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
George Wither
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 71%
Blended 71%
Swap sides
Another related pair
George Wither was born on 11 June 1588 at Bentworth, near Alton in Hampshire, and died on 2 May 1667 in London. His long life stretched across one of the most violently transformative periods in English history: the last years of Elizabeth I, the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the execution of a king, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and the Restoration of Charles II. Few English poets lived so fu…
In time
Joshua Sylvester
George Wither
1563
1667
They overlapped for 31 years (1588–1618).
When George Wither was born, Joshua Sylvester was about 25.
George Wither was about 30 when Joshua Sylvester died.
On the map
About 124 km separate Kent, England from Bentworth, Hampshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Joshua Sylvester
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
Joshua Sylvester: merchant adventurer, guillaume de salluste, du bartas, divine weekes and workes, henry iv of france, adrian à saravia, william plumbe, protestant culture. George Wither: bentworth, hampshire, prince henry frederick, abuses stript and whipt, the shepherd's hunting, hymnes and songs of the church, william browne, magdalen college.
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.
1595
Execution at Tyburn
Joshua Sylvester
George Wither
Emotional landscapes
Joshua Sylvester: Tenderness, Longing, Spirituality. George Wither: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.