Customer Reviews

Elizabethan Lyrics from the Original Texts

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This is an older anthology of lyric poetry covering the time from Thomas Wyatt to 1620, and as such is inlfuenced by the ideal that the Elizabethans were best when they were warbling. In other words, it's only a slice of their ; if you want a sense of the range of what Elizabethans wrote, you'd be better off with something like the Pengiun anthology of English Renaissance Poetry or _The New Oxford Book of Fifteenth Century Verse_.

But oh what a slice it is. Ault includes generous selections from the song books. Most of the poems in this collection were written with the voice in mind, and opening this collection at random will give you (odds are) something that's lovely to recite. The older idea had something to it, for all that it limited the Elizabethan achievement -- and this collection shows this to perfection.