1.
William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called Englands national poet, and the Bard of Avon and his extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a career in London as an actor, writer. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, in his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and it was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as not of an age, but for all time. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship. His plays remain highly popular and are studied, performed. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden and he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholars mistake, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, the consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaways neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage, twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596, after the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the bill of a law case before the Queens Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589
2.
Walter Raleigh
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Sir Walter Raleigh was an English landed gentleman, writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, spy and explorer. He was cousin to Sir Richard Grenville and younger half-brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and he is also well known for popularising tobacco in England. Raleigh was born to a Protestant family in Devon, the son of Walter Raleigh, later, he became a landlord of property confiscated from the native Irish. He rose rapidly in the favour of Queen Elizabeth I and was knighted in 1585, Raleigh was instrumental in the English colonisation of North America and was granted a royal patent to explore Virginia, which paved the way for future English settlements. In 1591, he secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the Queens ladies-in-waiting, without the Queens permission, for which he, after his release, they retired to his estate at Sherborne, Dorset. In 1594, Raleigh heard of a City of Gold in South America and sailed to find it, publishing an exaggerated account of his experiences in a book that contributed to the legend of El Dorado. After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was again imprisoned in the Tower, this time for being involved in the Main Plot against King James I, in 1616, he was released to lead a second expedition in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, men led by his top commander ransacked a Spanish outpost and he returned to England and, to appease the Spanish, was arrested and executed in 1618. Raleigh was one of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, in 2002, he was featured in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Little is known about Raleighs birth, some historians believe that he was born on 22 January 1552, although the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography currently favours a date of 1554. He grew up in the house of Hayes Barton, a farmhouse near the village of East Budleigh and he was the youngest of five sons born to Catherine Champernowne in two successive marriages. His half-brothers John Gilbert, Humphrey Gilbert, and Adrian Gilbert, Catherine Champernowne was a niece of Kat Ashley, Elizabeths governess, who introduced the young men at court. Raleighs family was highly Protestant in religious orientation and had a number of near escapes during the reign of Roman Catholic Queen Mary I of England, in the most notable of these, his father had to hide in a tower to avoid execution. As a result, Raleigh developed a hatred of Roman Catholicism during his childhood, in matters of religion, Elizabeth was more moderate than her half sister Mary. In 1569, Raleigh left for France to serve with the Huguenots in the French religious civil wars, in 1572, Raleigh was registered as an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford, but he left a year later without a degree. Raleigh proceeded to finish his education in the Inns of Court, in 1575, he was registered at the Middle Temple. At his trial in 1603, he stated that he had never studied law and his life is uncertain between 1569 and 1575, but in his History of the World he claimed to have been an eyewitness at the Battle of Moncontour in France. In 1575 or 1576, Raleigh returned to England, between 1579 and 1583, Raleigh took part in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions
3.
Philip Sidney
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Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar, and soldier, who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poesy, born at Penshurst Place, Kent, he was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His mother was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and his younger brother, Robert was a statesman and patron of the arts, and was created Earl of Leicester in 1618. His younger sister, Mary, married Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and was a writer, translator, Sidney dedicated his longest work, the Arcadia, to her. After her brothers death, Mary reworked the Arcadia, which known as The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia. Philip was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford and he spent the next several years in mainland Europe, moving through Germany, Italy, Poland, the Kingdom of Hungary and Austria. On these travels, he met a number of prominent European intellectuals, returning to England in 1575, Sidney met Penelope Devereux, the future Lady Rich, though much younger, she would inspire his famous sonnet sequence of the 1580s, Astrophel and Stella. Her father, Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, is said to have planned to marry his daughter to Sidney, in England, Sidney occupied himself with politics and art. He defended his fathers administration of Ireland in a lengthy document, more seriously, he quarrelled with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, probably because of Sidneys opposition to the French marriage, which de Vere championed. In the aftermath of episode, Sidney challenged de Vere to a duel. He then wrote a letter to the Queen detailing the foolishness of the French marriage. Characteristically, Elizabeth bristled at his presumption, and Sidney prudently retired from court, during a 1577 diplomatic visit to Prague, Sidney secretly visited the exiled Jesuit priest Edmund Campion. Sidney had returned to court by the middle of 1581 and in 1584 was MP for Kent and that same year Penelope Devereux was married, apparently against her will, to Lord Rich. An early arrangement to marry Anne Cecil, daughter of Sir William Cecil, in 1583, he married Frances, teenage daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. In the same year, he made a visit to Oxford University with Giordano Bruno and his artistic contacts were more peaceful and more significant for his lasting fame. During his absence from court, he wrote Astrophel and Stella, somewhat earlier, he had met Edmund Spenser, who dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to him. Both through his heritage and his personal experience, Sidney was a keenly militant Protestant. In the 1570s, he had persuaded John Casimir to consider proposals for a united Protestant effort against the Roman Catholic Church, in the early 1580s, he argued unsuccessfully for an assault on Spain itself
4.
