age of =Hiren= proclaims. Barksted is believed to have completed =The
Insatiate Countess= after Marston's withdrawal from the stage in 1608
or 1609. This play, bearing Barksted's name in one issue of the 1631
edition, contains a number of lines and phrases identical with lines
and phrases in =Mirrha= and =Hiren=.[10]

=Amos and Laura= has been attributed, probably correctly, to Samuel
Page (1574-1630),[11] who is mentioned by Meres as "most passionate
among us to bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of Love,"[12] and by
his fellow-Oxonian Anthony a Wood as long-time Vicar of Deptford.[13]
Although a few additional facts are known about these authors, none
seems to contribute to an understanding of the poems reprinted, and
all may be found under the appropriate authors' names in the =DNB=.

SOURCES

Traditionally the storyhouse of minor epic source materials has been
classical mythology, but inevitably, as suitable classical myths were
exhausted, Renaissance poets turned to such sources as the Italian
novella, or even--romantic heresy--to comparatively free invention. As
if to compensate for these departures from orthodoxy, the later
epyllionists leaned ever more heavily on allusions to classical
mythology. Of the seven poems included here only three (=Pyramus and
Thisbe, Mirrha, and The Scourge=) are based on a classical source
(Ovid's =Metamorphoses=). Of the remaining four tales, two are drawn
from Bandello apparently by way of Painter, and the last two (=Philos
and Licia, Amos and Laura=), though greatly indebted to =Hero and
Leander= overall, seem not to have drawn their characters or actions
directly from either a classical or more contemporary source. These
last two poems, then, from a Renaissance point of view, are
comparatively free inventions. But both, and especially =Philos and
Licia=, are a tissue of allusions to classical mythology.

Gale in =Pyramus and Thisbe= expands Golding's translation of Ovid's
=Metamorphoses=, IV, from some 130 to 480 lines, Barksted expands less
than 300 lines of Golding's =Ovid=, X, to nearly 900, and H. A. enlarges
the same tale to about 950 lines.[14] It should be emphasized,
however, that these are not mere amplified translations, but
reworkings of the classics, with significant departures from them.
Gale, for example, prefaces the romance of Pyramus and Thisbe with
their innocent meeting out-of-doors in an arbor, amid violets and
damask roses. He has Venus, enraged at se