Curated category
16th-century English male writers
- William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on the 25th of March 1616, describing himself in it as being in "perfect health." Within a month he…
- Henry VIIIHenry VIII once dressed all in yellow, with a white feather in his bonnet, the day after he learned that Catherine of Aragon had died.
- George Wyatt (writer)George Wyatt was born at Allington Castle around January 1554, entering the world at almost the exact moment his father was being led to the scaffold.
- Ben JonsonBen Jonson killed a man in a field on the 22nd of September 1598 and walked away from the gallows by reciting a Bible verse.
- Simon FishSimon Fish died in 1531, having never stood trial. He had been arrested in London on charges of heresy, but the plague reached him first.
- William Forrest (poet)William Forrest was an English Catholic priest who stood close enough to the demolition of St Frideswide's Priory to watch Cardinal Wolsey's new college rise…
- Christopher MarloweChristopher Marlowe was baptised on the 26th of February 1564 at St George's Church in Canterbury, just two months before William Shakespeare was baptised in…
- Michael DraytonMichael Drayton was born in Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in early 1563, and he would spend the next seven decades producing a body of work that…
- Thomas MoreThomas More climbed the scaffold at Tower Hill on the 6th of July 1535 and, finding the structure so rickety it might collapse, told the waiting official: "I…
- John FoxeJohn Foxe published a book on the 20th of March 1563 that would make him, in the words of one contemporary observer, England's first literary celebrity.
- Francis BaconFrancis Bacon dictated his last letter from a borrowed bed in Highgate, his fingers, he wrote, so disjointed with sickness that he could not steadily hold a…
- Edmund SpenserEdmund Spenser died in London on the 13th of January 1599, and according to Ben Jonson, he died "for want of bread". That claim was almost certainly false.
- Raphael HolinshedRaphael Holinshed is the man Shakespeare read. That single fact has kept Holinshed's name alive for centuries, long after scholars dismissed his great work…
- Robert Greene (dramatist)Robert Greene died on the 3rd of September 1592, reportedly after a surfeit of pickle herring and Rhenish wine. He was 34 years old, buried in the New…
- Thomas KydThomas Kyd died in 1594, at the age of 35. He was buried on the 15th of August, in the church of St Mary Colechurch in London.
- William CamdenWilliam Camden was born in London on the 2nd of May 1551, into a city that had barely begun to reckon with its own past.
- George Cavendish (writer)George Cavendish, born in 1497, spent nearly a decade standing at the shoulder of one of England's most powerful men, and then spent the rest of his long…
- Philip SidneyPhilip Sidney died on the 17th of October 1586, at the age of 31, from a wound to the thigh he had received at the Battle of Zutphen.
- John FisherJohn Fisher entered the world around the 19th of October 1469 in Beverley, Yorkshire. His father Robert worked as a prosperous mercer who died in 1477 when…
- Thomas Wyatt (poet)Sir Thomas Wyatt died on the 11th of October 1542, at around age thirty-nine, and was buried at Sherborne Abbey. He had lived fast and dangerously close to…
- Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of OxfordEdward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was born on the 12th of April 1550 at Hedingham Castle in Essex, heir to the second-oldest earldom in England.
- Henry WottonSir Henry Wotton, born on the 30th of March 1568, is remembered today less for the decades he spent negotiating on behalf of the English crown than for a…
- Thomas NasheThomas Nashe was baptised in Lowestoft on the 30th of November 1567, the son of a curate who would eventually be awarded the living at the church of All…
- John HemingesJohn Heminges appears in Shakespeare's will alongside two other men. Richard Burbage and Henry Condell each received the same bequest: 26 shillings and…