George Gascoigne, born about 1539 and dead on 7 October 1577, was one of the most adventurous and consequential writers of early Elizabethan England. Poet, translator, dramatist, critic, court entertainer, soldier, traveler, and sometime political aspirant, he lived with the instability and appetite that his writing so often dramatizes. His career was brief, troubled by debt, family conflict, legal suspicion, militar…
“The first and most necessary point that ever I found meet to be considered in making of a delectable poem is this, to ground it upon some fine invention. For it is not enough to roll in pleasant words, nor yet to thunder in rim, ram, ruff by letter, unless the invention have in it also aliquid salis.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Joy
Richard Rowlands, better known to history as Richard Verstegan or Verstegen, was born in London about 1550 and died in Antwerp in 1640. He belongs to that unusually rich category of Renaissance figures whose lives resist simple professional labels. He was a poet, translator, engraver, publisher, controversialist, antiquary, journalist, intelligence agent, and committed Catholic exile. He wrote in English, Latin, Dutc…
“She had that instinctive malice that makes one pick out for hatred the very persons who have done one a good turn. She was not merely ungrateful, but her only response to a benefit received was to revenge it.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Hymn Writers, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Peace
