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…
“Playing is an ornament to the city, which strangers of all nations repairing hither report of in their countries.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Longing, Sensuality
John Ford, baptized on 17 April 1586 and last securely documented in 1639, was one of the most daring and emotionally penetrating dramatists of England’s late Renaissance. Although he is commonly remembered as a playwright rather than as a poet in the narrower sense, poetry is inseparable from his dramatic achievement. His finest plays are built from a grave, musical, concentrated blank verse that gives private suffe…
“Where a truth of merit hath a general warrant, there love is but a debt, acknowledgement a justice.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow
