39-) English Literature

39-) English Literature 

Margaret Cavendish

Writings

The distinctive, even eccentric, character of Margaret Cavendish (known in the 1660s as “Mad Madge”) is apparent in all her works. A story she tells against herself in CCXI Sociable Letters (1664) gives a vivid sense of the different facets of this curious personality. In letter 66 she recounts that one day as she was “Pondering upon the natures of Mankind” she wrote down on one piece of paper all the virtues of her acquaintance, Lady A.N., and on another all her imperfections. She found so many “excellencies” that she thought the lady would be pleased to hear of them. But she accidentally included in her letter the wrong paper—the one listing her acquaintance’s imperfections. On receiving the reply she opened it “with great joy,” only to be horrified when she discovered her mistake. She now begs a friend to go to her and explain what happened, “for I dare not write to her again.” The incident demonstrates Cavendish’s passion for “philosophizing,” her sincerity, her good-heartedness, her social ineptness, and her naiveté.

Separating Cavendish’s works from her life is difficult, if not impossible. To understand her relationship with rhetoric, for example, one must recall that she first learned about it not in school but from her brothers, and later from her husband and her brother-in-law—all men who were considerably older than she and who had been educated according to high Renaissance principles and practices, which included a thorough grounding in the grand style. This situation might explain her lifelong ambivalence toward rhetoric: on the one hand, she despised it as an instrument of deceit and much preferred the plain style; on the other hand, even as late as 1667 she still felt inadequate because she had never learned its rules.

Cavendish, as a poet, philosopher, writer of prose romances, essayist and playwright, published under her own name at a time when most women writers remained anonymous. Her topics included gender, power, manners, scientific method and philosophy. Her utopian romance The Blazing World is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. She was unusual in her time for publishing extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science, producing over a dozen original works; with her revised works the total came to 21. She often would have her portrait engraved on the covers of her different works so that people would know that she was solely responsible for the creation of whatever she wrote and then published in some way or another.

Cavendish has been championed and criticised as a unique, ground-breaking woman writer. She rejected the Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy of the 17th century, preferring a vitalist model. In May 1667, she became the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society of London, criticising and engaging with members and philosophers such as Robert Boyle. She has been claimed as an early opponent of animal testing.

Cavendish's publications brought her fame and helped to disprove the contemporary belief that women were inherently inferior to men. Cavendish used them to advocate women's education: women were capable of learning and benefiting from education, and she insisted her own works would have been better still if, like her brothers, she had been able to attend school.

Cavendish’s next publication, Orations of Divers Sorts, Accommodated to Divers Places (1662) is a collection of short speeches on a variety of topics about which, by her own admission, she knew little: part 2, for example, consists of sixteen pieces collected under the title “Orations in the Field of War.” No doubt she was able to draw upon the considerable experience of her husband. The orations were written while she was still in exile, though the prefatory letter that discusses the reception of her plays must have been added later. The rhetorical theory in Orations of Divers Sorts is found in the preliminary addresses, “To the Readers of My Works” and “A Praefactory Oration.” The former reveals not only her ideas on rhetoric but also her confusion about it and, above all, her insecurity. If she had been a “Learned Scholar,” she says, she might have written shorter orations. Here she is probably responding to ideas coming from the Senecan school, which recommended the curt style. But she goes on to object that extremely short speeches have no power to persuade. Here she is drawing on Renaissance doctrines of copia, or the rhetorical amplification of ideas and expression. In the next paragraph she engages in the standard seventeenth-century critique of Renaissance style: the charge that rhetoricians of the old school are concerned more with sound than with sense. In “A Praefactory Oration” she develops further her ideas on accommodation and decorum, relating the discussion to the tension between ratio and oratio: speeches that merely entertain need only eloquence, whereas the more serious kind demand deep thought. An interesting comment on Orations of Divers Sorts is to be found in the preface to CCXI Sociable Letters. Noting that she has been criticized for “Patronizing Vice,” she explains that she is merely following established oratorical practice in arguing on both sides of the question. This remark suggests that one of her projects in writing Orations of Divers Sorts was to give herself a rhetorical education, practising declamatio (a rhetorical exercise common at that time) like any other aspiring orator. Because she is thus using her orations to give herself practice in rhetoric, it is dangerous to cite her “Femal Orations” as evidence of her ideas about women’s ethos. In fact, each speaker takes a different point of view.

In The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle (1667) Cavendish’s love and admiration for her husband shine clearly through her prose, which is simple, direct, and sincere. In the preface she lays out what would now be called her methodology. Her discussion of the principles of historical writing is especially interesting for its modern views: she eschews “feigned Orations” and “fancied Policies,” dismissing them as “pleasant Romances” inappropriate in historical accounts, which must stick to the simple truth. This preface also makes it clear that even toward the end of her life Cavendish was still ambivalent about rhetoric: admiring of its power to adorn, suspicious of its power to deceive, and above all unhappy about her own lack of training in it.

Yet, relatively little work has been done on her rhetorical theory, for it was long assumed that women had no part in the rhetorical tradition. That judgment is now being questioned and revised, and women’s contributions to rhetoric are at last being studied. Especially noteworthy on Cavendish’s rhetoric is Patricia A. Sullivan’s “Female Writing beside the Rhetorical Tradition: Seventeenth Century British Biography and a Female Tradition in Rhetoric” (1980), an essay exploring the specifically female characteristics of Cavendish’s style. Sylvia Bowerbank also contributes to the discussion of Cavendish’s style in “The Spider’s Delight: Margaret Cavendish and the ‘Female’ Imagination” (1984). Kate Lilley provides an important account of aspects of Cavendish’s rhetoric in the introduction to her 1992 edition of The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World. In “My Brain the Stage: Margaret Cavendish and the Fantasy of Female Performance” (1992) Sophie Tomlinson shows the connection between acting and public speaking; and Andrew Hiscock suggests the liberating effects of the age of print in giving women a public voice in his “‘Here’s No Design, No Plot, Nor Any Ground’: The Drama of Margaret Cavendish and the Disorderly Woman” (1997). Amy Scott-Douglass’s important essay “Self-Crowned Laureatess: Towards a Critical Revaluation of Margaret Cavendish’s Prefaces” (2000) discusses Cavendish’s rhetorical strategies in creating her own image. Anna Battigelli gives an account of Cavendish’s use of narrative frames in chapter 4 of her Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind (1998). Mary Beth Rose considers Cavendish’s autobiography, A True Relation of My Birth and Breeding, in “Gender, Genre, and History: Seventeenth-Century English Women and the Art of Autobiography” (1986). Jane Donawerth’s work on Cavendish’s rhetorical theory is essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. She has discussed The Worlds Olio in two essays: “The Politics of Renaissance Rhetorical Theory by Women” (1995) and “Conversation and the Boundaries of Public Discourse in Rhetorical Theory by Renaissance Women” (1998). Especially valuable is her discussion of the importance of conversation in seventeenth-century women’s rhetoric. Christine Mason Sutherland has discussed Cavendish’s rhetoric in her essay “Aspiring to the Rhetorical Tradition: A Study of Margaret Cavendish” (1997); and Ryan John Stark has contributed to the subject in “Margaret Cavendish and Composition Style” (1999).

Major works

Poems and Fancies (1653)

Poems, and Fancies covers a variety of subjects, including science. So far as rhetorical theory is concerned, it is important for its prefaces, in which she defends her decision to publish, thus contributing to the burning question for women in rhetoric at the time: their ethos. She contends that in writing and publishing in order to achieve fame she has done nothing shameful or immodest. Another point of interest is found in her address “To Moral Philosophers”; here, in an extended metaphor from music, she discusses rhetorical pathos, the address to the passions. Cavendish loved music, and some of her most interesting rhetorical theory has to do with sound.

Poems and Fancies encompasses poems, epistles and some prose on topics that include natural philosophy, atoms, nature personified, macro/microcosms, other worlds, death, battle, hunting, love, honour and fame. Her poems at times take a dialogue form between such pairs as earth and darkness, an oak and a tree-cutter, melancholy and mirth, and peace and war. As noted by Mistress Toppe, formerly Elizabeth Chaplain and Cavendish's maid, Cavendish's writings took the form of poetical fiction, moral instruction, philosophical opinion, dialogue, discourses and poetical romances. Poems and Fancies included The Animal Parliament, a prose piece consisting largely of speeches and letters. The collection concludes with her thoughts on her writing and an advertisement for one of her future publications.

Authorial intent

Cavendish concluded the collection by stating she was aware that she did not write elegantly and that her phrasing and placement of words could be criticised. She said she had difficulty creating rhymes that could communicate her intended meaning. In short, Cavendish stated that she strove for meaning at the expense of elegance, her aim being to communicate ideas. She also noted that she expected her work to be criticised for not being useful, but she wrote not to instruct her readers in the arts, sciences or divinity, but to pass her time, asserting that she made better use of her time than many others. Cavendish returned to these points in her epistles and poems.

Epistle dedicatory

Cavendish, like authors such as Aphra Behn and William Wordsworth, stated her intended audience, writing purpose and philosophy in prefaces, prologues, epilogues and epistles. Her several epistle dedications for Poems and Fancies often sought to justify writing at a time when women writers were not encouraged and in terms of her subject choice. She instructed readers in how to read and respond to her poetry, most often by inviting praise from supporters and requesting silence from those unaffected by her work. Cavendish commonly used the epistles to admit and excuse potential weaknesses in her writing. They were directed at specific audiences and varied accordingly.

