John Lyly (; also spelled ''Lilly'', ''Lylie'', ''Lylly''; born c. 1553/54 – buried 30 November 1606)Hunter, G. K. (2004)
"Lyly, John (1554–1606)"
. ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 January 2012. was an English writer, playwright, courtier, and parliamentarian. He first achieved success with his two books ''Euphues, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit'' (1578) and its sequel ''Euphues and His England'' (1580), and then became a dramatist, writing eight plays which survive, at least six of which were performed before Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabeth I. Lyly's distinctive and much imitated literary style, named after the title character of his two books, is known as ''euphuism''. He is sometimes grouped with other professional dramatists of the 1580s and 1590s like Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene (dramatist), Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and Thomas Lodge, as one of the so-called University Wits. He has been credited by some scholars with writing the List of claimed first novels in English, first English novel, and as being 'the father of English comedy'.

Biography

Childhood and education

John Lyly was born in Kent, England, c. 1553/54, the eldest son of Peter Lyly and his wife, Jane Burgh (or Brough), of Burgh Hall in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He was probably born either in Rochester, Kent, Rochester, where his father is recorded as a notary public in 1550, or in Canterbury, where his father was the wikt:registrar, Registrar for the Archbishop, Matthew Parker, and where the births of his siblings are recorded between 1562 and 1568. His grandfather was William Lily (grammarian), William Lily, the grammarian and the first High (or Head) Master of St Paul's School, London. His uncle, George Lily, was a scholar and cartographer, and served as domestic chaplain to Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury. Lyly was probably educated at King's School, Canterbury, where his younger brothers are recorded as contemporaries of Christopher Marlowe. He was about 15 years old when, in October 1569, his father died. Peter's will made his wife Jane and his son John his joint executors and named "my dwelling house... called the Splayed Eagle", close by Canterbury Cathedral on either Sun Street or Palace Street. They sold the house fourteen months later, in Jan 1571. In 1571, at the age of 16, Lyly became a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he is recorded as having received his bachelor's degree on 27 April 1573, and his master's two years later on 19 May 1575. In his address "To my very good friends the gentlemen scholars of Oxford" at the end of the second edition of his ''Euphues, Anatomy of Wit'', he complains about a sentence of Rustication (academia), rustication apparently passed on him at some time during his university career, but nothing more is known about either its date or its cause. According to Anthony Wood (antiquary), Anthony Wood, while Lyly had the reputation of "a noted wit", he never took kindly to the proper studies of the university: While at Oxford, Lyly wrote to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, on 16 May 1574, to seek his assistance in applying for the Queen's letters to admit him as Fellow#Academia, fellow at Magdalen College. Although the fellowship was not granted, later letters to Burghley show that their connection continued after he left university. In the ''Glasse for Europe'', in the second part of ''Euphues'' (1580), Lyly described how grateful he felt towards him:

