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Homer was A Greek poet, to whom are attributed the great epics, the Iliad, the story of the siege of Troy , and the Odyssey, the tale of Ulyssess wanderings. The place of his birth is doubtful, probably a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor , and his date, once put as far back as 1200 BC, from the style of the poems attributed to him is now thought to be much later. Arguments have long raged over whether his works are in fact by the same hand, or have their origins in the lays of Homer and his followers (Homeridae), and there seems little doubt that the works were originally based on current ballads which were much modified and extended. Of the true Homer, nothing is positively known. The so-called Homeric hymns are certainly of a later age. Virgil Virgil (70 B.C-19 B.C) , regarded as the greatest Roman poet, known for his epic, the Aeneid (written about 29 B.C.E), which had taken its literary model from Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey . Virgil was born on October 15, 70 B.C.E., in a small village near Mantua in Northern Italy . Publius Vergilius Maro, or Virgil has influenced Western literature for two millennia, but little is known about the man himself. His father was a prosperous landowner, described variously as a potter and a courier, who could afford thorough education for the future poet. Virgil attended school at Cremona and Milan , and then went to Rome , where he studied mathematics, medicine and rhetoric, and completed his studies in Naples . He entered literary circles as an Alexandrian, the name given to a group of poets who sought inspiration in the sophisticated work of third-century Greek poets also known as Alexandrians. After the battle of Philippi in 42 B.C. Virgils property was confiscated for veterans. According to some sources it was afterwards restored at the command of Octavian (later styled Augustus). In the following years Virgil spent most of his time in Campania and Sicily , but he had also a house at Rome . Between 42 and 37 B.C.E. Virgil composed pastoral poems known as Ecologues (rustic poems and selections), spent years on the Georgics (literally, pertaining to agriculture), a didactic work on farming, a townsmans view of the country. Augustus Caesar pressed Virgil to write of the glory of Rome under his sway. Thus the remaining time of his life, from 30 to 19 B.C., Virgil devoted to the composition of The Aeneid , the national epic of Rome , to glory the Empire. Although ambitious, Virgil was never really happy about the task; it was like performing a religious and political duty. Virgil accompanied the Emperor to Megara and then to Italy . The journey turned out to be fatal and the poet died in 19 B.C of a fever in contracted on his visit to Greece . It is said that the poet had instructed his executor Varius to destroy The Aeneid , but Augustus ordered Varius to ignore this request, and the poem was published. Virgil was buried near Naples but there are doubts as to the authenticity of the so-called Tomb of Virgil in the area. Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is generally considered the greatest of Italian poets, and also one of the greatest poets that Western civilization has produced. His reputation is primarily based upon his magnum opus The Divine Comedy . He was active in politics during the early part of his life and took an active interest in church reform. Dante was born in Florence , Italy , in 1265. Heir of a poor but noble family, he was one of the seven elected officials in charge of the government of Florence . Civil war was common in Florence at the time and the issues were further complicated by the question of Papal influence. In 1300, Dante along with his fellow magistrates confirmed anti-papal measures. When in 1302, the French prince acting under orders from the Pope captured power in Florence , Dante was sentenced on charges of corruption and opposition to the Church and exiled from Florence on pain of execution by burning if he ever returned. He spent the rest of his life in exile, pining for his native city. He withdrew from active politics to a large extent and concentrated on his literary creations. His first book was the Vita Nuova ( The New Life ), published in 1294, in which he relates how he fell in love with a young girl Beatrice. Though Beatrice and Dante both married other people, Dantes spiritual love for her persists and she functions as his chief Muse and inspiration. In 1304 or shortly thereafter he published De Vulgari Eloquentia, an argument for writing poems and other works in the language that people speak (in his case, Italian) rather than in Latin. At the same time he wrote Il Convivio . ( The Banquet ), in which he discusses grammar, and styles of poetry. In 1313 he published De Monarchia ( On Monarchy ) in which he argued that the authority of a secular prince is not derived from the authority of the church, and is not given him by the pope, but comes directly from God. We do not know exactly when Dante began work on Divina Commedia .He had been moving about from court to court after his exile and 1n 1317 had settled at Ravenna , where he completed his great work. Extant correspondence shows that the first and second parts of The Divine Comedy , the Inferno and the Purgatario were generally known around 1319. The last part, the Paradiso was completed only in 1321. Dante died at Ravenna on 14 September 1321 and the last thirteen Cantos of the Paradiso were published posthumously. The plot of The Divine Comedy is straightforward. It begins with Dante lost and walking in a Dark Wood. The poet Virgil then appears as his Guide, sent by the Lady Beatrice to take him through the depths of Hell and up the slopes of Purgatory, to meet her in the country of the Blessed. Dante then follows Virgil, who conducts him through the circles of Hell, where