Markham, Gervase

(1568-1637)

   The son of Sir Robert Markham of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, he was a soldier under the earl of Essex in Ireland. He knew Latin as well as several modern languages, was an authority on forestry and is credited with being the first breeder to import Arab horses. In 1593 he published A Discourse of Horsemanshippe. He also published The English Hus-wife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). He was buried at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, London. He wrote two plays, The Dumb Knight (1608) with Lewis Machin and The True Tragedy of Herod and Antipater (1622) with William Sampson. His poem (1595) The Most Honorable Tragedie of Sir Richard Grenville, Knight (see Grenville entry) commemorates the viceadmiral's death in 1591 when the Revenge was captured by the Spanish. Some of his other poems: "A Fragment," "Areteæ Lachrimæ," "Mary Magdalene's Laments in Seven Parts," "Rodomonths Infernall," "The Conclusion," "The Lamentable Complaint of Paulina the Famous Roman Curtezan," "The Poem of Poems, or, Sions Muse," "The Teares of the Beloued."

   Sources: Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry. Ezra Pound and Marcella Spann, eds. New Directions, 1964. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed (http://www. columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).