Michael Drayton

Topic: Michael Drayton

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• The local EEBO corpus records:

“The owle by Michaell Drayton ...”

• The same EEBO record identifies:

“Drayton, Michael, 1563-1631.”

• The same EEBO record dates the book:

1604

• The Folger catalog record describes the printed book as:

“London : Printed by E.A. for E. VVhite and N. Ling, and are to solde neere the little north doore of S. Paules Church, at the signe of the Gun, 1604.”

• The same Folger record cites:

“Pollard, A.W. Short-title catalogue ... (STC) 7213”

• In the local EEBO text witness for TCP A20832, the relevant appeal passage reads:

“Those that I could as I had power and might , Though with much paine , yet lastly did acquight . The rest whose freedome doth exceed my reach , O King of Birds I humbly thee beseech In mercy , let thy mightines puruay , To ransome from this imminent decay .”

• Kathleen Tillotson writes:

“Here Drayton clearly appeals for the release of the Earl of Southampton and Sir Henry Neville, but he hardly writes like a supporter of the conspiracy.”

• Tillotson also writes:

“it is just possible that Drayton's anxiety to make his epistles of Richard II and Isabel perfectly safe and respectable had something to do with this unidentified trouble”

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• No Ken Feinstein Twitter/blog material is isolated in this packet at present.

3. Quoted Source Text

Drayton, The owle (1604)

• “Those that I could as I had power and might”
• “Though with much paine , yet lastly did acquight”
• “The rest whose freedome doth exceed my reach”
• “O King of Birds I humbly thee beseech”
• “In mercy , let thy mightines puruay”
• “To ransome from this imminent decay”

Tillotson on Neville and Southampton

• “Here Drayton clearly appeals for the release of the Earl of Southampton and Sir Henry Neville, but he hardly writes like a supporter of the conspiracy.”
• “it is just possible that Drayton's anxiety to make his epistles of Richard II and Isabel perfectly safe and respectable had something to do with this unidentified trouble”

4. Citations

• Drayton, Michael. The owle. London, printed by E.A. for E. White and N. Ling, 1604. STC 7213. TCP A20832. Folger Shakespeare Library, https://catalog.folger.edu/record/415442. Oxford Text Archive, https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/A20832.
• Tillotson, Kathleen. “Drayton and Richard II: 1597-1600.” The Review of English Studies, old series, vol. 15, no. 58, Apr. 1939, pp. 172-179. Oxford Academic, https://academic.oup.com/res/article/os-XV/58/172/1530750.

5. Notes on Access

• The Tillotson article is available locally as drayton_neville.pdf. The PDF is OCR-readable.
• The Drayton quotation above was extracted directly from the local EEBO corpus record for TCP A20832.
• This packet preserves Tillotson’s interpretation as Tillotson’s interpretation. The primary text of The owle does not name Southampton or Neville directly in the quoted passage.