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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MUSIC AND LITERATURE
Series Editors: Paul Lumsden and

Marco Katz Montiel
ECHO AND
MEANING ON
EARLY MODERN
ENGLISH STAGES
Susan L. Anderson
Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature
Series Editors
Paul Lumsden
City Centre Campus
MacEwan University
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
Marco Katz Montiel

Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
This leading-edge series joins two disciplines in an exploration of how
music and literature confront each other as dissonant antagonists while
also functioning as consonant companions. By establishing a critical con-
nection between literature and music, this series highlights the interac-
tion between what we read and hear. Investigating the influence music
has on narrative through history, theory, culture, or global perspectives
provides a concrete framework for a seemingly abstract arena. Titles
in the series, both monographs and edited volumes, explore musical
encounters in novels and poetry, considerations of the ways in which nar-
ratives appropriate musical structures, examinations of musical form and
function, and studies of interactions with sound.
Editorial Advisory Board

Frances R. Aparicio, Northwestern University, US
Timothy Brennan, University of Minnesota, US
Barbara Brinson Curiel, Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies,
Humboldt State University, US
Gary Burns, Northern Illinois University, US
Peter Dayan, Word and Music Studies, University of Edinburgh,
Scotland
Shuhei Hosokawa, International Research Center for Japanese Studies,
Japan
Javier F. León, Latin American Music Center of the Jacobs School of
Music, Indiana University, US
Marilyn G. Miller, Tulane University, US
Robin Moore, University of Texas at Austin, US
Nduka Otiono, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Canada
Gerry Smyth, Liverpool John Moores University, England
Jesús Tejada, Universitat de València, Spain
Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel, Universidad del Valle, Colombia.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/15596
Susan L. Anderson
Echo and Meaning

on Early Modern
English Stages
Susan L. Anderson
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK
Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature

ISBN 978-3-319-67969-3 ISBN 978-3-319-67970-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67970-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952839
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
In memory of my father, Mike.
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making and I have benefited
from the advice, organisation and assistance of many more people than
I can mention here, both in terms of discussions and events specifically
relevant to this book’s content and in the wider support and fellowship
that makes scholarship possible. In particular, I would like to thank my
colleagues and friends at Leeds Trinity University and, more recently,
Sheffield Hallam University, especially Amina Alyal, Richard Storer,
Jane de Gay, Martyn Bedford, Oz Hardwick, Juliette Taylor-Batty, Kate
Lister, Rosemary Mitchell, Di Drummond, Joyce Simpson and Maureen
Meikle, and Katharine Cox, Charles Mundye, Dan Cadman, Matthew
Steggle, Lisa Hopkins and Annaliese Connolly. Helen Kingstone read
parts of the manuscript and offered constructive feedback and support.
Liz Oakley-Brown, Liam Haydon, Kit Heyam, Laurence Publicover,
Chloe Preedy, Andy Kesson and Jacomien Prins offered comments on
versions of work from this book that they will have long forgotten by
now. Martin Butler has been extremely helpful and encouraging, as have
the attendees and speakers at Renaissance research seminars at Leeds
University over the years. Thanks are due to members of the British
Shakespeare Association board of trustees past and present for their
encouragement, and also to everyone at Palgrave for their assistance and
interest in the project.
David Lindley supervised the Ph.D. that (eventually) gave rise to
parts of this book, and his mentoring and good-humoured advice has
been invaluable. My fellow Leeds alumni and co. have continued to
vii
viii Acknowledgements
challenge me intellectually while supporting me in friendship, especially

Gillian Roberts, Catherine Bates, Gareth Jackson, Milena Marinkova,
Jennifer Sarha, Caroline Herbert, Elizabeth Throesch, Edel Porter, Jeff
Orr, Kaley Kramer and Nasser Hussain. Love and thanks are due to
the Andersons, Kirwans and Gillams, especially Chloe, Neville, Roland,
Karina and my mother Liz. Most of all, Pete Kirwan has enabled,
encouraged, cajoled and inspired me during the writing of this book,
going far beyond the call of duty to support in both word and deed, for
which I offer my most heartfelt thanks.
Contents
1 Introduction: Echo and Meaning 1

Poetic Echo 6
Echoing Ovid: Golding, T.H. and Caxton 8
Echo and Pastoral: Sidney, Longus and Day 13
References 20
2 Sound and Precedent in Elizabethan Progress

Entertainments 23
Welcoming the Queen 26
Textual Representations 31
Elvetham and Amplification 38
References 45
3 Echo and Drama: Cynthia’s Revels (1601) 49

Music and Sense 55
Music, Satire and Sincerity 59
References 64
4 Echo, Dance and Song in Jacobean Masques 67

Campion’s Musical Amplifications 68
Dance and Music as Discipline 74
Revels Dancing 81
References 95
ix
x Contents
5 Conclusion: Disenchanted Echoes in The Duchess

of Malfi and The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania 99
Echo and Paranoia 100
Corporeality and Echo 108
Echo and Gender in Urania 113
Conclusion: That Strain Again? 117
References 119
Index 121
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 ‘Now Hath Flora’, bars 17–28 71

Fig. 4.2 ‘Nay, Nay, You Must Not Stay’, bars 1–7 78
Fig. 4.3 ‘Nay, Nay, You Must Not Stay’, bars 17–22 78
Fig. 4.4 ‘Gentle Knights’, bars 1–13 79
Fig. 4.5 ‘Gentle Knights’, bars 33–47 80
Fig. 4.6 ‘Come Away, Come Away’, bars 1–15 84
Fig. 4.7 ‘I Was Not Wearier’, bars 1–8 90
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Echo and Meaning
The most of us which now doe write,

Old-Writers Eccho’s are. (John Owen)
Abstract Anderson outlines the range of meanings made available

by the use of echo techniques in early modern drama and poetry. This
chapter establishes different levels of echoic meaning, including musical
repetitions, verbal alterations, intertextual references and textual revi-
sions. This chapter draws attention to variations between early modern
translations of Ovid’s version of Echo’s origin myth and within differ-
ent editions of Golding’s translation of the Metamorphosis. Anderson
also examines the use of echoic techniques in Sidney’s Old Arcadia and
the alternative origin story of Echo in Longus’ Greek prose narrative
Daphnis and Chloe. This chapter argues that Echo is a figure of distor-
tion and adaptation as well as repetition, and serves as a productive way
to represent historical inquiry itself.
Keywords Arthur Golding · Ovid · Echo · Philip Sidney

Metamorphoses · Repetition
© The Author(s) 2018 1

S.L. Anderson, Echo and Meaning on Early Modern
English Stages, Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67970-9_1
2 S.L. Anderson
Early modern echo is an extraordinarily capacious category whose func-

tions spread across practical, theoretical, aesthetic and moral realms.
Echo effects on stage enhance the pleasure of the listener even as echo,
on a broader level, operates as a creative and structural principle within
literary works. Echo is imitative, but it can also modify the meaning of
the sounds it imitates. It can be musical and indeed can be considered
as part of the modus operandi of music, an art form based on pleasur-
able sonic repetitions.1 Echo highlights the arbitrary sonic properties
of language and can uncover alternative meaning within words already
sounded. It can make what is unsaid, said and can even stand in for the
process of historical recovery. It exceeds temporal boundaries by coming
after the end, and thus, like historical inquiry, it is inherently belated.
This book uses the trope of echo to explore the ways in which sound
and music in performance were meaningful in early modern culture even
if we can no longer hear them. For twenty-first century auditors, under-
standing early modern music often entails imaginatively reconstructing
from sparse evidence ‘what it actually sounded like’. But ‘what it actu-
ally sounded like’ is itself a proposition that requires dismantling2 because
sound is no more outside discourse than language is. We cannot recre-
ate original performance conditions, firstly on the pedantic grounds that
absolute identicality is impossible. As Benjamin notes, ‘even the most
perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its pres-
ence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it hap-
pens to be’ (Benjamin [1936] 2007, 220). Secondly, our own presence
within such performance conditions is entirely anachronistic: we cannot
detach our context from the text we are listening to (Burstyn 1997).3
Furthermore, our conceptualisation of the nature of music, the way we
describe it and the effects we expect from it have a material effect on our
response to it. For instance, Dolscheid et al. (2013) have shown that con-
cepts of music embedded in language do verifiably influence the response
of listeners. Thus, since the early modern understanding of music was dif-
ferent to our own, the early modern experience of music must, too, have
differed considerably. Despite these seemingly insurmountable barriers,
however, the concept of echo allows us to retrieve the possibility of anal-
ysis. Reading the textual traces left by these soundings as echoic means
recognising that they both imitate and modify their unrecoverable origi-
nating moments. These traces include not only notated music where it
exists, to be sure, but also lyrics, commentary and other archival material
which does not record music and sound so much as reflect it.
1 INTRODUCTION: ECHO AND MEANING 3
This book attends to these echoes by focusing on iterations of the fig-

