Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles

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Title: Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles
Phillis - Licia
Author: Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
Editor: Martha Foote Crow
Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18841]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ELIZABETHAN SONNET CYCLES ***
Produced by David Starner, Taavi Kalju and the Online
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ELIZABETHAN SONNET-CYCLES
EDITED BY
MARTHA FOOTE CROW
PHILLIS
BY THOMAS LODGE

LICIA
BY GILES FLETCHER
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER AND CO.

PATERNOSTER HOUSE LONDON W.C.
1896
INTRODUCTION
The last decade of the sixteenth century was marked by an outburst of
sonneteering. To devotees of the sonnet, who find in that poetic form
the moat perfect vehicle that has ever been devised for the expression
of a single importunate emotion, it will not seem strange that at the
threshold of a literary period whose characteristic note is the most
intense personality, the instinct of poets should have directed them to
the form most perfectly fitted for the expression of this inner motive.
The sonnet, a distinguished guest from Italy, was ushered to by those
two "courtly makers," Wyatt and Surrey, in the days of Henry VIII. But
when, forty years later, the foreigner was to be acclimatised in England,
her robe had to be altered to suit an English fashion. Thus the sonnet,
which had been an octave of enclosed or alternate rhymes, followed by
a sestette of interlaced tercets, was now changed to a series of three
quatrains with differing sets of alternate rhymes in each, at the close of
which the insidious couplet succeeded in establishing itself. But these
changes were not made without a great deal of experiment; and during
the tentative period the name "sonnet" was given, to a wide variety of
forms, in the moulding of which but one rule seemed to be uniformly
obeyed--that the poem should be the expression of a single, simple
emotion. This law cut the poem, to a relative shortness and defined its
dignity and clearness. Beyond this almost every combination of rhymes
might be found, verses were occasionally lengthened or shortened, and
the number of lines in the poem, though generally fourteen, showed
considerable variation.
The sonnet-sequence was also a suggestion from Italy, a literary

fashion introduced by Sir Philip Sidney, in his _Astrophel and Stella_,
written soon after 1580, but not published till 1591. In a sonnet-cycle
Sidney recorded his love and sorrow, and Spenser took up the strain
with his story of love and joy. Grouped about these, and following in
their wake, a number of poets, before the decade was over, turned this
Elizabethan "toy" to their purpose in their various self-revealings,
producing a group of sonnet-cycles more or less Italianate in form or
thought, more or less experimental, more or less poetical, more or less
the expression of a real passion. For while the form of the sonnet was
modified by metrical traditions and habits, the content also was
strongly influenced, not to say restricted, by certain conventions of
thought considered at the time appropriate to the poetic attitude. The
passion for classic colour in the poetic world, which had inspired and
disciplined English genius in the sixties and seventies, was rather
nourished than repressed when in the eighties Spenser's _Shepherd's
Calendar_ and Sidney's _Arcadia_ made the pastoral imagery a
necessity. Cupid and Diana were made very much at home in the
golden world of the renaissance Arcadia, and the sonneteer singing the
praises of his mistress's eyebrow was not far removed from the lovelorn
shepherd of the plains.
It may reasonably be expected that in any sonnet-cycle there will be
found many sonnets in praise of the loved one's beauty, many
lamenting her hardness of heart; all the wonders of heaven and earth
will be catalogued to find comparisons for her loveliness; the river by
which she dwells will be more pleasant than all other rivers in the
world, a list of them being appended in proof; the thoughts of
night-time, when the lover bemoans himself and his rejected state, or
dreams of happy love, will be dwelt upon; oblivious sleep and the
wan-faced moon will be invoked, and death will be called upon for
respite. Love and the praises of the loved one was the theme. On this
old but ever new refrain the sonneteer devised his descant, trilling
joyously on oaten pipe in praise of Delia or Phyllis, Coelia, Cælica,
Aurora, or