Michael Drayton

“ All civilized nations possessing a history which they contemplate with pride endeavour to present that history in an epic form. In their initial stages of culture the vehicles of expression are ballads like the constituents of the Spanish Romanceros and chronicles like Joinville’s and Froissart’s. With literary refinement comes the distinct literary purpose, and the poet appears who is also more or less of an artist. ”

“ Shakespeare’s infinite superiority in moral delicacy, not merely to his imitator, but to all poets except the very best, is forcibly shown by his causing Henry to abstain from all attempts to excuse his father and himself at the expense of Richard, so natural in the mouth of an ordinary person, so unbecoming a hero. ”

“ Spenser or Dryden would have escaped from the difficulty in a manner more in accordance with epic precedent by representing Henry’s action as the effect of a divine vision. Edward the Third or the Black Prince would have risen from the grave to urge him to renew and complete their interrupted and now almost undone work; or the ghosts of chiefs untimely slain would have reproached him with their abandoned conquests and neglected graves. Drayton has merely taken the story as he found it, without a thought of submitting its dross to the alchemy of the re-creative imagination of the poet. ”

“ England possesses a national epic inferior to that of no country in the world, although the form be dramatic. In one respect, indeed, this epic is superior to any but the Homeric poems, standing one remove less apart from the poetry of the people. The impression of primitive force which the Homeric poems convey by their venerable language is equally well imparted by Shakespeare’s spontaneity and his apparent and probably real innocence of all purely literary intention. ”

“ It is above all things patriotic, pervaded throughout by a manly and honourable preference for England and all things English, yet devoid of bitterness towards the enemy, whose valour is frankly acknowledged, and whose overweening pride, the cause of their disasters, is never made the object of ill-natured sarcasm. It may almost be said that if Drayton had been in some respects a worse man, he might on this occasion have been a better poet. ”

“ To death like to be troden by our owne,
My Lord of Brabant, what is to be done?
See how the French before the English runne.
A bitter exclamation of the Duke of Brabant against the French.
Why, let them runne and neuer turne the head,
Quoth the braue Duke, vntill their hatefull breath
Forsake their Bodies, and so farre haue fled,
That France be not disparadg’d by their death:
Who trusts to Cowards ne’r is better sped,
Be he accurst, with such that holdeth faith,
Slaughter consume the Recreants as they flye,
Branded with shame, so basely may they dye. ”

“ Ben Jonson may be suspected of a sneer when he congratulates Drayton on thus outdoing Homer, as he had previously outdone, or at least rivalled, Virgil, Theocritus, Ovid, Orpheus, and Lucan. Ben might have said with perfect sincerity that Drayton’s descriptions are fine pieces of work, showing great command of language, and only open to criticism from some want of proportion between them and the poem of which they are but subordinate episodes. This censure would have been by no means just if the whole piece had been executed on the scale of the description of the siege of Harfleur. ”

“ The difficulties of Drayton’s unique undertaking were in a measure favourable to him. They compelled him to exert his fancy to the uttermost. The tremendous difficulty of making topography into poetry gave him unwonted energy. He never goes to sleep, as too often in the “Barons’ Wars.” The stiff practical obstacles attendant upon the poetical treatment of towns and rivers provoke even the dragging Alexandrine into animation; his stream is often all foam and eddy. The long sweeping line, of its wont so lumbering and tedious, is perfectly in place here. ”

“ Drayton must consequently have borrowed the term from Shakespeare, which is a pretty conclusive proof of his having read “Henry V.” as well as witnessed its performance. Regarding Shakespeare’s justification for the technical terms used by him, Mr. Marshall judiciously remarks: “It is certain that tennis was played and that rackets were used in the time of Henry V.; but whether chases were marked and a hazard invented, and to which of our hazards that hazard would answer, are questions which we cannot solve, and which doubtless never troubled ‘sweet Will’ for one single moment.” ”

“ Comparisons between modern and ancient poets must necessarily be very imperfect; yet our Drayton might not inaptly be termed the English Theocritus. If not so distinctly superior to every other English pastoral poet as Theocritus was to every other Greek, he yet stands in the front rank. He is utterly free from affectation, the great vice of pastoral poetry ”