ure of Echo in early modern descriptions of theatrical drama, progress
entertainments and masques. As well as appearing as a personification,
echo rebounds through these texts in forms of adaptation, translation
and invention, which all create echoic effects, particularly in relation to
the way that meaning operates intertextually.4 Writers of the texts dis-
cussed here all draw on pre-existing stories, including that of Echo her-
self, as well as other tropes and characters to combine and recombine in
the manner of a kaleidoscope, creating infinite variations made up of the
same recognisable materials.5 The technique enables creators of enter-
tainments to balance the joint aesthetic priorities of tradition and nov-
elty,6 as well as similarly conflicting criteria such as variety and restraint,
and conformity and exceptionality, values which are constantly in tension
with each other in early modern culture. Echo is the fundamental mech-
anism by which these values are negotiated and through which meaning
is created in early modern cultural artefacts.
Furthermore, the conditions of the source materials consulted by this
book offer parallels with echo in several ways. The instability and multi-
ple statuses of the texts I discuss present echoic relations to lost originals,
whether that original is considered to be a one-off performance event or
an ur-text. For example, texts describing Elizabethan progress entertain-
ments are often assembled from fragmentary poems, songs, dramatic
vignettes and partial descriptions to create a piecemeal narrative of events
that took place over several days, or were planned and did not take place.
Even where entertainment texts are organised by an authorial hand, as
became de rigueur in the court masque of the seventeenth century, such
accounts show clear partiality. For example, they tend not to focus on
music and rarely provide notation.7 (In some cases songs were printed
separately, published in adapted form for private use.) Even playtexts,
which might seem to offer a stable key to multiple performances of the
same play soon recede into plurality and indeterminacy under scrutiny. For
instance, one of the plays discussed in Chap. 3, Cynthia’s Revels, exists in at
least two significantly distinct textual forms which may or may not reflect
evidence of court and public performances, and the differences between
them. The Duchess of Malfi, discussed in Chap. 5, contains song lyrics disa-
vowed by Webster which may have been heard at some performances and
not others. Rather than imposing an in/out model of textual authentic-
ity, however, I prefer a paradigm of degrees of likeness (Kirwan 2015,
Chap. 3). Performance sounds reverberate, then, in plural iterative forms
4 S.L. Anderson
across time, their textual traces recapitulating and distorting the sounds,
words and actions heard and seen at a particular event or events. The idea
of distortion is not to be understood negatively here. Rather, it is a creative
and distinctive feature of the development of these texts, and akin to the
reworking of the myth of Echo found in the texts themselves.
Nevertheless, before these echoes dissipate so far as to become unin-
telligible, there remains within them a level of coherence which can offer
a degree of concrete evidence about the past. This book attends to this
evidence for the purpose of understanding how music and sound inter-
acted with other elements of performance, and what kinds of meaning
they conveyed, even where they are not archivally preserved. The book
uncovers a variety of ways in which individuals engaged with music and
sound in the period, and shows that they were significant elements in
creating a public self for a range of different kinds of people. The book
is organised by genre and, in the next chapter, starts by examining echo’s
presence in progress entertainments staged for Queen Elizabeth, focus-
ing in particular on the entertainments at Elvetham and Kenilworth.
These events, although unusual in terms of their scale, show how per-
formances become exemplary and therefore subject to repetition. In par-
ticular, the use of echo as a performance device at Kenilworth is repeated
or referenced in several later entertainments. The sounds heard at prior
events are thus revisited, revised and reheard in different locations and
contexts, developing an acoustics of courtly entertainments in which the
signs of musical sophistication become political assertions.
Chapter 3 examines the portrayal and use of echo in drama more
broadly, surveying a range of texts to demonstrate the ways that form and
content overlap. It then focuses at length on the 1601 Quarto of Ben
Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels in which Echo appears as a character on stage.
In revivifying her, this play turns Ovid’s version of the myth into a tool of
moral, as opposed to aesthetic, expression. In doing so, Jonson repeat-
edly invokes Neoplatonic notions of music’s spiritual and ethical func-
tions, and this chapter explores Jonson’s transformations of these ideas.
Chapter 4 discusses the use of echo and repetition in the Jacobean
court masque. Jonson’s texts are again a focus, as both the Masques
of Blackness and of Beauty include echo effects which, in Ferrabosco’s
songs, convey moral meaning through their aural aesthetic. It is Thomas
Campion, however, who, as this chapter demonstrates, exploits echoic
effects most clearly in his Lord Hay’s Masque and Lords’ Masque. Most
importantly, this c hapter reads the masque as a dance genre, and as such,
one in which music is indivisibly linked to repetitive physical movement.

Through understanding dance both as a form of aestheticised repetition
within itself, and as a somatic repetition of music, this chapter shows that
the genre’s focus on mingling fictional and social personae was promoted
through song and enacted through dance.
The concluding chapter explores the continued troping of repetition
in two very different texts. The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania’s open-
ing references to echo demonstrate the way this work seeks to recapit-
ulate and capitalise on poetic, literary and family precedent. Although
Urania suggests the continuation of an echoic tradition, this chapter also
offers a counterpoint in the disillusioned echo heard in The Duchess of
Malfi, a play whose scepticism tends towards the deconstructive effects
that echo can have. Malfi’s mournful echo scene and repeated engage-
ment with meaningless sound suggest that in the absence of accurate
listening, echo becomes a meaningless cacophony. Ultimately, echo’s
malleability is also instability.
The texts discussed in this book originate in a literary-historical
period whose identity and artistic output has consistently been mediated
through the idea of repetition: the very idea of ‘The Renaissance’ itself
is quite obviously a trope of repetition, but the concept of the ‘Early
Modern’ also depends upon a sense that ideas and figures common in
the modern era are recognisably linked to those that have gone before.
Echo is a way of accounting for the mixture of sameness and difference
that characterises engagement with the traces of the literary, visual, sonic
and musical past. Thus, a consideration of echoic sound on early modern
stages feeds into broader questions about the extent to which it is pos-
sible to recover and reconsider moments from the past, the nature of the
relationship between the archive and experience, and the importance of
loss in historical understanding.
That history is engendered by loss is made clear in Stephen
Greenblatt’s famous opening to his account of the cultural production
of works of art, Shakespearean Negotiations, where he confesses to have
been motivated by ‘the desire to speak with the dead’ (Greenblatt 1988,
1). Greenblatt’s acknowledgment that ‘all I could hear was my own
voice’ not only concedes some of the limitations of the enterprise, but
also implicitly recognises the aural quality of the object of his desire at
the same time. Similar anxieties repeatedly surface in discussions of voice,
authenticity and the relationship between original and copy in the mod-
ern and postmodern eras.
6 S.L. Anderson
Even more acutely than speech, music’s inherent evanescence makes

it a particularly stark example of this kind of loss. Music is a temporal
art form: the passage of time is, in some sense, its medium. Each sound-
ing, therefore, constitutes a unique and unrecoverable event. Rather than
mourning this loss as absolute, however, it proves more productive to
consider the loss as a process which is ongoing rather than a dead/alive
binary. In this way, echo helps to bridge the gap between what is pre-
served in the archive and what Taylor (2003) refers to as the repertoire.
Taylor disputes the idea that embodied practices like dance or ritual are
ephemeral and that only archivable material endures. This is most use-
fully developed in her concept of the scenario: ‘Instead of privileging
texts and narratives, we could also look to scenarios as meaning-making
paradigms that structure social environments, behaviors, and potential
outcomes’ (Taylor 2003, 28). Echo is a scenario of repetition which is
itself obsessively repeated, rewritten and restaged in the period. Echo
always already contains within it its implied originary instance which
is, paradoxically, no longer present. It denotes what has already begun
and is in the process of being lost, but is by definition what yet remains.
Using echo as a historical methodology means acknowledging that we
are in some sense participating in these repetitions and that we are always
in medias res. Nevertheless, a historical account must itself begin some-
where. The rest of this chapter establishes some of the mechanisms for
meaning that this figure invokes through examining a range of early
modern poetic manifestations of echo.
Poetic Echo
In his discussion of poetic refrain, John Hollander outlines a referential
spectrum ‘with one pole at what used to be called the “purely musi-
cal”’ (for which he gives the example ‘fa-la-la’) and the other pole being
‘one of optimum density of reference, in which each return accrued new
meaning, not merely because of its relation to the preceding strophe
(their glossing of each other), but as a function of the history of its
previous occurrences in the poem’ (Hollander 1985, 77).
Thus echo as refrain occupies the overlap between sound and sense,
drawing attention to poetry’s exploitation of arbitrary yet serendipitous
sonic coincidences. The poetic echo is thus a specific form of anadiplosis
or reduplication. In discussing German baroque poets’ own prescriptions
for a successful echo poem, Johnson (1990) notes that ‘simple repeti-
tions are acceptable, but good echoes are either repetitions in which the
sense or the syntactical function is changed, or when the final words are
split up and only a part is repeated’ (193). Good, or pleasurable echo,
therefore, reveals unintended meaning, the paradoxical content of what
is said covertly through not being said overtly (Hollander 1981, 27).
Echo is a mischievous principle of deforming, manipulating and recasting
the words of a speaker through partiality of repetition.
In the context of the obsessively punning linguistic culture of
Elizabethan poetry, the alteration of semantic function is hardly unusual,
but it is worth pointing out the extra emphasis that echo’s repetitions
place on homonyms and double meanings. Such a mode of expression is
particularly appropriate to the highly politicised context of courtly enter-
tainment where evading meaning is as useful as invoking it. The echo
draws attention to the malleability of meaning and the ingenuity that can
take advantage of this instability. In performance, this emphasises the liter-
ary artifice of the words being heard; in the text, it highlights the aural and
temporal performativity of the speech being represented on the page.
Echo’s emphatic wittiness makes it especially appropriate to the
courtly setting in which it first emerged as a dramatic trope in English.
As Ringler notes, the earliest English example of an Echo appearing in
performance is the one created by Gascoigne for the 1575 Kenilworth
entertainment (1962, 402).8 This instance of Echo, discussed at length
in Chap. 2, establishes the figure through a question and answer struc-
ture. The answers to the questions, in accordance with the nature of the
echo device, are contained in the final one, two or three syllables of each
line, which are repeated by Echo. For example, at one point, the Savage
asks ‘But wherefore doe they so rejoyce? | is it for King or Queene?’,
to which Echo, inevitably, replies ‘Queene’ (Goldring et al. 2014, 3:
604). Binnie observes that ‘the voice of an echo giving aid or answers
to the speakers became a dramatic convention’ in the Jacobean period
(Binnie 1980, 60n), though it had fallen out of popularity by the time
it was revived by Milton for a song in his 1637 masque at Ludlow cas-
tle (usually known as Comus).9 This tradition, such as it is, takes place
within an already established set of paradigms. Chronologically prior ver-
sions of the figure are simultaneously present in the reuse of the familiar
story and scenario. This telescoping of time is characteristic of the way in
which we as later readers encounter such chronologically disparate texts.
Furthermore, temporal distortion is also a notable feature of the way in
which Echo’s story (in common with the others in the work) is told in
the Metamorphoses and it is Ovid’s version of Echo’s story that most of
the echoes in this book recapitulate.
8 S.L. Anderson
Echoing Ovid: Golding, T.H. and Caxton

