THE POEMS OF ISABELLA WHITNEY: A CRITICAL EDITION by ...

About Gruffith himself I have been able to
find no information. There is no reason for
attempting to identify him with the well-known
printer William Griffith. Possibly he was the
W. G. who contributed to The Copy of a letter,
lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman
. . . "A Loveletter, or an earnest perswasion of
a Lover." In this poetical epistle W. G.
remarks that 'six yeares long ... I bod for
thee," addressing himself apparently to "Is. W.,"
the "yonge Gentilwoman" mentioned on the titlepage
.
(Gorgeous Gallery 204)
Because the poem was entered in the Stationers' Register in
1577, and William Griffith, the printer, died in 1572,
Rollins is undoubtedly correct that the epitaph deals with
the death of another man with the same name (the poem says,
"my freend, who is but lately dead," 1. 20). Unfortunately,
other than Fehrenbach's assertion that Whitney wrote the
poem, and Rollins's guess that this William Griffith might
be the "W. G." of The Copy of a letter, there is nothing to
tie him to Whitney.
Unless Whitney did write one or both of the above
poems, we know nothing about her after 1573, the date of A
Sweet Nosgay. In his introduction to Geoffrey Whitney's
Choice of Emblemes, Green suggested that Isabella might have
been one of the poets asked to write a dedicatory poem for
Thomas Morley's A Plaine & Easie Introduction to practicall
Musicke in 1597 (Ixix). The poem in question is titled
"Another by I. W.":
A Noise did rise like thunder in my hearing.
When in the East I saw darke clowdes appearing:
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