1.
Sir Philip Sidney
BORN: 1554, England
DIED:1586,the Netherlands NATIONALITY: British
GENRE: Poetry, fiction, criticism
MAJOR
WORKS:
(1) The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
(1590)
(2) Astrophel and Stella (1591)
(3) The New Countess of Pembroke's
Arcadia (revision) (1593)
(4) An Apologie for Poetry (1595)
Sir
Philip Sidney was born on November 30, 1554, in Kent, England. His father, Sir Henry
Sidney, was the lord president of Wales, and his uncle, Robert Dudley, was the Earl
of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth’s friend and advisor. Sidney attended Oxford University’s
Christ Church College from 1568 to 1571, but he left to travel Europe before
completing his studies.
Sidney
returned to England in 1575 and was appointed cupbearer to Queen Elizabeth, a
prestigious position. In 1577, he was sent to Germany as an ambassador, and
when he returned to England soon after, he became a patron of the arts, notably
encouraging the poet Edmund Spenser. He also continued his involvement in politics,
opposing the queen’s planned marriage to the French heir and serving as a
Member of Parliament in the early 1580s.
Sidney
penned several major works of the Elizabethan era, including ‘Astrophel and Stella’,
the first Elizabethan sonnet cycle, and ‘Arcadia’, a heroic prose romance. He was
also known for his literary criticism, known as ‘The Defense of Poesy’.
Although he shared his writing with his close friends, he did not allow his
work to be published during his lifetime.
In
1585, Sidney was appointed governor of the Dutch town of Flushing. He fought in
a battle against the Spanish at Zutphen in 1586 and died of his wounds several
days later. He was buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on February 16,
1587.
2.
Thomas Sackville
BORN: 1536, Sussex, England
DIED: 1608, London, England
NATIONALITY: British
GENRE: Drama, poetry
MAJOR
WORKS:
(1)The Tragedy of Gorboduc (1562)
(2) “Induction” (1563)
(3) “Complaint” (1563)
Thomas
Sackville, 1st earl of Dorset, (1535/6-1608) was an English playwright, poet, statesman,
and the Chancellor of Oxford University. He was the son of Sir Richard
Sackville, a member of the court of
King Henry VIII of England. He married Cicely Baker in 1555.
Sackville
was a London barrister, and entered Parliament in 1558. He was a member of the
Privy Council in 1585. In 1586, he delivered the death sentence to Mary, Queen of
Scots. He served on diplomatic missions to The Hague. In 1591, Sackville became
Chancellor of the University of Oxford. He served as lord high treasurer, a
life appointment, from 1599 to 1608. He died of a stroke.
Sackville
is famous for ‘Gorboduc’ (1563), the first English tragedy written in blank verse.
He wrote this play with Thomas Norton. Sackville's two great poems, ‘Induction’
and ‘Buckingham's Complaint’, were published in ‘The Mirror for Magistrates’
(1563). The play and the two poems make Sackville one of the major English
poets and playwrights.
3.
Michael Drayton
BORN: 1563, Hartshill, Warwickshire,
England
DIED: 1631, London, England
NATIONALITY: British, English
GENRE: Poetry
MAJOR
WORKS:
(1) The Tragicall Legend of Robert,
Duke of Normandy (1596)
(2) To the Maiestie of King James
(1603)
(3) Poly-Olbion (1612)
(4) Poems by Michael Drayton Esquyer
(1619)
(5) The Muses Elizium (1630)
Michael
Drayton, English poet, was the first to write odes in English in the manner of Horace.
Michael Drayton, born in the 16th century, was an English poet who became known
during the Elizabethan era. He was born in a small town in England near
Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Otherwise, very little is known about his early life.
Some evidence suggests that he studied at the University of Oxford, but this is
not a confirmed fact.
