John Bennet, born probably around 1575 and last securely active in 1614, occupies a distinctive if elusive place in the cultural history of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. He is frequently described as a poet because his finest music is inseparable from the language it sets, but the surviving evidence identifies him principally as a composer: a writer of madrigals and psalm settings whose art depended upon an excep…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
John Bennet
Poet B
Edmund Waller
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 66%
Blended 66%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Edmund Waller was born on 3 March 1606 at Coleshill, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and died on 21 October 1687 at Beaconsfield. His long life carried him through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II, and the opening years of James II’s rule. Few English poets lived so visibly amid such violent political reversals, and fewer still man…
“The King governs by Law. Let us look back to the evils we had, in order to prevent more. We give public money, and must see that it goes to public use.”
In time
John Bennet
Edmund Waller
1575
1687
They overlapped for 9 years (1606–1614).
When Edmund Waller was born, John Bennet was about 31.
Edmund Waller was about 8 when John Bennet died.
On the map
About 265 km separate Blackburn, Lancashire from Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, England. Both have ground in England.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
John Bennet: elizabethan england, jacobean england, madrigals to foure voyces, weeping eyes, thomas morley, john wilbye, john dowland, ralph assheton. Edmund Waller: coleshill, beaconsfield, james i, charles i, civil wars, commonwealth, restoration, lady dorothy sidney.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
John Bennet
1614
Death of John Bennet
Edmund Waller
Emotional landscapes
John Bennet: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Edmund Waller: Longing, Tenderness, Peace.