This study considers the history of laureateship and the relevance of laureate self-presentation on the poetry of Michael Drayton (in Idea) and George Gordon, Lord Byron (in Don Juan). I consider how these poets use the gestures of stable, centered laureate identity to legitimize their poetry, but rely upon strategies of unstable poetic voice and narrative progression to provoke engagement with their work. When conventions and formulae threaten to render the articulation of individual authority meaningless, Drayton and Byron both seek recourse to the advantages of rapidly unfolding variety, within the conceptual framework of self-styled stable poetic identity.