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
Thomas Traherne, born about 1636 or 1637 and dead on 27 September 1674, was an Anglican priest, theologian, prose writer, and poet whose reputation rests on work that scarcely anyone in his own lifetime knew existed. He published only a little, lived without public literary renown, and died before his fortieth birthday. Yet the manuscripts he left behind, overlooked for more than two centuries, eventually revealed on…
“The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
