The 'Rosania Manuscript' of Katherine Philips's Works

Language: English

Context and purpose

This 406-page quarto is the sole presentation copy of Philips's works known to survive. It was compiled after her death, between 1664 and 1667, by a scribe who signs himself 'Polexander' in his dedicatory epistle to her lifelong friend, Mary (n ee Aubrey) Montagu, the 'Rosania' of Philips's poems. The manuscript's title, the Rosania Manuscript, derives from this dedication. Polexander has not been identified, although Limbert has suggested that he may be Sir William Temple (see Claudia A. Limbert, " Katherine Philips: Another Step-Father and Another Sibling, "Mrs C: P" and "Polex:r" ", Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, 13, 2-6, 1989).

This is the most comprehensive compilation of Philips's works among the surviving manuscripts. It opens with the dedication, followed by Philips's translation of Corneille's La Mort de Pompee, , first performed in Dublin by John Ogilby's company at the Smock Alley Theatre in February 1662/3. Five verse translations follow, and these in turn are followed by her unfinished translation of Corneille's Horace, , completed after her death by Sir John Denham, and first performed at Whitehall on 4 February 1667/8. The remainder of the volume is comprised of 91 original poems, ten of which are known to occur only here prior to the publication of the posthumous POEMS By the most deservedly Admired Mrs Katherine Philips The Matchless ORINDA, London, Henry Herringman, 1667.

The dedicatee of the manuscript, Mary Montagu, had nursed Philips in London during her fatal illness. It serves as a monument to her dead friend, not only via the dedicatory epistle, which urges a posthumous edition of Philips's works, but also materially. The manuscript has a heavily decorated, black 'sombre' binding typical of books connected with mourning or piety in the second half of the seventeenth century.

The manuscript is carefully ruled throughout: single lines parallel to the spine and edge, and to the top and bottom of the pages. All the texts are transcribed by Polexander, with the exception of 'Rosania's private Marriage' (item 85). Polexander's omission of this poem might be attributed to a sensitivity towards the fact that Montagu married without her friend's knowledge. Unlike Philips and Dering, Polexander does not signal the end of the poems with a flourish. However, like Philips, in some instances he inserts apostrophes before the 's' at the end of plural words and present-tense verbs. Accordingly, in addition to the modernisation of spelling adopted as policy by the Perdita Project, this description has modernised use of the apostrophe in order to facilitate searching.

This manuscript bears little relation to the other key identified copy-texts of Philips's work. Philips's own autograph manuscript, compiled in the 1650s (NLW MS 775B), is closely related to the Dering Manuscript (Austin, Texas: Harry Ransom HRC, Pre-1700 MS 151), the Clarke Manuscript (Worcester College, Oxford, MS 6.13), and the unauthorised 1664 print edition. The Rosania Manuscript, on the other hand, is copied from a variety of different sources, and exhibits many variant texts. Greer has observed that 20 of the 91 original poems have had couplets excised, an editorial process which she argues is deliberate on the scribe's part (see Germaine Greer, Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet, London, Penguin, 1996 , pp. 166-7).

In her Pompey, , Philips departed from Corneille's original play by writing five songs, to be performed after each of the five acts. The composers of the music for each of the songs are noted below. These original settings have not yet been located. However, John Banister composed new music for a later production, which survives in Christ Church, Oxford, Mus. MS 350: see Curtis Price, "The Songs for Katherine Philips' Pompey (1663)", Theatre Notebook, 33, 61-66, 1979.