allusions as psychological experiences rather than as
miniature narratives, thereby constructing a character’s
emotional state.
Delia deals with the passionate and artless love of a
poet-speaker who is seemingly more interested in gain-
ing his beloved’s love than in poetic renown. Delia is
often depicted as a frowning lady with eyes as bright as
stars, as cruel as she is fair. The poet-speaker, on the
other hand, protests his sincerity and frequently refers
to “limning” (painting) as being a means to counterfeit
emotion, unlike his own expressions of woe for not
being able to secure Delia’s love. Interestingly, the fi nal
sonnet of the sequence ends with a seemingly coy, “I say
no more, I feare I said too much”; however, given that
Daniel revised Delia six times over a period of 10 years,
it is not surprising that there is some confusion in the
poet-speaker’s self-representation (Sonnet 55, l. 14).
Of the 28 sonnets from the fi rst unauthorized print-
ing, only 22 were included in the offi cial 1592 edition
dedicated to the countess of Pembroke, which com-
prised 50 sonnets. The sequence was augmented by
fi ve sonnets in the 1594 printing, and 18 of the 55
were reused. In the 1595 and 1598 printings, there
were changes made, and the last printing in 1601 saw
the greatest number of revisions made.
Delia provokes critical curiosity for two major rea-
sons. First, this sonnet sequence was written soon after
the period in Daniel’s life about which critics know
least, 1586–92. Second, there is dissent about who
Delia might have really been. Two major theories exist:
Delia lived by the Avon River and was upper-class
(Sonnet 53); or, Delia is Mary Sidney. More recently,
critics have suggested that Delia was completely fi c-
tional, which allowed Daniels freedom for his many
revisions. Whatever the case, overall Delia boasts some
of the most eloquent and passionate love poetry of the
period.
FURTHER READING
Donow, Herbert S. A Concordance to the Sonnet Sequences of
Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Spenser. London
and Amsterdam: Feffer & Simons, 1969.
Goldman, Lloyd. “Samuel Daniel’s Delia and the Emblem
Tradition.” JEGP 67 (1968): 49–63.
Rees, Joan. Samuel Daniel: A Critical and Biographical Study.
Liverpool, U.K.: Liverpool University Press, 1964.
Schaar, Claes. An Elizabethan Sonnet Problem: Shakespeare’s
Sonnets, Daniel’s Delia, and their Literary Background.
Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, 1960.
Seronsky, Cecil. Samuel Daniel. New York: Twayne, 1967.
Svensson, Lars-Hakan. Silent Art: Rhetorical and Thematic
Patterns in Samuel Daniel’s Delia. Lund, Sweden: Gleerup,
1980.
Josie PanzutoDelia: Sonnet 6 (“Fair is my love, and cruel as
she’s fair”) SAMUEL DANIEL (1592) Delia’s charac-
ter is depicted in Sonnet 6 of SAMUEL DANIEL’s SONNET
SEQUENCE. The poet pauses and refl ects on a number of
contrasts found within Delia’s character and between
the poet-speaker and his beloved. The fi rst QUATRAIN
opens with a standard CONCEIT: “Fayre is my love, and
cruell as sh’is fayre,” evoking the emotion the speaker
feels for Delia alongside the notion of Delia as his love
(l. 1). This is a problematic opening, but it is probably
intentional. The poet directs the reader’s gaze from
himself to Delia and then back to himself as the abject
lover in the SONNET. A number of contrasts are drawn
between cruelty and the many 16th-century defi nitions
of fair: physically beautiful; of the female sex; a form of
respectful address; blonde; untainted. Notably, “faire”
as coupled with cruelty suggests that SAMUEL DANIEL
was also using the word with the meaning “just.” The
sonnet draws more contrasts between her “sunny” eyes
and “frownes” which her forehead “shades” (l. 2) by
playing with the order in which her positive qualities
appear. The fi rst and fourth lines of the fi rst quatrain
list a negative quality fi rst, followed by a positive one,
while the second and third lines reverse that order.
In the second quatrain, the poet-speaker elaborates
on Delia’s exemplary attributes, and she becomes
“Sacred on earth, design’d a Saint aboue,” and thus the
unattainable (l. 8). In the third quatrain, the poet reveals
what makes Delia a union of opposites: the melding of
“Chastitie and Beautie” (l. 9). The two qualities cannot
coexist, according to the speaker, and his rhyming COU-
PLET wishes that she had been only chaste, so that his
“Muse” would not have been tempted and his outpour-
ings of emotion could have remained private.
Critics note that Sonnet 6 shares affi nities with the
Song of Songs from the Bible’s Book of Solomon (4.7),DELIA: SONNET 6 143