Richard Flecknoe

Richard Flecknoe (c. 1600 – 1678) was an English dramatist, poet and musician. He is remembered for being made the butt of satires by Andrew Marvell in 1681 and by John Dryden in Mac Flecknoe in 1682.

Little is known of Flecknoe's life. He was probably of English birth, from Northamptonshire, though he may have been of Irish heritage. He was a Catholic and may have been ordained a lay-priest by the Jesuits while abroad. There was once a suggestion that he may have been the nephew of the Jesuit William Flecknoe or Flexney of Oxford, though there is no evidence of this. Much of his early life seems to have been spent outside England. He attended St Omer English Jesuit School from 1619 to 1624, where he may have taken part in the annual drama productions: in 1623 the play was Guy of Warwick. After ordination as a secular priest, he continued his studies at Watten in the Netherlands until 1636, when he returned to England, but he was disappointed to find little acceptance among English Catholics, who were not favourably disposed towards Jesuits: "he is none of ours" said the outspoken Catholic priest Anthony Champney. Andrew Marvell encountered him in Rome in 1645, from which period dates Marvell's satire "Flecknoe, an English Priest at Rome", although it was not published until 1681. His verse is charactised there as "hideous" and it is also mentioned that he performed on the lute.

Shortly after Flecknoe's return to England in 1636 his first play, now lost, was performed in London, possibly by Queen Henrietta's Men. Audiences derided as it "lascivious" and "scandalous", an assessment compounded by the knowledge that the author was an ordained priest.

He provides information about his travels in his collection of letters, Relation of Ten Years' Travels in Europe, Asia, Affrique, and America, completed around 1655. It contains correspondence with friends and patrons, beginning in 1640, and comprises accounts of the Ottoman dominions in Western Asia and of a voyage to and stay in Brazil. By 1653 he was in London, when he began publishing, and so far compromised his Catholic identity as to praise Oliver Cromwell in his The idea of His Highness Oliver, late Lord Protector, with certain brief reflexions on his life (1659).

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