Susan has an excellent point on Shakespeare, many voices. So many in fact, that when I first read Marlowe I thought he was Shakespeare. Except that Kit is way more gay than Will. And some of the songs from the plays sound an awful lot like Campion and Jonson. That's of course partly attributable to his being the greatest dramatic poet. I think there is an undifferentiation in Elizabethan verse that ends shortly thereafter. For instance, and this is Mark's field, who could mistake Herbert for Donne?
TJ, that was a brilliant pastiche of boring crap you assembled. The chasing of voice in creative writing schools is scandalous. I mean, get a life, develop passionate interests, then write what you know with minute attention to its close observation. When you read a Wilbur plant poem, you know it's Wilbur, because he knows plants as well as I know dogs or pheasants.
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