Mental spinning

Looking at several of the epistles in Poems and Fancies, her dedication to Sir Charles Cavendish, her brother in law, compares writing poetry to spinning and calls poetry mental spinning – it was commonly thought to be more appropriate for women to spin than to write, but she herself was better at writing. This is one of several occasions when Cavendish calls attention to stereotypical gender roles and expands on her reasons for not following them. As here, Cavendish often employed metaphors to describe her writing in terms of stereotypical feminine tasks or interests, such as spinning, fashion and motherhood. While criticising her own work, she said it would seem better if Sir Charles Cavendish looked favourably on it. Cavendish often appealed to readers for applause: if it were well received it would be somewhat improved. She ends by complimenting Charles's charity and generosity.

The pursuit of fame

In her epistle to noble and worthy ladies and in many others, Cavendish plainly expresses her desire for fame. She was not concerned that the best people should like her writing, as long as many people did. She justified this by linking fame to noise and noise to great numbers of people. Cavendish often assumed a defensive position, here justified by asserting that she expected critiques from males and females not only of her writing, but of her practice of writing itself. Cavendish argued that women who busy themselves writing will not act ineptly or gossip. Though she expected criticism from females, she calls for female support in gaining honour and reputation. She ends by stating that if she fails, she will see herself as martyred for the cause of women.

Defence of writing and fame

In her epistle to Mistress Toppe, Cavendish states a desire for fame as her main reason for writing. Again she asks for acceptance of her writing as a digression from accepted gender norms. While she often brings in metaphors of domestic or stereotypical feminine activities, here she tries to excuse her desire for fame by distancing her ambition from what is feminine: her ambition is a quest for glory, perfection and praise, which she states is not effeminate. Even while writing and pursuing fame she remained modest and honourable and does nothing to dishonour her family. Cavendish attributed her confidence, as a type of censor, to her belief that there is no evil, only innocence in her desire for fame. As to her writing without permission, Cavendish excuses herself by stating it is easier to get a pardon after the fact than to obtain leave beforehand. She places writing over gossip, as a common and negative female activity. She credits her books as tangible examples of her contemplation and contrasts her self-proclaimed harmless ideas with wild ideas that might lead to indiscreet actions.

Cavendish explored writing closet dramas in her exile. She became one of the best-known women playwrights through her interest in philosophical nature. This epistle is followed by a response from Mistress Toppe, praising Cavendish and her skill in poetical fiction, moral instruction, philosophical opinion, dialogue, discourses and poetical romances.

Language, knowledge and error

Cavendish included a prefatory letter to natural philosophers. She knew no language but English, and even her English was somewhat limited, since she was familiar only with "that which is most usually spoke." In other words, she downplayed her knowledge of the technical vocabulary used by natural philosophers, and thereby her knowledge of opinions and discourses that preceded her own. She then dismissed errors she might make as trivial, asserting that she did not mean her text to be taken as truth. She wrote simply to pass time and expected her work to be read for the same end. This epistle also explained her writing in verse: poets were thought to write fiction and that fiction was aligned with pastime, not truth. So verse might be expected to contain errors. Cavendish lamented that her work was not more entertaining and advised readers to skip any part they did not like.

Writing to pass the time

Her epistle states that with no children and at that time no estate, she has a lot of spare time, which she fills by writing, not housekeeping. Food husbandry in poetry was well-ordered fancy composed of fine language, proper phrases and significant words. Cavendish excused errors that might be found in her work as due to youth and inexperience, for she wrote only to distract herself from hardships of her husband's and her own. Comparing her book to a child, she said that it was innocent, young, well-behaved, bashful and sensitive. Readers should blame her, not the book, if they did not like it. If, however, the book was well liked, she made it clear that she expected fame.

Instruction on comprehension and judgement

In her epistle to the poets, Cavendish notes that as women seldom wrote, her writing may be ridiculed, as the strange and unusual seem fantastical, the fantastical seems odd, and the odd seems ridiculous. She requests that her work be judged by reason, not prejudice. She then excuses weaknesses in her poetry by stating that she writes only to escape melancholy thoughts and fill idle time. She employs a food/feasting metaphor: her poems are not ripe, but applause and praise will make them pass as a "general feast" to those of vulgar taste who take quantity over quality. As was typical in her writing, applause is welcomed and criticism censored, as she advises those who dislike her poetry to keep silent. Hers are poems of fancy and so require study. She recommends that as one with a troubled conscience ought to look to a minister for guidance. Likewise a reader will ask a poet for help in understanding her poems. Attempting again to guide readers to a positive reception of her book, Cavendish distinguishes poets (able judges of poetry) from rhymers (faulty judges of poetry) and advises people not to call her book nonsense or poorly constructed out of their own ignorance and malice. Returning again to her desire for fame, Cavendish notes that if judged by an honest poet, who would not be envious, her work would receive applause.

Cavendish asks the reader to read her fancies (poems) slowly, paying heed to each word, for each is a fancy itself. She warns that if readers lose their place or skip lines, they will miss the meaning of the entire work.

Poems: excuses and instructions

Cavendish followed some epistles with poems on how they came to be published and how they should be received. The proximity of the poems to the epistles and their similarity in subject and tone, suggests that they may be interpreted as Cavendish's own point of view.

The poem The Poetresses sic hasty Resolution, like many of Cavendish's epistles, contains excuses for errors that may be found in the poet's work and begs for praise. The poet states that self-love influences her judgement of her own poetry, which she finds she likes so much that she is moved to continue writing in hope of fame. She claims to write without thought of how her work would be received by critics. She then recalls how she was visited by Reason, who advised her to stop writing. Reason said her writing was a waste of time, that her work would not be well received and she should not have her work printed, so that the printer would not lose money. Reason also stated that there were already too many books and she should burn what she had written to spare the world from more. The poet noted her own angry response: she sent her book to press before she could be persuaded otherwise. In hindsight, however, she regretted doing so: she felt ashamed by her writing and told the reader to pity her and wipe away her tears with praise.

In The Poetresses Petition, she compares a negative reception to her books with their death. If the books suffer such a death (i. e. criticism), she requests silence and that they be forgotten, without alteration or inscriptions, and left undisturbed unless new merit is found. Again Cavendish sought to censor criticism and promote fame by instructing that only positive criticism should be voiced.

In An Apology for Writing So Much upon This Book, she compares it to a child and the book/child and author/parent to birds. The book is like a baby bird just going out on its own. The author, like a parent bird, is unsure whether the book/baby bird will be safe and chirrups an attempt to protect it.

Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancy's Pencil to the Life (1656)

This is viewed as "Cavendish's most ambitious attempt to combine modes and genres." It includes short prose romances – "The Contract" and "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity" – and several prefatory addresses to the reader. The stories concern "the advantageous production of woman as spectacle" and "repeatedly [feminise] the aristocratic and chivalric trope (or figure) of the fair unknown."

A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life (1656)

Cavendish published this autobiographical memoir as an addendum to Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, in 1656. She wrote it at the age of 33, which has been discussed by literary critics. One critic sees Cavendish's autobiography as a way to gain credibility and a marketable image that would undercut a socially improper public image. Cavendish wrote her autobiography in response to what people were saying of her in her lifetime. It relates Cavendish's lineage, social status, fortune, upbringing, education and marriage, describes her pastimes and manners, and offers an account of her personality and ambition, including thoughts on her bashfulness, contemplative nature and writing. She also shares her views on gender (appropriate behaviour and activity), politics (Parliamentarians v. Royalists) and class (proper behaviour of servants).

The memoir details the lives of her family, including a short account of her brother Charles Lucas, one of the best Civil War Cavalier cavalry commanders, executed by the Parliamentarians for treason in the Second English Civil War. She goes on to address the economic and personal hardships that she and her family faced from the war and their political allegiance, such as loss of estates and bereavements.

CCXI Sociable Letters (1664)

CCXI Sociable Letters was published in 1664, but many of the letters were written while she was still in exile. Some were presumably written before Orations of Divers Sorts—particularly letter 175, in which she discusses the idea of writing a book of orations, expressing her reservations about her competence to do so. She knows “no Rules in Rhetorick,” never having been to school. In this letter she tells of the “antient decayed gentlewoman” who taught her to read and write. Four other pieces in CCXI Sociable Letters are significant to Cavendish’s views on rhetoric: two prefaces and letters 27 and 28. “To All Professors of Learning and Art” offers her familiar excuse for the deficiencies of the work: she is a woman and therefore inferior both by nature and by “breeding.” The preface addressed to “Noble Readers” is a rebuttal of criticisms of earlier works. One other important point in this preface concerns style; and again her rhetorical theory takes the form of defense, this time against the anticipated criticism that she does not use “High Words and Mystical Expressions.” What she is endeavoring to do, she explains, is to reproduce conversational style in letters. Letters 27 and 28 are panegyrics on rhetoric. In spite of what she says elsewhere about the superiority of thought over expression, she now speaks in praise of eloquence considered as pathos, the address to the emotions. In letter 27 she praises men for their natural eloquence. She fears women are incapable of it and therefore envies men. In the next letter she defends herself against the charge that she admires mere words, explaining that the reason she loves eloquence “before all other Musick” is that it has the power to make truth operative. CCXI Sociable Letters is certainly one of the most successful of all Cavendish’s works, beguiling in its candor, and with shrewd comments on everyday life and domestic relations that add a delicious sharpness. The racy style suggests that, had it not been for her debilitating bashfulness, she might have been a famous conversationalist. She herself knows that this particular genre is her forte: she explains in another preface to the work (titled “The Preface”) that she has chosen to write letters rather than plays because they allow her to use the conversational style.

Published in 1664 by William Wilson, CCXI Sociable Letters (1664) is a collection of letters, written as if composed by real women. The organisation is similar to that of The World's Olio (1655). The topics are as varied as the forms and length of the letters. They cover marriage, war, politics, medicine, science, English and classical literature, and miscellaneous matters like gambling and religious extremism. Some letters seem to point to characters as actual people – Thomas Hobbes may appear in letter 173 and C. R. stand for King Charles II, – and some are addressed to real people with whom Cavendish often communicated, but most are fictional, leading to a surprisingly vibrant, ongoing conversation and observation of contemporary life.

Cavendish's natural philosophy

Throughout her work on natural philosophy, Margaret Cavendish defends the belief that all nature is composed of free, self-moving, rational matter.[33] Eileen O'Neill provides an overview of Cavendish's natural philosophy and its critical reception in her introduction to Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. She describes Cavendish's natural philosophy as rejecting Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy and favouring Stoic doctrines: while women rarely wrote about natural philosophy in the 17th century, Cavendish published six books on the subject. O'Neill points out that Cavendish herself was not formally educated in natural philosophy, though William Cavendish and his brother Charles shared an interest in the subject and supported her interest and study in the area. She may also have been influenced by social encounters with philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. O'Neill believes Hobbes (who had instructed Charles in philosophy) had marked influence on Cavendish's natural philosophy, making her one of the few 17th-century supporters of Hobbes' materialist philosophy, which argued that incorporeal souls did not exist in nature. Beginning in the 1660s, Cavendish began to study the work of her contemporaries more seriously. O'Neill suggests that such study was meant to enable Cavendish to argue her own points better by contrast with those of other natural philosophers.

O'Neill notes that Cavendish's natural philosophy and her writing in general were criticised by many contemporaries and by more recent readers, such as Pepys, Henry More and Virginia Woolf. Cavendish's work has also received positive criticism and been lauded by many for tackling typically male-dominated subjects such as natural philosophy. Letters and poems of praise by her husband were included in several of her published works.

Writing as an honourable disease

Cavendish in her preface to Observations upon Experimental Philosophy states that she expects readers to say that her practice of writing prolifically is a disease. If so, Cavendish stated, many others, including Aristotle, Cicero, Homer and St Augustine, have suffered the same disease. It was an honour for someone of great ambition (as she often identified herself) to share the disease of such wise and eloquent men. In these, as in her other writings, she asserts that she writes for herself and that her writing is a harmless pastime when compared with those of many other women. She contradicts herself, however, by adding that she writes for delight, which she had denied in her previous work. Also somewhat contradictory is her intention of continuing to write even if she has no readers, which belies her desire for fame. Ultimately, Cavendish excuses her criticism of and engagement with the theories of other natural philosophers as a necessary step in the search for truth.

Learning versus wit

In her epistle to the reader, Cavendish writes that woman's wit may equal that of man, and women may be able to learn as easily as men. She argues that wit is natural, whereas learning is artificial, and in her time, men have more chance of educating themselves than women.

Cavendish remarks on her own experience reading philosophical works: many such works have challenged her understanding with their frequently difficult words and expressions. Thus Cavendish advises writers of philosophy to use language appropriate to less expert readers. She defends this by stating that philosophical terms should ease communication of thoughts. She believes that successful communication is possible in all languages and accuses those who complicate communication (particularly English writers) of aiming for esteem from those who admire writing simply because they do not understand it, without considering that it may be nonsense. In her own work, Cavendish states, she chooses not to use difficult terms, although she adds that she understands such terms. Her stated reason is that she desires her work to be accessible to people regardless of their education. Her aim is to communicate her ideas clearly. She requests that any errors that may be found in her work be overlooked and readers remain focused on her main ideas. Here, as in many epistles, she instructs readers on how to approach her work and requests them to read it fully and withhold criticism until they have done so.

The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666)

Cavendish's prose tale was published in 1666 and again in 1668, each time with Observations upon Experimental Philosophy.

As many such as Silvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson have noted,this early version of science fiction critiques and explores such issues as science, gender and power. It also views relations between imagination and reason and philosophy and fiction. Cavendish writes herself into the book, which details a fictional, quite separate new world and its empress. She remarks in her epilogue that she is the empress, adding that in much the same way as there was a Charles the First, she would be seen as Margaret the First.

Plays in 1662 and 1668

Cavendish’s first collection of plays, though written during her exile, was not published  until 1662, the original manuscript having been lost at sea. The prefatory material includes a discussion of gender: here, as in The Worlds Olio, Cavendish shows a clear recognition of the difference between masculine and feminine styles and their different uses. This time she does not suggest that women are naturally inferior. She also takes further her ideas on accommodation: because discourse must be adjusted to particular audiences and circumstances, one cannot expect the orator to use the same style in private conversation as in public speech. On the relationship between speaking and writing, she asserts that the best writers are not usually the best speakers; and women cannot be good writers because they talk too much. A short note immediately preceding a prefatory poem by William Cavendish is especially interesting because it gives instructions about delivery. Here again, Cavendish is concerned with decorum: the readers must not read the scenes as if they were chapters in a book. The last play in this collection, The Female Academy, uses the idea of a women’s retreat, rather similar to the one in William Shakespeare’s Loves Labors Lost (1598). One must be cautious in attributing the ideas of the various speakers to Cavendish herself, for they represent a variety of points of view; but they are worth noting, especially those that also occur in her nonfictional works. Of these, three should be noted in particular.

The first has to do with attitudes toward rhetoric: the lady speaker in act 2, scene 4, represents rhetoric as the art of deceit. This position is consistent with Cavendish’s own in The Worlds Olio, though not with that in CCXI Sociable Letters. Second, the ideas expressed on the subject of propriety are also consistent with what is known from other sources of Cavendish’s views: a true aristocrat, she insists upon proper deference to different ranks. Finally, the characters in the play develop the idea of music as rhetoric found in The Worlds Olio: disputative discourses are compared to “Chromatick Musick”; and in act 2, scene 16, music itself is added as a fifth kind of discourse after the four major kinds listed: reasoning belongs to the soul; speaking to the senses; actions to life; and writing, painting, and carving to the arts; but music is “the Language of the Gods.”

Two volumes of Cavendish's dramatic works were printed. Plays (1662), printed by A. Warren (London) includes:

Loves Adventures , The Several Wits , Youths Glory, and Deaths Banquet

The Lady Contemplation , Wits Cabal , The Unnatural Tragedy , The Public Wooing , The Matrimonial Trouble , Nature's Three Daughters, Beauty, Love and Wit , The Religious , The Comical Hash , Bell in Campo , A Comedy of the Apocryphal Ladies , The Female Academy , Plays, Never Before Printed (1668) was published by Anne Maxwell (London): , The Sociable Companions, or the Female Wits , The Presence , Scenes (edited from The Presence) , The Bridals , The Convent of Pleasure , A Piece of a Play

Other works

Cavendish also published collections of Philosophical Letters (1664), orations, as in her collection entitled Orations (1662). Many of her works address such issues as natural philosophy, gender, power and manners. Cavendish's plays were never acted in her lifetime, but a number, including The Convent of Pleasure (1668) have been staged since. Several of Cavendish's works have epistles, prefaces, prologues and epilogues in which she discusses her work, philosophy and ambition, while instructing the reader on how to read and respond to her writing. Her work has been alternately criticised and championed from its original publication to the present day.

Critical reception

Cavendish’s works were not well received in her own day. Two celebrated diarists made fun of her: Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, who wrote a rude ballad about her visit to the Royal Society on 30 May 1667. Evelyn’s wife, Mary, and Dorothy Osbourne, wife of William Temple, both thought her so eccentric that she ought not to be allowed out. She had her admirers, however: Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, wrote a poem in her honor on the flyleaf of his copy of Poems, and Fancies; John Dryden congratulated Newcastle on his wife’s “masculine style”; Sir Kenelm Digby and Henry More, to both of whom she gave copies of her work, professed to value it; and Joseph Glanvill and Walter Charleton respected her enough to offer her serious criticism and advice. Among women, Bathsua Makin paid tribute to her in An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673). In general, however, she remained a frequently satirized figure.

Cavendish’s reputation fared little better in subsequent generations, though she continued to have admirers: Alexander Nicol appended extracts from Natures Pictures to Poems on Several Subjects, Both Comical and Serious (1766); Sir Egerton Bridges in 1814 published an edition of Cavendish’s “A True Relation of My Birthe and Breeding”; and Kathleen Jones reports in her 1988 biography of Cavendish that Charles Lamb enjoyed her Sociable Letters and so much admired her biography of her husband, the duke, that he referred to it as a jewel. In the twentieth century Virginia Woolf valued her work, though she also made trenchant criticisms of it. Only in the latter part of the twentieth century, however, did Cavendish’s importance begin to be recognized. Many contemporary scholars are now engaged in studying her works, and there is a flourishing Margaret Cavendish Society.

