Sir William Davenant
born February 1606, Oxford, Eng.
died April 7, 1668, London
English poet, playwright, and theatre manager
who was made poet laureate on the strength of
such successes as The Witts (licensed 1634), a
comedy; the masques The Temple of Love,
Britannia Triumphans, and Luminalia; and a
volume of poems, Madagascar (published 1638).
Shakespeare was apparently Davenant’s godfather,
and gossip held that the famous playwright may
even have been his father. Davenant became a
page in London in 1622 and later served a famous
literary courtier, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke.
Meanwhile he was writing his early revenge
tragedies, such as Albovine (produced c. 1629),
and tragicomedies, such as The Colonel. After he
had served in continental wars, his engaging,
reckless personality and his plays and
occasional verses attracted the patronage of
Queen Henrietta Maria. Davenant was appointed to
the poet laureateship in 1638, after the death
of Ben Jonson the previous year, and composed
several court masques.
In 1641 Davenant risked his life in a bungled
army plot, and the outbreak of the Civil War in
1642 nullified a royal patent he had secured to
build a theatre. A supporter of King Charles I
during the Civil War, he was knighted by the
king in 1643 for running supplies across the
English Channel. Later, having joined the
defeated and exiled Stuart court in Paris, he
began his uncompleted verse epic Gondibert
(1651), a tale of chivalry in 1,700 quatrains.
After the execution of Charles I, his queen sent
Davenant to aid the Royalist cause in America as
lieutenant governor of Maryland. Davenant’s ship
was captured in the English Channel, however,
and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London
until 1654.
In 1656 Davenant made the first attempt to
revive English drama, which had been banned
under Cromwell, with The first day’s
Entertainment (produced 1656), a work disguised
under the title Declamations and Musick. This
work led to his creating the first public opera
in England, The Siege of Rhodes Made a
Representation by the Art of Prospective in
Scenes, And the Story sung in Recitative Musick
(produced 1656). In The Siege he introduced
three innovations to the English public stage:
an opera, painted stage sets, and a female
actress-singer.
In 1660, after the Restoration, he was
granted one of two new royal patents to
establish new acting companies and founded the
new Duke of York’s Playhouse in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields. As manager, director, and playwright, he
continued to produce, write, and adapt plays.
The charter was later transferred to Covent
Garden. Together with the poet John Dryden, he
adapted Shakespeare’s The Tempest in 1667.
