© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press 2006; all rights reserved
‘Many a herdsman more disposde to morne’: Peele, Campion, and the Portugal Expedition of 1589
Exeter College, Oxford
This article examines one Latin and two English poems occasioned by the English military expedition to Portugal of 1589: George Peel's A Farewell and An Eglogue. Gratulatorie, and Thomas Campion's ‘Ad Daphnin’, a dedicatory poem prefacing his collection of Latin verse, Poemata (1595). Through close analysis of the formal and stylistic aspects of the poems, reading them also alongside their literary sources and analogues, and through contextualization of the poems with the troubled events and aftermath of the expedition, the article seeks to show that these works—which have been given little scholarly and critical attention—are unexpectedly complex and nuanced. Attention is paid to the poems' encomiastic elements, and they are positioned in the careers of their authors. These analyses have implications for our understanding of early modern interactions between the text and the event; the motives for and modes of public, occasional poetry; and the possibilities of reading closely the Anglo-Latin poetry of the Renaissance