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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Any attempt to interpret an allegorical pastoral which was written three hundred years ago is a stimulating but precarious undertaking. Particularly is this true when the author deliberately exercises his ingenuity to make his allegory difficult of interpretation even by his contemporaries. This generalization is especially applicable to Drayton's pastoral allegory, The Shepheards Sirena. Any number of hypotheses may be erected; none, I think, can be completely and satisfactorily substantiated. Replying to my former article, Professor J. William Hebel recognizes this limitation of our knowledge when he remarks: “Possibly we are too far away from The Shepheards Sirena, and have too little information, to arrive at a completely satisfactory interpretation of the dark conceit of the poem.”
1 “Drayton's Relation to the School of Donne, as Revealed in the Shepheards Sirena,” PMLA, XXXVIII, 557-87.
2 “Drayton's Sirena,” PMLA, XXXIX, 836.
3 Professor Hebel thinks it unlikely that “Angry Olcon” shadowed Donne since “he apparently lost all interest in secular poetry” after his ordination in 1615. We must remember that The Shepheards Sirena, though published in 1627, may have been written some years earlier. There is no evidence to establish its date of composition.
4 See Of Poets and Poesie, vv. 187-202.
5 Song XXI, 165 ff.
5 In a passage in the Discoveries (p. 87, ed. F. E. Schelling), Jonson apparently condemns the same kind of poetry: “You admire no poems but such as run like a brewer's cart upon the stones, hobbling:
Et, quae per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt,
Actius et quidquid Pacuviusque vomunt.
Attonitusque legis terrai, frugiferai.“
This epigram from Martial, together with Jonson's remark, imply that Drayton and Jonson were at one in their attitude to roughness in poetry.
7 Conversations, pp. 5, 18, ed. R. F. Patterson, 1923.
8 Professor Hebel intimates that Jonson objected particularly to the Spenserian character of Drayton's poetry, as he wrote in the Discoveries that “Spenser, in affecting the Ancients, writ no Language.” This criticism could not possibly be applied to Drayton's poetry, since he avoided Spenser's archaic diction. Though Jonson censured the pastoralists for their unreality, and though he told Drummond that “Spenser's stanzaes pleased him not,” we must remember that he likewise told Drummond that “for a Heroic poeme, ther was no such ground as King Arthurs fiction,” and that “he hath by heart some verses of Spenser's Calender, about wyne, between Coline and Percye.” Also, we should recall that in his complaints in the Discoveries (p. 22, ed. Schelling) against the badness of popular taste, Jonson cites Spenser as the type of the truly great poet. Jonson's tastes in literature were, after all, rather liberal and catholic. Was he not the author of a romantic pastoral drama, The Sad Shepherd?
9 Conversations, p. 14.
10 At the end of the Conversations, the offended Drummond comments upon Jonson's tendency to be jealous when under the influence of drink: “He is a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to losse a friend than a jest, jealous of every action and word of those about him, (especiallie after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth).”
11 See Ben Jonson (English Worthies), J. A. Symonds, p. 147-48: “Selden” Camden, Bacon, Donne, Beaumont, Sylvester, Alleyn, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Drayton, Chapman, all remain embalmed in verses which only the familiarity of affectionate friendship can have inspired.“ Also, see C. H. Herford's article on Ben Jonson (D.N.B.): ”The disparaging remark on Drayton in the Conversations is of less weight than Jonson's manly and dignified Vision of the Muses of his Friend Michael Drayton.“
12 See A. H. Thorndike's article on Jonson, Camb. Hist. of Eng. Lit., VI, 3: “In all his relations with his literary rivals, we see a man vain, assertive, arrogant, quick to censure, strong in his loves and hates and always ready for a fight, but also one whose quarrels often ended in friendships, and who was loved and admired by the worthiest of his time.” Cf. also Drummond's comment: “he is passionatly kynde and angry, careless either to gaine or keep, vindicative, but, if he be well answered, at himself.”
13 This poem is similar in substance to the Leges Conviviales which Jonson had engraved in marble over the chimney of the Apollo Room of the Devil Tavern. See Chalmers, English Poets, V. 540.
14 Vv. 35-42, 73-76.
15 P.M.L.A., XXXVIII, 557-87.