69-) English Literature

69- ) English Literature

Abraham Cowley

Abraham Cowley (/ˈkuːli/; born 1618, London—died July 28, 1667, Chertsey, Eng.) born in the City of London late in 1618 was an English poet and essayist who wrote poetry of a fanciful, decorous nature. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his Works published between 1668 and 1721. He also adapted the Pindaric ode to English verse.

Early life and career

Born in 1618 in London, England poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was one of the most popular and influential artists of the 17th Century. From a well to do family, his father died when Cowley was still a boy. Cowley's father, a wealthy Londoner, who died shortly before his birth, was a stationer. His mother was wholly given to works of devotion, but it happened that there lay in her parlour a copy of The Faerie Queene. This became the favourite reading of her son, and he had read it twice before he was sent to school.

At that early age he became immersed in literature and was particularly fond of the populist work The Faerie Queene written by Edmund Spenser.He displayed early talent as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of his Cambridge fellowship during the English Civil War and expelled for refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644. In turn, he accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to France, where he spent 12 years in exile serving as her secretary. During this time, Cowley completed The Mistress (1647). Arguably his most famous work, the collection exemplifies Cowley’s metaphysical style of love poetry. After the Restoration, Cowley returned to England, where he was reinstated as a Cambridge fellow and earned his MD before finally retiring to the English countryside. He is buried at Westminster Abbey alongside Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser.

Cowley was writing by the time he was just ten years old and completed his first epic poem at that age. The Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe was considered very mature for someone of his age and marked the beginning of a prolific career as a poet. Two years later he produced Constantia and Philetus at the same time as he was attending school in Westminster. He was a talented and inquiring student and had achieved a certain amount of fame by the time he was fifteen.

He wrote a comedy Love’s Riddle when he was sixteen, was accepted into Cambridge in 1637 and began working on an epic about King David before he had left his studies. As the prospect of Civil War began to spread its dark veil across the country, Cowley, a distinct Royalist, wrote a play for Charles I which was considered a great success and was regularly performed in secret in Dublin after war broke out.

Cowley had become a fellow at Cambridge at the time of the war but was thrown out by the new Parliamentarians. He moved to Oxford and became firm friends with Lord Falkland which led to him being an integral part of the Royal court. He spent 12 years in exile in Paris with the Queen but royal service also saw him undertaking various precarious trips in aid of the King’s cause. He developed complex ciphers to ensure that the King and Queen could communicate with each other in secrecy.

Cowley continued to write poetry however, despite being surrounded by the turmoil and aftermath of war, beginning a description of the Civil War and writing the collection Poems that was published in 1656. His fame also continued to grow and when he finally returned to England he was without peer in the whole of England. His poem The Mistress became one of the most popular verses at the time. It wasn’t until the restoration of the monarchy in 1662, following the death of Cromwell, that it was safe to return to England.

A year after the Restoration, he published the work Verses upon several occasions and retired to the country, living in Chertsey and living in quiet solitude, studying plants and writing verses. This was a period of great scientific advances and Cowley in part devoted himself to promoting the case for an academy of science which shortly after became The Royal Society.

In 1667, whilst at his home in Chertsey, Cowley caught what appeared to be a cold but quickly became more ill, dying a little while after. He was buried alongside Chaucer and Spenser in Westminster Abbey.

Educated at Westminster school and the University of Cambridge, where he became a fellow, he was ejected in 1643 by the Parliament during the Civil War and joined the royal court at Oxford. He went abroad with the queen’s court in 1645 as her cipher secretary and performed various Royalist missions until his return to England in 1656. Seemingly reconciled to the Commonwealth, he did not receive much reward after Charles II was restored in 1660 and retired to Chertsey, where he engaged in horticulture and wrote on the virtues of the contemplative life.

As early as 1628, when he was only ten years old, he composed his Tragicall Historie of Piramus and Thisbe, an epic romance written in a six-line stanza, a style of his own invention. It has been considered to be a most astonishing feat of imaginative precocity; it is marked by no great faults of immaturity, and possesses constructive merits of a very high order. Two years later, Cowley wrote another and still more ambitious poem, Constantia and Philetus; around this time he was sent to Westminster School. At Westminster he displayed extraordinary mental precocity and versatility, writing when he was just thirteen the Elegy on the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton. These three lengthy poems, and some smaller ones, were collected in 1633, and published in a volume entitled Poeticall Blossomes, dedicated to Lambert Osbaldeston, the headmaster of the school, and prefaced by many laudatory verses by schoolfellows.

Cowley at once became famous, although he was only fifteen years old. His next composition was a pastoral comedy, entitled Loves Riddle, a marvellous production for a boy of sixteen, airy, correct and harmonious in language, and rapid in movement. The style is not without resemblance to that of the poet Thomas Randolph, whose earliest works had only just been printed.

In 1637 Cowley went up to Trinity College, Cambridge,[4] where he "betook himself with enthusiasm to the study of all kinds of learning, and early distinguished himself as a ripe scholar". Portraits of Cowley, attributed to William Faithorne and Stephen Slaughter, are in Trinity College's collection. It was about this time that he composed his scriptural epic on the history of King David, one book of which still exists in the Latin original. An English version of the epic in four books, called the Davideis, was published after his death. The epic deals with the adventures of King David from his boyhood to the smiting of Amalek by Saul, where it abruptly closes.

In 1638 Loves Riddle and a Latin comedy, the Naufragium Joculare, were printed, and in 1641 the passage of Prince Charles (later to be King Charles II) through Cambridge led to the production of another dramatic work, The Guardian, which was performed before the royal visitor with much success. During the civil war this play was privately performed at Dublin, but it was not printed till 1650. It is bright and amusing, in the style common to the "sons" of Ben Jonson, the university wits who wrote more for the closet than the public stage.

Cowley tended to use grossly elaborate, self-consciously poetic language that decorated, rather than expressed, his feelings. In his adolescence he wrote verse (Poeticall Blossomes, 1633, 1636, 1637) imitating the intricate rhyme schemes of Edmund Spenser. In The Mistress (1647, 1656) he exaggerated John Donne’s “metaphysical wit”—jarring the reader’s sensibilities by unexpectedly comparing quite different things—into what later tastes felt was fanciful poetic nonsense. His Pindarique Odes (1656) try to reproduce the Latin poet’s enthusiastic manner through lines of uneven length and even more extravagant poetic conceits.

Cowley also wrote an unfinished epic, Davideis (1656). His stage comedy The Guardian (1641, revised 1661) introduced the fop Puny, who became a staple of Restoration comedy. As an amateur man of science he promoted the Royal Society, publishing A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1661). In his retirement he wrote sober, reflective essays reminiscent of Montaigne.

Cowley is often considered a transitional figure from the metaphysical poets to the Augustan poets of the 18th century. He was universally admired in his own day, but by 1737 Alexander Pope could write, justly: “Who now reads Cowley?” Perhaps his most effective poem is the elegy on the death of his friend and fellow poet Richard Crashaw.

