Richard Edwards, 1523–1566? an early dramatic writer, educated at Corpus Christi College, and Christ Church, Oxford, is best known as the designer and principal contributor to “The Paradyse of Daynty Deuises,” and as the author of “Damon and Pythias,” certainly one of the first English dramas upon a classical subject. This tragedy—published London, 1570, ’71, ’82, 4to—was acted before Queen Elizabeth in 1566. Her majesty also witnessed the performance of Edwards’s “Comedy of Palæmon and Arcyte” in Christ Church Hall, 1566.
| Devyne Camenes, that with your sacred food | |
| Have fed and fosterde up from tender yeares | |
| A happye man, that in your favour stoode, | |
| Edwardes, in Courte that can not fynde his feares, | |
| Your names be blest, that in the present age | |
| So fyne a head by Arte have framed out, | |
| Whom some hereafter, healpt by Poets rage, | |
| Perchaunce may matche, but none shall passe (I doubt). | |
| O Plautus! yf thou wert alyve agayne, | |
| That Comedies so fynely dydste endyte; | |
| Or Terence thou, that with thy pleasaunt brayne | |
| The hearers mynde on stage dydst much delyght, | |
| What would you say, syrs, if you should beholde, | |
| As I have done, the doyngs of this man? | |
| No worde at all, to sweare I durst be bolde, | |
| But burne with teares that which with myrth began; | |
| I meane your bookes, by which you gate your name | |
| To be forgot, you wolde commit to flame. | |
| Alas! I wolde, Edwards, more tell thy prayse, | |
| But at thy name my muse amased stayes. |
In the beginning of Queen Elizabeth, he was made one of the Gentlemen of her Chapel, and Master of the Children there, being then esteemed not only an excellent Musician, but an exact Poet, as many of his compositions in Music (for he was not only skill’d in the practical but theoretical part) and Poetry do shew, for which he was highly valued by those that knew him, especially his associates in Lincolns Inn (of which he was a member, and in some respects an Ornament) and much lamented by them, and all ingenious Men of his time, when he died.
Edwards, besides that he was a writer of regular dramas, appears to have been a contriver of masques, and a composer of poetry for pageants. In a word, he united all those arts and accomplishments which minister to popular pleasantry: he was the first fiddle, the most fashionable sonnetteer, the readiest rhymer, and the most facetious mimic, of the court…. If I should be thought to have been disproportionately prolix in speaking of Edwards, I would be understood to have partly intended a tribute of respect to the memory of a poet, who is one of the earliest of our dramatic writers after the reformation of the British stage.
His popularity seems to have altogether arisen from those pleasing talents, of which no specimens could be transmitted to posterity; and which prejudiced his partial cotemporaries in favour of his poetry.
It was nearly new, at the date when this piece was written, to bring stories from profane history upon the stage: “Damon and Pythias” was one of the earliest attempts of the kind; and at any other period, and without the Queen’s extraordinary commendations, it may at least be doubted whether Edwards would have acquired an equal degree of notoriety.
In the general estimation of his contemporaries, seems to have been accounted the greatest dramatic genius of his day, at least in the comic style. His “Damon and Pytheas” does not justify their laudation to a modern taste; it is a mixture of comedy and tragedy, between which it would be hard to decide whether the grave writing or the gay is the rudest and dullest. The play is in rhyme, but some variety is produced by the measure or length of the line being occasionally changed…. Edwards, however, besides his plays, wrote many other things in verse, some of which have an ease, and even an elegance that neither Surrey himself nor any other writer of that age has excelled.
