Earl of Surrey – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Henry Howard’s ‘Alas, so all things now do hold their peace’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

As we’ve mentioned before, although he gets the credit for it, William Shakespeare didn’t invent the Shakespearean sonnet. That specific poetic form – also known as the English sonnet, and rhyming ababcdcdefefgg – was instead the innovation of a Tudor courtier and poet named Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-47), who, as well as making Shakespeare’s Sonnets possible, also invented the verse form that would make Elizabethan drama possible: blank verse. In short, the Bard had a lot to thank Henry Howard for.

‘Alas, so all things now do hold their peace’ is one of Henry Howard’s finest sonnets written in the new rhyme scheme he created. The poem is included below with modernised spelling, before we proceed to a few words of analysis.

Alas, so all things now do hold their peace,
Heaven and earth disturbèd in no thing;
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,
The nightès car the stars about doth bring;
Calm is the sea; the waves work less and less:
So am not I, whom love alas doth wring,
Bringing before my face the great increase

A Short Analysis of Henry Howard’s ‘In Cyprus Springs’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Although he gets the credit for it, William Shakespeare didn’t invent the Shakespearean sonnet. That specific poetic form – also known as the English sonnet – was instead the innovation of a Tudor courtier and poet named Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-47), who, as well as making Shakespeare’s Sonnets possible, also invented the verse form that would make Elizabethan drama possible: blank verse. The Bard had a lot to thank Henry Howard for.

‘In Cyprus Springs’ is the short title sometimes attached to the sonnet by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey which begins ‘In Cyprus springs whereas Dame Venus dwelt’. (We’ll come to the punctuation in a moment.) This is a curious poem, an example of the ‘lover’s complaint’, and deserving of closer analysis. First, here is the poem:

In Cyprus, springs (whereas Dame Venus dwelt)
A well so hot, that whoso tastes the same,
Were he of stone, as thawed ice should melt,
And kindled find his breast with fixed flame,
Whose moist poison dissolved hath my hate.

A Short Analysis of Henry Howard’s ‘The Soote Season’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17-1547) was the poet who invented the Shakespearean sonnet, sometimes known as the English sonnet. It was the Earl of Surrey who made the innovation of ending the sonnet with a rhyming couplet, and in ‘The Soote Season’ he uses this to brilliant effect.