Royalist in exile

The learned quiet of the young poet's life was disrupted by the Civil War in 1642 as he warmly espoused the royalist side. He became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, but was ejected by the Parliamentarians in 1643. He made his way to Oxford, where he enjoyed the friendship of Lord Falkland, and gained the personal confidence of the royal family. Around this time, he published two anti-Puritan satires: A Satyre Against Separatists (attribution sometimes disputed), printed in 1642, and The Puritan and the Papist (1643).

After the Battle of Marston Moor he followed the queen to Paris, where his exile lasted twelve years. This period was spent almost entirely in the royal service, "bearing a share in the distresses of the royal family, or labouring in their affairs. To this purpose he performed several dangerous journeys into Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, the Netherlands, or wherever else the king's troubles required his attendance. But the chief testimony of his fidelity was the laborious service he underwent in maintaining the constant correspondence between the late king and the queen his wife. In that weighty trust he behaved himself with indefatigable integrity and unsuspected secrecy; for he ciphered and deciphered with his own hand the greatest part of all the letters that passed between their majesties, and managed a vast intelligence in many other parts, which for some years together took up all his days, and two or three nights every week."

In spite of these labours he did not refrain from writing. During his exile he became familiar with the works of Pindar, and determined to reproduce their lofty lyric passion in English. However, Cowley misunderstood Pindar's metrical practice and therefore his reproduction of the Pindaric ode form in English did not accurately reflect Pindar's poetics. But despite this problem, Cowley's use of iambic lines of irregular length, pattern, and rhyme scheme was very influential and these type of odes are still known in English as Pindarics, Irregular Odes or Cowleyan Odes. Some of the most famous odes written after Cowley in the Pindaric tradition are Coleridge's "Ode on the Departing Year" and Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality".

During his exile, Cowley wrote a history of the Civil War (which did not get published in full until 1973). In the preface to his 1656 Poems, Cowley mentioned that he had completed three books of an epic poem on the Civil War, but had left it unfinished after the First Battle of Newbury when the Royalist cause began to lose significant ground. In the preface, Cowley indicated that he had destroyed all copies of the poem, but this was not precisely the truth. In 1679, twelve years after Cowley's death, a shortened version of the first book of the poem, called A Poem on the Late Civil War was published. It was assumed that the rest of the poem had indeed been destroyed or lost until the mid-20th century when scholar Allan Pritchard discovered the first of two extant manuscript copies of the whole poem among the Cowper family papers. Thus, the three completed books of Cowley's great (albeit unfinished) English epic, The Civill Warre (otherwise spelled "The Civil War"), was finally published in full for the first time in 1973.

In 1647 a collection of his love verses, entitled The Mistress, was published, and in the next year a volume of wretched satires, The Four Ages of England, was brought out under his name, with the composition of which he had nothing to do[clarification needed]. In spite of the troubled times, usually so fatal to poetic fame, his reputation steadily increased, and when, on his return to England in 1656, he published a volume of his collected poetical works, he found himself without a rival in public esteem. This volume included the Pindarique Odes, the Davideis, the Mistress and some Miscellanies. Among the latter are to be found Cowley's most vital pieces. This section of his works opens with the famous aspiration:

"What shall I do to be for ever known,

And make the coming age my own?"

It contains elegies on Wotton, Vandyck, Falkland, William Hervey and Crashaw, the last two being among Cowley's finest poems, brilliant, sonorous and original; the amusing ballad of The Chronicle, giving a fictitious catalogue of his supposed amours; various gnomic pieces; and some charming paraphrases from Anacreon. The Pindarique Odes contain weighty lines and passages, buried in irregular and inharmonious masses of moral verbiage. Not more than one or two are good throughout, but a full posy of beauties may easily be culled from them. The long cadences of the Alexandrines with which most of the strophes close, continued to echo in English poetry from Dryden down to Gray, but the Odes themselves, which were found to be obscure by the poet's contemporaries, immediately fell into disesteem.

The 1656 edition includes the notorious passage in which Cowley abjures his loyalty to the crown: "yet when the event of battle, and the unaccountable will of God has determined the controversie, and that we have submitted to the conditions of the Conqueror, we must lay down our Pens as well as Arms, we must march out of our Cause itself, and dismantle that, as well as our own Towns and Castles, of all the Works and Fortifications as Wit and Reason by which we defended it."

'The Mistress' was the most popular poetic reading of the age, and is now the least read of all Cowley's works. It was the last and most violent expression of the amatory affectation of the 17th century, an affectation which had been endurable in Donne and other early writers because it had been the vehicle of sincere emotion, but was unendurable in Cowley because in him it represented nothing but a perfunctory exercise, a mere exhibition of literary calisthenics. He appears to have been of a cold, or at least of a timid, disposition; in the face of these elaborately erotic volumes, we are told that to the end of his days he never summoned up courage to speak of love to a single woman in real life. The "Leonora" of The Chronicle is said to have been the only woman he ever loved, and she married the brother of his biographer, Sprat.

Return to England

Soon after his return to England he was seized in mistake for another person, and only obtained his liberty on a bail of £1000. In 1658 he revised and altered his play of The Guardian, and prepared it for the press under the title of The Cutter of Coleman Street, but it was not staged until 1661. Late in 1658 Oliver Cromwell died, and Cowley took advantage of the resulting confusion to escape to Paris, where he remained until the Restoration brought him back in Charles's train. In 1662, he published the first two books of Plantarum (Plantarum libri duo). He published in 1663 Verses upon several occasions, in which The Complaint is included.

Cowley obtained permission to retire into the country; and through his friend, Lord St Albans, he obtained a property near Chertsey, where, devoting himself to botany and books, he lived in comparative solitude until his death. He took a practical interest in experimental science, and he was one of those advocating the foundation of an academy for the protection of scientific enterprise. Cowley's pamphlet on The Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, 1661, immediately preceded the foundation of the Royal Society, to which Cowley, in March 1667, at the suggestion of John Evelyn, addressed an ode. He is also known for having provided the earliest reference to coca in English literature, in "Pomona", the fifth book of his posthumously published Latin work Plantarum libri sex (included in Works, 1668; translated as Six Books of Plants in 1689).

He died in the Porch House in Chertsey, in consequence of having caught a cold while superintending his farm-labourers in the meadows late on a summer evening. On 3 August, Cowley was buried in Westminster Abbey beside the ashes of Chaucer and Spenser, where in 1675 the Duke of Buckingham erected a monument to his memory. The poetry of Cowley rapidly fell into neglect.

The first volume of Cowley's collected works was published in 1668, when Thomas Sprat brought out an edition in folio, to which he prefixed a life of the poet. This included Poemata Latina, including the Plantarum libri sex (Six Books of Plants). Additional volumes were added in 1681 and 1689. There were many reprints of this collection, which formed the standard edition till 1881, when it was superseded by Alexander Balloch Grosart's privately printed edition in two volumes, for the Chertsey Worthies library. The Essays have frequently been revived.