Drayton’s
first collection was published in 1590. It was a volume of spiritual poems, under
the name The Harmony of the Church. Three years later came Idea: The
Shepherd's Garland, in which he
indulges into his love life sorrows, using the name Rowland. Drayton is
considered to be the first to use the word “ode” in a lyrical, poetical sense.
Eventually
Michael Drayton died in poverty. During his lifetime, his poems did not bring
him prosperity and did not die with dignity. The last of Drayton's voluminous publications
was The Muses' Elizium in 1630. He died in London, was buried in Poets' Corner
in Westminster Abbey.
4.
John Dryden
John
Dryden was an English poet, critic, and playwright active in the second half of
the 17th century. As a poet, Dryden is best known as a satirist and was
England's first poet laureate in 1668. In addition to satires, Dryden wrote
elegies, prologues, epilogues, odes, and panegyrics. His most famous poem is
Absalom and Achitophel
(1681). Dryden was so influential in
Restoration England that the period was known to many as the Age of Dryden.
Born
at a vicarage in Northampshire in 1631, Dryden was the son of parliamentary supporters,
but exhibited royalist sympathies early. His poem “Upon the Death of Lord
Hastings” supports a royalist agenda. Three years after graduating from Trinity
College, Cambridge, he moved to London and wrote his "Heroic Stanzas"
in 1659. After writing the poem "Annus Mirabilis" in 1667, Dryden was
named poet laureate of England.
Dryden
wrote plays throughout the 1670s, and was at the forefront of Restoration comedy.
His best-known plays were Marriage à la Mode in 1673 and All for Love in 1678.
However, his plays were never as successful as his poetry, and he eventually turned
back to satires. In the satires that he wrote, Dryden often took aim at the
Whigs, which earned him attention from Charles II. In the 1680s, Dryden
converted to Catholicism and set to work criticizing the Anglican church, which
ultimately lost him the position of Poet Laureate.
At
the end of his career, Dryden returned to theatrical writing and also took up translation.
He died in 1700 from gout.
5.
Samuel Butler
Samuel
Butler (baptized 14 February 1613 – 25 September 1680) was a poet and satirist.
He is remembered now chiefly for a long satirical poem titled Hudibras. Hudibras
is directed against religious sectarianism. The poem was very popular in its
time, and several of its phrases have
passed into the dictionary.
Samuel
Butler was born in Strensham, Worcestershire, and was the son of a farmer and
churchwarden, also named Samuel. In late 1662 the first part of Hudibras, which
he began writing in 1658, was published, and the other two in 1664 and 1678
respectively.
Butler
died of consumption on 25 September 1680, and was buried on 27 September in the
Church-yard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, London.
6.
Robert Herrick
Robert
Herrick, (baptized August 24, 1591—died October 1674), English cleric and poet,
who revived the spirit of the ancient classic lyric. He is best remembered for
the line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” and he is counted among the
Cavalier poets.
Herrick
was the seventh child and fourth son born to a London goldsmith, Nicholas,and
his wife, Julian Stone Herrick. When Herrick was fourteen months old, his
father died. At age 16, Herrick began a ten-year apprenticeship with his uncle.
The apprenticeship ended after only six years, and Herrick, at age twenty-two,
matriculated at Saint John's College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1617.
Over
the next decade, Herrick became a disciple of Ben Jonson, about whom he wrote five
poems. In 1623 Herrick took holy orders, and six years later, he became vicar
of Dean Prior in Devonshire. His post carried a term for a total of thirty-one
years, but during the Great Rebellion in 1647, he was removed from his position
because of his Royalist sympathies. Following the restoration of Charles II,
Herrick was reinstated at Dean Prior where he resided from 1662 until his death
in October 1674. He never married, and many of the women mentioned in his poems
are thought to have been fictional.
His
principal work is Hesperides; or, the Works Both Human and Divine of Robert
Herrick, Esq. (1648). A group of
religious poems printed in 1647 appear within the same book under a separate
title page bearing the name His Noble Numbers. The entire collection contains
more than 1200 short poems, ranging in form from epistles and eclogues to
epigrams and love poems. Herrick was influenced by classical Roman poetry and
wrote on pastoral themes, dealing mostly with English country life and village
customs.
