Born at Houghton, Daventry, Northamptonshire, 1605: died 1634. An English poet and dramatist. He was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, and was also incorporated at Oxford. Ben Jonson adopted him as one of his “sons.” He wrote “Aristippus,” “The Muses’ Looking-Glass, a Comedy,” “Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry,” “The Conceited Pedlar,” “The Jealous Lovers,” “Down with Knavery” (from the “Plutus” of Aristophanes), etc.; also a number of minor poems.

  His wit and learning endeared him to Ben Jonson, who owned him, like Cartwright, as his adopted son in the Muses. Unhappily he followed the taste of Ben not only at the pen, but at the bottle; and he closed his life in poverty, at the age of twenty-nine,—a date lamentably premature, when we consider the promises of his genius. His wit and humour are very conspicuous in the Puritan characters, whom he supposes the spectators of his scenes in the “Muse’s Looking-Glass.” Throughout the rest of that drama (though it is on the whole his best performance) he unfortunately prescribed to himself too hard and confined a system of dramatic effect.

  Randolph has a good deal of fancy, and his verse flows very melodiously; but his poetry has in general a bookish and borrowed air. Much of it is on subjects of love and gallantry; but the love is chiefly of the head, or, at most, of the senses,—the gallantry, it is easy to see, that merely of a fellow of a college and a reader of Ovid.

  It seems probable that in the premature death of Randolph, English literature underwent a very heavy loss…. Intellect and imagination Randolph possessed in full measure, but as he does not seem to have been born to excel in play-writing or in song-writing, and as he died too early to set his own mark on literature, we are left to speculate down what groove such brilliant and energetic gifts as his would finally have proceeded. Had he lived longer his massive intelligence might have made him a dangerous rival or a master to Dryden, and as he shows no inclination towards the French manner of poetry, he might have delayed or altogether warded off the influx of the classical taste. He showed no precocity of genius; he was gradually gathering his singing-robes about him, having already studied much, yet having still much to learn. There is no poet whose works so tempt the critic to ask, “what was the next step in his development?” He died just too soon to impress his name on history.

  The most gifted (according to general estimate rather than to specific performance) of the Tribe of Ben…. There is no doubt that Randolph’s work gives the impression of considerable power. At the same time it is fair to remember that the author’s life was one very conducive to precocity, inasmuch as he underwent at once the three stimulating influences of an elaborate literary education, of endowed leisure to devote himself to what literary occupations he pleased…. It may be plausibly argued that, good as what Randolph’s first thirty years gave is, it ought to have been better still if it was ever going to be of the best.

  Randolph achieved a wide reputation in his own day, and was classed by his contemporaries among “the most pregnant wits of his age.” Fertile in imagination, he could on occasion express himself with rare power and beauty. But his promise, as might be expected from his irregular life and premature death, was greater than his performance.