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…
“It is now public, to satisfy the importunity of friends: I will only add, it is like to be the last, for in my resolve, nothing of this nature shall, after this, engage either my pen or invention.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair
Sir Charles Sedley, fifth baronet, was born in March 1639 and died on 20 August 1701. He belonged to that brilliant and troubling generation of Restoration writers whose lives seem inseparable from the political convulsions, sexual freedoms, theatrical revivals, and moral contradictions of later seventeenth-century England. Poet, playwright, translator, conversational wit, courtier, landowner, and member of Parliamen…
“As the king has made my daughter a countess, the least I can do, in common gratitude, is to assist in making his Majesty's daughter a queen.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Irony, Joy
