Prophetic Elegy: Sir John Denham

Chapter 2 discusses Sir John Denham’s use of Virgil to mourn the death of Charles I in his published translations from the Aeneid (The Destruction of Troy and The Passion of Dido), and the Interregnum-era editions of his topographical poem Coopers Hill. Where the title-pages of these texts often engaged with the trope of the Virgilian poet as prophet by framing their elegies for Charles as moments of prophetic insight, in the poems themselves Denham acts as a Virgilian poet-counsellor. He supported Charles and lamented his death, but also criticised him for policies which he believed represented monarchical overreach; his political affinities were thus of a piece with the principles that have been termed constitutional royalism. In his contribution to Katherine Philips’ translation of Corneille’s tragedy Horace, his only major composition of the 1660s, Denham transferred his advice regarding the proper exercise of royal power from Charles I to his son.