Jonson joined the theatrical company of Philip Henslowe in London as an actor and playwright on or before 1597, when he is identified in the papers of Henslowe. In 1597 he was imprisoned in the Fleet Prison for his involvement in a satire entitled The Isle of Dogs, declared seditious by the authorities. The following year Jonson killed a fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a duel in the Fields at Shoreditch and was tried at Old Bailey for murder. He escaped the gallows only by pleading benefit of clergy. During his subsequent imprisonment he converted to Roman Catholicism only to convert back to Anglicism over a decade later, in 1610. He was released forfeit of all his possessions, and with a felon’s brand on his thumb.

Jonson’s second known play, Every Man in His Humour, was performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe with William Shakespeare in the cast. Jonson became a celebrity, and there was a brief fashion for ‘humours’ comedy, a kind of topical comedy involving eccentric characters, each of whom represented a temperament, or humor, of humanity. His next play, Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), was less successful. Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia’s Revels (1600) were satirical comedies displaying Jonson’s classical learning and his interest in formal experiment.

While at Cambridge, Alabaster wrote Roxana, a Senecan tragedy in Latin, in 1592. It was performed at Trinity soon after to great enthusiasm. Forty years after its first performance, it was still esteemed highly enough to warrant an unauthorized publication, in 1632. Full of errors, this induced Alabaster to publish an authorized edition later in the same year. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, says, in reference to “Latin verses with classic elegance”: “If we produced any thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster’s Roxana.²

“And there is Alabaster thoroughly taught
In all this skill, though knowen yet to few;
Yet, were he knowne to Cynthia as he ought,
His Elisëis would be redde anew.
Who lives that can match that heroick song,
Which he hath of that mightie Princesse made?
(ll.400-5)

Eliseis still exists among the manuscripts of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

In 1637, Alabaster published his Lexicon Pentaglotton Hebraicum, a work which had occupied him for many years, and which was received with accolades from other scholars. Alabaster also wrote metaphysical devotional poems in Latin and in English, few of which survive, and which were not printed in his lifetime. He died in his 74th year, in April, 1640.

Article Citation:

Jokinen, Anniina. “William Alabaster.” Luminarium.
22 Oct 2006. [Date when you accessed the page].              <http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/alabaster/alabasterbio.htm>

Sir Thomas Overbury (1581 – September 15, 1613), English poet and essayist, and the victim of one of the most sensational crimes in English history, was the son of Nicholas Overbury, of Bourton-on-the-Hill, and was born at Compton Scorpion, near Ilmington, in Warwickshire.

In the autumn of 1595 he became a gentleman commoner of Queen’s College, Oxford, took his degree of B.A. in 1598 and came to London to study law in the Middle Temple. He found favour with Sir Robert Cecil, travelled on the Continent and began to enjoy a reputation for an accomplished mind and free manners. About the year 1601, being in Edinburgh on a holiday, he met Robert Carr, then an obscure page to the earl of Dunbar; and so great a friendship was struck up between the two youths that they came up to London together.

The early history of Carr remains obscure, and it is probable that Overbury secured an introduction to Court before his young associate contrived to do so. At all events, when Carr attracted the attention of James I, in 1606, by breaking his leg in the tilt-yard, Overbury had for some time been servitor-in-ordinary to the king. He was knighted in June 1608, and in 1609 he travelled in France and the Low Countries. He seems to have followed the fortunes of Carr very closely, and “such was the warmth of the friendship, that they were inseparable, … nor could Overbury enjoy any felicity but in the company of him he loved [Carr].” When the latter was made Lord Rochester in 1610, the intimacy seems to have been sustained. But it was now destroyed by a new element.

Early in 1611 the Court became aware of the mutual attraction between Rochester and the infamous and youthful countess of Essex, who seemed to have bewitched the handsome Scots adventurer. To this intrigue Overbury was from the first violently opposed, pointing out to Rochester that an indulgence in it would be hurtful to his preferment, and that the woman, even at this early stage in her career, was already “noted for her injury and immodesty.” He went so far as to use, in describing her, a word which was not more just than scandalous. But Rochester was now infatuated, and he repeated to the countess what Overbury had said.

