author
active 1611 William Barksted
A little-known figure from the Jacobean stage, this English actor and poet is remembered for lush narrative poems and a career that brushed against some of the best-known dramatists of his time.
1 Audiobook
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 17th century. He is chiefly known for the poems Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis (1607) and Hiren, or the Faire Greeke (1611), and the title page of Hiren describes him as one of the servants of His Majesty's Revels.
He also appears in the theatrical record as a performer. Sources connect him with Ben Jonson's Epicene in 1606 and with Beaumont and Fletcher's The Coxcomb in 1613, which places him among the working actors of London's lively Jacobean theatre world.
Much about Barksted's life remains uncertain, which gives him a slightly mysterious place in literary history. What survives suggests a writer and player moving between poetry and the stage at a time when those worlds were closely linked.