George Chapman emerged from the shadowed corners of Elizabethan England as one of its most formidable literary voices—a poet, playwright, and translator whose life bridged the raw vitality of the Renaissance stage and the lofty ideals of classical antiquity. Born around 1559 in the modest market town of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, some thirty miles north of London, he would grow into a figure who embodied the era’s restl…
“Homer's poems were writ from a free fury, an absolute and full soul; Virgil's out of a courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatory spirit.”
Neighbourhood:
Classical & Ancient Poets, Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness
In the golden twilight of the English Renaissance, when madrigals flourished in the courts and cathedrals of England and Ireland, few composers demonstrated such exquisite taste in wedding poetry to music as Thomas Bateson. Born around 1575 in the rolling countryside of Cheshire, this Anglo-Irish composer would become one of the most significant figures of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean musical landscape, le…
“In truth I must confess, they are like young birds feared out of the nest before they be well feathered, and find no place so fit to light on as on the branches of your favour: where (such is your love to me and music) I hope they will be so shrouded in the leaves of your good liking, that you will give leave neither to any ravenous kite nor crafty fowler (I mean neither to any open-mouthed Momus nor more sly detractor) to devour, or harm them, that cannot succour nor shift for themselves.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