Both of Ovid’s sixteenth-century translators, Golding and T.H.,10
emphasise in their paratexts the importance of understanding the links
between the interwoven stories that make up the epic poem. Golding,
for example, in his address to the reader asserts that ‘whoso means to
understand them right| Must have a care as well to know the thing that
went before’ (2002, lines 210–211). Even T.H., who only translates an
excerpt of Ovid, suggests (somewhat ironically) ‘His tales do join in such
a goodly wise, | That one doth hang upon another’s end’ (1560, lines
221–222). The looping structure of Ovid’s epic introduces characters
into the timeline of a narrative, only to immediately veer onto their back-
story before cycling back round to resume the tale again. Echo’s story is
a corollary to the story of Narcissus; the account of her origin is a par-
enthetical aside before she becomes yet another of Narcissus’s spurned
would-be lovers.11 T.H.’s title—The Fable of Ovid Treating of Narcissus—
makes clear whom his version is ‘about’ in the crudest sense. After hear-
ing of Narcissus’s birth and childhood, the moment Echo first espies him
triggers in the narrative a retrospective excursus explaining how she lost
her power over her own voice.12 The narrative then returns to the point
where Echo (still embodied, though voiceless) pursues Narcissus. Being
rejected by Narcissus initiates Echo’s bodily decay, and, in Golding, this
is narrated in the present continuous, right up until the ‘real’ present
shared between the narrative voice and the reader:
[…]               Through restless cark and care

Her body pines to skin and bone, and waxeth wondrous bare.
The blood doth vanish into air from out of all her veins,
And nought is left but voice and bones. The voice yet still remains;
Her bones, they say, were turned to stones. From thence she, lurk-
ing still
In woods, will never show her head in field nor yet on hill.
Yet is she heard of every man; it is her only sound,
And nothing else that doth remain alive above the ground. (Golding
2002, lines 491–500)
Despite being a denizen of the distant mythical past, ‘yet is’ her voice
heard even now, and, rather like Tantalus, her suffering and wasting takes
place in a continual never-ending present.13 Immediately after updating
the reader on Echo’s current status, the narrative reverts to the mythi-
cal past to describe Narcissus’s encounter with his own reflection. Once
he has become ensnared in infatuation, Echo returns to the scene to
repeat his laments and subsequently the laments of other nymphs after
Narcissus has finally expired.14
Echo is a particularly apt figure for this folding together of timelines.
Her repetitiousness offers a way of holding on to the past, repeating
a part of something that is lost, and in this sense, the figure interferes
with continuity and temporal order. Such non-logical sequencing helps
to obscure the linear relationship between original and copy, sound and
echo. This works on a symbolic level, too, as Narcissus’s transmutation
into a flower fulfils his desire to be free of his own body, and thus can be
read as a recasting of Echo’s bodily loss, narrated prior to this passage. In
terms of the poem’s ‘plot’, Echo cannot be the originator of this action,
so both Narcissus and Echo replicate each other’s magical loss of bodily
substance in a kind of echo with no original note.
Repetition and parallelism work throughout Golding’s translation of
the entire work, not just in this particular storyline. The characteristically
‘Renaissance’ habit of reworking and developing Classical sources is, in
the broadest sense, itself a kind of echo. Looking at the more obvious
repeated motifs of the Metamorphoses, we find that Narcissus’s experi-
ence of unrequited love forms a textual parallel with the many other frus-
trated lovers of the poem, including Echo herself, and the other suitors
of all genders that Narcissus has rejected. In a series of decreasing circles
of desire, Narcissus is unattainable first to ‘a number both of men and
maids’ (T.H., line 13), then to Echo specifically, and then to himself.
The frank sexuality of the poem makes no bones about the object
of the lovers’ desire throughout. Reciprocation is expressed through
the body, emphasising the role of the body as a necessary component
of erotic love. Thus Golding specifies, before her rejection, ‘This Echo
was a body then and not an only voice’ (line 447). Unfortunately for
Narcissus, the body is ‘the thing’ which he must ‘wish away’ (line
590),15 and, in a radical disjunction between self and body, he wishes
that ‘I for a while might from my body part’ (line 588).
10 S.L. Anderson
The erotic prospect of bodily contact is part of the humour of

Golding’s use of Echo’s voice. When Narcissus tries to locate his lost
hunting companions, she answers his question ‘Is there anybody nigh?’
(line 474) with ‘I’, at once an affirmative and a declaration of subjectiv-
ity. Her repetition of his reply ‘Let us join’ (line 483) translates its mean-
ing as explicitly sexual and this is the moment where she finally shows
herself and attempts to touch him, prompting his instant retreat. Echo’s
embodiment is crucial for her participation in sexual exchange; denied
sexual exchange, she loses her body.
Narcissus’s lack of desire can be recast as a desire for lack—for the
absence of physical contact, to avoid being touched. His rejection of the
body and withdrawal into absence is the trigger for Echo’s gradual bod-
ily diminution. First, she is reduced to ‘skin and bone’ (line 494), then
‘voice and bones’ (line 496) and finally voice alone. Although the posses-
sive in ‘it is her only sound’ (line 499) suggests that this voice belongs to
her in some way, it is nevertheless not her own. The nymph is reduced to
such an extent that her presence becomes homoeopathic in quantity and
in quality a catalyst—she becomes a process, not a person.
As pointed out by Gibbs and Ruiz, the body is denigrated by Golding
in his address to the reader,16 where he avows ‘this lump of flesh and
bones, this body, is not we’ (‘To the Reader’, line 101). Yet the poem
has a more ambivalent relationship to the body than the dismissal of it
as a ‘vile and stinking pelf’ might suggest (‘To the Reader’, line 106).
Drawing an equivalence between the pleasures of the body and mind,
Golding asserts the value of poetry, claiming
For, as the body hath his joy in pleasant smells and sights,
Even so in knowledge and in arts the mind as much delights.
(‘To the Reader’, lines 135–136)
The personification of the body as a separate entity from the mind here
curiously prefigures Narcissus’s dilemma. That art reflects the self is
clear from Golding’s description of his poem as a ‘crystal glass’ which
reflects ‘foul images’ if it is presented with ‘foul visages’ in the 1567
Epistle (lines 559–560). This idea rendered thus in the Epistle for the
Earl of Leicester, is presented somewhat less tactfully in the address ‘To
the Reader’ when the poem is called ‘a mirror for thyself thine own
estate to see’ (line 82). Ultimately, Golding, like other writers (especially
Jonson as we shall see in Chap. 3), places a moral responsibility upon the
reader to seek out the meaning of art and to respond accordingly, urg-
ing the reader to bring ‘a staid head and judgement’ to the task (‘To the
Reader’, line 140), in order to avoid Narcissus’s error.
This argument is not restricted to poetry, of course. The writer of The
Praise of Musicke (a work sometimes attributed to John Case) uses the same
tactic, claiming that ‘the fault is not in musicke, which of it selfe is good:
but in the corrupt nature and evill disposition of light persons, which of
themselves are prone to wantonnes ([Case?] 1586, 58).17 Thomas Wright
also ascribes responsibility for the results of musical affect to the moral
quality of the listener: ‘Let a good and a godly man heare musicke, and
he will lift up his heart to heaven: let a bad man heare the same, and hee
will convert it to lust’ (quoted in Lindley 2006, 29). Although Golding’s
references to reflective surfaces prefigure the story of Narcissus as a cau-
tionary tale, and seem part of a generally visual bias in the poem, he nev-
ertheless describes poetry as ‘Not more delightful to the ear than fruitful
to the mind’ (‘To the Reader’, line 184), suggesting the necessity of aural
attentiveness. Golding’s repetitiousness on the topic emphasises the read-
er’s obligation to actively look and listen for hidden meaning.18
Such didactic purposefulness is reflected quantitatively in T.H.’s ren-
dering, where the story itself is only a fifth of the length of the verse
‘moralisation’ that follows it. And if stories should be recycled, so too,
it seems, should interpretive suggestions. T.H.’s appeals to authority are
entirely grounded in the idea that he is reporting the interpretations of
others. Only after he has paid due diligence to prior authorities such as
Bersuire and Boccaccio, does he sheepishly put forward ‘What I conceive’,
whilst making a rather garbled promise to maintain ‘the reck of wisdom’s
sober port’ and the judgement of ‘the learnèd’ (lines 568–569). Such def-
erence is thoroughly typical, and not necessarily to be taken at face value.
Nevertheless, it is evidence of a discourse that is explicitly constructed as
repetition, not novelty. What is concealed by this rhetoric is the selectiv-
ity of repetition and the transformational effect that partiality has upon
meaning. Whilst these translations and exegeses c oncentrate on Narcissus,
the partiality of Echo and the incompleteness of her repetitions invite
scrutiny and reveal the potential for novelty.
Differences between the translations express significantly differ-
ent approaches to the story and to its larger implications. For instance,
Caxton’s 1480 prose version, itself based on a French translation
(Brown and Taylor 2013, 4), suggests that, when Narcissus hears Echo
12 S.L. Anderson
repeating his words, he ‘herd never voys that so moche plesed hym’
(Caxton [1480] 1968).19 This is unsurprising, as at this point she is
effectively an aural mirror, repeating his own words. This prefigures
Narcissus’s preference for himself since it is only when he sees her (and
thus recognises her difference) that he is repelled. In T.H.’s version,
by contrast, it is Echo who ‘never heard| A sound that liked her half
so well to answer afterward’ (lines 53–54). She is not only attracted by
Narcissus’s looks, but by both sound and content of his speech, and it is
her preferences T.H. draws our attention to.
Comparing these versions of the story forces us to consider the ques-
tion of whose voice is whose. That is, whether Echo’s repetitions are her
voice or Narcissus’s, whether they are the same or different, and what
constitutes difference. Echo interferes with the subjectivity implied in the
speaking ‘I’. It is not a simple correspondence of voice and identity. In
Golding’s rendering of this moment, the authorial voice also complicates
matters by seeming to explain the words Echo would have liked to have
said. In Seres’s 1567 edition of Golding the section is printed thus:
He still persistes and wondring much what kinde of thing it was

