SOURCE: Cousins, A. D. “The Cavalier World and John Cleveland.” Studies in Philology 78, no. 1 (winter 1981): 61-86.

In the following essay, Cousins contextualizes Cleveland within the “cavalier” world of kingship and the royal court, and illustrates how his shrewd satire distinguishes him from his predecessors and contemporaries.

To repeat a commonplace, there is no innovative formal verse satire between Marston and Cleveland. Rankins, Rowlands, and Wither continues the Attic satiric manner which passes from Wyatt through Lodge and Hall.¹ Guilpin, “T. M.,” and Fitzgeffrey build on the style of Marston.² For the most part, those poets seem to be concerned with satire as a literary fashion, rather than as a form which analyzes how men live.³ Here, I want to suggest that with his critical intelligence, his hauteur, his bitterness, Cleveland clearly distinguishes himself from his immediate predecessors. I want to suggest also that his satires are innovative—and...