“The fetters of her sex”: Voicing Queens in the Historical Poetry of Michael Drayton and Samuel Daniel

Abstract

The epyllia of the Elizabethan period, often referred to as historical complaint poetry, enjoyed several especially fruitful decades toward the end of the sixteenth century.1 Samuel Daniel made his literary debut with The Complaint of Rosamond (1592), and most likely William Shakespeare made his with The Rape of Lucrece (1594), followed shortly by Venus and Adonis. Many other poets followed suit, including Michael Drayton and Anthony Chute, thus providing an interesting counterpoint to the popular male-voiced sonnet. For the most part, these complaints are narrated by women, usually young women whose chastity is threatened by a man in a higher social position—as a result they, as much as the poems in the Mirror tradition, concern themselves with the uses and abuses of royal and aristocratic power.2