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Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft
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Portrait of Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft by Joachim von Sandrart, showing Hooft with light brown hair, a trimmed beard, and a white lace collar against a dark background.
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Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry
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4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
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Born:
March 16, 1581, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died:
May 21, 1647, The Hague (aged 66)
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Portrait of Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft by Joachim von Sandrart, showing Hooft with light brown hair, a trimmed beard, and a white lace collar against a dark background.
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, detail of an oil painting by Joachim von Sandrart, 1630–1700; in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft

Dutch author
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History

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (born March 16, 1581, Amsterdam, Netherlands—died May 21, 1647, The Hague) was a Dutch dramatist and poet, regarded by many as the most brilliant representative of Dutch Renaissance literature. Hooft’s prose style continued to provide a model into the 19th century.

During three years spent in France and Italy, Hooft came completely under the spell of the new learning and art; the impact of that experience is shown by the contrast between his letter in pre-Renaissance verse sent from Florence to his friends in Amsterdam and the first poetry he wrote after his return: love lyrics and the pastoral play Grandida (1605). That play is noted for the delicacy of its poetry and the simplicity of its moral—that individuals and nations can be at peace only when rulers and subjects alike shun ambition and seek only to serve.

Hooft’s personal and pragmatic ethic is more explicit in the Sticht-rijmen (1618 or 1619; “Edifying Verses”) and two Senecan tragedies. Geeraert van Velsen (1613) is a quasi-historical dramatization of the murder of Count Floris V, and Baeto (1617) portrays an Aeneas-type hero who goes into exile rather than cause civil war. Both plays reveal Hooft’s pacifist hatred of tyranny.

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4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
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Famous Poets and Poetic Form

In Nederlandse historiĂ«n (20 vol., published 1642, a continuation in 1654), the glory of the epic hero, the prince of Orange, is reflected in Hooft’s affection for the commoners who fought for the new democracy in Holland (now part of the Netherlands). Tacitus was his model for this monumental work, on which he spent 19 years chronicling only the period from 1555 to 1585.

The Muiderslot (the castle that he restored) became, after his second marriage in 1627, the centre of the Muiderkring, a circle of accomplished and cultured friends including Constantijn Huygens and Joost van den Vondel.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.