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larryhammerFor download: an ePub edition of The Barons Wars by Michael Drayton, being an Elizabethan epic poem about the events surrounding the deposition of Edward II of England in 1326.
The work first caught my attention because it's a 1603 revision of his earlier 1596 epic Mortimeriados (meaning something like "the deeds of Mortimer"? -- my Greek roots fail me here), in which Drayton rewrote seven-line stanzas of rhyme royal into eight-line stanzas of ottava rima. What I actually want is to read is the earlier version, because it's one of the last major works to be written in rhyme royal* and I'm always looking for examples of how poets handle the form, especially one as good as Drayton. However, I've yet to find an electronic version of Mortimeriados worth sniffing at.**
OTOH, Google has a pretty good scan of an 1887 edition of Drayton that includes this -- one of the better OCRs of poetry I've seen, actually, with over half the stanzas recognized as lines of verse instead of run-in as paragraphs. Plus some of the usual OCR artifacts, but not many. (Especially compared to archive.org's job on this edition, which is as noisy as typical for them.) A couple hours' work with regular expressions, and I got this.
NB: This is not a scholarly edition. It hasn't even been systematically proofread -- I corrected obvious mis-recognitions in passing (against Google's page images as needed) but otherwise it's all been formatting. But it is a reading edition, which is what I wanted, and which I'm offering to anyone who'd like a copy. I can also provide a flat HTML version, if you'd prefer that instead. Kindle format, I leave to someone with a device to create and test it on.
It makes a good companion to Daniel's The Civil Wars, covering (most of) the War of the Roses. Contrast also Drayton's treatment of Mortimer and Queen Isabel in part III of England's Heroicall Epistles. Or you could simply read it if you're one of those who found the summary treatment in 1066 and All That a bit too summary.
* The passage in the preface -- not included in my edition -- in which Drayton justifies the change based on stanza structures is sometimes quoted in discussions about the decline in popularity of rhyme royal for serious works, two centuries after Chaucer brought the form on board. I remain unconvinced by his arguments, not the least because he diagrams and argues for ABACBCDD but then uses ABABABCC, but I want to compare against his practice before turning them to jetsam.
** There seems to be one available in Australia of uncertain quality. Plus there's a POD edition of what seems to be the same text.
---L.
The work first caught my attention because it's a 1603 revision of his earlier 1596 epic Mortimeriados (meaning something like "the deeds of Mortimer"? -- my Greek roots fail me here), in which Drayton rewrote seven-line stanzas of rhyme royal into eight-line stanzas of ottava rima. What I actually want is to read is the earlier version, because it's one of the last major works to be written in rhyme royal* and I'm always looking for examples of how poets handle the form, especially one as good as Drayton. However, I've yet to find an electronic version of Mortimeriados worth sniffing at.**
OTOH, Google has a pretty good scan of an 1887 edition of Drayton that includes this -- one of the better OCRs of poetry I've seen, actually, with over half the stanzas recognized as lines of verse instead of run-in as paragraphs. Plus some of the usual OCR artifacts, but not many. (Especially compared to archive.org's job on this edition, which is as noisy as typical for them.) A couple hours' work with regular expressions, and I got this.
NB: This is not a scholarly edition. It hasn't even been systematically proofread -- I corrected obvious mis-recognitions in passing (against Google's page images as needed) but otherwise it's all been formatting. But it is a reading edition, which is what I wanted, and which I'm offering to anyone who'd like a copy. I can also provide a flat HTML version, if you'd prefer that instead. Kindle format, I leave to someone with a device to create and test it on.
It makes a good companion to Daniel's The Civil Wars, covering (most of) the War of the Roses. Contrast also Drayton's treatment of Mortimer and Queen Isabel in part III of England's Heroicall Epistles. Or you could simply read it if you're one of those who found the summary treatment in 1066 and All That a bit too summary.
* The passage in the preface -- not included in my edition -- in which Drayton justifies the change based on stanza structures is sometimes quoted in discussions about the decline in popularity of rhyme royal for serious works, two centuries after Chaucer brought the form on board. I remain unconvinced by his arguments, not the least because he diagrams and argues for ABACBCDD but then uses ABABABCC, but I want to compare against his practice before turning them to jetsam.
** There seems to be one available in Australia of uncertain quality. Plus there's a POD edition of what seems to be the same text.
---L.
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Date: 6 June 2011 07:26 pm (UTC)Also you could get Mortimeriados if you know someone with EEBO access, if you're okay with scans of the 16th-century text. (I lost my EEBO access when I graduated, which sucks a lot.)
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Date: 6 June 2011 08:08 pm (UTC)I'm kinda surprised that while I'm liking The Barons Wars, I like it less than England's Herociall Epistles. (Which, btw, I just finished your transcriptions thereof. I'm tinkering with transcribing the last two sets out of Google books. I've no idea if you plan to return to those, but if you do and it'd be useful, I could send you my text when I'm done.) I mean, yeah, I'm a son of Ovid myself, but I was kinda expecting something with the clarity of The Civil Wars -- or imagination as the Epistles. Either would do.
---L.