George Gascoigne

George Gascoigne , c.1539-1577, English author, a pioneer in various fields of English literature. A reckless, dissipated youth, he left Cambridge without a degree to study law, but he spent most of his time in debtors' prison and was never admitted to the bar. In spite of this, he served in Parliament from 1557 to 1559, and from 1572 to 1574 he served in the army of William of Orange. His "Certain Notes of Instruction" was the first English essay on prosody. It appeared in The Posies of George Gascoigne (1575), a revision of his earlier collected poems, A Hundred Sundry Flowers (1573). Gascoigne's Supposes, a translation of Ariosto's I suppositi, was the first English prose comedy, while his Jocasta, translated from an Italian version of Euripides' Phoenician Women, was the first Greek tragedy in English to be staged and one of the earliest English tragedies in blank verse. Both plays were performed at Gray's Inn in 1566. He also wrote The Steel Glass (1576), a nondramatic work in blank verse, noted as the first English satire.

Bibliography: See his complete works ed. by J. Cunliffe (1907-10, repr. 1969); F. E. Schelling (1893, repr. 1967) and R. C. Johnson (1972).

Gascoigne, George (c.1534–77), soldier and poet. Many of his works were contained in The Posies of George Gascoigne (1575), a variety of secular and devotional verse, including ‘The delectable history of Dan Bartholmew of Bathe’; a verse account of his adventures as a soldier in the Netherlands, ‘The fruites of Warre’; two plays written for performance at Gray's Inn in 1566, Supposes, a prose comedy based on Ariosto's I Suppositi, and Jocasta, a blank verse tragedy; a strange Chaucerian novella of sexual intrigue, The Adventures of Master F.J.; and Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in English, a pithy but pioneering account of English versification. Gascoigne's other works include The Glasse of Governement: A Tragicall Comedie (1575). The Droomme of Doomes Day (1576), and The Steele Glas: A Satyre (1576). Gascoigne's achievement has been overshadowed by the later Elizabethan poets, but he was an innovator in a wide variety of literary forms.

Gascoigne, George (c.1542–77), scholar of Cambridge who helped to prepare the entertainments given before Elizabeth I at Kenilworth and Woodstock in 1575. He had earlier prepared translations of Lodovico Dolce's Giocasta (based on Euripides' Phoenician Women) as Jocasta, and of Ariosto's I suppositi (based on Plautus's Captivi) as The Supposes, both performed at Gray's Inn in 1566. The Supposes, which provided Shakespeare with the sub-plot of Bianca and her suitors in The Taming of the Shrew, was revived at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1582.