Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain.
The knitters and the spinners in the sun
And the free maids that weave their threads with bones
Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth[20]
And dallies with the innocence of love
Like the old age.
[Footnote 20: Simple truth.]
Many of these songs, so natural, fresh, and spontaneous, together with
sonnets and other more elaborate forms of lyrical verse, were printed in
miscellanies, such as the _Passionate Pilgrim, England's Helicon_, and
Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_. Some were anonymous, or were by poets of
whom little more is known than their names. Others were by well-known
writers, and others, again, were strewn through the plays of Lyly,
Shakspere, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and other dramatists. Series of
love sonnets, like Spenser's _Amoretti_ and Sidney's _Astrophel and
Stella_, were written by Shakspere, Daniel, Drayton, Drummond,
Constable, Watson, and others, all dedicated to some mistress real or
imaginary. Pastorals, too, were written in great number, such as
William Browne's _Britannia's Pastorals_ and _Shepherd's Pipe_
(1613-1616) and Marlowe's charmingly rococo little idyl, _The Passionate
Shepherd to his Love_, which Shakspere quoted in the _Merry Wives of
Windsor_, and to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a reply.
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