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From its Nobel laureates to its literary festivals, modern-day Dublin lives up to its role as a literary capital. The question of whether Ireland experienced a cultural and literary Renaissance has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. This book extends the discussion by engaging with the specific literary culture of its capital city. It begins with an argument for the internationalised literary culture of late medieval Dublin by an analysis of James Yonge's 'Memoriale'. The citizens of Dublin engaged with and actively read texts imported from London, as Dublin's own printing was limited. The book presents case studies that establish Dublin as an emerging city of Renaissance literature by focusing on Edmund Spenser's political and social connections and by examining the literature of complaint emanating from late Elizabethan Dublin. It analyses the constructed authorial personae of Richard Bellings, James Shirley and Henry Burnell residing in Dublin, and discusses the concepts of literary friendship. Sir James Ware's scholarly achievements are analysed and his extensive intellectual community are investigated, revealing an open-minded Dublin community. In addition to being a representative Renaissance activity, translation was harnessed in the country as an 'instrument of state', as shown by translations of Gaelic poetry. The Renaissance literary production in Dublin had a multi-linguistic character with Latin orations taking place in the Trinity College Dublin. The book also addresses the question of whether the English-language drama composed and staged in Restoration Dublin is most accurately described as Anglo-Irish drama or 'English drama written in Ireland'.
5 Renaissance Dublin and the construction of literary authorship: Richard Bellings, James Shirley and Henry Burnell Marie-Louise Coolahan That quintessentially Renaissance literary project – the humanist dialogue translated – was apparently undertaken in Dublin in the early 1580s by the colonial administrator and writer Lodowick Bryskett. Not published until 1606, Bryskett’s A discourse of civill life (adapted from the Italian Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio’s Tre dialoghi della vita civile of 1565) was careful to represent its author at the centre of another
English.29 Meanwhile Lodowick Bryskett, clerk of the Irish privy council, had the advantage of being the son of Italian parents and had travelled in Italy in the 1560s at the instigation of the future Irish lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney. Thus, it is of little surprise that his A discourse of civill life, set in Dublin and published in 1606, is mainly derived from the 1565 Italian work by Giambattista Battista Giraldi Cinzio, De gli hecatommithi.30 In the early seventeenth century the Pale lawyer and playwright Henry Burnell probably drew on François de Beleforest
emotions. The most likely mayor portrayed in the woodcut is either Patrick or John Goghe who held the office in 1575–76 and 1576–77 respectively, or, less probably, John’s father-in-law Giles Allen, mayor in 1577–78. The sheriffs in 1575–76 were William Barnwall and Richard Fagan, and in 1576–77, Edward White and Edmond Devinish. The distinguished lawyer Henry Burnell was recorder until 1575; the identity of his replacement is unknown. 55 Dublin’s councillors are presented in Plate X as well dressed in
presentation of Dublin as a fitting location for a literary community. Through a consideration of three printed works by Stanihurst, Bellings and Henry Burnell, Coolahan’s chapter opens up concepts of literary friendship in a study that emphasises the geographical dimension of literary work. Empey follows on Coolahan’s study with an appraisal of Sir James Ware’s career constructed through detailed archival research. Empey examines the seventeenth-century historian’s scholarly achievements through an analysis of De praesulibus lageniae sive provinciae Dubliniensis (1628) and
agents, Richard Netterville, Henry Burnell and Barnaby Scurlocke, to England to argue that Sidney’s continuing resort to the ‘cess’ on the basis of the royal prerogative was unconstitutional.112 However, the apparent disavowal of the queen’s prerogative saw them meet with a harsh response. The three were committed to the Fleet and Sidney was given permission to arrest the ring-leaders in the Pale. Moreover, in September 1577 William Gerrard was sent to England to represent Sidney’s administration in the controversy. Contrary to Brady’s assertion that Gerrard abandoned