George Gascoigne, a writer of plays, poems,…
1575 CE
George Gascoigne, a writer of plays, poems, and prose, had had a scandalous youth, during which he had been imprisoned for debt, and become a member of Parliament for Bedford from 1557 to 1559.
He had repaired his fortunes by marrying the wealthy widow of William Breton, thus becoming stepfather to the poet, Nicholas Breton.
An inquiry into the disposition of William Breton's property with a view to the protection of the children's rights had been instituted in 1568 before the Lord Mayor, but the matter had probably been settled in a friendly manner, for Gascoigne is to continue to hold the Walthamstow estate, which he had from his wife, until his death.
When he had presented himself in 1572 for election at Midhurst he had been refused on the charges of being "a defamed person and noted for manslaughter," "a common Rymer and a deviser of slaunderous Pasquelles," "a notorious rufilanne," an atheist and constantly in debt.
Educated at Trinity College and a member of Gray's Inn from 1555, his friends there had importuned him to write on Latin themes set by them, and there two of his plays were acted.
His poems, with the exception of some commendatory verses, were not published before 1572, but they were probably circulated in manuscript before this date.
Sailing in this year as a soldier of fortune to the Low Countries, he had been driven by weather to Brill, which luckily for him had just fallen into the hands of the Dutch.
Obtaining a captain's commission, he has taken an active part in the campaigns of the past two years, during which he has acquired a profound dislike of the Dutch, and a great admiration for William of Orange, who had personally intervened on his behalf in a quarrel with his colonel, and secured him against the suspicion caused by his clandestine visits to a lady at the Hague.
Taken prisoner after the evacuation of Valkenburg by the English troops, he had been sent to England in the autumn of 1574.
Gascoigne dedicates to Lord Grey of Wilton the story of his adventures, The Fruites of Warres (printed in the edition of 1575) and Gascoigne's Voyage into Hollande.
He has a share in devising the masques (to be published in the next year as The Princely Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelworth) celebrating the queen's visit to the Earl of Leicester in 1575.
At Woodstock in 1575, he delivers a prose speech before Elizabeth, and presents her with The Pleasant Tale of Hemetes the Hereinitei in four languages.
Gascoigne is responsible for the first English prose comedy, The Supposes, an adaptation of Italian epic poet Ludovico Ariosto's I Suppositi.
His Jocasta, written with Francis Kinwelmersh and based on Euripides' Phoenician Women, is one of the first English blank-verse tragedies.
A Hundred Sundry Flowers, containing his dramas and poems, had been expanded to The Posies of George Gascoigne, published in 1573, which includes the earliest treatise on English prosody, Certain Notes of Instruction.
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