Joshua Sylvester, born in 1563 and dead on 28 September 1618, occupied an unusual and important place in the literary culture of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. He was neither a university poet in the manner of many learned writers nor a wholly court-dependent figure; he was a merchant, a translator, a religious poet, a public panegyrist, a husband and father, and, for a time, a servant of the royal household. His…
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
Joshua Sylvester
Poet B
Richard Rowlands
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 73%
Blended 73%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Richard Rowlands, better known to history as Richard Verstegan or Verstegen, was born in London about 1550 and died in Antwerp in 1640. He belongs to that unusually rich category of Renaissance figures whose lives resist simple professional labels. He was a poet, translator, engraver, publisher, controversialist, antiquary, journalist, intelligence agent, and committed Catholic exile. He wrote in English, Latin, Dutc…
“Holland is as fertile in sects as Italy is in mushrooms: new doctrines sprout overnight from the dreams of men.”
In time
Joshua Sylvester
Richard Rowlands
1550
1640
They overlapped for 56 years (1563–1618).
When Joshua Sylvester was born, Richard Rowlands was about 13.
Richard Rowlands was about 68 when Joshua Sylvester died.
On the map
About 56 km separate Kent, England from East London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Joshua Sylvester
Richard Rowlands
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
religious
history
protestant
Joshua Sylvester: merchant adventurer, guillaume de salluste, du bartas, divine weekes and workes, henry iv of france, adrian à saravia, william plumbe, protestant culture. Richard Rowlands: london, antwerp, edmund campion, theatrum crudelitatum, catholic exile, christ church oxford, goldsmiths' company, william allen.
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.
1564
Shakespeare Born
1595
Execution at Tyburn
Joshua Sylvester
Richard Rowlands
Emotional landscapes
Joshua Sylvester: Tenderness, Longing, Spirituality. Richard Rowlands: Tenderness, Joy, Peace.