In its valorization of changeableness, Drayton's 1619 Idea fundamentally alters the dynamic which informs the sequences of both Shakespeare and Spenser. Those works continually attempt to wrest themselves from the socially mutable effects of exchange they gender female: throughout Amoretti and Epithalamion, Spenser associates narrative change with femininity and lyric control with masculinity; likewise, Shakespeare's Sonnets attempt to keep separate the modes of social distinction associated with the young man and the dark lady by distinguishing between them in gendered terms. In claiming changeableness and fashion for himself, Drayton's speaker embraces the very contingency Spenser and Shakespeare associate with femininity and turns it into a masculine virtue.

Class itself, as a mode of producing social distinction, increasingly becomes gendered male. In the sixth sonnet of the 1619 Idea, Drayton's speaker creates his own masculine, classed authority in part by setting it against a feminized court: