transparentfill.gif (65 bytes)

Top

Here are some of the best links I have found to Shakespeare's contemporaries (using the term very broadly indeed). The effort continues. Let me encourage those who take an interest in these authors to mount presentations of their works. There are some wonderful examples to work from, such as Chris Cleary's Middleton page and Richard Bear's Spenser page. The term "contemporary" is taken very loosely here to cover pre- and post- Shakespearean figures from the Renaissance.  Of surpassing excellence are Anniina Jokinen's pages devoted to various writers of the English Renaissance.  To avoid littering the page with five diamonds each time Anniina is mentioned, let me place them here with a link to her index, The Luminarium.

Swinburne's Contemporaries of Shakespeare is still an interesting text.

The Biographical Index of English Drama Before 1660:  all people known to have been involved with theater in England prior to 1660, is also a very useful resource for persons not found here.

Adriaenssen, Emmanuel

Emmanuel Adriaenssen (1554(?)-1604 - also known as Hadrianius), Flemish composer and lutenist, was one of the most influential Renaissance musicians primarily because of the publication of his Pratum Musicum, (1584, rev. 1600), and Novum Pratum Musicum, 1592.  The contents include about 5 fantasies, 50 vocal compositions, for 1-4 lutes with 1-4 vocal parts, and about 30 dances (The Lute in Britain, p.223).

The lute was possibly the most popular instrument of the Renaissance, certainly the lute literature from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries is extensive (for a remarkable list of 16th century publications for the lute see the list published by Appalachian State). 

Lute music printing was centered in the Netherlands, especially Antwerp by the Phalese firm, and few pieces of printed music were more important than  Adriaenssen's Pratum Musicum, which amounted to nothing less than a Renaissance compendium of greatest hits written in lute tabulature, or "intabulation" as it is known (see Svsann'vn jour à 5 from the Novum, for example). In fact, the Pratum was a much studies source for Italian madrigals (which predominate), motets, chansons, canzonets, villanellas, galliards, corantos, preludes, fantasias, Neapolitan songs and German and English lute pieces by the best known composers of the late sixteenth century, "freely transcribed" by Adriaenssen.

Interestingly, G. R. Hibbard, in his Oxford edition (p. 243) of Love's Labour's Lost suggests that the song sung by Moth, given at 3.1.3, "Concolinel", may have been to the tune of "Altra canzon englesa" found in the Pratum Musicum, (see the contents listed here, specifically the entry for 92v/2 attributed to John Johnson) via the 'Dallis' Lute Book. 

Top

Anonymous

Top

Alciato, Andrea (1492 - 1550)

[Alciato] displayed great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history, languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original research for the servile interpretations of the glossators. He published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus. Alciati is most famous for his Emblemata, published in dozens of editions from 1531 onward. This collection of short Latin verse texts and accompanying woodcuts created an entire European genre, the emblem book, which attained enormous popularity in continental Europe and Great Britain.

From the Wikipedia article on Andrea Alciato

Top

Allen, William (Cardinal) (1532 - 1594)

William Allen (1532 – October 16, 1594) was an English Catholic priest and cardinal...In 1567 he went to Rome for the first time, and conceived his plan for establishing a college where English students could live together and finish their theological course. This was linked to the conviction, arising from his experience as a missioner, that the whole future of the Catholic Church in England depended on there being a supply of trained clergy and controversialists ready to come into the country when Catholicism would again be restored.

From the Wikipedia article on Cardinal William Allen.

Top

Ariosto, Ludovico (1474 - 1533)

Ludovico Ariosto (September 8, 1474 – July 6, 1533) was an Italian poet, author of the epic poem Orlando furioso (1516), "Orlando Enraged".

From the Wikipedia article on Ludovico Ariosto.

Top

Ascham, Roger (1515? - 1568)

Though only technically a contemporary of Shakespeare's (he died in 1568 and Shakespeare was born in 1564) Roger Ascham can be said to have been enormously influential in the life of Shakespeare if only indirectly because of his enormous influence on Elizabeth I and, it is not too much to say, his influence on the humanistic ethos of the Elizabethan court and courtly culture under Elizabeth.  He was but a tutor and schoolmaster, but one of the lessons of his life is the enormous impact a teacher can have when devoted to his students.

