SOURCE: “‘My Unwashed Muse’: Sexual Play and Sociability in Carew's ‘A Rapture’,” in English Language Notes, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, September, 1989, pp. 32-39.

In the following essay, Hannaford describes “A Rapture” as “a kind of miniaturized masque” that “reveals tensions in [the aesthetic, social, and cultural values” of Carew's day.]

For Kings and Lovers are alike in this That their chief art in reign dissembling is. 

—Sir John Suckling

The relationship between art and social life in the earlier seventeenth century is particularly fascinating to a study of Carew's poetry, which has so often been cursorily cited by critics to condemn him to the status of merely an anthology poet. From his biographical facts (scanty but not veiled in obscurity) as well as his literary artifacts, it is clear that Carew was both a participant in and observer of court life. It is impossible to dismiss the likely influence...