William Alabaster

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
File:William Alabaster.jpg
William Alabaster from a contemporary etching.

William Alabaster (also Alablaster, Arblastier) (27 February 1567 – buried 28 April 1640) was an English poet, playwright, and religious writer.[lower-alpha 1][1]

He became a Roman Catholic convert in Spain when on a diplomatic mission as chaplain. His religious beliefs led him to be imprisoned several times; eventually he gave up Catholicism, and was favoured by James I. He received a prebend in St Paul's Cathedral, London, and the living of Therfield, Hertfordshire. He died at Little Shelford, Cambridgeshire.

Biography

File:Roxana title page.gif
Title page of Alabaster's Roxana, c. 1595.

He was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk,[2] the son of Roger Alabaster of the cloth merchant family from Hadleigh in Suffolk, and Bridget Winthrop of Groton, Suffolk.[lower-alpha 2][3] He was educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge from 1583.[2][4] He became a fellow of Trinity, and in 1592 was incorporated of the university of Oxford. About 1592 he produced at Trinity College his Latin tragedy of Roxana.[2]

In June 1596 Alabaster sailed with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, on the expedition to Cadiz in the capacity of chaplain, and, while he was in Spain, he became a Roman Catholic. An account of his change of faith is given in an obscurely worded sonnet contained in an manuscript copy of Divine Meditations, by Mr Alabaster.[5] He defended his conversion in a pamphlet, Seven Motives, of which no copy is extant.[lower-alpha 3] It appears that Alabaster was imprisoned for his change of faith in the Tower of London during 1598 and 1599.[2]

In 1607 he published at Antwerp Apparatus in Revelationem Jesu Christi, in which his study of the Kabbalah gave a mystical interpretation of Scripture. The book was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum at Rome early in 1610. He went to Rome and was there imprisoned by the Inquisition, but succeeded in escaping to England and again embraced the Protestant faith.[6]

After returning to England Alabaster became a doctor of divinity at Cambridge University and chaplain to King James I. After his marriage in 1618 his life now became more settled and he devoted his later years to theological studies.[2][7] He died in 1640[2] at Little Shelford, Cambridgeshire.[citation needed]

Works

Roxana is modelled on the tragedies of Seneca, and is a stiff and spiritless work.[lower-alpha 4] Fuller and Anthony à Wood bestowed exaggerated praise on it, while Samuel Johnson regarded it as the only Latin verse worthy of notice produced in England before Milton's elegies. Roxana is founded on the La Dalidapp (Venice, 1567) of Luigi Groto, known as Cieco di Hadria, and Hallam asserts that it is a plagiarism.[8]

A surreptitious edition in 1632 was followed by an authorized version a plagiarii unguibus vindicata, aucta et agnita ab Aithore, Gulielmo, Alabastro. One book of an epic poem in Latin hexameters, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, is preserved in manuscript (MS) in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. This poem, Elisaeis, Apotheosis poetica, Spenser highly esteemed. "Who lives that can match that heroick song?" he says in Colin Clout's come home againe, and begs "Cynthia" to withdraw the poet from his obscurity.[2][2]

Alabaster's later cabalistic writings are Commentarius de Bestia Apocalyptica (1621) and Spiraculum tubarum (1633), a mystical interpretation of the Pentateuch. These theological writings won the praise of Robert Herrick, who calls him "the triumph of the day" and the "one only glory of a million".[2]

List of works:[2]

  • Roxana - (c. 1595) Latin drama.
  • Elisaeis – Latin epic on Elizabeth I.
  • Apparatus in Revelationem Jesu Christi (1607).
  • De bestia Apocalypsis (1621)
  • Ecce sponsus venit (1633)
  • Spiraculum Tubarum (1633)
  • Lexicon Pentaglotton, Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicon et Arabicum (1637)

Family

In 1618 Alabaster married Katherine Fludd, a widow, and was linked by marriage to the celebrated physician and alchemist Robert Fludd.[2]

Notes

  1. His surname, sometimes written Arblastier, is one of the many variants of arbalester, a cross-bowman.Chisholm 1911, p. 466
  2. He was, so Fuller states, a nephew by marriage of Dr John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells (Chisholm 1911, p. 466). Bridget Winthrop was the sister of Adam Winthrop (1548–1623) whose first wife (the marriage was short, she died three years later in child birth) was Alice Still, sister of Bishop John Still.[3]
  3. The proof of its publication only remains in two tracts, A Booke of the Seuen Planets, or Seuen wandring motives of William Alablaster's wit, by John Racster (1598), and An Answer to William Alabaster, his Motives, by Roger Fenton (1599).[2]
  4. For an analysis of the Roxana see an article on the Latin university plays in the Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft (Weimar, 1898).[2]
  1. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 Chisholm 1911, p. 466.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Fuller, vol ii, p. 343; Camp, p. [page needed]
  4. ACAD ALBR584W.
  5. see J. P. Collier, Hist. of Eng. Dram. Poetry, ii. 341.
  6. Chisholm 1911, p. 466 citing the preface to Alabaster's Ecce sponsus venit (1633), a treatise on the time of the second advent of Christ
  7. Drabble 2000, p. 13.
  8. Chisholm 1911, p. 466 cites Hallam Literature of Europe, iii.54.


References

  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[full citation needed] — Traces the linage of the Winthrop family from 1498 forward 200 years.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Attribution

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainLua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. endnotes:
    • T. Fuller, Worthies of England (ii. 343);
    • J. P. Collier, Bibl. and Crit. Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (vol. i. 1865);
    • Pierre Bayle, Dictionary, Historical and Critical (ed. London, 1734);
    • the Athenaeum (December 26, 1903), where Mr. Bertram Dobell describes a MS. in his possession containing forty-three sonnets by Alabaster.


Further reading

  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. both books Ceri Sullivan, examine Alabaster's prose and poetry respectively.

External links