William Warner

William Warner (?1558 - 9 March 1609) was an English poet.

William Warner (?1558-1609) Albion's England. London: Widow Orwin, for I.B., 1596. Courtesy [Wikimedia Commons].

Life

Overview

March 11 - William Warner, our English Homer

Warner, born in London or Yorkshire, studied at Oxford, and was an attorney in London. In 1585 he published a collection of 7 tales in prose entitled Pan his Syrinx, and in 1595 a translation of the Menæchmi of Plautus. His chief work was Albion's England, published in 1586 in 13 books of 14-syllabled verse, and republished with 3 additional books in 1606. The title is thus explained in the dedication, "This our whole island anciently called Britain, but more anciently Albion, presently containing two kingdoms, England and Scotland, is cause ... that to distinguish the former, whose only occurrants I abridge from our history, I entitle this my book 'Albion's England'." For about 20 years it was among the most popular poems of its size — it contains about 10,000 lines — ever written. In his narratives Warner allowed himself great latitude of expression, which may partly account for the rapidity with which his book fell into oblivion.

Youth and education

Warner was born in London about 1558.

He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, but did not take a degree. According to Wood he was "more a friend to poetry, history, and romance than to logic and philosophy."

Career

Settling in London, Warner followed the profession of an attorney, and, while acquiring some reputation in the court of common pleas, managed to secure a more prominent position as a man of letters. He was acquainted with Marlowe and other writers of his day in London; Henry Carey, first lord Hunsdon, lord chamberlain, and his son George, second lord Hunsdon, who was also lord chamberlain, proved encouraging patrons.

Warner died suddenly on 9 March 1608-9 at Amwell in Hertfordshire, and was buried there. The entry in the parish register runs:

1608-9. Master William Warner, a man of good yeares and of honest reputation; by profession an attornye of the common pleas, author of 'Albion's England,' diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde without any former complaynt of sicknesse on Thursday night, beinge the 9th daye of March; was buried the Saturday following, and lyeth in the church at the corner under the stone of Walter Ffader.

Writing

Tanner mentions that an English translation of the Novelle of Bandello was issued by a writer who only used his initials ‘W. W.’ in 1580. No such work is now known, but it may possibly be an early venture by Warner in the field of romance (cf. Warton, Hist. of English Poetry, 1824, iv. 312).

Warner's earliest extant publication is a collection of tales in prose, somewhat in the manner of Heliodorus's ‘Ethiopica,ntitled Pan his Syrinx, or Pipe, compact of seuen Reedes; including in one, seuen Tragical and Comicall Arguments, with their diuers Notes not impertinent. Whereby, in effect, of all thinges is touched, in few, something of the vayne, wanton, proud, and inconstant course of the World. Neither, herein, to somewhat praiseworthie, is prayse wanting. By William Warner. At London, by Thomas Purfoote [1585], 4to. This was dedicated to Sir George Carey (afterwards second Lord Hunsdon). The 7 tales are entitled respectively: ‘Arbaces,’ ‘Thetis,’ ‘Belopares,’ ‘Pheone,’ ‘Deipyrus,’ ‘Aphrodite,’ and ‘Opheltes.’ Another edition, in 1597, bore the title Syrinx, or a Seauenfold Historie, handled with Varietie of pleasant and profit- able both comicall and tragicall argument. Newly perused and amended by the first Author, W. Warner, London, 1597, 4to. This edition is dedicated to George Carey, 2nd lord Hunsdon.

Warner also translated several plays of Plautus, but of these only 1 was published. This was Menæchmi. A pleasant … Comedie, taken out of … Plautus … Written in English by W.W. London, by T. Creede, 1595, 4to (without pagination). Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, which was probably composed in 1592, owes much to Plautus's Menæchmi, and Shakespeare may have had access to Warner's translation before it was published. It was reprinted in John Nichols's ‘Six Old Plays,’ 1779, i. 109 seq., and in J. P. Collier's ‘Shakespeare's Library,’ 1844 (new edit. by W. C. Hazlitt, 1875, pt. ii. vol. i. 1 et seq.).

Albion's England

Warner's chief work and his earliest experiment in verse was a long episodic poem in 14-syllable lines, which in its original shape treated of legendary or imaginary incidents in British history from the time of Noah till the arrival in England of William the Conqueror, but was continued in successive editions until it reached the reign of James I. In its episodic design it somewhat resembled Ovid's Metamorphoses. Historical traditions are mingled with fictitious fabliaux with curious freedom.

