Calling all English Majors...

[neotoma]

I'm looking for romantic poetry from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobin periods -- say 1580 to 1608. I'd like to avoid Shakespeare, since I know there *were* other poets out there then. Donne? Marlowe? Who else might have been popular enough for octavos of their poems to be available?

How familiar would an educated man have been with the Roman poets? I could get to the dirtier bits of Catallus, but is that period? Or would someone else be better for the 'classics' of the time?

Comments

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, and I might run off to the young man sonnets if I get desperate, but there were other writers of the time, and I doubt Robbie could bring back only Shakespeare and still fill a sea-chest. Shakespeare wasn't the whole of the publishing industry back then, no matter how enduring he has proved.