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The anonymous libretto for John Blow's Venus and Adonis (c. 1683) may be the work of Anne Kingsmill, later Anne Finch, who was a Maid of Honour to the second Duchess of York at the time it was performed. Earlier musical dramas originating in that court, such as Ariane and Calisto, also have mythological plots, pastoral interludes, and an emphasis on female characters. While at court, Finch began a translation of Tasso's Aminto, a pastoral drama resembling Venus and Adonis. ‘The Grove’, a partially blotted manuscript poem ‘Written when I was a Maid of Honour’, has close verbal parallels with the musical work. A Maid of Honour would have reasons to conceal her authorship of this delicately erotic libretto. Finch later remarked on that she had been careful not ‘to lett any attempts of mine in Poetry shew themselves whilst I livd in such a publick place as the Court, where every one would have made their remarks upon a Versifying Maid of Honour’. Her efforts to efface or conceal later works with close resemblances to the opera suggest that she remained determined to cover her tracks. There are numerous verbal parallels between Venus and Adonis and later works by Finch, and if some of the phrases are conventional, their frequency points to Finch as the author of Venus and Adonis.

Handel's ‘Serenata’ for the Birthday of Queen Anne (1713) poses serious challenges to historical scholarship. We are not certain that it was performed for the Queen, and the attribution of the text to the Whig poet Ambrose Philips rests on a marginal note written after Handel and Philips were both dead. The piece celebrates the Peace of Utrecht, and thus participates in various political discourses, but the motives of everyone involved—poet, composer, performers, patrons, and dedicatee—cannot be adequately described in merely partisan terms. Poets of all stripes were eager to celebrate the Peace at this time, and Handel, though aware that his German employer (later George I) opposed the Peace, celebrated it not only in this work but in the Utrecht Te Deum. Internal and external evidence supports the attribution of the text to Philips; the careful avoidance of mythological terms suggests that the Pastoral War involving Philips, Thomas Tickell, Joseph Addison, and Alexander Pope is a relevant context for this ode. For his own part, Handel took care to write music showcasing the English singers of the Chapel Royal and displaying his knowledge of English vocal traditions, though he also used female singers and some musical forms derived from his work in the Italian opera.

With characteristic generosity, the Earl softened the blow with a gift of money, a kindness Dryden gratefully acknowledged in the preface to his Satires of Juvenal and Persius (1693), another work dedicated to Dorset: I must ever acknowledge, to the Honour of your Lordship, and the Eternal Memory of your Charity, that since this Revolution, wherein I have patiently suffer'd the Ruin of my small Fortune, and the loss of that poor Subsistence which I had from two Kings, whom I had serv'd more Faithfully than Profitably to my self; then your Lordship was pleas'd, out of no other Motive, but your own Nobleness, without any Desert of mine, or the least Sollicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful Present, which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my Relief.1 There is no primary evidence to tell us exactly when Dorset made this present or how large it was. Two surviving letters from the new Laureate to the Lord Chamberlain, both written in 1692, show him asking Dorset to intervene in bringing his plays on stage before those of other writers, including Dryden.9 In the dedication to the Satires, Dryden takes care to praise Dorset for his impartiality: \"There are no Factions, tho irreconcilable to one another, that are not united in their Affection to you, and the Respect they pay you\" ( Works, 4:3). In trying to understand the disparity between the praise Dryden offers to Dorset as a generous, impartial patron and the evidently partisan nature of much of the translation itself, we need to remember the value placed on raillery during this period.

Winn discusses several literary works of John Dryden, which contained cleverly disguised criticisms against the reign of King William III, as well as military heroism during his time. To this end, some excellent recent scholarship have been made with regards to the political dimensions of the drama, prose, translations, and original poetry that Dryden wrote after the Revolution of 1688. In keeping with his Jacobite principles, the old Dryden frequently seized and sometimes created opportunities to criticize the usurpation, conscription, standing armies, and the belief that warfare might actually achieve its goals, all of which were recognizable features of the regime of King William III. Verily then, in an era when printers of Jacobite propaganda were regularly arrested and sometimes hanged, the expression of such sentiments required some form of disguise, which Dryden often achieved, and exploited, by appearing to describe the past, but using language that unmistakably pointed to the present.