{\b John Lyly}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: (approx.) 1554

{\b Date of Death}.: November 1606

{\b Works}.

English dramatist and prose writer. John Lily's work gave rise to a particular 
Elizabethan style of writing, known as 'euphuism' and characterised - like 
Lyly's own work - by a high degree of elegance and artifice. His two most 
influential works in this regard were both prose romances: Euphues. The 
Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and his England (1580). He also wrote a 
number of plays including Campaspe (1583-84), Sapho and Phao(1583-84), 
Gallathea (1585), Endminion (1588), Midas (1590), Love's Metamorphosis (1590), 
Mother Bombie (1590), The Woman in the Moon (1595). Lyly's importance lies 
chiefly in his fine writing: on the one hand, his prose style left a lasting 
effect on the English language per se, on the other, his handling of prose 
dialogue is significant within the specific development of the English comedy.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Song:To the Spring', 'Cupid and My Campaspe Played'.

{\b General Comment}.

Lyly was educated first at King's School, Cambridge and then at Magdalen 
College, Oxford. He went to London at some time around 1576 and first achieved 
fame for his two prose romances in 1578. These novels at once ensured Lyly's 
own fashionable status throughout the 1580's and brought to the novel form a 
new concern with form.

After 1580 Lyly gave up novel writing and turned instead to the theatre and to 
politics. As well as writing a good number of plays, Lyly took control of the 
Blackfriars Theatre, where his plays were to be produced in 1583, and, in 
1598, became MP for Hindon, Aylesbury and Appleby (a post he was to hold until 
1601).

However, Lyly's fashionable comedies, most of which were acted, at the time, 
by child theatre groups and were based upon mythological motifs, having 
quickly passed into fashion, soon passed out of fashion with equal rapidity. 
Lyly died a pauper in 1606.