Ascham was born in 1515 and educated first in the home of Sir Humphrey Wingfield (speaker of the House of Commons in 1533), where he first learned to enjoy archery as a sport.  About 1530 he was sent to St. Johns, Cambridge where, to Ascham's great good fortune, the fasion for the study of Greek was at high water.  Here he met John Cheke, later tutor to Edward VI, probably the most influential association he made at Cambridge with respect to the cours of his later life.  Ascham showed enormous facility for languages, and particularly Greek.  Ascham, a born scholar, took his BA in 1534/35, his MA in 1537, and was elected a fellow of St. John's college where he took pupils, one of whom was William Grindal who, in 1544 was appointed tutor to the Princess Elizabeth by Katherine Parr.  Ascham, through Grinadal, took a great interest in the edcation of Elizabeth and maintained a regular correspondence with Kat Ashely, Elizabeth's early governess and companion, and recommended to Grindal books for Elizabeth to study.

Ascham's interest in Elizabeth's intellectual progress was not completely selfless, of course.  He hoped eventually to become her tutor.  In 1548, with Edward not King Edward VI, Elizabeth's tutor Grindal died and Ascham made his application for the job of tutor.  Elizabeth was much of the same mind and used her influence to secure Asham in the position.

At the time Ascham was an internationally known scholar.  In 1545 he published Toxophilus, his English vernacular treatise on archery.  He was also a master of calligraphy, and improved the elegant Italic hand taught to Elizabeth initially by Castiglione.  Ascham is best know, however, for the posthumous (1570) The Scholemaster, which propounds progressive,even liberal ideas, for the day, on education.  His curriculum was based on study of the Scriptures (!) and the classics, espcially Cicero.  He included athletics in his instruction, and Elizabeth learned to love riding and hunting.  Elizabeth took from Ascham a love a learning that she retained throughout her life.  Through Elizabeth the bar for her courtier's (and entertainers) was set ever so high, thanks, primarily, to the tutelage of Ascham.

Top

Bacon, Sir Francis (1561 - 1626)

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, and essayist, but is best known as a philosophical advocate and defender of the scientific revolution. Indeed, his dedication brought him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.

From the Wikipedia article on Sir Francis Bacon.

Top

Barnes, Barnabe (1568? - 1609)

This, on the little known Barnabe Barnes, from Morley's 1893 English Writers: an attempt towards a History of English Literature:

"Barnabe Barnes published, in May, 1593, his "Parthenophil and Parthenophe," which is a way of naming "the Maid and her Lover," as Sidney's Astrophel and Stella were names for "the Star and her Lover." It is a collection of a hundred and four sonnets, twenty-six madrigals, and a sestine exact in technical construction. These are followed by twenty-one elegies, a canzone, a translation of the first Idyll of Moschus, twenty odes, four more sestines, and a few sonnets of compliment.

"Barnabe Barnes was the fourth of nine children of Richard Barnes, Bishop of Durham, who died in 1587. A year before his father's death Barnabe entered Brasenose College, but he left Oxford without graduating. In 1591 Barnabe Barnes went with the Earl of Essex into Normandy, to join the French against the Prince of Parma. As a friend of Gabriel Harvey, whom he supported with a sonnet against Nash, Barnabe Barnes received in his own face some of the mud thrown in the Nash and Harvey gutter-war [See Nash's "Have with you to Saffron Walden" where he accuses Barnes of cowardice]. While many of the sonnets in "Parthenophil and Parthenophe" are in the form then commonly used, of three quatrains and a couplet, others vary the rhyming, and some — as the thirtieth, thirty- second, thirty-third, and others — are accurately formed on Petrarch's model. In 1595 Barnabe Barnes published "A Divine Centvrie of Spirituall Sonnets," mainly Petrarchan in their form. Whether he sing of earthly or of heavenly love, the passion is conventional, but there is livelier imagery in the poems upon earthly love. After the death of Elizabeth, Barnabe Barnes published, in 1606, "Foure Bookes of Offices ; enabling privat Persons for the speciall service of all good Princes and Policies." This was followed in the next year (1607) by a tragedy, called " The Divel's Charter," on Pope Alexander VI. and Lucretia Borgia. Barnes died in December, 1609" (pp. 214-215).

