In the pantheon of English literature, few figures loom as large or cast as long a shadow as John Dryden. Born on August 9, 1631, in the village of Aldwincle All Saints in Northamptonshire, England, and dying on May 12, 1700, in London, Dryden lived through one of the most turbulent periods in British history. His lifetime spanned the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Interregnum under Oliver Cromwel…
“A play ought to be a just image of human nature; but it is not necessary that it should be a true history of the times.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
Sir William Davenant, baptized on 3 March 1606 and buried on 9 April 1668 after his death on 7 April, was one of the great survivors and reinvigorators of seventeenth-century English literary culture. Poet, playwright, court servant, royalist officer, prisoner, theatrical entrepreneur, and eventually the leading architect of Restoration stage practice, he lived through an age in which a writer’s career could be trans…
“How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
