ABSTRACT
Robert Copland, early printer, poet, and translator, plays a considerable role in the history of early English gender discourses. His imprints include the Seuen Sorrowes That Women Haue When Theyr Husbandes Be Dead, Jyl of Braintford’s Testament, and the Hye Way to the Spittal Hous, each making a different kind of satiric contribution to the early English literature on women. This chapter explores two other of his contributions: A Complaynt of them that be to soone maryed (hereafter, the Too Soon) and The Complaynte of them that ben to late maryed (hereafter, the Too Late), printed by Wynkyn de Worde and translated from French by Copland.1 This pair of poems shows the printer-translator actively reshaping French poems for an English readership. These poems share, in shorter forms, the themes and images also found in the Fyftene Joyes: marriage too soon is prison or animal cruelty; marriage is servitude instead of natural liberty; death or holy vows are better alternatives. Marriage (whether soon or late) brings poverty, everyday and bodily annoyances, and sexual frustrations, as misogamist male narrators typically say. Here, however, both husband and wife say so in a long central section of the Too Soon-another female speaker translated from French who offers an alternative viewpoint. The Too Late has no such vocal woman but does present unusually specific, erotic depictions of an impotent husband and-a type rare in the misogamous tradition-a chastely sexual, desiring, and desirable wife.