From which that answering voyce by turne so duely seemde to passe,
Said: Let us joyne. She (by hir will desirous to have said
In fayth with none more willingly at any time or stead)
Said: Let us joyne.20 And standing somewhat in hir owne conceit,
Upon these wordes she left the Wood. (Golding 1567, Fiiiiv)
Golding seems to be stating that Echo would have liked to have

expressed her willingness to join with Narcissus. Madeleine Forey’s edi-
tion makes this interpretation clear by placing the line within quotation
marks, making ‘In faith with none more willingly at any time or stead’
reported speech (Golding 2002, bk 3, line 482). This makes Golding’s
narrator the reporter of Echo’s thoughts—Echo cannot put her sen-
timents into words, but a narrator can do just that. In this reading,
Echo’s words are only utterable by someone who is not Echo. Having
said this, Forey also suggests the alternative of reading ‘said’ as a syno-
nym for ‘converse’ and notes that this produces a closer translation of
Ovid (Golding 2002, 476n). In Hill’s Latin edition, the line, ‘nullique
libentius umquam| responsura sono, “coeamus,” rettulit Echo’ is given
as ‘and Echo, who would never respond| more willingly to any sound,
replied’ (Ovid 1985, bk 3, lines 386–387). In these different versions of

this moment, our attention is drawn to the question of who is originat-
ing and who is responding to sound and sentiment, and to the fact that
the originator of one may not be that of the other. That is, speaking first
does not confer control over the meaning of the words uttered. Echo’s
repetition, seemingly a merely mechanical effect, is an opportunity for
intervention.
Furthermore, different early modern editions of Golding’s translation
vary in their rendering of this moment. The different printings of the
text give different versions of the word that Echo repeats—the word that
either Narcissus or Echo herself prefers to hear or repeat. The earliest
editions, printed by Willyam Seres in 1565 and 1567 have Narcissus say-
ing ‘let us joyne’ (Fiiiiv) which, as noted above, has its latent sexualised
meaning brought forward by Echo’s repetition. In Seres’s 1575 edition,
however, we find the less obviously suggestive ‘let us meet’. This revision
stands in editions produced by a range of printers during the rest of the
sixteenth century (Windet and Judson 1584; Waldegrave 1587; Danter
1593), before W. White’s 1603 edition reverts to ‘joyne’. Most intrigu-
ingly, Thomas Purfoot’s 1612 printing gives Narcissus the phrase ‘let us
joyne’, but has Echo respond ‘let us meet’. One’s first response (in the
grand tradition of scholarly denigration of blockheaded typesetters and
error-prone printers) is to wonder how such an obvious mistake could
slip through—and it probably is indeed an error. Although the mismatch
thwarts the reader’s expectations, perhaps this is no bad thing. Having
heard echo dutifully repeat Narcissus’s phrase in previous editions of
what is an exceptionally well-known work, the obvious clang here might
present a refreshing and comic surprise. At any rate, Echo’s speech,
seemingly so rigidly controlled, is in fact pliable. Who is responsible for
directing it both within the myth itself and in the mechanics of retelling
her story is not fixed. And most importantly of all, Echo foregrounds the
obligation on the reader to actively seek out, or indeed create, meaning
from the words that are repeated.
Echo and Pastoral: Sidney, Longus and Day

Whilst Echo’s repetitions of the words of others are her last toehold on
the corporeal world, in poetic terms, masculine speakers co-opt the voice
of Echo to preserve their own subjectivity. In the Old Arcadia, echo is
invoked twice, but not as a character in her own right. Instead, she is a force
14 S.L. Anderson
available to male poetic voices. For instance, Pas invokes the aid of echo to
outperform another shepherd-poet in his praise of his love-object:
So oft these woods have heard me “Cosma” cry,
That after death to heav’n in woods’ resound,
With echo’s help, shall “Cosma, Cosma” fly. (Sidney 1973, 145)21
Alternative manuscript versions of this part of the work offer altered

echoes of the particular word that the poet repeats, supplying either
‘Hyppa’ or ‘happy’ for ‘Cosma’.22 For both ‘Hyppa’ and ‘Cosma’, osten-
sibly the name of the muse lives on after the poet’s oblivion, whereas
in fact it is the poet’s voice speaking her name that maintains subjectiv-
ity. In the ‘happy’ version of these lines the identity of the beloved is
dispensed with altogether in favour of the condition of the poet. Rather
than hypothesising about the order in which these variants might have
emerged,23 I prefer to argue that their simultaneous echoing presence in
itself is a telling merger that shows us that the beloved’s name operates
as a cipher for the state of mind of the speaker. Furthermore, an appar-
ent fantasy of immortality is, in fact, a fantasy of annihilation (Goldberg
1986). Bodies decay whilst sound traces remain, concretising the word at
the expense of the body that speaks it. Thus, the general Platonic depre-
cation of the body noted above also permeates the Old Arcadia (‘A shop
of shame, a book where blots be rife| This body is’ (147)).
Echo is also used as a poetic device in an eclogue which only appears
in the Old Arcadia, not the revised New Arcadia. Near the end of book
1, the authorial caricature, Philisides, agrees to perform ‘an eclogue
betwixt himself and the echo, framing his voice so in those desert places
as what words he would have the echo reply unto, those would he sing
higher than the rest’ (160). This is a rather odd-sounding principle for
a song setting, but the text invites us to imagine an ideal performance
in which such rendering is desirable or even possible. Furthermore,
this design seems to misrepresent the way an echo works in nature.24
By asserting that the singer is deliberately selecting particular words for
Echo to repeat, Sidney’s text shows that it is neither concerned with
creating a credible representation of a genuine echo, nor with reveal-
ing ostensibly unintended meaning. Instead, it emphasises the way echo
verse showcases skill and artifice. Notwithstanding the fact that Sidney’s
verse does not do a particularly good job of conforming to the quantita-
tive metrical pattern he has set himself (and indeed supplies),25 the poem
is at least meant to be a performance of verbal dexterity that aligns the

aural and semantic properties of speech. The poem’s subject matter is
standard—the folly and pain of love and the impossibility of satisfying
desire. Its ‘failure’ in terms of its metrical scheme might charitably be
seen as representing the overambition of music and poetry more gener-
ally, and of the bathos lurking behind the hyperbole of courtly pastoral.
In this way, the eclogue can be read as a knowing failure whose attempt
at artifice is still pleasurable since the prescriptions for performance are
entirely imaginary.
The strictness of the echo form imposes repetition that emphasises
the arbitrary nature of the relationship between sound and sense, and
therefore sign and signified. The clearest example of this is that when
Philisides declares the words that have ‘served more to me bless’, Echo
replies ‘Less’, revealing the ironically opposing meaning contained within
the statement itself. Worked through to its conclusion, this approach
collapses meaning—the words contain their opposite, removing the
Derridean difference that underpins meaning.26 This is not destructive,
however, but additive as echo proliferates meaning. The variants listed
by Robertson in her edition of Sidney testify to the radical instability of
the text, to the necessity of making our own meaning of these echoes.
Different, potentially contradictory meanings are simultaneously present.
In the broadest sense, then, the entire work itself is a paradigmatic
example of the way early modern sources survive in multiple, equally
valid forms, including the major differences between the Old Arcadia
and the New Arcadia (Davis 2011). Furthermore, as noted above, the
use of echoic techniques such as repetition and redoubling of homonyms
and homophones is endemic in the poetry of the period, and this is just
as true of Sidney’s work even if it does not use end rhymes in the way
that Golding does.27 For instance, when a disguised prince complains
about disguise, he opines that
But yet, alas! O but yet, alas! our haps be but hard haps,
Which must frame contempt to the fittest purchase of honour.
Well may a pastor plain, but alas his plaints be not esteemed (84).
The density of repetitiousness in these three lines is characteristic of

much of the work (in its prose as well as its poetry), as is the irony of
complaining that disguise alters the way that poetic statements are
16 S.L. Anderson
interpreted. This implies an epistemology where contextual cues such as

