The Minor Elizabethans: Obscurity Deserved?

By Alan S. Weber

Weill Cornell Medical College - Qatar

The Elizabethan Age, named after the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, was truly a golden age in English history. Literature and art flourished; it was a time of relative internal peace, and the country fought off a nearly successful Spanish naval invasion in 1588. During the Elizabethan Era, England began its massive colonial expansion that culminated in the world’s largest empire, stretching to over 33 million square kilometers by 1922. Within only a few decades after Elizabeth’s death in 1603, England was torn apart by a devastating civil war (1642-51) that would leave psychological scars well into the 18th century. Later generations would look back fondly on this extraordinary period of English history presided over by Elizabeth.

The Elizabethan era also produced one of England’s most renowned poets and dramatists, William Shakespeare. But along with Shakespeare, the country also boasted of a number of lesser lights, some–like Ben Jonson–whose reputation equaled that of Shakespeare during the Elizabethan period, and others who have passed silently into obscurity. Today I will look at three artists – two poets, and one composer, who, while not entirely obscure, are studied and admired much less than the towering and better known figures of Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, and Marlowe. What has led to these minor artists falling out of critical favor and popularity? Why has Shakespeare alone become synonymous with Elizabethan literature?

Adventurer, poet, and scholar Sir Walter Raleigh, poet Michael Drayton, and lutenist and lyricist John Dowland all shared a serious commitment to artistic production. Although well known in their day, currently they are not the subject of much scholarly inquiry, even by Renaissance specialists. The reasons why I have chosen these particular “minor” Elizabethans will become clearer as the discussion progresses.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh has several claims to fame. The source of Sir Walter’s wealth and his rise to social prominence originated in confiscated lands in Ireland where he spent his early years suppressing the Irish rebellions (Hennessy, 2007). He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1585 but fell in and out of favor at court due to his strident behavior and knack for making enemies. Elizabeth banished him to the Tower of London for marrying Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of her ladies-in-waiting, without her consent. The marriage was happy, although Sir Walter had the reputation of being a ladies’ man.

Raleigh undertook several journeys to the Americas in search of the famed City of Gold, or El Dorado, which he claimed to have discovered in Guyana on the Orinoco River. He also founded a failed colony on Roanoke Island in Virginia. In 1587, Raleigh’s company tried again to colonize Roanoke with another group of settlers. But supply ships to the colony were delayed for years, and when they finally arrived in 1591, not a trace of the “lost colony of Roanoke” was ever found. The only clue to the colony’s fate was the word Croatoan carved into a tree. This led to speculation that the colony’s inhabitants had been massacred or kidnapped by the native Croatoan Indians. Sir Walter is also credited with bringing tobacco back to England and establishing smoking as a fashionable pastime.

Just as he lived in controversy, he died in it also. Raleigh spent 12 years imprisoned in the Tower of London for plotting against James I. He was released by James to renew the search for El Dorado, but on his return voyage, Raleigh imprudently ransacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Thomé. To appease the outraged Spanish, James I executed Sir Walter on his return to England (Lloyd, 1899, pp. 61-112).

While in the Tower of London, Sir Walter wrote regularly, producing an ambitious History of the World, and a number of poems. Let’s look at one of his productions, a sonnet. This poem, “My Boddy in the Walls Captived,” belongs to the period of his second imprisonment in the Tower.

My boddy in the walls captived
feels not the wounds of spighfull envy.
butt my thralde minde, of liberty deprived,
fast fettered in her auntient memory,
douth nought beholde butt sorrowes diing face,
such prison earst was so delightfull
as it desirde no other dwellinge place,
Butt tymes effects, and destines despightfull
haue changed both my keeper and my fare,
loves fire, and bewtis light I then had store,
butt now closs keipt, as captives wounted are
y(t) food, that heat, that light I find no more,
Dyspaire bolts vp my dores, and I alone
speake to dead walls, butt thos heare not my mone.
(Latham, 1951).

This is not bad poetry – Raleigh certainly possesses an ear for the native rhythms of the English language in his verse. Techniques such as the alliteration in “Fast-fetter’d,” a common feature of native Anglo-Saxon poetry, are fused with the continental traditions of the sonnet form. What is missing in Raleigh’s sonnet is that he has passed over too many opportunities to universalize his experience and to teach the listener something new. One could uncover literally hundreds of similar sonnets during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. In short, the themes and theme development are commonplace in Raleigh’s poem, and speak most eloquently to his own particular case of outrage and mistreatment.

A brief comparison with a poem on a similar theme by John Donne will illustrate some of the failings of Raleigh’s poetic art:

Oh my black Soule! Now thou art summoned
By sicknesse, deaths herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled,
Or like a thiefe, which till deaths doome be read,
Wisheth himselfe deliverd from prison;
But damn'd and hal'd to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisioned;
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;
But who shall give thee that grace to beginne?
Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke;
And red with blushing, as thou art with sinne;
Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might
That being red, it dyes red soules to white.
(Donne, 1991).

