William Smith (poet)
William Smith was a poet from the Elizabethan era, primarily recognized for his collection of sonnets titled *Chloris: Or, The Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepheard*, published in 1596. His work is notable for its stylistic connections to Edmund Spenser, indicating the influence of Spenserian themes and forms in his poetry. While Smith's life remains largely undocumented, it is established that he was not the playwright William Smith, who lived during the same period. The original copies of *Chloris* are scarce, but the collection was revived in 1877 through a reprint by Alexander Grosart, ensuring its survival in literary history. In addition to *Chloris*, Smith may have authored poems dedicated to Mary Sidney Herbert, although details about these works are limited. He has also been tentatively linked to another poetic figure, William Smythe, known for an allegory and other writings, but the evidence remains inconclusive. The initials "W. S." associated with Smith have led to considerable academic interest, often complicating the identification of poets from this time. Overall, William Smith's contributions to Elizabethan poetry, while not extensively documented, reflect the rich literary culture of the period.
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William Smith (poet)
Poet
- Born: fl. 1596
Biography
Many examples of Elizabethan poetry in printed anthologies and surviving manuscripts are unsigned, or signed only with initials. The initials W. S. have come under uniquely intense academic scrutiny because they were William Shakespeare’s; anything thus signed has been inspected very thoroughly. One byproduct of this activity has been the identification of several owners of what must have been one of the most common English names of the era: William Smith. The one who concerns us here signed a collection of sonnets, Chloris: Or, The Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepheard, published in 1596; everything else attributed to him is conjectural. Nothing is known of his life except that he was not the herald and playwright of the same name who was born around 1550 and died in 1618.
Chloris collects more than fifty sonnets, some of which are addressed to Edmund Spenser and many of which show his influence. Very few copies of the original book survived, but it was reprinted by Alexander Grosart in 1877, thus saving it from oblivion. There is some evidence that the author of Chloris may have written two poems dedicated to Mary Sidney Herbert, “A New Year’s Guifte” and “A Poesie Made upon Certen Flowers.” It is also possible that he might be the “William Smythe” who wrote a 396-line allegory, “What time all creatures did by joint consent,” although a stronger case can be made for that Smythe’s identification with an equally shadowy figure who wrote topographical poems and spent twenty years in Nuremburg, Germany. Other tentative attributions have been made in the past, but there is no evidence for any of them, apart from the perennially tantalizing signature W. S.