Born at London, 1532: died at Sharpenhoe, Bedfordshire, 1584. An English lawyer, translator, and author. He wrote (with Sackville) the first English tragedy, “Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex.” He published a “Translation of Calvin’s Institutes” (1561), and translated many of the psalms in the Psalter of Sternhold and Hopkins (1561), etc.

  As to Norton’s assistance in this play, it is said on better authority than that of Anthony Wood, who supposes “Gordobuc” to have been in old English rhyme, that the three first acts were written by Thomas Norton, and the two last by Sackville. But the force of internal evidence often prevails over the authority of assertion, a testimony which is diminished by time, and may be rendered suspicious from a variety of other circumstances. Throughout the whole piece, there is an invariable uniformity of diction and versification. Sackville has two poems of considerable length in the “Mirrour of Magistrates,” which fortunately furnish us with the means of comparison: and every scene of “Gordobuc” is visibly marked with his characteristical manner, which consists in a perspicuity of style, and a command of numbers, superior to the tone of his times. Thomas Norton’s poetry is of a very different and a subordinate cast: and if we may judge from his share in our metrical psalmody, he seems to have been much more properly qualified to shine in the miserable mediocrity of Sternhold’s stanza, and to write spiritual rhymes for the solace of his illuminated brethren, than to reach the bold and impassioned elevations of tragedy.

  The style of this old play is stiff and cumbersome, like the dresses of its times. There may be flesh and blood underneath, but we cannot get at it. Sir Philip Sidney has praised it for its morality. One of its authors might easily furnish that. Norton was an associate to Hopkins, Sternhold, and Robert Wisdom, in the singing psalms. I am willing to believe that Lord Buckhurst supplied the more vital parts.

  On the title-page of the first edition, printed in 1565, which, however, was surreptitious, it is stated that the three first acts were written by Norton, and the two last by Sackville; and, although this announcement was afterwards withdrawn, it was never expressly contradicted, and it is not improbable that it may have a general foundation of truth. It must be confessed, however, that no change of style gives any indication which it is easy to detect of a succession of hands; and that, judging by this criterion, we should rather be led to infer that, in whatever way the two writers contrived to combine their labors, whether by the one retouching and improving what the other had rough-sketched, or by the one taking the quieter and humbler, the other the more impassioned, scenes or portions of the dialogue, they pursued the same method throughout the piece.

  Norton owes his place in literature to his joint authorship with Sackville of the earliest tragedy in English and in blank verse. Sackville’s admirers have on no intelligible ground contested Norton’s claim to be the author of the greater part of the piece. Of “The Tragedie of Gorboduc,” three acts (according to the published title-page) “were written by Thomas Nortone, and the two last by Thomas Sackuyle,” and it was first performed “by the Gentlemen of Thynner Temple” in their hall on Twelfth Night, 1560–1. The plot is drawn from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of Britain,” book ii, chap. xvi., and relates the efforts of Gorboduc, king of Britain, to divide his dominions between his sons Ferrex and Porrex: a fierce quarrel ensues between the princes, which ends in their deaths and in the death of their father, and leaves the land a prey to civil war. The moral of the piece “that a state knit in unity doth continue strong against all force, but being divided is easily destroyed,” commended it to political circles, where great anxiety prevailed at the date of its representation respecting the succession to the throne. Norton had himself called attention to the dangers of leaving the question unsettled in the House of Commons. The play follows the model of Seneca, and the tragic deeds in which the story abounds are mainly related in the speeches of messengers. Each act is preceded by a dumb show portraying the action that is to follow, and a chorus concludes the first four acts. Blank verse had first been introduced into English literature by Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, Nicholas Grimoald, who, like Norton, contributed to Turner’s “Prerogative,” and was doubtless personally known to him, had practiced it later. But Norton and Sackville were the first to employ it in the drama. They produced it with mechanical and monotonous regularity, and showed little sense of its adaptability to great artistic purposes.