Barnes' connections to Shakespeare are tantalizing.  Their common acqaintance is John Florio (p. 463), translator of Montaigne and secretary to Southampton, who was in Barnes' service while he was at Oxford.  Barnes and his friend William Percy, to whom Parthenophil and Parthenophe is dedicated, were both sonneteers in the same circles as Shakespeare in the years when he was, most likely, writing his sonnets.  Barnes, in 1593 wrote a flattering sonnet to Southampton, and at least one widely read biographer (Sir Sidney Lee in his 1898 biography; see also Lee's DNB entry on Shakespeare in 1909) assigned Barnes the role of rival poet of the Sonnets. Later Barnes contributed to the spate of Jacobean plays on witchcraft, necromancy and the daemonic, The Devil's Charter, reflecting the interests of King James, near the same time that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth.  Barnes' play was performed before the King by Shakespeare's company.

Top

Beaumont, Francis (1584 - 1616)

Francis Beaumont (1584 – March 6, 1616) was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher.

From the Wikipedia article on Francis Beaumont.

Works

  • Works by Francis Beaumont at Project Gutenberg.
  • The Woman Hater
  • The Masque of The Inner-Temple and Gray's Inn, Gray's Inn and The Inner-Temple;
  • Poems
  • The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, George Darley ed., Oxford, 1859 (reprint): Vol. I, Vol. II; from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.
  • The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher in Ten Volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1905-1912, from Internet Archive.
    • Vol. I - The Maid's Tragedy; Philaster; A King, and No King; The Scornful Lady, The Custom of the Country.
    • Vol. II - The Elder Brother; The Spanish Curate; Wit Without Money; Beggar's Bush; The Humerous Lieutenant; The Faithful Shepherdess.
    • Vol. III - The Mad Lover; The Loyal Subject; Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife; The Laws of Candy; The False One; The Little French Lawyer.
    • Vol. IV - The Tragedy of Valentinian; Monsieur Thomas; The Chances; The Bloody Brother; The Wild-Goose Chase.
    • Vol. V - A Wife for a Month; The Lover's Progress; The Pilgrim; The Captain; The Prophetess.
    • Vol. VI - The Queen of Corinth; Bonduca; The Night of the Burning Pestle; Love's Pilgrimage; The Double Marriage.
    • Vol. VII - The Maid of the Mill; The Knight of Malta; Love's Cure, or The Martial Maid; Women Pleas'd; The Night-Walker, or The Little Thief.
    • Vol. VIII - The Woman's Prize; The Island Princess; The Noble Gentleman; The Coronation; The Coxcomb.
    • Vol. IX - The Sea Voyage; Wit At Several Weapons; The Fair Maid of the Inn; Cupid's Revenge; The Two Noble Kinsmen.
    • Vol. X - Thierry and Theodorat; The Woman Hater; Nice Valor; The Honest Man's Fortune; The Masque of the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple; Four Plays or Moral Representations in One.

Top

Brooke, William, 10th Baron Cobham (1527 - 1597)

William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham (1527-1597) was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and and a Member of Parliament for Hythe. Although he was viewed by some as a religious radical during the Somerset protectorate, he entertained Elizabeth at Cobham Hall in 1559, signalling his acceptance of the moderate regime...In 1596, he was named Lord Chamberlain on the death of Baron Hunsdon; he died in March 1597.

From the Wikipedia article on William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham.

[NB: He is briefly Lord Chamberlain after the death of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon.  He was succeeded in the office by George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon, a man much more congenial to the players.  He is descended from the Sir John Oldcastle, of Lollard fame, whose name was originally given to Falstaff.  Whether the name was given with satiric intent is not known, but it was quickly changed, under pressure, when his descendant became Lord Chamberlain.  During the time Brooke was Lord Chamberlain, Shakespeare's company called themselves Lord Hunsdon's Men, and are so named on the title page of the first quarto of Romeo and Juliet published in 1597.]

Top

Buck, (Sir) George (1560 - 1622)

Sir George Buck, or Buc (1560 – 1622) was an antiquarian who served as Master of the Revels to King James I of England...Once he assumed the full office in 1610, Buck clearly was the primary censor for public drama...Buck was also a minor poet and prose writer. He published "A Discourse or Treatise of the third universitie of England" (1615), an account of the Inns of Court. His major work, his History of the Life and Reign of Richard III, would not be published until 1646.

