A Look at Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

As Candice Lines states in her essay "The Erotic Politics of Grief in Surrey's 'So Crewel Prison,' Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey did more than lament the loss of his friend, Henry, the Duke of Richmond, he lamented the loss of a political and sexual ally. "Throughout his life, Surrey declared his love and grief for Richmond at every opportunity, and these declarations assisted his continued self-presentation as a disenfranchised nobleman brutalized by a world that had rejected nobility and chivalry.

Every mention of Richmond recalls a golden past, faded and yet recuperable even in the politically catastrophic present. Richmond's memory becomes the scene for Surrey's "stage playes" of not-quite-lost possibilities. In his portrait, Surrey stands in a doorway, surrounded by broken emblems of the past yet ready to step forward. "So crewell prison" and Surrey's other gestures of grief similarly cast him as mourner and survivor, as an embodied and potent mix of memory and ambition" (Lines). The poem "So Crewell Prison" is an epic poem about the loss of a childhood friend, a lover, and a nobility unseen during his time. Surrey is lost without Richmond, as noted with the historical homage to Troilus and Criseyde, as well as the unmistakable fall of Troy. Surrey commands these historical similes as a way of expressing the utter loss he feels, once Richmond is gone.

Much like Troy, their friendship celebrated moments of greatness and chivalry, but inevitably suffered. Surrey also takes this moment to address the political state of affairs, and his disenchantment with the nobility of the time. "Thus the love that Surrey, in "So crewell prison," claims existed between himself and Richmond was not in any sense detached from political concerns; it originated in Howard alliance politics and marked their success" (Lines). With Richmond's death and Anne Boleyn falling from favors, the Howard-Tudor alliance failed, and the Howard family was no longer in favor of owning the throne. Surrey capitalized on this grief, as he writes himself into the family tree, and feeling the loss of the throne for himself.

Within the text of "The Soote Season," Surrey again laments the passing of his friend, as yet another season passes. The juxtaposition of the new beginnings of spring and the loss that the narrator feels jolts the reader into a false sense of security. Spring being eternally hopeful, Surrey acknowledges the inevitably of their decay: "And thus I see among these pleasant things,/Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs." (lines 13-14). The use of alliteration within the poem allows the reader to gain a sense of repetition of loss, such as hearing the name of a loved one and the pain that name brings up. Surrey allows his words to bubble forward in similar sounds, so that the reader gets a sense of reliving the memory. He also uses words that were becoming unfashionable, giving the poem a thread of discarding and removal, as the love had been removed from Surrey's life. He uses the every day to exemplify how life continues on, regardless of death. By listing all of the things that renew in the spring, Surrey notes how death cannot stop time or life. All of these poetical applications forceful imply the finality of death and how nothing stops for it. Spring will still arrive once Surrey is gone. Though his heart is broken, the cycle of life continues, life is restored upon the earth, without the return of the lover.

WORKS CITED

Lines, Candice. "The Erotic Politics of Grief in Surrey's 'so crewel prison'." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Winter 2006. http://tudorgentleman.0catch.com/hh1.html (March 2008)

Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of. The Political Works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1854. 17-20