Michael Drayton

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Michael Drayton, engraving 1619, (unknown artist, now National Portrait Gallery , London)

Michael Drayton (* 1563 in Hartshill , Warwickshire , † December 23, 1631 in London ) was an English poet of the Elizabethan Age .

Life

Little is known about Drayton's life. He was born in Hartshill in the English county of Warwickshire , raised a Page and possibly studied at Oxford University .

Sir Henry Goodere (also: Goodyere) of Powlesworth was its patron and benefactor, who introduced him to Lady Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, who was known as "the patroness of poets" . He dedicated his Mortimeriades to her . His love for Goodere's daughter Anne may have inspired some of his love poems.

Drayton was a squire with Sir Walter Aston for several years. Probably around 1591 he moved to London , where he initially worked as a co-author of dramas for the theater owner and stage manager Philip Henslowe . However, none of these works, which were created under his co-authorship, has survived. Later, from around 1607, Drayton also wrote for the Children's Troops and the Whitefriars Theater . He died on December 23, 1631 and was buried in Westminster Abbey .

Literary career

Title page of the print by Thomas Pavier from 1619. Erroneously marked with the date of the first print by Valentine Simmes from 1600 and incorrect author.

Drayton wrote an extremely extensive opus with numerous, today largely forgotten individual works, which included poetic-historical and topographical poems, letter and shepherd poems as well as a wide range of pieces such as eclogues , odes , elegies , sonnets , religious writings and satirical poems.

The only play written or co-authored by him that has survived is The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle from 1600, which was probably created in collaboration with Anthony Munday and is mostly also attributed to Munday as the author, due to a forgery of In 1619, however, it was included in the unauthorized False Folio edition of Shakespeare's works by Thomas Pavier and was also published in later editions by mistake as a play written by Shakespeare.

As a writer, Drayton tried almost all of the common genres of the time and thus embodied the new type of author of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean ages who wrote for patrons and the emerging literary market . Drayton's diverse work was constantly revised by him, thus gained additional complexity and was also published several times under different titles.

His first published work was a collection of religious poems dedicated to Lady Jane Devereux: The Harmony of the Church (1591), a rather dry, alliterative arrangement of various songs and prayers of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha .

One of the most beautiful poems in this collection is considered his version of the song Song of Salomon . The book was confiscated (up to 40 copies) by state orders and, according to an entry in the Stationers' Register from 1591, handed over to a Mr. Bishop, possibly the then Archbishop of Canterbury , John Whitgift , for destruction.

In 1593 Dayton published various shepherd poems in Idea: The Shepherd's Garland (revised 1606), a collection of nine classic pastoral eclogues in the tradition of Edmund Spenser , in which he celebrates his own lovesickness under the poet name Rowland . In 1594 Drayton expanded the basic idea in a cycle of 64 sonnets, which he published for the first time in 1594 under the title of Idea's Mirror and then revised eleven times, each under the title Idea .

His first historical epic , The Legend of Piers Gaveston and the epic poem Matilda, probably also appeared around 1594 . These two works mark the beginnings of historical poetry, which is central to Drayton's oeuvre.

With Endymion and Phoebe Drayton participated in 1595 in the contemporary fashion of the Versepyllien ; In 1606 a revised version appeared under the title The Man in the Moon . In 1596 he published his lavish and much more important poem Mortimeriados , in which he draws on Christopher Marlowe's Edward II and begins to poetically shape the Wars of the Roses in the style of the Mirror for Magistrates, which was very well known at the time. The poetic adaptation of the civil war waged in England in the second half of the 15th century for the British rule in Mortimeriados is expanded by Drayton in 1603 and republished under the title The Barons' Wars . The revision in The Barons' Wars focuses primarily on the origins and consequences of the Civil War.

In 1597 Drayton published England's Heroicall Epistles, a poetic collection of letters from great lovers of English history, for example from Henry II and Fair Rosamund or Richard II and Isabel . In his Heroicall Epistles , which reached thirteen editions, Drayton falls back on the model of Ovid's love poetry , as expressed in the Heroides, for example .

Michael Drayton - Title cover of Poly-Olbion 1622

Drayton became famous above all for his work Poly-Olbion , a poetic topographical description of England in pair-rhyming Alexandrians , which in 1613 contained eighteen chants (books) and in 1622 - after a publisher was found - in an expanded edition to 30 chants or approx Verse grew, with scholarly notes from John Selden . In 1627 he published another mixed volume with the works The bataille of Agincourt ; The Miseries of Queen Margaret ; Nimphidia ; The Quest of Cinthia , The Shepherd's Sirena, and The Moon Calf . One of his best works is considered to be Nymphidia, or The Court of Fairy , a mock-heroic poem that was influenced by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream .

