Poet Laureate

laureate originates from Latin laureatus meaning "crowned with laurel" (Kahan, Jeffrey). The title was adopted from the Greek and Roman custom of crowning successful men with a wreath of laurel. Nowadays, the British poet laureate is a member of the Royal household, expected to write poems for official occasions, for example for Royal weddings, birthdays or funerals. The British Poet Laureate was originally awarded the position for life, however, from 1999 the post is limited to 10 years.

The British poet laureate developed from two strands of tradition. In the Renaissance it became customary to award the laurel to writers who not only wrote poems, but who were also well-versed in ancient (i.e. classical) traditions and authors. In other words: they embodied the ideal of a poeta doctus, a learned poet. The Poet Laureate in this sense, had to pass an examination and then was awarded the laurel and the title as an honorary university degree. This custom was not restricted to England (far from it). It originated in Italy (with Petrarch as famous poet laureate) and spread all over (Renaissance) Europe. A completely different strand of tradition pertinent for the British laureate was the post of "court poet" (or versificator regis). Medieval and Renaissance monarchs sometimes paid someone to write poetry. This could be a post held for life or only an occasional stipend plus "a degree of political protection" (Kahan, Jeffrey). In the Renaissance, there was a gradual institutionalisation of the office, and a host of writers are associated with it: e.g., John Skelton, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson or William Davenant. There is no documentary evidence that they actually held the post, though.

The office of poet laureate proper (i.e. regular employment, orderly succession of laureates, legal basis and Royal patents) started in 1668 with John Dryden. Dryden lost the office after the Glorious Revolution. He had converted to Catholicism when James II came to the throne and this did not go down well with the new monarchs William and Mary and the Whigs. Therefore the office went to his Whig rival Thomas Shadwell. From then on until 2009, all poets laureate held the post for life.

Duties

The patent for John Dryden remained vague about his duties. It merely stipulated him to “diligently attend [his] employment” (quoted in Broadus 61). Dating from Nicholas Rowe’s appointment in 1715, the laureates were obliged to write at least one birthday ode and one New Year’s ode for the monarch. During the 18th century this became a very mechanical exercise for the poets (in the bigger picture, the quality of the odes did not really matter, because they were performed to music). Hence satirists like Alexander Pope attacked the poets laureate as nonentities, idiots and sycophants. Nahum Tate wrote "prose run mad" (quoted in Hopkins 52), according to Pope. And The Dunciad of 1743 attacks “King Colley” (I, 321) as the most nonsensical dunce of them all. A bit later, Lord Byron also attacked both the office and the office holder. In "A Vision of Judgment" (1820), Robert Southey had lambasted the "Satanic school" (with Byron implicitly as chief member) as "men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations" and praised George III as saint, Byron struck back in "The Vision of Judgment": George is "an old man/With an old soul, and both extremely blind" and Southey a boring, incompetent busybody. After regular laureate bashing and after some renowned authors were offered the post and declined it (most famous is Thomas Gray's refusal to become the "rat catcher" of the king), regular duties were abolished when William Wordsworth became Poet Laureate in 1843. Since then, the Laureate does not have any official obligations connected with his office. Most of the laureates do write about official events, usually connected with the Royal family.

Payment

It was customary to pay the Laureate a small fee, plus some material rewards. The patents specifically name “a butt of sack”, a barrel of sherry (=150 bottles or 572,796 litres). In the 18th century, this was seen as an anachronism and since 1790, at the behest of Henry James Pye, the sherry was turned into money. John Betjeman asked for the reintroduction of the “butt of sack” in 1972. Since then every laureate gets a delivery of sherry on top of the annual fee.

List of Official Laureates

• John Dryden (1668-89)
• Thomas Shadwell (1689-92)
• Nahum Tate (1692-1715)
• Nicholas Rowe (1715-18)
• Laurence Eusden (1718-30)
• Colley Cibber (1730-57)
• William Whitehead (1757-85)
• Thomas Warton (1785-90)
• Henry James Pye (1790-1813)
• Robert Southey (1813-43)
• William Wordsworth (1843-50)
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1850-92)
• Alfred Austin (1896-1913)
• Robert Bridges (1913-1930)
• John Masefield (1930-67)
• Cecil Day-Lewis (1968-72)
• Sir John Betjeman (1972-84)
• Ted Hughes (1984-98)
• Andrew Motion (1999-2009)

Today's English poet laureate is Andrew Motion. This position is now given by the prime minister and a poet stays in office for ten years until the next one is nominated. The new laureate elect is the first woman ever: Carol Ann Duffy.

Sources

Broadus, Edmund Kemper. The Laureateship. A Study of the Office of Poet Laureate in England. With some Account of the Poets, 1921, repr. New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1969.

Hopkins, Kenneth, The Poets Laureate, New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

Kahan, Jeffrey. "Poet Laureate." The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Ed. David Scott Kastan. Vol. IV. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2007.

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/about_laureate.html.