7.
Andrew Marvell
Andrew
Marvell (31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English Metaphysical
poet, satirist and politician who sat
in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the
Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems
range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to evocations of an
aristocratic country house and garden in "Upon Appleton House" and "The
Garden", the political address "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's
Return from Ireland", and the later personal and political satires
"Flecknoe" and "The Character of
Holland".
Marvell
grew up in the Yorkshire town of Hull, England, where his father, Rev.
Andrew Marvell, was a lecturer at Holy
Trinity Church and master of the Charterhouse. At age twelve Marvell began his
studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. Four years later, two of Marvell's
poems, one in Latin and one in Greek, were published in an anthology of
Cambridge poets. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1639, Marvell stayed
on at Trinity, apparently to complete a master's degree. In 1641, however, his
father drowned in the Hull estuary and Marvell abandoned his studies.
During
the 1640's Marvell traveled extensively on the continent, adding Dutch,
French, Spanish, and Italian to his
Latin and Greek—missing the English civil wars
entirely. Marvell spent most of the
1650s working as a tutor, first for Mary Fairfax, daughter of a retired
Cromwellian general, then for one of Oliver Cromwell's wards. Scholars believe
that Marvell's greatest lyrics were written during this time. In 1657, due to John
Milton’s efforts on his behalf, Marvell was appointed Milton's Latin secretary,
a
post Marvell held until his election
to Parliament in 1660.
A
well-known politician, Marvell held office in Cromwell's government and represented
Hull to Parliament during the Restoration. His very public position—in a time
of tremendous political turmoil and upheaval—almost certainly led Marvell away from
publication. No faction escaped Marvell's satirical eye; he criticized and lampooned
both the court and Parliament. Indeed, had they been published during his lifetime,
many of Marvell's more famous poems—in particular, "Tom May's Death,"
an attack on the famous Cromwellian—would have made him rather unpopular with royalists
and republicans alike.
Marvell
used his political status to free Milton, who was jailed during the
Restoration, and quite possibly saved the elder poet's life. In the early years
of his tenure, Marvell made two extraordinary diplomatic journeys: to Holland
(1662-1663) and to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1663-1665). In 1678, after 18
years in Parliament, Marvell died rather suddenly of a fever. Gossip of the
time suggested that the Jesuits (a target of Marvell's satire) had poisoned
him. After his death he was remembered as a fierce and loyal patriot.
Now
considered one of the greatest poets of the seventeenth century, Marvell
published very little of his scathing
political satire and complex lyric verse in his
lifetime. Although he published a
handful of poems in anthologies, a collection of his
work did not appear until 1681, three
years after his death, when his nephew compiled
and found a publisher for
Miscellaneous Poems. The circumstances surrounding the
publication of the volume aroused some
suspicion: a person named "Mary Marvell,"
who claimed to be Marvell's wife,
wrote the preface to the book. "Mary Marvell" was,
in fact, Mary Palmer—Marvell's
housekeeper—who posed as Marvell's wife,
apparently, in order to keep Marvell's
small estate from the creditors of his business
partners. Her ruse, of course, merely
contributes to the mystery that surrounds the life
of this great poet. Marvell died on August
16, 1678.
8.
George Herbert
George
Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest
of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical
poets. He was born into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised
in England. He received a good
education that led to his admission to Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1609. He went there with
the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public
Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He
served in the Parliament of England in
1624 and briefly in 1625.
After
the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up
his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of
England, spending the rest of his life
as the rector of the little parish of St Andrew's Church, Lower Bemerton,
Salisbury. He was never a healthy man and died of
consumption at age 39.