the assumed identity of the speaker are inseparable from verbal mean-
ing. Such meaning operates echoically, varying according to the con-
text within sentences, within the text, and between characters. Words,
phonemes and rhythms echo intratextually within the work itself. As
Hollander (1985) notes, repetitions are further circuits of potential ref-
erentiality: ‘refrains are, and have, memories—of their prior strophes or
stretches of text, of their own preoccurrences, and of their own genealo-
gies in earlier texts as well’ (77). Such a formulation is one thing within
a single text, but in broader terms points towards a potentially endless
recursiveness that seems to require omniscience in its reader. But like the
non-omniscient reader, who may not share or recognise the memories
encoded, Echo has only partial recall, and thus acknowledges as already
lost the ‘preoccurrences’ that gave rise to it.
Furthermore, echo has the potential to obscure referentiality by oblit-
erating or covering over certain sounds, whether by accident or selec-
tion. Although Ovid’s version of the story resounds more loudly in the
archive, there is an alternative origin story in Longus’s Greek prose
romance Daphnis and Chloe (second–third century CE). Here, Echo
is the subject of an inset tale, told by Daphnis during his courtship of
Chloe. Daphnis presents Echo as a talented musician, described in Angel
Day’s 1587 translation as having ‘a most excellent knowledge and cun-
ning in all kinde of songs and instruments’ (Day 1587, M2v).28 Because
of ‘hir unmatchable skill’, Echo is a favoured companion of the Muses,
and thus has no interest in ‘the company of men […] but being a virgin
by disposition, sought fully and wholy how to preserve the same’ (M2v).
Echo’s abjuration of men seems to be an affront, especially in the con-
text of the direction of Daphnis and Chloe’s incipient relationship. Life
in an all-female enclave is not imagined as unpleasant for women,29 since
Echo is well-suited to it and happy to remain. But for the male teller of
the story it cannot stand. As Schlapbach (2015) points out, all three of
Daphnis’s inset tales feature a gifted female musician being subjugated to
male control, creating a pattern designed to prepare Chloe for patriarchal
marriage (80). In Echo’s case, Pan’s anger at her refusal of his sexual
advances leads him to take revenge in a particularly gruesome manner:
He inraged against her all the heat of men and shepheards of the coun-
try where she was, that like woolves and mad dogges they tare the poore
Nymph peece-meale in their furie, […] throwing the gobbets here and
there. (M2v)
Somewhat startlingly, even as she is being dismembered, Echo is ‘yet

singing hir songs’, inspiring a kind of feminised resistance:
The very earth it selfe favoured hir musike, and [receaved] immediatly hir
soundes in sorte as evermore agreeing to this day with the Muses in accorde,
the same tune that is plaied she recordeth, the same song that by any voice
is delivered, she repeateth. The earth thus retaining the former condicion
of the Nymph while she lived, when either gods, or men, or instruments of
musike, or beasts, or Pan himselfe soundeth his sweet Syrinx over the hollow
rocks, it counterfeiteth evermore the same notes. (M2v–M3r)
The story emphasises Pan’s lack of understanding of what has transpired,

noting how the god often follows the sound Echo makes, not because he
thinks he might find her, but because he remains ignorant of what causes
it.
Although the specifics of this version of Echo are not restaged in the
early modern period, there are ways in which Longus’s story reverber-
ates. Sidney, for example, consistently and deliberately harks back to the
conventions of Greek prose romance (Moore 2015, 302), and tropes
and techniques from this echo story recur across the genres and texts dis-
cussed in this book. Longus’s story includes a description of a festival
to honour Pan. This setup is echoed in the pastoral conceits that regu-
larly introduce and facilitate the progress entertainments discussed in
Chap. 2. The textual description of performed music, mime and song
parallels the way Elizabethan entertainment texts describe performances.
Moore (2015) points out that Angel Day uses this opportunity in his
translation to interpolate ‘an idealised and obedient rural populace’ into
the story (305). This invented and politically convenient populace would
be read back into reality by progress entertainment texts.
Jacobean masques and their textual descriptions also take advantage of
this slippage between imitation and reality, as we shall see in Chap. 4. This
slippage is prefigured in Longus, in the moment where Daphnis pretends to
be Pan playing the Syrinx. As Schlapbach (2015) points out, ‘if the music is
mimetic, by contrast, the act itself of performing it is completely real’ (92).
She is right, therefore, to claim that in Longus’s text, Daphnis ‘does not
just communicate tales of male predominance, he performs male predomi-
nance by the very act of being the one talking and playing music’ (93). But
in Elizabethan and Jacobean echoes of this Greek story, the differing con-
text offers an opportunity to hear Echo as a mode of facilitating feminised
resistance to male predominance. This is especially notable in the Bisham
18 S.L. Anderson
entertainment, discussed in Chap. 2, and in Wroth’s Urania, as we shall see

