981J Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Poems by Michael Drayton esquyer. Newly corrected and augmented.

London: W. Stansby for J. Smethwick, 1637 Price $2,500

Octavo 13.5 x 8 cm. Signatures A2-X12. (A1,The first leaf is blank except for signature mark “A”. is lacking) The title page is engraved and signed: William Marshall. sculp. “Englands heroicall epistles” and “The legends of Robert, Duke of Normandie. Matilda, the faire. Pierce Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall. Thomas Cromwel, Earle of Essex” have separate dated title pages; pagination and register are continuous. This copy is bound in nineteenth century full red morocco, with gilt spine and edges. With the book plates of Albert Hooper and Fayetteville H. Philip.

This edition descends from the great collected folio of 1619, preserving the mature form of Drayton’s works and, notably, the celebrated preface “To the Reader of the Barons Warres,” in which the poet explains the principles of his poetic construction, illustrating stanzaic form with diagrams and reflecting upon revision, publication, and literary criticism.

“Born within a year before Shakespeare, and dying when Milton was already twenty-three, he worked hard at poetry during nearly sixty years of his long life, and was successful in keeping in touch with the poetical progress of a crowded and swiftly-moving period. His earliest published work tastes of Tottel’s Miscellany: before he dies, he suggests Carew and Suckling, and even anticipates Dryden. This quality of forming, as it were, a map or mirror of his age gives him a special interest to the student of poetry, which is quite distinct from his peculiar merits as a poet.

In Drayton’s extensive preface “To the Reader of the Barons Warres,” in which he lays bare the mechanics of poetic composition. Defending both his subject and his revisions, Drayton explains why he abandoned one stanza form for another, illustrating the structure of his verse with printed diagrams and comparing poetic construction to classical architecture. The result is an unusually candid account of literary craftsmanship, revealing a major English poet consciously reflecting on form, revision, publication, and the nature of criticism.

This edition of the poems contains “The Baron’s Wars”, “England’s heroical epistles”, “The legend of Robert Duke of Normandy”, “The legend of Matilda”, “The legend of Pierce Gaveston”, “The legend of Great Cromwell” and “Idea”.

This collected edition also includes Drayton’s celebrated sonnet sequence Idea, among the finest achievements of Elizabethan lyric poetry. Revised repeatedly throughout the poet’s career, the sequence contains the famous sonnet beginning “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part,” one of the most enduring love poems of the English Renaissance. Together with The Barons Warres and the Heroicall Epistles, Idea reveals the remarkable range of a poet whose work bridges the age of Shakespeare and the generation of Milton.

https://datb.cerl.org/estc/S109927 STC 7225; see, Grolier, Langland to Wither, p. 74

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