Herbert
wrote poetry in English, Latin and Greek. Shortly before his death, he sent a literary
manuscript to Nicholas Ferrar, reportedly telling him to publish the poems if he
thought they might "turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul",
otherwise to
burn them. In 1633 all of his English
poems were published in ‘The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations’,
with a preface by Ferrar. The book went through eight editions by 1690.
9.
Henry Vaughan
Henry
Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695)
was a Welsh metaphysical poet,
author, translator and physician,
writing in English. He is chiefly known for religious poetry published in
‘Silex Scintillans’ in 1650, with a second part in 1655. In 1646 his
poems, with the ‘Tenth Satyre of
Juvenal Englished’, were published, followed by a second volume in 1647.
Meanwhile, he had been persuaded by reading the religious poet George Herbert
to give up "idle verse". The prose ‘Mount of Olives’ or ‘Solitary Devotions’
(1652) shows the depth of his religious convictions and authenticity of his genius.
The
British poet Henry Vaughan , one of the finest poets of the metaphysical
school, was born in Brecknockshire, Wales. He and his twin brother Thomas
received their early education in Wales and in 1638 matriculated at Jesus
College, Oxford. Henry left
Oxford without a degree to pursue a
law career in London. At the outbreak of the civil
war in 1642, Vaughan returned to
Wales, occupied himself in the law, and then entered military service in the
royalist cause. Later in life he practiced medicine, and he probably studied it
during these years.
Vaughan
apparently began writing poetry in the same decade. In 1646 he published his
‘Poems’, half of which consisted of a translation of Juvenal's tenth satire.
The next year he wrote the preface to a second volume, ‘Olor Iscanus’ (The Swan
of Usk), which did not appear until 1651.
The
major poetry of Vaughan, all religious in nature, was published in 1650 and
1655 in the two parts of ‘Silex scintillans’ (Sparkling Flint). Some of the
best poems in it
are "The Morning Watch,"
"The Retreat," "Childhood," "The Dawning," and
"Peace." He published more religious verse and prose in his later
years, and a number of translations, but nothing after the great volumes of the
1650s retains much interest. He
died in Wales on April 23, 1695.
10.
Richard Crashaw
Richard
Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649) was an English poet, teacher, High
Church Anglican cleric and Roman
Catholic convert, who was among the major figures associated with the
metaphysical poets in seventeenth-century English literature.
Richard
Crashaw was born in London. His father, a stern Puritan who was preacher at the
Temple Church. Crashaw was educated at the Charterhouse, where he received a rigorous
classical education. He had already indicated his poetic talent and religious sensibility
in poems in Latin and Greek before he entered Pembroke College,
Cambridge, in 1631.
In
1634 Crashaw received a bachelor of arts degree, and in 1635 he was elected a fellow
of Peterhouse. In fact, the religious atmosphere of this college was scarcely distinguishable
from Roman Catholicism. During the years that followed, Crashaw participated
often in the life of the religious establishment at Little Gidding, a village near
Cambridge. By 1639 he was an ordained preacher.
The
civil war, however, changed his life. Cromwell seized Cambridge in 1643 and
efficiently rooted out all traces of
"popery." Crashaw did not wait to be ejected from his fellowship by
the Puritans but left at the beginning of the occupation and spent the rest of
his life in exile at Little Gidding and Oxford and on the Continent. The civil war
deprived him of a successful career as preacher and probably of continued participation
in the Anglican Church. His years of exile were dogged by poverty, ill health,
and neglect by his patrons. Crashaw became a Roman Catholic in 1645. He died in
1649 in Loreto, Italy, where he was in the service of Cardinal Pallota.
Crashaw's
major poetry appeared in Steps to the Temple in 1646 (enlarged in 1648). Though
the title suggests the dominance of George Herbert, the major influences in fact
are the spirit and esthetic techniques of the Continental Counter Reformation,
which produced the arts known as
baroque. The major poetic influence was the Italian Giambattista Marino, some
of whose work Crashaw translated.
