A clue: George Gascoigne's The Grief of Joy

The Elizabethan age produced many, many vanitas vanitatum poems, there can be no proof that the author of "The Paine of Pleasure" was specifically imitating any one of them. However, a near-contemporary poem, George Gascoigne's The Grief of Joy, is strikingly similar in title, in content, and--most important for a poet--in rhythmic sophistication and voice.

George Gascoigne presented The Grief of Joy, his last major work, to Queen Elizabeth on New Year's Day 1576/7.[11a] It consists of a preface and four 'songs', "The Griefs or Discommodities of Lusty Youth", "The Vanities of Beauty", "The Faults of Force and Strength", and "The Vanities of Activities".

The content of The Grief of Joy overlaps to a significant degree that of "The Paine of Pleasure." Both poets talk about beauty, riches, fencing, leaping, riding, and other activities, seldom seen together in vanitas poetry. Both use (indeed overuse) the words joy and toy. One is in ABABCC mode; the preface to the other is. Both paint attractive, specific pictures of court life. The energy of both is secular, a vivid contemporary portraiture. Gascoigne even may provide "The Paine of Pleasure" with its title; "no pleasure free from pain," he writes. [12]

Moreover, The Grief of Joy has a subtlety of rhythmic effects and energy of diction that closely resemble those in "The Paine of Pleasure":

The heavens on highe perpetually doe moue

By mynutes meale the howre doth steal awaie

By howres the daie, by daies the moneths remoue

And then by moneths the yeares as fast decaie

Yea, Virgills verse and Tully truth do saie

That time flieth on and never claps her wings,

But rides on clowdes, & forward still she flinges….

What said I? daies? nay, not so manie howres

Not howres? no no so manie mynuts nott

The bravest yowth, which floorisheth lyke flowers,

Woulde think his hew to be as sone forgot,

As tender herbes cut up to serve the pott.

And then this lyfe, which he so thougt to clyme,

Woulde shew yt selfe but toomblyng under tyme…

Gascoigne is a strong poet: homely metaphors ("tender herbs cut up to serve the pot"), energetic abstraction ("time…rides on clouds, and forward still she flings"), varied rhythm, and above all a human speaking voice. "What said I? Days? Nay, not so many hours./Not hours? No, no, so many minutes not…"

Gascoigne was one of the leading poets of his time and The Grief of Joy is one of the best poems of his late period; one would think that the audiences who heard it at Elizabeth's court, or read it in manuscript, must have found it very good indeed. But the poem was apparently not popular. Gascoigne did not publish it before his death the following November, and it does not appear to have had wide circulation in manuscript.[13] It was not printed until Hazlitt's edition of the Works in 1868-70.[14] For this reason, if the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" was imitating The Grief of Joy, he probably either saw it in Gascoigne's papers, read the manuscript presented to Elizabeth, or heard it during a reading at court.

Thus the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" is likely to be either one of Steven May's courtier poets or some other poet at court sometime between January 1577 and October 1580[15]. We cannot definitively identify him; but starting from May's list of less than forty poets and their biographical data, we are closer to speculating who he might be.