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…
“I here proclaim myself ever faithful to the first, and never guilty of the second sale.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Longing, Sensuality
Phineas Fletcher, baptized on 8 April 1582 and buried in December 1650, was one of the most ambitious English poets of the generation after Edmund Spenser. He lived through the last decades of Elizabeth I, the reigns of James I and Charles I, and the early upheavals of the Civil War, yet his own life was comparatively quiet: he was a scholar, priest, husband, father, country rector, and author. His reputation has nev…
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Nature Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Despair, Longing