Cavendish was an unorthodox and daring intellectual who received positive and negative commentary from her contemporaries. Negative comments can be found by the Royal Society member Samuel Pepys who once wrote of her as "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman" though he was eager to read her work. Dorothy Osborne reflected in one published letter, after reading a book by the Duchess, that she was "sure there are soberer people in Bedlam." She also had numerous admirers, Constantijn Huygens, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, John Dryden, Kenelm Digby, Henry More were among them. Joseph Glanvill and Walter Charleton corresponded with her and engaged with philosophy and science. After her death, her husband William Cavendish compiled a book of admiring letters, poems, and epitaphs by numerous people. In the nineteenth century Charles Lamb enjoyed her Sociable Letters and so much admired her biography of her husband that he called it a jewel "for which no casket is rich enough." James Fitzmaurice argues “Cavendish was viewed sympathetically by the English Romantic poets”.

Margaret Cavendish was the first person to develop an original theory of atomism in Britain. She was also the first female to be invited to attend a session of the Royal Society. One member, John Evelyn, saw in Cavendish "a mighty pretender to learning, poetry, and philosophy". Yet her knowledge was recognised by some, such as the protofeminist Bathsua Makin: "The present Dutchess of New-Castle, by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Gown-Men." She saw her exemplifying what women could become through education. New manuscript evidence also suggests she was read and taken seriously by at least some early Royal Society members, such as its secretary, Nehemiah Grew.

Cavendish was mostly lost to obscurity in the early twentieth century. Not until Virginia Woolf's The Common Reader (1925) did discourse rediscover the Duchess. Woolf remarked that:

the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her intelligence so active.

Margaret Cavendish began to generate intense scholarly interest in the 1980s, when rediscovered and analysed from a modern feminist perspective. Since then there have been many book-length critical studies of her. She has also gained fame as one of the first science-fiction writers, with her novel The Blazing World. Her self inserted as a character named Margaret Cavendish in The Blazing World is said to be among the earliest examples of the modern Mary Sue trope. More recently, her plays have been examined in performance studies, for blurring the lines between performance and literature, challenging gender identities and upsetting gender norms. Further analysis on Cavendish appears here.

This new interest has engendered media projects. The film, The Blazing World (2021) is loosely inspired by Cavendish's science fiction story. Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World (2014), which was also loosely inspired by Cavendish, won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and was long listed for the Booker Prize. Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton dramatises her "with lucid precision and sharp cuts through narrative time", as a new approach to "imagining the life of a historical woman".[60]] As the digital humanities grow, several projects have begun archiving Cavendish. The International Margaret Cavendish Society was set up as "a means of communication between scholars worldwide", to increase awareness of Cavendish's scholarly presence as a hub for newsletters, contacts and links to Cavendish's works. Likewise the Digital Cavendish Project works to make Cavendish's writing accessible and readable for people across the web and "highlight digital research, image archives, scholarly projects, and teaching materials". On 26 January 2018, the Digital Cavendish Twitter account announced that its next goal was to compile the Complete Works of Margaret Cavendish.

A question that necessarily arises for contemporary scholars is whether or not Margaret Cavendish should be regarded as an early feminist. She certainly paved the way for the feminists who came later; however, she evinces little of that solidarity with other women that characterizes feminism. In fact, at the beginning of Natures Pictures she not only confesses to extraordinary ambition but also admits that she does not want to share her glory with other women: “I dare not examin the former times, for fear I should meet with such of my Sex that have out-done all the glory I can aime at.” An alternative approach is to see Cavendish in terms of the aristocratic culture of her own time, one that adopted an ideology of display. Hero Chalmers discusses Cavendish as an aristocrat in “Dismantling the Myth of ‘Mad Madge’: The Cultural Context of Margaret Cavendish’s Authorial Self-Presentation” (1997). Diana Barnes reinforces this approach in “The Restoration of Royalist Form in Margaret Cavendish’s Sociable Letters” (2001). In “Margaret Cavendish: Strategies Rhetorical and Philosophical against the Charge of Wantonness, or Her Excuses for Writing So Much” (1991), Sylvia Brown also sees Cavendish in terms of a heroic ideology, rather than as an early feminist, though she puts forward the idea that Cavendish offered a new, feminine interpretation of copia.

38-) English Literature

38- ) English Literature 

Lady Margaret Lucas Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (née Lucas; 1623 – 16 December 1673) was a prolific English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer and playwright. In her lifetime she produced more than 12 original literary works, many of which became well known due to her high social status. This high social status allowed Margaret to meet and converse with some of the most important and influential minds of her time.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was a prolific writer who worked in many genres, including poetry, fiction, drama, letters, biography, science, and even science fiction. Unlike most women of her day, who wrote anonymously, she published her works under her own name. Her significance as a rhetorical theorist has two main dimensions. First, she lived at a time when rhetoric itself and rhetorical theory were undergoing radical changes. Her writings provide a valuable source of information about some of these changes. Second, her ideas about the rhetorical tradition provide particular insight into the relationship of women to that tradition at a critical time in its history. Cavendish not only practiced rhetoric but also recorded her progress, including her fears and failures, and her rhetorical ideas must be understood in this context. No single work is devoted to a consideration of rhetorical theory; to discover her ideas one must sift through many of her works, particularly her prefaces. She was perhaps more successful as an aspiring rhetorician than as a theorist of rhetoric. Yet, familiarity with her ideas is crucial to an understanding of the development of women’s sense of themselves in relation to the tradition, which was later to bear fruit in the work of women more apparently successful than she.

Background

Born Margaret Lucas to Sir Thomas Lucas (1573–1625) and Elizabeth Leighton (died 1647), she was the youngest child of the family. She had four sisters and three brothers, the royalists Sir John Lucas, Sir Thomas Lucas and Sir Charles Lucas, who owned the manor of St John's Abbey, Colchester. As a teenager, she became an attendant on Queen Henrietta Maria and travelled with her into exile in France, living for a time at the court of the young King Louis XIV. She became the second wife of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1645.

Her husband, then-marquess William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, was a Royalist commander in Northern England during the First English Civil War and in 1644 went into self-imposed exile in France. Margaret accompanied him and remained abroad until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.

Cavendish returned to her husband in Antwerp early in 1653. The next work in which she deals with rhetorical theory is The Worlds Olio, published in 1655 but begun before her departure to England at the end of 1651. It is a curious work, rather like an informal conversation, flitting from one subject to another in disconnected fashion, with no serious sustained discussion of any issue. In the eclectic assortment of ideas about rhetoric it is possible to identify four themes. The first concerns women as practitioners of rhetoric. In spite of her own project of seeking fame as a writer, she entertains a low view of women’s capacities, declaring that they are inferior to men in wit, wisdom, and eloquence. Women can at best only imitate men. Some women may by education become more adept than some men, but in general, men have a natural advantage. Masculine and feminine styles of writing are quite different, she believes; and she usually sees the masculine as superior. She also introduces the idea, however, that the styles are complementary; each has its uses. This kind of inconsistency is typical of much of her discussion both of women and of rhetoric.

The second theme is the relationship between thought and speech, or ratio and oratio in rhetorical terms. In this work Cavendish, like many of her contemporaries, regards rhetoric as the art of expression only; she is contemptuous and, indeed, suspicious of it: the “colours” of rhetoric can make the bad appear good and vice versa. The business of rhetoric is merely to dress thought; she compares the rhetor to the tailor. Yet, dress and rhetoric have their own importance and must be appropriate to the occasion; and she acknowledges that “want of eloquence” can conceal or misrepresent the truth.

The third theme concerns delivery. In a preface, “To the Reader,” she declares that “the very sound of the voice will seem to alter the sense of the Theme” and uses metaphors from music to illuminate her discussion. In essay 137 she rules that passionate speeches must be delivered in a tenor or even a bass voice, not a treble, to give due weight and solemnity. She even gives advice about the use of lips, teeth, and tongue to achieve the desired effect. Finally, the fourth theme is Cavendish’s preference for natural style. Her dislike of the artificial extends to a horror of the pedantic, the fussily correct: she even states that “it is against nature for women to spell right.” A good style has ease and simplicity, which are more important than mere accuracy.

The Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655; revised as Grounds of Natural Philosophy, 1668) brings together, somewhat eclectically, Cavendish’s ideas about science. Again, she addresses issues of rhetorical theory in the prefatory material. In an epistle to the reader she recognizes that as a woman she is unable to teach publicly; a regrettable situation, she observes, because writing is inferior to speaking as a medium. The Philosophical and Physical Opinions also has an important preface addressed to universities, to which she sent complimentary copies of her works. It includes a plea for recognition of women’s rationality; women, she says, are so used to having their intellectual capacities despised by men that they begin to despise themselves.

Natures Pictures, also written during her time in exile, is predominantly fictional. One of the stories, however, concerns an anchoress who gains a reputation as a wise woman and is consulted on matters of all kinds, including oratory. Since the opinions expressed by the wise woman are quite similar to Cavendish’s own as expressed elsewhere, they may be taken as hers. The main topic of discussion is pathos and its dangers: it ought, says the anchoress, to be banished from law courts; only truth has a place there. Here again she compares the power of oratory to the power of music, and the audience to a musical instrument upon which the orator plays.

