John Lyly

1554–1606. Writer, playwright and dramatist. Euphuist.

Lyly wrote his plays to entertain the court of Queen Elizabeth I. and can be considered one of the dramatists that had a certain influence on William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]. He also coined the expression Euphuism, a particular style of English prose, employing literary devices in their extremes.

Family and Life

John Lyly was the oldest of eight children of Peter Lyly (d. 1569) and his wife, Jane Burgh (or Brough) of Burgh Hall in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Due to his family Lyly early got in touch with the humanistic spirit. His grandfather William Lyly, a friend of John Colet, Thomas More and Erasmus, was a leading member of the generation of scholars that brought Italian humanism to England. He was even high master at St Paul’s school, the first humanist grammar school in England.

The date and place of John’s birth is not hundred percent certain just like the place of his school. What is known for sure is that he was brought up in Canterbury and studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, a prime centre of the new humanist culture, improving his knowledge of the Latin language and shaping his approach to literature. In 1573 he took the B.A., in 1575 the M.A. After his studies he went to London, where thanks to his “Oxford reputation of having ‘his genie … naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry’” (cf. Hunter 1962, 47) he certainly found some literary company.

Lyly died in the year 1606 due to an illness. In the parish register of Bartholomew the Less in Smithfield the exact date of Lyly’s funeral is recorded: 30 November 1606.

Literary Contribution

John Lyly wrote for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth and her court. The first and probably most significant documented evidence of Lyly’s literary talent is Euphues, or, The Anatomy of Wit dated to 1578/79. Euphues is ornamented with classical quotations and contains a lot of humanist wisdom, telling the love story of the charming heiress Lucilla and Euphues. Lyly’s work was a great success, which probably helped him to become the secretary of the Earl of Oxford by 1582. In 1580 Euphues and his England was published, a continuation of the latter, displacing the setting from Greece and Italy to England.

In the 1580’s Lyly also wrote Campaspe, Sapho and Phao, Gallathea, Endimion, and Love’s Metamorphosis. Especially the first ones fostered his popularity as a court dramatist, as Oxford appointed him to the leader of the children’s acting group “Oxford’s boys” which performed at court. In 1588 Gallathea and Endimion were brought to court by “The Paul’s boys”, the choirboys of St Paul’s. In most of these plays Lyly employed the classical gods as major characters, unlike the public Elizabethan drama, in which the gods only rarely appear. Besides, the plays have a strong overtone of allegory.

Among Lyly’s late plays there are Midas (1592) and The Woman in the Moon (1597), the only blank verse drama, which were both performed at court. At that point, however, Lyly’s career had already suffered and by the time the Queen died in 1603, it was over.

Sources

Fricker, Robert (1983): Das ältere englische Schauspiel. John Lyly bis Shakespeare. Bd 2. Bern, München: Francke.

Hunter, G. K. (1962): John Lyly. The Humanist as Courtier. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Hunter, G. K. (2004). "Lyly, John (1554–1606)" in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 09 January 2013. [1]

Saccio, Peter (1969): The Court Comedies of John Lyly. A Study in Allegorical Dramaturgy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.