ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a comparative study of the otherwise very different lives and careers of Fulke Greville and Robert Southwell. Though both men could not have been farther from each other religiously, their work was informed by similar literary conventions and psychological impulses that intersected in startling ways. Equally significant, however, was their problematic relationship to the state: while Southwell’s position ultimately led to his martyrdom, Greville’s Calvinist faith and Tacitean humanism could also drive him to assume oppositional or politically ambiguous stances, and to a life no less “shadowed,” in its way, than Southwell’s.
