Thomas Sackville was by no means a prolific poet. Only four of his poems have survived and one of those was only very recently discovered. Yet Sackville's fellows and followers in the art of poetry were in no doubt as to the quality and importance of...

The following essay discusses Thomas Sackville and co-writer, Thomas Norton. Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, joined by little else in their lives, collaborated in the writing of Gorboduc, the first important play in the history of English...

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, Walker argues that the earliest stage performances of Gorboduc before royal audiences show that, despite the play's more universal appeal, its foremost intention was to influence Queen Elizabeth to marry Robert Dudley.

In the following excerpt, Baker argues that the ongoing critical debate about the themes and philosophy of Gorboduc can best be resolved by considering the lives and literary concerns of the play's two authors, Sackville and Thomas Norton.