Delia by Samuel Daniel
"Delia" is a sonnet sequence by Samuel Daniel, first published in complete form in 1592, which exemplifies the growth of English poetry during the Elizabethan era. Despite being overshadowed by contemporary poets like Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare, Daniel's work significantly contributed to the development of the sonnet form in English literature. The sequence encapsulates themes of unrequited love, where the speaker laments the indifference of his beloved, Delia, and reflects on the transitory nature of beauty and love. Daniel's sonnets are characterized by their structured flow, linking imagery and themes across individual poems, which creates a cohesive narrative throughout the sequence.
The language used in "Delia" is noted for its fluency and dignity, avoiding both overly archaic and colloquial styles. Daniel's incorporation of classical mythology and moral lessons into his verses also helped establish conventions that would resonate through later works, including those of Shakespeare. His careful craftsmanship and emotional depth allowed the sonnet form to express complex feelings and intellectual ideas, making "Delia" a crucial part of the Elizabethan literary landscape. The enduring popularity of "Delia," demonstrated by multiple editions published throughout the 1590s, reflects its significant role in influencing English poetry and solidifying the sonnet as a powerful literary vehicle.
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Delia by Samuel Daniel
First published: 1592
Type of work: Poetry
The Work:
The evidently unauthorized publication of a portion of Samuel Daniel’s sonnet sequence Delia in 1591, as part of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, marked the introduction of the perfected version of a major poetic form that, within a few years, had become one of the dominant methods of expression in English poetry. While Daniel may be relatively unknown in comparison to Sidney, Edmund Spenser, or William Shakespeare, with Delia, first published in complete form in 1592, he became one of the important contributors to the development and growth of English poetry, and he remains a central figure in Elizabethan intellectual life.
One of the most notable features about the English Renaissance is the extremely rapid intellectual, cultural, and artistic development of the period. Two of the major cultural and artistic accomplishments of the English Renaissance, the blank verse play and the sonnet sequence, were innovations that were introduced relatively suddenly and perfected rapidly. The forms, once available, were utilized by artists ranging across the full intellectual spectrum, and, within a single generation, often within a period of a few years, English authors produced enduring masterpieces in both forms.
For example, Gorboduc (1561), by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, is credited with being the first English play written in blank verse; it also served as the prototype for the five-act, multiple-scene play. Gorboduc spurred other writers to present a variety of plays ranging from tragedy to comedy to history. English literature reached a peak in its development by being exposed to a new and powerful method of presenting dramatic action.
Fairly soon after its initial production, Gorboduc was accorded mainly historical interest and its style and stagecraft considered rudimentary and crude; still, it was an important step forward, and within thirty years the genre had developed to the point that Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare could write their masterpieces. The relatively crude beginning present in Gorboduc was rapidly explored and exploited.
A similarly rapid development and fruition took place with the sonnet sequence. The sonnet originally developed on the continent of Europe, with writers such as Petrarch and his followers fixing the major themes, forms, and poetic devices. Spreading throughout Europe, the sonnet convention added refinements from French poets such as Joachim du Bellay before gaining English attention in the early part of the sixteenth century, when Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the form into English literature. Achieving limited circulation in manuscript form during Wyatt’s life (although Wyatt seems to have planned to publish), his sonnets first saw wide distribution when they were printed in 1557 in a volume known as Tottel’s Miscellany. Tottel’s Miscellany, a collection of more than 250 poems by various writers, was to become one of the most significant contributions to English literature; its value was not so much in its own excellence, but in the development that it inspired in other writers.
Between 1580 and 1583, the Elizabethan courtier and soldier Sir Philip Sidney turned to the sonnet form and produced Astrophel and Stella, the first of the great Elizabethan sonnet sequences. Purposefully unpublished during Sidney’s brief lifetime, Astrophel and Stella was first printed in 1591 in an unauthorized edition by the printer and publisher Thomas Newman. In addition to Sidney’s sonnet sequence, the volume Newman published included twenty-eight additional sonnets by Samuel Daniel; these sonnets were the core of Daniel’s own sonnet cycle, Delia. In this fashion, two of the most influential works of this particular genre were made public. This was appropriate, for Daniel was an admirer of Sidney’s poetic style and was associated with Sidney’s sister, Mary, Countess of Pembroke.
Unlike Sidney, who had adhered to the older custom of being reluctant to publish his work, once Newman had issued the pirated edition, Daniel was ready to provide the reading public with the authentic version of Delia. In 1592, Daniel published Delia as an independent volume, adding four additional poems and revising others. He continued to revise and republish the work throughout the 1590’s, adding new sonnets, removing older poems, and revising others. The 1594 edition of Delia had fifty-five sonnets, twenty-three of them from Newman’s earlier edition. In 1601, Daniel produced his most thoroughgoing revision, which left the work in substantially the form in which it is best known. Significantly, as proof of the enduring relationship between Daniel and the Sidney circle, the book was dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke.
While Astrophel and Stella is undoubtedly the greater of the two sonnet cycles, Delia is itself an outstanding example of the genre, and one of the finest and most influential produced during the Elizabethan period. In its story, themes, imagery, structure, and language it follows the particular and often quite rigorous conventions that governed how the Elizabethans believed sonnet sequences should be written.
The story of Delia, as with so many other sonnet sequences dating back to Petrarch, is that of unrequited love. The author of the sonnets, who need not be closely or literally identified with Daniel himself, is in despair; his beloved scorns him, preferring another suitor. The lover has tried every means he can conceive of to win the beloved’s heart, but she remains as adamant as she is indifferent. In the end, there is little hope except that his poems will endure as testimony to her cruelty and his faithful love.
