Nec doctum satis: humanist translation and English recreational song

Abstract Studies of the literary dimensions of English Renaissance madrigals frequently cordon off these works from non-musical forms, such as the prosodic experiments being carried out by humanist poets or the humanist practices of literary translation and imitation. Conversely, studies of humanist translation in England almost never consider recreational song, instead focusing exclusively on more ‘serious’ genres. However, several collections of recreational song published in the period present these songs as legitimate humanist works. In some cases, these collections offer the first English translations of classical and Renaissance poems. Nicholas Yonge’s Musica transalpina (1588) and Thomas Watson’s Italian madrigalls Englished (1590), for example, call attention to their translations of eminent Italian poets (Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso) and address themselves to classically learned readers. The humanist character of such anthologies was well enough known to be satirized by Thomas Weelkes in his Ayeres and phantasticke spirites (1608), whose classical references have seldom been seriously considered. At the heart of these exchanges is an implicit debate over whether recreational song texts are an appropriate vehicle for humanist learning.