In the vast and glittering tapestry of Renaissance music, where names like Palestrina, Byrd, and Dowland shimmer with canonical brilliance, there strides a figure less polished by posterity, yet no less compelling — Tobias Hume. Born in 1579, likely in the shadowed alleys of London or perhaps the rolling countryside of northern England, Hume emerges not as a cloistered churchman or courtly favorite, but as a man of t…
“My Profession being, as my Education hath beene, Armes, the onely effeminate part of me, hath beene Musicke.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Irony, Joy, Sensuality
James Shirley, born in September 1596 and buried on 29 October 1666, was the last major dramatist of England’s long Renaissance theatrical age. His life extended from the final years of Elizabeth I through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the civil wars, the Puritan Commonwealth, and the first years of the Restoration. That span placed him at the center of extraordinary transformations in English religion, politi…
“Poetry is the child of nature, which, regulated and made beautiful by art, presenteth the most harmonious of all other compositions; among which (if we rightly consider) the dramatical is the most absolute.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair
