Henry Glapthorne

Henry Glapthorne (28 July 1610 (baptised) – c.1643) was a Caroline era dramatist.

Glapthorne was baptized in Cambridgeshire, the son of Thomas Glapthorne and Faith nee Hatcliff. His father was a bailiff of Lady Hatton, the wife of Sir Edward Coke. Before he turned fourteen, Henry Glapthorne was matriculated as a pensioner at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, but there is no record that he ever took a degree. From then until he emerges as a playwright in the mid-1630s little is known of him. There is some evidence he may have been employed as a groom-porter in a nobleman's household during some of that time — a later document refers to him as "Glapthorne the Porter" — but there is nothing conclusive.

His best-regarded work is Argalus and Parthenia (c. 1633, printed 1639), based upon Sidney's Arcadia. Other plays are the comedy The Hollander (licensed for performance 12 March 1636), Wit in a Constable (c. 1636–38), and the tragicomedy The Lady's Privilege (all printed 1640), and the historical tragedy Albertus Wallenstein (c. 1634–39, printed 1639), based on the famous general in the Thirty Years' War.

Glapthorne published a volume of Poems in 1639, including a series addressed to "Lucinda", and a poem titled "Whitehall", dedicated to Richard Lovelace, in 1643, among other minor works.

A collected edition of his work, The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne, was published in 1874. In 1883, editor A. H. Bullen attributed the anonymous play The Lady Mother, written c. 1633–35, to Glapthorne, an attribution that has been accepted by the consensus of critical opinion.

The play Revenge for Honour, first printed in 1654 and misattributed to George Chapman, may be another work by Glapthorne; it was entered into the Stationers' Register on 29 November 1653, as a Glapthorne work, under the title The Parricide, or Revenge for Honour. A play called The Parricide, was acted in 1624, but Glapthorne would have been only 14 years old at the time.

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