Thomas Randolph (poet)

Thomas Randolph (bapt.Tooltip baptised 15 June 1605 – March 1635) was an English poet and dramatist, recognised by his mentor Ben Jonson as being a promising writer of comedy, and amongst his contemporaries had a reputation as a wit.

His father remarried about 1615 to Dorothy, the widow of Thomas West of Cotton End, and daughter of gentleman Richard Lane, of Courteenhall.

Prior to official publication, Randolph wrote several pieces before entering Westminster, including several epitaphs for people close to the family, the first written when he was 16 in the year 1621.

After Cambridge, Randolph lived with his father at Little Houghton, Northamptonshire for some time, and afterwards with William Stafford of Blatherwycke Hall, where he died aged 29.

[b] It is a gay interlude burlesquing a lecture in philosophy, the whole piece being an argument to support the claims of sack against small beer.

Amyntas, or The Impossible Dowry, a pastoral printed in 1638, with a number of miscellaneous Latin and English poems, completes the list of Randolph's authenticated work.

Randolph has been proposed as the author of the anonymous manuscript play, The Fairy Knight, though the attribution has not won much approval from critics.