in Chap. 5, though in The Duchess of Malfi the possibility is pessimistically
rejected (also discussed in Chap. 5).
The myth of echo is a personification which both explains a natural
phenomenon and also attaches symbolic significance to it. In this way,
nature and artifice become so closely entwined as to be indistinguishable.
By this, I mean that our understanding of the natural phenomenon of
echo is conceptualised in language that inevitably invokes the symbolic
properties of Echo. Examining the recruitment of the ‘natural’ to reify
social and cultural states is central to this book’s political reading of the
cultures of courtly performance in early modern England. In relation to
Longus, Schlapbach suggests that stories are ‘projected onto the natu-
ral environment’, making cultural patterns seem natural and inevitable;
reciprocally, music and the sounds of animals are given social meaning.
Nowhere is this process of naturalisation clearer than in the heavily sym-
bolic use of echo in early modern texts.
Echo is a specialised example of sound that does not have meaning:
it is accidental, mechanical repetition without regard for semiotic con-
tent. Nevertheless, in all of the uses of echo as a literary and performance
device covered in this book, echo has the capacity to uncover the hid-
den meaning of the speaker’s words, and add meaning and significance
to a performance occasion. Sound and meaning cannot be separated as
clearly as it initially seems they ought to be, and speakers are frequently
shown to be making statements that they themselves are unaware of.
Echo’s punning potential is irresistible, but so is the sense that it offers of
arcane and obscure inner meanings that are just out of reach. By attend-
ing to the proliferation of these possibilities of meaning, this book does
not attempt to present a key to detecting the correct interpretation of
instances of echo. Rather, it offers echo as a mechanism for listening to
the fading sounds of the past.
Notes
1. These sometimes incorporate words but always contain more than seman-
tic meaning. Schafer ([1977] 1994) posits a division between what he
terms ‘absolute and programmatic’ music (103), but echo merges these
categories together.
2. I myself am here echoing Pierre Nora (1996) in his critique of the notion
of ‘what actually happened’ in Realms of Memory (xxiv).
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
were regular carpenters—privileged men. There was no time for a
raw hand to learn anything. Every man had to do that which he knew
how to do, and in entering the yard Mr. Gardiner had directed me to
do whatever the carpenters told me to do. This was placing me at
the beck and call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these
as my masters. Their word was to be my law. My situation was a
trying one. I was called a dozen ways in the space of a single
minute. I needed a dozen pairs of hands. Three or four voices would
strike my ear at the same moment. It was “Fred, come help me to
cant this timber here,”—“Fred, come carry this timber
yonder,”—“Fred, bring that roller here,”—“Fred, go get a fresh can of
water,”—“Fred, come help saw off the end of this timber,”—“Fred, go
quick and get the crow-bar,”—“Fred, hold on the end of this
fall,”—“Fred, go to the blacksmith’s shop and get a new
punch,”—“Halloo, Fred! run and bring me a cold-chisel,”—“I say,
Fred, bear a hand, and get up a fire under the steam-box as quick as
lightning,”—“Hullo, nigger! come turn this grindstone,”—“Come,
come; move, move! and bowse this timber forward,”—“I say, darkey,
blast your eyes! why don’t you heat up some pitch?”—“Halloo!
halloo! halloo! (three voices at the same time)”—“Come here; go
there; hold on where you are. D——n you, if you move I’ll knock your
brains out!” Such, my dear reader, is a glance at the school which
was mine during the first eight months of my stay at Gardiner’s ship-
yard. At the end of eight months Master Hugh refused longer to allow
me to remain with Gardiner. The circumstances which led to this
refusal was the committing of an outrage upon me, by the white
apprentices of the ship-yard. The fight was a desperate one, and I
came out of it shockingly mangled. I was cut and bruised in sundry
places, and my left eye was nearly knocked out of its socket. The
facts which led to this brutal outrage upon me, illustrate a phase of
slavery which was destined to become an important element in the
overthrow of the slave system, and I may therefore state them with
some minuteness. That phase was this—the conflict of slavery with
the interests of white mechanics and laborers. In the country this
conflict was not so apparent; but in cities, such as Baltimore,
Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile, etc., it was seen pretty clearly. The
slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by
encouraging the enmity of the poor laboring white man against the
blacks, succeeded in making the said white man almost as much a
slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white
slave and the black slave was this: the latter belonged to one
slaveholder, and the former belonged to the slaveholders collectively.
The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black
slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were
plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave was robbed by
his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare
physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the
slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung
into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages.
The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive
their prejudice against the slaves as men—not against them as
slaves. They appealed to their pride, often denouncing emancipation
as tending to place the white working man on an equality with
negroes, and by this means they succeeded in drawing off the minds
of the poor whites from the real fact, that by the rich slave-master,
they were already regarded as but a single remove from equality
with the slave. The impression was cunningly made that slavery was
the only power that could prevent the laboring white man from falling
to the level of the slave’s poverty and degradation. To make this
enmity deep and broad between the slave and the poor white man,
the latter was allowed to abuse and whip the former without
hindrance. But, as I have said, this state of affairs prevailed mostly in
the country. In the city of Baltimore there were not unfrequent
murmurs that educating slaves to be mechanics might, in the end,
give slave-masters power to dispose altogether with the services of
the poor white man. But with characteristic dread of offending the
slaveholders, these poor white mechanics in Mr. Gardiner’s ship-
yard, instead of applying the natural, honest remedy for the
apprehended evil, and objecting at once to work there by the side of
slaves, made a cowardly attack upon the free colored mechanics,
saying they were eating the bread which should be eaten by
American freemen, and swearing that they would not work with
them. The feeling was really against having their labor brought into
competition with that of the colored freeman, and aimed to prevent
him from serving himself, in the evening of life, with the trade with
which he had served his master, during the more vigorous portion of
his days. Had they succeeded in driving the black freemen out of the
ship-yard, they would have determined also upon the removal of the
black slaves. The feeling was very bitter toward all colored people in
Baltimore about this time (1836), and they—free and slave—suffered
all manner of insult and wrong.
Until a very little while before I went there white and black
carpenters worked side by side in the ship-yards of Mr. Gardiner, Mr.
Duncan, Mr. Walter Price, and Mr. Robb. Nobody seemed to see any
impropriety in it. Some of the blacks were first rate workmen and
were given jobs requiring the highest skill. All at once, however, the
white carpenters knocked off and swore that they would no longer
work on the same stage with negroes. Taking advantage of the
heavy contract resting upon Mr. Gardiner to have the vessels for
Mexico ready to launch in July, and of the difficulty of getting other
hands at that season of the year, they swore they would not strike
another blow for him unless he would discharge his free colored
workmen. Now, although this movement did not extend to me in
form, it did reach me in fact. The spirit which it awakened was one of
malice and bitterness toward colored people generally, and I
suffered with the rest, and suffered severely. My fellow-apprentices
very soon began to feel it to be degrading to work with me. They
began to put on high looks and to talk contemptuously and
maliciously of “the niggers,” saying that they would take the
“country,” that they “ought to be killed.” Encouraged by workmen
who, knowing me to be a slave, made no issue with Mr. Gardiner
about my being there, these young men did their utmost to make it
impossible for me to stay. They seldom called me to do anything
without coupling the call with a curse, and Edward North, the biggest
in everything, rascality included, ventured to strike me, whereupon I
picked him up and threw him into the dock. Whenever any of them
struck me I struck back again, regardless of consequences. I could
manage any of them singly, and so long as I could keep them from
combining I got on very well. In the conflict which ended my stay at
Mr. Gardiner’s I was beset by four of them at once—Ned North, Ned
Hays, Bill Stewart, and Tom Humphreys. Two of them were as large
as myself, and they came near killing me, in broad daylight. One
came in front, armed with a brick; there was one at each side and
one behind, and they closed up all around me. I was struck on all
sides; and while I was attending to those in front I received a blow on
my head from behind, dealt with a heavy hand-spike. I was
completely stunned by the blow, and fell heavily on the ground
among the timbers. Taking advantage of my fall they rushed upon
me and began to pound me with their fists. I let them lay on for a
while after I came to myself, with a view of gaining strength. They did
me little damage so far; but finally getting tired of that sport I gave a
sudden surge, and despite their weight I rose to my hands and
knees. Just as I did this one of their number planted a blow with his
boot in my left eye, which for a time seemed to have burst my eye-
ball. When they saw my eye completely closed, my face covered
with blood, and I staggering under the stunning blows they had given
me, they left me. As soon as I gathered strength I picked up the
hand-spike and madly enough attempted to pursue them; but here
the carpenters interfered and compelled me to give up my pursuit. It
was impossible to stand against so many.
Dear reader, you can hardly believe the statement, but it is true,
and therefore I write it down; no fewer than fifty white men stood by
and saw this brutal and shameful outrage committed, and not a man
of them all interposed a single word of mercy. There were four
against one, and that one’s face was beaten and battered most
horribly, and no one said, “that is enough;” but some cried out, “Kill
him! kill him! kill the d——n nigger! knock his brains out! he struck a
white person!” I mention this inhuman outcry to show the character
of the men and the spirit of the times at Gardiner’s ship-yard; and,
indeed, in Baltimore generally, in 1836. As I look back to this period,
I am almost amazed that I was not murdered outright, so murderous
was the spirit which prevailed there. On two other occasions while
there I came near losing my life, on one of which I was driving bolts
in the hold through the keelson with Hays. In its course the bolt bent.
Hays cursed me, and said that it was my blow which bent the bolt. I
denied this, and charged it upon him. In a fit of rage he seized an
adze and darted toward me. I met him with a maul and parried his
blow, or I should have lost my life.
After the united attack of North, Stewart, Hays, and Humphreys,
finding that the carpenters were as bitter toward me as the
apprentices, and that the latter were probably set on by the former, I
found my only chance for life was in flight. I succeeded in getting
away without an additional blow. To strike a white man was death by
lynch law, in Gardiner’s ship-yard; nor was there much of any other
law toward the colored people at that time in any other part of
Maryland.
After making my escape from the ship-yard I went straight home
and related my story to Master Hugh; and to his credit I say it, that
his conduct, though he was not a religious man, was every way more
humane than that of his brother Thomas, when I went to him in a
somewhat similar plight, from the hands of his “Brother Edward
Covey.” Master Hugh listened attentively to my narration of the
circumstances leading to the ruffianly assault, and gave many
evidences of his strong indignation at what was done. He was a
rough but manly-hearted fellow, and at this time his best nature
showed itself.
The heart of my once kind mistress Sophia was again melted in
pity towards me. My puffed-out eye and my scarred and blood-
covered face moved the dear lady to tears. She kindly drew a chair
by me, and with friendly and consoling words, she took water and
washed the blood from my face. No mother’s hand could have been
more tender than hers. She bound up my head and covered my
wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh beef. It was almost
compensation for all I suffered that it occasioned the manifestation
once more of the originally characteristic kindness of my mistress.
Her affectionate heart was not yet dead, though much hardened by
time and circumstances.
As for Master Hugh he was furious, and gave expression to his
feelings in the forms of speech usual in that locality. He poured
curses on the whole of the ship-yard company, and swore that he
would have satisfaction. His indignation was really strong and
healthy; but unfortunately it resulted from the thought that his rights
of property, in my person, had not been respected, more than from
any sense of the outrage perpetrated upon me as a man. I had
reason to think this from the fact that he could, himself, beat and
mangle when it suited him to do so.
Bent on having satisfaction, as he said, just as soon as I got a
little the better of my bruises Master Hugh took me to Esquire
Watson’s office on Bond street, Fell’s Point, with a view to procuring
the arrest of those who had assaulted me. He related the outrage to
the magistrate as I had related it to him, and seemed to expect that a
warrant would at once be issued for the arrest of the lawless ruffians.
Mr. Watson heard all he had to say, then coolly inquired, “Mr. Auld,
who saw this assault of which you speak?” “It was done, sir, in the
presence of a ship-yard full of hands.” “Sir,” said Mr. Watson, “I am
sorry, but I cannot move in this matter, except upon the oath of white
witnesses.” “But here’s the boy; look at his head and face,” said the
excited Master Hugh; “they show what has been done.” But Watson
insisted that he was not authorized to do anything, unless white
witnesses of the transaction would come forward and testify to what
had taken place. He could issue no warrant on my word, against
white persons, and if I had been killed in the presence of a thousand
blacks, their testimony combined would have been insufficient to
condemn a single murderer. Master Hugh was compelled to say, for
once, that this state of things was too bad, and he left the office of
the magistrate disgusted.
Of course it was impossible to get any white man to testify
against my assailants. The carpenters saw what was done; but the
actors were but the agents of their malice, and did only what the
carpenters sanctioned. They had cried with one accord, “Kill the
nigger! kill the nigger!” Even those who may have pitied me, if any
such were among them, lacked the moral courage to volunteer their
evidence. The slightest show of sympathy or justice toward a person
of color was denounced as abolitionism; and the name of abolitionist
subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities. “D——n abolitionists,” and
“kill the niggers,” were the watch-words of the foul-mouthed ruffians
of those days. Nothing was done, and probably there would not have
been had I been killed in the affray. The laws and the morals of the
Christian city of Baltimore afforded no protection to the sable
denizens of that city.
Master Hugh, on finding he could get no redress for the cruel
wrong, withdrew me from the employment of Mr. Gardiner and took
me into his own family, Mrs. Auld kindly taking care of me and
dressing my wounds until they were healed and I was ready to go to
work again.
While I was on the Eastern Shore, Master Hugh had met with
reverses which overthrew his business; and he had given up ship-
building in his own yard, on the City Block, and was now acting as
foreman of Mr. Walter Price. The best he could do for me was to take
me into Mr. Price’s yard, and afford me the facilities there for
completing the trade which I began to learn at Gardiner’s. Here I
rapidly became expert in the use of calker’s tools, and in the course
of a single year, I was able to command the highest wages paid to
journeymen calkers in Baltimore.
The reader will observe that I was now of some pecuniary value
to my master. During the busy season I was bringing six and seven
dollars per week. I have sometimes brought him as much as nine
dollars a week, for the wages were a dollar and a half per day.
After learning to calk, I sought my own employment, made my
own contracts, and collected my own earnings—giving Master Hugh
no trouble in any part of the transactions to which I was a party.
Here, then, were better days for the Eastern Shore slave. I was
free from the vexatious assaults of the apprentices at Mr. Gardiner’s,
and free from the perils of plantation life, and once more in favorable
condition to increase my little stock of education, which had been at
a dead stand since my removal from Baltimore. I had on the Eastern
Shore been only a teacher, when in company with other slaves, but
now there were colored persons here who could instruct me. Many
of the young calkers could read, write, and cipher. Some of them had
high notions about mental improvement, and the free ones on Fell’s
Point organized what they called the “East Baltimore Mental
Improvement Society.” To this society, notwithstanding it was
intended that only free persons should attach themselves, I was
admitted, and was several times assigned a prominent part in its
debates. I owe much to the society of these young men.
The reader already knows enough of the ill effects of good
treatment on a slave to anticipate what was now the case in my
improved condition. It was not long before I began to show signs of
disquiet with slavery, and to look around for means to get out of it by
the shortest route. I was living among freemen, and was in all
respects equal to them by nature and attainments. Why should I be a
slave? There was no reason why I should be the thrall of any man.
Besides, I was now getting, as I have said, a dollar and fifty cents
per day. I contracted for it, worked for it, collected it; it was paid to
me, and it was rightfully my own; and yet upon every returning
Saturday night, this money—my own hard earnings, every cent of it
—was demanded of me and taken from me by Master Hugh. He did
not earn it; he had no hand in earning it; why, then, should he have
it? I owed him nothing. He had given me no schooling, and I had
received from him only my food and raiment; and for these my
services were supposed to pay from the first. The right to take my
earnings was the right of the robber. He had the power to compel me
to give him the fruits of my labor, and this power was his only right in
the case. I became more and more dissatisfied with this state of
things, and in so becoming I only gave proof of the same human
nature which every reader of this chapter in my life—slaveholder, or
non-slaveholder—is conscious of possessing.
To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It
is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as
possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to
detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man who takes his
earnings must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to
do so. It must not depend upon mere force: the slave must know no
higher law than his master’s will. The whole relationship must not
only demonstrate to his mind its necessity, but its absolute
rightfulness. If there be one crevice through which a single drop can
fall, it will certainly rust off the slave’s chain.
CHAPTER XXI.
ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.
Closing incidents in my “Life as a Slave”—Discontent—Suspicions—Master’s