Bibliography

Poeticall Blossomes (1633; revised 1636) , Loves Riddle (1638), a play , Naufragium Joculare (1638), a play , The Guardian (1641), a play, later revised as The Cutter of Coleman Street (performed 1661; published 1663)

A Satyre Against Separatists (1642), also known as The Puritans Lecture

A Satire: The Puritan and the Papist (1643) , The Mistress; or, Several Copies of Love-Verses (1647) , Poems (1656), includes Miscellanies, Anacreontiques, Davideis and Pindarique Odes , A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1661) , Plantarum libri duo (1662) , Verses Lately Written Upon Several Occasions (1663) , Ode to the Royal Society (1667)

Works (1668), "Consisting of Those which were formerly Printed: and, Those which he Design'd for the Press", includes Essays and Plantarum libri sex

Works (1681), with a second part, "Being what was Written and Published by himself in his Younger Years" , Works (1689), with a third part, "Being His Six Books of Plants, Never before Printed in English"

Abraham Cowley Poems

A Supplication , Against Fruition ,Against Hope , An Answer To A Copy Of Verses Sent Me To Jersey , Anacreontics, Drinking , Anacreontics, The Epicure , Anacreontics, The Swallow , Bathing In The River , Beauty, Concealment , Constantia's Song , Cousel , Davideis: A Sacred Poem Of The Troubles Of David (excerpt) , Epitaph , Hymn. To Light , Inconstancy , Life , Not Fair , Of Wit , On the Death of Mr. Crashaw , On the Death of Mr. William Hervey , On The Death Of Sir Henry Wootton , Platonick Love , Reason, The Use Of It In Divine Matters , Resolved To Be Loved , Sleep , Sport , The Change , The Chronicle , The Despair , The Epicure , The Given Heart , The Given Love , The Grasshopper , The Heart Breaking , The Innocent Ill , The Motto , The Parting , The Praise of Pindar in Imitation of Horace His Second Ode, Book 4 , The Request , The Spring , The Thief , The Thraldom , The Tree Of Knowledge , The Usurpation , The Vote (excerpt) , The Welcome , The Wish , Thisbe's Song , To Sir William Davenant , To The Lord Falkland , To The Royal Society , Written In Juice Of Lemon

 

68-) English Literature

68-) English Literature 

Samuel Daniel 

Daniel and Shakespeare

Samuel Daniel was born a year or two before William Shakespeare and died three years after him. The literary careers of both started in the 1590s and ended in the 1610s. Both writers enjoyed success and came to be regarded as leading authors of the period, though Shakespeare was more associated with the popular stage and Daniel with courtly poetry and noble patrons. Literary scholars generally accept that many of Shakespeare's plays and poems were influenced by Samuel Daniel's works, while the possible influence of Shakespeare's plays on Daniel's works has been more subject to debate.

Samuel Daniel scholar, John Pitcher, states, "One measure of Daniel's quality and importance as a writer is the assiduousness with which Shakespeare followed and drew freely on his every publication. ... But it would be deeply unfair to leave Daniel in Shakespeare's wake".

Daniel's influence on Shakespeare

Evidence of the influence of Daniel's works on Shakespeare includes the following:

Rosamond and The Rape of Lucrece – Literary critics cite Daniel's The Complaint of Rosamond as one of the principal sources of inspiration for Shakespeare's composition of The Rape of Lucrece. One of the similarities between the two that is often cited is Rosamond's description of a seduction scene on an engraved box in Rosamond which has close parallels to Lucrece's narrative of a similar scene in a tapestry or painting in Lucrece.

Delia and Shakespeare's sonnets – Numerous parallels between Shakespeare's sonnets and Delia suggest that Daniel's sequence served as an inspiration and model for Shakespeare as he composed his poems. Daniel employed the sonnet structure that has come to be called "Shakespearean", three quatrains and a final couplet, before Shakespeare did. Daniel's pairing of a sonnet sequence with a complaint in Delia and The Complaint of Rosamond, a structure that has come to be described as "Delian", may have inspired the pairing of A Lover's Complaint with Shakespeare's sonnets in the 1609 edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. If William Herbert is the "W.H." in the dedication to the 1609 edition of Shakespeare's sonnets and is the "fair youth" of the sonnets, then Daniel, who worked in the Herbert household, may be one of the models for the "rival poet".

Rosamond and Romeo and Juliet – Romeo's final speech over the lifeless body of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet ("And lips, O you / The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss"), written between 1593 and 1596, are generally accepted to have been inspired by some of the concluding stanzas of The Complaint of Rosamond ("This sorrowing farewell of a dying kiss"), published in 1592.

The First Four Books of the Civil Wars and Richard II – Shakespeare's Richard II includes many elements that the playwright would not have found in his historical sources that appear similarly in The First Four Books of the Civil Wars, printed in 1595. These include the representation of Richard's queen, Isabel, as a mature woman (rather than the historical child of ten years of age), details of the Bishop of Carlyle's defense of Richard before Parliament, Richard and Isabel's tearful parting, Richard entering London behind Bolingbroke as his prisoner, and the depiction of Richard in prison philosophically musing on his fallen state. The appearance of the first print edition of Daniel's epic poem has been used to establish the earliest possible date for Shakespeare's composition of Richard II as mid- to late 1595. Recent analysis of an extant early manuscript of Daniel's poem, however, suggests that Shakespeare could have used such a manuscript as a source, making an earlier date possible.

The First Four Books of the Civil Wars and Henry IV, Part 1 – In Henry IV, Part 1, Shakespeare depicts Prince Hal and Hotspur as being around the same age and makes a rivalry between the two a central part of the play. Historically, Hotspur was as old as Hal's father and the prince was only sixteen years old at the Battle of Shrewsbury at which he gained military experience but did not play a significant role. The playwright seems to have been inspired by similar ahistorical elements of the depiction of the prince in Daniel's First Four Books of the Civil Wars.

The First Four Books of the Civil Wars and Henry IV, Part 2 – There are close parallels between Henry's deathbed scene in Shakespeare's play and Daniel's description of the king's death in his poem.

The First Four Books of the Civil Wars and Henry V – In The First Four Books of the Civil Wars, the ghost of Henry V requests that some poet write the story of his glorious victories, "Whence new immortal Iliads might proceed" (Book IV, stanza 6). Scholars believe that this served as part of Shakespeare's inspiration for using a Chorus and what Geoffrey Bullough called "the energy of the epic" in Henry V, a play that emphasizes the king's victory at the Battle of Agincourt.

The First Four Books of the Civil Wars and Shakespeare's possible revisions to the Henry VI plays – If the Henry VI plays were revised by Shakespeare in 1595 or later, as is suggested in The New Oxford Shakespeare Authorship Companion, elements of those plays that include parallels to The First Four Books of the Civil Wars may indicate the influence of Daniel's work on Shakespeare's revisions.

