Stephen Gosson

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Gosson, Stephen

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | | © The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Gosson, Stephen (1554–1624). His plays are not now extant, but were ranked by Meres among ‘the best for pastorall’: however, he soon became a leader of the Puritan attacks on plays and players. His School of Abuse (1579), dedicated to Sidney, helped to stimulate Sidney to write his Defence of Poetry. T. Lodge replied more directly to Gosson in A Defence of Stage Plays, provoking a reply from Gosson in Playes Confuted in Five Actions (1582).

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Gosson, Stephen." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 22 Dec. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Gosson, Stephen." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (December 22, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-GossonStephen.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Gosson, Stephen." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved December 22, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-GossonStephen.html

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Stephen Gosson

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Stephen Gosson , 1554-1624, English writer, b. Canterbury, grad. Oxford, 1576. He wrote three plays, all of which are lost and none of which seems to have been successful. He is best known for his attack on plays, poetry, and other arts in The School of Abuse (1579), which evoked in reply a defense from Thomas Lodge and Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry.

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Profeminism in Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie.(Critical essay)
Magazine article from: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900; 1/1/2008; ; 700+ words ; In 1579 Stephen Gosson published a pamphlet titled The Schoole...playhouses and English poetry. Although Gosson dedicated his tract to "the right noble...Poetrie. (1) In composing his answer to Gosson, Sidney adopted the formal structure...
The ''popular philosopher'': Plato, Poetry, and Food in Tudor Aesthetics.(Book Review)
Magazine article from: Early Modern Literary Studies; 9/1/2003; 700+ words ; ...on the role of poetry, such as Gosson's Schoole of Abuse and Sidney...metaphors, omnipresent in both Gosson and Sidney, the allusions to Plato...uses and abuses of literature. Stephen Gosson's tract The Schoole of Abuse...
Idolatry and commodity fetishism in the antitheatrical controversy.
Magazine article from: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900; 3/22/1999; ; 700+ words ; ...1) In his Apology (1579), Stephen Gosson cautions his readers that "I touche...and Thomas Lodge's Reply to Gosson (15807) is typical: "I wish...greate abuse of our playes?"(8) Gosson (1579) also distinguishes ancient...
Staging Government: Shakespeare's Life of King Henry the Eighth and the Government of Generations.(William Shakespeare)(Critical Essay)
Magazine article from: Criticism; 1/1/1999; ; 700+ words ; ...multitudes pestering England.(6) Stephen Gosson advances just such a claim by suggesting...7) Philip Stubbes confirms Gosson's point. Whether or not the plays...consistent with the vitriol of Gosson, Stubbes, and Crosse, implies...
Milton and the muse-haters: 'Ad patrem,' 'L'Allegro/Il Penseroso,' and the ambivalences of poetry. (poet John Milton)
Magazine article from: Criticism; 1/1/1995; ; 700+ words ; ...publication of both Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender and Stephen Gosson's first attack on fiction, The Schoole of Abuse...whereas London's authorities not only commissioned Gosson's work, but forbade the licencing of any rebuttals...
Eating Air, Feeling Smells: Hamlet's Theory of Performance
Magazine article from: Renaissance Drama; 1/1/2006; ; 700+ words ; ...antitheatrical pamphleteers raised in their texts. From Stephen Gosson's 1579 The Schoole of Abuse onward, Elizabethan antitheatrical...before they received any kind of "hurt" therein, Gosson conceived of their particular vulnerability in terms...
Looking behind the masque; The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque. Edited by David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (Cambridge University Press, pounds 40). Reviewed by Richard Edmonds.(News)
Newspaper article from: The Birmingham Post (England); 8/14/1999; 700+ words ; ...between culture and power", which links perfectly with Stephen Orgel's focus on James, showing the masques presented...irresistible attractiveness" of the 17th century stage - Stephen Gosson's "cup of Circe", where the fictions of the playwrights...
The Bell Savage inn and playhouse in London.(Renaissance theaters)
Magazine article from: Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England; 1/1/2006; ; 700+ words ; ...presumably, that an entry about Richard Tarlton in the Stationers' Register spelled it so (2 August 1589) and Stephen Gosson and William Prynne spelled it nearly so, "Belsauage" and "Belsavage" (1579, 1633). In documents mentioned...
The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England .(Book Review)
Magazine article from: History Today; 12/1/2002; ; 700+ words ; ...tracts and the reposts which they elicited in like kind, and in the attacks on the stage written by Philip Stubbes, Stephen Gosson and their ilk, which found appropriate response in those classic caricatures of `the godly' on stage, Zeal-of...
Review of Dennis Kezar, Guilty Creatures.(Book Review)
Magazine article from: Early Modern Literary Studies; 1/1/2002; ; 700+ words ; ...dogmatic theoretical apparatus. Even the fairly well-worn critical move of examining an antitheatricalist such as Stephen Gosson in the context of Shakespeare's plays yields new insight into the tensions over the "harms . . . of representation...

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