Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T22:42:36.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Drayton's Sirena

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

J. William Hebel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The troubled tone and unsettled mood of Drayton's The Shepheards Sirena at once calls to the reader's mind Drayton's statement that in his pastoral poems he wrote “of most weightie things.” Rarely ever does this statement seem to be applicable to Drayton's pastorals, for though in many of them there is some veiled allusion to contemporaries, it hardly seems to be “weightie,” even from Drayton's point of view. In The Shepheards Sirena, however, there is the atmosphere of a dark conceit; things of weight, at least to Drayton, seem to be dimly shadowed forth. Dorilus, a shepherd well past his younger days, is cast “in sorrowes deepe” by the necessity of deciding between two courses of action in his relations with a fair shepherdess, the “Bright Sirena”:

      Hard the Choise I haue to chuse,
      To my selfe if friend I be,
      I must my Sirena loose,
      If not so, shee looseth me.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 1924 , pp. 814 - 836
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1924

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Poems: by Michael Drayton Esqvire, 1619, “To the Reader of His Pastorals,” at Sig. Iii4 verso.

2 Translated into English by Bartholomew Yong, 1598. This likeness was pointed out to me by Mr. T. P. Harrison, whose study of the influence of the Diana on English literature is soon to appear. The similarity is not close enough, however, to make it certain that Drayton was indebted to Montemayor. We may note that Montemayor's hero is named Syrenus; but the name Sirena was, I believe, suggested by a situation in Drayton's life.

3 P.M.L.A. XXXVIII, 557-87.

4 Lucy, Countess of Bedford, was not the daughter of Sir John Harington, the translator of Ariosto, as Mr. Jenkins states (p. 571). She was the daughter of Sir John Harington, from 1603 Lord Harington, of Exton. See Camden, The Visitation of the County of Rutland, p. 39.

5 Grierson, Donne's Poetical Works, ii. xxii, 132; Gosse, Life and Letters of Donne, i. 210.

6 Sir Henry Goodere the younger was not the son of Sir Henry Goodere the elder, as Mr. Jenkins states (p. 570). He was the nephew and son-in-law of the elder Sir Henry. See Camden, The Visitation of the County of Warwick, p. 67.

7 I cannot here take space to quote the many references in contemporary letters to Lady Bedford in the rôle of godmother.

8 Englands Heroicall Epistles, 1597, dedication of the epistle of “Queene Isabell to Richard the second.”

9 It is frequently stated that the volume was dedicated to Lady Bedford, but the phrasing of the dedication makes it quite evident that the first epistle only was intended.

10 Since there was no cause for an open quarrel, Drayton did continue the dedications in the subsequent editions of Englands Heroicall Epistles until 1619, and he included the dedicatory sonnet from Endimion and Phœbe among his sonnets. When, however, he rewrote Mortimeriados as the Barrons Warrés, 1603, he gave it a new dedication to “Ma. Walter Aston,” and omitted all the lines of compliment to Lady Bedford in the poem itself.

11 The first entry of moneys paid to Drayton in Henslowe's Diary (ed. Greg, i. 70) was made on December 22, 1597.

12 See the epistle to Reynolds Of Poets and Poesie, and note that Drayton did not include any of his plays in his collected editions. Daniel held the same opinion of writing for the popular stage, and only permitted the performance of Philotas because of financial necessity; see his letters printed in Grosart's edition, i. xxiii and iv. liii.

13 I have here tried to interpret again Drayton's relations with the stage in order to offer what seems to me a more probable explanation than that of Mr. Lemuel Whittaker in his Michael Drayton as a Dramatist, PMLA. XVIII. 378-411. Mr. Whittaker, misunderstanding Drayton's relations with his patrons, does not believe that Drayton turned dramatist through financial pressure, but “first by the influences around him, and secondly, by the constitution of his mind.”

14 See The Private Correspondence of Jane, Lady Cornwallis, ed. by Lord Braybrooke, 1842.

15 “To any that will read it,” prefixed to the second part of the Poly-Olbion, 1622.

16 Worlde of Wordes, 1598, Dedication.

17 The sonnet, prefixed to the 1603 edition of Florio's translation, is signed Il Candido. Hazlitt (Coll. and Notes, 1st Series, 162) saw a copy of the Worlde of Wordes, 1598, with the following note, in a contemporary hand, written opposite to a sonnet also signed Il Candido: “Gwin his name was, which in wellsh signifieth white, and therefore calleth him sellfe il Candido, which is white in Italian.” This identification is made more certain by the friendship between Gwinne and Florio, which is known to have existed for many years. As early as 1584, Giordano Bruno coupled their names together in La cena de le Ceneri.

18 Theodore Diodati was the father of Milton's friend, Charles Diodati.

19 Biographical Chronicle, i, 145.

20 Mr. Jenkins gives a wrong impression of Daniel's attitude toward the Court during the reign of James I, when he says that Daniel “turned his back on the court” (p. 566). That is exactly what Daniel did not do, though at times he does indulge in melancholy complaint of the passing of the good old days of Queen Elizabeth, a complaint so frequently uttered that it became conventional. Save for several periods of difficulty, he was in high favor at court until June 15, 1618, when we hear in a letter of the Rev. Thomas Lorkin that “Daniel and Sir George Reynolds were discharged the queen's service, and banished the court, only for having visited Sir Robert Floud in this his disgrace, or else for having formerly entertained amity with him.” (Birch, James, ii. 77). Thus it was only about a year before his death that Daniel finally retired to Beckington.

21 See the dedication to Lady Bedford in which Daniel gracefully acknowledges her favor to him.

22 Lady Bedford's patronage of Daniel is commented on by Jonson in an epistle to the Countess of Rutland (The Forest, xii).

23 Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 416-27.

24 Were it not for this connection in Eglog viii between Olcon and Cerberon and Selena, possibly it might seem that Drayton had Thomas Lodge in mind as Olcon. Drayton several times complimented Lodge under the name of Goldey, and Lodge in his turn complimented Drayton. About 1596, Lodge deserted the pursuit of literature for the practice of medicine. But, so far as is known, Lady Bedford never was the patroness of Lodge.

25 Ed. by Castelain, p. 90.

26 The quotations are from the edition of the Conversations by R. F. Patterson, 1923.

27 I. ii. 139.

28 Cal. S. P. Dom., 1611-1618, p. 72.

Aubrey: Brief Lives, ed. by Clark, ii. 50-3.

Gayley: Beaumont, p. 146.

29 The epitaph on Drayton, printed in the Gifford-Cunningham editions of Jonson as Underwoods xvii, is sometimes ascribed to Jonson. This ascription, as W. D. Briggs points out in Anglia, xxxix, 211, is based only on tradition and not on manuscript evidence. The epitaph is most probably by Quarles.

30 Biog. Chron. i. 147.

31 It is interesting to notice that in The Shepheards Sirena Drayton also abandons the name Rowland, which he had earlier used to designate himself, for the name Dorilus, possibly because he does not wish the real situation in the poem to be too evident.