The appearance of Miklós Zrínyi and István Gyöngyösi in a 17th century songbook

Abstract

At the centre of my study are two texts from the Petrovay songbook. It is a manuscript that, although long known to literary history, still plays a somewhat neglected role in the technical literature. The collection was compiled between 1668 and 1677 by Miklós Petrovay, a nobleman from Maramureș; we can encounter mainly lays in it, but we can also read many prose writings and contemporary poems too.
In this paper, I deal with two works in the latter category, more specifically with the appearance of Miklós Zrínyi and István Gyöngyösi, mostly with the intention of proving that Gyöngyösi was not the genuine writer of Electra’s monologue in scene 5 of Florentina’s 3rd act. In my opinion he merely used up an already existing spinster mockery, that (or whose common ancestor) can be read in the Petrovay songbook. The literature practically treats it as a fact that the song comes from Gyöngyösi’s Florentina, and there is really no doubt about the connection between the two versions, but there is the problem of the chicken and the egg. The two versions were so close in time that I consider it extremely unlikely that Gyöngyösi’s own poem would have found its way to Miklós Petrovay in such a short time. Especially in light of the fact that one of the stanza of the poem, though in a slightly different form, is to be found in a third source, a spinster mockery in the Szentsei songbook.