SOURCE: Clayton, Thomas. “General Introduction.” In The Works of Sir John Suckling: the Non-Dramatic Works, edited by Thomas Clayton, pp. xxvii-lxxv. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1971.

In the excerpt below, Clayton surveys Suckling's critical reception from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century.

Ii. Suckling's Reputation

Suckling's literary reputation was established by 1638, when he was twenty-nine years old. “The Wits” had been sung to the King the year before,¹ and Aglaura, also completed in 1637, was ‘acted in the Court, and at the Black Friars, with much Applause’, during the Christmas season of 1637/8. Immediately after its first production, it was eulogized by an anonymous admirer:

If learning will beseem a Courtier well, If honour waite on those who dare excell, Then let not Poets envy but admire, The eager flames of thy poetique fire; For whilst the world loves wit, Aglaura shall, Phœnix-like live after her funerall.(2) 

Again...