[2] Nineteenth- and 20th-century scholars, on the basis of scattered allusions in his poems and dedications, suggested that Drayton might have studied at the University of Oxford, and been intimate with the Polesworth branch of the Goodere family.

More recent work has cast doubt on those speculations, suggesting that it is more likely Drayton's "social status was inferior to that of William Shakespeare and well below that of Edmund Spenser or Samuel Daniel, both of whom obtained university degrees".

[4] This has led to the notion that he failed to win his "Idea", and lived and died a bachelor, one of a series of biographical interpretations of the poems that Jean Brink sees as "romantic flourishes".

[5] It has been said Drayton's sonnets possess a direct, instant and universal appeal because of their simple straightforward ring and foreshadowing of the smooth style of Fairfax, Waller and Dryden.

It was about this time, too, that he brought out Endimion and Phoebe, a volume which he never republished, but which contains some interesting autobiographical matter, and acknowledgments of literary help from Thomas Lodge, if not from Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel also.

He also collected his smaller pieces, hitherto unedited, in a volume undated, but probably published in 1605, under the title of Poems Lyric and Pastoral; these consisted of odes, eclogues and a fantastic satire called The Man in the Moon.

He had adopted as early as 1598 the extraordinary resolution of celebrating all the points of topographical or antiquarian interest in the island of Great Britain, and on this laborious work he was engaged for many years.

It consists of the following pieces: The Battle of Agincourt, an historical poem in ottava rima (not to be confused with his ballad on the same subject), and The Miseries of Queen Margaret, written in the same verse and manner; Nimphidia, the Court of Faery, an epic of fairyland; The Quest of Cinthia and The Shepherd's Sirena, two lyrical pastorals; and finally The Moon Calf, a sort of satire.

He died in London, was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, and had a monument placed over him by the Countess of Dorset,[8] with memorial lines attributed to Ben Jonson.

[9] Like other poets of his era, Drayton was active in writing for the theatre; but unlike Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, or Samuel Daniel, he invested little of his art in the genre.

The text of Oldcastle shows no clear signs of Drayton's hand; traits of style consistent through the entire corpus of his poetry (the rich vocabulary of plant names, star names and other unusual words; the frequent use of original contractional forms, sometimes with double apostrophes, like "th'adult'rers" or "pois'ned'st") are wholly absent from the text, suggesting that his contribution to the collaborative effort was not substantial.

In one of Drayton's poems, an elegy or epistle to Mr Henry Reynolds, he has left some valuable criticisms on English poets from Chaucer's time to his own, including Shakespeare.

In 1748 a folio edition of Drayton's complete works was published under the editorial supervision of William Oldys, and again in 1753 there appeared an issue in four volumes quarto[11] but these were very unintelligently and inaccurately prepared.