Bartholomew Griffin is one of many minor poets whose works are generally dismissed as having little value compared with those of their better-known contemporaries. He produced only a single, mediocre collection of sonnets that has attracted little critical attention, and not favorable at that. Nevertheless, his modest contribution to Elizabethan literature is a characteristic example of the sixteenth-century practice of imitation, as well as an indication of just how popular and widespread the sonneteering fashion became. The fact that Griffin and others like him attempted to emulate poets such as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare reveals the true extent of the major poets' influence, while expanding the context in which the work of all Elizabethan poets should be considered.

Bartholomew Griffin may have been related to the Griffins of Dingley, Northamptonshire, but he is probably not the Bartholomew Griffin of Coventry buried at Holy Trinity...