Robert Henryson
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Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. His poetry was composed in Middle Scots at a time when this had become a state language and it is one of the most important bodies of work in the canon of early Scottish literature. His writing consists mainly of narrative works highly inventive in their development of story-telling techniques and he generally achieved a canny balance of humour and high seriousness which is often multi-layered in its effects. This range is extended in his Testament of Cresseid with its more tragic vision. Overall, his themes and tone convey an impression of humanity. He was a rhetorician and remains to this day one of the finest in the Scots language. An example is his use of psychology to convey individual character in carefully dramatised. His surviving body of work amounts to almost exactly 5000 lines, Henrysons surviving canon consists of three long poems and around twelve miscellaneous short works in various genres. The longest poem is his Morall Fabillis, a tight, intricately structured set of thirteen stories in a cycle that runs just short of 3000 lines. Two other long works survive, both a little over 600 lines each, as with his longer works, his outward themes often carry important subtexts. Internal evidence has been used to suggest that the Morall Fabillis were composed during the 1480s, there is no record of when or where Henryson was born or educated. If this was the poet, as is assumed, then the citation indicates that he had completed studies in both arts and canon law. With no record of him as a student in Scotland, it is thought that he graduated in a university furth of the land, possibly in Leuven. Almost all early references to Henryson firmly associate his name with Dunfermline, direct unconfirmed evidence for this connection occurs in 1478 when his name appears as a witness on abbey charters. If this was the poet, then it would establish that one of his functions was as notary for the abbey, an institution which possessed and managed a vast portfolio of territory across Scotland. The almost universal references to Henryson as schoolmaster are usually taken to mean that he taught in and had some duty to run the school for Dunfermlines abbatial burgh. Dunfermline, as a burgh with capital status, was routinely visited by the court with residences directly linked to the abbey complex. There is no record of Henryson as a poet
5.
Torquato Tasso
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He suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by the Pope. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe. Born in Sorrento, Torquato was the son of Bernardo Tasso, a nobleman of Bergamo and an epic and lyric poet of considerable fame in his day, and his wife Porzia de Rossi, a noblewoman from Naples. His father had for years been secretary in the service of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno. When the prince of Salerno came into collision with the Spanish government of Naples, being subsequently outlawed and deprived of his hereditary fiefs and he was proclaimed a rebel to the state, together with his son Torquato, and his patrimony was sequestered. These things happened during the boys childhood, in 1552 Torquato was living with his mother and his only sister Cornelia at Naples, pursuing his education under the Jesuits, who had recently opened a school there. The precocity of intellect and the fervour of the boy attracted general admiration. At the age of eight he was already famous, soon after this date he was allowed to join his father, who then resided in great poverty and without occupation in exile in Rome. News reached them in 1556 that Porzia Tasso had died suddenly and mysteriously at Naples and her husband was firmly convinced that she had been poisoned by her brother with the object of getting control over her property. As it subsequently happened, Porzias estate never descended to her son, Tassos father was a poet by predilection and a professional courtier. Therefore, when an opening at the court of Urbino was offered in 1557, the young Torquato, a handsome and brilliant lad, became the companion in sports and studies of Francesco Maria della Rovere, heir to the duke of Urbino. At Urbino a society of cultivated men pursued the aesthetic and literary studies which were then in vogue. Bernardo Tasso read cantos of his poem LAmadigi to the duchess and her ladies, or discussed the merits of Homer and Virgil, Trissino and Ariosto, with the dukes librarians and secretaries. Torquato grew up in an atmosphere of refined luxury and somewhat pedantic criticism, at Venice, where his father went to superintend the printing of his own epic, Amadigi, these influences continued. He found himself the pet and prodigy of a literary circle. But Bernardo had suffered in his own career so seriously from dependence on the Muses and the nobility, Torquato was sent to study law at Padua. Instead of applying himself to law, the young man bestowed all his attention upon philosophy, before the end of 1562, he had produced a twelve-canto epic poem called Rinaldo, which was meant to combine the regularity of the Virgilian with the attractions of the romantic epic. Nevertheless, its author was recognized as the most promising young poet of his time, the flattered father allowed the work to be printed, and, after a short period of study at Bologna, he consented to his sons entering the service of Cardinal Luigi dEste
6.
