SOURCE: Rees, Joan. “Political Poetry.” In Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, 1554-1628: A Critical Biography, pp. 119-38. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.

In the following excerpt, Rees examines how Greville's poetry reflects his political philosophy.

The important part played in Greville's life by his political activity is obvious and the importance of political themes in his writing is no less so. The Life of Sidney is in large measure a political tract and there are political poems in Caelica. The treatises Of Monarchy and Of Warres indicate their material by their titles and a study of them at this point may fill out the picture of Greville's attitudes and opinions which has already emerged. Of Monarchy, in particular, also offers a fresh view of Greville as a writer, partly through what he says of his intentions in the treatise and partly through the style, or styles, of the poem itself...