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This chapter moves from arguments about literary and discursive convention to debates about the place, if any, of fiction in autobiography. One of the most important unrecognized texts in the history of autobiography is William Baldwin's A Mirror for Magistrates (1559). Mirror, a collection of first-person fictional monologues by “ghosts” of fallen English princes, is framed by Baldwin's own first-person tongue-in-cheek account of how he and his coauthors composed the monologues. Mirror's unique combination throughout of outward-looking history and inward-looking “poesie,” rather than disqualifying it for a place in the history of autobiography, inspired later autobiographical writing by both its contributors and its readers.

This chapter examines the most significant poetic miscellanies of the sixteenth century, focusing on Tottel’s Miscellany, A Mirror for Magistrates, and England’s Helicon, showing how these volumes attempted to fashion a reading and writing nation. Songes and Sonettes (commonly known as Tottel’s Miscellany) was first printed at a time of great national crisis and presents poetry as a way of enduring various kinds of suffering, even if its focus seems largely on love. A Mirror for Magistrates construes national history through verse as an object of proper contemplation for those with civic responsibilities. In England’s Helicon, though the focus on pastoral tries to establish a poetic community, we see the emergence of a new, more atomistic society, which poetic ideals struggle to bind together.

After noting the evidence for the public performance of poetry in Continental Europe, this chapter turns to the impact of print on English poetry: from the late fifteenth century, the printers Caxton and de Worde gave readers a new way to experience poems. At the court of Henry VIII, Skelton exploited both manuscript and print. The Devonshire manuscript, which circulated around Henry’s courtiers, is discussed, as is Tottel’s 1557 Songes and Sonettes, whose cachet lay partly in its making the private poetry of the elite available to a large public. Another popular collection was A Mirror for Magistrates, in which a gathering of poets impersonating famous tragic victims of the past was staged. Although there were signs of a suppler use of metre, the 1560s and 1570s were characterized by highly regular verse. The most skilled poet of this period, Gascoigne, was also responsible for a pathbreaking treatise on poetry.

This chapter discusses Churchyard’s service during the Habsburg–Valois wars in a company of English mercenaries fighting for Emperor Charles V. It charts Churchyard’s participation in several major engagements including the siege of Metz (1552) and siege of Therouanne (1553). Attention then turns to Churchyard’s return to England in 1554 in the aftermath of Mary I’s accession and the Wyatt rebellion. It discusses Churchyard’s self-declared status as a gentleman in the mid-1550s and considers some of the literary works he produced at this time. And finally it examines Churchyard’s involvement in the Mirror for Magistrates project and his female-voiced complaint tragedy of ‘Shore’s wife’. The chapter proposes that Churchyard rehearses the story of the friendless individual at court as a means of speaking about his own parlous fortunes at court thus far.

This chapter considers the issues raised in the various different sorts of military books Churchyard writes during the late 1570s. After comparing Churchyard’s work to the military writings of his fellow soldeier-authors, it shows that the author eschews composing works of tactics, strategy, or technical instruction and avoids participating in some of the contemporary controversies concerning developments in the art of war. The chapter explores the relationship of the pen and the sword—a relationship at the heart of this book as a whole—and compares Churchyard’s attempts to defend the trade of soldiery and the martial arts to Sidney’s defence of the poet’s vocation. It examines Churchyard’s own theories about the role of the literate fighting man and his particular interest in recording individual soldiers’ names and deeds.