The Last Early Modern Epyllion: William Sampson’s Love’s Metamorphosis, Or: Apollo and Daphne

William Sampson’s Ovidian epyllion Love’s Metamorphosis, Or: Apollo and Daphne, written after 1645, has remained in manuscript only (Harley MS 6947, no. 41, fols. 318–36, British Library) and has received virtually no scholarly attention. It is a willful archaism modeled on Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. The poem was dedicated to Margaret Cavendish, perhaps on the occasion of her return from her exile on the Continent in 1651. This essay considers why Sampson chose this genre, what his relationship with the Cavendishes was, how he expected the poem to be received in the context of the Civil War and Interregnum, and what the dedication to Cavendish tells us about female readership.