“ The King of England entreth Harflew in triumph.
The gates thus widened with the breath of Warre;
Their ample entrance to the English gaue:
There was no dore that then had any barre;
For of their owne not any thing they haue:
When Henry comes on his Emperiall Carre:
To whom they kneele their liues alone to saue.
Strucken with wonder, when that face they sawe,
Wherein such mercy was, with so much awe.
And first themselues the English to secure,
Doubting what danger might be yet within ”

“ No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic to narrative poetry in vividness of delineation could be found than the contrast between Shakespeare’s scene representing the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely in actual conversation, and Drayton’s tame exposition of the outcome of their deliberations. ”

“ Page 51, l. 25. “King Richards wrongs, to minde, Lord doe not call.”—Drayton evidently follows Shakespeare, but remains a long way behind:
“Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!
I Richard’s body have interred new:
And on it have bestowed more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood:
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a day their withered hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do ”

“ It is difficult to imagine what could have tempted Drayton to spend so much time upon an episode treated by Holinshed with comparative brevity. Some of the stanzas are exceedingly spirited, but as a whole the description certainly fatigues. If the same is to some extent the case with the description of the Battle of Agincourt itself, the cause is not so much prolixity as the multitude of separate episodes, not always derived from the chroniclers, and the consequent want of unity which has been already adverted to. ”

“ In the rude old play, “The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth,” on which Shakespeare founded his “Henry IV.” and “Henry V.,” the argument for attacking Scotland first is put into the mouth of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Shakespeare’s noble expansion of this scene from the hints of his artless predecessor and of the chroniclers is one of the most signal proofs of the superiority of his genius. ”

“ It can only be concluded that he did not choose to be indebted to Shakespeare, or despaired of rivalling him. His notice of his great contemporary in the “Epistle to Reynolds” is surprisingly cold; but the legend, however unauthentic, of Shakespeare’s death from a fever contracted at a merry-making in Drayton’s company, seems incompatible with any serious estrangement, and Shakespeare’s son-in-law was Drayton’s physician when the latter revisited his native Warwickshire. ”

“ As a whole, Daniel’s “Civil War” is a better poem than Drayton’s “Barons’ Wars.” The superiority of the latter lies in particular passages, such as the description of the guilty happiness of Isabella and Mortimer, quoted in Mr. Arthur Bullen’s admirable selection. This is to say that Drayton’s genius was naturally not so much epical as lyrical and descriptive. In his own proper business as a narrative poet he fails as compared with Daniel, but he enriches history with all the ornaments of poetry ”

“ Where, in the slaughter euery one exceedes,
Where euery man, his fellow forward calls,
And shows him where some great-born Frenchman bleeds
Whilst Scalps about like broken pot sherds fly,
And kill, kill, kill, the Conquering English cry.
Now wexed horror to the very height,
And scarse a man but wet-shod went in gore,
As two together are in deadly fight,
And to death wounded, as one tumbleth ore,
This Frenchman falling, with his very weight
Doth kill another strucken downe before,
As he againe so falling, likewise feeles
His last breath hastned by anothers heeles. ”

“ In his report of the session of Parliament where the French war is discussed he closely follows Holinshed, so closely as to omit Shakespeare’s masterly embellishment of Henry’s solemn appeal to the Archbishop to pronounce on the justice of xviii his cause as in the sight of God. Drayton must assuredly have perceived how greatly such an appeal tended to exalt his hero’s character, and what an opening it afforded for impressive rhetoric. ”

“ If to his feet his Armes would let him rise:
On the Kings Helme their height of fury scor’d;
Who like a Dragon fiercely on them flies,
And on his body slew them both, whilst he
Recouering was their ayde againe to be.
The King thus made the Master of the Fight:
The Duke calls to him as he there doth lye:
Henry I’le pay my Ransome, doe me right:
I am the Duke Alanzon; it is I.
The King to saue him putting all his might,
Yet the rude Souldiers, with their showt and crie,
Quite drown’d his voyce, his Helmet being shut,
And, that braue Duke into small peeces cut.
The Duke of Alanzon slaine. ”

