Glapthorne, HENRY

Glapthorne, HENRY, a minor dramatist in the period of decadence that followed the Elizabethan, of whose life nothing whatever is known save that he flourished between the years 1639 and 1643, was a friend of Cotton and Lovelace, wrote a few fair poems and five plays—Albertus Wallenstein, a tragedy; Argalus and Parthenia, a poetical dramatisation of part of the Arcadia; two comedies, The Hollander and Wit in a Constable; and Love's Privilege, a tragico-comedy. Mr Bullen, on dubious internal evidence, attributes to him also The Lady Mother. Glapthorne's dramatic faculty is but feeble, and it was hardly a kindness to his memory to reprint his works (2 vols. 1874), which long encumbered the book-stalls. Nor was it wise of his anonymous editor to try to eke out our slender knowledge of his life by irrelevant and unedifying details about one George Glapthorne of Whittlesea, who need not even have been a relative.