How are you on the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets, in particular Wyatt. Surrey, Raleigh and Donne? (I assume you know Shakespeare's sonnets.) There are, of course, loads of others, but for me these three stand out. Moving on a bit through the seventeenth century, I think Marvell is interesting. And then, of course, there is Milton, thought by many to be the greatest English poet. When I was at Oxford (I did
not read English), Milton was a big compulsory chunk of the first-year English syllabus. I suppose that if you want to be
au fait with the classics Milton is inescapable.
Did you do any poets of the Restoration period? How about Rochester? I'm a bit surprised you found the Restoration boring. Was it the conventions and artificiality? The thing with Restoration plays is that you really need to see them done, and done well, in the theatre. I have seen two excellent productions of Wycherley's
The Country Wife, one starring Jeremy Northam at the Royal Shakespeare and the other starring Toby Stephens in the West End of London. When you think that this was the first period when women played on the English stage, you can see how exciting it must have been at the time to see them in these risqué plays. A couple of interesting films about the Restoration period are
The Libertine and
Stage Beauty.