Early years

Childhood

Cavendish's father, Thomas Lucas, was exiled after a duel that led to the death of "one Mr. Brooks", but pardoned by King James. He returned to England in 1603. As the youngest of eight, Cavendish recorded spending a lot of time with her siblings. She had no formal education, but had access to libraries and tutors, although she hinted that the children paid little heed to tutors, who were "rather for formality than benefit". Cavendish began putting ideas down on paper at an early age, although it was poorly accepted for women to display such intelligence at the time and she kept her efforts in the privacy of her home. The family had significant means and Cavendish stated that her widowed mother chose to keep her family in a condition "not much lower" than when her father was alive; the children had access to "honest pleasures and harmless delights". Her mother had little to no male help.

Records of the birth of Margaret Lucas were lost during the English Civil Wars in the 1640s, but she was probably born in 1623, just outside Colchester. She was the youngest in a family of eight children, consisting of three sons and five daughters. The main source of information about these early years is Cavendish’s autobiography, “A True Relation of My Birthe and Breeding,” which was published with the first (but not with the second) edition of Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life (1656). Her father, Thomas Lucas, died when she was two; the most formative influence upon her, therefore, was that of her mother, Elizabeth Leighton Lucas. Within the family, relationships were warm and loving, but strangers were kept at arm’s length, perhaps because the Lucases were royalists, whereas most of their neighbors supported Parliament. Possibly as a result, Margaret grew up to be afflicted by a terrible bashfulness that left its mark on both her practice and her theory of rhetoric. She received what little education she had at home from a governess and visiting tutors. In general, she was leniently treated and not forced to study against her will. Not a keen student, she greatly preferred to amuse herself by writing—scribbling, as she called it—and by designing her own clothes.

Her happy family life was violently disrupted in 1641, when the political situation reached a crisis: never popular with their Puritan neighbors, the Lucases were attacked in their family home. In 1642 Margaret and her mother fled to Oxford, where King Charles I now held his court; in 1643 Margaret became maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria, whom she accompanied in 1644 when the queen escaped to France. There, in the spring of 1645 she met William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, the famous royalist in exile, whom she married in December of that year. Her husband was a great influence throughout her life. He encouraged her to write, supplemented her scanty education, paid for the publication of her books, and above all gave her confidence. He was himself a patron of the arts and sciences, and his brother Charles was a noted scholar. Childless, and without a great house and estate to care for, Margaret Cavendish amused herself in the early years of her marriage by writing, first in Paris, later in Rotterdam, and finally in Antwerp. The turning point of her career, however, was a visit to England begun in 1651. She had returned, escorted by her brother-in-law, to try to claim a portion of her husband’s sequestered estates for her maintenance. During the eighteen months she spent there, she wrote constantly and also arranged for the publication of her first two books, Poems, and Fancies (1653) and Philosophicall Fancies (1653).

Lady-in-waiting

When Queen Henrietta Maria was in Oxford, Cavendish never gained permission from her mother to become a lady-in-waiting. She accompanied the Queen into exile in France, away from her family for the first time. She notes that while she was confident in the company of her siblings, amongst strangers she became bashful, being afraid she might speak or act inappropriately without her siblings' guidance, while anxious to be well received and well liked. She spoke only when necessary and so came to be regarded as a fool, which Cavendish stated that she preferred to being seen as wanton or rude.

Regretting that she had left home to be a lady-in-waiting, Cavendish informed her mother that she wanted to leave the court, but her mother persuaded her not to disgrace herself by leaving and provided her with funds that Cavendish noted quite exceeded the normal means of a courtier. She remained a lady-in-waiting for two more years before marrying William Cavendish, then still Marquess of Newcastle.

Marriage to the Marquess

Cavendish noted that her husband liked her bashfulness; he was the only man she was ever in love with, not for his title, wealth or power, but for merit, justice, gratitude, duty and fidelity. She saw these as attributes that held people together even in misfortune, and in their case helped them to endure suffering for their political allegiance. Cavendish had no children, despite efforts by her physician to help her conceive. Her husband had five surviving children from a previous marriage, two of whom, Jane and Elizabeth, wrote a comic play, The Concealed Fancies.

Cavendish later wrote a biography of her husband: The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince William Cavendish. In her dedication, Cavendish recalls a time when rumours surrounded the authorship of her works: that her husband wrote them. Cavendish notes that her husband defended her from these, but admits to a creative relationship, even as her writing tutor, for writing "fashions an image of a husband and wife who rely on each other in the public realm of print."

Personal life

Financial problems

A few years after her marriage, she and her husband's brother, Sir Charles Cavendish, returned to England. Cavendish had heard that her husband's estate, sequestrated due to his being a royalist delinquent, would be sold and that she as his wife could hope to benefit from the sale. In the event she received no benefit. She noted that while many women petitioned for funds, she herself only did so once, and being denied decided such efforts were not worth the trouble. After a year and a half she left England to be with her husband again.

In 1660, with the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, Margaret Cavendish and her husband were finally able to return to England. For a while they lived in London, but they soon found the court of Charles II uncongenial and before the end of 1660 had retired to their estate at Welbeck. Once settled in there, Cavendish resumed her life as a writer, publishing material she had worked on during her exile. She also made a serious effort to improve her knowledge and skills, studying philosophy and revising her philosophical works in the light of her new knowledge.

Character and health

Cavendish stated in A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life that her bashful nature, which she described as "melancholia", made her "repent my going from home to see the World abroad." It manifested itself in reluctance to discuss her work in public, but this she satirised in her writing. Cavendish defined and sought self-cures for the physical manifestations of her melancholia, which included "chill paleness", inability to speak, and erratic gestures.

Religious beliefs

Cavendish's views on God and religion remained ambiguous. Her writings show her as a Christian, but she did not often address the matter. In her Physical Opinions, she explicitly stated her belief in the existence of God – "Pray account me not an Atheist, but believe as I do in God Almighty," – but sought to split philosophy from theology and so avoid debating God's actions in many of her philosophical works.

Her theological temerity was unusual at a time when much women's writing was built around religion. Although Cavendish acknowledged God's existence, she held "that natural reason cannot perceive or have an idea of an immaterial being." So "when we name God, we name an Inexpressible, and Incomprehensible Being." Still, she believed that all parts of nature have an innate knowledge of God's existence. Even inanimate matter, she argues, "also have an interior, fixt and innate knowledge of the existency of God, as, that he is to be adored and worshipped. And thus the inanimate part may, after its own manner, worship and adore God."

Fashion and fame

Cavendish in her memoir explained her enjoyment in reinventing herself through fashion. She said she aimed at uniqueness in dress, thoughts and behaviour, and disliked wearing the same fashions as other women. She also made her desire for fame public. Several passages remark on her virtuous character: while acknowledging goodness in others, she thought it acceptable to hope to better them and even achieve everlasting fame.

She expected to be criticised for deciding to write a memoir, but retorted that it was written for herself, not for delight, to give later generations a true account of her lineage and life. She noted that others, such as Caesar and Ovid, had done the same.

Death

She died suddenly on 15 December 1673,in London, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 7 January 1674. Her husband arranged for a monument, by the sculptor Grinling Gibbons, to be erected in the north transept of the abbey. Her husband was not well enough to attend her funeral and two years later was himself interred with her, on 22 January 1676. Before he died, however, he collected all the letters and poems written to celebrate her and arranged to have them published as Letters and Poems in Honour of the Incomparable Princess, Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle (1676). In his 1957 biography of Cavendish, Douglas Grant quotes the epitaph that William Cavendish wrote to be engraved on the tomb in which he was soon to join his wife:The epitaph reads: " Here lyes the Loyall Duke of Newcastle and his Dutches, his second wife, by whome he had noe issue; her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble familie, for all the Brothers were Valiant and all the Sisters virtuous. ". All the Brothers Were Valiant became the title of a novel and number of film adaptations in the early 20th century.

Margaret Cavendish’s last years were clouded by disputes with her husband’s children and false accusations from his servants. This Dutches was a wise, wittie and learned Lady, which her many Bookes do well testifie; she was a most Virtuous and a Loving and carefull wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his banishment and miseries, and when he came home never parted from him in his solitary retirements. 

37-) English Literature

37-) English Learning 

Thomas Campion 

Thomas Campion (sometimes spelled Campian ; 12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620)  . He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He was an English composer, poet , musical and literary theorist,  physician , and one of the outstanding songwriters of the brilliant English lutenist school of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. His lyric poetry reflects his musical abilities in its subtle mastery of rhythmic and melodic structure. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music .Campion’s importance for nondramatic literature of the English Renaissance lies in the exceptional intimacy of the musical-poetic connection in his work . While other poets and musicians talked about the union of the two arts, only Campion produced complete songs wholly of his own composition, and only he wrote lyric poetry of enduring literary value whose very construction is deeply etched with the poet’s care for its ultimate fusion with music. The development of this composite art was Campion’s lifelong project, which made a modest but lasting impression on the modern assessment of the nature of lyric poetry in England in the last decade of the 16th century and the first two decades of the 17th. A practicing physician in his later years, Campion occupied a curious place somewhere between the well-trained courtly amateur and the professional craftsman in poetry, music, and drama—particularly the masque. Although he did not earn his livelihood as a musician nor rely on favor garnered through the system of literary patronage, he did seek the recognition of print and the remuneration of the professional craftsman at court. He produced an accomplished oeuvre in both poetry and music (mostly in the form of songs for which he provided both lyrics and musical settings), and he wrote treatises on both arts. His Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602) and A New Way of Making Four Parts in Counterpoint (circa 1610) are conservative works, drawing extensively on earlier authors, yet both treatises and the songs they support offer startling innovations as well, and the musical treatise continued to appear—incorporated without acknowledgment into John Playford’s Brief Introduction to the Skill of Music (1660)—throughout the 17th century.

