Sir William Davenant: the shorter poems, and songs from the plays and masques

Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) came into prominence as a court poet and dramatist in the early 1630s and played a major part in the revival of English drama at the end of the Puritan regime. The present volume is the first complete collection of his poems and songs from the plays and masques, the last full collection of the poems having been that included in the Folio edition of his Works in 1673. Six poems which have now been added to the canon are included. The text is based on collation of a wide variety of seventeenth-century printed and manuscript sources, and is followed by a commentary which aims to place the poems in their contemporary literary and historical context. The poems are prefaced with a biographical, critical and textual introduction and a selection of critical comments on Davenant by various writers from his own time to the nineteeth century. Contemporary musical settings of several of the poems, by William and Henry Lawes, John Wilson and others, are included in an appendix.