The Bride

Produced by David Starner, Phil Petersen, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team
Editorial note: Long s's have been turned into s's, and the occasional use of a macron over a vowel to express a following n or m has been replaced with the following n or m. Otherwise, the spelling is as in the original edition of 1617, as difficult and inconsistent as it may be.
By Samuel Rowlands
With an Introductory Note by Alfred Claghorn Potter
Introductory Note
While all of Rowlands's works are classed by bibliographers as rare, this one seemed to have disappeared entirely. No copy was to be found in any of the large libraries or private collections, nor was there any record of its sale.
Last spring a copy was discovered in the catalogue of a bookseller in a small German town, and was secured for the Harvard College Library, being purchased from the Child Memorial Fund. The copy is perfect, except that the inner corner at the top of the second and third leaves has been torn off, with the loss of parts of two words, which have been supplied in manuscript. From this copy the present reprint is made. As in the Hunterian Club edition of Rowlands's Works, to which this may be considered a supplement, the reprint is exact. The general makeup of the book as to style and size of type has been followed as closely as possible; and the text has been reproduced page for page and word for word. The misprints, which are unusually numerous, even for a book of this period, have been left uncorrected. The title-page and the two head-pieces have been reproduced by photography.
Of the poem itself, since it is now before the reader, little need be said. It cannot be claimed that it presents great poetical merit. Rowlands at his best was but an indifferent poet,—hardly more than a penny-a-liner. In his satirical pieces and epigrams, and in that bit of genuine comedy, Tis Merrie vvhen Gossips meete, his work does have a real literary value, and is distinctly interesting as presenting a vivid picture of London life at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In The Bride, it must be confessed, Rowlands falls below his own best work. Yet the poem is by no means wholly lacking in interest. If not his best work, The Bride is by no means his worst. Like most of his poems, it is written in an heroic stanza of six lines, and, as is not so common with him, is in dialogue form. The dialogue for the most part is well sustained and sprightly. The story of the birth of Merlin, it is true, seems to have been inserted mainly to fill out the required number of pages; but this digression has an interest of its own, in that the name here given to Merlin's mother, Lady Adhan, does not appear in the ordinary versions of the legend.