Here Donne delves into similar themes explored by Raleigh, including suffering, psychological and physical imprisonment and deprivation, and abandonment, but Donne interlaces religious themes, the medieval contemptus mundi philosophy and the philosophical intricacies of grace and redemption. The line “Thou are like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done Treason,” is a shocking and startling image (in light of several Catholic plots against Queen Elizabeth), typical of the metaphysical style cultivated by Donne. Here is a new and memorable kind of poetry.

“My Boddy in the Walls Captived” does not represent Raleigh’s best poetry and while he could write stretches of outstanding verse, but he certainly was an inconsistent poet. Thus my final assessment remains that although Sir Walter Raleigh did produce some noteworthy poetry, and should also be remembered as a great prose stylist, he must be classed as a minor Elizabethan artist. His reputation will rest on the key historical role he played in English politics and American colonial history and his fame as an early historiographer for his History of the World.

Michael Drayton

Only two comparative studies on Michael Drayton have been written in the last ten years (Galbraith, 2000; Swärdh, 2003), and he is little read except by specialists. The title of Jean Brink’s 1990 book entitled Michael Drayton Revisited is explicitly apologetic. Drayton probably knew William Shakespeare personally since Drayton was born in Hartshill in the same county as Shakespeare, Warwickshire. There are remarkable points of contact between the two authors and their lives and work were strangely parallel:

1) both were born in Warwickshire within one year of each other
2) both came from Yeoman stock, Drayton the son of a tanner, Shakespeare the son of a glove-maker
3) both attended their local grammar school, but not University
4) both men moved to London to write poetry and plays
5) both rose to the rank of gentlemen and received coats of arms.

John Ward, who became the vicar of Shakespeare’s home town Stratford-on-Avon in 1662, reported that "Shakespear, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted" (Bate, 2010). This story, however, may be apocryphal.

Drayton was prolific and produced poetry from 1591 to 1630, thus he spanned both the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. He was known as “Our English Ovid” for his collection of poetry called England’s Heroical Epistles in imitation of Ovid. So why is Drayton today not regarded as a major poet, or even England’s national poet? Why did this crown pass to Shakespeare, whose primary work was in the realm of drama?

Drayton’s greatest work, which received mixed reviews in his day, was the massive 15,000 line poem Poly-Olbion (1612-22). The title draws on the ancient name for Briton, Albion, or the White Isle, describing the white cliffs of Dover. He drew on standard histories of the day, such as Froissart, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and William Camden’s Britannia, but the author also collected local historical information through his own research. The poetry of Poly-Olbion is well crafted and surprisingly even in quality, which is a difficult feat to maintain given its voluminous size. But more striking is the encyclopedic scope of Poly-Olbion, which not only provides historical background on each of England’s counties but also discusses the character, psychology, and philosophy of England’s various inhabitants. In this sense Drayton’s work provides a valuable sociological and historical sourcebook of the period. Drayton begins in Book I of Poly-Olbion:

Of Albions glorious Ile the Wonders whilst I write,
The sundry varying soyles, the pleasures infinite
(Where heate kills not the cold, nor cold expells the heat,
The calmes too mildly small, nor winds too roughly great,
Nor night doth hinder day, nor day the night doth wrong,
The Summer not too short, the Winter not too long)
What helpe shall I invoke to ayde my Muse the while?
Thou Genius of the place (this most renowned Ile)
Which livedst long before the All-earth-drowning Flood,
Whilst yet the world did swarme with her Gigantick brood;
Goe thou before me still thy circling shores about,
And in this wandring Maze helpe to conduct me out.
(Drayton, “The First Song,” 1961).

Drayton invokes the genius of England to take him on a poetic voyage of discovery throughout the country. The tone is the epic voice, best illustrated in Western literature by Homer, and reaching perfection in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which later eclipsed Poly-Olbion as England’s most recognized poetic epic.
Drayton was bitter about the neglect of his work during his lifetime both by the public and the courts of Elizabeth and James. This failure to attract royal favor could explain why his work is today not better known. Perhaps Drayton had also incurred the displeasure of his influential contemporary Ben Jonson, who did enjoy abundant royal patronage and who was not known for praising his fellow poets. Jonson was disappointed by the Poly-Olbion; he wrote: “Michael Drayton’s Polyalbion if he had performed what he promised to write the deeds of all the Worthies [would have] been excellent; his Long Verses pleased him not” (as cited in Newdigate, 1941, p. 137). So the curious overshadowing of this poet must remain a mystery – one could attribute his decline in popularity simply to the quality of his work, or to his marginalization by the influential London literati as well as by monied patrons. So my final assessment is that Drayton is a poet who should be reassessed. The close parallels of his life and career to Shakespeare has led to an unfair comparison of the two artists.

