SOURCE: McKeown, Simon and William E. Sheidley. Introduction to The Shippe of Safegarde (1569), by Barnabe Googe, pp. xiii-xxxiv. Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1989.

In the following excerpt, McKeown and Sheidley analyze Googe's The Ship of Safegarde, which they see as a moralizing poem extolling the rewards of a virtuous life and the superiority of Protestantism over Catholicism.

In 1569 the London printer William Seres, renowned mainly for producing books of prayers and devotions, published a slim octavo volume entitled A newe Booke called the Shippe of safegarde.¹ This work, ascribed on the title-page to one “G. B.,” has the appearance of a poetic miscellany; in addition to a prose dedication, the volume includes an introductory address to the reader in fourteeners, two narrative versifications of miraculous incidents from a Latin redaction of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, and the long title-poem. In 219 ottava rima stanzas, plus a...