SOURCE: Bohlmeyer, Jeannine. “Mythology in Sackville's ‘Induction’ and ‘Complaint.’” Costerus 2 (1972): 9-23.

In the following essay, Bohlmeyer argues that although Sackville borrowed heavily from classical and medieval sources to fashion his “Induction” and “Complaint,” the poems were truly original and the greatest expressions of tragedy found in A Mirror for Magistrates.

Classical mythology has been and occasionally still is a fertile field in which English literature flowers easily. Some of the flowers are decorative and showy and fast-fading; some are sturdy hybrids grafting the ancient tradition and a later creative imagination into a plant of perennial beauty. During the English Renaissance, authors and the reading public both had been educated in the classics, especially the Latin classics, and translations, allusions, recreations of myths were the common stock of the educated. One of the favorite books was A Mirror for Magistrates, such a popular success that it went through eight...