SOURCE: “Thomas Carew and the ‘Harmelesse Pastimes’ of Caroline Peace,” in Philological Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 201-19.

In the following essay, Anselment interprets Carew's qualified and at times ironic praise of Gustavus Adolphus in his poem “In answer of an Elegiacall Letter upon the death of the King of Sweden.”

Thomas Carew's occasional poem “In answer of an Elegiacall Letter upon the death of the King of Sweden from Aurelian Townsend, inviting me to write on that subject” has not received the critical attention it deserves. Although his response to the death of Gustavus Adolphus has been characterized “a superb poem,” the more typical judgment criticizes a “fatal separation” between the worlds of art and politics.¹ Literary, historical, and art scholars alike sense in the poem a “mood of make-believe and play-acting which was to be the undoing of King Charles.”² For some, Carew's apparent unconcern about...