English Poet Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke 1554 - 1628

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke (3 October 1554 – 30 September 1628), known before 1621 as Sir Fulke Greville, was an Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman.

Greville was a capable administrator who served the English Crown under Elizabeth I and James I as, successively, treasurer of the navy, chancellor of the exchequer, and commissioner of the Treasury, and who for his services was in 1621 made Baron Brooke, peer of the realm, and granted Warwick Castle, which he substantially improved. Greville is however best known today as the biographer of Sir Philip Sidney, and for his sober poetry, which presents dark, thoughtful, and distinctly Calvinist views on art, literature, beauty, and other philosophical matters.

Named after his father, Sir Fulke Greville, Greville was born at Beauchamp Court, near Alcester, Warwickshire. He was sent in 1564, on the same day as his life-long friend, Philip Sidney, to Shrewsbury School. He enrolled at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1568. Sir Henry Sidney, Philip's father, and president of the Council of Wales and the Marches, gave him in 1576 a post connected with the court of the Welsh Marches, but Greville resigned it in 1577 to go to attend court of Queen Elizabeth along with Philip Sidney. There, young Greville became a great favourite with the Queen, who valued his sober character and administrative skills, making him secretary to the principality of Wales in 1583; however he was more than once disgraced for leaving the country against her wishes.

Philip Sidney, Sir Edward Dyer and Greville were members of the "Areopagus", the literary clique which, under the leadership of Gabriel Harvey, supported the introduction of classical metres into English verse. Sidney and Greville arranged to sail with Sir Francis Drake in 1585 in his expedition against the Spanish West Indies, but Elizabeth forbade Drake to take them with him, and also refused Greville's request to be allowed to join Robert Dudley's army in the Netherlands. Philip Sidney, who took part in the campaign, was killed on 17 October 1586. Greville memorialized his beloved friend in his Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney.

He participated in the Battle of Coutras in 1587. About 1591 Greville served further for a short time in Normandy under Henry of Navarre in the French Wars of Religion. This was his last experience of war.

Greville represented Warwickshire in parliament in 1592-1593, 1597, 1601 and 1621. In 1598 he was made treasurer of the navy, and he retained the office through the early years of the reign of James I. In 1614 he became chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer, and throughout the reign he was a valued supporter of James I, although in 1615 he advocated the summoning of a parliament. In 1618 he became commissioner of the treasury, and in 1621 he was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Brooke, a title which had belonged to the family of his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Willoughby. He received from James I the grant of Warwick Castle, in the restoration of which he is said to have spent £20,000.

Death

Fulke Greville died in consequence of a knife wound inflicted by a servant who felt he had been cheated in his master's will on 30 September 1628. After stabbing Greville, the murderer, Ralph Heywood, turned the knife on himself. Lord Brooke was buried in the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, and on his tomb was inscribed the epitaph he had composed for himself: "Folk Grevill Servant to Queene Elizabeth Conceller to King James Frend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophaeum Peccati.".

Works

It is by his biography of Sidney that Fulke Greville is best known. The full title expresses the scope of the work. He includes some autobiographical matter in what amounts to a treatise on government.

His poetry consist of closet tragedies, sonnets, and poems on political and moral subjects. His style is grave and sententious.

Greville's works include:

Biography

• The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney (1625)

Closet drama

• Alaham
• Mustapha

Verse poems

• Caelica in CX Sonnets
• Of Monarchy
• A Treatise of Religion
• A Treatie of Humane Learning
• An Inquisition upon Fame and Honour
• A Treatie of Warres

Miscellaneous prose

• a letter to an "Honourable Lady,"
• a letter to Grevill Varney in France,
• a short speech delivered on behalf of Francis Bacon

Editions

His works were collected and reprinted by Alexander Balloch Grosart, in 1870, in four volumes. Poetry and Drama of Fulke Greville, edited by Geoffery Bullough, was published in 1938. The Prose Works of Fulke Greville, edited by John Gouwn, were published in 1986. "The Selected Poems of Fulke Greville," edited by Thom Gunn, with an afterword by Bradin Cormack, was published in 2009 (University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226308463.)

Critical views

Of Brooke Charles Lamb says

"He is nine parts Machiavel and Tacitus, for one of Sophocles and Seneca.... Whether we look into his plays or his most passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with intellect."

He goes on to speak of the obscurity of expression that runs through all Brooke's poetry.

Andrea McCrea sees the influence of Justus Lipsius in the Letter to an Honourable Lady, but elsewhere detects a scepticism more akin to Michel de Montaigne.

A rhyming elegy on Brooke, published in Henry Huth's Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, brings charges of miserliness against him.

Robert Pinsky has asserted that this work is comparable in force of imagination to John Donne.

Some believe that Greville is the true author of several plays attributed to William Shakespeare.

Family

He left no natural heirs, and his senior (Brooke) barony passed to his cousin and adopted son, Robert Greville (1608–1643), who took the side of Parliament part in the English Civil War, and defeated the Royalists in a skirmish at Kineton in August 1642. Robert was killed during the siege of Lichfield on 2 March 1643, having survived the elder Greville by only twelve years. His other barony (Willoughby de Broke) was inherited by his sister Margaret who married Sir Richard Verney.