William Webbe
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William Webbe (fl. 1568–1591)[1] was an English critic and translator. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge,[2] and was a tutor for distinguished families, including the two sons of Edward Sulyard of Flemyngs, Essex, and later the children of Henry Grey of Pirgo, also in Essex.[3]
Webbe wrote a Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), dedicated to Sulyard, in which he discusses prosody and reviews English poetry up to his own day. He argued that the dearth of good English poetry since Chaucer's day was not due to lack of poetic ability, or to the poverty of the language, but to the want of a proper system of prosody. He decried rhyming verse, showed enthusiasm for Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender, and urged the adoption of hexameters and sapphics for English verse[3]
He also translated Virgil's first two Eclogues. A letter by Webbe to Robert Wilmot (fl. 1568–1608) is prepended to the 1591 edition of Wilmot's play Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund.[4] The letter, praising Wilmot for having decided to publish the tragedy, acts as a prefacing endorsement of the play.
Notes
- ↑ "Webbe, William" A Dictionary of Writers and their Works. Ed. Michael Cox. Oxford University Press, 2001.
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- ↑ 3.0 3.1
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. - ↑ Wilmot, Robert. The Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund. London, 1591.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Wikisource
External links
- A Discourse of English poetrie at Internet Archive.
Quotations related to William Webbe at Wikiquote
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- Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
- Wikipedia articles incorporating text from A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature
- English translators
- 1568 births
- 16th-century English writers
- 16th-century male writers
- 16th-century English educators
- Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
- 1591 deaths
- Translators of Virgil