From the Wikipedia article on Sir George Buck.

Works

Top

Burbage, Richard (1568 - 1619)

Richard Burbage (July 7, 1568 – March 13, 1619) was an actor and theatre owner. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage...He probably was acting with the Admiral's Men in 1590, with Lord Strange's Men in 1592, and with the Earl of Pembroke's Men in 1593; but most famously he was the star of William Shakespeare's theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men which mutated into the King's Men on the ascension of James I in 1603. He played the title role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and King Lear. But he was in great demand and also appeared in the plays of many of the great contemporary writers, such as Ben Jonson (the title role in Volpone and Subtle in The Alchemist), John Marston (The Malcontent), John Webster (The Duchess of Malfi) and Beaumont & Fletcher (The Maid's Tragedy).

From the Wikipedia article on Richard Burbage.

Top

Byrd, William (1543? - 1623)

If you look up William Byrd in an encyclopedia his birth date will often be succeeded by a question mark.  It is, indeed, indefinite.  It is just possible he was born as early as 1534, but more likely in 1543, depending upon whether the Wylliam Byrd who became a chorister in Westminster Abbey in 1543 is the composer, or simply another lost William Byrd.  His birth place is usually given as Lincoln, since he has strong Lincoln associations later in life, but if the Westminster chorister and Byrd are the same, London is a more likely birth place.  In any event, there is no doubt he died in 1623, aged at least 80.

It is a near certainty that Byrd sang in the Chapel Royal during the reign of Mary I under Thomas Tallis.  In his mid-twenties he is found as organist and choirmaster of Lincoln Cathedral.  He was named a gentleman of the Chapel Royal under Elizabeth, in 1572 and worked there as organist, singer and composer for many subsequent years.  He published a collection of motets with Tallis before Tallis' death, and composed Ye Sacred Muses as an elegy to the departed Tallis.

In spite of Byrd's employment writing for the Protestant Church of England under Elizabeth, he seems to have harbored strong personal Catholic sympathies, and wrote a good deal of music for the Mass in his later years, apparently celebrating Mass secretly with his co-religionists.  Even though Byrd composed and openly published Catholic music he was not molested by the state, though some of those in possession of his printed music certainly were.  He composed prolifically throughout his very long life, and after Orlando Gibbons, is often considered the greatest of Elizabethan-Jacobean composers

Top

 

Campion, Edmund (1540 - 1581)

St. Edmund Campion (January 24, 1540 – December 1, 1581) was a Catholic priest, Jesuit and martyr...he was indicted at Westminster on a charge of having conspired, along with others, at Rome and Reims to raise a sedition in the realm and dethrone the Queen...He answered the sentence of the traitor's death with the Te Deum laudamus, and, after spending his last days in prayer, was led with two companions to Tyburn and hanged, drawn and quartered on December 1, 1581. Campion was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized in 1970.

From the Wikipedia article on Edmund Campion.

Top

Campion, Thomas (1567 - 1620)

Thomas Campion, (sometimes Campian) (February 12, 1567 – March 1, 1620) was an English composer, poet and physician...Campion wrote over one hundred lute songs in the Books of Airs, with the first collection (co-written with Philip Rosseter) appearing in 1601 and four more following throughout the 1610s. He also wrote a number of masques, including Lord Hay's Masque performed in 1607, along with Somerset Masque and The Lord's Masque which premiered in 1613. Some of Campion's works were quite ribald on the other hand, such as "Beauty, since you so much desire" (see media). In 1615 he published a book on counterpoint, A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint By a Most Familiar and Infallible Rule, which was regarded highly enough to be reprinted in 1660.

From the Wikipedia article on Thomas Campion.
  • Thomas Campion resources from the Luminarium.
  • Campion in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.

Top

Carey, George, 2nd Baron Hunsdon (1547 - 1603)

George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon KG (1547 – 9 September 1603) was the eldest son of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon and Anne Morgan. His father was first cousin to Elizabeth I of England...Both Henry and George Carey were patrons of the professional theatre company in London known as "the Lord Chamberlain's Men". Talents such as William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were among the writers and performers of the company.

From the Wikipedia article on George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon.

