Robert Parry (1540–1612) was a Welsh poet, romancier and translator who published the romance ''Moderatus'' and a collection of verse entitled ''Sinetes Passions'', which may have influenced Shakespeare's sonnets.
Life
Parry was a member of the local gentry of
Denbighshire
Denbighshire ( ; cy, Sir Ddinbych; ) is a county in the north-east of Wales. Its borders differ from the historic county of the same name. This part of Wales contains the country's oldest known evidence of habitation – Pontnewydd (Bontnewy ...
, Wales. He was the son of Harry ap Robert. He married Dorothy the daughter of John Wynn Panton. His patron was
Sir John Salusbury, the local leader of a group of poets dedicated to mystical and acrostic verse. Parry's nephew later married Sir John's daughter Oriana.
His diary has survived, providing useful information about Elizabethan culture and politics in Wales. It also indicates that he travelled widely. He was regularly in London and in 1600 he went to Italy where he stayed for six months.
Work
In 1595 he published a romance novel entitled ''Moderatus, the most delectable and famous Historie of the Black Knight'', the story of a knight who learns life-lessons through struggle and error, supported by the loyalty of his friend Priscius. It was dedicated to "Henry Townshend … one of her Maiesties Justices of Assise of the countie Pallatine of Chester".
Parry is believed to be the "R.P." who helped
Margaret Tyler
Margaret Tyler (c. 1540 - c. 1590) was the first Englishwoman to translate a Spanish romance and the first woman to publish a romance in England. She also published a defense of the seriousness and importance of women’s writing. She proposed th ...
to translate the Spanish book ''Espejo de Principe y Cavalleros'' under the title ''Mirrour of Princely Deeds and Knighthood'', or rather replaced her as translator for the second volume.
The full title of Parry's poetry book is "Sinetes passions vppon his fortunes offered for an incense at the shrine of the ladies which guided his distempered thoughtes. The patrons patheticall posies, sonets, maddrigals, and rowndelayes. Together with Sinetes dompe" The "patron's pathetical posies" have been said to be verses by Salusbury himself, but
G. Blakemore Evans argues that they are by Parry, characterised by his typical heavy use of alliteration and word repetition. The main body of the book comprises forty six "passions", a series of four-verse complaints about love. The meaning of the name "Sinetes" is obscure.
Katherine Duncan-Jones
Katherine Dorothea Duncan-Jones, (13 May 1941 – 16 October 2022) was an English literature and Shakespeare scholar. She was a Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge (1965–1966) and then Somerville College, Oxford (1966–2001). She was also Professo ...
and Henry Woudhuyson argue that Shakespeare may have known Parry's work, because there are verbal parallels between his poems and Shakespeare's sonnets.
[Duncan-Jones, Katherine and Woudhuyson, Henry, ''Shakespeare's Poems'', Arden Shakespeare, Cengage Learning EMEA, 2007, p.105.]
Notes
External links
Online text of ''Sinetes Passions''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parry, Robert
1540 births
1612 deaths
16th-century Welsh poets
17th-century Welsh poets