Some Longer Elizabethan Poems

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
A. H. BULLEN
WESTMINSTER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO., LTD. 1903
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The texts contained in the present volume are reprinted with very slight alterations from the English Garner issued in eight volumes (1877-1890, London, 8vo) by Professor Arber, whose name is sufficient guarantee for the accurate collation of the texts with the rare originals, the old spelling being in most cases carefully modernised. The contents of the original Garner have been rearranged and now for the first time classified, under the general editorial supervision of Mr. Thomas Seccombe. Certain lacunae have been filled by the interpolation of fresh matter. The Introductions are wholly new and have been written specially for this issue.
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

The items indicated by an asterisk are new additions to An English Garner .

As there is no need to adopt a strictly chronological order for the poems included in the present volume, I have begun with the Orchestra and Nosce Teipsum of Sir John Davies (1569-1626), who was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant figures of the Elizabethan Age. Well-born and gently bred, educated at Winchester and at New College, Oxford, Davies was exceptionally fortunate in escaping the pecuniary cares that harassed so many Elizabethan men of letters. From the Middle Temple he was called to the bar in 1595 (at the age of twenty-six). In the previous year Orchestra had been entered in the Stationers' Register, but the poem was first published in 1596. From the dedicatory sonnet to Richard Martin we learn that it was written in fifteen days. There are, however, no signs of haste in the writing, and it may fairly be claimed that this poem in praise of dancing is a graceful monument of ingenious fancy. Lucian composed a valuable and entertaining treatise on dancing, and I suspect that Περὶ ᾽Ορχήσεως gave Davies the idea of writing Orchestra .
'The sovereign castle of the rockly isle