SOURCE: Kneidel, Gregory. “Reforming George Gascoigne.” Exemplaria 10, no. 2 (fall 1998): 329-70.

In the essay which follows, Kneidel asserts that Gascoigne intentionally depicted himself in his writings as an internally divided individual.

George Gascoigne returned to England from an undistinguished tour of military duty in the Low Countries to find that the publication of his A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573) had created a minor scandal at court.¹ Designed to attract patrons and secure employment, this anthology of amatory verse, two translated plays, and the epistolary novella The Adventures of Master F. J. had in fact proven “perillous to [his] credite.”² Gascoigne then produced The Posies (1575), a revised and expurgated version of his Flowres, which ultimately did little to help him regain his footing at court.³ In 1576, after publishing his long verse satire The Steele Glas, Gascoigne's career seems to have changed course altogether. He began to translate flesh-hating moral diatribes. By...