Except where noted (*), texts are in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edn (New York: Norton, 2000).
Plays
- William Shakespeare (1564—1616), *Hamlet, ed. Philip Edwards (Cambridge) or Harold Jenkins (Arden 2)
- Ben Jonson (1572—1637), Volpone
- John Webster (c. 1680—c. 1625), The Duchess of Malfi
Poems
- Edmund Spenser (1552—99), ‘To His Booke’ and ‘October’ from The Shepheardes Calender
- Ben Jonson, ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us’
- John Donne (1572—1631), ‘The Sun Rising’, ‘The Flea’, ‘The Bait’, ‘The Apparition’, ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’, ‘The Relic’, ‘A Lecture upon the Shadow’, Elegy 19 (‘To his Mistress going to Bed’), Holy Sonnets 5, 7, 10, 14; ‘A Hymn to God the Father’
- George Herbert (1593—1633), ‘The Collar’, ‘Redemption’, ‘Prayer’, ‘Denial’, ‘The Windows’, ‘The Flower, ‘Love (III)’
- John Milton (1609—74), Paradise Lost I, IV, IX
Prose
- Sir Philip Sidney (1554—86), from The Defense of Poesy
- Francis Bacon (1561—1626), from Novum Organum (1620)