The 1st edition in 4 books — now a volume of the utmost rarity — appeared in 1586, under the title Albion's England; or, Historical map of the same island: prosecuted from the lives and acts and labors of Saturne, Jupiter, Hercules, and Æneas: Originalles of the Bruton, and the Englishman, and occasion of the Brutons their first aryvall in Albion. Containing the same Historie vnto the Tribute to the Romaines, Entrie of the Saxones, Invasion by the Danes, and Conquest by the Normaines. With Historicall Intermixtures, Inuention, and Varietie profitably, briefly and pleasantly, performed in Verse and Prose by William Warner. London, by George Robinson for Thomas Cadman, 1586, 4to (black letter). Thomas Cadman obtained a license for printing the book on 7 November 1586 (Arber, Stationers' Reg. ii. 458), but a pirate-publisher, Roger Ward, had been detected setting the manuscript in type in the previous October (Ames, Typogr. Antiq. ed. Herbert, 1190).

Warner dedicated the original edition of Albion's England to Henry Carey, first lord Hunsdon. At the close of the volume is a prose "Breviate of the true historie of Aeneas," which reappeared in all later editions except the 2nd. The work was brought down to the accession of Henry VII in the 2nd edition, which included 6 books, and was called The First and Second parts of Albion's England. The former reuised and corrected, and the latter newly continued and added, containing an Historical Map, London, 1589, 4to. A folding woodcut, exhibiting the lineages of Lancaster and York, forms the frontispiece in some copies.

A 3rd edition further extended the work to 9 books, and concluded with the accession of Queen Elizabeth; this edition bore the title Albion's England; the third time corrected and augmented: Containing an history of the same countrey and kingdome, from the originals of the inhabitants of the same. With the chief Alterations and Accidents therein happening, until her nowe Majesties most blessed Raigne. …, London, 1592, 4to. Of later editions (all in quarto) a 4th, "now revised and newly inlarged," appeared in 1596 in 12 books, with a folding pictorial plate of the genealogy of Lancaster and York inserted opposite page 161 (some title-pages bear the date 1597), and a 5th edition, with the addition of a 13th book and a prose "Epitome of the whole Historie of England," was issued in 1602.

A Continuance of Albion's England, by the first author, W.W., supplied 3 additional books (xiv, xv, xvi) in 1606. Finally a new edition, with the most chief alterations and accidents … in the … Raigne of … King James. … Newly revised and enlarged. With a new epitome of the whole Historie of England, was issued, after Warner's death, in 1612. Here the books number 16, and the chapters 107, with the 2 prose appendices (the "Breviate" and the "Epitome").

Albion's England in its own day gained a very high reputation, which was largely due to the author's patriotic aims and sentiment. But his style, although wordy and prosaic, is unpretentious, and his narrative, which bears little trace of a study of Italian romance, and lacks the languor of current Italian fiction, occasionally develops an original vigor and dignity which partially justify the eulogies of the writer's contemporaries.

In the book's heyday, Warner and Edmund Spenser were called the Homer and Virgil of their age. They must, however, have appealed to quite different classes. The plain-spoken, jolly humor, homely, lively, direct tales, vigorous patriotic feeling, and rough-and-tumble meter of Warner's muse, and its heterogeneous accumulation of material — history, tales, theology, antiquities — must have appealed to a lower and wider audience than Spenser's charmed verse. The style is clear, spirited, and pointed, but, as has been said, "with all its force and vivacity ... fancy at times, and graphic descriptive power, it is poetry with as little of high imagination in it as any that was ever written."

The finest passage in Albion's England recites the pastoral story of ‘Argentile and Curan.’ The tale was doubtless of Warner's invention, but it resembles the topic of the 13th-century poem called Havelock the Dane. Warner's story has secured through adaptations a longer tenure of fame than the rest of the poem. It was plagiarised without acknowledgment by William Webster in a poem in 6-line stanzas, entitled The most pleasant and delightful Historie of Curan, a Prince of Danske, and the fayre Princesse Argentile (London, 1617, 4to).

Warner's tale also formed the plot of the Thracian Wonder, a play attributed to John Webster and William Rowley (London, 1661, 4to). It was subsequently converted into a ballad entitled The Two Young Princes on Salisbury Plain, published in A Collection of Old Ballads (3 volumes 1726–38, 12mo). Percy with much enthusiasm quoted it, as well as another of Warner's invented legends, "The Patient Countess," in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), and William Mason based on it his "Legendary Drama of Five Acts, written on the Old English Model" (Poems, 1786, vol. iii.).

