Professor Elizabeth Story Donno, in her recent =Elizabethan Minor Epics=
(New York, 1963), has made an important contribution to both
scholarship and teaching. Not only has she brought together for the
first time in one volume most of the extant Elizabethan minor epics,
but in so doing, she has hastened the recognition that the minor epic,
or "epyllion" as it has often been called in modern times,[1] is a
distinctive literary genre as deserving of study as the sonnet, the
pastoral, or the verse satire.
The purpose of the present volume is to supplement and complement
Professor Donno's collection by making available in facsimile seven
minor epics of the English Renaissance omitted from it. With the
publication of these poems all the known, surviving minor epics of the
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods will for the first time be made
available for study in faithful reproductions of the earliest extant
editions.
Of the seven minor epics included here, three--=A Pleasant and
Delightfull Poeme of Two Lovers, Philos and Licia=, =STC= 19886 (1624);
Dunstan Gale's =Pyramus and Thisbe=, =STC= 11527 (1617); and S[amuel]
P[age's] =The Love of Amos and Laura= (1613)[2]--have not previously
been reprinted in modern times. And of these three, one, =Philos and
Licia=, though listed in the =Short-Title Catalogue=, seems not to have
been noticed by Renaissance scholars, nor even by any of the principal
bibliographers except William C. Hazlitt, who gives this unique copy
bare mention as a book from Robert Burton's collection.[3]
The remaining four books--R[ichard] L[ynche's][4] =The Amorous Poeme of
Dom Diego and Ginevra= published with Lynche's =Diella, Certaine
Sonnets=, =STC= 17091 (1596); William Barksted's =Mirrha The Mother of
Adonis: Or, Lustes Prodegies=, =STC= 1429 (1607), published with =Three
Eglogs= by Lewes Machin; Barksted's =Hiren: or The Faire Greeke=, =STC=
1428 (1611); and H. A's =The Scourge of Venus, or, The Wanton Lady.
With the Rare Birth of Adonis=, =STC= 968 (1613)--have been edited by the
"indefatigable" Alexander B. Grosart in =Occasional Issues of Very Rare
Books= (Manchester, 1876-77), limited to 50 copies each and hence
extremely scarce today.[5] =Dom Diego and Ginevra= was also reprinted by
Edward Arber in =An English Garner=, VII (Birmingham, 1883), 209-240.
With the exception of =Philos and Licia=, these poems are printed in
their approximate order of composition from 1596 to 1613.[6]