Wither, George (1588–1667), poet and pamphleteer. His satires
Abuses Stript and Whipt, published 1613, in spite of the innocuous character of their denunciations of Avarice, Gluttony, and so forth, earned him imprisonment in the Marshalsea. There he wrote five pastorals under the title of
The Shepheards Hunting, a continuation of
The Shepheard's Pipe, which he had written in conjunction with William
Browne, the ‘Willie’ of these verses. His
Fidelia appeared in 1617 and again, with the famous song ‘Shall I, wasting in despair’, in 1619; it was this song, printed by Percy in his
Reliques, that was to rescue Wither's reputation from a century of neglect.
In 1622 appeared
Faire-Virtue, the Mistresse of Phil'arete, a long sequence of poems in various verse forms in praise of his semi-allegorical mistress. From this time Wither's poetry became increasingly religious and satirical in tone, which led to accusations that he was a Puritan, and his portrayal as ‘Chronomastix’ in
Jonson's masque
Time Vindicated (1623). He published
The Hymnes and Songs of the Church in 1623, a poem on the plague in 1628, a book of
Emblems in 1634–5, and
Heleluiah in 1641.