Musophilus and Julius Caesar – Shakespeare's Julius Caesar includes echoes of Daniel's poem Musophilus which was published around the time when the playwright was writing the play.

The Tragedy of Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra – Supplementing his principal source, Plutarch's Lives, Shakespeare took inspiration from Daniel's Senecan tragedy for his complex characterization of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, especially for the scenes surrounding her suicide in Act 5 of the play. Daniel's poem A Letter from Octavia may have also provided material for Shakespeare's sympathetic portrayal of Antony's wife.

Paulus Jovius and Pericles – The image of a down-turned torch in Pericles may have been inspired by an emblem described by Daniel in The Worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius. The wording used in the play to describe the device closely mirrors Daniel's in his translation of Paolo Giovo. Elements of the image are also used in Shakespeare's sonnet 73.

Daniel's masques and The Tempest – The masque in Shakespeare's The Tempest may have been influenced by Daniel's Vision of the Twelve Goddesses and Tethys' Festival, which included similar Greek deities, such as Ceres and Juno.

Shakespeare's influence on Daniel

Evidence of Shakespeare's possible influence on Daniel's works includes the following:

Henry VI plays and The First Four Books of the Civil Wars – Laurence Michel, in his 1958 critical edition of Samuel Daniel's The Civil Wars, stated, "The likelihood that Daniel knew Shakespeare or any of his works before at least 1604 is small" and therefore "we may assume that Daniel did not know" the versions of the Henry VI plays that were printed in the 1590s. More recent research, however, has suggested that elements of The First Four Books of the Civil Wars may reflect the influence of the Henry VI plays. Those plays had been performed by Pembroke's Men, the acting company sponsored by Henry Herbert, the husband of Daniel's patron, Mary Sidney, before the 1595 publication of the first edition of Daniel's epic poem. Among the strongest evidence of influence is Daniel's inclusion of a romantic relationship between Queen Margaret and the Duke of Suffolk, including a woeful parting scene between the two. These elements of the poem are unsupported by his chronicle sources but are emphasized in Henry IV, Part 2. If Daniel incorporated elements of the Henry VI plays into The First Four Books of the Civil Wars, it may be the first instance of another author reflecting the influence of Shakespeare's plays in his or her own work.

Richard II and Daniel's revisions to The Civil Wars – In the 1609 edition of The Civil Wars, Daniel describes Henry IV's repudiation of Richard II's murderer, Sir Piers of Exton (III.79). This incident is not mentioned in his chronicle sources but is emphasized in Shakespeare's Richard II.

Henry IV plays and Daniel's revisions to The Civil Wars – In the 1609 edition of The Civil Wars, Daniel expanded the material formerly included in the third book and broke it into two books, now Books III and IV. The bulk of the added material concerned the reign of King Henry IV and seems to have been influenced by Shakespeare's plays on that king's reign.

Henry VI plays and Book VIII of The Civil Wars (1609) – The eighth book of The Civil Wars, added in the 1609 edition, includes two sections that suggest the influence of Henry VI, Part 3: Edward IV's wooing of Lady Grey and Henry on the molehill at the Battle of Towton.

Antony and Cleopatra and Daniel's revisions to The Tragedy of Cleopatra – There is debate surrounding the extent to which Daniel may have been influenced by Shakespeare's play in his 1607 revisions to The Tragedy of Cleopatra. Daniel incorporated elements that made his play more "theatrical", yet the revised version remains closer to neoclassical Senecan tragedy than popular theater. The detail of Antony's servant, Eros, having been freed by Antony seems to confirm influence.

Henry V and Funeral Poem Upon the Death of the Noble Earl of Devonshire – Elements of Daniel's characterization of Charles Blount as a hero-warrior include echoes of Shakespeare's Henry V, especially in the section on Blount rallying the English troops at the Siege of Kinsale.

Personal relationship

An essay by Albert Harthshorne in 1899 in The Archaeological Journal reported that during his retirement, Daniel "received his friends, among them Shakespeare, Chapman, Marlowe of the 'mighty line', Drayton, and Jonson". The facts that Christopher Marlowe had died in 1593, many years before Daniel's retirement, and that Daniel had an acrimonious relationship with Jonson, casts doubt on the comment as a whole. There is no direct evidence that Daniel was friendly with Shakespeare or knew him personally, although they likely shared many common acquaintances, including John Florio, Henry Wriothesley, William Herbert, and Ben Jonson.

Literary reputation and style

During his lifetime, Daniel was regarded as one of the most important English authors of the period. His writings contributed innovations to a wide range of literary genres, including the sonnet cycle (Delia), the complaint (Complaint of Rosamond), neo-classical drama (Tragedy of Cleopatra), the epic (The Civil Wars), the verse colloquy (Musophilus), the literary essay ("Defense of Rhyme"), and epistolary verse (Certain Epistles). He continued to have admirers for centuries after his death and his works had a significant influence on many other authors. John Milton adapted elements of his works in Paradise Lost.] Alexander Pope parodied the opening of The Civil Wars in The Rape of the Lock.] Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a particular admirer of Daniel's work, referring to him as "one of the golden writers of our golden Elizabethan age ... whose diction bears no mark of time". Coleridge's friend and collaborator William Wordsworth reflected Daniel's influence in many of his works and included an extended quotation from Daniel's Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland in his poem The Excursion. Henry David Thoreau referred to Daniel to elucidate his own thoughts in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

Although Daniel's work fell into obscurity during the 20th century, he continued to have admirers. Many anthologies of early modern literature include excerpts from his Delia, Musophilus, and A Defense of Rhyme. In his 1944 English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, C.S. Lewis said of Daniel that he "actually thinks in verse; thinks deeply, arduously; he can doubt and wrestle ... he is the most interesting man of letters whom that century produced in England."

One factor that contributes to the diminished recognition of Daniel's works in the 20th century, relative to some of his contemporaries, is his calmer, less emotional style. As reflected in C.S. Lewis's assessment that Daniel "thinks in verse", his poetry often employs the more precise language of debate, self-doubt, and deep thought rather than passionate imagery. In Musophilus, Daniel described his poetry as "a speaking picture of the mind" (line 170). The conversational, less lyrical nature of his poetry resulted in criticism, even from the time when he wrote. Fellow poet Michael Drayton, a contemporary of Daniel's, called him "too much historian in verse" and stated that "His rimes were smooth, his meters well did close, / But yet his manner better fitted prose". Yet those same qualities of his writing are what helped him appeal to Coleridge and Wordsworth, who in their prelude to Lyrical Ballads (1802) asserted that "a large portion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good prose". In Biographia Literaria (1817), Coleridge praised Daniel's poetry for "many and exquisite specimens of that style which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both." At the time that Coleridge and Wordsworth were writing, Daniel's "prosaic" style seemed more current than that of many other Elizabethan poets. The 18th century literary critic Robert Anderson expressed this in his 1795 anthology Works of the British Poets. Anderson wrote of Daniel that there is "in both his poetry and prose such a legitimate rational flow of language, as approaches nearer the style of the 18th than the 16th century".