It was at this time, too, that Overbury wrote, and circulated widely in manuscript, the poem called His Wife, which was a picture of the virtues which a young man should demand in a woman before he has the rashness to marry her. It was represented to Lady Essex that Overbury’s object in writing this poem was to open the eyes of Rochester to her defects. The situation now resolved itself into a deadly duel for the person of Rochester between the mistress and the friend. The countess contrived to lead Overbury into such a trap as to make him seem disrespectful to the king, and she succeeded so completely that he was thrown into the Tower on April 22, 1613.

It was not known at the time, and it is not certain now, how far Rochester participated in this first crime, or whether he was ignorant of it. But the queen, by a foolish phrase, had sown discord between the friends; she had called Overbury Rochester’s “governor.” It is, indeed, apparent that Overbury had become arrogant with success, and was no longer a favourite at Court. Lady Essex, however, was not satisfied with having had him shut up; she was determined that “he should return no more to this stage.” She had Sir William Wade, the honest Governor of the Tower, removed to make way for a creature ofher own, Sir Gervaise Elvis (or Heiwys); and a gaoler, of whom it was ominously said that he was “a man well acquainted with the power of drugs,” was set to attend on Overbury. This fellow, afterwards aided by Mrs. Turner, the widow of a physician, and by an apothecary called Franklin, plied the miserable poet with sulphuric acid in the form of copper vitriol.

But his constitution long withstood the timid doses they gave him, and he lingered in exquisite sufferings until September 15, 1613. Two months later Rochester, now earl of Somerset, married the chief murderess, Lady Essex. More than a year passed before suspicion was roused, and when it was, the king showed a disinclination to bring the offenders to justice. In the celebrated trial which followed, however, evidence of a plot was uncovered. The four accomplices were hanged; the countess of Somerset pleaded guilty but was spared, and Somerset himself was disgraced.

Meanwhile, Overbury’s poem, The Wife, was published in 1614, and ran through six editions within a year, the scandal connected with the murder of the author greatly aiding its success. It was abundantly reprinted within the next sixty years, and it continued to be one of the most widely popular books of the 17th century. Combined with later editions of The Wife, and gradually adding to its bulk, were Characters (first printed in the second of the 1614 editions). The Remedy of Love (1620), and Observations in Foreign Travels (1626). Later, much that must be spurious was added to the gathering snowball of Overbury’s Works.

Excerpted from:
A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.
John W. Cousins, ed. J M Dent & Co, London, 1910.

About 1591 he formed a friendship with the Earl of Essex, from whom he received many tokens of kindness ill requited. In 1593 the offices of Attorney-general, and subsequently of Solicitor-general became vacant, and Essex used his influence on Bacon’s behalf, but unsuccessfully, the former being given to Coke, the famous lawyer. These disappointments may have been owing to a speech made by Bacon on a question of subsidies. To console him for them Essex presented him with a property at Twickenham, which he subsequently sold for £1800, equivalent to a much larger sum now.

In 1596 he was made a Queen’s Counsel, but missed the appointment of Master of the Rolls, and in the next year (1597), he published the first edition of his Essays, ten in number, combined with Sarced Meditations and the Coulours of Good and Evil. By 1601 Essex had lost the Queen’s favour, and had raised his rebellion, and Bacon was one of those appointed to investigate the charges against him, and examine witnesess, in connection with which he showed an ungrateful and indecent eagerness in pressing the case against his former friend and benefactor, who was executed on Feb. 25, 1601. This act Bacon endeavoured to justify in A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons, etc., of…the Earl of Essex, etc. His circumstances had for some time been bad, and he had been arrested for debt: he had, however, received a gift of a fine of £1200 on one of Essex’s accomplices.

