SOURCE: Johnson, Ronald C. “The Love Lyrics.” In George Gascoigne, pp. 36-55. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.

In the excerpt below, Johnson discusses Gascoigne's love lyrics, noting that while some display the conventions of courtly love poems, some are unusual for their examination of the psychology of love.

A discussion of Gascoigne's lyric poems falls naturally into two sections, those concerning love and those concerning his insights into himself and his society. The love lyrics grew out of his life at court, and they include the forms we expect from the courtly love tradition, such as the praise of a lady, the disclosure of love, and the lament of an absent lover. However, a number of his love lyrics deal with the psychology of love. For example, the absent-lover's lament was usually an exercise in rhetoric, but Gascoigne turns it into an examination of the feelings inherent in the...