Michael Drayton
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Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era. Drayton was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham, Nottinghamshire. More recent work has cast doubt on those speculations, in 1590 he produced his first book, The Harmony of the Church, a volume of spiritual poems, dedicated to Lady Devereux. It is notable for a version of the Song of Solomon, however, with the exception of forty copies, seized by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the whole edition was destroyed by public order. Nevertheless, Drayton published a vast amount within the few years. In 1593 appeared Idea, The Shepherds Garland, a collection of nine pastorals, in which he celebrated his own love-sorrows under the poetic name of Rowland. The basic idea was expanded in a cycle of sonnets, published in 1594, under the title of Ideas Mirror. It appears that he failed to win his Idea, and lived and died a bachelor. It has been said Draytons sonnets possess a direct, instant, and universal appeal, by reason of their simple straightforward ring and foreshadowed the style of Fairfax, Waller. Drayton was the first to bring the term ode, for a poem, to popularity in England and was a master of the short. Also in 1593 there appeared the first of Draytons historical poems, The Legend of Piers Gaveston, and the year saw the publication of Matilda. In his Fig for Momus, Lodge reciprocated these friendly courtesies, in 1596 Drayton published his long and important poem Mortimeriados, a very serious production in ottava rima. He later enlarged and modified this poem, and republished it in 1603 under the title of The Barons Wars, in 1596 also appeared another historical poem, The Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy, with which Piers Gaveston was reprinted. In 1597 appeared Englands Heroical Epistles, a series of historical studies and these last poems, written in the heroic couplet, contain some of the finest passages in Draytons writings. By 1597, the poet was resting on his laurels and it seems that he was much favoured at the court of Elizabeth, and he hoped that it would be the same with her successor. But when, in 1603, he addressed a poem of compliment to James I, on his accession, it was ridiculed and his bitterness found expression in a satire, The Owl, but he had no talent in this kind of composition. Not much more entertaining was his scriptural narrative of Moses in a Map of his Miracles, in 1605 Drayton reprinted his most important works, his historical poems and the Idea, in a single volume which ran through eight editions during his lifetime. Some of the odes are extremely spirited, in this volume he printed for the first time the famous Ballad of Agincourt
7.
Irish poetry
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Irish poetry includes poetry in two languages, Irish and English. The earliest surviving poems in Irish date back to the 6th century and this culminated in the work of the poets of the Irish Literary Revival in the late 19th and early 20th century. Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe, the earliest examples date from the 6th century, and are generally short lyrics on themes from religion or the world of nature. They were frequently written by their authors in the margins of the illuminated manuscripts that they were copying. The best known example is Pangur Bán and it was practical for poems to be short because the Irish recognized that it was necessary to use any means necessary to make the poems lasting in their oral culture. To accomplish such a feat as well as they have, they used complicated rhyme schemes that would render a poem nonsensical if any of the key words were changed from the original version, in an oral culture, Irish poetry had many uses. A poem could be used to both the poet and the subject of the poem, oftentimes kings would commission poets to create a piece about them. Such poems would be passed on to descendants so they would remember the deeds of past generations. Kings would also commission poets to write poems of advertisement, speaking of the greatness and worthiness. Oral poetry, because it was in the vernacular, was used for entertainment. Poems that were entertaining could also be informative, teaching people lessons or offering them wisdom of experience for dealing with situations they would encounter in their everyday lives. Finally, poems, especially those featured in the sagas, were thought to be an instrument of the supernatural, Another source of early Irish poetry is the poems in the tales and sagas, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge. Unlike many other European epic cycles, the Irish sagas were written in prose, Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained, learned poets. As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they performed a number of official roles and they were chroniclers and satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire, glam dicin, the Metrical Dindshenchas, or Lore of Places, is probably the major surviving monument of Irish bardic verse. It is a great onomastic anthology of naming legends of significant places in the Irish landscape, the earliest of these date from the 11th century, and were probably originally compiled on a provincial basis. As a national compilation, the Metrical Dindshenchas has come down to us in two different recensions. Knowledge of the real or putative history of local places formed an important part of the education of the elite in ancient Ireland, verse tales of Fionn and the Fianna, sometimes known as Ossianic poetry, were extremely common in Ireland and Scotland throughout this period
8.
Henry Constable
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Henry Constable was an English poet, known particularly for Diana, one of the first English sonnet sequences. In 1591 he converted to Catholicism, and lived in exile on the continent for some years and he returned to England at the accession of King James, but was soon a prisoner in the Tower and in the Fleet. He died an exile at Liege in 1613 and his paternal grandparents were Sir Robert Constable and Katherine Manners, the daughter of George Manners, 11th Baron de Ros, and sister of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland. According to Sullivan, the connections Robert Constable acquired through his marriage opened up a career of military service, Constable served under Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, in the campaign after the Northern Rebellion of 1569, and was knighted by Sussex at Berwick. He was Marshal of Berwick from 1576 to 1578, and was appointed Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance at some time before 4 August 1588, Henry Constable matriculated as a fellow commoner at St Johns College, Cambridge at Easter 1578, and took his BA on 29 January 1580. His contemporary at Cambridge was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and he was enrolled at Lincolns Inn on 21 February 1583, but there is no further record of his legal studies. On 12 September of that year Constable was in Scotland, in May 1585 he was at Heidelberg, and he may have travelled to Poland. During this period, according to Sullivan, Constable acted as a spokesperson for Protestant causes, during this period he was reported to have been one of Queen Elizabeths favourites. He was sent to Edinburgh in 1589 on the occasion of King Jamess marriage and his religious convictions were still to outward appearances Protestant. In 1591 Constable went to Normandy with the English forces under Essex who laid siege to Rouen, at some time between his arrival in France and the death of his father on 12 November 1591 Constable openly embraced Roman Catholicism. Henri IV granted him a small pension, for the next decade he was principally based in Paris, but travelled to Rome in 1595. On 3 October 1596 he was in Rouen, from which Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, during this period he was also in Antwerp and Brussels. Until 1597 he kept up his connections with the Essex circle, writing to Essex himself and he continued to claim loyalty to Queen Elizabeth, and supported King James claim to the English throne in preference to the claim of the Spanish Infanta, daughter of Philip II of Spain. On 1 March 1599 Constable arrived at Leith in Scotland, and eventually obtained access to King James, remaining until September, hunting and conversing on poetry, in 1600 he again travelled to Rome to seek Pope Clement VIIIs approval of another visit to King James. By December of that year he was back at court, and was granted a warrant on 8 February 1604 by which he obtained possession of his inherited lands. However his continued pursuit of plans to influence King James towards toleration of Catholics resulted in his imprisonment in the Tower and he was subsequently placed under house arrest, and deprived of his inheritance. Constable was imprisoned on at least one other occasion, on 31 July 1610 he was granted licence to leave England. Little more is known of his activities apart from the record of his presence at a disputation on 4 September 1612
9.
Thomas Morley
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Thomas Morley was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of the Renaissance. He was one of the foremost members of the English Madrigal School and he was also involved in music publishing, and from 1598 up to his death he held a printing patent. He used the monopoly in partnership with professional music printers such as Thomas East, living in London at the same time as Shakespeare, he became organist at St Pauls Cathedral. He was the most famous composer of music in Elizabethan England. He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare. Morley was born in Norwich, in East England, the son of a brewer, most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood, and he became master of choristers there in 1583. However, it is assumed that Morley moved from Norwich Cathedral sometime before 1574 to be a chorister at St Pauls Cathedral. He was working as a singer in London in the 1570s and appears to have studied with William Byrd at that time, while the dates he studied with Byrd are not known, they were most likely in the early 1570s. In his 1597 publication A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, in 1588 he received his bachelors degree from the University of Oxford, and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at St. Pauls in London. His young son died the year in 1589. Morley obviously found his direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals. Morley lived for a time in the parish as Shakespeare. While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his sacred works. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein. Thomas Morleys compositions include, April is in my mistress face Arise, get up my deere, when loe by break of morning Where art thou wanton. The First Service How long wilt thou forget me, the Burial Service De profundis clamavi Eheu sustulerunt domine Domine, non est exultarem cor meum Domine, dominus noster O amica mea The Triumphs of Oriana edited by Morley, published in 1601. Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance, ISBN 0-393-09530-4 Article Thomas Morley in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. ISBN 1-56159-174-2 The University of Reading Library featuring, Thomas Morley, A Plaine, London,1597 Philip Ledger The Oxford Book of English Madrigals OUP1978 The Madrigal, Jerome Roche,1972
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