Book Description

Fulke Greville is one of the most enigmatic ofthe Elizabethans. He served three monarchs-Elizabeth, James and Charles-achieving high office in the state and amassing considerable wealth. The contrast between the worldliness of his career and the inwardness of his poetry has led to theories of 'the dualism of Fulke Greville', but the explanation lies rather in the development of his thought. Taking up verse as one of the accomplishments of the courtier, Greville ventured on the sonnet sequence Ca!lica (written concurrently with Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella), but came out on the other side. He turned next to the Senecan play, and in Mustapha and Alaham dramatized various subversive political viewpoints, and made the Senecan chorus an instrument of reflection and debate. An anonymous and unauthorized text of Mustapha was published in 1609. From the choruses of the plays developed the first of the verse treatises, A Treatise ofMonarchy, an exercise in Realpolitik. The issues encountered but not resolved in Monarchy led to a further set of treatises, showing Greville's deepening moral vision and his exploration of the treatise as an art fonn. His confidence that the state may be refonned, if the right policies are adopted (Monarchy), yields finally to a loss of faith in human institutions altogether.