Life

Campion was born in London, the son of John Campion, a clerk of the Court of Chancery, and Lucy (née Searle – daughter of Laurence Searle, one of the Queen's serjeants-at-arms). He was the second child of John and Lucy Campion; a sister, Rose, preceded him by two years. His early family life was complicated by the vicissitudes of living in a time of shorter life expectancy than that of the present day: Lucy Campion was a widow with a young daughter, Mary, at the time of her marriage to Thomas’s father, John, making Thomas the third child in the household. When John died in October 1576, Lucy married a third time in August 1577, and then died in March 1580, leaving at least Rose and Thomas in the guardianship of their stepfather, Augustine Steward. When Steward also remarried in 1581, Thomas, then 14, and his new stepbrother were sent away to Cambridge, apparently not even returning home for vacations.

Campion left Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1584. Although he did not take a degree, the three years he spent at Cambridge must have been significant for Upon the death of Campion's father in 1576, his mother married Augustine Steward, dying soon afterwards. His stepfather assumed charge of the boy and sent him, in 1581, to study at Peterhouse, Cambridge as a "gentleman pensioner"; he left the university after four years without taking a degree. He later entered Gray's Inn to study law in 1586. However, he left in 1595 without having been called to the bar.On 10 February 1605, he received his medical degree from the University of Caen.

Campion is thought to have lived in London, practising as a physician, until his death in March 1620 – possibly of the plague. He was apparently unmarried and had no children. He was buried the same day at St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street.

The acquaintances he would have made: Abraham Fraunce, Gabriel Harvey, and Thomas Nashe were all at Cambridge during Campion’s years in residence. In 1586 he made an even more decisive move for the direction he was to take, enrolling at Gray’s Inn, a law school more celebrated for its development of the artistic tastes and talents of the young men who entered than for its rigorous legal training. At Gray’s Inn, Campion made many friends, including the poet Francis Davison, and performed in plays and masques.

From that point on, as Campion’s adult life was taking shape, the known facts are few and details are vague. He left Gray’s Inn probably sometime around 1594, and eventually his references to people from other parts of the city make clear that he had moved to St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, where other musicians lived. He may have been with Essex in the siege on Rouen in 1591; he described the actions of the cowardly Barnabe Barnes during this siege in his Latin poem In Barnum (1619). He went to the University of Caen in 1602, studied medicine, and took up a medical practice in London at the age of nearly forty; Walter R. Davis, in Thomas Campion (1987), suggests that this was a practical course, since the £260 his mother had left in trust for him had run out, forcing him to find a way to earn a living.

After attending the University of Cambridge (1581–84), Campion studied law in London, but he was never called to the bar. Little is known of him until 1606, by which time he had received a degree in medicine from the University of Caen, France. He practiced medicine from 1606 until his death.

He was implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, but was eventually exonerated, as it was found that he had unwittingly delivered the bribe that had procured Overbury's death.

Campion died on March 1, 1620, at age 52. He was buried on the day of his death at St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, Fleet Street. He had never married, and although he had carved an important place for himself in the musical and literary world of James’s court, he cannot be said to have been a success, at least not by late-20th-century standards. With six collections of songs in print, three masques presented at court and their descriptions published, and an apparently adequate midlife career as a physician, Campion was able to leave only 23 pounds to his longtime friend and collaborator, Philip Rosseter. There is no record of any more musical or English literary work after 1617, and as noted above, the 1619 collection of Latin verse contains considerable reprinting of the 1595 collection. Even though the outcome of the Monson-Overbury scandal was positive for Campion and his friend Monson, it seems likely that these events prompted his withdrawal from the glittering world of courtly flattery and intrigue.

Poetry and songs

Campion’s entry into the field came in 1601 with the publication of Philip Rosseter’s Book of Ayres. By 1604 Rosseter was the king’s lutenist and remained active in court entertainment throughout most of King James’s reign. He was Campion’s best friend and the sole inheritor named in Campion’s will. It is fair to say, however, that little would be known of Rosseter today had he not collaborated with Campion in this collection. The book was presented for publication by Rosseter, and it was he who wrote the dedication to Campion’s friend and supporter Sir Thomas Monson, but Campion contributed the first 21 songs and is almost certainly the author of the brief but groundbreaking treatise on song presented as an address “To the Reader.”

The body of his works is considerable, the earliest known being a group of five anonymous poems included in the "Songs of Divers Noblemen and Gentlemen," appended to Newman's edition of Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, which appeared in 1591. In 1595, Poemata, a collection of Latin panegyrics, elegies and epigrams was published, winning him a considerable reputation. This was followed, in 1601, by a songbook, A Booke of Ayres, with words by himself and music composed by himself and Philip Rosseter. The following year he published his Observations in the Art of English Poesie, "against the vulgar and unartificial custom of riming," in favour of rhymeless verse on the model of classical quantitative verse. Campion's theories on poetry were criticized by Samuel Daniel in "Defence of Rhyme" (1603).[1]

In 1607, he wrote and published a masque[6] for the occasion of the marriage of Lord Hayes, and, in 1613, issued a volume of Songs of Mourning: Bewailing the Untimely Death of Prince Henry, set to music by John Cooper (also known as Coperario). The same year he wrote and arranged three masques: The Lords' Masque for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth; an entertainment for the amusement of Queen Anne at Caversham House; and a third for the marriage of the Earl of Somerset to the infamous Frances Howard, Countess of Essex. If, moreover, as appears quite likely, his Two Bookes of Ayres[7] (both words and music written by himself) belongs also to this year, it was indeed his annus mirabilis.

In 1615, he published a book on counterpoint, A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint By a Most Familiar and Infallible Rule, a technical treatise which was for many years the standard textbook on the subject. It was included, with annotations by Christopher Sympson, in Playford's Brief Introduction to the Skill of Musick, and two editions appear to have been published by 1660.

Some time in or after 1617 appeared his Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres.[10] In 1618 appeared the airs that were sung and played at Brougham Castle on the occasion of the King's entertainment there, the music by George Mason and John Earsden, while the words were almost certainly by Campion. In 1619, he published his Epigrammatum Libri II. Umbra Elegiarum liber unus, a reprint of his 1595 collection with considerable omissions, additions (in the form of another book of epigrams) and corrections.[1]

Campion’s first publication was five sets of verses appearing anonymously in the pirated 1591 edition of Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella. In 1595 his Poemata (Latin epigrams) appeared, followed in 1601 by A Booke of Ayres (written with Philip Rosseter), of which much of the musical accompaniment and verses were Campion’s. He wrote a masque in 1607 and three more in 1613, in which year his Two Bookes of Ayres probably appeared. The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres came out in 1617, probably followed by a treatise (undated) on counterpoint.

Campion’s lyric poetry and songs for lute accompaniment are undoubtedly his works of most lasting interest. Though his theories on music are slight, he thought naturally in the modern key system, with major and minor modes, rather than in the old modal system. Campion stated his theories on rhyme in Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602). In this work he attacked the use of rhymed, accentual metres, insisting instead that timing and sound duration are the fundamental element in verse structure. Campion asserted that in English verse the larger units of line and stanza provide the temporal stability within which feet and syllables may be varied.

Evidence is more plentiful of the lifelong enterprise for which Campion is known today: his published literary and musical works and the two treatises devoted to these arts. These begin, appropriately, with five songs probably written for incorporation into a masque. They appeared in 1591 in a pirated edition of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella published by Thomas Newman. Attributed to “Content,” the five lyrics can be ascribed to Campion with good assurance, as the first reappeared in the Book of Ayres (1601) and the third and fourth were translated to Latin epigrams in his Liber Epigrammatum (1595). Sidney’s influence is evident, particularly in the second poem, which is written in rhymed Asclepiadics following Sidney’s “O Sweet Woods the Delight of Solitariness,” and in the fifth, which mimics several devices found in Sidney’s experimental lyrics in Arcadia (1590, 1593). While these are youthful and derivative poems, they point decisively toward the hallmarks of Campion’s later style, with careful attention to the pacing of words and syllables, the disposition of a few polysyllabic words in the context of a line made up of the monosyllables he noted as frequent in the English tongue, and the fine-tuning of the succession of vowel sounds within the line. Clearly his interest in these musical details was present from his earliest attempts.

Campion’s next published work was in Latin, Thomae Campiani Poemata (1595), and included the incomplete epic “Ad Thamesin,” celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada; part of a long Ovidian poem, “Fragmentum Umbra”; 16 elegies; and 129 epigrams. While Latin titles begin and end the list of Campion’s oeuvre, and the Latin poems make up nearly a third of his published work, much of the later collection is revision or completion of the poems begun in this 1595 collection. Thus, Tho. Campiani Epigrammatum Libri II (1619) includes the completed Umbra and revised versions of eleven of the elegies plus two additional elegies; “Ad Thamesin” is dropped.

The one portion of the earlier Latin collection that is significantly continued up to the printing of the later volume is the epigrams; their number reaches 453 by the time of the final publication. Like the other Latin poems, the epigrams are fashionable, the sorts of things all young poets wrote. They are clearly derived from Roman models as well as earlier Renaissance poets. They are important in Campion’s development, however, for the sharp attention they focus on character and subject. It seems likely that the epigrams engaged the poet’s thinking throughout his career, honing his ability to distill portraits of people and descriptions of things and events into a few short but precise lines and sharpening his skill with the aphoristic turn that characterizes much of his work. These traits take on significance in the more graceful English lyrics he set as songs; indeed, Campion himself drew the connection, announcing in the preface to A Book of Ayres, “What epigrams are in poetry, the same are ayres in music, then in their chief perfection when they are short and well seasoned.”

