[Vwoolf] really obscure Elizabethan reference

[Laura Cernat]

The "White Devil" reference makes a lot of sense to me, since the play is also one of the intertextual references in "The Waste Land" and there seems to have been some tension between Woolf and T. S. Eliot over some of the lines Eliot took from Webster ("the dog who's friend to man" was in Webster's original "the wolf who's foe to man"). For a set of interesting fictional speculations about the Webster passage and the reasons for replacing "wolf" with "dog", see Norah Vincent's Woolf-themed biofiction Adeline.


Hope this is not too off-topic.


All best,


Laura Cernat

________________________________
From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+cernat.laura=kuleuven.be at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 9:54 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] really obscure Elizabethan reference

"'mongst women howling" is from "The White Devil" (5.3.36-7).

Stuart
(Day 112)

From: Elisa Sparks via Vwoolf
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 1:34 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
Subject: [Vwoolf] really obscure Elizabethan reference

Dear all--
I am researching ivy in Virginia Woolf and have discovered a pattern of references to owls in the ivy.  I have not been able to find any literary origins for this association which appears no les than six times in Woolf's writing.  Particularly curious is this allusion in her 1925 essay "Notes on an Elizabethan Play":

             and we scarcely recognise any likeness between the knight who imported timber and died of pneumonia at Muswell Hill and the Armenian Duke who fell like a Roman on his sword while the owl shrieked in the ivy and the Duchess gave birth to a still-born babe 'mongst women howling (E4 67)



Does anyone have any idea what minor Elizabethan dramatist Woolf is citing here?  I am at an utter loss.



Thanks,

Elisa



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