Tudor and Stuart Love Songs

These are voices from a vanished England, singing of love in the century before Shakespeare became Shakespeare. This anthology gathers love poems from the Tudor and Stuart periods, verses passed down from courtly circles through the reign of Henry VIII and into the golden age of Elizabeth I. The poets here, many unnamed, some famous, were travelers who crossed the Alps and returned speaking of Petrarch, bringing the Italian sonnet to English and making it new. Here is longing, idealized beauty, the particular ache of desire refused. Some verses burn with urgency; others whisper with quiet desperation. The collection captures a moment when English poetry was being remade, when continental wit met native passion, and when love, as ever, remained the great unfinished business of the human heart. For readers who want to hear the music that played before the language settled into its modern tongue.