The point at which Campion turned from being what Davis calls “a coterie poet in Latin” to a writer of English lyrics for music is hard to determine. By 1597, however, he had apparently begun to be associated with the chief players in the development of the English lute song, for he contributed a dedicatory poem to John Dowland’s First Book of Songs or Ayres in that year. This collection was not only Dowland’s first, but the first English publication in what was to be a favored genre for the next two decades, celebrated then and now for its careful attention to the union of music and poetry.

With the exception of his classic lyric Rose-cheekt Lawra, Come, Campion usually did not put his advocacy of quantitative, unrhymed verse into practice. His originality as a lyric poet lies rather in his treatment of the conventional Elizabethan subject matter. Rather than using visual imagery to describe static pictures, he expresses the delights of the natural world in terms of sound, music, movement, or change. This approach and Campion’s flowing but irregular verbal rhythms give freshness to hackneyed subjects and seem also to suggest an immediate personal experience of even the commonest feelings. The Selected Songs, edited by W.H. Auden, was published in 1972.

As already noted, Campion’s prefatory remarks to A Book of Ayres introduce the comparison of the ayre, or solo song, to the epigram, suggesting both brevity and simple, straightforward delivery as the desirable characteristics. He objects to “many rests in music,” proclaiming, “in ayres I find no use they have, unless it be to make a vulgar and trivial modulation seem to the ignorant strange, and to the judicial tedious.” He argues against the fashionable madrigal, which he describes as “long, intricate, bated with fugue, chained with syncopation, and where the nature of every word is precisely expressed in the note.” His own songs, by contrast, he describes as “ear-pleasing rhymes without art,” and he declares that “we ought to maintain as well in notes, as in action, a manly carriage, gracing no word but that which is eminent and emphatical.” Davis, in the introduction to A Book of Ayres in his 1967 edition of Campion’s works, refers to this document as a manifesto—an apt word, for the songs in this book are presented simply, with a single treble vocal part and a relatively unadorned lute accompaniment with a bass line for viola da gamba, thus looking forward to the continuo song that would gain favor in England by the 1630s.

Campion’s poems in A Book of Ayres include some of his best-known compositions and present the essence of his contribution to the lyric genre: the aphoristic “Though You Are Young and I Am Old”; “I Care Not for These Ladies,” with its artfully simple portrait of “kind Amarillis / The wanton country maid”; the celebration of intellectual beauty in “Mistress, since you so much desire / To know the place of Cupid’s fire” (to be parodied in his earthier version, “Beauty, Since You So Much Desire,” published later in The Fourth Book, 1617); “Come, Let Us Sound with Melody,” the only instance of classical quantitative meter (Sapphic) that Campion rendered musically in the manner of the French musique mesurée. While the later books would present some wonderful new songs and some refinements of the features exhibited in this first collection, they would introduce no radical new techniques or striking developments. In 1601 Campion was nearly 35 years old, and despite the paucity of earlier publication he seems to have arrived at his own mature understanding of the kind of art he would produce. Its most significant hallmarks are the formal properties associated with music noted above. But in substance, too, the mature Campion is already present. He is a keen observer of human frailty, particularly that brought on by the conflicts of love and sexuality. He is also a moralist. Although it would be difficult to abstract a single, consistent moral code from these lyrics, Campion does not hesitate to offer his vision of what is proper. While religious lyrics do not form a prominent part of this collection, the piety of “The Man of Life Upright” or “Come, Let Us Sound” is conventional, and in both sacred and secular veins Campion’s epigrammatic turn to the timeless aphorism is notable.

What is new in the 1601 Book of Ayres is the overt connection with music, both in performance and in its impact on the nature of poetry. The analyst who seeks examples of how Campion’s music represents text in these songs is oddly stymied. There are occasional instances of word painting, and the rhythmic and metrical interaction of music and poetry bears close observation, but it is the fusion of the two elements in the best songs that is striking, affecting the reader-listener with the sense that a musical declamation was in the poet’s ear from the start. In this and in Campion’s espousal of the principle of quantitative meters for an English poetry, there is a relation to the experiments called musique mesurée practiced in France by the group known as the Pléiade. Yet in Campion’s best poetry the stiffness and artificiality of the French experiments yield to a supple, musical handling of the sounds of words that bespeaks much more than theory alone.

One of the tantalizing gaps in Campion’s biography occurs around the question of his musical training. Some have speculated that Campion learned music from his new friends Dowland and Rosseter in the late 1590s, and it is sometimes suggested that Rosseter helped him with the musical settings for his contributions to A Book of Ayres (as it has also sometimes been assumed that Campion provided the texts for Rosseter’s half, although Davis rejects this hypothesis). On the other hand, the musical settings of all of Campion’s songs merge so well with their texts as to create a medium that does not readily admit of division into separable components. In the absence of clear knowledge that, for instance, Campion did not play the lute, it seems reasonable to take him at his word and acknowledge the settings as his representations of his theories about the new medium of the ayre.

In the year after A Book of Ayres Campion published his manifesto on poetry, Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602). His intent is stated on the title page of the book: “Wherein it is demonstratively proved and by example confirmed that the English tongue will receive eight several kinds of numbers, proper to itself, which are all in this book set forth and were never before this time by any man attempted.” Following in the direction indicated by Sidney and taken up in the famous correspondence between Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey, Campion embarks on a defense of quantitative meters in English, illustrating each with an example of his own composing. His singular contribution to this short-lived movement lay in his eschewing the notion that a classical ideal could be recaptured by imposing classical rules of scansion on English poetry. Instead, Campion set out to align the quantity of the classical meters with the natural stress patterns of English. In the final chapter of the treatise—“The Tenth Chapter, of the Quantity of English Syllables”—he begins the “rules of position” with the observation that “above all the accent of our words is diligently to be observed, for chiefly by the accent in any language the true value of the syllables is to be measured. ... Wherefore the first rule that is to be observed is the nature of the accent, which we must ever follow.”

There can be no doubt that Campion’s writing of this treatise grew out of his interest in the associations of music and poetry as much as from his admiration and emulation of Sidney. On the first page he refers to the organization of syllables in terms of “the length and shortness of their sound” and continues by comparing poetry with music. “The Eighth Chapter, of Ditties and Odes” brings the connection full circle; here the author notes that “it is now time to handle such verses as are fit for ditties or odes, which we may call lyrical, because they are apt to be sung to an instrument, if they were adorned with convenient notes.”

The most controversial feature of the Observations was the second chapter “declaring the unaptness of rhyme in poesie.” Rhyme, Campion noted, is a rhetorical figure of the category figura verbi, having only a surface appeal, and ought “sparingly to be used, lest it should offend the ear with tedious affectation.” He refers later to “the childish titillation of rhyming” and comments that “there is yet another fault in rhyme altogether intolerable, which is that it enforceth a man oftentimes to abjure his matter and extend a short conceit beyond all bounds of art.” As the lyric poets of the day were regular users of rhyme, it is not surprising that Campion offended many in declaring that “the facility and popularity of rhyme creates as many poets as a hot summer flies.” The Observations did not go unremarked, prompting Samuel Daniel’s 1603 rejoinder, A Defense of Rhyme, in which Daniel points out that Campion’s quantitative meters are not new. But the treatise does offer theoretical insight into the particular kind of care about words that drove this poet-composer.

Sometime during the year of the publication of the Observations, Campion went to France, embarking at the age of 38 on a course of medical studies at the University of Caen in Normandy, a reputable but not distinguished medical school in a university better known for its poetry contests. Three years later, with medical degree in hand, he returned to London to set up practice. Again little is known about this aspect of the poet’s life. His earlier friend and supporter Sir Thomas Monson became his patient, as is recorded in accounts of their implication in the Sir Thomas Overbury murder in 1613, but otherwise the record is silent on his medical practice, noting instead his continued involvement in the world of literature and music.

Edward Lowbury, Timothy Salter, and Alison Young, the authors of Thomas Campion: Poet, Composer, Physician (1970), have attempted to see an influence from Campion’s medical practice on his poetry, but the evidence is sparse. In the final chapter of the book, they note that images of wounds and healing are relatively frequent and that while pain and death are common subjects for poets, in Campion’s poetry they are presented in an almost clinical manner. They conclude, however, that while images of disease, healing and death or, more profoundly, those of human frailty and suffering could result from Campion’s study and practice of medicine, it would be difficult to deduce from the poems alone that the poet was also a physician.

In any event, Campion’s medical practice does not seem to have interfered with his artistic career as he moved into the world of courtly entertainment with Lord Hay’s Masque (1607). This work, commissioned by James’s court for the marriage of James Hay, one of the king’s favorites, to Honora Denny, the daughter of one of James’s early supporters, was the first of three masques for which Campion provided the libretti; the other two, both performed in 1613, were for even more important weddings, those of the Princess Elizabeth to Frederick Count Palatine (The Lord’s Masque, 1613), and of Robert Carr, the Earl of Somerset and James’s new favorite, to Lady Frances Howard, whose earlier marriage to the earl of Essex had been annulled (The Squire’s Masque or The Somerset Masque, 1614).