Writer and dramatist

At some point after university Lyly moved to London, finding lodgings at the fashionable residence of the Savoy Palace#Savoy Hospital, Savoy Hospital on the Strand, London, Strand, where Gabriel Harvey described him as "a dapper & a deft companion" and "a pert-conceited youth." Here he began his literary career, writing his first book ''Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit''. It was licensed to Gabriel Cawood on 2 December 1578 and printed that year with a dedication to William West, 1st Baron De La Warr, and a second expanded edition immediately followed in 1579. In the same year Lyly was Ad eundem degree, incorporated Master of Arts (Oxbridge), M.A. at the University of Cambridge. ''The Anatomy of Wit'' was an instant success, and Lyly quickly followed it with a sequel, ''Euphues and his England'', licensed to Cawood on 24 July, and published in 1580. Like the first, it won immediate popularity. Between them, the two works went through over thirty editions by 1630. As Leah Scragg, their most recent editor, describes them, they would "prove the literary sensation of the age". For a time Lyly was the most successful and fashionable of English writers, hailed as the author of "a new English", as a "''raffineur de l'Anglois''"; and, as Edward Blount, one of the publishers of his plays, wrote in 1632, "that beautie in court which could not parley Euphuism was as little regarded as she which nowe there speakes not French". Lyly's prose style was much imitated, for example by Barnabe Rich in his ''Second Tome of the Travels and Adventures of Don Simonides'', 1584; by Robert Greene (dramatist), Robert Greene in his ''Menaphon, Camilla's Alarum to Slumbering Euphues'', 1589; and by Thomas Lodge in his ''Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie'', 1590, the source text for ''As You Like It''. Lyly dedicated his second ''Euphues'' novel to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who seems to have acted as patron to most of Lyly's literary associates when they left Oxford for London, and it is about this time that Lyly became his private secretary. De Vere was Burghley's son-in-law, and two years later a letter from Lyly to Burghley, dated July 1582, protests against an accusation of dishonesty which had brought him into trouble with the Earl, and requests a personal interview in order to clear his name. In the same year, he contributed an introductory epistle, ''John Lyly to the Author his friend'', to Thomas Watson (poet), Thomas Watson's collection of poems ''Hekatompathia, or passionate Centurie of Love'', also published by Cawood, and which Watson also dedicated to de Vere. In 1583, de Vere secured him the lease of the first Blackfriars Theatre, Blackfriars Playhouse, where Lyly's first two plays, ''Campaspe (play), Campaspe'' and ''Sapho and Phao'' were performed by the joint company of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's known as Oxford's Boys, before their performances at Court in the presence of the Queen at Palace of Whitehall, Whitehall Palace. ''Campaspe'' was performed there during the Christmas festivities 1583–84, on "New Year's Day at Night", and ''Sapho'' during the pre-Lent festivities on the evening of Shrove Tuesday, 3 March 1584. A warrant issued on 12 March ordered that Lyly be paid a total of £20 for the two performances, although it took until 25 November until he finally received the money. In the meantime, Lyly lost control of the theatre around Easter when William More (died 1600), Sir William More reclaimed the lease, closing it down, and in June, Lyly was briefly jailed in the Fleet Prison for a debt of £9 8s 8d owed to Nicholas Bremers. Patent Rolls show he was quickly released, "for pity's sake", on 10 June, by the intervention the Queen herself. A letter written on 30 Oct 1584 from Oxford to Burghley shows that Lyly was still in de Vere's service, and that Lyly was awkwardly positioned in his loyalty to both men, saying "you sent for Amis my man, and yf he wear absent, that Lylle should come unto yow... I mean not to be yowre ward nor yowre chyld ... and scorne to be offered that injurie, to think I am so weak of government as to be ruled by servants". On 24 November Oxford transferred the rental rights of the manor of Bentfield Bury and a nearby wood, both in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, to Lyly worth £30 13s 4d a year. Just over a year later, on 3 March 1586, the property's tenants then bought out the rental rights from him for the lump sum of £250. In 1587, Lyly revived his theatrical career, writing for the Children of Paul's at their playhouse adjacent to St Paul's Cathedral, where his plays would be publicly staged first before their subsequent performance at court. ''Gallathea'' was likely performed at Greenwich Palace on "New Year's Day at Night" as part of the 1587/88 Christmas revels there, with ''Endymion (play), Endymion'' following suit at Candlemas on 2 February 1588. Paul's Boys performed on three dates during the 1589/90 Christmas season at Richmond Palace, on Sunday after Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Twelfth Day, according to the Council Registers records of payment made for them. The last of these three, 6 Jan 1590, must have been the occasion for ''Midas (Lyly play), Midas'' since its title page states it was "played... upon Twelfth Day at Night", and this was the only time the company is recorded playing that date. Both ''Mother Bombie'' and ''Love's Metamorphosis'' must also date from this period 1588–91, each with title pages stating their performance by Paul's Boys, although neither mentions performance before the Queen. After the closure of Paul's Playhouse sometime 1590–91, the latter was subsequently revived for performance at the second Blackfriars Theatre in 1600–01, this time, as its title page states, by the Children of the Chapel. An eighth play by Lyly, ''The Woman in the Moon'', his only play in verse and first published in 1597, also declares its royal performance but is the only one that does not state the name of the company who performed it. In total, at least six of Lyly's eight known surviving plays were performed before the Queen. In 1589, Lyly published a tract in the Martin Marprelate controversy, called ''Pappe with an hatchet, alias a figge for my Godsonne; Or Crack me this nut; Or a Countrie Cuffe, etc.'' Though published anonymously, the evidence for his authorship of the tract may be found in Gabriel Harvey's ''Pierce's Supererogation'' (written November 1589, published 1593), in Thomas Nashe's ''Have with You to Saffron-Walden'' (1596), and in various allusions in Lyly's own plays.

