Read The Columbia History of British Poetry Online

Authors: Carl Woodring,James Shapiro

Tags: #test

The Columbia History of British Poetry (40 page)

BOOK: The Columbia History of British Poetry
2.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
 
Page 168
Of all their ways I love 
Meander's 
path,
   Which to the tunes of dying swans doth dance,
Such winding sleights, such turns and tricks he hath,
   Such creeks, such wrenches, and such dalliance,
   That whether it be hap or heedless chance,
In this indented course and wriggling play
He seems to dance a perfect cunning hay.
Like Chapman's narrative, Davies's is slight. During Ulysses' long absence, Penelope is visited in her court by the Greek Antinous, who in the course of the evening asks her to dance. When she declines, not knowing the art, he responds with his discourse on the merits and universality of dancing. Davies uses a rime royal stanza, and the versification is dexterously handled; but unlike most examples of erotic mythological poems, he relies on the variations afforded by the topic rather than on its decorative treatment. The diction is markedly simple and direct (although the poem provides perhaps the first use of the term
courtly love
, which Antinous, a "fresh and jolly knight" employs in wooing Penelope to dance).
Several years later Davies directed his efforts to an expository treatise entitled
Nosce Teipsum
("Know Thyself ") taking his title from the well-known inscription on the temple at Delphi. By the end of the century he had composed nearly five hundred quatrains in the two "Philosophic" essays that make up his treatise: the first dealing with human knowledge, the second with the soul and the issue of its immortality. Davies had judged well both in terms of matter and manner, since the poem was to go through at least fourteen editions before 1800.
Nosce Teipsum
's appeal came from its Christian and humanistic basis. The first essay deals with man's desire for knowledge but with the Christian recognition of human culpability and, in accord with the Greek skepticism currently in vogue, the impossibility of achieving any certain truth. Davies handles this seemingly difficult matter with remarkable clarity and control, etching each quatrain with deft precision but never impeding the narrative flow. The first essay ends with the memorable stanza:
I
know
my life's a pain, and but a span.
I
know
my sense is mock'd with every thing;
And to conclude, I
know
myself a
Man
Which is a
proud
and yet a
wretched
thing.
 
Page 169
In the second essay he argues for the immortality of the soul, it has been said, like an attorney presenting a brief. This is an altogether apt description, for having been expelled from the Middle Temple in 1597/98 "never to return," Davies set about to redeem himself by writing this compendium of popular philosophy and theology and dedicating it to the queen, among others. Not only did he counter his earlier disgrace by this means, but he also provided a long-lasting epitome of Renaissance ideas.
From the mid-1590s on, Samuel Daniel, although not forgoing the patronage system, addressed himself more and more to the role of a professional poet. This is evidenced by the variety of genres he turned to following his initial success with the influential
Complaint of Rosamond
, and his sonnets to Delia. In the course of his long careerand in response to the literary tastes of the dayhe essayed many other forms, including classical tragedy, versified history, verse epistle, literary criticism, philosophic poem, panegyric, pastoral drama, and court masque.
From this perspective it is not surprising that in 1595 Daniel published the first four books of his
Civil Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York
, a work that was to be revised, reissued, and enlarged up to 1609, by which time it had reached eight books and some seven thousand lines of ottava rima. This was set in the period that had been treated in the
Mirror for Magistrates
and had been or would shortly be treated by Shakespeare in his two tetralogies, first in the three parts of
Henry VI
and
Richard III
and then in
Richard II
,
Henry IV
,
1
and
2
, and
Henry V
.
Daniel, like Drayton it seems, was assiduous in seeking out historical source material, leading, on the one hand, to his declaration in Book I that he does not poetize but rather versifies the truth; on the other hand, to the later charge that he was too much a "historian" in versethis because his manner better suited prose. Yet in the beginning of the work he adopts epical trappings: the statement of purpose, the invocation to his sacred goddess (later "sacred Virtue"), and many epic similes. In following his sources for a period dominated by deposition, murder, and rebellion, what he lacked was a true epic hero, although he does provide Hotspur, for example, with a valiant speech before the Battle of Shrewsburyone of the licensed inventions of historians since the time of Thucydides:
This day (sayth he) my valiant trusty friends,
   Whatever it doth give, shall glory give;
 
Page 170
This day, with honor, frees our State or ends
Our misery with fame, that still shall live.
And do but think how well the same he spends,
Who spends his blood his country to relieve.
What! Have we hands, and shall we servile be?
Why were swords made? But to preserve men free.
Proceeding chronologically, although with a thematic emphasis on the horrors of civil dissension, Daniel intersperses a number of complaints, historically grounded like those in the
Mirror
but imaginatively reconstructed, for example, that of Richard II's queen when she mistakenly identifies the triumphant figure returning from the Irish wars as her lord rather than his deposer. He also places individual motivation within a universal schemethus the psychological realism of his comments about the murder and murderer of Richard:
So foul a thing, Oh, thou 
Injustice 
art,
  That tort'rest both the doer and distress'd,
For when a man hath done a wicked part,
  How doth he strive t' excuse, to make the best,
To shift the fault, t' unburthen his charg'd heart,
  And glad to find the least surmise of rest!
And if he could make his seem others' sin,
What great repose, what ease he finds therein!
Although in due course Daniel did write a history in prose extending to the time of Edward IIIfirst published in 1612 and reprinted for some twenty yearshe never gave up his passionate interest in poetry.
This is made clear with the publication in 1599 of
Musophilus
, containing a "general defense of learning," but which is, in point of fact, Daniel's personal manifesto, an intent clearly signaled in the dedicatory poem. Here he rejects the presentation of others' passions, rages, wounds, and factionstypical of the literary scene, and indeed the subjects of his own varied careerin order to set forth his personal views. In a period so persistently reliant on rhetorical and generic approaches, such an open assertion of self-expression is novel, suggesting an attitude more in accord with that of the Romantic period.
For the form Daniel chooses a dialogue in verse which takes place between Philocosmus (a lover of the world) and Musophilus (a lover of the muses), and their argument turns on the justifying or not of a literary career. In setting forth telling pragmatic points against such fruit-
BOOK: The Columbia History of British Poetry
2.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Death in High Places by Jo Bannister
Tymber Dalton by Out of the Darkness
At What Price? by P. A. Estelle
Immortal Storm by Bserani, Heather
The Light of Day by Kristen Kehoe
Stripped by Brian Freeman
Escaping Heaven by Cliff Hicks
At Thei rCommand by Scarlett Sanderson