POETS BY APPOINTMENT
What could be dafter Than John Skelton’s laughter? / T was Robert Graves who asked the question. Skelton, a rowdy, harum-scarum English poet with a noisy, scampering way of writing, was born about 1460+-an extraordinary fellow, and at this distance of time, rather likeable. That, anyway, is how Professor J, Y. T. Greig describes him in the first of his illustrated talks on The Poets Laureate-an NZBS Coronation programme — which will start this month. It will be heard: eventually from all ;National stations. Professor Greig, who is Professor of English at Otago University, talks chiefly, but not only, about. the official poets laureate. As he says, he could have gone back as far as Chaucer, who had some sort of post at the royal court, and he could have included Shakespeare, who now and then had to put on the royal livery. About half-way between these two came Skelton, and with him Professor Greig chooses to start his story. Listeners will find, whether or not poetry is their cup of tea, that it is a very good story, too. On. the first programme with Skelton is Ben Jonson. Like Skelton he was "a vain, prickly, quarrelsome fellow,’ but even the poems he wrote to order-unlike the work of ‘some who were to follow him-had the _ting of a powerful mind and a practised hand.
~When Jonson died poets began "scrambling: and lobbying" for the succession to the laureateship, as by that time the post was commonly, though still not officially, known, It went to William D’Avenant, generally believed to be Shakespeare’s godson and perhaps an even closer relation. If D’Avenant was.never really of much account as a poet, his successor, John Dryden, was "not merely a great poet but also a great man, and no poet laureate after
him has been master of so many branches of the writer’s craft." With Wordsworth and perhaps Tennyson, Dryden © was indeed, says . Professor Greig, one of the few major poets to become laureate. One or two others were "minor poets worth remembering"; the / rest "little more than
figures of fun.’ Quite @ batch of these came after Dryden, and they are discussed together in one programme. Two of Professor Greig’s major poets are included in the second half of The Poets Laureate. Wordsworth is bracketed with Southey, whom he succeeded; and Tennyson gets a programme to himself. When Southey was appointed it was known that the salary would be welcome to him. In a letter to Scott, who had declined the honour, Southey described the delays and indignities he had to suffer before he could be sworn in. The salary for the office, he mentioned, had beén raised for Jonson to £100 and a tierce of Spanish Canary wine, "now wickedly commuted for £26, which said sum, unlike the Canary, is subject to income-tax, land-tax, and Heaven knows, what taxes beside." The whole net income was now only about £90. Nevertheless, "It comes to me as a God-send," Southey said, "and I have vested it in a life-policy." \ Bringing the story down to the present is a talk on Austin, Bridges and Masefield. Likeeall the others, it contains a generous measure of readings, including a long extract from Reynard the Fox. The Poets Laureate Will start from 1YA at 3.20 p.m. on Sunday, May 10, from 3YC at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday May 6, and from the other YC stations about a fortnight later. — ee ____t
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 720, 1 May 1953, Page 9
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574POETS BY APPOINTMENT New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 720, 1 May 1953, Page 9
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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