ABSTRACT

This chapter considers supposedly misattributed poems in a single manuscript miscellany, BL, Stowe MS 962. In addition to Donne's prose problem on Ralegh, this quarto miscellany contains substantial other Donne holdings: approximately 91 poems and 30 additional short prose pieces. And Stowe MS 962 displays an unusually high level of attention and accuracy, particularly regarding attributions. First, people consider material features of Stowe MS 962 and the accuracy of its attributions, for awareness of the manuscript's quality informs evaluation of its few seeming misattributions. Next, we will consider certain poems supposedly misattributed in this manuscript to Ralegh and Donne. Such study will lead us to consider the period's most famous elegy on the actor Richard Burbage a poem currently considered anonymous but ascribed in Stowe MS 962 to John Fletcher. Analysis of its ascriptions, provenance, compilers and scribes, and general level of precision as demonstrated by sound texts, revisions, annotations, and indices illuminates the high quality of the miscellany.