Richard Flecknoe (c. 1600 – 1678) was an
English
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English may also refer to:
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dramatist, poet and musician. He is remembered for being made the butt of satires by
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell (; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend ...
in 1681 and by
John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
in ''
Mac Flecknoe
''Mac Flecknoe'' (full title: ''Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S.''Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, ) is a verse mock-heroic satire writte ...
'' in 1682.
Life
Little is known of Flecknoe's life. He was probably of English birth, from
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by
two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...
, though he may have been of
Irish
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* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
heritage. He was a
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
and may have been ordained a lay-priest by the
Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
s while abroad. There was once a suggestion that he may have been the nephew of the Jesuit William Flecknoe or Flexney of Oxford, though there is no evidence of this. Much of his early life seems to have been spent outside England. He attended
St Omer English Jesuit School from 1619 to 1624, where he may have taken part in the annual drama productions: in 1623 the play was ''
Guy of Warwick
Guy of Warwick, or Gui de Warewic, is a legendary English hero of Romance popular in England and France from the 13th to 17th centuries. The story of Sir Guy is considered by scholars to be part of the Matter of England.''Boundaries in medieval r ...
''. After ordination as a
secular priest
In Christianity, the term secular clergy refers to deacons and priests who are not monastics or otherwise members of religious life. A secular priest (sometimes known as a diocesan priest) is a priest who commits themselves to a certain geogr ...
, he continued his studies at
Watten
Watten may refer to:
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* Watten, Nord, a commune in the Nord ''département'' of France
** ''Blockhaus d'Éperlecques'' or Watten bunker, intended to be a launching facility for the V-2 ballistic missile
* Watten, Highland, a village in Cai ...
in the Netherlands until 1636,
when he returned to England, but he was disappointed to find little acceptance among English Catholics, who were not favourably disposed towards Jesuits: "he is none of ours" said the outspoken Catholic priest
Anthony Champney Anthony Champney (c. 1569 in England – c. 1643 in England) was an English Roman Catholic priest and controversialist.
Life
He studied at Reims (1590) and Rome (1593). As priest he was imprisoned at Wisbech Castle, and was active against the J ...
.
Andrew Marvell encountered him in Rome in 1645, from which period dates Marvell's satire "Flecknoe, an English Priest at Rome", although it was not published until 1681. His verse is charactised there as "hideous" and it is also mentioned that he performed on the
lute
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
More specifically, the term "lute" can ref ...
.
Works
Shortly after Flecknoe's return to England in 1636 his first play, now lost, was performed in London, possibly by
Queen Henrietta's Men Queen Henrietta's Men was an important playing company or troupe of actors in Caroline era in London. At their peak of popularity, Queen Henrietta's Men were the second leading troupe of the day, after only the King's Men.
Beginnings
The company ...
. Audiences derided it as "lascivious" and "scandalous", an assessment compounded by the knowledge that the author was an ordained priest.
[
He provides information about his travels in his collection of letters, ''Relation of Ten Years' Travels in Europe, Asia, Affrique, and America'', completed around 1655. It contains correspondence with friends and patrons, beginning in 1640, and comprises accounts of the Ottoman dominions in Western Asia and of a voyage to and stay in ]Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. By 1653 he was in London, when he began publishing, and so far compromised his Catholic identity as to praise Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...
in his ''The idea of His Highness Oliver, late Lord Protector, with certain brief reflexions on his life'' (1659).
In the field of drama his ''Ariadne...a dramatick piece for recitative music'' has a claim to be the first English opera, though the musical score (also composed by himself) is now lost. He also wrote a masque, ''The Marriage of Oceanus and Brittania''; an unacted tragi-comedy, ''Erminia or The Fair and Vertuous Lady''; and an unacted comedy, ''The Demoiselles à La Mode'', the plot and subplot of which were taken from Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
’s ''Les Précieuses Ridicules'' and ''L'École des Femmes''. One other production, ''Love’s Dominion'', a pastoral with songs, was performed privately on the continent and later acted in Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
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...
England as ''Love's Kingdom''.
