author

active 1611 William Barksted

Best known as a Jacobean actor-poet, this elusive writer left behind two vivid narrative poems that echo the theatrical energy of early 17th-century England. His life is only partly recoverable, which gives his work an added air of mystery.

1 Audiobook

Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624)

Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624)

by active 1611 William Barksted, Dunstan Gale, Richard Linche, Samuel Page

About the author

William Barksted was an English actor and poet active in the early 1600s. Reliable reference sources describe him as flourishing roughly between 1607 and 1630, and he is especially associated with the world of the Jacobean stage.

He is credited with the poems Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis; or Lustes Prodegies (1607) and Hiren, or the Faire Greeke (1611). On the title page of Hiren, he called himself one of the servants of His Majesty’s Revels, linking him directly to professional theatrical life.

Some sources also connect him with performances in Ben Jonson’s Epicene and Beaumont and Fletcher’s Coxcomb. Even so, much about Barksted remains uncertain, and that partial record is part of what makes him interesting today: he survives through a small body of dramatic, sensuous verse and a few tantalizing traces from the Renaissance stage.