author
Stephen Hawes
A Tudor poet and courtier, this early English writer is best remembered for turning moral lessons into vivid allegorical adventure. His best-known poem, The Passetyme of Pleasure, follows a knight through learning, love, and the tests of life.
5 Audiobooks
The Example of Vertu The Example of Virtue
by Stephen Hawes
The Pastime of Pleasure: An Allegorical Poem
by Stephen Hawes
The Conuercyon of swerers (The Conversion of Swearers)
by Stephen Hawes
The cõforte of louers The Comfort of Lovers
by Stephen Hawes
About the author
Little about Stephen Hawes is known with certainty, but he is generally placed in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, with a life often dated around 1474 to 1523. He was an English poet of the Tudor period and served at the court of Henry VII, where he was known as a courtier as well as a writer.
Hawes is most closely associated with The Passetyme of Pleasure, a long allegorical poem that made his reputation. The work blends chivalric romance with moral and educational themes, following the knight Graunde Amoure through a symbolic journey shaped by learning, virtue, and desire. Readers interested in the bridge between medieval poetry and early Tudor literature often meet Hawes here.
He is also linked with the influence of John Lydgate, and his writing carries forward that late medieval taste for pageantry, devotion, and personified ideas. Although he is not as widely read today as some later English poets, Hawes remains an important figure for anyone curious about how English poetry was changing at the start of the Tudor age.