Parliamentarian and courtier

Lyly sat as an Member of parliament, MP in Queen Elizabeth's last four Parliaments, for Hindon (UK Parliament constituency), Hindon in Wiltshire in 1589, for Aylesbury (UK Parliament constituency), Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire twice, in 1593 and 1601, and for Appleby (UK Parliament constituency), Appleby in Westmorland in 1597–98 when he also served on a parliamentary committee about wine casks. In 1594, Lyly was made an honorary member of Gray's Inn in order to attend the lawyers' Christmas Revels, during which, on 28 December, Shakespeare's company famously performed their The Comedy of Errors#Performance, ''Comedy of Errors''. In 1597, Lyly contributed commendatory verses in Latin to Henry Lok's verse translation of the book of ''Ecclesiastes'', which Lok dedicated to the Queen. In addition to plays, Lyly also composed at least one "entertainment" (a show that combined elements of masque and drama) performed for Queen Elizabeth during her various Progresses through the country; ''The Entertainment at Chiswick'' was staged on 28 and 29 July 1602 at the house of Sir William Russell. Lyly has been suggested as the author of several other royal entertainments of the 1590s, most notably ''The Entertainment at Mitcham'' performed on 13 September 1598 at the house of Julius Caesar (judge), Sir Julius Caesar. Two petitions by Lyly to Queen Elizabeth show that he entered her service at some time in the late 1580s, with hopes of becoming her Master of the Revels, hopes that eventually ended in disappointment. In the first petition he says that: In the second petition, dated 1601, Lyly complains: The originals of the two petitions do not survive, but, whatever their success with Elizabeth, after Lyly's death the pair enjoyed the most extensive circulation in manuscript of any Elizabethan-Jacobean dramatist. Forty-six copies of the two letters in post-1620 manuscript miscellanies, anthologies of state correspondence, and letter-manuals, can currently be recorded. A third, now lost, petition is mentioned in a letter to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth's Principal Secretary, dated 4 Feb 1602, where Lyly tells him that: What he did in fact receive, if anything, as a result of this third petition is unknown. At Elizabeth's death a year later in March 1603, Lyly was granted seven yards of black cloth for her funeral, and his servants four yards. Lyly died of unknown causes in 1606, in the early part of the reign of James I of England, James I, and was buried on 30 November in the church of St Bartholomew-the-Less in London. He was married to Beatrice Browne of Yorkshire, and they had at least four sons and five daughters. The proverb "All is fair in love and war" has been attributed to Lyly's ''Euphues''.

