The possible list of courtier poets

May lists thirty-two known courtier poets, plus non-courtiers known to have presented "courtly poetry" to Elizabeth or to have been resident at Court. Many of these can be knocked out of contention for one or more of several reasons:

•	They are female. The poet speaks from male experience; Lady Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell and Lady Mary Sidney are unlikely candidates.

•

They collected their poetry, which did not include this poem. Sir Walter Raleigh and Fulke Greville, for example, had leisure to edit their own literary works; if "The Paine of Pleasure" was written by either, neither claimed it. Sir Arthur Gorges' poetry was collected in manuscript; if he wrote this substantial poem by his twenty-third year, it did not find its way into his collection.[16] Mary Sidney edited her brother Sir Philip Sidney's poetry and did not include "The Paine of Pleasure." Thomas Churchyard published his own poetry abundantly, and did not claim "The Paine of Pleasure."

•	Many of these poets, of course, can also be dismissed on stylistic grounds, e.g. John Lyly, George Puttenham, and George Peele.[17]

•	Some poets may be dismissed because all their known poetry is in another language, for example Petruccio Ubaldini (Italian) and Dr. Thomas Wilson and Sir John Wolley (Latin).

Some poets must be dismissed simply because we have none or almost no specimens of their work. They may have written "The Paine of Pleasure," but if so, we will never know. Among these poets are George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, Gilbert Talbot, seventh earl of Stanhope, Sir Walter Mildmay, and Sir Edward Hoby. Sir Thomas Heneage's longest known poem is less than twenty lines; though it is in ABABCC form and iambic pentameter, it is virtually impossible to compare with "The Paine of Pleasure," and he too must be considered at best a non-proven.

For other poets, we have specimens, but in different genres or written at substantially different periods of their lives; thus we have nothing to compare this poem with directly. Of Sir Christopher Hatton we have only the fourth act of Gismond of Salern (ca. 1567), though he is known to have written verse to Elizabeth. The surviving poems of Saint Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, all date from after his conversion.[18] Sir Thomas Sackville's only identified extant poem is a verse epistle dated ca. 1566-1574. Sir John Harington's extant work is epigrams and translations; Sir Edward Dyer's nine poems are love lyrics. On the evidence of their extant work, none of these men is the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure."

•	Since writing a substantial poem takes energy, it is unlikely the poet was an old man by 1580. Sir William Cordell (d. 1581) and John Harington (d. 1582) are unlikely candidates.

•

Since the poem describes a Renaissance education of a fairly modern sort, the poet is more likely to have been born in the 1540s or later than in the 1530s or earlier. Sir Henry Lee (b. 1533) and Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (b. 1535) are not likely candidates; nor are Sir William Cecil[19] or Thomas Churchyard.

If the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" imitated Gascoigne and wrote the poem between 1577 and 1580, we can infer additional biographical details about him:

•

He must have been born by about 1560 since he must have been old enough to be at Court by 1579 at the latest, and preferably by 1577, and old enough to complete a substantial poem by 1580. Essex, born in 1565, is far too young. Sir Robert Sidney, born in 1563, is known not to have attended Court until 1581.

•

He must have had leisure to compose a substantial poem after January 1577 and to approve, if not oversee, its publication in 1580. Sir Francis Drake and Henry Neel had embarked on Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage of exploration in 1578 and did not return until October 1580, the month of the poem's publication.

•	He is likely to have had the reputation of writing substantial pieces, or substantial pieces of his must be known to have existed; "The Paine of Pleasure" was not the author's first work.

We have deduced that the author was a male member of the upper classes, born by about 1560, with a good Renaissance education, interested in upper-class sports, probably with experience of the tiltyard. He may have been present at Court sometime between 1577 and 1580, and may have had access to manuscripts in the Queen's library or attended readings of Gascoigne's manuscript of The Grief of Joy. He had time and energy to compose a substantial poem before October 1580. By 1580 he had the reputation of composing significant work, none of which survives under his name.

There is one final piece of biographical information that might make us question all our other thinking: the context in which the poem was published. There was, of course, no stricture against writing poetry--it was one of a gentleman's talents--and none against circulating it in manuscript or reading it aloud at court. Indeed, Elizabeth's court was known for reading aloud:

…the stranger that entereth into the court of England upon the sudden, shall rather imagine himselfe to come into some publike schoole of the universities, where manie give eare to one that readeth, than into a princes palace…[20]

Nor, Steven May has argued, was there a stricture against publishing poetry. Lady Mary Sidney published her brother's poetry not long after his death. Fulke Greville published his own work.

But with "The Paine of Pleasure" we are dealing with a rather special case. First, it is early. Sidney's poetry was published in 1591, Greville's not until the seventeenth century. Second, it was not published alone, as were Sidney's and Greville's poems. The other participants in the book, The Paine of Pleasure, apart from our hypothetical court poet, were commoners, Anthony Munday and possibly Nicholas Breton.

In the period around 1580, only two noble poets are known to have appeared in a collection with non-noble authors. One is Thomas, Lord Vaux, some of whose poems appeared in The Paradise of Dainty Devices in 1576; however, he can hardly be said to have participated enthusiastically, since he had died in 1556 (thus certainly could not have written "The Paine of Pleasure" after 1577).

The only living poet of noble birth who is known to have allowed his poems to appear in a collection with bourgeois authors before 1580 is also the only one of May's courtier poets whom we have not eliminated on other grounds as the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure."

Of May's listing of court poets--based on his examination of over 32,000 printed and manuscript Elizabethan poems--the man who is most likely to have written "The Paine of Pleasure" is the man whose early poetry appeared with Vaux's in Paradise: Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.