Doodling in a Copy of Guarini's "Il Pastor Fido"

frontispiece and title page

Battista Guarini, Il Pastor Fido=The Faithful Shepherd: a pastorall / written in Italian by Baptista Gvarini, a knight of Italie ; and now newly translated out of the originall. 

London : Printed by R. Raworth, M DC XLVII [1647].

[12], 223 p. : ill., port. ; 20 cm.

Translated by Richard Fanshawe.

Renaissance Center copy is in later (18th-century?; a signature dated 1660 is partially trimmed) calf (rebacked; inner hinges cracked; all before B2 and 2F2-4 detached; some worm damage to outer margins, which occurred before the current binding); extensive scribblings on several leaves at front and at back, including drawings and names, presumably of owners: John Penrose (title page; dated both 1647 and 1660); Bernard Penrose (2F4v; dated 1704; and on V3v and X4v, undated); Thomas Penrose (front free endpaper; and V1v, dated 1701; and 2F4v, dated 1708); Francis Penrose ((a)2v, undated; and as "Frank Penrose" on M2r, undated); Edward Penrose (F3r and 2F4v; undated); Margarett Penrose, James Lake, and Robert Olivier (all 2F4v, undated); John James Sampson (2E4v; undated). 

 

Although a number of my posts on early modern manuscript annotation characterize the practice as a serious affair, practiced by diligent scholars or readers deeply invested in their reading material, one can't ignore the frivolous act of doodling as one of the most common forms of book annotation. Children and bored students (both in the early modern and modern periods) frequently doodled in the blank leaves of their books, both as a form of writing practice ("pen trials") and no doubt to alleviate the boredom of tedious classroom lessons.

The subject of this post is the most copiously doodled book in our collection, a 1647 English translation of Guarini's Il Pastor Fido. The play is well known as one of the first tragicomedies ever written and its author's writings on the genre influenced a number of early seventeenth-century English playwrights. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays Philaster and The Faithful Shepherdess are both indebted to Guarini's experimentation with tragicomedy.

But this post isn't about tragicomedy, it's about doodling, copious doodling. This particular copy's title page and frontispiece (in addition to the blank recto of the frontispiece leaf) bear a complex layering of pen trials, drawings, tracings, signatures, and sums, stemming from the ownership of nine different people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (many of them from the Penrose family).

 Let's begin with the frontispiece leaf:

recto of frontispiece leaf

Perhaps the most obvious items of note on this page are the amateurish drawings, one of which is clearly a tracing of the frontispiece on the other side of the leaf. Probably in imitation of the fairly decent tracing job, a second would-be artist (undoubtedly a child) has added a second rendition of Guarini's face, upon which a third illustrated figure leans. A number of pen trials and other forms of handwriting practice litter the page, including the strange, owl-like forms in the bottom left-hand corner, clearly intended to train writing students in the formation of specific pen strokes. The page also contains (in no particular order) sums, transcriptions of the book's title, an armorial drawing, the initials of Baptista Guarini, and a line from an unidentified text.

frontispiece

Of course the frontispiece itself supplied the image for the tracing, and in its margin another annotator has drawn a couple fairly accurate human heads.

detail of margin on frontispiece leaf: drawings of heads

The title page contains a number of different sorts of doodles, including many items seen on the reverse page (a transcription of the book's title and another armorial drawing, for instance). The amateur drawing also continues with several images of birds and wings, apparently drawn by the same person responsible for the human figure on the reverse side of the leaf. One of the title page annotators has copied "London" from the book's imprint, writing it in both English and Latin. Another has written a number of early capital "block" letters (several "B"s, and "E," and an "H").

title page

There are also plenty of signatures on the title page and elsewhere in the book, identifying a total of nine different owners or readers from various time periods. One of the most interesting ownership marks elects not to use the typical signature for self-identification, but instead the rebus, that strange admixture of words, letters, and images we usually associate with children's literature.

