SOURCE: Wallace, William L. Introduction to George Gascoigne's The Steele Glas and The Complainte of Phylomene: A Critical Edition with an Introduction, pp. 4-70. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1975.

In the essay which follows, Wallace provides an in-depth analysis of both The Steele Glas and The Complainte of Phylomene.

Maister Gascoigne is not to bee abridged of his deserved esteeme, who first beate the path to that perfection which our best Poets have aspired to since his departure; whereto he did ascend by comparing the Italian with the English as Tully did Graeca cum Latinis. …

Thus Thomas Nashe “To the Gentleman Students of both Universities.”¹ But with the notable exception of Ivor Winters, who ranks George Gascoigne “one of the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the sixteenth century, and perhaps higher,”² modern scholars and critics have neglected the poet's virtues...