The accession of James VI in 1603 gave a favourable turn to his fortunes: he was knighted, and endeavoured to set himself right with the new powers by writing his Apologie (defence) of his proceedings in the case of Essex, who had favoured the succession of James. In the first Parliament of the new king he sat for St. Alban’s, and was appointed a Commissioner for Union with Scotland. In 1605 he published The Advancement of Learning, dedicated, with fulsome flattery, to the king. The following year he married Alice Barnham, the daughter of a London merchant, and in 1607 he was made Solicitor-General, and wrote Cogita et Visa, a first sketch of the Novum Organum, followed in 1609 by The Wisdom of the Ancients.

Meanwhile (in 1608), he had entered upon the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, and was in the enjoyment of a large income; but old debts and present extravagance kept him embarrassed, and he endeavoured to obtain further promotion and wealth by supporting the king in his arbitrary policy. In 1613 he became Attorney-General, and in this capacity prosecuted Somerset in 1616. The year 1618 saw him Lord Keeper, and the next Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam, a title which, in 1621, he exchanged for that of Viscount St. Albans. Meanwhile he had written the New Atlantis, a political romance, and in 1620 he presented to the king the Novum Organum, on which he had been engaged for 30 years, and which ultimately formed the main part of the Instauratio Magna.

In his great office Bacon showed a failure of character in striking contrast with the majesty of his intellect. He was corrupt alike politically and judicially, and now the hour of retribution arrived. In 1621 a Parliamentary Committee on the administration of the law charged him with corruption under 23 counts; and so clear was the evidence that he made no attempt at defence. To the lords, who sent a committee to inquire whether the confession was really his, he replied, “My lords, it is my act, my hand, and my heart; I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.” He was sentenced to a fine of £40,000, remitted by the king, to be committed to the Tower during the king’s pleasure (which was that he should be released in a few days), and to be incapable of holding office or sitting in parliament. He narrowly escaped being deprived of his titles.

Thenceforth he devoted himself to study and writing. In 1622 appeared his History of Henry VII, and the 3rd part of the Instauratio; in 1623, History of Life and Death, the De Augmentis Scientarum, a Latin translation of the Advancement, and in 1625 the 3rd edition of the Essays, now 58 in number. He also published Apophthegms, and a translation of some of the Psalms.

His life was now approaching its close. In March, 1626, he came to London, and shortly after, when driving on a snowy day, the idea struck him of making an experiment as to the antiseptic properties of snow, in consequence of which he caught a chill, which ended in his death on 9th April 1626. He left debts to the amount of £22,000. At the time of his death he was engaged upon Sylva Sylvarum.

The intellect of Bacon was one of the most powerful and searching ever possessed by man, and his developments of the inductive philosophy revolutionised the future thought of the human race.

James I of England and VI of Scotland was born in 1566, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry, Lord Darnley. James had to face difficulties from his earliest years—his mother was an incompetent ruler who quarrelled with politicians and churchmen such as John Knox, and she may have been involved in the murder of her husband Darnley, himself a worthless character. The murder was carried out partly to avenge the slaying of Mary’s secretary and possible lover, David Rizzio or Riccio, in which Darnley played a part (before James’s birth), and it also enabled Mary to marry her current lover, the Earl of Bothwell. Mary was deposed by the Scottish lords in 1567, and fled to England, where she sought the protective custody of Elizabeth I, who clapped her in prison and had her beheaded twenty years later.

James grew up under various regencies and a couple of notable tutors, the poet, dramatist and humanist George Buchanan, and Peter Young, whose good nature and enthusiasm for lighter reading somewhat offset the formidable learning and sometimes overbearingly serious teaching methods of Buchanan. James chafed against Buchanan and disliked him, but in later years would boast that he had been the great man’s pupil. Buchanan instilled in James political theories which included the idea that the king is beholden to the people for his power, a belief which James later came to reject in favour of Divine Right kingship. From Young he learned to appreciate poetry (Buchanan wrote Latin poetry of a largely didactic nature, and encouraged James to read mostly Latin and Greek books) and delved deeply into his mother’s library of French verse and romances. James developed a genuine love of learning (he was not, as many authors have claimed, a mere pedant), some skill in writing poetry, and a lively prose style. He also showed an interest in plays, including those of Shakespeare and Jonson, and was particularly fond of the masque, which would become the leading form of court entertainment when James became King of England in 1603. His marriage to Anne of Denmark, herself a great patron of masques and a connoisseur of literature, may have piqued his interest in this particularly royal form of entertainment, with its music, dancing, singing and elaborate sets designed by Inigo Jones. Of the children of King James and Queen Anne, only three survived to adulthood: Henry, Prince of Wales, who died untimely in 1612, possibly of typhoid fever, Charles, who succeeded his father as king, and Princess Elizabeth, who married Frederick V, Elector Palatine.

