Giles Fletcher, author of _Licia_, was one of that distinguished family
that included Richard Fletcher, the Bishop of London, and his son John
Fletcher, the dramatist. The two sons of Dr. Giles Fletcher were also
men of marked poetic ability: Phineas, the author of that extraordinary
allegorical poem, _The Purple Island_; and Giles, of _Christ's Victory
and Triumph_. There was a strong family feeling in this circle; Phineas
and Giles pay compliments to each other in their verse and show great
reverence and tenderness toward the memory of the poetic powers of their
father. But Giles Fletcher the elder was not thought of in his own time
as a poet. Educated at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, where he was made
LL.D. in 1581, a member of Parliament in '85, employed in many public
services at home and abroad during a career that lasted until 1611, in
which year Dr. Fletcher died at the age of seventy-two, he was known as
a man of action, a man for public responsibility, rather than as the
retired scholar or riming courtier. Most important among the foreign
embassages undertaken by Fletcher was the one to Russia. The results
were of great import to England, commercially and otherwise, but the
book he wrote on his return was, for political reasons, suppressed.
It happened that the years of enforced idleness that followed the
suppression of this book came in the time when the young sonneteers at
London were all busy. He returned from his embassage in '89; the book
was suppressed in '91. _Licia_ was published in '93. The writing of
_Licia_ was "rather an effect than a cause of idleness;" he did it "only
to try his humor," he says apologetically in the dedicatory addresses.
"Whereas my thoughts and some reasons drew me rather to have dealt in
causes of greater weight, yet the present jar of this disagreeing age
drives me into a fit so melancholy, as I had only leisure to grow
passionate."
In case wise heads should think him to be treating "an idle subject and
so frivolous," or that it has been "vainly handled and so odious," he
sets forth the nobility of his view. "Howsoever, Love in this age hath
behaved himself in that loose manner as it is counted a disgrace to give
him but a kind look, yet I take the passion in itself to be of that
honor and credit, as it is a perfect resemblance of the greatest
happiness, and rightly valued at his just price (in a mind that is
sincerely and truly amorous), an affection of greatest virtue and able
of himself to eternise the meanest vassal." "For Love," he declares, "is
a goddess (pardon me though I speak like a poet) not respecting the
contentment of him that loves, but the virtues of the beloved; satisfied
with wondering, fed with admiration; respecting nothing but his lady's
worthiness; made as happy by love as by all favors; chaste by honor; far
from violence; respecting but one, and that one in such kindness,
honesty, truth, constancy, and honor, as were all the world offered to
make a change, yet the boot were too small and therefore bootless. This
is love, and far more than this, which I know a vulgar head, a base
mind, an ordinary conceit, a common person will not nor cannot have.
Thus do I commend that love wherewith in these poems I have honoured the
worthy Licia."
The sonnet-cycle is inscribed "To the worthie kinde wise and virtuous
ladie, the Ladie Mollineux; wife to the right worshipful Sir Richard
Mollineux Knight." Nothing is known of this lady, except that her family
may possibly have been very distantly connected with that of Fletcher.
What the poet's feeling was towards his patroness he defines
sufficiently. "Now in that I have written love sonnets, if any man
measure my affection by my style, let him say I am in love.... Yet take
this by the way; though I am so liberal to grant thus much, a man may
write of love and not be in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to
the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness and be flat
profane."
What "shadowings" the poet may intend he refuses to confide to us. "If
thou muse what my Licia is, take her to be some Diana, at the least
chaste; or some Minerva; no Venus, fairer far. It may be she is
Learning's image, or some heavenly wonder, which the precisest may not
dislike: perhaps under that name I have shadowed Discipline. It may be I
mean that kind courtesy which I found at the patroness of these poems.
It may be some college; it may be my conceit, and portend nothing." It
is evident then that the patroness herself is not the real person behind
the poetic title. He therefore dedicates _Licia_ to Lady Molineux, not
because the sonnets themselves are addressed to her, but because he has
received "favours undeserved" at her hands and those of "wise Sir
Richard" for which he "wants means to make recompence," and therefore in
the meantime he begs her to accept this. "If thou like it," he says to
the reader, "take it, and thank the worthy Lady Mollineux, for whose
sake thou hast it; worthy, indeed, and so not only reputed by me in
private affection of thankfulness but so equally to be esteemed by all
that know her. For if I had not received of her ... those unrequitable
favours, I had not thus idly toyed."
A warm admirer of Fletcher has expressed his opinion that _Licia_
"sparkles with brilliants of the first water." A more temperate
judgment is that of another, who says that he "took part without
discredit in the choir of singers who were men of action too." _Licia_
is what a typical sonnet-cycle ought to be, a delicate and almost
intangible thread of story on which are strung the separate
sonnet-pearls. In this case the jewels have a particular finish.
Fletcher has adopted the idea of a series of quatrains, often extending
the number to four, and a concluding couplet, which he seems fond of
utilising to give an epigrammatic finish to the ingenious incident he so
often makes the subject of the sonnet. He is fully in the spirit of the
Italian mode, however, acknowledging in his title page his indebtedness
to poets of other nationalities than his own.