John Banks (playwright)

Virtually nothing is known about Banks's early life; his date of birth has been estimated on the basis of his later biography.

Banks followed this with The Destruction of Troy, which was staged by the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in November 1678 and printed the following year.

The Unhappy Favourite, or the Earl of Essex (1682), for which John Dryden provided a prologue and epilogue, was his first major success.

Virtue Betrayed, or Anna Bullen, published the same year, proved to be his most popular play, and was acted as late as 1766.

Banks was considered a crude writer who could nonetheless, at his best, create powerful drama.