Stephen Hawes

English poet and courtier

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History

Stephen Hawes (flourished 1502–21) was a poet and courtier who served King Henry VII of England and was a follower of the devotional poet John Lydgate.

Hawes’s main work is a long allegorical poem, The Passetyme of Pleasure, the chief theme of which is the education and pilgrimage through life of the knight Graunde Amoure. Completed in 1506, it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509. Another allegory by Hawes, The Example of Vertu, is simpler and shorter. Though he shows at times a finer quality of mind than Lydgate, Hawes is not even Lydgate’s equal in technical accomplishment, and little of his prolix, repetitious verse is memorable.

Little is known of Hawes’s life beyond the facts that he was educated at the University of Oxford, traveled in England, Scotland, and France, and in 1502 was groom of the chamber to Henry VII. He was alive in 1521, but his date of death is unknown.