SOURCE: Gaudet, Paul. “William Baldwin and the ‘Silence’ of His Last Years.” Notes and Queries 25 (October 1978): 417-20.

In the following essay, Gaudet speculates on what happened to Baldwin after he disappeared from public view and ceased to write.

William Baldwin was a man of diverse interests and occupations, and one of the most productive and experimental writers in England from 1547 to 1564. In his lifetime he was scholar, printer, writer, theatrical jack-of-all-trades, and perhaps schoolmaster. In his writings, Baldwin was an active sampler of various literary forms. His dedicatory verse for a work on physiology is probably the first sonnet published in English.¹ His Treatise of Morall Phylosophie, a collection of moral commonplaces from the classical philosophers, was one of the most frequently printed books in English during the second half of the sixteenth century.² He became the first poetic translator of “The Song of Songs” in England when...