The Poetry of Drayton by Michael Drayton
"The Poetry of Drayton" explores the works and life of Michael Drayton, a prominent English poet of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Drayton is recognized as one of the first professional poets, having dedicated his life to poetry and drawing inspiration from his experiences and relationships, including a long-standing admiration for Sir Henry Goodere's daughter, Anne. His early works, such as "The Harmonie of the Church," show a blend of Biblical themes and emerging poetic talent, while his later collections like "Poems Lyric and Pastoral" include notable pieces such as "The Ballad of Agincourt" and "Ode to the Virginian Voyage," which reflects on the beauty of the New World.
Drayton's exploration of love and history is evident in his sonnet sequence "Idea's Mirror," where he captures passionate emotions, and in "England's Heroical Epistles," an imaginative exchange of love letters among historical figures. His ambitious work "Poly-Olbion" aims to map England's geography and folklore through poetry, although it met with mixed reception. Drayton's ability to interweave nature, legend, and personal reflection is highlighted in his smaller but significant pieces like "Nimphidia" and "The Muses' Elizium," where he creates a rich tapestry of English pastoral life and the complexities of the poet's journey. Overall, Drayton's poetry offers a window into the literary landscape of his time, blending classical influences with uniquely English themes.
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The Poetry of Drayton by Michael Drayton
First published:The Harmonie of the Church, 1591; Idea, The Shepherd’s Garland, 1593; Piers Gaveston, 1593; Idea’s Mirror, 1594; Matilda, 1594; Endimion and Phoebe, 1595; The Tragical Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy, 1596; Mortimeriados, 1596; England’s Heroical Epistles, 1597; Legend of the Great Cromwell, 1607; Poly-Olbion, 1612-1622; Nimphidia, 1627; Shepherd’s Sirena, 1627; The Muses’ Elizium, 1630
Type of work: Poetry
Critical Evaluation:
Held in high esteem by his contemporaries, Michael Drayton was one of the first professional poets whose entire life was devoted to his muse. He was thought to have been with Shakespeare during the last merry evening of the playwright’s life, or so legend has it. Drayton is almost as elusive a figure for the biographer. According to his own word, he turned to poetry at the age of ten, when he was a page in the service of Sir Henry Goodere—a connection he maintained by worshipful devotion to Goodere’s youngest daughter Anne throughout his bachelor lifetime.
His first published work, THE HARMONIE OF THE CHURCH, is seldom read now even by scholars, so much like the weaker works of his contemporaries is this collection of Biblical studies in verse. But some of the prayers, the songs of thanksgiving, and especially his rendition of the Song of Solomon give indications of his latent talent. His admiration for Spenser led to the writing of a pseudo-SHEPHEARDES CALENDER, pastoral eclogues called IDEA, THE SHEPHERD’S GARLAND. This work is not to be confused, however, with Drayton’s fine sonnet sequence of a later period. In 1605 or 1606 Drayton brought out a collection of old and new work, POEMS LYRIC AND PASTORAL, which contained “The Ballad of Agincourt,” a celebration of Henry V’s great victory, and “Ode to the Virginian Voyage,” a patriotic poem commemorating Raleigh’s conquests in the New World. This latter is among the first to present America as the new Garden of Eden (“Earth’s only paradise”):
Where nature hath in store
Among Drayton’s other odes are two often anthologized because they are among the most graceful, felicitous verses in the language. “To His Coy Love”—a canzonet, as Drayton calls it, but meant to be sung, like his other odes—calls back the poet’s heart from a half love, starved for pleasure “amidst an ocean of delight.” Rejecting many of the lady’s physical charms, he pleads:
Come nice thing, let thy heart alone,
About this same time Drayton published a number of historical verses titled MORTIMERIADOS (republished as THE BARON’S WARS in 1603), a criticism of civil strife in which he presented the disturbed career of Edward II. He produced a more interesting work of poetic history in ENGLAND’S HEROICAL EPISTLES, an imaginary exchange of the love letters supposedly written by twelve English lovers such as James and Mary Suffolk, Edward IV and Jane Shore, Henry II and the fair Rosamond. Along with ENDIMION AND PHOEBE, verses in imitation of Marlowe, and a miscellany of conventional verses such as his FIG FOR MOMUS, Drayton during this period seems to have given more time to dramatic productions and social life than to the diligence in writing which characterizes his later life.
