Aesthetic anomaly? Historical oddity? Notable development in Occidental art song? Triumph of poetic and musical proportion? The English ayre, which enjoyed a short vogue from approximately 1596 to 1622, is a distinctive subgeare of the lyric, marking a transition in English lyric history from the staid language of Petrarchism to the lively and varied style of the late Elizabethans, and later to the highly elaborate metrical and philosophical style of the metaphysical poets.

Based on Edward Doughtie's seminal critical edition, Lyrics from English Airs, 1596-1622 (Harvard University Press, 1970), and intended as a complement to it, In Small Proportions provides the first extended examination of the ayre's literary devices and attributes.

Its goal is to elaborate a poetics of the ayre as a blend of music and text - a means by which scholars, students, performers, and cultural historians may interpret the ayre's lyrics through a heightened understanding of the distinctive literary features that assure the genre a unique place in the cultural achievements of the English Renaissance.