George Gascoigne

Poet and playwright, born in Cardington, Bedfordshire, SC England, UK. He studied at Cambridge, entered Gray's Inn, wrote poems, and sat in parliament (1557–9), but was disinherited for his extravagance. He served in Holland (1573–5) under the Prince of Orange, but was taken prisoner and detained for four months. He then settled in Walthamstow, where he collected and published his poems, and translated from Greek, Latin, and Italian. He wrote Certayne Notes of Instruction on Making of Verse (1575), which is the first English essay on the subject. His play Jocasta was one of the first tragedies written in blank verse in English.

He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and on leaving the university is supposed to have joined the Middle Temple. There is no doubt that his escapades were notorious, and that he was imprisoned for debt.George Whetstone says that Sir John Gascoigne disinherited his son on account of his follies, but by his own account he was obliged to sell his patrimony to pay the debts contracted at court.

His poems, with the exception of some commendatory verses, were not published before 1572, but they were probably circulated in manuscript before that date. He repaired his fortunes by marrying the wealthy widow of William Breton, thus becoming step-father to the poet, Nicholas Breton. In 1568 an inquiry into the disposition of William Breton's property with a view to the protection of the children's rights was instituted before the Lord Mayor, but the matter was probably settled in a friendly manner, for Gascoigne continued to hold the Walthamstow estate, which he had from his wife, until his death.

He sailed through as a soldier of fortune to the Low Countries in 1572, and was driven by stress of weather to Brill, which luckily for him had just fallen into the hands of the Dutch.

Taken prisoner after the evacuation of Valkenburg by the English troops, he was sent to England in the autumn of 1574. He dedicated 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. In 1575 he had a share in devising the masques, published in the next year as The Princely Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelworth, which celebrated the queen's visit to the Earl of Leicester.

Most of his works were actually published during the last years of his life, after his return from the wars. George Whetstone wrote a long dull poem in honour of his friend, entitled "A Remembrance of the wel-imployed life and godly end of George Gaskoigne, Esquire."

His theory of metrical composition is explained in a short critical treatise, "Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati," prefixed to his Posies (1575). He acknowledged Chaucer as his master, and differed from the earlier poets of the school of Surrey and Wyatt chiefly in the added smoothness and sweetness of his verse. His poems were published in 1572 during his absence in Holland, surreptitiously, according to his own account, but it seems probable that the "editor" who supplied the running comment was none other than Gascoigne himself. and partely by Invention out of our owne fruitfull Orchardes in Englande, Yelding Sundrie Savours of tragical, comical and moral discourse, bothe pleasaunt and profitable, to the well-smelling name."