After Queen Elizabeth died, Drayton failed to enjoy the favor of King James. The first benefit posterity gained from this lack of acceptance was an excellent satire, THE OWL (1604), that wise bird so hated by the crows and kites who made up the new court. With a return to his scriptural preoccupations, he published in that same year MOSES IN A MAP OF HIS MIRACLES. While not an original genius, Drayton displayed in this work a spirit of courtliness and an expert use of conventional themes: a lament over a loved one, a comparison of youth and age, a clearly patriotic celebration of the great Elizabeth, a lament for the dead Sidney, a praise of Idea (Anne), a song of deceased though venerated worthies of England.
The next year saw the publication of a sequence made up of fifty-one sonnets, four of which are still remembered and read. Here, in IDEA’S MIRROR, the platonic conception is lost in what is clearly passionate love. Drayton, often thought of as a lesser Daniel and as the great imitator, struck out on his own here, rivaling the early Shakespeare and the later Cavalier poets. The sonnet form, here three iambic pentameter quatrains and a final couplet, reaches a maturity of style, especially in the poems starting with the line “To nothing fitter can I thee compare,” continuing through “When first I ended, then I first began,” to a climax of despair in “You’re not alone when you are still alone,” and then to the gravely beautiful conclusion:
Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss
“To His Rival” is thought to be autobiographical in that it reflects a page’s aspiration to marry into the nobility. In this poem Drayton gives the victorious lover saucy advice and warning.
Though out of favor now, the long poem was the mark of distinction in renaissance England. Unfortunately for Drayton, he planned his greatest work as a cartographer might by mapping out seas, lakes, streams, hills, islands, forests, towns—a complete poetic excursion from offshore islands through the southern districts to the Tweed River. In “Poly-Olbion” he intended to go right on north through Scotland and to add at least another 10,000 couplets to the 15,000 extant. Some critics have praised his use of Alexandrines for this literary excursion, saying that the ambling meter of twelve-syllable lines fits the pleasant landscapes viewed leisurely. Others feel that the meter, unnatural in our language, is dreary and boring. Certainly, all the couplets are not poetry or even good verse; but certainly some of the descriptive passages are beautiful. For this great work of thirty books a learned scribe, Selden, wrote notes nearly as voluminous and in some ways more interesting, especially those concerning the legendary and antiquarian sections. For Drayton included history and folklore as well as topography in the poem.
Drayton, by his own admission, was disappointed in the reception of what he hoped was an account of the Elizabethan discovering his own England, a panegyric of lofty dimensions which was also scholarly and profound. He was most successful in evoking the fairy glens, the legendary figures of saints and warriors. His pastoral scenes with shepherds still offer in verse the peace and tranquility of a life no longer possible in the bustling seventeenth century. He starts with an argument or prelude to each book or song which can be read as a gloss or summary, as this passage illustrates:
The sprightly Muse her wing displays,
The really interesting thing, as the argument suggests and the first book reveals, is the intermingling of place and legend; for example, the river where Arthur’s blood “By Mordred’s murderous hand was mingled with her flood.” Add to this material the lovely prospect, the homely cottage, the toiling peasant, and Old England lives on.
Two other works, inferior in length but superior in all other ways, need be mentioned: NIMPHIDIA and THE MUSES’ ELIZIUM, the first a miniature epic of fairyland and the latter an ironic self-portrait of the poet in a pagan paradise. Like Shakespeare and Chaucer, Drayton combines the lusty and the magical, farm and fay, in “The Court of Faery,” as the subtitle of NIMPHIDIA reads, where the reader encounters Oberon the duped, Queen Mab, mischievous, teasing Puck, and Pigwiggen, the fairy knight.
A kind of epilogue to the life of the friend of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Ben Jonson is the brilliant work, THE MUSES’ ELIZIUM. Though the idea is classical, the earthly paradise presented is English: the rills, the flowers, the seasons (apart from the fact there is no winter), and especially the pastimes. Divided into Nimphalls, or books, which correspond to the epic struggles between the Eliziums and the Felicians, the last embattled satyr takes refuge in the imaginary, Elizium, though his heart is still in a world no longer felicitous. Here we may see in ironic portraiture the disappointed, embattled old poet writing in praise of earlier and happier times.