With these masques Campion moved into the center of the country’s artistic elite; he was composing for the royal court and enjoyed the advantages of increased prestige and visibility and of the lavish expenditures with which James indulged his taste for luxury. The masque had become a highly politicized form of entertainment used by the king to reinforce his role and status. It was also the occasion for spending large sums of money for the best and the latest that money could buy in costume, in sets and stage design and machinery, and in music and dance, putting Campion in direct contact with the leading designers, dancers, and musicians and, significantly, with other composers who would set his libretti. Thus, while Campion’s masques have an important place in the dramatic literature of the period, they are also significant for their impact on his continued nondramatic output in the form of additional volumes of songs, many of which bear the traces of composers associated with the masque such as Nicholas Lanier and the Italianized Englishman Giovanni Coperario, as well as some working in the more native English traditions.

In November 1612, England was shocked by the death of Prince Henry. With the Songs of Mourning: Bewailing the Untimely Death of Prince Henry (1613), Campion contributed to the outpouring of elegies occasioned by the death of the young heir. The musical settings for these songs were composed not by Campion but by Coperario. Little documentary information exists about the nature of this collaboration, but as these poems are different in significant ways from Campion’s other work, it seems likely that the musical connection with Coperario effected some changes in Campion’s creative process. The poems are addressed to members of the royal family, to “the Most Disconsolate Great Britain,” and finally to the world, and they seek to confront the particular states of anguish that these various constituencies might be expected to feel in the face of the young prince’s death. They have neither the aphoristic certainty nor the witty perspicacity of the best of Campion’s lyrics, but seem instead heavy and contrived. More tellingly, the formal properties of these poems lack the grace and classical balance of his better lyrics. In the third song, “Fortune and Glory May Be Lost and Won,” for instance, the eleven lines of varying lengths that make up the stanza suggest the Italian madrigal form rather than Campion’s more characteristic rhymed, balladlike stanzas. The rhythm of the lines is also less finely honed, and one does not hear the delicate movement of vowels and space for consonants that he perfected in other works. His collaboration with Nicholas Lanier in “Bring Away This Sacred Tree” for The Squire’s Masque in 1614 may have involved Campion’s writing a parody or contrafactum to Lanier’s already-existing music. Perhaps these songs are also contrafacta, assembled quickly for the immediate purpose of lamenting the country’s tragic loss.

Campion’s remaining songbooks were published in pairs and were clearly ascribed to him, without the mediating presence of a Rosseter. Two Books of Ayres (circa 1613) presents, according to the author, a retrospective collection, containing “a few” songs out of many “which, partly at the request of friends, partly for my own recreation, were by me long since composed.” This characteristic amateur posture of the age is probably also an accurate representation of Campion’s activity as a poet and composer. The book was published without date, but internal evidence suggests that it was sometime around 1612 or 1613, more than a decade after the previous collection in collaboration with Rosseter. One of its lyrics, “Though Your Strangeness Frets My Heart,” had obviously been in circulation prior to this date, for another composer, Robert Jones, used it as a text for his own song, published in his collection A Musical Dream (1609).

The best-known songs in the 1613 books are notable for precisely the features that characterize all of Campion’s work. “Never Weather-Beaten Sail,” for example, illustrates the intricate and careful creation of musical and verbal rhythm out of the accentual pattern of the words and the sensitive distribution of the vowel sounds. This song also epitomizes the sense one frequently has with Campion that the sacred and the secular are not far apart—a sense reinforced by the almost erotic urgency of both music and words in the last line: “O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest.”

The musical treatise, A New Way of Making Four Parts in Counterpoint, was also published around this time, most likely around 1610. It is primarily a summary of the rules of counterpoint as set down by the 16th-century German musical theorist Sethus Calvisius. For musical historians the most important feature of Campion’s document is its insistence on the importance of the bass line rather than the tenor as the foundation of harmony, an essential development in the advent of the new baroque styles in music.

The final song book, The Third and Fourth Book of Ayres, published sometime after February 1617, is again at least in part a retrospective collection. The two books are dedicated respectively to Sir Thomas Monson, referring to his recent release from prison, and his son, John Monson. Several songs in the third book especially have a world-weariness about them, as if their author had experienced disillusion and disaffection (“Why Presumes Thy Pride” or “O Grief, O Spite”). The best, however, are expansive lyrics celebrating the better times (“Now Winter Nights Enlarge”) and the perpetual joys and frustrations of love (“Kind Are Her Answers,” “Shall I Come, Sweet Love, to Thee?,” or, in the fourth book, “I Must Complain”).

Campion’s implication in the sordid events surrounding the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury rate discussion, as they span the years from 1613 to 1617 and must have had a profound impact on Campion during that time. The confusing series of events was prompted by Overbury’s overt opposition to the marriage of Robert Carr and Frances Howard (for which Campion wrote The Squire’s Masque). Carr and Lady Frances had sufficient influence that they were able to get Overbury imprisoned and eventually poisoned. Campion’s friend Sir Thomas Monson was implicated because of his association with the Howards and his involvement in selling the office of Lieutenant of the Tower of London to Sir Jervis Elwes, who assisted Carr and Lady Frances in accomplishing the murder. Campion was implicated because, as Monson’s friend and physician, he unwittingly transported the money for the sale of the office from Elwes to Monson. Carr and Frances were eventually convicted of the crime and imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1622; Elwes and two other accomplices were hanged. Monson and Campion were both acquitted, having persuaded the justices that neither of them knew of the plot to poison Overbury, although Monson was confined to the Tower from October 1615 until February 1617 while the case was being investigated. Campion, as Monson’s physician, was allowed to visit him under the supervision of the new lieutenant. The dedication for The Third and Fourth Book of Ayres, addressed to Monson, refers to Monson’s having finally gained his freedom, and the tone of the poem is celebratory. Nevertheless, the protracted episode almost certainly had a permanent impact on Campion.

Legacy

Campion made a nuncupative will on 1 March 1619/20 before 'divers credible witnesses': a memorandum was made that he did 'not longe before his death say that he did give all that he had unto Mr Phillip Rosseter, and wished that his estate had bin farre more', and Rosseter was sworn before Dr Edmund Pope to administer as principal legatee on 3 March 1619/20.[11]

While Campion had attained a considerable reputation in his own day, in the years that followed his death his works sank into complete oblivion. No doubt this was due to the nature of the media in which he mainly worked, the masque and the song-book. The masque was an amusement at any time too costly to be popular, and during the Commonwealth period it was practically extinguished. The vogue of the song-books was even more ephemeral, and, as in the case of the masque, the Puritan ascendancy, with its distaste for all secular music, effectively put an end to the madrigal. Its loss involved that of many hundreds of dainty lyrics, including those of Campion, and it was due to the work of A. H. Bullen (see bibliography), who first published a collection of the poet's works in 1889, that his genius was recognised and his place among the foremost rank of Elizabethan lyric poets restored.[1]

Early dictionary writers, such as Fétis, saw Campion as a theorist.[12] It was much later on that people began to see him as a composer. He was the writer of a poem, Cherry Ripe, which is not the later famous poem of that title but has several similarities.

In popular culture

Repeated reference was made to Campion (1567–1620) in an October 2010 episode of the BBC TV series, James May's Man Lab (BBC2), where his works are used as the inspiration for a young man trying to serenade a female colleague. This segment was referenced in the second and third series of the programme as well.

Occasional mention is made of Campion ("Campian") in the comic strip 9 Chickweed Lane (i.e., 5 April 2004), referencing historical context for playing the lute.

Throughout his career and for some years after his death, Campion’s poetry appeared regularly in manuscript commonplace books, both literary and musical. These books document another kind of fame than the poet’s movement in the court’s entertainment world, showing instead a broad appeal in those literary circles where poetry was read and admired. Campion’s poems appear in these household collections beginning in the early 1590s and continuing sporadically throughout the 17th century. In assessing Campion’s unique contribution to the musical lyric of his day, it is also useful to recognize that his poems were frequently chosen by other composers as texts for their songs.

In the nondramatic literature of the late Renaissance, Campion’s contribution holds an ambiguous position. He was neglected for almost two hundred years, but in the late 1800s he was rediscovered by A.H. Bullen, who published the first collected edition and started a resurgence of interest and admiration that would include T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. In The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) Eliot calls Campion, “except for Shakespeare ... the most accomplished master of rhymed lyric of his time.” His lyrics and the songs in which he presented them strongly reflect his period’s style, and Davis finds Campion’s influence in the works of such poets as Pound, W.H. Auden, and Robert Creeley. Campion has been called a poet of the ear, and his careful respect for the nature of the language and its capacities for pleasing intonation was a significant development. Yet although his poems continue to be anthologized, they represent a refinement of the 16th-century lyric rather than a departure and did not offer as much to a new generation as, say, John Donne’s bold innovations did. For the literary historian, then, his poems remain beautiful miniatures, revered for their intrinsic worth more than for their significance.

In current critical debates, Campion’s art is on the fringes. The gentle sarcasm of the more epigrammatic lyrics offers some pictures of the age, and some (such as “Though You Are Young and I Am Old”) present themselves as timeless aphorisms. Critics interested in gender studies will find a full range of the period’s gender clichés, from the heartless and fickle women to the dismissive or broken-hearted lovers. But the important formal properties of his style are of little interest to cultural criticism.