“ May English Henry, pleased if you be.
And of the English rid your Countrey cleane,
If on their backs, but Callice walles they win,
Whose Frontier Townes you easly may maintaine,
With a strong Army still to keepe them in;
Then let our Ships make good the mouth of Seyne,
And at your pleasure Harflew you may winne,
Ere with Supplys againe they can inuade,
Spent in the Voyage lately hither made.
That day at Poyteers, in that bloudy Field,
The sudaine turne in that great Battell then,
Shall euer teach me, whilest I Armes can weeld,
Neuer to trust to multitudes of men ”

“ Had he been acquainted with him otherwise than through Virgil, he would probably have been unable to refrain from direct imitation; but as matters stand, instead of a poet striving to write as Theocritus wrote in Greek, we have one actually writing as Theocritus would have written in English. But the most remarkable point of contact between Drayton and Theocritus is that both are epical as well as pastoral poets. Two of the Idylls of Theocritus are believed to be fragments of an epic on the exploits of Hercules ”

“ This ayre of France doth like me wondrous well,
Lets burne our Ships, for here we meane to dwell.
A charitable Proclamation made by the King.
But through his Hoast, he first of all proclaim’d
In paine of death, no English man should take
From the Religious, aged, or the maym’d,
Or women that could no resistance make:
To gaine his owne for that he onely aym’d;
Nor would haue such to suffer for his sake:
Which in the French (when they the same did heare)
Bred of this braue King, a religious feare.
The Kings mayne Standard (for the ponderousnes thereof,) euer borne vpon a Carriage. ”

“ Had these works survived, we might not improbably have found Drayton surpassing his prototype in epic as much as he falls below him in pastoral; for the more exquisite art of the Sicilian could hardly have made amends for the lack of that national pride and enthusiastic patriotism which had died out of his age, but which ennobled the strength and upbore the weakness of the author of “The Battaile of Agincourt.” ”

“ Drayton’s heart too was in his work, as he had proved long before xvi by the noble ballad on King Harry reprinted in this volume. If he has not shown himself an artist in the selection and arrangement of his topics, he deserves the name from another point of view by the excellent metrical structure of his octaves, and the easy fluency of his narrative. ”

“ Epic poets, however gifted, could be but ix gleaners after such a harvest. Yet not every excellent poet, even of that dramatic age, was endowed with the dramatic faculty, and two of especial merit, singularly devoid of dramatic gift, but inferior to none in love of their country and self-consecration to its service, turned their attention to the epic. These were Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton. ”

“ As in painting, so in poetry, a true impression is not to be conveyed by microscopic accuracy in minutiæ, but by a vigorous grasp of the entire subject.
xv
Notwithstanding these defects, which one might have thought would have been avoided even by a poet endowed with less of the bright and sprightly invention which Drayton manifests in so many of his pieces, “The Battaile of Agincourt” is a fine poem, and well deserving the honour of reprint. ”

“ One annoying defect, the frequent occurrence of flat single lines not far remote from bathos, must be attributed to the low standard of the most refined poetry in an age when “the judges and police of literature” had hardly begun either to make laws or to enforce them. It is a fault which he shared with most others, and of which he has himself given more offensive instances. ”

“ Drayton’s version of the speech departs almost entirely from that given by the chroniclers, who make Chicheley, as no doubt he would have done, dwell at great length upon Henry’s alleged claim to the crown of France, and omit all topics unbefitting a man of peace. Drayton greatly curtails Chicheley’s legal arguments, and makes him talk like a warrior and a statesman. ”

“ Martin, where he gave solemn thanks to God for his success” (Sir Harris Nicolas, quoting the French chroniclers) , Holinshed mentions Henry’s repairing to the church to offer thanks, but omits the picturesque circumstance of his going thither barefoot, and passes over his entrance into the town in the briefest possible manner. It is an interesting proof of Shakespeare’s dependence upon the chronicler to find him equally ignoring any solemn entry or prolonged sojourn:
“To-night in Harfleur will we be your guest,
To-morrow for the march are we addrest.” ”