James published his first book in 1584, entitled The Essays of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesy, which he followed up in 1591 with His Majesties Poetical Exercises at Vacant Hours. In the first book James included some translations he had made from du Bartas, whose Uranie takes the muse Urania and transforms her into a Christian figure representing the Holy Spirit, an idea which appealed to James at the time, because he thought he could employ poetry for the dissemination of his religious and political beliefs. As a King, James had a special relationship with God and could therefore write religious poetry from a special viewpoint. James’s poetry is competent, and sometimes he manages a striking line or two; one of his best poems is the sonnet he wrote prefacing his book Basilikon Doron (1599).

The majority of James’s written works are concerned with theology and the justification of the theory of Divine Right, and for those reasons he must be considered as a major writer of political philosophy. In lively style and with considerable learning he defended the Oath of Allegiance which Catholics were required to take, disputed it with the great Cardinal Bellarmine, wrote two books on Divine Right, one, Basilikon Doron, for the edification of his son Prince Henry (1594-1612) and the other, The True Law of Free Monarchies, was a simple explanation of his theories for the general literate public. D.H. Willson, one of James’s biographers, calls the first book “entertaining and quotable” (133) and also cites Francis Bacon as finding that it “filled the whole realm as with a good perfume or incense, being excellently written and having nothing of affectation” (166). James’s comment on Bacon’s Advancement of Learning was “it was like the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Ashton 142). James also wrote some rather moving “Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer” and a justly famous essay, “A Counterblast to Tobacco” (1604), one of the first, and surely one of the best attacks on smoking ever written. Smoking, James tells us, is “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”

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For some context on Seamus Heaney, see the Context section of Storm on the Island

1. Subject Matter
2. Structure and Language
3. Imagery and Sound
4. Attitude, tone and ideas
5. Comparison

The Song of the Old Mother

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

The Language Of the Poem

• The Old Mother uses very simple language. It is ordinary polite English (not colloquial) with few words more than one syllable in length. This suggests that the woman has had a simple, straightforward life and that the things that occupy her now are basic: I must scrub and bake and sweep.
• However, the young women have nothing to do but worry about the colour of their ribbons. The contrast between the idleness of the young – who are more suited to physical work – and the old woman, is harsh.
• The young sigh or complain (line 8) if the wind merely disarranges their hair, but the old woman does not complain – at least, not explicitly. Do you feel that the final line is a veiled complaint?
• The title indicates that the woman is a Mother, but it is not clear whether the young whose idleness she describes are her children or not. It is possible that the word Mother is merely an affectionate name for an old woman, and that she has no children – or that her children have grown up and left her alone. If so, is she perhaps reminded of her own daughters when she sees the young women?

Sound

• There is some effective use of repetition in the poem:
  – The I must scrub and bake and sweep in line 3 is echoed by the I must work in line 9, reinforcing the repetitive, unending nature of her work.
  – Line 10 mirrors line 2, giving a feeling of finality and enclosure to the poem.
  
• The strong regular rhythm emphasises the physical side of the woman’s work: the beat falls on rise, dawn, kneel, blow in line 1, for example, as if hammering out her tough routine.
• There is a lot of alliteration and assonance in the poem. For example:
  – The repeated b and k and p sounds in scrub and bake and sweep (line 3) emphasise how hard and physical the woman’s work is
  – The long l sounds in lie long (line 5) help to convey the laziness of the young women.
  – We can hear the girls sighing in the assonance of line 8 – sigh if the wind but lift a tress – while the soft rhyme in lines 7 and 8 – idleness / tress emphasises the gentle way in which they spend their days.

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