Peter Woodhouse (

fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

1605) was the writer of a 1605 poem ''The Flea'', with the subsidiary title ''Democritus, his Dream, or the Contention between the Elephant and the Flea''. The poem was printed for John Smethwick, whose shop was in St Dunstan's Churchyard in

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...

.Edward Irving Carlyle and Elizabeth Goldring, 'Woodhouse, Peter (fl. 1605), poet', '' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. In the poem the flea boasts of his superiority to the elephant, since he can enjoy unparalleled erotic access to the body of even the 'coyest dames in Citie or in Court'.

References

Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown 16th-century births 17th-century deaths 17th-century English poets 17th-century English male writers {{England-poet-stub