Sir William DAvenant

Sir William D'Avenant , 1606-68, English poet, playwright, and theatrical producer. His life and work bridge the gap between the Elizabethan and Restoration ages. His best plays appeared between 1634 and 1639. They include The Wits, a realistic comedy; The Platonic Lovers, a romantic comedy of manners; and Love and Honour, a tragicomedy, anticipating the Restoration heroic drama. In 1638 he succeeded Ben Jonson as poet laureate. For his services in the royalist cause he was knighted by Charles I in 1643. Gondibert, an unfinished epic poem, and seemingly his most ambitious work, was published in 1651. During the Puritan regime Cromwell permitted him to produce a series of plays that are considered to be the first English operas, the best known being The Siege of Rhodes (1656; part 2, 1659). After the Restoration he and Thomas Killigrew were given exclusive patents to produce plays. In these few years D'Avenant divided his energy between managing the Duke of York's players and adapting old plays, most notably those of Shakespeare. His historical significance is greater than the intrinsic value of his work.

Bibliography: See biographies by A. Harbage (1935, repr. 1971) and A. H. Nethercot (1938, repr. 1967).

Davenant, Sir William (1606–68), English dramatist and theatre manager, born in Oxford. His father was a friend of Shakespeare, who often stayed at Davenant's tavern on his journeys to and from Stratford, and this later led some to believe that William was Shakespeare's son. He may have believed it himself; but it is now thought unlikely, though he was almost certainly his godson. Young Davenant went to London in 1622, and soon made his name as a playwright and as a writer of Court masques in the style of Ben Jonson, whom he later succeeded as Poet Laureate. His career was interrupted by the Civil War, during which he was knighted by Charles I. Towards the end of the Commonwealth he returned to the theatre, staging mainly ‘dramatic concerts’. In 1656 he produced privately his own ‘entertainment’ The Siege of Rhodes, considered by some the first English opera, following it with The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). When Charles II returned to London in 1660 Davenant obtained from him a patent—still in force at Covent Garden—for the opening of a playhouse in the former Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, with a company headed by Betterton and containing professional actresses for the first time in England. It opened in 1661, but soon proved too small, and Davenant was planning a more commodious building—Dorset Garden—when he died, leaving his widow to complete and open it in 1671. Davenant was one of the first London managers to encourage the use of machinery, dancing, and music in the production of plays, and greatly influenced the development of the English theatre.