FLECKNOE, RICHARD (c. 1600–c. 1678), English drama tist and poet, was probably of English birth. The few known facts of his life are derived from his Relation of Ten Years' Travels in Europe, Asia, Afirique, and America, consisting of letters written during his travels. He fled from the Civil War to Ghent, and in 1645 he went to Rome for Beatrix de Cusance, to secure the legalization of her marriage to Charles IV. Andrew Marvell has described him in his satire, "Flecknoe, an English Priest at Rome." He also travelled in the Levant, and in 1648 went to Brazil.
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) . This publication was discounted at the Restoration by the Heroick Portraits (166o) of Charles II. 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 : All human things are subject to decay, And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was called to empire, and had governed long ; In 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). He died probably about 1678.