Samuel Rowlands - Sacred and Secular Poems

Sacred and Secular Poems

Among his works, which include some poems on sacred subjects, are:

• The Betraying of Christ (1598)
• The Letting of Humour's Blood in the Head-vaine (epigrams and satires) and A Mery Meetinge, or tis Mery when Knaves mete (1600) -- the two latter being publicly burnt by order, but republished later under other names (Humors Ordinarie and The Knave of Clubbes)
• Greene's Ghost haunting Conie-Catchers (1602), which he pretended to have edited from Greene's papers, but which is largely borrowed from his printed works
• Tis Merrie when Gossips meete (1602), a dialogue between a Widow, a Wile, a Maid and a Vintner
• Looke to it; for Ile stabbe ye (1604), in which Death describes the tyrants, careless divines and other evil-doers whom he will destroy
• Hell's broke loose (1605), an account of John of Leyden. In the same year a Theatre of Divine Recreation (not extant), poems founded on the Old Testament, and a collection of epigrams entitled Humor's Antique Faces
• A Terrible Battle between ... Time and Death (1606)
• Democritus, or Doctor Merry-man his Medicines against Melancholy humors, reprinted, with alterations, as Doctor Merrie-man, and Diogenes Lent home (1607), in which Athens is London
• The Famous History of Guy, Earl of Warwick (1607), a long romance in Rowlands's favorite six-lined stanza, and one of his hastiest, least successful efforts
• Humors Looking Glasse (1608)
• Martin Mark-all, Beadle of Bridewell (1610), a history of roguery containing much information about notable highwaymen and the completest vocabulary of thieves' slang up to that time.