William Sampson (playwright)

He found a permanent position as a retainer by 1628 in the family of Sir Henry Willoughby, 1st Baronet, of Risley, Derbyshire, where Phineas Fletcher resided between 1616 and 1621.

[1] Sampson made the acquaintance of Gervase Markham, another Nottinghamshire author, and joined him in writing, probably about 1612, a tragedy on the story of Herod and Antipater drawn from the Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus (based on books xiv.

It was successfully produced in London, was licensed for publication on 22 February 1622, and appeared as The True Tragedy of Herod and Antipater.

[5] Sampson followed with a play on his own, on a topic of local interest—the seduction by one Bateman of Mistress German, a young married woman of Clifton.

The episode was the subject of a chapbook Bateman's Tragedy; or the perjured Bride justly rewarded, and there was a popular ballad on the theme (later reprinted by Joseph Ritson).

[6] A second plot involved Gervase Clifton, a local worthy, Member of Parliament and soldier serving against the Scots in 1560 at the Siege of Leith,[7] following Holinshed's Chronicles.

In 1636 there appeared his Virtus post Funera vivit, or Honour Tryumphing over Death, being true Epitomes of Honorable, Noble, Learned, and Hospitable Personages (London, printed by John Norton, 1636).

There follow a prose dedication to Christian, Dowager Countess of Devon, and one in verse to Charles, son of the Earl of Newcastle.

An unprinted poem by him, inscribed to Margaret Cavendish, Marchioness of Newcastle, is entitled Love's Metamorphosis, or Apollo and Daphne; it is in some 180 six-line stanzas, and is extant in Harleian MS. 6947 (No.