Aspects of Daniel's writing may also be closer to the 20th and 21st century than to his own time. Much of his work expresses a sympathy for the plight of women who maintain their dignity despite being regarded as the subordinates of undeserving men. He exhibited this attitude in his dedicatory verses to Mary Sidney, his poem Letter from Octavia, and especially in his Epistle to Countess of Cumberland. The pensive, self-reflective style of much of his poetry is more similar to some modern poetry than the more ornate style of many of his contemporaries. His belief that every culture and era had value to offer in its thought and writing, reflected in A Defense of Rhyme, and refusal to accept that poetry and art should be artificially held to classical standards, differed from the attitude of many humanist writers and thinkers of his time. In Musophilus, he demonstrated the foresight to see the benefit of writing in English, even though the use of the language was restricted to one small island. He presciently wrote, "who in time knows whither we may vent / The treasure of our tongue ... Or who can tell for what great work in hand / The greatness of our style is now ordained" (lines 947 to 954).

Daniel also had the humility to admit that he, along with all humans, is fallible and is prone to hold strongly to opinions that will come to be regarded as misguided. This humility is demonstrated in the following comment from his Collection of the History of England:

Pardon us antiquity, if we miscensure your actions which are ever (as those of men) according to the vogue, and sway of times, and have only their upholding by the opinion of the present. We deal with you but as posterity will with us (which ever thinks itself the wiser) that will judge likewise of our errors according to the cast of their imaginations.

— Collection of the History of England (1618), p. 101

In many of his works, Daniel expressed a deep regard for the power of written language ("blessed letters") to reach across cultures and generations. As he wrote in Musophilus:

O blessed letters that combine in one

All ages past, and make one live with all,

By you we do confer with who are gone,

And the dead living unto counsel call:

By you th'unborn shall have communion

Of what we feel, and what doth us befall.

— Musophilus (lines 181 to 186)

Modern editions and recent references to Daniel

The last time a thorough edition of the works of Daniel appeared in print was in the late nineteenth century, in the five-volume Complete Works in Verse and Prose (1885–1896), edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart. Two collections of selected works were published during the twentieth century: Poems and a Defence of Ryme (1930), an edition that preserves the original early modern spelling and punctuation, edited by Arthur Colby Sprague, and Selected Poetry and a Defense of Rhyme (1998), a modernized edition, edited by Geoffrey G. Hiller and Peter L. Groves. John Pitcher is currently working on a multi-volume critical edition of Daniel's complete works to be published by Oxford University Press.

Daniel's Tragedy of Cleopatra was staged by the University College London (UCL) Centre for Modern Exchanges in 2013 as part of a project to evaluate if the "closet drama" was performable. A recording of the performance is available on Vimeo and an analysis of it is included in Yasmin Arshad's book Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England.

Daniel is a significant supporting character in the novel Imperfect Alchemist, by Naomi Miller, a fictionalized account of Mary Sidney.

  

67-) English Literature

67-) English Literature

 Samuel Daniel 

Works

Though admired as a lyric poet and historian, Samuel Daniel has found few enthusiastic readers for his dramatic works. Sober minded, restrained, reflective, and frequently prosaic, Daniel stands outside the popular-stage tradition, yet as an innovator he is of considerable importance in the history of Renaissance drama. Cleopatra is one of the earliest and best attempts to transplant French Senecan closet drama to the English stage; The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses inaugurated the vogue for the elaborate Jacobean court masque; and The Queen's Arcadia is the first English imitation of Italian pastoral drama.

By 1592 Daniel had come under the patronage of Mary, Countess of Pembroke, to whom he dedicated Delia. Containing Certain Sonnets: With the Complaint of Rosamond (1592)—a volume which firmly established his reputation as a poet—and Cleopatra. It was under the influence of the literary circle at Wilton (his "best Schoole," as he refers to it in Defense of Rhyme ) that Daniel wrote his first two plays.

Reflecting the political interests (in abuses of tyranny and limits of government) and literary ideals (derived from Sidney's Defense of Poetry) of the Countess of Pembroke's circle, Daniel sought in Cleopatra and Philotas "to reduce the stage from idlenes to those grave prsentments of antiquitie vsed by the wisest nations." More specifically, it was in the Wilton group's interest in the French Senecan drama of Robert Garnier and Etienne Jodelle that Daniel found a model for his early plays.

Encouraged by the Countess to compose a companion piece to her translation of Garnier's Marc-Antoine and heeding Spenser's advice to turn his pen to "tragic plaints and passionate mischance," Daniel wrote The Tragedy of Cleopatra. The play was first published in 1594, but Daniel, as he was to do for so many of his works, revised it: once in 1599 and more extensively in 1607.

In its emphasis on the destruction of the state through unrestrained ambition, on the doctrine of cyclical recurrence, and on the providential course of history, Cleopatra treats themes typical of much of Daniel's work. Tormented by her sins and aware of the disorder in Egypt brought about by her ambition, Cleopatra is determined to commit suicide, both to preserve her honor and to attest her love of the dead Antony. However, in an attempt to preserve her son Caesario so that he might restore Egypt's fallen glory, she pretends to submit to Octavius Caesar, who hypocritically promises her mercy. Caesar, however, plans to parade Cleopatra through Rome as his triumphant prize and, by bribing Caesario's tutor, arranges the murder of the prince. Apprised by Dolabella of Caesar's plans, Cleopatra has two asps smuggled to her and "Die[s] like a Queene," requesting to be buried in Antony's tomb. The play concludes with the Chorus emphasizing that Rome will be destroyed as was Egypt.

In the 1594 and 1599 versions, Cleopatra is closet drama: the lengthy monologues, dialogues on questions of political morality, and reported action render the play unsuitable for the popular stage. Yet, it is effective closet drama. As in Rosamond and Letter from Octavia , Daniel delineates the mind of an afflicted woman who bears herself with dignity and nobility. In her struggle over her divided role as Queen and mother, her awareness of the destruction she has caused in Egypt, the intensity of her love for Antony, and her resolution to die honorably, Cleopatra is an effective psychological portrait. Although all of the action is reported, Daniel handles this technique well, even dramatically (especially in Rodon's description of Caesario's betrayal and death, and the Nuntius's account of Cleopatra's suicide). Daniel addresses a variety of political issues, but the result is not the diffuseness we find in Philotas. Here Daniel makes effective use of the Chorus as a unifying device, for at the conclusion of each act the Chorus relates individual issues to the overriding emphases on the causes of civil disorder and its cyclical recurrence.

In 1607 Daniel so completely revised Cleopatra that it became in effect a new work. Apparently attempting to make the play more stage-worthy, he rearranged scenes and parts of scenes to break long monologues into dialogue or to turn reported into direct action, added passages to clarify action or theme, and deleted passages to reduce narration. Although the result is a more symmetrical action, Daniel's revisions—particularly of Cleopatra's opening monologue and Diomedes's report of Cleopatra's death—reduce the meditative, philosophical power of the verse, rendering the characterization of Cleopatra less powerful and the development of theme less full.