generosity—Difficulties in the way of escape—Plan to obtain money—
Allowed to hire my time—A gleam of hope—Attend camp-meeting—Anger
of Master Hugh—The result—Plans of escape—Day for departure fixed—
Harassing doubts and fears—Painful thoughts of separation from friends.
MY condition during the year of my escape (1838) was

comparatively a free and easy one, so far, at least, as the wants of
the physical man were concerned; but the reader will bear in mind
that my troubles from the beginning had been less physical than
mental, and he will thus be prepared to find that slave life was
adding nothing to its charms for me as I grew older, and became
more and more acquainted with it. The practice from week to week
of openly robbing me of all my earnings, kept the nature and
character of slavery constantly before me. I could be robbed by
indirection, but this was too open and barefaced to be endured. I
could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the
reward of my honest toil into the purse of my master. My obligation to
do this vexed me, and the manner in which Master Hugh received
my wages vexed me yet more. Carefully counting the money, and
rolling it out dollar by dollar, he would look me in the face as if he
would search my heart as well as my pocket, and reproachfully ask
me, “Is that all?”—implying that I had perhaps kept back part of my
wages; or, if not so, the demand was made possibly to make me feel
that after all, I was an “unprofitable servant.” Draining me of the last
cent of my hard earnings, he would, however, occasionally, when I
brought home an extra large sum, dole out to me a sixpence or a
shilling, with a view, perhaps, of kindling up my gratitude. But it had
the opposite effect; it was an admission of my right to the whole sum.
The fact that he gave me any part of my wages, was proof that he
suspected I had a right to the whole of them; and I always felt
uncomfortable after having received anything in this way, lest his
giving me a few cents might possibly ease his conscience, and make
him feel himself to be a pretty honorable robber after all.
Held to a strict account, and kept under a close watch,—the old
suspicion of my running away not having been entirely removed,—to
accomplish my escape seemed a very difficult thing. The railroad
from Baltimore to Philadelphia was under regulations so stringent
that even free colored travelers were almost excluded. They must
have free papers; they must be measured and carefully examined
before they could enter the cars, and could go only in the day time;
even when so examined. The steamboats were under regulations
equally stringent. And still more, and worse than all, all the great
turnpikes leading northward were beset with kidnappers; a class of
men who watched the newspapers for advertisements for runaway
slaves, thus making their living by the accursed reward of slave-
hunting.
My discontent grew upon me, and I was on a constant lookout
for means to get away. With money I could easily have managed the
matter, and from this consideration I hit upon the plan of soliciting the
privilege of hiring my time. It was quite common in Baltimore to allow
slaves this privilege, and was the practice also in New Orleans. A
slave who was considered trustworthy could, by paying his master a
definite sum regularly, at the end of each week, dispose of his time
as he liked. It so happened that I was not in very good odor, and I
was far from being a trustworthy slave. Nevertheless, I watched my
opportunity when Master Thomas came to Baltimore (for I was still
his property, Hugh only acting as his agent) in the spring of 1838, to
purchase his spring supply of goods, and applied to him directly for
the much-coveted privilege of hiring my time. This request Master
Thomas unhesitatingly refused to grant; and he charged me, with
some sternness, with inventing this stratagem to make my escape.
He told me I could go nowhere but he would catch me; and, in the
event of my running away, I might be assured he should spare no
pains in his efforts to recapture me. He recounted, with a good deal
of eloquence, the many kind offices he had done me, and exhorted
me to be contented and obedient. “Lay out no plans for the future,”
said he; “if you behave yourself properly, I will take care of you.”
Now, kind and considerate as this offer was, it failed to soothe me
into repose. In spite of all Master Thomas had said, and in spite of
my own efforts to the contrary, the injustice and wickedness of
slavery was always uppermost in my thoughts, strengthening my
purpose to make my escape at the earliest moment possible.
About two months after applying to Master Thomas for the
privilege of hiring my time, I applied to Master Hugh for the same
liberty, supposing him to be unacquainted with the fact that I had
made a similar application to Master Thomas, and had been refused.
My boldness in making this request fairly astounded him at first. He
gazed at me in amazement. But I had many good reasons for
pressing the matter, and, after listening to them awhile, he did not
absolutely refuse, but told me he would think of it. There was hope
for me in this. Once master of my own time, I felt sure that I could
make over and above my obligation to him, a dollar or two every
week. Some slaves had made enough in this way to purchase their
freedom. It was a sharp spur to their industry; and some of the most
enterprising colored men in Baltimore hired themselves in that way.
After mature reflection, as I suppose it was, Master Hugh
granted me the privilege in question, on the following terms: I was to
be allowed all my time; to make all bargains for work, and to collect
my own wages; and in return for this liberty, I was required or obliged
to pay him three dollars at the end of each week, and to board and
clothe myself, and buy my own calking tools. A failure in any of these
particulars would put an end to the privilege. This was a hard
bargain. The wear and tear of clothing, the losing and breaking of
tools, and the expense of board made it necessary for me to earn at
least six dollars per week to keep even with the world. All who are
acquainted with calking know how uncertain and irregular that
employment is. It can be done to advantage only in dry weather, for it
is useless to put wet oakum into a ship’s seam. Rain or shine,
however, work or no work, at the end of each week the money must
be forthcoming.
Master Hugh seemed much pleased with this arrangement for a
time; and well he might be, for it was decidedly in his favor. It
relieved him of all anxiety concerning me. His money was sure. He
had armed my love of liberty with a lash and a driver far more
efficient than any I had before known; and while he derived all the
benefits of slaveholding by the arrangement, without its evils, I
endured all the evils of being a slave, and yet suffered all the care
and anxiety of a responsible freeman. “Nevertheless,” thought I, “it is
a valuable privilege—another step in my career toward freedom.” It
was something even to be permitted to stagger under the
disadvantages of liberty, and I was determined to hold on to the
newly gained footing by all proper industry. I was ready to work by
night as by day, and being in the possession of excellent health, I
was not only able to meet my current expenses, but also to lay by a
small sum at the end of each week. All went on thus from the month
of May till August; then, for reasons which will become apparent as I
proceed, my much-valued liberty was wrested from me.
During the week previous to this calamitous event, I had made
arrangements with a few young friends to accompany them on
Saturday night to a camp-meeting, to be held about twelve miles
from Baltimore. On the evening of our intended start for the camp-
ground, something occurred in the ship-yard where I was at work
which detained me unusually late, and compelled me either to
disappoint my friends, or to neglect carrying my weekly dues to
Master Hugh. Knowing that I had the money and could hand it to him
on another day, I decided to go to camp-meeting, and to pay him the
three dollars for the past week on my return. Once on the camp-
ground, I was induced to remain one day longer than I had intended
when I left home. But as soon as I returned I went directly to his
home on Fell street to hand him his (my) money. Unhappily the fatal
mistake had been made. I found him exceedingly angry. He
exhibited all the signs of apprehension and wrath which a
slaveholder might be surmised to exhibit on the supposed escape of
a favorite slave. “You rascal! I have a great mind to give you a sound
whipping. How dare you go out of the city without first asking and
obtaining my permission?” “Sir,” I said, “I hired my time and paid you
the price you asked for it. I did not know that it was any part of the
bargain that I should ask you when or where I should go.” “You did
not know, you rascal! You are bound to show yourself here every
Saturday night.” After reflecting a few moments, he became
somewhat cooled down; but evidently greatly troubled, he said:
“Now, you scoundrel, you have done for yourself; you shall hire your
time no longer. The next thing I shall hear of will be your running
away. Bring home your tools at once. I’ll teach you how to go off in
this way.”
Thus ended my partial freedom. I could hire my time no longer;
and I obeyed my master’s orders at once. The little taste of liberty
which I had had—although as it will be seen, that taste was far from
being unalloyed, by no means enhanced my contentment with
slavery. Punished by Master Hugh, it was now my turn to punish him.
“Since,” thought I, “you will make a slave of me, I will await your
order in all things.” So, instead of going to look for work on Monday
morning, as I had formerly done, I remained at home during the
entire week, without the performance of a single stroke of work.
Saturday night came, and he called upon me as usual for my wages.
I, of course, told him I had done no work, and had no wages. Here
we were at the point of coming to blows. His wrath had been
accumulating during the whole week; for he evidently saw that I was
making no effort to get work, but was most aggravatingly awaiting his
orders in all things. As I look back to this behavior of mine, I scarcely
know what possessed me, thus to trifle with one who had such
unlimited power to bless or blast me. Master Hugh raved, and swore
he would “get hold of me,” but wisely for him, and happily for me, his
wrath employed only those harmless, impalpable missiles which roll
from a limber tongue. In my desperation I had fully made up my mind
to measure strength with him, in case he should attempt to execute
his threats. I am glad there was no occasion for this, for resistance to
him could not have ended so happily for me as it did in the case of
Covey. Master Hugh was not a man to be safely resisted by a slave;
and I freely own that in my conduct toward him, in this instance,
there was more folly than wisdom. He closed his reproofs by telling
me that hereafter I need give myself no uneasiness about getting
work; he “would himself see to getting work for me, and enough of it
at that.” This threat, I confess, had some terror in it, and on thinking
the matter over during the Sunday, I resolved not only to save him
the trouble of getting me work, but that on the third day of September
I would attempt to make my escape. His refusal to allow me to hire
my time therefore hastened the period of my flight. I had three weeks
in which to prepare for my journey.
Once resolved, I felt a certain degree of repose, and on Monday
morning, instead of waiting for Master Hugh to seek employment for
me, I was up by break of day, and off to the ship-yard of Mr. Butler,
on the City Block, near the drawbridge. I was a favorite with Mr.
Butler, and, young as I was, I had served as his foreman, on the
float-stage, at calking. Of course I easily obtained work, and at the
end of the week, which, by the way, was exceedingly fine, I brought
Master Hugh nine dollars. The effect of this mark of returning good
sense on my part, was excellent. He was very much pleased; he
took the money, commended me, and told me I might have done the
same thing the week before. It is a blessed thing that the tyrant may
not always know the thoughts and purposes of his victim. Master
Hugh little knew my plans. The going to camp-meeting without
asking his permission, the insolent answers to his reproaches, the
sulky deportment of the week after being deprived of the privilege of
hiring my time, had awakened the suspicion that I might be
cherishing disloyal purposes. My object, therefore, in working
steadily was to remove suspicion; and in this I succeeded admirably.
He probably thought I was never better satisfied with my condition
than at the very time I was planning my escape. The second week
passed, and I again carried him my full week’s wages—nine dollars;
and so well pleased was he that he gave me twenty-five cents! and
bade me “make good use of it.” I told him I would do so, for one of
the uses to which I intended to put it was to pay my fare on the
“underground railroad.”
Things without went on as usual; but I was passing through the
same internal excitement and anxiety which I had experienced two
years and a half before. The failure in that instance was not
calculated to increase my confidence in the success of this, my
second attempt; and I knew that a second failure could not leave me
where my first did. I must either get to the far North or be sent to the
far South. Besides the exercise of mind from this state of facts, I had
the painful sensation of being about to separate from a circle of
honest and warm-hearted friends. The thought of such a separation,
where the hope of ever meeting again was excluded, and where
there could be no correspondence, was very painful. It is my opinion
that thousands more would have escaped from slavery but for the
strong affection which bound them to their families, relatives, and
friends. The daughter was hindered by the love she bore her mother,
and the father by the love he bore his wife and children, and so on to
the end of the chapter. I had no relations in Baltimore, and I saw no
probability of ever living in the neighborhood of sisters and brothers;
but the thought of leaving my friends was the strongest obstacle to
my running away. The last two days of the week, Friday and
Saturday, were spent mostly in collecting my things together for my
journey. Having worked four days that week for my master, I handed
him six dollars on Saturday night. I seldom spent my Sundays at
home, and for fear that something might be discovered in my
conduct, I kept up my custom and absented myself all day. On
Monday, the third day of September, 1838, in accordance with my
resolution, I bade farewell to the city of Baltimore, and to that slavery
which had been my abhorrence from childhood.
His Present Home in Washington.
SECOND PART
CHAPTER I.
ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.
Reasons for not having revealed the manner of escape—Nothing of romance

