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Convention and Design in Drayton's Heroicall Epistles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Richard F. Hardin
Richard F. Hardin*
Affiliation:
University or Kansas, Lawrence
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Abstract

Drayton's Epistles are imitations of Ovid's Heroides only in a limited sense, for they were strongly influenced by the vogue of complaint poems (like Daniel's Rosamond), popular during the 1590's. The Epistles resemble both the Heroides and the complaint poems in their rhetorical embellishment and their moral sententiousness. In a few cases, Drayton clearly intended some parallels between Ovid's characters and his own (Hero and Leander-Queen Mary and Charles Brandon; Paris and Helen-Edward IV and Jane Shore). However, unlike Ovid, he informed his poems with a unifying purpose: to show how Providence had guided England through its turbulent past into the glorious age of Queen Elizabeth. Although Elizabeth does not appear in the Epistles, it is clear that Drayton selected his historical events so as to anticipate the greatness of her reign. The patriotic tone of these poems is typical of much historical literature of the 1590's; their concern with Providence evolves from the concept of Fortune in the Mirror for Magistrates. The Epistles, then, are far more Elizabethan than Ovidian, and contemporary praise of Drayton as “the English Ovid” can be misleading.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 83 , Issue 1 , March 1968 , pp. 35 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1968

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References

1 See Drayton's bibliography by B. Juel-Jensen in the corrected edition of The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. W. Hebel, with introductions, notes, and variant readings by K. Tillotson and B. H. Newdigate (Oxford, 1961), v, 265–306. Quotations from Drayton are from this edition, cited hereafter as Works.

2 Criticism of the Epistles is found only in literary histories; as of this writing they are the subject of no monograph in English. See K. Tillotson's introduction in Works, v, 99–101. The standard, although incomplete, source study is W. Claassen, Michael Draytons ‘England's Heroical Epistles’: Eine Quellenstudie (Borna-Leipzig, 1913).

3 Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 107. For an account of the complaint vogue see Smith, pp. 102–106. Also see Smith, “A Woman Killed with Kindness,” PMLA, LIII (1938), 138–147, for the influence of the complaint on drama. A survey of the “progeny” of the Mirror is found in Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (Berkeley, 1936), Ch. viii.

4 E.g., the self-questioning of Byblis or Iphis, Met. ix. 447–797.

5 Anthony Chute, Beawtie Dishonoured (1593); Lodge, Complaint of Elstred (1593); Drayton, Peirs Gaveslon (1593–94), Matilda (1594); Churchyard's revised Shore's Wife (1593); Lucrece (1594); “Hen. Willoby,” Willobie His Avisa (1594); Richard Barnfield, Complaint of Chastilie and Cassandra (1595); John Trussell, First Rape of Faire Hellen (1595).

6 Cf. Heroides, tr. G. Showerman (London, 1914), xix. 9–17, and Rosamond, 1594 (augmented) ed., 1. 714. Examples of feminine psychologizing in other complaint poems are numerous. The subject is perhaps most extensively treated in Daniel's Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius (1599), a poem which derives from Drayton's epistles and the complaint vogue.

7 Rosamond, ll. 372–413, noted by Tillotson, Works, v, 102.

8 Drayton acknowledges Rosamond, Lucrece, Shore's Wife, and Lodge's Complaint of Elslred as forerunners of his “tragicall Historie” in Matilda, ll. 29–49 (1594 ed.).

9 Five distinct states of the text of Gaveston are noted by J. W. Hebel, “The Surreptitious Edition of Michael Drayton's PeirsGaveston,” Library, iv (1923), 151–155.

10 The Compleal Gentleman (1622), ed. G. S. Gordon (Oxford, 1906), pp. 87–88.

11 Fausto Ghisalberti, “Medieval Biographies of Ovid,” JWCI, ix (1946), 11: “Intentio est castum amorem commen-dare, illicitum refrenare, et incestum condemnare.”

12 Cf. Heroides.Cum interpretibus Flubertino Crescent.& Iano Parrhasio (Brescia, 1542), f. Alv : “Materia vero est ethica: id est moralis quia describit varios virorum mulierum-que mores.” Needless to say, the Metamorphoses was also widely moralized in the Middle Ages.

13 T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke (Urbana, Ill., 1944), ii, 419. Cf. Erasmus, Opus de conscribendis epislolis (Cologne, 1569), p. 23: “Quanquam heroicarum sunt castiores: neque quidque vetat et hoc genus caste verecundeque tractari.”

14 Tr. in E. K. Rand, Ovid and Bis Influence (New York, 1925), pp. 155–156.

15 The Heroycall Epistles of the Learned Poet Publius Ovidius Naso, ed. F. S. Boas (London, 1928), p. ix.

16 Ovid and the Elizabethans, English Association Lecture (London, 1947), p. 10.

17 Works, ii, 130.

18 Heinz Ludwig, Der Einfluss romischer Dichter auf das Werk Michael Draytons (diss. Koln, 1961), pp. 21–149, finds many verbal parallels, but a good number of these are rather tenuous: e.g., Katherine's “Love my sweet Tudor, that becomes thee best” (1. 156), and Helen's “Apta magis Veneri, quam sunt tua corpora Marti” (1. 255).

19 See Mrs. Tillotson's note on ll. 15–17, Works, v, 128.

20 Cf. Edward, ll. 33–50, and Ovid's Paris, ll. 189–212.

21 See Her. xvi. 213–234, where Taris' jealousy is most expressive. In Drayton's Epistle of Queen Mary, King Louis may be seen as a Menelaus figure (note especially her boasts of deception, ll. 133 ff.).

22 Namely, completing his family mansion:

Why art thou slack, whilst no man puts his hand

To raise the mount where Surrey's Towers must stand?

(Geraldine, ll. 151–152)

23 Shakespeare's History Plays (London, repr. 1959), p. 247.

24 The Lover's Handbook (London, 1928), p. 61. In agreement is L. Purser's introd. to Heroides, ed. A. Palmer (Oxford, 1898), p. xxviii.

25 Elizabethan Poetry, p. 129. In agreement with Smith is Maurice Evans, English Poetry in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1955), p. 127.

26 Drayton's persistent references to the Tudor myth in Poly-Olbion seem to have perturbed young Selden, who in his “illustrations” to Song I wrote, “I should sooner have been of the Authors opinion (in more then Poeticall forme, standing for Brute) if in any Greeke or Latine Storie authentique, speaking of Aeneas and his planting in Latium, were mention made of any such like thing” (Works, iv, 21).

27 Drayton's note on this passage: “A Prophesie of Queene Maries Barrennesse, and of the happie and glorious Raigne of Queene Elizabeth; her restoring of Religion, the abolishing of Romish Servitude, and casting aside the Yoke of Spaine” (Works, II, 301).

28 Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, p. 419.

29 The English Historical Play in the Age of Shakespeare, rev. ed. (London, 1965), p. 223.

30 On the two ideas of history see Leonard F. Dean, Tudor Theories of History Writing (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1947).

31 In Capitolo IX (Book vn in Yong's version) Fiammetta recounts the misfortunes of Ovid's heroines.

32 Works, ii, 131, “To M. Michael Drayton.” First printed in the 1600 ed.

33 Works, v, 97.