The monumental, high-contrast poetry of Drayton's extensive and ambitious Magnum Opus Poly-Olbion provides impressive testimony to both patriotism and the historical-antiquarian interest of this age. The work describes the journey of the winged muse through the regions of England and is considered to be one of the last attempts to "recapitulate the diverging elements of poetry and everyday life, of legend and history, of past and present".

The range and diversity of Drayton's work show him as an author who, not least for financial reasons, adapted to prevailing tastes and tried his hand at numerous literary forms. Edmund Spenser had the greatest influence on his work, but Drayton's artistic style rarely reached. With regard to his poetic Platonism, however, Drayton proves to be more consistent and rigid than Spenser.

The last of his extensive works was The Muses' Elizium in 1630 .

literature

  • Paul Gerhard Buchloh : Michael Drayton. Bard and historian, politician and prophet. A contribution to the treatment and assessment of the early national history of Great Britain in the English poetry of the late Renaissance (= Kiel contributions to English and American studies. 1, ISSN  0453-8463 ). K. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1964.
  • Joseph A. Berthelot: Michael Drayton (= Twayne's English Authors Series. 52, ISSN  0564-559X ). Twayne Publishers, New York NY 1967.
  • Jean R. Brink: Michael Drayton revisited (= Twayne's English Authors Series. 476). Twayne Publishers, Boston MA 1990, ISBN 0-8057-6989-7 .
  • Oliver Elton: Michael Drayton. A critical study. With a bibliography. Constable, London 1905, (Reissued. Russel, New York NY 1966).
  • Frank E. Halliday: A Shakespeare Companion. 1564-1964 (= Penguin Reference Books. 27, ZDB -ID 262219-1 ). Revised edition. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1964.
  • Richard F. Hardin: Michael Drayton and the Passing of Elizabethan England. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS 1973, ISBN 0-7006-0103-1 .
  • James L. Harner: Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton. A Reference Guide. GK Hall, Boston MA 1980, ISBN 0-8161-8322-8 .
  • J. William Hebel (Ed.): Works of Michael Drayton. 6 volumes. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1961.
  • S. Naqi Husain Jafri: Aspects of Drayton's Poetry. Doaba House, Delhi 1988, ISBN 81-8517305-2 .
  • Louise Hutchings Westling: The Evolution of Michael Drayton's "Idea" (= Salzburg Studies in English Literature. Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies. 37, ZDB -ID 186853-6 ). Institute for English Language and Literature, Salzburg 1974.
  • Lemuel Whitaker: Michael Drayton as a dramatist. In: PMLA. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Volume 18, No. 3, 1903, pp. 378-411, doi : 10.2307 / 456502 , (Philadelphia, University, Dissertation, 1903).

Web links

Commons : Michael Drayton  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Die kleine Enzyklopädie , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, Volume 1, page 382
  2. ↑ See the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica Michael Drayton · English Poet . Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  3. ↑ See Bernhard Fabian (Ed.): The English literature. Volume 2: Authors . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04495-0 , p. 128. See also Uwe Baumann: Drayton, Michael . In: Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning (eds.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 170.
  4. ↑ Uwe Baumann: Drayton, Michael . In: Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning (eds.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 170.
  5. ↑ Uwe Baumann: Drayton, Michael . In: Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning (eds.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 170. See also the entry on Poetry Foundation Michael Drayton 1563–1631 . Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  6. ↑ See Oliver Elton: An Introduction to Michael Dayton . Manchester 1895, p. 11. Elton quotes at this point the corresponding entry in the Stationers' Register of 1591, according to which the first edition of The Harmony of the Church, except for 40 remaining copies, is to be handed over to a Mr. Bishop for destruction.
  7. ↑ See the entry on Poetry Foundation Michael Drayton 1563–1631 . Retrieved on July 19, 2017. See also Uwe Baumann: Drayton, Michael . In: Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning (eds.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 170
  8. ↑ Uwe Baumann: Drayton, Michael . In: Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning (eds.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 170 f. See also Bernhard Fabian (Ed.): The English literature. Volume 2: Authors . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04495-0 , p. 128 f.
  9. ↑ See Paul Gerhard Buchloh : Michael Drayton: Bard and Historian, Politician and Prophet. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1964, quoted from Uwe Baumann: Drayton, Michael . In: Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning (eds.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 171. See also Bernhard Fabian (Hrsg.): Die Englische Literatur. Volume 2: Authors . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04495-0 , p. 128 f.
  10. ↑ See Bernhard Fabian (Ed.): The English literature. Volume 2: Authors . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04495-0 , p. 129.
  11. ↑ See Michael Drayton: The Muses Elizium: The Description of Elizium . Retrieved July 18, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Drayton, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English poet
DATE OF BIRTH 1563
PLACE OF BIRTH Hartshill , Warwickshire
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1631
Place of death London