Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton's Gorboduc (1561-62) has elicited critical interest mainly because it is the first blank-verse tragedy in English and because it engages the politically delicate matter of the Elizabethan succession. As scholars of the play have noted, Gorboduc urges Elizabeth...

AFTER 20 years as a soldier and colonial administrator, Hugh Sackville- West trained as a land agent. This unusual range of experience, combined with a talent for administration and a generous and kindly nature, proved to be the ideal qualifications for the management of...

In the following essay, Zim argues that Sackville's official correspondence to Queen Elizabeth and Thomas Heneage, composed while he was a diplomat in France, can be read as filled with carefully crafted rhetoric meant to influence decisions on royal succession and thus may be regarded as political literature in much the way that Gorboduc has been.

In the following essay, Bohlmeyer argues that although Sackville borrowed heavily from classical and medieval sources to fashion his “Induction” and “Complaint,” the poems were truly original and the greatest expressions of tragedy found in A Mirror for Magistrates.

In the following excerpt, Bradford argues that Sackville's “Induction” was the most influential Tudor poem to use images of winter landscapes to express the human condition.