James Reshoulde and Elizabethan Scribal Culture

Abstract: Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. poet. 85 (Ra), and Marsh's Library, Dublin, MS Z 3.5.21 (Ma), are two of the most important anthologies of Elizabethan lyric poetry. We have long known that Ra was compiled at St. John's College, Cambridge, apparently by John Finet. He credits his fellow Johnian, James Reshoulde, with two poems in Ra, one of which is answered by a poem in Ma. Reshoulde is not named in Ma, but the discovery of his handwriting in this miscellany confirms that it, too, was compiled at St. John's and drew upon a common store of in-house and external writings, including poems written by courtiers at the apogee of Elizabethan society. The relationships among these elite texts shed important new light on how lyric poetry circulated in the age's scribal culture and how these practices exerted a democratizing influence on what is generally considered a culture of exclusive coteries.