GASCOIGNE, GEORGE (c. English poet, eldest son of Sir John Gascoigne of Cardington, Beds., was born probably between 1530 and 1535. He was educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, and became a member of Gray's Inn in His escapades were notorious ; he was imprisoned for debt, and was obliged to sell his patrimony to pay the debts contracted at court. He was M.P. for Bedford in 1557-58 and 1558-59, but when he presented himself in 1572 for election at Midhurst he was refused on account of his bad reputation. He married the wealthy widow of William Breton, thus becoming step-father to the poet, Nicholas Breton. Fighting in the Low Countries in 1572 he was driven by stress of weather to Brill, which had just fallen into the hands of the Dutch. He obtained a captain's com mission, and fought in the campaigns of the next two years. Taken prisoner after the evacuation of Valkenburg by the English troops, he was sent to England in the autumn of 1574. He dedicated to Lord Grey of Wilton the story of his adventures, The Fruites of IVarres (printed in the edition of 1575) and Gascoigne's Voyage into Hollande. In 1575 he had a share in devising the entertain ments provided for Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth and Wood stock. Most of his works were actually published during the last years of his life, after his return from the wars. He died at Ber nack, near Stamford, where he was the guest of George Whet stone, on Oct. 7, Gascoigne acknowledged Chaucer as his master, and differed from the earlier poets of the school of Surrey and Wyatt chiefly in the added smoothness and sweetness of his verse. His poems were published in 1572 during his absence in Holland with the title A liundreth Sundrie Floures bound up in one small Posie . . . followed in 1575 by an authorized edition, The Posies of G. G. Esquire . . . (not dated). This edition contains as preface a treatise on prosody, apparently the earliest in English, "Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English." Gascoigne was a pioneer in many directions. In 1576 he pub lished The Steele Glas, sometimes called the earliest regular Eng lish satire. Although this poem is Elizabethan in form and man ner, it is written in the spirit of Piers Plowman. Gascoigne be gins with a comparison between the sister arts of Satire and Poetry, and under a comparison between the old-fashioned "glas of trustie steele," and the new-fangled crystal mirrors which he takes as a symbol of the "Italianate" corruption of the time, he attacks the amusements of the governing classes, the evils of absentee landlordism, the corruption of the clergy, and pleads for the restoration of the feudal ideal.
Againe I see, within my glasse of Steele But foure estates, to serve each country Boyle, The King, the Knight, the Pesant, and the Priest.
The King should care for al the subjects still, The Knight should fight, for to defend the same, The Pesant, he shoulde labor for their ease, And Priests shuld pray, for them and for themselves.
(Arber's ed. p. 57.) His dramatic work belongs to the period of his residence at Gray's Inn, both Jocasta (of which Acts i. and iv. were contrib uted by Francis Kinwelmersh) and Supposes being played there in 1566. Jocasta is a literal version of Lodovico Dolce's Giocasta, which was derived probably from the Pboenissae in the Latin translation of R. Winter. Supposes, a version of Ariosto's I. Sup positi, is an early and excellent adaptation of Italian comedy, and "the earliest play in English prose acted in public or private." Udal's Ralph Roister Doister had been inspired directly by Latin comedy; Gammer Gorton's Needle was a purely native product; but Supposes is the first example of the acclimatization of the Italian models that were to exercise so prolonged an influence on the English stage. A third play of Gascoigne's, The Glasse of Government (published in is a school drama of the "Prodi gal Son" type, familiar on the Continent at the time, but rare in England.
Gascoigne's works not already mentioned include: "G.G. in commendation of the noble Arte of Venerie," prefixed to The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting ; The Complaynte of Phylomene, bound up with The Steele Glas (1576) ; The Droomme of Doomes-day (1576), a prose compilation from various authors, especially from the De contemptu mundi of Pope Innocent III., printed with varying titles, earliest ed. (1470?) ; A Delicate Diet for daintie mouthde Droonkardes . . . (1576), a free version of St. Augustine's De ebrietate. The Posies (1S72) included Supposes, Jocasta, A Discourse of the Adventures of Master F[erdinando] J[eronimi], in imitation of an Italian novella, a partly autobiographical Don Bartholomew of Bath, and miscellaneous poems. The Whole Workes of G.G. . . . appeared in 1587. In 1868-7o The Complete Poems of G.G. . . were edited for the Roxburghe Library by W. C. Hazlitt. In his English Reprints Prof. E. Arber included Certayne Notes of In struction, The Steele Glas and the of Philomene. The Steele Glas was also edited for the Library of English Literature, by Henry Morley, vol. i. p. 584 (1889) . A new edition, The Works of George Gascoigne (The Cambridge English Classics, 1907, etc.) is edited by Dr. J. W. Cunliffe. See also F. E. Schelling, The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne (Publications of the Univ. of Pennsyl vania series in vol. ii. No. 4, 1894) ; C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 149-164 (5886), and "Gascoigne's Glasse of Government," in Englische Studien, vol. ix. (Halle, 1877, etc.) .