though she have a better verser got,
(Or Poet, in the court-account), than I,
And who doth me, though I not him envy.
In 1619 Jonson told Drummond that he had answered Daniel’s Defence of Ryme (?1603), that ‘Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, had no children; but no poet’, and that ‘Daniel was at jealousies with him’ (Laing, 1, 2, 10). All this suggests to me a rivalry at the Jacobean, rather than the Elizabethan Court, and I concur in the criticisms of Small, 181, upon the elaborate attempts of Fleay, i. 84, 359, to trace attacks on Daniel in Jonson’s earlier comedies. Fleay makes Daniel Fastidious Brisk in Every Man Out of his Humour, Hedon in Cynthia’s Revels, and alternatively Hermogenes Tigellius and Tibullus in The Poetaster, as well as Emulo in the Patient Grissel of Dekker and others. In most of these equations he is followed by others, notably Penniman, who adds (Poetaster, xxxvii) Matheo in Every Man In his Humour and Gullio in the anonymous 1 Return from Parnassus. For all this the only basis is that Brisk, Matheo, and Gullio imitate or parody Daniel’s poetry. What other poetry, then, would affected young men at the end of the sixteenth century be likely to imitate? Some indirect literary criticism on Daniel may be implied, but this does not constitute the imitators portraits of Daniel. Fleay’s further identifications of Daniel with Littlewit in Bartholomew Fair and Dacus in the Epigrams of Sir John Davies are equally unsatisfactory. To return to biography. In 1604 Daniel, for the first time so far as is known, became connected with the stage, through his appointment as licenser for the Queen’s Revels by their patent of 4 Feb. Collier, New Facts, 47, prints, as preserved at Bridgewater House, two undated letters from Daniel to Sir Thomas Egerton. One, intended to suggest that Shakespeare was a rival candidate for the post in the Queen’s Revels, is a forgery, and this makes it impossible to attach much credit to the other, in which the writer mentions the ‘preferment of my brother’ and that he himself has ‘bene constrayned to live with children’. Moreover, the manuscript was not forthcoming in 1861 (Ingleby, 247, 307). Daniel evidently took a part in the management of the Revels company; the indiscretion of his Philotas did not prevent him from acting as payee for their plays of 1604–5. But his connexion with them probably ceased when Eastward Ho! led, later in 1605, to the withdrawal of Anne’s patronage. The irrepressible Mr. Fleay (i. 110) thinks that they then satirized him as Damoetas in Day’s Isle of Gulls (1606). Daniel wrote one more mask and two pastorals, all for Court performances. By 1607 he was Groom of Anne’s Privy Chamber, and by 1613 Gentleman Extraordinary of the same Chamber. In 1615 his brother John obtained through his influence a patent for the Children of the Queen’s Chamber of Bristol (cf. ch. xii). He is said to have had a wife Justina, who was probably the sister of John Florio, whom he called ‘brother’ in 1611. The suggestion of Bolton Corney (3 N. Q. viii. 4, 40, 52) that this only meant fellow servant of the Queen is not plausible; this relation would have been expressed by ‘fellow’. He had a house in Old Street, but kept up his Somerset connexion, and was buried at Beckington, where he had a farm named Ridge, in Oct. 1619.
Collections
1599. The Poeticall Essayes of Sam. Danyel. Newly corrected and augmented. P. Short for Simon Waterson. [Includes Cleopatra.]
1601. The Works of Samuel Daniel Newly Augmented. For Simon Waterson. [Cleopatra.]
1602. [Reissue of 1601 with fresh t.p.]
1605. Certaine Small Poems Lately Printed: with the Tragedie of Philotas. Written by Samuel Daniel. G. Eld for Simon Waterson. [Cleopatra, Philotas.]
1607. Certain Small Workes Heretofore Divulged by Samuel Daniel one of the Groomes of the Queenes Maiesties priuie Chamber, and now againe by him corrected and augmented. I. W. for Simon Waterson. [Two issues. Cleopatra, Philotas, The Queen’s Arcadia.]