Reputation

Thomas Nashe in his preface to Greene's Menaphon (1589), after mentioning the greatest of English poets, remarked, "As poetry has been honoured in those before-mentioned professors, so it hath not been any whit disparaged by William Warner's absolute Albions."

Meres in his Palladis Tamia (1598) associated Warner with Spenser, as the 2 chief English heroic poets. As a lyric poet he classed him with Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, and Breton. Meres added, "I have heard him termed of the best wits of both our universities, our English Homer. As Euripides is the most sententious among Greek poets, so is Warner among our English poets."

Drayton, after eulogising Sidney, wrote in his Epistle of Poets:—

    Then Warner, though his lines were not so trimmed
    Nor yet his Poem so exactly limn'd
    And neatly jointed but the Criticke may
    Easily reproove him; yet thus let me say
    For my old friend; some passages there be
    In him which, I protest, have taken me
    With almost wonder; so fine, cleere, new,
    As yet they have bin equalled by few.

Many extracts figured in England's Parnassus, 1600.

Warner's admirers of the 19th century were few. In 1801 George Ellis quoted for "their singularity" 3 extracts in his Specimens of the Early English Poets (ii. 267 et seq.). The whole poem was reprinted in Chalmers's Collection of the English Poets (1810). Charles Lamb wrote to Harrison Ainswort on 9 December 1823: "I have read Warner['s Albion's England] with great pleasure. What an elaborate piece of alliteration and antithesis! Why, it must have been a labor far above the most difficult versification. There is a fine simile or picture of Semiramis arming to repel a siege’ (Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. Ainger, ii. 93).

Critical introduction

by George Saintsbury

Warner's chief and only poetical work is Albion’s England, a curious medley of partly traditional history, with interludes of the fabliau kind. By some accident it has, since the author’s death, secured an audience, not indeed wide, but much wider than that enjoyed by the work of contemporaries of far greater power. The pastoral episode of Argentile and Curan hit the taste of the 18th century, and Chalmers reprinted the whole poem in his Poets, very injudiciously following Ellis in dividing the 14-syllable lines into 8's and 6's. In this form much of it irresistibly reminds the reader of Johnson’s injurious parody of that metre: but in the original editions it appears to much greater advantage. The ascending and descending slope of the long lines is often managed with a good deal of art; and there is sometimes dignity in the sentiments and vigour in their expression. The author is too prone to adopt classical constructions, especially absolute cases, which often throw obscurity over his meaning.

Warner is not, as he has been called, a "good, honest, plain writer of moral rules and precepts"; nor is his work, as another authority asserts, "written in Alexandrines." But though he will not bear comparison with the better, even of the second-rate Elizabethans, such as Watson, Barnes, and Constable, much less with his fellow historians Drayton and Daniel, the singularity of the plan of his book, and some vigorous touches here and there, raise him above the mass. There is, moreover, one thing in his work which is of considerable literary interest. Unlike almost all his contemporaries, he is hardly at all "Italianate." The Italian influence, which for a full century coloured English poetry, is scarcely discernible in him, and he is thus an interesting example of an English poet with hardly any foreign strain in him except, as has been said, a certain tinge of classical study.

Publications

Poetry

• Albions England. London: George Robinson, for Thomas Cadmnan, 1586; London: Widow Orwin, for I.B., 1596; London: widow Orwin. for Ioan Broome, 1597; London: Edm. Bollifant. for George Potter, 1602; London: William Stansby. for George Potter, 1612; Hildesheim, Germany, & New York: G. Olms, 1971.
• A Continuance of Albions England. London: Felix Kyngston [& Richard Bradock?], for George Potter, 1606.

Short fiction

• Syrinx; or, A seven-fold history. London: Thomas Purfoot, for Ioan Broome, 1597;
  • (edited by Wallace Alger Bacon). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1950.

Non-fiction=

• Pan His Syrinx, or Pipe. London: printed by Thomas Purfoote, 1584.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

References

•  Lee, Sidney (1899) "Warner, William" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 59 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 405-407 

External links

Poems

• Warner, William (extract from Albion's England) at Representative Poetry Online
• extract from Albions England: Before the Battle of Hastings
• William Warner at PoemHunter (3 poems)
• William Warner at Poetry Nook (3 poems)

About

• Warner, William" in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Warner, William