Mabbe's Maybes: A Stuart Hispanist in Context

Abstract

James Mabbe (c.1571–c.1642) remains a somewhat enigmatic figure. While the paucity of detail about his personal life once led to speculation that he might have been working secretly for the English government, more recent evidence has emerged that he spent time in prison as a Catholic spy. Valuable insights can be gained from a study of his choice and treatment of texts for translation in the context of his diverse network of friends, patrons, and dedicatees, and from considering his corpus as a whole (including his less well known translations), which seems to suggest a sociopolitical agenda. Ultimately, though, he continues to fascinate precisely because of the ambiguities that surround him; Mabbe's work has a mysterious quality, a différance that defies stable reconstruction.