John Lyly Play Style

Callie Hansen Hansen 1

Mrs. Crenshaw

British Literature

4/22/2014

John Lyly

John Lyly was a play write in the 1500s. He wrote mainly comedies and love story’s. He wrote plays such as Compaspe, Sapho and Phao, Gallathea, Endimion, Midas, Loves Medamorpasis, Mother Bombie, and The Woman in the Moon. John Lyly, in my opinion helped start the modern english play style and formed literature to a new way of writing.

John Lyly was born in 1554. He attended Magdalene College, Oxford in 1573. Afterward he moved to London to start his career as an author. In 1578 he wrote his first prose called Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit. In 1580 he wrote a part two called Euphues and His England. These two plays springboard John Lyly to be one of ,if not the most successful play write of the 1580s according to Encyclopedia Britannica. His plays also spurred a literature movement called Euphism. This style gave a more defined idea of Prose in literature. This style did not last long. (EncyclopediaBritannicaOnline.com, John Lyly; Imagi-nation.com, John Lyly)

In 1583 John came into possession of the Blackfairs Theater. Here John Started to write mostly comedies. He had them performed by a all young boys company called Children of Pauls choir school. Lyly wrote many og his plays for this company. With all of the musical numbers, and not to mention many of the plays actually said the companies name on the front. Encyclopedia Britannica tells the years his plays where perfomed; “Compaspe and Sapho and Phao 1583-84, Gal...

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...e comic relief Sir Tophas. Eumenides, on his quest to find a cure finds a majical fountain that will grant one question with and answer. He does the right thing and asks why Endymion is asleep, and the fountain tells him that Endymion is under a spell and only Cynthia’s kiss will wake him up. Cynthia kisses Endymion and he wakes up. And like any good story, it end with Tellus and Corsites, Eumenides and Semele, and lastly Dipsas and Sir Tophas walking down the aisle to be wed. Cynthia and Endymion cannot be wed due to the differing social statuses. (www.elizabethanauthors.org/endmod1.htm, John Lyly)

John Lyly did, leave a long lasting mark on English literature, He made popular a new way of writing, and was ably to succeed in making a old story new again. Even though Lyly was not as famous as Shakespeare or others, he was a founder of the art of English writing.