Top

Carey, Henry, 1st Baron Hunsdon (1526 - 1596)

Henry Carey (or Cary), 1st Baron Hunsdon of Hunsdon (4 March 1526 – 23 July 1596) was an English nobleman...He was appointed Lord Chamberlain of the Household in July, 1585 and would hold this position until his death.  [NB: Thus, he was Lord Chamberlain, patron of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, when the company was first formed.]

From the Wikipedia article on Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon.

Top

Carr, Frances (Howard) (1591 - 1632) Countess of Essex, then Countess of Somerset

Frances Howard daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and mother of Lady Anne Carr,  married, at age 13 the 3rd Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, son of the same Earl of Essex condemned for the rebellion against Queen Elizabeth in 1601.  The marriage was annulled, in a sensational annulment hearing conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot (who vehemently opposed it) on the grounds that the marriage had never been consummated.  The annulment left Frances Howard free to marry Robert Carr, the king's favorite, then Lord Rochester and soon elevated to Earl of Somerset.

The Countess of Somerset plotted to poison Sir Thomas Overbury while he was incarcerated in the Tower, and succeeded, whether with the knowledge of the Earl of Somerset or not is not known, though he was convicted of the crime.  At her trial the countess pleaded guilty and asked for pardon, which was granted by King James, though many socially lesser individuals were executed for her crime.

Both the Earl and Countess were pardoned, and lived together thereafter in reduced, but not unprosperous, circumstances, though their relationship deteriorated from the unbridled love they had at one time known.

Frances Howard was vilified after her trial as lust incarnate, a witch and a Machiavellian poisoner, a reputation she has retained through the centuries, though there may be much to suggest these characterizations were colored by would be moralists.  Certainly she was guilty of compassing the death of Overbury--who at the time was thoroughly disliked, but who became a martyr of sorts in the public imagination afterwards--and certainly she had participated in incantations and other rites associated with wise men or astrologers, like Simon Forman--a practice not uncommon for the age--but whether she was as licentious as she is portrayed in the contemporary ballads is questionable.

She died a horrible death at the age of 41 from cancer of the breast and cervix.

The modern authority--and engaging history--on the Essex and Overbury affairs is Anne Somerset, Unnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James I.

Top

Carr, Robert, Earl of Somerset (1587 - 1645)

Robert Carr was a lowly born Scot page whose good looks and natural graces attracted the homosexual affections of King James I and, once becoming the King's favourite, was elevated as Viscount Rochester (1611) and then 1st Earl of Somerset (1613).  The King showered enormous wealth upon him, and he became, for a time, the most influential man at James' court.

Carr conducted an adulterous affair with Frances Howard, whose marriage to Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex was annulled so that she might marry Carr (in 1613).  Carr was soon supplanted in the King's affections by George Villiers (later the Duke of Buckingham) and shortly thereafter was arrested and tried for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, which had been engineered by his wife, Frances Howard.  Whether Carr was directly involved in the murder cannot be determined, but his behavior afterwards was highly suspicious and when brought to trial he was convicted by his peers.

Carr received a pardon from the King, and was restored to a prosperous, though not lavish, living, through the King's bounty.  He was deeply embittered and never returned to court.  His relations with his wife, who he probably blamed entirely for his downfall, deteriorated, but they continued to live together.

Carr's daughter was Lady Anne Carr, born at the time of her parents' murder trials, who later married the Duke of Bedford and became estranged with Carr over his failure to fulfill her dowry contract.

Top

Castiglione, Baldassare

Baldassare Castiglione, count of Novellata (December 6, 1478 – February 2, 1529), was a diplomat and was a very prominent Renaissance author.

From the Wikipedia article on Baldassare Castiglione.

Top

Cecil, Robert, 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563 - 1612)

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, KG, PC (1 June 1563 – 24 May 1612), son of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley and half-brother of Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter, statesman, spymaster and minister to Queen Elizabeth I and King James I...Salisbury was made Secretary of State following the death of Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, and he became the leading minister after the death of his father in 1598, serving both Queen Elizabeth and King James as Secretary of State. He fell into dispute with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and only prevailed upon the latter's poor campaign against the Irish rebels during the Nine Years War in 1599. He was then in a position to orchestrate the succession to the throne, which he achieved with aplomb following Elizabeth's death in 1603.