various kinds of evil deeds are punished. They find a small tunnel or pathway cut through the rock that leads them finally out on the other side of the earth, directly opposite Jerusalem , at the foot of Mount Purgatory , which is surrounded by cornices on which the seven basic kinds of inclination to sin are purged and corrected. They climb the mount and at its summit they find the earthly Paradise , the Eden from which our first parents were expelled. There Beatrice meets Dante, and she conducts him upward through the planetary spheres. Finally, he soars beyond the planets, beyond the stars, and beholds the whole company of Heaven assembled together, and is given a vision of the glory of God Himself. The poem is an allegory of human life and literally sums up the intellectual and theological knowledge of the Middle AgesFrancois Rabelais Francois Rabelais （ 1490-1553 ） French humanist and writer who sought to free medieval life of the pretence and superstition ecclesiastical life. There are some references to gardens in his writings, as discussed by Gothein in her sections on Boccaccio (Chapter 6) and French renaissance gardens (Chapter 9). In the latter she writes that in the park farther on and near the castle, there was no lack of baths, animal cages, hippodrome, theatre, open and enclosed places for tennis, targets for archery - in fact, all the things that could be found in the parks of that day, or that a learned student of past history could supply. Rabelais does not say much about the real laying-out of the individual gardens ; and any special feature is only useful to him in so far as it serves the ends and suits the style of his general scheme of ideal education. Three of Rabelais books were translated into English. Rabelaisian is used as an adjective to mean marked by exuberant imagination, language and coarse humour. He drew ideas from Erasmus. William Shakespeare William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born to John Shakespeare and mother Mary Arden some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon . There is no record of his birth, but his baptism was recorded by the church, thus his birthday is assumed to be the 23 of April. His father was a prominent and prosperous alderman in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon , and was later granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds . All that is known of Shakespeares youth is that he presumably attended the Stratford Grammar School , and did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge . The next record we have of him is his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582. The next year she bore a daughter for him, Susanna, followed by the twins Judith and Hamnet two years later. Seven years later Shakespeare was recognized as an actor, poet, and playwright, when a rival playwright, Robert Greene, referred to him as an upstart crow in A Groatsworth of Wit. A few years later he joined up with one of the most successful acting troupes in London : The Lord Chamberlains Men. When, in 1599, the troupe lost the lease of the theatre where they performed (appropriately called The Theatre), they were wealthy enough to build their own theatre across the Thames, south of London, which they called The Globe. The new theatre opened in July of 1599, built from the timbers of The Theatre, with the motto Totus mundus agit histrionem (A whole world of players). When James I came to the throne (1603) the troupe was designated by the new king as the Kings Men (or Kings Company). The Letters Patent of the company specifically charged Shakespeare and eight others freely to use and exercise the art and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Interludes, Morals, Pastorals, stage plays . as well for recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure. Shakespeare entertained the King and the people for another ten years until June 19, 1613 , when a canon fired from the roof of the theatre for a gala performance of Henry VIII set fire to the thatch roof and burned the theatre to the ground. The audience ignored the smoke from the roof at first, being to absorbed in the play, until the flames caught the walls and the fabric of the curtains. Amazingly there were no casualties, and the next spring the company had the theatre new builded in a far fairer manner than before. Although Shakespeare invested in the rebuilding, he retired from the stage to the Great House of New Place in Statford that he had purchased in 1597, and some considerable land holdings ,where he continued to write until his death in 1616 on the day of his 52nd birthday. Tragedies Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Histories King Henry IV Part 1 King Henry IV Part 2 King Henry V King Henry VI Part 1 King Henry VI Part 2 King Henry VI Part 3 King Henry VIII King John Richard II Richard III Comedies Alls Well That Ends Well As You Like It Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Loves Labours Lost Measure for Measure Merchant of Venice Merry Wives of Windsor Midsummer Nights Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre Taming of the Shrew Tempest Troilus and Cressida Twelfth Night Two Gentlemen of Verona Winters Tale Poetry A Lovers Complaint Sonnets 1-30 Sonnets 121-154 Sonnets 31-60 Sonnets 61-90 Sonnets 91-120 The Passionate Pilgrim The Phoenix and the Turtle The Rape of Lucrece Venus and Adonis John Milton John Milton (1608-1674) , English poet, famous for his Epic work Paradise Lost (1667). Milton was born in London on December 9, 1609 as the son of a wealthy notary. He was educated at St. Paul s School. Milton received a Masters degree from Cambridge University in 1632. In 1638, he undertook a European tour where he met many of the major thinkers of the day, especially in Italy . On his return to England , Milton became a Puritan, and an opponent of the Catholics and of the Stuarts. He