never know the same.

DIANA

BY

HENRY CONSTABLE

HENRY CONSTABLE

The sonnet-cycle in the hands of Henry Constable seems to have been in
the first place rather a record of a succession of "moment's monuments"
than a single dramatic scheme, even an embryonic one. The quaint preface
found in the Harleian transcript of the _Diana_ shows this, and at the
same time tells what freedom was at that period allowed in the structure
and dove-tailing of a sonnet-cycle. It is as follows:

"The Sonnets following are divided into 3 parts, each parte
contayning 3 several arguments and every argument 7 sonets.

"The first parte is of variable affections of love: wherein the
first 7 be of the beginning and byrth of his love; the second 7, of
the prayse of his mistresse; the thyrd 7, of severall accidents
hapning in the tyme of his love.

"The second is the prayse of perticulars: wherein the first 7 be of
the generall honoure of this ile, through the prayses of the heads
thereof, the Q. of England and K. of Scots; the second 7 celebrate
the memory of perticular ladies whoe the author most honoureth: the
thyrd 7 be to the honoure of perticulars, presented upon severall
occasions.

"The thyrd parte is tragicall, conteyning only lamentations:
wherein the first 7 be complaynts onlye of misfortunes in love, the
second 7, funerall sonets of the death of perticulars; the last 7,
of the end and death of his love."

The four sonnets to that distinguished "perticular," the King of
Scotland, seem to have won for the author a great deal of fame, for
Bolton mentions one of them as a witness to his opinion that "noble
Henry Constable was a great master in English tongue, nor had any
gentleman of our nation a more pure, quick, or higher delivery of
conceit." The King himself the poet is said to have met personally when
on his propagandist tours in Scotland; for Constable was an ardent Roman
Catholic, and spent most of his life in plots for the re-establishment
of that faith in England. Among the other "perticulars" addressed, the
Queen is of course bounteously favoured, and a number of ladies of her
Court are honoured; the series therefore lacks all pretense of unity. In
fact, the title of the 1594 edition declares that the "excellent
conceitful sonnets of Henry Constable" are "augmented with divers
quartorzains of honourable and learned personag