Of Daniel's plays, Cleopatra is the best known and most influential. Shakespeare drew upon the 1599 version in Antony and Cleopatra, which in turn probably influenced Daniel's 1607 version; Dryden was influenced in All for Love by Daniel's imagery. Among minor writers, Samuel Brandon, Fulke Greville, William Alexander, and Elizabeth Cary were indebted in various ways to Cleopatra.

As Joan Rees observes, Cleopatra marks an important stage in Daniel's development: "When he began Cleopatra he was 'Sweete hony-dropping Daniel'; by the time he finished it, he was Coleridge's 'sober-minded Daniel.'"

Until 1600, by which time he probably had begun Philotas, Daniel's attention was to his nondramatic poetry. Some time during 1594 he came under the patronage of Lord Mountjoy, to whom The First Four Books of the Civil Wars (1595) and The Poetical Essays (1599) are dedicated. By 1600 he had possibly come under Elizabeth's favor, but the tradition that she appointed him poet laureate after the death of Spenser has no factual basis.

Daniel had written the first three acts of Philotas by 1600, intending the play to be acted by some gentlemen's sons as a Christmas entertainment. Revision of The Civil Wars interrupted work on the play, but, needing money, he completed the final two acts in 1604. The play was probably first performed on 3 January 1605 by the Children of the Queen's Revels. In 1607 Daniel extensively revised the work, principally to improve grammar, meter, or rhyme.

In Philotas, as he had in Cleopatra, Daniel treats themes common to much of his work: how unchecked ambition leads to civil disorder, how tyranny, through the unscrupulous use of the law, results in oppression, and how "To admire high hills, but liue within the plain" is the best course of life. Philotas, a proud and ambitious soldier whom Alexander has raised above his rank, has entered into a conspiracy with his father to overthrow Alexander, whom they perceive as a vain and tyrannical ruler. Cloaking his ambition under protestations of honor, concern for the state, and a refusal to conform to the times by flattering the king, Philotas is esteemed by the people (represented by a Chorus). Partly motivated by self-interest and jealousy, Craterus (one of Alexander's "faithfull'st Counsellers") discerns Philotas's ambition and sets about to entrap him. Using Philotas's revelation of his ambition to his mistress Antigona and his failure to report a different plot by several nobles to murder Alexander—as well as masterful character assassination—Craterus, through rather Machiavellian maneuvering which subverts justice but providentially preserves the state, convinces the king of Philotas's guilt. At his trial Philotas is allowed to speak only after Alexander, presiding as judge, has pronounced him guilty and left. In protesting his innocence Philotas effectively underlines the trial's mockery of justice. Craterus, realizing the need for a confession to quell rumor and discontent, convinces Alexander to have Philotas tortured. At first Philotas, attempting to preserve his honor, resists, but eventually he reveals the conspiracy, even implicating an innocent bystander. As a result, Philotas loses all his supporters' respect, and the play concludes with the affirmation that the state has been spared from civil insurrection.

Philotas is justifiably acclaimed for elegance of diction and regularity of meter, qualities generally typical of Daniel's verse. However, his tendency to perceive an issue from more than one perspective—a trait which lends depth to many of his poems—works to disadvantage here. The examination of political morality and abuses of government at times is contradictory and structurally deficient. Although it is clear from the dedication to Prince Henry and the concluding apology that Daniel meant Philotas generally to condemn unchecked ambition which leads to civil disorder and to affirm the providential course of history, the equivocal nature of many of the issues and characters results in diffuseness and ambiguity rather than the complexity which Daniel sought.

Because of its political emphasis, many of Daniel's contemporaries read Philotas as a comment on the trial and execution of the Earl of Essex. Although Daniel was sympathetic to Essex and although the play, particularly in the trial scene, bears several parallels to the Earl's trial, Daniel steadfastly denied before the Privy Council any connection between his play and the celebrated case. Whatever the relation to the Essex affair, Daniel turned away from history for subject matter in his later plays.

Although A Panegyric Congratulatory to the King's Majesty (1603) failed to gain the favor of the new king, James I, in 1604 Daniel came under the patronage of Queen Anne, for whom he wrote his last four dramatic works. The first of these was The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, a masque performed by the Queen and her ladies at Hampton Court on 8 January 1604 and published later the same year. This was the first of several lavish and expensive masques which were so popular at the Jacobean court and included many of the finest specimens of this form of dramatic art.

As in his earlier plays, Daniel emphasizes order in the state: his intent is "to present the figure of those blessings, with the wish of their encrease and continuance, which this mightie Kingdome now enioyes by the benefite of his most gracious Maiestie; by whom we haue this glory of peace, with the accession of so great state and power." To realize his theme, Daniel relies principally on an emblematic procession of the twelve goddesses, who represent "those blessings and beauties that preserue and adorne" the peaceful state. (For example, Pallas stands for "Wisedome and Defence"; Proserpina, riches; and Tethys, "power by Sea.") The goddesses, richly and symbolically dressed, descend from a hill at one end of the hall and march to the Temple of Peace, where they offer their respective gifts. For example, Pallas, played by the Queen, "was attyred in a blew mantle, with a siluer imbrodery of all weapons and engines of war, with a helmet-dressing on her head, and present[ed] a Launce and Target."

Although Daniel regarded The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses as entertainment and not one of his "grauer actions," he does unify text and spectacle, including dancing, singing, elaborate scenery, and emblematic costumes, to underscore his emphasis on the ordered state. From the opening speech of Night, who wields his white wand to "effect ... significant dreames," to the closing speech of Iris, who justifies the representation of the goddesses in the forms of the Queen and her ladies, Daniel effectively manipulates levels of reality. Ultimately, however, The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses is not an accomplished example of the masque, a form with which Daniel was clearly uncomfortable.

In 1604 Daniel became Licenser to the Children of the Queen's Revels, a post he held until 28 April 1605. The appointment was not a fortunate one, for it involved Daniel in a lawsuit and monetary difficulties (which may have led him to complete Philotas for presentation by the company). And Daniel was not circumspect in his licensing of plays, for the Queen withdrew her patronage from the Children after Philotas, John Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, and George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and Marston's Eastward Ho! offended James I. Daniel did not, however, lose the favor of the Queen, and in 1607 he was appointed one of the Grooms of her Privy Chamber.

Daniel's next dramatic work, The Queen's Arcadia, is of considerable importance in the history of the drama, for it is the first attempt in English to imitate the Italian pastoral drama. Performed before the Queen at Christ Church, Oxford, on 30 August 1605, the play reflects Daniel's interest in Italian literature and attempt to appeal to the court's taste for extravagant dramatic entertainment. Although heavily indebted to Guarini and Tasso, The Queen's Arcadia is distinctly English in its concerns. Like Daniel's earlier plays, it emphasizes order in the state, and like much of his poetry, it glorifies the simple life.

