Randolph, Thomas

(1605-1635)

   The son of William Randolph, steward to Edward, Lord Zouch, he was born at Newnham-cum-Badby. Northamptonshire. At the age of nine or ten he wrote in verse the "History of the Incarnation of Our Savior." He was educated at Westminster School and graduated M.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1632, where he quickly assumed a reputation as a writer of English and Latin verse. In 1630 he published Aristippus, or the Joviall Philosopher, prose interspersed with verse in a satire on university education. In the same year he produced The Muse's Looking-Glass, followed by The Jealous Lovers (1634). Hey for Honesty, a comedy, was published posthumously in 1651. He died from smallpox. His volume Poems, with the Muses' Looking-Glasse and Amyntas, was published posthumously in 1638. Some of his poems: "A Devout Lover," "A Parley with His Empty Purse," "A Platonik Eligie," "In Praise of Women in General," "Maske for Lydia," "Necessary Observations," "On the Death of a Nightingale," "The Conceited Pedlar," "The Pedler," "The Song of Orpheus," "The Wedding Morne," "To a Painted Mistriss."

   Sources: Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Hugh MacLaen, ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1974. 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). How Does a Poem Mean? 2nd edition. John Ciardi and Miller Williams, eds. Houghton Mifflin, 1975. Songs from the British Drama. Edward Bliss Reed, ed. Yale University Press, 1925. The Anchor Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Verse, Vol. II. Louis L. Martz and Richard S. Sylvester, eds. Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation. Adrian Poole and Jeremy Maule, eds. 1995. The Oxford Book of Short Poems. P.J. Kavanagh and James Michie, eds. Oxford University Press, 1985. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.