Essays and Marginalia, Vol. 2 of 2Excerpt from Essays and Marginalia, Vol. 2 of 2 "He wanted neither fire nor imagination, and possessed great command of his abilities. He has written no masques; his personifications of the passions are few; and that allegorical vein which the popularity of Spenser's works may fairly be supposed to have rendered fashionable, but seldom occurs in him." - Headley, quoted in the Life of Drayton. What is the Polyolbion but an allegory? and as for personification, I should think the Passions were as capable of it as the Counties. Why it should have been a peculiar commendation to have written no masques, I cannot perceive. Would Milton have been greater had he not written Comus? Are not Ben Jonson's and Daniel's masques replete with lovely poetry? And does not the masque in general bear the same relationship to the Faery Queen as the Greek Tragedies to the Iliad and the Odyssey? Neither Mr. Headley nor Dr. Anderson seem to have been aware that Drayton was a dramatic writer, which it is evident from Collier's Annals of the Stage that he was. Besides the Merry Devil of Edmonton. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. |