John Dowland

Dowland was also a very close contemporary of Shakespeare – he was born one year before Shakespeare in 1563. There is no evidence that they ever knew each other, and Dowland never served as a musician at Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant court, possibly because of his Roman Catholic religion. He spent most of his professional career at the court of King Christian IV of Denmark. He was known throughout Europe as one of the greatest lute players of his age. Richard Barnfield wrote in 1598 in the famous lines: “Dowland … whose heavenly tuch / Upon the Lute doeth ravish humaine sense” (Barnfield, “Sonnet 1,” 1876, p. 189).

His melodies are haunting and inspired imitators throughout Europe. Dowland created a close match between the cadence and timbre of the music and his lyrics, as witnessed by his masterpiece “Come, Heavy Sleep,” which describe a man longing for sleep and his ambivalence towards his final and permanent sleep (Dowland, 1597).

When comparing the compositions of Dowland to another famous composer and music theorist of the period, Thomas Morley, Dowland’s artistic merit becomes apparent. Morley’s “It Was a Lover and His Lass” appears in Shakespeare’s play As You like It and is one of the few songs in Shakespeare, whose plays must have been very musical, for which the notated music has survived.

While very pleasant and entertaining, Morley’s light-hearted song, which describes the joys of care-free love, is obviously inserted as a filler to the drama, a musical interlude to provide variety to the action. The lyrics are only very loosely related to the plot, and instead create an atmosphere of spring, love, and festivity, some of the major themes of As You Like It. The verses are interchangeable, and do not create a narrative sequence, as Dowland’s songs often do, unfolding a tale of the introspective inner movement of the soul.

But what other criteria can we invoke to judge Dowland’s art besides my own personal preference for Dowland’s melancholy over Shakespeare’s and Morely’s boundless optimism? We can also invoke the canon of universality and influence. Dowland obviously touched a chord in the English consciousness – centuries after his death, other composers have identified something quintessentially English in his compositions. The well known British classical composer Benjamin Britten, for example, in 1963 took the melodic line from Dowland’s signature piece “Come Heavy Sleep,” and built upon it a new work of theme and variation called “Nocturnal after John Dowland for Guitar.” It was written for Julian Bream, a guitarist and lutenist who was the student of the great Andrés Segovia, and after Segovia one of the greatest 20th century classical guitarists.

Dowland has also resonated with modern British pop artists. Elvis Costello included a recording of Dowland's lute song "Can she excuse my wrongs" as a bonus track on the 2006 re-release of his album The Juliet Letters. And rock artist Sting, of the Police, has also recorded some of Dowland’s songs for voice and lute. In conclusion, my final assessment of John Dowland is that although he played a small part in the development of English court music, his influence on European music was immense as well as on later English composers and musicians. He is a major Elizabethan artist.

Clearly, the question of why some artists are remembered and studied long after their deaths involves complicated questions of history, literary politics and the vagaries of fame. One obvious explanation for the relative obscurity of some very fine Elizabethan artists was the enshrinement of Shakespeare as England’s national writer, which began in the 18th century and intensified in the 19th. One aspect of bardolatry was clearly nationalistic – the ‘natural, untutored genius’ of Shakespeare could be contrasted with the rival French drama which had adopted strict classical rules (‘the unities’) based on Aristotle’s Poetics. Also, Shakespeare always flattered his English audiences for their bravery, patriotism, and native wit.

References

Barnfield, R. (1876). Complete Poems. A. Grosart, (Ed.). London: J.B. Nichols and Sons.

Bate, J. (2010). Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare. New York: Random House.

Brink, J. R. (1990). Drayton Revisited. Boston: Twayne.

Donne, J. (1985). The Complete English Poems. C.A. Patrides, (Ed.). London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Dowland, J. (1597). The First Book of Songs, for 4 parts and lute (1597). London.

Drayton, M. (1961). The Works of Michael Drayton. J. William Hebel, (Ed.). 5 vols. London: Shakespeare Head Press.

Galbraith, D.I. (2000). Architectonics of Imitation in Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Hennessey, Sir J. P. (1883; rpt. 2007). Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland. Fayetteville, AK: Juniper Grove.

Latham, A. M. C. (1951). The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Newdigate, B. S. (1941). Drayton and His Circle. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press.

Lloyd, C.E. (1899). State Trials of Mary, Queen of Scots, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Captain William Kidd. Chicago: Callaghan and Co.

Swärdh, Anna. (2003). Rape and Religion in English Renaissance Literature: A Topical Study of Four Texts by Shakespeare, Drayton, and Middleton. Uppsala: Uppsala University.