Minor Poems of Michael Drayton

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Title: Minor Poems of Michael Drayton
Author: Michael Drayton
Editor: Cyril Brett
Release Date: February 27, 2006 [EBook #17873]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MINOR POEMS OF MICHAEL DRAYTON ***
Produced by David Starner, Taavi Kalju and the Online?Distributed Proofreading Team at (This?file was produced from images generously made available?by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
MINOR POEMS?OF?MICHAEL DRAYTON
CHOSEN AND EDITED BY?CYRIL BRETT
OXFORD?AT THE CLARENDON PRESS?1907
Henry Frowde, M.A.?Publisher to the University of Oxford?London, Edinburgh, New York?and Toronto
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE iv
INTRODUCTION v
SONNETS (1594) 1
SONNETS (1599) 28
SONNETS (1602) 42
SONNETS (1605) 47
SONNETS (1619) 51
ODES (1619) 56
ODES (1606) 85
ELEGIES (1627) 88
NIMPHIDIA (1627) 124
THE QUEST OF CYNTHIA 144
THE SHEPARDS SIRENA 151
THE MUSES ELIZIUM (1630) 161
SONGS FROM THE SHEPHERD'S GARLAND (1593) 231
SONGS FROM THE SHEPHERD'S GARLAND (1605) 240
SONGS FROM THE SHEPHERD'S GARLAND (1606) 242
APPENDIX 248
NOTES 257
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF DRAYTON'S LIFE AND WORKS
1563 Drayton born at Hartshill, Warwickshire.
1572? Drayton a page in the house of Sir Henry Goodere, at
Polesworth.
c. 1574 Anne Goodere born?
Feb. 1591 Drayton in London. Harmony of Church.
1593 Idea, the Shepherd's Garland_. _Legend of Peirs Gaveston.
1594 Ideas Mirrour_. _Matilda. Lucy Harrington becomes Countess
of Bedford.
1595 Sir Henry Goodere the elder dies. Endimion and Phoebe,
dedicated to Lucy Bedford.
1595-6 Anne Goodere married to Sir Henry Rainsford.
1596 Mortimeriados_. _Legends of Robert, Matilda, and Gaveston.
1597 England's Heroical Epistles.
1598 Drayton already at work on the Polyolbion.
1599 Epistles_ and _Idea sonnets, new edition. (Date of Portrait
of Drayton in National Portrait Gallery.)
1600 Sir John Oldcastle.
1602 New edition of Epistles_ and _Idea.
1603 Drayton made an Esquire of the Bath, to Sir Walter Aston.
To the Maiestie of King James_. _Barons' Wars.
1604 The Owle_. _A Pean Triumphall_. Moyses in a Map of his
Miracles_.
1605 First collected edition of Poems. Another edition of
Idea_ and _Epistles.
1606 Poemes Lyrick and Pastorall_. _Odes_. _Eglogs.
The Man in the Moone.
1607 Legend of Great Cromwell.
1608 Reprint of Collected Poems.
1609 Another edition of Cromwell.
1610 Reprint of Collected Poems.
1613 Reprint of Collected Poems. First Part of Polyolbion.
1618 Two Elegies_ in FitzGeoffrey's _Satyrs and Epigrames.
1619 Collected Folio edition of Poems.
1620 Second edition of Elegies, and reprint of 1619 Poems.
1622 Polyolbion complete.
1627 Battle of Agincourt_, _Nymphidia, &c.
1630 Muses Elizium_. _Noah's Floud_. Moses his Birth and
Miracles_. David and Goliah.
1631 Second edition of 1627 folio. Drayton dies towards the end
of the year.
1636 Posthumous poem appeared in Annalia Dubrensia.
1637 Poems.
INTRODUCTION
Michael Drayton was born in 1563, at Hartshill, near Atherstone, in Warwickshire, where a cottage, said to have been his, is still shown. He early became a page to Sir Henry Goodere, at Polesworth Hall: his own words give the best picture of his early years here.[1] His education would seem to have been good, but ordinary; and it is very doubtful if he ever went to a university.[2] Besides the authors mentioned in the Epistle to Henry Reynolds, he was certainly familiar with Ovid and Horace, and possibly with Catullus: while there seems no reason to doubt that he read Greek, though it is quite true that his references to Greek authors do not prove any first-hand acquaintance. He understood French, and read Rabelais and the French sonneteers, and he seems to have been acquainted with Italian.[3] His knowledge of English literature was wide, and his judgement good: but his chief bent lay towards the history, legendary and otherwise, of his native country, and his vast stores of learning on this subject bore fruit in the Polyolbion.
While still at Polesworth, Drayton fell in love with his patron's younger daughter, Anne;[4] and, though she married, in 1596, Sir Henry Rainsford of Clifford, Drayton continued his devotion to her for many years, and also became an intimate friend of her husband's, writing a sincere elegy on his death.[5] About February, 1591, Drayton paid a visit to London, and published his first work, the _Harmony of the Church_, a series of paraphrases from the Old Testament, in fourteen-syllabled verse of no particular vigour or grace. This book was immediately suppressed by order of Archbishop Whitgift, possibly because it was supposed to savour of Puritanism.[6] The author, however, published another edition in 1610; indeed, he seems to have had a fondness for this style of work; for in 1604 he published a dull poem, Moyses in a Map of his Miracles_, re-issued in 1630 as Moses his Birth and Miracles_. Accompanying this piece, in 1630, were two other 'Divine poems': Noah's Floud_, and _David and Goliath_. _Noah's Floud is, in part, one of Drayton's happiest attempts at the catalogue style of bestiary; and Mr. Elton finds in it some foreshadowing of the manner of Paradise Lost. But, as