation in English, 47 and there are a number of poets whose poetic output, like Fanshawe's, consists mostly of translated work 48 or happily mixes original and translation. 49 A systematic analysis of translation in the mid seventeenth century, particularly with attention to translations from the vernacular and its position in the contemporary literary hierarchy, remains to be undertaken. Such work is of vital importance: if translation was, as I argue here, on a par with original work, ignoring its role in seventeenth-century literature means limiting ourselves to a half-picture, one which is already so damaged by its virtual absence from curricula at all levels of education; furthermore, by insisting on a multi-tiered hierarchy of literary originality, unwitting scholars perpetuate the continued marginalisation of under-represented authors in the period -as a man of some position and influence, Fanshawe could choose to translate instead of writing his own original poetry with the knowledge that it would be read, circulated and published, but that would not be the case for many of his contemporaries, particularly female authors who were often confined to translation as the only acceptable mode of literary production -their works, and those of lower-class jobbing translators who often did not sign their names under Horace's or Virgil's, will virtually disappear unless translation is studied from a literary perspective that is not 46  circumscribed by the field of translation studies. Even for those poets who, like Fanshawe, had the luxury of being able to write and circulate whatever they wanted in whatever form, ignoring their translations in favour of original work is accepting a skewed perspective on their literary characters: both considerable segments of their work will be ignored and, as demonstrated in this article, the connections between original and translation will be lost, new and innovative readings will not be achieved and the reductive, isolationist, nineteenth-century idea of national literature will go on unchallenged. If the poets of the mid-seventeenth century saw their translation work as the equal of their original work, it is our duty to read it as such.
Newcastle University