John Reynolds, born about 1588 and believed to have died about 1655, was one of the most industrious and revealing English writers of the Stuart age. He was never a canonical figure in the manner of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne, or John Milton, and the details of his private life are far less securely recorded than those of such celebrated contemporaries. Yet Reynolds deserves attention precisely becau…
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 Reynolds
Poet B
Thomas Vautor
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 59%
Blended 59%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the twilight of the English Renaissance, when the golden age of madrigal composition was drawing to its close, there emerged a composer whose work would serve as both culmination and farewell to one of England's most distinctive musical traditions. Thomas Vautor, active from approximately 1590 to 1625, stands as one of the final masters of the English madrigal school, a musician whose single published collection c…
In time
John Reynolds
Thomas Vautor
1588
1655
They overlapped for 28 years (1592–1619).
When Thomas Vautor was born, John Reynolds was about 4.
John Reynolds was about 31 when Thomas Vautor died.
On the map
About 271 km separate Exeter, Devon, England from Leicestershire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
John Reynolds
Thomas Vautor
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 Reynolds: exeter, protestant polemicist, dolarnys primrose, the triumphs of god's revenge, spanish match, thirty years' war, vox coeli, votivae angliae. Thomas Vautor: english madrigal school, beaumont family, glenfield, sir george villiers, marquis of buckingham, sweet suffolk owl, the first set, farewell to oriana.
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
John Reynolds
Emotional landscapes
John Reynolds: Wonder, Joy, Tenderness. Thomas Vautor: Sorrow, Spirituality, Despair.