detail of ownership rebus

As part of the witty, playful, and sometimes secretive literary culture of the day, writers could adopt the rebus as a way not only to mask their identities, but also to playfully incorporate text and image into the presentation of their names. If you haven't already figured it out, this rebus reads "T [Pen] [Rose]," or Thomas Penrose, one of the many owners identified elsewhere in the book. The rebus incorporates the Tudor Rose into an interesting amalgam of local (the Penrose family) and national identity, and I suspect its form was passed down through the family for some time. The illustration of the pen drawing the rose, albeit clearly appropriate for someone named "Penrose," is also interesting in light of the many drawings and pen marks displayed in this book, since it depicts the very material processes responsible for the doodling. Along with my earlier post on children's annotation, this example clearly demonstrates a relationship between the book and reader based less on serious intellectual engagement than on casual and playful interaction with a material object.

A Renaissance Artist's Copy of Vitruvius

Vitruvius, Pollio, De architectura libri decem

[Lyon] : Apud Ioan. Tornaesium, typogr. reg. Lugd., MDLXXXVI [1586].

[16], 460, [36] p., [1] folded leaf of plates : ill., port. ; 24 cm. (4to)

Renaissance Center copy is in contemporary (?) limp vellum; ms. annotations throughout.

Probably the book in our collection most heavily annotated by a contemporary reader, this sixteenth-century edition of the Roman engineer Vitruvius' landmark architectural work was likely owned by a trained artist. While the extensive marginal notes running through the entire volume demonstrate the owner's readerly labors and unquestionable interest in the text, numerous ink sketches--many illustrating content from the printed work--suggest the owner's formal training in artistic techniques.

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It appears that most of the marginal drawings hold a direct relationship with adjacent chunks of printed text. As such, the illustrations could have served as mnemonic or reference devices, enabling the reader to quickly navigate the text by finding the corresponding illustration in the margins. On the other hand, this could have been the property of a student who transformed word into image as an exercise of some kind.

In the image above, one can see a drawing of a figure worshipping a vase; the corresponding text describes the Ancient Egyptian practice of storing sacred water in a “hydria” for safekeeping and worship in a temple. The last line of that paragraph, roughly translated, reads: “then laying down on the earth with hands raised to the heavens, they give thanks for divine benevolence.” And this is exactly what the illustration portrays. Considering the handwritten marking of the passage in addition to the illustration, it seems likely the owner accorded great importance to this part of the work. And if the illustrations do in fact serve a reference function of some kind, then they hold a practical role as a means of marking off the most important passages in a book filled with important passages.

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The relation of the second image to its corresponding text is less direct than in my first example. You can see a drawing of four women looking into a mirror, complete with a reflection and lines indicating their field of vision. The corresponding text briefly describes the reflective properties of mirrors, noting, “no mirrors reflect fixed images.” The passage concludes with a bit of Senecan wisdom explaining how mirrors can benefit the beautiful, the ugly, the young, and the old alike. Nowhere in the passage is there any description of women looking in a mirror, but it is possible that the drawing reflects Seneca’s idea that “the young are admonished in the flower of age,” one of sententiae listed at the end of the paragraph. The drawing may also reflect the earlier sentence on the mirror’s inability to reflect fixed images, since the illustrated reflection doesn’t quite match up with the figures.

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Some of the illustrations demonstrate the act of reading the text. In the above image, the eye of the reader/artist has digested, transformed, and visualized the words read on the page, physically recreating the architectural concept previously existing only in the abstract language of the text.

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Here the book's owner has marked an important passage with the manicule (Latin for "little hand"), a device similar in function to the "nota bene" or "florigelum," i.e. one used to indicate quotable or important sections of a book. But unlike most of the crudely drawn manicules of the period, this one shows signs of an artist's touch; the graceful posture of the hand almost resembles Adam's in the famous painting of the Creation adorning the Sistine Chapel.

Here are a few more illustrations from the book:

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Early modern sunbathing?

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Is this man hiding? ducking? crawling?

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This image of Jupiter preparing to hurl lightning from the heavens probably corresponds to Vitruvius' discussion of "simulacra deorum" in the adjacent printed text.