was also an ardent polemicist, a follower of Cromwell, and the latters foreign language secretary. In 1652 he became completely blind. His first wife died in 1652 and he remarried in 1656. After the restoration of the Stuarts he suffered considerable persecution. He withdrew from active participation in politics and concentrated on his poetry. Paradise Lost was published in 1667, followed by Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in 1671. Among other popular works by Milton are the elegy Lycidas, Comus , a masque, and the companion pieces LAllegro and Il Penseroso. Milton died in London on November 12, 1674 . Molire M olire（1622-1673） , whose real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin, composed 12 of the most durable and penetratingly satirical full-length comedies of all time, some in rhyming verse, some in prose, as well as six shorter farces and comedies. As a comic dramatist he ranks with such other distinctive masters of the genre as Aristophanes, Plautus, and George Bernard Shaw. He was also the leading French comic actor, stage director, and dramatic theoretician of the 17th century. In a theatrical period, the early baroque, dominated by the formal neoclassical tragedies of Mairet, Rotrou, du Ryer, Pierre and Thomas Corneille, and Racine, Molire affirmed the potency of comedy as a serious, flexible art form. He also wrote a number of pastorals and other indoor and outdoor divertissements, such as his popular comedy-ballets, that depended on a formidable array of stage machinery (mostly imported from Italy ) capable of providing swift and startling changes of sumptuous scenic effects. He was born on Jan. 15, 1622 , to Marie and Jean Poquelin; his father was a Parisian furniture merchant and upholsterer to the king. Jean Baptiste received his early education at the College de Clermont, a Jesuit school, becoming a promising scholar of Latin and Greek. Although he proceeded to study law and was awarded his law degree in 1642, he turned away from both the legal profession and his fathers business. Instead, he incorporated (1643) an acting troupe, the Illustre Theatre, in collaboration with the Bejart family, probably because he had fallen in love with their oldest daughter, Madeleine Bejart, who became his mistress. At roughly the same time he also acquired the pseudonym Molire. With this company, Molire played an unsuccessful season in Paris and went bankrupt, then left to tour the provinces, primarily in southern and southwestern France , from about 1646 to 1658. During these 12 years he polished his skills as actor, director, administrator, and playwright. In 1658 the troupe returned to Paris and played before Louis XIV. The kings brother became Molires patron; later Molire and his colleagues were appointed official providers of entertainment to the Sun King himself. I n the following 24 years, starting with The Precious Maidens Ridiculed (1659), which established him as the most popular comic playwright of the day, and ending with The Imaginary Invalid (1673), Molire advanced from being a gifted adapter of Italian-derived sketches and a showman who put on extravaganzas to a writer whose best plays had the lasting impact of tragedies. Unwittingly, he made many enemies. The clergy mistakenly believed that certain of his plays were attacks on the church. Other playwrights resented his continual experiments with comic forms (as in The School for Wives ) and with verse (as in Amphitryon ). Famous tragedians such as Montfleury and Hauteroche envied his success with the public and the royal protection he enjoyed. Molire responded by incorporating some of his detractors into his comedies as buffoons and ineffectuals. I n 1662 he married Armande Bjart, a 19-year-old actress who was either Madeleines sister or (as some of the playwrights rivals claimed) her daughter by Molire. They had one child, Esprit-Madeleine, born in 1665. The marriage led to more than one separation and reconciliation between the playwright and his wife, who was 21 years his junior. I n the late 1660s, Molire developed a lung ailment from which he never recovered, although he continued to write, act, direct, and manage his troupe as energetically as before. He finally collapsed on Feb. 17, 1673 , after the fourth performance of The Imaginary Invalid, and died at home that evening. Four days later, on the night of February 21, he was interred in Saint Joseph s Cemetery. Church leaders refused to officiate or to grant his body a formal burial. Seven years later the king united Molires company with one of its competitors; since that time the French national theater, the Comdie Francaise, has been known as the House of Molire. T he strongest influence on Molires theater came from the Italian commedia dellarte troupes - with their stock characters and situations - that he encountered during his travels. This influence was enhanced by Molires sharing of the Thatre du Petit-Bourbon in Paris with the Italian Players, led by the celebrated Scaramouche. In his longer comedies, Molire immensely refined the commedia themes and techniques, setting most of his plots in and around Paris and raising neoclassical French comedy to a plane of artistry and inventiveness never attained before or since. He applied the alexandrine , or rhymed hexameter line - borrowed from contemporary tragedies, many of which he had staged - to a relaxed dialogue that imitated conversational speech. He also created a gallery of incisive portraits: Tartuffe the religious hypocrite, and Orgon, his dupe; Jourdain the social climber; Don Juan the rebel and libertine; cuckolds such as Arnolphe, Dandin, and Amphitryon; Alceste the stony idealist; Harpagon the miser; Scapin the trickster; Argan the hypochondriac; Philaminte the pretentiously cultured lady; and many more. M olires principal short plays (in one or two acts) are: The Jealous Husband (1645?), The Flying Docto