In the rich tapestry of Elizabethan literature, certain figures stand as crucial bridges between the medieval past and the Renaissance flowering that would produce Shakespeare, Spenser, and Marlowe. Among these transitional figures, Barnabe Googe occupies a unique and often underappreciated position as one of the earliest English poets to fully embrace Continental Renaissance forms while maintaining a distinctly Engl…
“I hear live amongst a sort of Scythians, wanting the comfort of my country, my poor wife and children.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Irony
Thomas Nashe, baptized on 26 November 1567 and probably born shortly before that date in Lowestoft, Suffolk, was one of the most brilliant, abrasive, inventive, and precarious figures of the English Renaissance. He died sometime after 1599 and is conventionally assigned a death date of about 1601, though the circumstances and exact date remain unknown. In a life that appears to have lasted little more than three deca…
“The Sun shineth as well on the good as the bad: God from on high beholdeth all the workers of iniquity, as well as the upright of heart.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Fear