Today, we experience sonnets like this one in printed form. Often anthologized with other poems from different eras and traditions, it’s easy to forget that poems from different periods come from different literary contexts.
Early Renaissance sonnets like this one were originally written by hand, to be shared as hand-written manuscripts. They were passed around among members of the court, as part of an elaborate “manuscript culture.” In a way, they were more like secret notes passed between groups of friends than published poems. Mary Wroth’s group was the “Sidney Circle,” a group of poets named for Sir Philip Sidney. Philip Sidney is an influential Renaissance poet best known for his own sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. Wroth responds to and adapts this poem in the sonnet sequence from which “In that strange labyrinth where shall I turn” is taken.
Manuscript culture also shaped the style of Renaissance poetry. As you probably noticed, this sonnet is pretty dense, and it can be hard to know what everything references—the poem can feel a little like a puzzle. This is partly because the sonnet is intended for a very limited audience, who would have understood the poem’s coded references. That audience was also aristocratic, with lots of time to puzzle over tricky poems, and show off by writing their own extremely detailed and complicated verse. As print became more accessible, and more and more poems were written for publication, poetry became less complex and better suited to a broader audience.