Some critics and scholars have sought to read into this generic setting a real situation in which Daniel himself loved and was rejected. There is a reason, or perhaps rather an excuse, for such an interpretation because Sidney’s sequence in Astrophel and Stella alludes to his love for Penelope, Lady Rich. In Daniel’s case, there is little evidence to support a real-life counterpart to his poetic misery; it would seem, instead, to be a case of the poet’s following the conceits of the genre, nothing more.
In Delia, Daniel helps to establish the themes and imagery that rapidly came to dominate the majority of Elizabethan and sonnet sequences. His sonnets contain numerous references to classical mythology; insistent appeals to natural history as a source of moral lessons; and frequent reminders of the transitory quality of beauty, in particular the beauty of Delia, which, along with all mortal things, however lovely, is doomed to decay. This last theme was to become a central motif in later sonnet sequences, including Shakespeare’s.
Daniel was a talented and conscientious craftsman, and Delia is structured in such a way that the individual sonnets flow from one to the other, giving a sense of organic unity and progress; the story, such as it is, is made to have sense and coherence and seems to be moving forward, even if that motion is toward an unhappy ending. Daniel frequently uses the device of sharing themes, images, and words between sonnets, thereby linking them together.
An example of this is found in sonnets 32 through 35, in which Daniel concentrates on the transitory nature of beauty, using the imagery of flowers, spring, and summer, all of which fade and give way to weeds and winter. The words “winter” and “flowers” are found throughout this particular section of the sequence.
In some cases, Daniel repeats words and phrases from one sonnet to the next. Sonnet 24, for example, ends with the line, “Reign in my thoughts, my love and life are thine,” and sonnet 25 opens: “Reign in my thoughts, fair hand, sweet eye, rare voice.” Sonnet 42 finishes with the thought that “women grieve to think they must be old,” while the next poem opens with the poet reminding himself, “I must not grieve my Love.”
Daniel’s use of language is fluent and dignified, avoiding the feigned antique language of Spenser and the vigorously colloquial style of Thomas Nashe. Perhaps because of his association with the Sidney circle, Daniel was highly conscious of the ideal of poetic decorum, especially in language, which was greatly esteemed in the earlier years of the Elizabethan Renaissance. His word choice is restrained, and his images are carefully chosen. His images are often based on mythological sources. The opening lines of his most famous sonnet from the sequence displays both qualities:
Care-charmer sleep, son of the sable night,
This verse, fluent and flowing, shows Daniel’s work in Delia at its best and helps explain how and why this sequence played such an important role in the development of English literature. The ability to use the sonnet form to comment on complex emotional feelings and intellectual concepts became a recognized possibility with the publication of Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella and Daniel’s Delia. Daniel’s sonnets helped to establish the Elizabethan sonnet as a versatile and powerful instrument of English poetry.
Daniel’s impact on the literature of his time was important and undeniable. The numerous editions of Delia that came in rapid succession clearly indicate a considerable popularity for the sequence; this popularity helps to explain the vogue for the sonnet sequence, which rapidly exerted great power over the English literary scene. Daniel was one of the first to produce, in perfect form, a genre in which English writers could write in a new and sophisticated fashion. The emotional, rhetorical, and intellectual versatility of the sonnet form provided English literature with a vehicle that it subsequently used to express some of its most profound and moving thoughts.
Bibliography
Klein, Lisa M. “Delia, the Countess of Pembroke, and the Literary Career of Samuel Daniel.” In The Exemplary Sidney and the Elizabethan Sonneteer. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998. Daniel is one of the sixteenth century English sonneteers whose work is examined in this study of the genre.
Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954. Still one of the best surveys of English Renaissance literature. Lewis’s comments on Daniel are informative and enlightening.
Pilcher, John. “Essays, Works, and Small Poems: Divulging, Publishing, and Augmenting the Elizabethan Poet, Samuel Daniel.” In The Renaissance Text: Theory, Editing, Textuality, edited by Andrew Murphy. New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. Pilcher examines the texts of Daniel’s published works to describe how he wrote his poetry, drama, and prose histories, how they were presented to friends and patrons, and how they were sold in English bookshops. Includes a literary analysis of Daniel’s writings.
Rees, Joan. Samuel Daniel: A Critical and Biographical Study. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1964. The standard biography of Daniel. Provides insight into Daniel’s sonnets, especially those in Delia.
Ryding, Erik S. In Harmony Framed: Musical Humanism, Thomas Campion, and the Two Daniels. Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Northeast Missouri State University, 1993. Describes how Samuel Daniel and two other English Renaissance poets modeled their work on ancient Greek and Roman verse, seeking to recapture the marriage of words and music that is found in these classical poems. The analysis of selected poems reprints the words as well as musical inscriptions for these works.
Seronsy, Cecil. Samuel Daniel. New York: Twayne, 1967. An introductory volume on Daniel, providing an overview of his life and works. Excellent background discussions on the period, including the political and intellectual currents of the time.
Spiller, Michael R. G. Early Modern Sonneteers: From Wyatt to Milton. Plymouth, England: Northcote House/British Council, 2001. This study of the development of the English sonnet in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries includes a chapter on Daniel, providing a critical assessment of his poetry. Designed for students and general readers.
Ure, Peter. “Two Elizabethan Poets: Daniel and Ralegh.” In The Age of Shakespeare, edited by Boris Ford. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. An excellent comparison of two highly accomplished poets of the period, which introduces the reader to a sense of the social, intellectual, and artistic standards of the period.