View source for William Webbe

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'''William Webbe''' ([[floruit|fl.]] 1568–1591)<ref>"Webbe, William"  A Dictionary of Writers and their Works. Ed. Michael Cox. Oxford University Press, 2001.</ref> was an English critic and translator. He attended [[Trinity College, Cambridge]],<ref>{{acad|id=WB569W|name=Webbe, William}}</ref> and was a tutor for distinguished families, including the two sons of Edward Sulyard of Flemyngs, [[Essex]], and later the children of [[Henry Grey, 1st Baron Grey of Groby|Henry Grey]] of [[Pirgo]], also in Essex.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Webbe, William|volume=28|page=455}}</ref>

Webbe wrote a ''[[Discourse of English Poetrie]]'' (1586), dedicated to Sulyard, in which he discusses [[Prosody (linguistics)|prosody]] and reviews English poetry up to his own day. He argued that the dearth of good English poetry since [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]]'s day was not due to lack of poetic ability, or to the poverty of the language, but to the want of a proper system of prosody. He decried rhyming verse, showed enthusiasm for [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]]'s ''[[The Shepheardes Calender]]'', and urged the adoption of [[hexameter]]s and [[sapphic stanza|sapphics]] for English verse<ref name="EB1911"/>

He also translated [[Virgil]]'s first two ''[[Eclogues]].'' A letter by Webbe to [[Robert Wilmot (playwright)|Robert Wilmot]] ([[fl.]] 1568–1608) is prepended to the 1591 edition of Wilmot's play [[Tancred and Gismund|''Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund'']].<ref>Wilmot, Robert. ''The Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund''. London, 1591.</ref> The letter, praising Wilmot for having decided to publish the tragedy, acts as a prefacing endorsement of the play.

==Notes==
<references />

==References==
*{{A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature}}

==External links==
*[https://archive.org/details/adiscourseengli00webbgoog ''A Discourse of English poetrie''] at Internet Archive.
*{{Wikiquote-inline}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Webbe, William}}
[[Category:English translators]]
[[Category:16th-century births]]
[[Category:16th-century English writers]]
[[Category:16th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:16th-century English educators]]
[[Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:1591 deaths]]
[[Category:Translators of Virgil]]