Michael Drayton was born in 1563, at Hartshill, near Atherstone, in
Warwickshire, where a cottage, said to have been his, is still shown. He
early became a page to Sir Henry Goodere, at Polesworth Hall: his own
words give the best picture of his early years here.[1] His education
would seem to have been good, but ordinary; and it is very doubtful if
he ever went to a university.[2] Besides the authors mentioned in the
Epistle to Henry Reynolds, he was certainly familiar with Ovid and
Horace, and possibly with Catullus: while there seems no reason to doubt
that he read Greek, though it is quite true that his references to Greek
authors do not prove any first-hand acquaintance. He understood French,
and read Rabelais and the French sonneteers, and he seems to have been
acquainted with Italian.[3] His knowledge of English literature was
wide, and his judgement good: but his chief bent lay towards the
history, legendary and otherwise, of his native country, and his vast
stores of learning on this subject bore fruit in the _Polyolbion_.

While still at Polesworth, Drayton fell in love with his patron's
younger daughter, Anne;[4] and, though she married, in 1596, Sir Henry
Rainsford of Clifford, Drayton continued his devotion to her for many
years, and also became an intimate friend of her husband's, writing a
sincere elegy on his death.[5] About February, 1591, Drayton paid a
visit to London, and published his first work, the _Harmony of the
Church_, a series of paraphrases from the Old Testament, in
fourteen-syllabled verse of no particular vigour or grace. This book was
immediately suppressed by order of Archbishop Whitgift, possibly because
it was supposed to savour of Puritanism.[6] The author, however,
published another edition in 1610; indeed, he seems to have had a
fondness for this style of work; for in 1604 he published a dull poem,
_Moyses in a Map of his Miracles_, re-issued in 1630 as _Moses his Birth