Colax, "a corrupted traueller," and his accomplice Techne, "a subtle wench [that is, whore] of Corinth," are corrupting the natural harmony of Arcadia by introducing its virtuous lovers to lust, vanity, suspicion, in inconstancy. Three other foreigners also attempt to corrupt the Arcadians: Lincus, a pronotary's boy, passes himself off as a great lawyer and encourages needless litigation; Alcon, formerly a physician's servant, gains a reputation by distributing placebos and encouraging hypochondria; and Pistophoenax, a religious disputer who hides his ugly face behind a mask, works to subvert the natural religion of the country. The attempts of these outsiders to undermine "Rites, ... Custome, Nature, Honesty"—"the maine pillors of ... [the] state"—are frustrated by the revelations of Ergastus and Melibaeus, two elderly Arcadians who conveniently overhear all that takes place during the play.

Although commended by a member of the original audience as "being indeed very excellent, and some parts exactly acted," the play has not been well received by modern readers. Daniel's treatment of the outsiders offers some effective comic satire on the hypocrisy and greediness of lawyers, on the quackery of physicians, and, generally, on a preference for foreign ideas and things. Most effective is a lengthy diatribe against tobacco, inserted perhaps because of King James's aversion to it. Yet, the satire is frequently blunted by Daniel's moralizing tendency and does not mesh with the conventional romantic treatment of pastoral love. The denouement is mechanical, and overall the play is rather dull.

During 1605-1610 Daniel published revisions of many of his earlier works (including Cleopatra and Philotas), completed the final version of The Civil Wars, and began his prose history, The Collection of the History of England (1618), which was to occupy him the remainder of his life.

Tethys' Festival, Daniel's second masque, was presented 5 June 1610 at Whitehall as part of the celebration of the creation of Prince Henry as Prince of Wales. This production, as befitted the occasion and Daniel's conception of masques as "Complements of State," was an elaborate, costly one (the charge for the costumes alone was nearly £1,000). In creating the entertainment, Daniel collaborated with Inigo Jones, the foremost stage architect of the period. As in The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses , the Queen (as Tethys) and her ladies (as the nymphs representing the rivers) assumed major roles.

Tethys' Festival consists of three scenes. The first represents "a Port or Hauen, with Bulworkes at the entrance, and the figure of a Castle commanding a fortified towne: within this Port were many Ships, small and great, seeming to be at Anchor, some neerer, and some further off, according to prospectiue: beyond all appeared the Horison, or termination of the Sea; which seemed to mooue with a gentle gale, and many Sayles, lying some to come into the Port, and others passing out." Zephyrus, accompanied by nyads and tritons, presents Tethys' gifts: a trident to the King and "a rich sword and skarfe," symbolizing respectively justice and "Loue and Amitie," to the Prince. The second scene is an elaborate architectural set compartmented into five niches, the middle one being Tethys' throne, the others representing the caverns of the river nymphs; from these the women issue forth to present "seuerall flowers in golden vrnes" at the Tree of Victory. In the final scene, the Queen and her ladies are revealed "in their owne forme" in an artificial grove.

It is clear from Daniel's description of the sets and costumes and from Jones's extant drawings that the verse occupies a distinctly subordinate role in the entertainment. This is consistent with Daniel's conception of the masque as outlined in the preface to Tethys' Festival: "in these things ... the onely life consists in shew; the arte and inuention of the Architect giues the greatest grace, and is of most importance: ours [the verse], the least part and of least note in the time of the performance thereof." Nevertheless, Tethys' Festival does display Daniel's fine lyric gift, particularly in the song beginning "Are they shadowes that we see?" Overall, as Rees points out, the work is a "feeble effort at a date when the masque form was in its full flower."

There is evidence of rivalry, even hostility, between Jonson and Daniel during the latter years of his life. This rivalry may have begun as early as 1604, when Daniel was chosen to write the first Queen's masque. William Drummond of Hawthornden records Jonson's assertion that "Daniel was at jealousies with him," and many references in the prefatory matter to Daniel's last four dramatic works seem directed at Jonson. Given their widely differing conceptions of the masque and pastoral drama, some kind of feud is not unlikely.

During the last years of his life, Daniel gave his attention to his prose history of England. His last major poetic work was also his final dramatic work, for which he again turned to pastoral drama. Hymen's Triumph was presented in February 1614 as part of the Queen's entertainment for the marriage of the Earl of Roxborough to Jean Drummond. A manuscript copy, with a dedicatory poem to Jean Drummond, is in Edinburgh University Library. The play was first published in 1615.

Appropriate to the occasion for which it was written, the play celebrates constancy in love. The theme is set in the prologue, an allegorical encounter of Hymen, who dons a pastoral disguise to effect a marriage between two of the most constant lovers, with Avarice, Envy, and Jealousy, "the disturbers of quiet marriage."

Thirsis, a young shepherd, remains constant in his love for Silvia, who, two years before, had been abducted by pirates and is apparently dead. Silvia, however, has escaped and returned to Arcadia, disguising herself as a boy and hiring out as a servant to Cloris. She maintains her disguise until after the marriage of Alexis, to whom her father, out of avarice, had betrothed her. Before she can reveal herself to Thirsis, Silvia is stabbed by the jealous Montanus, who believes his beloved is in love with Silvia. Thirsis, having identified Silvia by a mole, vows to die with her, but they are miraculously saved and reunited.

Although Hymen's Triumph is less derivative than The Queen's Arcadia,, Daniel's use of the conventional plot elements of pastoral drama—the female disguised as a male, the mistakes in love which ensue from the disguise, thwarted love, abduction by pirates, and an oracle—results in "sentimentality and bathos," as Cecil C. Seronsy points out. Although marred by some lengthy, incompletely assimilated passages on avarice and inconstancy, the masque has a "variety of mood and a rich lyricism," and many passages bear a striking resemblance to Shakespeare's romantic comedies, particularly Twelfth Night and As You Like It.

Five years after completing his final dramatic work, Daniel died. He was buried on 14 October 1619 at Beckington, Somersetshire, where in the church the Countess Dowager of Pembroke—who as Lady Anne Clifford had been his pupil—erected a monument to "that excellent poet and historian."

Although important for their innovations, Daniel's plays are little read and largely unappreciated today, especially by readers nurtured on the popular drama of this period. Daniel's seriousness, quietness, restraint, dignity, reflectiveness, sober-mindedness, preference for the abstract and general—qualities admirable in much of his nondramatic poetry—are not traits which serve him effectively in a dramatic medium. His fine lyric gift, which rightly earned him the epithet "well-languaged Daniel," surfaces too rarely in his plays. His pastoral dramas and masques—among the few works he did not revise—are serviceable occasional pieces, but it is the two tragedies on which Daniel would have wanted his reputation as a dramatist to rest.