Plays

Although the two volumes of ''Euphues'' were Lyly's most popular and influential works in the Elizabethan period, it is his plays which are now admired most, for their flexible use of dramatic prose and the elegant patterning of their construction.''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', 6th ed. Edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press, 2000 p. 618 Eight of Lyly's plays survive in quarto, published during his lifetime in fourteen separate editions, all but the last written in prose: * ''Campaspe (play), Campaspe'' performed 1583/84 (printed 1584 three times, & 1591) * ''Sapho and Phao'' performed 1584 (printed 1584 twice, & 1591) * ''Gallathea'' performed 1587/88 (printed 1592) * ''Endymion (play), Endymion, the Man in the Moon'' performed 1588 (printed 1591) * ''Midas (Lyly play), Midas'' performed 1589/90 (printed 1592) * ''Mother Bombie'' performed c. 1590 (printed 1594, & 1598) * ''Love's Metamorphosis'' performed c. 1589/90, revived 1600/01 (printed 1601) * ''The Woman in the Moon'' probably performed 1590–95 (printed 1597) While ''A Warning for Fair Women'' (1599) and ''The Maid's Metamorphosis'' (1600) have been attributed to Lyly in the past, these attributions have not gained any serious acceptance. ''Six Court Comedies,'' the first printed collection of Lyly's plays, was published in duodecimo format by Edward Blount in 1632, the same year that he published the Second Folio of Shakespeare's plays. They appear in the volume in the following order: ''Endymion'', ''Campaspe'', ''Sapho and Phao'', ''Gallathea'', ''Midas'' and ''Mother Bombie'', all first printed 1584–94. The last two of his plays to be published, ''The Woman in the Moon'' and ''Love's Metamorphosis'', printed in 1597 & 1601 respectively, were omitted. The collection printed the songs in ''Campaspe'' and ''Gallathea'' for the first time. In his introduction to the plays, 'To the Reader', Blount explained his motivation for publication: He ended his address with: Blount dedicated the collection to Richard Lumley, 1st Viscount Lumley, Richard, 1st Viscount Lumley of Waterford, writing: Francis Meres placed "eloquent and witty John Lyly" alongside Shakespeare in his list of "the best for comedy amongst us" when describing the playwrights of his day in his ''Palladis Tamia, Palladis Tamia, or Wits Treasury'', printed in 1598. Ben Jonson, in his poem "To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr William Shakespeare" printed in the 1623 First Folio, praised Lyly by listing him as one of the best playwrights whom Shakespeare surpassed: "How far thou didst our Lyly outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line". Lyly's importance as a dramatist has been very differently estimated, but his dialogue was a great advance in anything that had gone before it, and his nimbleness and wit represents an important step in English dramatic art. Shakespeare's comedies ''Love's Labour's Lost'', ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', ''Much Ado About Nothing'', ''As You Like It'' and ''Twelfth Night'' are all seen to have drawn influence from Lyly's work.

References

Sources

* Beal, Peter
''Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700''
Retrieved 22 April 2021. * Bevington, David (2000). ''Galatea & Midas'' (282 pp.). The Revels Plays, Manchester University Press. * Bond, R. W. (1902; reprinted 1967). ''The Complete Works of John Lyly''. 3 Vols. Oxford University Press. * Drabble, Margaret (ed.) (2000).''The Oxford Companion to English Literature''. 6th edition, Oxford University Press. p. 618. * Feuillerat, Albert (1910). ''John Lyly: Contribution a l'Histoire de la Renaissance en Angleterre''. Cambridge University Press. * Hunter, G. K. (1962). ''John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier'' (376 pp.). Harvard University Press. * Hunter, G. K. (2004)
"Lyly, John (1554–1606)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 January 2012. * Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. (1973). ''The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama''. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press. * Lyly, John (1632). ''Six Court Comedies''. Edward Blount, London. * Scragg, Leah (2003). ''Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, and Euphues and His England'' (358 pp.). Revels Plays Companion Library, Manchester University Press. * Urry, William (1960). ''John Lyly and Canterbury'', 33rd Annual Report of the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral. * Wiggins, Martin (2012). ''British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue, Vol. II: 1567–1589''. Oxford University Press. * Wilson, John Dover (1905). ''John Lyly'' (140 pp.). Macmillan and Bowes.

External links

* * (A 1905 study by J. Dover Wilson) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lyly, John English Renaissance dramatists 1550s births 1606 deaths Year of birth uncertain People of the Elizabethan era People from Kent Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Alumni of the University of Cambridge University Wits 16th-century English writers 17th-century English male writers 16th-century English novelists 16th-century English male writers 16th-century English dramatists and playwrights 17th-century English dramatists and playwrights English MPs 1589 English MPs 1593 English MPs 1597–1598 English MPs 1601 English male dramatists and playwrights English male novelists English male poets