Abstract
Herrick's 'Rex Tragicus' and the 'Troublesome Times.' Recent criticism of the poetry of Robert Herrick would suggest that Herrick's verse is far more responsive to the political and religious upheavals of the English Civil War than had long been supposed. In no poem are the evocations of what Herrick called the troublesome times more profoundly in play than in Good Friday: Tragicus, or Christ going to His Crosse, a poem from Herrick's collection of religious verses, Noble Numbers, which has been read as Herrick's pro-Royalist expression of concern for the impending trial and execution of Charles I. What follows here is an attempt to read the Rex Tragicus for what could have been read in and into it when it was published along with the rest of Herrick's Noble Numbers and Hesperides 1648. Examining the iconology of the Passion to which the poem is heir, this paper relates the Rex Tragicus to the controversies involving, not only the Crown, but the Anglican Church and the public stage, a...
Published Version
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