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George Gascoigne Quotes

George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney. He was the first poet to deify Queen Elizabeth I, in effect establishing her cult as a virgin goddess married to her kingdom and subjects. His most noted works include A Discourse of the Adventures of Master FJ , an account of courtly intrigue and one of the earliest English prose fictions; The Supposes, , an early translation of Ariosto and the first comedy written in English prose, which was used by Shakespeare as a source for The Taming of the Shrew; the frequently anthologised short poem "Gascoignes wodmanship" and "Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or

ryme in English" , the first essay on English versification. Wikipedia  

✵ 1525 – 7. October 1577
George Gascoigne photo
George Gascoigne: 7 quotes0 likes

Famous George Gascoigne Quotes

“Suffiseth this to proove my theame withall,
That every bullet hath a lighting place.”

George Gascoigne

"The Fruites of Warre", line 467, from The Posies (1575); p. 412.

“Sing lullabie, as women do,
Wherewith they bring their babes to rest;
And lullabie can I sing to,
As womanly as can the best.”

George Gascoigne

"The Lullabie of a Lover", line 1; p. 272.
A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573)

“Master Gascoigne is not to bee abridged of his deserved esteeme, who first beate the path to that perfection which our best Poets have aspired too since his departure.”

George Gascoigne

Thomas Nashe, Preface to Robert Greene's Menaphon (1589), cited from G. Gregory Smith (ed.) Elizabethan Critical Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904) vol. 1, p. 315.
Criticism

“Full many wanton babes have I,
Which must be stilld with lullabie.”

George Gascoigne

"The Lullabie of a Lover", line 7; p. 272.
A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573)

“From shortly after his death until the present Gascoigne's reputation as the foremost poet of his generation and as a precursor of the great Elizabethans has remained constant.”

George Gascoigne

G. W. Pigman III, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) vol. 21, p. 585.
Criticism

“The Raynbowe bending in the skye,
Bedeckte with sundrye hewes,
Is lyke the seate of God on hye,
And seemes to tell these newes:
That as thereby he promised,
To drowne the worlde no more,
So by the bloud whiche Christe hath shead,
He will oure health restore.”

George Gascoigne

"Gascoignes Good Morrow", line 41; p. 287.
A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573)

“I thinke it not amisse to forewarne you that you thrust as few wordes of many sillables into your verse as may be: and hereunto I might alledge many reasons: first the most auncient English wordes are of one sillable, so that the more monasyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seeme, and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne.”

George Gascoigne

"Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in English", from The Posies; pp. 457-8.

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