Thomas Heywood, born about 1574 and buried on 16 August 1641, was one of the great working writers of the English Renaissance: a playwright, actor, poet, translator, prose controversialist, civic pageant-maker, and indefatigable observer of London life. He has never possessed the singular cultural monumentality of William Shakespeare, nor the sharply defined authorial reputation of Ben Jonson, yet this apparent eclip…
“Seven cities warred for Homer being dead, who living had no roof to shroud his head.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Longing, Sensuality
In the sun-dappled fields and ancient cathedral shadows of Kent, England, around the year 1553 or 1554, a boy named John Lyly entered the world. He would grow to become one of the most dazzling literary innovators of the Elizabethan age, a wordsmith whose elegant prose and witty comedies lit up the courts of Queen Elizabeth I and helped shape the very foundations of English drama and fiction. Though his birth date is…
“The finest wits are not the soundest judgments.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Sensuality