From the Wikipedia article on Robert Cecil.
  • Biography of Cecil from Britannia Biographies.
  • Article on Cecil from the Luminarium Encyclopedia Project.

Top

Cecil, William, 1st Baron Burghley (1520 - 1598)

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (13 September 1520 – 4 August 1598), was an English politician, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign (17 November 1558–24 March 1603), and Lord High Treasurer from 1572...The interest of the State was the supreme consideration and to it he had no hesitation in sacrificing individual consciences. He frankly disbelieved in toleration; that State, he said, could never be in safety where there was a toleration of two religions. "For there is no enmity so great as that for religion; and therefore they that differ in the service of their God can never agree in the service of their country."

From the Wikipedia article on William Cecil, Lord Burghley.

Top

Cervantes, Don Miguel de (1547 - 1616)

Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra[b] (IPA: [miˈɣel ðe θerˈβantes saaˈβeðra] in modern Spanish; September 29, 1547 – April 23, 1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. Cervantes was one of the most important and influential persons in literature and the leading figure associated with the cultural flourishing of sixteenth century Spain (the Siglo de Oro). His novel Don Quixote is considered as a founding classic of Western literature and regularly figures among the best novels ever written; it has been translated into more than sixty-five languages, while editions continue regularly to be printed, and critical discussion of the work has persisted unabated since the 18th century. His work is considered among the most important in the universal literature[1]. He has been dubbed el Príncipe de los Ingenios (the Prince of Wits).

From the Wikipedia article on Cervantes.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA was born at Alcalá de Henares in Spain in 1547, of a noble Castillan family. Nothing is certainly known of his education, but by the age of twenty-three we find him serving in the army as a private soldier. He was maimed for life at the battle of Lepanto, shared in a number of other engagements, and was taken captive by the Moors on his way home in 1575. After five years of slavery he was ransomed; and two or three years later he returned to Spain, and betook himself to the profession of letters. From youth he had practiced the writing of verse, and now he turned to the production of plays; but, tilling of financial success, he obtained an employment in the Government offices, which he held till 1597, when he was imprisoned for a shortage in his accounts due to the dishonesty of an associate. The imprisonment on this occasion lasted only till the end of the year, and, after a period of obscurity, he issued, in 1605, his masterpiece, "Don Quixote." Its success was great and immediate, and its reputation soon spread beyond Spain. Translations of parts into French appeared; and in 1611 Thomas Shelton, an Englishman otherwise unknown, put forth the present version, in style and vitality, if not in accuracy, acknowledged the most fortunate of English renderings.

From the Introductory Note to the 1909 Harvard Classics edition of the 1611 Thomas Shelton translation of Don Quixote.

Works

Top

Chamberlain, John (1553 - 1627)

John Chamberlain (1553 – 1628) was the author of a series of letters written in England from 1597 to 1626, notable for their historical value and their literary qualities. In the view of historian Wallace Notestein, Chamberlain's letters "constitute the first considerable body of letters in English history and literature that the modern reader can easily follow". They are an essential source for scholars who study the period.

From the Wikipedia article on Chamberlain.

Chamberlains correspondents and friends included Dudley Carleton, William Gilbert, Henry Wotton, Thomas Bodley, and William Camden.

Top

Chapman, George (1559 - 1634)

George Chapman (ca. 1559 – May 12, 1634) was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. He has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets. He is perhaps best remembered for his translations of Homer's Iliad, Odyssey, and Batrachomyomachia.

From the Wikipedia article on George Chapman.

Top

Chettle, Henry (1564? - 1607?)

Henry Chettle (1564? – 1607?) was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era.

From the Wikipedia article on Henry Chettle.

Top

Coke, Sir Edward (1552 - 1634)

Sir Edward Coke (pronounced "cook") (1 February 1552 – 3 September 1634), was an early English colonial entrepreneur and jurist whose writings on the English common law were the definitive legal texts for some 300 years...Coke became a Member of Parliament in 1589, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1592 and was appointed England's Attorney General in 1593, a post for which he was in competition with his rival Sir Francis Bacon. During this period, he was a zealous prosecutor of Sir Walter Raleigh and of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1606. In 1613, he was elevated to Chief Justice of the King's Bench, where he continued his defense of the English common law against the encroachment by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, local courts controlled by the aristocracy, and meddling by the King...Copies of Coke's writings arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620, and every lawyer in the English colonies and early United States was trained from Coke's books, particularly his Reports and Institutes, the most famous of which was his property book, The First Institute of the Lawes of England, or a Commentary on Littleton (a reference to 15th century English jurist Thomas de Littleton).

