Thomas Carew
born 1594/95, West Wickham, Kent, Eng.
died March 22, 1639/40, London
English poet and first of the Cavalier song writers.
Educated at the University of Oxford and at the Middle
Temple, London, Carew served as secretary at embassies in
Venice, The Hague, and Paris. In 1630 Carew received a court
appointment and became server at table to the king. The Earl
of Clarendon considered him as “a person of pleasant and
facetious wit” among a brilliant circle of friends that
included the playwright Ben Jonson.
Carew’s only masque, Coelum Britannicum, was performed by
the king and his gentlemen in 1634 and published the same
year. Music for it was composed by Henry Lawes, who, among
others, set some of Carew’s songs to music.
Carew’s poems, circulated in manuscript, were amatory
lyrics or occasional poems addressed to members of the court
circle, notable for their ease of language and skillful
control of mood and imagery. His longest poem was the
sensuous Rapture, but his lyrics are among the most complex
and thoughtful of any produced by the Cavalier poets. He was
a meticulous workman, and his own verses addressed to Ben
Jonson show that he was proud to share Jonson’s creed of
painstaking perfection. He greatly admired the poems of John
Donne, whom he called king of “the universal monarchy of
wit” in his elegy on Donne (deemed the outstanding piece of
poetic criticism of the age). Carew was also indebted to
Italian poets, particularly Giambattista Marino, whose
libertine spirit, brilliant wit, and technical facility were
much akin to his own, and on whose work he based several of
his lyrics. He translated a number of the Psalms and is said
to have died with expressions of remorse for a life of
libertinism. His poems were published a few weeks after his
death. The definitive edition is The Poems of Thomas Carew,
with His Masque “Coelum Britannicum,” edited by Rhodes
Dunlap (1949).
