Drayton, Michael 1563-1631
English poet

Born in Hartshill, near Atherstone, Warwickshire, he became a page in a wealthy household and spent the rest of his life in the households of patrons. His earliest work was The Harmony of the Church (1591), a metrical rendering of scriptural passages, which gave offence to the authorities. His first major poem, Mortimeriados (1596, recast in 1603 as The Barons' Wars) was followed by England's Heroical Epistles (1597). Poems, Lyric and Pastoral (c.1606) contains some of his most familiar poems, including the Ballad of Agincourt and Fair Stood the Wind for France. The first 18 'songs' or books of his greatest work, the panoramic Polyolbion, were published in 1613, with annotation by John Selden, and the complete poem appeared in 1622. In 1619 he collected in one volume all the poems (except Polyolbion) which he wished to preserve, and in 1627 he published a new volume of miscellaneous poems, among them the whimsical Nymphisdia, the Court of Fairy. His last work, The Muses' Elysium (1630), contains some pastoral poems. His only surviving play is The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle (1600). He was buried in Westminster Abbey, London.

Bibliography: J A Berthelot, Michael Drayton (1967)