From the Wikipedia article on Sir Edward Coke.

Top

Daniel, Samuel (1562 - 1619)

[Samuel] Daniel was a great innovator in verse. His style is full, easy and stately, without being very animated or splendid; it is content with level flights. As a gnomic writer Daniel approaches Chapman, but is more musical and coherent. He lacks fire and passion, but he has scholarly grace and tender, mournful reverie.

From the Wikipedia article on Samuel Daniel.

Top

Davenant, Sir William (1606 - 1668)

Sir William Davenant (February 28, 1606 – April 7, 1668), also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras, and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and the Interregnum.

From the Wikipedia article on Sir William Davenant

Davenant was said to be the godson of William Shakespeare and claimed himself, according to Aubrey, to be Shakespeare's illegitimate natural son.

In 1638 Aubrey became England's Poet Laureate.  He was imprisoned in the Tower for his royalist sympathies from 1650-52.  Later he became manager of the Covent Garden theatre, one of the two (Drury Lane being the other) officially licensed after the Restoration.

Top

Davies, John of Hereford (1565 - 1618)

John Davies of Hereford (c. 1565, Hereford, England – July 1618, London) was a writing-master and an Anglo-Welsh poet. He is usually known as John Davies of Hereford in order to distinguish him from others of the same name, Sir John Davies, for instance.

Davies was a writing master, meaning he taught penmanship.  His pupils included members of very distinguished families, including the Pembroke, Derby, Herbert, Percy and Egerton families. He made powerful connections thereby.  He was also an acquaintance of John Donne, and may have met him in the Egerton household. In 1605 he was appointed master of penmanship to Prince Henry while the prince attended Magdalen College.

Davies authored the Epigram on Shakespeare (number 159) in The Scourge of Folly (c. 1610) titled "To our English Terence Mr. Will : Shake-speare" and also made reference to Shakespeare and Burbage in Microcosmos (1603) and to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in Papers Complaint, compil'd in ruthfull Rimes Against the Paper-spoylers of these Times, a 546-line poetic satire appended to The Scourge of Folly.
  • The Complete Works of John Davies of Hereford (15.. - 1618), ed. A. B. Grosart, 1878.

Top

Davies, Sir John (1569 - 1626)

Sir John Davies (1569 – July 1626) was an English poet and lawyer, who became attorney general in Ireland and formulated many of the legal principles that underpinned the British Empire.

In 1594 Davies' poetry brought him into contact with Queen Elizabeth. She wished him to continue his study of law at the Middle Temple and had him sworn in as a servant-in-ordinary. In the following year, his poem, Orchestra, was published in July, prior to his call to the bar from the Middle Temple.

In February 1598 Davies was disbarred, after having entered the dining hall of the Inns in the company of two swordsmen and striking Richard Martin with a cudgel. The victim was a noted wit who had insulted him in public, and Davies immediately took a boat at the Temple steps and retired to Oxford, where he chose to write poetry. Another of his works, Nosce Teipsum, was published in 1599 and found favour with the queen and with Lord Mountjoy, later lord deputy of Ireland.

Davies became a favourite of the queen, to whom he addressed his work, Hymns of Astraea, in 1599. Later that year, however, his Epigrams was included in a list of published works that the state ordered to be confiscated and burned. In 1601 he was readmitted to the bar, having made a public apology to Martin, and in the same year served as the member of parliament for Corfe Castle. In 1603, he was part of the deputation sent to bring King James VI of Scotland to London as the new monarch. The Scots king was also an admirer of Davies' poetry, and rewarded him with a knighthood and appointments (at Mountjoy's recommendation) as solicitor-general and, later attorney-general, in Ireland.

From the Wikipedia article on Sir John Davies.

Dekker, Thomas (c. 1572 - 1632)

Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – August 25, 1632) was an Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.

From the Wikipedia article on Thomas Dekker.