Edmund Spenser praised Daniel for his first book of poems, Delia, with The Complaint of Rosamond (1592). Daniel published 50 sonnets in this book, and more were added in later editions. The passing of youth and beauty is the theme of the Complaint, a tragic monologue. In The Tragedie of Cleopatra (1594) Daniel wrote a Senecan drama. The Civile Warres (1595–1609), a verse history of the Wars of the Roses, had some influence on Shakespeare in Richard II and Henry IV; it is Daniel’s most ambitious work.

Daniel’s finest poem is probably “Musophilus: Containing a Generall Defence of Learning,” dedicated to Fulke Greville. His Poeticall Essayes (1599) also include “A Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius.” His Defence of Ryme, answering Thomas Campion’s Observations in the Art of English Poesie, a critical essay, was published in 1603. Fame and honour are the subjects of “Ulisses and the Syren” (1605) and of A Funerall Poeme uppon the Earle of Devonshire (1606). He had to defend himself against a charge of sympathizing with the Earl of Essex in The Tragedie of Philotas, acted in 1604 (published 1605). His other masques include Tethys’ Festival (1610), staged with scenery by Inigo Jones, and The Queenes Arcadia (published 1606), a pastoral tragicomedy in the Italian fashion. Daniel’s last pastoral was Hymens Triumph (1615). He also wrote The Collection of the Historie of England (1612–18) as far as the reign of Edward III.

Many of Samuel Daniel's poems and plays were reprinted multiple times in collections of his writings during his lifetime, often in substantially revised editions that represented distinct versions of the works. The following list of Daniel's major works demonstrates the breadth of his writing, both in terms of subject and genre. Included in the list is a brief description of the work, the volume and year in which it originally appeared, and the years of significant revisions:

Delia – Sonnet cycle. Portions published in Philip Sidney's Astrophel & Stella (1591). First published in a complete, authorized version in Delia and The Complaint of Rosamond (1592), and in a second revised edition in the same year. Revised, expanded versions published in Delia and Rosamond Augmented. Cleopatra (1594) and The Works of Samuel Daniel Newly Augmented (1601).

The Complaint of Rosamond – Long historical poem (epyllion) about Rosamund Clifford, the mistress of King Henry II. First published in Delia and The Complaint of Rosamond (1592) and in a second revised edition in that same year. Revised, expanded version published in Delia and Rosamond Augmented. Cleopatra (1594).

The Tragedy of Cleopatra – Senecan, closet drama about Cleopatra's suicide following the death of Mark Antony. First published in Delia and Rosamond Augmented. Cleopatra (1594). Substantially revised in Certain Small Works Heretofore Divulged by Samuel Daniel, Now Again Corrected and Augmented (1607).

The Civil Wars Between the Houses of Lancaster and York – Epic poem on the series of conflicts that have come to be called "The Wars of the Roses", modeled on Lucan's Pharsalia. Four books published as The First Four Books of the Civil Wars (1595). Earlier manuscripts of Books 1 to 2 and Book 3 survive that include substantively different versions of those portions of the poem. A fifth book was added between 1595 and 1599 and is included in The Civil Wars in The Poetical Essays of Samuel Daniel (1599). A sixth book was added to the poem in The Works of Samuel Daniel, Newly Augmented (1601). The final version of the poem, expanded to eight books, was published, on its own, in 1609.

Musophilus, or A Defense of All Learning – Long dialogue in verse between a poet (Musophilus – lover of the muses) and a courtier (Philocosmus – lover of the world). First published in The Poetical Essays of Samuel Daniel (1599). Substantially revised and shortened in Certain Small Works Heretofore Divulged by Samuel Daniel, Now Again Corrected and Augmented (1607).

A Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius – Epistolary historical poem. First published in 1599 in The Poetical Essays of Samuel Daniel.

A Panegyrick Congratulatory to the King's Most Excellent Majesty – Poem delivered to King James on his accession to the crown of England, published in A Panegyrick Congratulatory Delivered to the King's Excellent Majesty, Also Certain Epistles, With a Defense of Rhyme (1603).

Epistles – Advisory letters, in verse, addressed to Sir Thomas Egerton (Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England), Lord Henry Howard (One of His Majesty's Privy Council), Lady Margaret Clifford (Countess of Cumberland), Lady Lucy Russell (Countess of Bedford), Lady Anne Clifford, and Henry Wriothesley (Earl of Southampton). First published in A Panegyrick Congratulatory Delivered to the King's Excellent Majesty, Also Certain Epistles, With a Defense of Rhyme (1603).

A Defense of Rhyme – Prose treatise defending the English verse's lack of adherence to classical standards, a response to Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602). First published in A Panegyrick Congratulatory Delivered to the King's Excellent Majesty, Also Certain Epistles, With a Defense of Rhyme (1603).

The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses – One of the first masques to be presented to the Stuart court. A surreptitious edition was published in 1604 as The True Description of a Royal Masque, the year of its presentation at Hampton, and Daniel's authorized version was published that same year.[58]

Ulysses and the Siren – Short poem debating the attributes of an active compared to a contemplative life. First published in Certain Small Poems (1605).

The Tragedy of Philotas – Play in verse combining closet drama with elements of the popular stage. First published in Certain Small Poems (1605).

The Queen's Arcadia – Play in verse, tragicomic romance in the style of Italian pastoral drama. First published, on its own, in 1606.

A Funeral Poem Upon the Death of the Noble Earl of Devonshire – Valedictory poem upon the death of Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy, who was created the Earl of Devonshire in 1603 and died in 1606. The poem was published, on its own, in the year of Blount's death. A revised version was included in Certain Small Works (1607).

Tethys' Festival – Masque to celebrate the investiture of James's son, Prince Henry, as Prince of Wales, in June 1610. Published in the year of its performance, in The Order and Solemnity of the Creation of the High and Mighty Prince Henry, Eldest Son to Our Sacred Sovereign, Prince of Wales. In the preface accompanying the printed edition, Daniel stated that the "art and invention" of the designer of the performance, Inigo Jones, was of "the greatest grace, and is of most importance: ours, the least part and of least note."

Hymen's Triumph – Pastoral play presented at the marriage of Jean Drummond to Robert Ker of Cressford, Lord Roxborough in 1614. Published in 1615.

Collection of the History of England – Prose history of England from its earliest documented days, pre-Norman conquest, through the reign of Edward III. The first portion was published in 1612 as The First Part of the History of England. The final version was published in 1618 and represented the last of Daniel's works published during his lifetime.

In 1623, the same year as the publication of Shakespeare's First Folio, Samuel Daniel's younger brother, John Danyel, a lute player and composer in King James's court, oversaw the publication of a collection of his brother's poetry in an edition titled The Whole Works of Samuel Daniel Esquire in Poetry. The collection was dedicated to King James's son, Prince Charles. It included copies of the 1609 edition of The Civil Wars, and newly printed editions of Daniel's other verse works, each generally with their own title page dated 1623 but based upon the final versions published during the poet's life.[61]