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Michael Drayton As Minor Poet

 


Life

Michael Drayton was born about in 1563 at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Michael wrote sonnets and theatrical plays, as well as historical, pastoral, and topographical poetry. Michael was the layman of the elizabethan age, vastly more scholarly then his predecessor. Michael Drayton  was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era. drayton is the most voluminous and to antiquarians at least the most interesting of the minor poets. Michael Drayton was also one of the most versatile of English poet and distinguished writer  in Elizabethan England. He was highly praised in his own time, by Ben Jonson among others.

Michael wrote one of the longest poems in English history. Michael Drayton was a contemporary of many  literary giant in an age of literary giants.

Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham, Nottinghamshire.

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Education

His father was a tradesman and his socio economic status was modest at best. His social stock rose when he worked as a page for the wealthy nobleman Sir Henry Goodere. who sponsored and promoted the theater and literary works. 

Like his contemporary William Shakespeare, Michael Drayton was the son of a prosperous Warwickshire tradesman. He received a good education as a page in the house of Sir Henry Goodere, but there is no record of his ever having studied at a university.


Marriage

He fell in love with Goodere's daughter Anne, and some of his literary characters were patterned after her. Sadly for Drayton, she married someone else and Drayton himself never married.


Work

In 1590, Drayton's first publication, The Harmony of the Church, a volume of spiritual poems, dedicated to Lady Devereux. It is notable for a version of the Song of Solomon, with the exception of forty copies, the whole edition was destroyed by public order. Nevertheless, Drayton published a vast amount within the next few years. appeared in 1591, when he was 28.

In 1613, his chief work is Poly Olbion, majestic topographical and historical poem. An enormous poem of many thousand coulets, describing the towns, mountains, rivers of britain. it is an extremely valuable work and represents a lifetime of study and is one of the longest poems in the English language. Over the years, it proved to be an inspiration for later writers to emulate. It is an incredible 15,000 lines. 

His much-celebrated Poly Olbion was dedicated to Prince Henry, the son of James I. 

By 1593 Drayton had also written his first historical romance in verse, The Legend of Piers Gaveston, which was about an English nobleman and confidant of King Edward II. Barons' wars in the reign of edward 2 1603. In 1594, Matilda made great Hollywood films in later times, much like the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, An epic poem in rhyme royal.

In 1593, Idea the Shepherd's Garland  is a collection of nine pastoral poems. 

In 1594 Idea's mirror drayton wrote , a set of sonnets that declared his love for a unknown lady , who we now know to be his patrons daughter anne goodere, his love was unrequited and anne went on to marry another, but she remained friends with michael . Idea's Mirror is a sonnet sequence, also portrays the poet's beloved under the Platonic name of Idea.  

In 1627, The most important of the poems of Drayton's later years, his Nymphidia is a delicate mock heroic tale of the fairy kingdom.  The battle of agincourt, a ballad written in the lively mater which tennyson used with some variations in the charge of the light brigade , and which shows the old english love of brave deeds and of the songs that stir a poeples heart in momery of noble ancestors. The last of Drayton's voluminous publications was The Muses' Elizium in 1630. The Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy. 

Like other poets of his era, Drayton was active in writing for the theatre, but unlike Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,  Samuel Daniel. Drayton was a member of the stable of playwrights who supplied material for the theatrical syndicate of Philip Henslowe. 

In later centuries, many renowned English authors such as Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth were inspired by his works especially by Poly Olbion. 

 

Death 

Michael died on 23 December 1631 in London. he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.  had a monument placed over him by the Countess of Dorset,  with memorial lines attributed to Ben Jonson.

Drayton was also a strongly political poet, who aimed to be acknowledged as a bard of his nation. 

The English poet Michael Drayton (1563-1631) attempted to create a strong national culture by turning for inspiration to English history rather than to foreign sources.



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