Curated category
English male dramatists and playwrights
- Charles DickensOn the 12th of May 1824, twelve-year-old Charles Dickens boarded a small boat to visit his father inside the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark.
- William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and baptised on the 26th of April 1564. His father John worked as an alderman and a…
- Percy Bysshe ShelleyOn a summer day in 1804, Percy Bysshe Shelley stood before the wooden paling fence at Eton College. He held a bag of gunpowder he had stolen from the school…
- Lord ByronGeorge Gordon Byron entered the world on the 22nd of January 1788 on Holles Street in London. His birthplace now sits beneath a branch of the department…
- Ben JonsonBenjamin Jonson was born in June 1572, possibly on the 11th day of that month. His father died a single month before his birth after losing property and…
- John MiltonJohn Milton was born on the 9th of December 1608 in Bread Street, London. His father, also named John Milton, had moved to London around 1583 after being…
- Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin D'Israeli was born on the 21st of December 1804 at 6 King's Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury. His family carried a Sephardic Jewish mercantile…
- W. H. AudenWystan Hugh Auden was born at 54 Bootham in York, England, on the 21st of February 1907. His father George Augustus Auden worked as a physician while his…
- Leonard Digges (writer)Leonard Digges entered University College, Oxford in 1603. This was the same year his mother remarried Thomas Russell of Alderminster.
- Christopher MarloweChristopher Marlowe was baptised at St George's Church in Canterbury on the 26th of February 1564. He was the second child born to John Marlowe, a local…
- Willy RussellWilliam Russell was born on the 23rd of August 1947 in Whiston, Lancashire. He left school at age fifteen to work as a women's hairdresser.
- John Fletcher (playwright)John Fletcher was born in December 1579 and baptized on the 20th of that month. He entered the world in Rye, Sussex, as the son of Richard Fletcher.
- Robert Greene (dramatist)A baptism record from the 11th of July 1558 at St George's church in Norwich offers the only concrete anchor for a man whose life remains slippery.
- Thomas KydThomas Kyd entered the world through a church record on the 6th of November 1558. The entry at St Mary Woolnoth in London listed him as the son of Francis…
- Tom StoppardOn the 15th of March 1939, the day Nazi forces invaded Czechoslovakia, a five-year-old boy named Tomáš Sträussler fled his hometown of Zlín with his mother…
- John DrydenJohn Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire. His father Erasmus Dryden belonged to a landowning gentry family…
- Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of OxfordOn the 12th of April 1550, Edward de Vere entered the world at Hedingham Castle in Essex. He was the only son of John de Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford, and…
- Henry WottonHenry Wotton was born on the 30th of March 1568 at Bocton Hall in Kent. His father Thomas Wotton died in 1587 leaving Henry only a hundred marks a year.
- David GarrickDavid Garrick was born at the Angel Inn on Widemarsh Street in Hereford on the 19th of February 1716. His family traced their roots to French Huguenots who…
- Nicholas Rowe (writer)Nicholas Rowe was born on the 20th of June 1674 in Little Barford, Bedfordshire. His father John worked as a barrister and sergeant-at-law before dying in…
- Thomas NasheThomas Nashe entered the world on the 30th of November 1567 in Lowestoft, a coastal town in Suffolk. His father William served as curate there before the…