FLECKNOE, RICHARD (c. 1600-1678?)

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FLECKNOE, RICHARD (c. 1600-1678?) , English dramatist and poet, the object of Dryden's satire, was probably of English

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

, although there is no corroboration of the suggestion of J. Gillow (

Bibliog

BIBLIOG

. Did. of the Eng. Catholics, vol. ii., 1885), that he was a nephew of a Jesuit priest, William Flecknoe, or more properly Flexney, of Oxford. The few known facts of his life are chiefly derived from his Relation of Ten Years' Travels in Europe, Asia, AfJrique and America (1655?), consisting of letters written to friends and patrons during his travels. The first of these is dated from

Ghent

GHENT (Flem. Gent, Fr. Gand)

(164o), whither he had fled to escape the troubles of the Civil War. In Brussels he met Beatrix de Cosenza, wife of Charles IV., duke of Lorraine, who sent him to Rome to secure the legalization of her

marriage

MARRIAGE

. There in 1645 Andrew Marvell met him, and described his leanness and his rage for versifying in a witty satire, " Flecknoe, an English Priest at Rome." He was probably, however, not in priest's orders. He then travelled in the Levant, and in 1648 crossed the Atlantic to Brazil, of which country he gives a detailed description. On his return to Europe he entered the household of the duchess of Lorraine in Brussels. In 1645 he went back to England. His royalist and Catholic convictions did not prevent him from writing a book in praise of Oliver Cromwell, The Idea of His Highness Oliver . (1659), dedicated to Richard Cromwell. This publication was discounted at the restoration by the Heroick Portraits (166o) of Charles IL and others of the Stuart family. John Dryden used his name as a stalking horse from behind which to assail Thomas Shadwell in Mac Flecknoe (1682). The opening lines run:'

FLEET

FLEET

, PRISON
All human things are subject to decay,
And,, when fate summons, monarchs must obey. This Flecknoe found, who, like

Augustus

AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)

, young Was called to empire, and had governed long; In

prose

PROSE

and verse was owned, without dispute, Throughout the realms of nonsense, absolute."
Dryden's aversion seems to have been caused by Flecknoe's affectation of contempt for the players and his attacks on the immorality of the English stage. His verse, which hardly deserved his critic's sweeping condemnation, was much of it religious, and was chiefly printed for private circulation. None of his plays was acted except Love's Dominion, announced as a " pattern for the reformed stage " (1654), that title being altered in 1664 to Love's Kingdom, with a Discourse of the English Stage. He amused himself, however, by adding lists of the actors whom he would have selected for the parts, had the plays been staged. Flecknoe had many connexions among English Catholics, and is said by Gerard Langbaine, to have been better acquainted with the

nobility

NOBILITY

than with the muses. He died probably about 1678.
A Discourse of the English Stage, was reprinted in W. C. Hazlitt's English Drama and Stage (Roxburghe Library, 1869) ; Robert Southey, in his Omniana (1812), protested against the wholesale depreciation of Flecknoe's works. See also " Richard Flecknoe " (

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1905, in Mi nchener Beitrage zur . . Philologie), by A. Lohr, who has given minute attention to his life and works.

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