[Vwoolf] really obscure Elizabethan reference

[Caroline Webb]

Google search on "owl shrieked in the ivy" turns up an article called "Upton Court" in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction , volume 29 (which I find elsewhere dates from 1837), that includes the following sentence:

"Really, when the wind swept through the overgrown espaliers of that neglected but luxuriant wilderness, the terraced garden; when the screech-owl shrieked from the ivy that clustered up one side of the walls, 'and rats and mice, and such small deer' were playing inside the wainscot, it would have formed as pretty a locality for a supernatural adventure as ever decayed hunting-lodge in the recesses of the Hartz, or ruined fortress on the castled Rhine."

The source is given as a sketch by Miss Mitford called "Country Lodgings."

Woolf referred to the popularity of Mary Russell Mitford on various occasions (not positively, as I recall).  Whether Mitford is also quoting I don't know, but it sounds that way (though there is a marked quotation in that sentence).

Caroline

From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Laura Cernat via Vwoolf
Sent: Tuesday, 7 July 2020 6:20 PM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu; Stuart N. Clarke <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] really obscure Elizabethan reference


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

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From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+cernat.laura=kuleuven.be at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf-bounces+cernat.laura=kuleuven.be at lists.osu.edu>> on behalf of Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 9:54 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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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