Рет қаралды 1,618
The Latin refrain is hard to translate satisfactorily. Traditionally the translation when discussing this poem has been "about the throne the thunder rolls". The phrase however is taken from from Seneca's Phaedra. In the play's context it refers to Jupiter and means "he goes a-thundering around the kingdoms." Regna indeed means "kingdoms". The sense "throne" here is an interpretative gloss. Likewise, it is not strictly necessary to read tonat in this poem as an impersonal verb. One might still take the words as "he thunders around the realms" with the referent of he being King Henry, Jovian in temper as much as in family values. In any case, if I had my druthers I would take the phrase to mean "thunder strikes about the court".
In reading this poem I relied on the writings of orthoepists from the beginning and middle of the 16th century (and secondary scholarship on same, of course). The principle sources considered are John Hart, Sir Thomas Smith and Sir John Cheke.
If you're wondering, for example, why "blind" is being pronounced as if to rhyme with "sinned" it's because words of this type (Old English /ĭ/ before Middle English lengthening groups) varied in their realization in the 16th century. In the later language, the diphthongal version of "blind" and most other such words won out (though the noun "wind" did otherwise, despite the diphthong being apparently the more normal pronunciation before the 1700s).
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