Thomas Jordan, born about 1612 and probably dead in 1685, was one of the most energetic professional writers in seventeenth-century London: poet, playwright, actor, pamphleteer, compiler, civic entertainments writer, and, from 1671, the City Poet responsible for helping to turn the Lord Mayor’s Show into a verbal as well as visual celebration of London. He has never occupied the canonical position of John Milton, And…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Thomas Jordan
Poet B
Thomas Randolph
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 73%
Blended 73%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Thomas Randolph was born on 15 June 1605 at Newnham, in the parish of Newnham-cum-Badby near Daventry, Northamptonshire, and was buried on 17 March 1635. His life lasted not quite thirty years, yet his achievement was unusually various: he was a lyric poet, satirist, writer of university entertainments, comic dramatist, pastoral dramatist, and one of the most gifted younger members of the literary circle gathered aro…
In time
Thomas Jordan
Thomas Randolph
1605
1685
They overlapped for 24 years (1612–1635).
When Thomas Jordan was born, Thomas Randolph was about 7.
Thomas Jordan was about 23 when Thomas Randolph died.
On the map
About 52 km separate Eynsham, Oxfordshire, England from Newnham-cum-Badby, Northamptonshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
Thomas Randolph only
From the biographies
comedy
Thomas Jordan: seventeenth-century london, city poet, lord mayor's show, thomas rawlins, messalina, poeticall varieties, a pill to purge melancholy, youths figaries. Thomas Randolph: daventry, ben jonson, trinity college, the jealous lovers, the muses' looking-glass, aristippus, caroline age, lyric poet.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Thomas Jordan
Thomas Randolph
Emotional landscapes
Thomas Jordan: Joy, Sensuality, Irony. Thomas Randolph: Irony, Joy, Wonder.