Samuel Daniel was an English poet, playwright and historian in the late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean eras. He was an innovator in a wide range of literary genres. His best-known works are the sonnet
Portrait of Daniel's patron, Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1590. Daniel dedicated Delia and The Tragedy of Cleopatra to the Countess.