John Fletcher, baptized on 20 December 1579 and buried on 29 August 1625, was one of the most successful, inventive, and influential dramatists of England’s Jacobean age. Though he is now less familiar to general readers than William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, or Christopher Marlowe, Fletcher was for generations among the most frequently performed writers in the English language. In the decades after his death, audienc…
“A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Peace, Despair
Richard Lovelace, born on 9 December 1617 and dead by 1657, occupies a distinctive place in English literary history as one of the finest poets associated with the Cavalier tradition. His name is inseparable from two of the most frequently quoted lyrics of the seventeenth century: “I could not love thee, Dear, so much, / Loved I not Honour more” and “Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.” Such mem…
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness