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| Edward Sharpham | |
|---|---|
| Name | Edward Sharpham |
| Birth date | c. 1576 |
| Death date | 1608 |
| Occupation | Playwright, Lawyer |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | English |
| Notable works | The Fleire, Cupid's Whirligig |
Edward Sharpham was an English dramatist and legal practitioner active during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods. He is best known for two extant plays and a single pamphlet, which situate him among minor figures of the English Renaissance theatre alongside contemporaries from the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Children of Paul's. His life intersects with institutions of law and courtly patronage in London and with the literary milieu of Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, and John Marston.
Sharpham was born around 1576 into a family with connections to Devon and Warwickshire, and he was raised during the reign of Elizabeth I of England amid political events such as the Spanish Armada and the cultural ferment of the English Renaissance. Records associate his family with the landed gentry and with legal circles in London and the Middle Temple, which provided social access to networks around Court of King James I after 1603. Like other provincial figures who gravitated to the capital—such as Ben Jonson and Thomas Heywood—Sharpham’s background reflected the mobility of aspiring writers and lawyers within the courts of patronage exemplified by households like that of the Earl of Essex and families associated with Oxford and Cambridge patronage.
Sharpham undertook legal training that connected him to the Middle Temple and the Inns of Court culture that produced numerous dramatists including Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. His legal practice in London overlapped with involvement in pamphleteering and dramatics, a common dual career among early modern writers such as Nathaniel Bacon (judge and writer) and Thomas Kyd. During the reign of James I, Sharpham experienced confinement in the Fleet Prison on at least one occasion, a fate shared by writers and debtors like Ben Jonson and Thomas Nashe. Civic and legal disputes of the period—illustrated by cases in the Court of Star Chamber and litigation among gentry families like the Suffolk and Neville houses—provide context for the period’s frequent incarcerations and forlines between legal strife and literary production.
Sharpham’s surviving corpus is small but notable. His anonymous pamphlet, published in the vein of contemporary tracts such as those by Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe, participates in the pamphlet culture centered in Stationers' Company distribution networks. Two plays are securely attributed to him: The Fleire and Cupid's Whirligig, both staged in the years surrounding the accession of James I of England and printed for the London market alongside works by Ben Jonson and the companies like the Children of the Chapel and the King's Men. The Fleire exhibits affinities with city comedy and satire found in the plays of Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, while Cupid's Whirligig shows links to moralistic interludes and the masques favored at the Jacobean court by figures such as Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson.
Sharpham’s dramas reflect the hybrid influences of Elizabethan city comedy, Jacobean satire, and the didactic interlude tradition exemplified by John Lyly and Philip Sidney. His characters and plots draw on urban types common to the repertoire of the Blackfriars Theatre and the Globe Theatre—merchant figures, bawds, and courtly suitors—mirroring treatments in the works of Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene. The moral anxieties and social mobility in his plays resonate with concerns addressed in pamphlets by Thomas Deloney and the satirical personae cultivated by John Marston and Ben Jonson, while his occasional use of song and masque elements aligns him with courtly entertainments associated with Anne of Denmark and the Jacobean masque tradition.
Contemporaries seem to have regarded Sharpham as a competent if minor practitioner within the competitive theatrical world of London that produced figures like William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. His works were preserved through quartos and references in stationers’ records similar to those that document the oeuvres of Thomas Middleton and Anthony Munday. Later critics and theatre historians place Sharpham within studies of secondary Elizabethan dramatists who illuminate the operations of companies such as the Children of the Revels and venues including the Red Bull Theatre. Modern scholarship on the period—represented in surveys of English Renaissance theatre and catalogues of the Early English Books Online corpus—draws on Sharpham’s plays to map genre interactions between city comedy, court masque, and pamphlet-satire, ensuring his continued interest for specialists in Jacobean literature and the history of the theatre.
Category:English dramatists Category:Jacobean dramatists