in the method—Danger—Free Papers—Unjust tax—Protection papers
—“Free trade and sailors’ rights”—American eagle—Railroad train—
Unobserving conductor—Capt. McGowan—Honest German—Fears—
Safe arrival in Philadelphia—Ditto in New York.
IN the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly forty

years ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public what
I considered very good reasons for withholding the manner of my
escape. In substance these reasons were, first, that such publication
at any time during the existence of slavery might be used by the
master against the slave, and prevent the future escape of any who
might adopt the same means that I did. The second reason was, if
possible, still more binding to silence—for publication of details
would certainly have put in peril the persons and property of those
who assisted. Murder itself was not more sternly and certainly
punished in the State of Maryland, than that of aiding and abetting
the escape of a slave. Many colored men, for no other crime than
that of giving aid to a fugitive slave, have, like Charles T. Torrey,
perished in prison. The abolition of slavery in my native State and
throughout the country, and the lapse of time, render the caution
hitherto observed no longer necessary. But even since the abolition
of slavery, I have sometimes thought it well enough to baffle curiosity
by saying that while slavery existed there were good reasons for not
telling the manner of my escape, and since slavery had ceased to
exist there was no reason for telling it. I shall now, however, cease to
avail myself of this formula, and, as far as I can, endeavor to satisfy
this very natural curiosity. I should perhaps have yielded to that
feeling sooner, had there been anything very heroic or thrilling in the
incidents connected with my escape, for I am sorry to say I have
nothing of that sort to tell; and yet the courage that could risk
betrayal and the bravery which was ready to encounter death if need
be, in pursuit of freedom, were essential features in the undertaking.
My success was due to address rather than courage; to good luck
rather than bravery. My means of escape were provided for me by
the very men who were making laws to hold and bind me more
securely in slavery. It was the custom in the State of Maryland to
require of the free colored people to have what were called free
papers. This instrument they were required to renew very often, and
by charging a fee for this writing, considerable sums from time to
time were collected by the State. In these papers the name, age,
color, height, and form of the free man were described, together with
any scars or other marks upon his person, which could assist in his
identification. This device of slaveholding ingenuity, like other
devices of wickedness, in some measure defeated itself—since
more than one man could be found to answer the same general
description. Hence many slaves could escape by personating the
owner of one set of papers; and this was often done as follows: A
slave nearly or sufficiently answering the description set forth in the
papers, would borrow or hire them till he could by their means
escape to a free State, and then, by mail or otherwise, return them to
the owner. The operation was a hazardous one for the lender as well
as the borrower. A failure on the part of the fugitive to send back the
papers would imperil his benefactor, and the discovery of the papers
in possession of the wrong man would imperil both the fugitive and
his friend. It was therefore an act of supreme trust on the part of a
freeman of color thus to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another
might be free. It was, however, not unfrequently bravely done, and
was seldom discovered. I was not so fortunate as to sufficiently
resemble any of my free acquaintances as to answer the description
of their papers. But I had one friend—a sailor—who owned a sailor’s
protection, which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers—
describing his person, and certifying to the fact that he was a free
American sailor. The instrument had at its head the American eagle,
which gave it the appearance at once of an authorized document.
This protection did not, when in my hands, describe its bearer very
accurately. Indeed, it called for a man much darker than myself, and
close examination of it would have caused my arrest at the start. In
order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of the railroad official, I
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Series Editors: Paul Lumsden and

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Echo and Meaning

Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952839

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: © saulgranda/Getty

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

challenge me intellectually while supporting me in friendship, especially

1 Introduction: Echo and Meaning 1

2 Sound and Precedent in Elizabethan Progress

3 Echo and Drama: Cynthia’s Revels (1601) 49

4 Echo, Dance and Song in Jacobean Masques 67

5 Conclusion: Disenchanted Echoes in The Duchess

Fig. 4.1 ‘Now Hath Flora’, bars 17–28 71

Introduction: Echo and Meaning

The most of us which now doe write,

Abstract Anderson outlines the range of meanings made available

Keywords Arthur Golding · Ovid · Echo · Philip Sidney

© The Author(s) 2018 1

Early modern echo is an extraordinarily capacious category whose func-

This book attends to these echoes by focusing on iterations of the fig-

one in which music is indivisibly linked to repetitive physical movement.

Even more acutely than speech, music’s inherent evanescence makes

Echoing Ovid: Golding, T.H. and Caxton

[…] Through restless cark and care

The erotic prospect of bodily contact is part of the humour of

He still persistes and wondring much what kinde of thing it was

Golding seems to be stating that Echo would have liked to have

replied’ (Ovid 1985, bk 3, lines 386–387). In these different versions of

Echo and Pastoral: Sidney, Longus and Day

So oft these woods have heard me “Cosma” cry,

That after death to heav’n in woods’ resound,

Alternative manuscript versions of this part of the work offer altered

is at least meant to be a performance of verbal dexterity that aligns the

The density of repetitiousness in these three lines is characteristic of

interpreted. This implies an epistemology where contextual cues such as

Somewhat startlingly, even as she is being dismembered, Echo is ‘yet

The story emphasises Pan’s lack of understanding of what has transpired,

entertainment, discussed in Chap. 2, and in Wroth’s Urania, as we shall see

Closing incidents in my “Life as a Slave”—Discontent—Suspicions—Master’s

MY condition during the year of my escape (1838) was

Reasons for not having revealed the manner of escape—Nothing of romance

IN the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly forty

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Echoing Ovid: Golding, T.H. and Caxton

[…]               Through restless cark and care

Echo and Pastoral: Sidney, Longus and Day