Why Transprose The Rehearsal?

Abstract

The title-page of Marvell’s reply to Samuel Parker is odd. Animadversions upon a Late Book, Intituled. A Preface Shewing What Grounds There Are of Fears and Jealousies of Popery1 is an unproblematic formulation, generically and thematically precise in the style of seventeenth-century works of controversial divinity. Its implied reader is interested in ecclesiastical politics, in the status and nature of the Church of England, in Nonconformity and its limits, in toleration and comprehension. This, however, is only the subtitle, and it sits very awkwardly with Marvell’s main title, The Rehearsal Transpros’d. That conjures quite another literary and cultural occasion, genre and purpose. The last thing on its implied reader’s mind is ecclesiastical politics. Why thus perplex potential readers?

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