Much of Flecknoe's later poetry was epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...
matic, in the line of Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
, with aristocratic addressees, which led one critic to remark that he was "better acquainted with the Nobility than with the Muses". Flecknoe explains his taste for the epigram in a dedicatory epistle which is itself epigrammatic and paradoxical: “I write chiefly to avoid idleness, and print to avoid the imputation; and as others do it to live after they are dead, I do it only not to be thought dead whilst I can live.” Its lightness is the reason he chooses this form, “who love not to take pains in anything, and rather affect a little negligence than too great curiosity”. The separate section of “Epigrams Divine and Moral” in the 1670 edition is, however, indicative of a religious seriousness persisting from his first publication some 44 years before in the devotional ''Hierothelamium''.
He also took a moral stance in his prose works on English drama, and it may have been one of those that prompted Dryden to make him an object of satire in his ''Mac Flecknoe
''Mac Flecknoe'' (full title: ''Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S.''Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, ) is a verse mock-heroic satire writte ...
'' (1682), where he is depicted as the dying Monarch of Nonsense, bequeathing his title to the playwright Thomas Shadwell
Thomas Shadwell ( – 19 November 1692) was an English poet and playwright who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1689.
Life
Shadwell was born at either Bromehill Farm, Weeting-with-Broomhill or Santon House, Lynford, Norfolk, and educated at Bury ...
. The attack is unexpected, since Flecknoe had written an epigram in Dryden's praise and both were Catholics. Robert Southey
Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...
, giving it as his opinion that "Flecknoe is by no means the despicable writer that we might suppose" from Dryden's vicious attack, accounted for it by supposing that Dryden was "offended at his invectives against the obscenity of the stage, feeling himself more notorious, if not more culpable than any of his rivals".
One of Dryden's later editors conjectured that "the plan of the poem required a dead author and Flecknoe suited the purpose". It might also have been that Dryden believed him to be author of a pamphlet signed "R. F." and published in 1668, in defence of Sir Robert Howard Robert Howard may refer to:
Entertainment
* Robert Howard (playwright) (1626–1698), English playwright and politician
* Robert Boardman Howard (1896–1983), American muralist and sculptor
* Robert E. Howard (1906–1936), fantasy writer, crea ...
against Dryden in a controversy about rhyme and blank-verse, and was taking his revenge 14 years later. More recently, Paul Hammond accounts for it by the literary politics of the time and points out that many details in his depiction are drawn from the imagery of Flecknoe’s own poems.
Bibliography
*''Hierothelamium or the Heavenly Nuptialls of Our Blessed Saviour With a Pious Soule'', 1626
*''Miscellania or poems of all sorts with divers other pieces'', 1653
*''Ariadne deserted by Theseus and found and courted by Bacchus'', 1654
*''Love’s Dominion'', 1654; reissued in 1664 as ''Love's Kingdom'', prefaced with the essay ''A Short Discourse of the English Stage''
*''The Diarium... in burlesque rhyme or drolling verse'', 1656
*''Relation of Ten Years' Travels in Europe, Asia, Affrique, and America'', privately printed 1656, reissued 1665
*''Enigmatical Characters'', 1658, revised 1665
*''The Idea of his Highness Oliver, Late Lord Protector'', 1659
*''The Marriage of Oceanus and Brittania'', masque, 1659
*''Heroick Portraits…dedicate to his Majesty'' (prose and verse), 1660
*''Erminia or The Fair and Vertuous Lady'', tragi-comedy, 1661, 1665
*''A Farrago of several pieces'', 1666
*''The Life of Tommaso the Wanderer'', 1667
*''The Demoiselles à La Mode'', comedy, 1667
*''Sir William Davenant’s voyage to the other world, with his adventures in the poets Elizium'', a poetical fiction, 1668
*''Epigrams of all sorts 1'', 1669
*''Epigrams of all sorts'', rearranged with new additions, 1670
*''Epigrams'', 1671
*''A collection of the choicest epigrams and characters'', with omissions and additions, 1673; described as “being rather a new work than a new impression of the old”
*''Euterpe Revived, epigrams made in the years 1672,3,4, in three books'', 1675[Sources for the bibliographical material are Acton F. Griffith, ''Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica: a descriptive cataloque'', London 1815]
pp.109-10
and ''The Literary History of England'', London 2003
Vol 3, p.814
/ref>
References
External links
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Flecknoe, Richard
1600s births
1670s deaths
17th-century English dramatists and playwrights
17th-century English poets
17th-century English male writers
English male dramatists and playwrights
English male poets