Michael Drayton devoted more space to the topic of deforestation than other poets of his time. In the fifth volume of the Hebel edition of his works we are told that 'Drayton is constantly deploring the destruction of the woods and forests, chiefly for fuel and iron-smelting', and that the topic is 'frequent' in Poly-Olbion (1612; 1622).1 In J. F. S. Post's English Lyric Poetry, Drayton is described as a 'life-long critic of deforestation'.2 The claim that the theme is a frequent one seems fair, although it depends on what counts as frequency. Deforestation is mentioned in a little less than one per cent of Poly-Olbion (145 out of 14,718 lines), and less than two per cent of The Muses Elizium (forty-six out of 2,561 lines), and they are the only two poems in which Drayton deals with the issue. In Poly-Olbion, the destruction of forests is bewailed by the forests' own nymphs,3 and because of the emotional way in which these woodland deities deprecate the rapid felling of their trees, the problem of the despoliation of forests makes a great impression on the reader; which perhaps leads to an over-estimate of the actual frequency of the laments. However, the topic itself and the context of its appearance in Drayton deserves to be analysed in depth.1. The Ecocritical ModelAccording to some critics, Drayton had a strong interest in ecological issues, which surfaces in his treatment of deforestation. Diane Kelsey McColley, in her Poetry and Ecology in the Age of Milton and Marvell, aims to persuade the reader that 'pre-Romantic' and 'pre-Darwinian' poetry is not 'unecological', or deprived of any 'environmental ethic'; therefore, ecocriticism is not an anachronistic means of analysis of seventeenth-century English texts.4 Although he was active when both Milton and Marvell were barely born, and his works were on the market about forty years earlier than most of the poems analysed in McColley's book, Drayton is included for his treatment of deforestation among the seventeenth-century English authors 'concerned deeply and allusively with what [was] actually happening to the natural world'. McColley counts Drayton among the poets who began to regard 'plants and animals not only as providers of human sustenance, pleasure and wisdom', but also as 'fellow creatures whose lives belong to themselves', thus developing a 'practice of attentive empathy that counters the allegorical, mechanical, instrumental, and commercial appropriation', and which draws a 'careful line between sympathetic affinity and the falsification of identity'. These authors, McColley explains, abandoned the use of poetic language and subjects derived from antiquity - what she calls the 'classic matters of mining and agriculture' - in favour of new ways of expression suggested by technological progress, and began to deal with topical issues like 'air pollution, deforestation, damming of rivers, and draining of wetlands'.5Sukanya Dasgupta has recently argued that Drayton's manipulation of literary genres in Poly-Olbion is 'a clever radicalisation of poetic conventions', in order to make a 'serious ecological and ethical claim', and that Drayton seems to share 'many of the insights of the modern green movement'.6 An 'early environmentalist', Drayton expresses his worries for the painful ecological changes brought about by the evolving agricultural economy: with his erasure of human voices in the poem, and his non-anthropocentric world view, Drayton aims to portray a fundamentally primitive landscape symbolising the ethical system of 'rural English culture' that 'gives value to the past', and which is being annihilated with the environment. In particular, as far as the destruction of forests is concerned, Dasgupta believes that Drayton is not only criticising the act itself; he is also attempting to 'draw attention to the particular bio-regions of each English county' and on the 'need for conservation of their natural habitat'.7More varied is Todd Andrew Borlik's theory on Poly-Olbion. …