Stephen Gosson (April 1554 – 13 February 1624) was an English satirist.
Gosson was baptized at St George's Church,Canterbury, on 17 April 1554. He enteredCorpus Christi College, Oxford in 1572, and on leaving the university in 1576 he went to London. In 1598,Francis Meres in hisPalladis Tamia mentions him with SirPhilip Sidney,Edmund Spenser,Abraham Fraunce, and others as the "best for pastorall", but no pastorals of Gosson's are extant. He is said to have been an actor.
After the publication of theSchoole of Abuse, Gosson retired to the country, where he acted as tutor to the sons of a gentleman (Plays Confuted. "To the Reader," 1582).Anthony à Wood places this earlier and assigns the termination of his tutorship indirectly to his animosity against the stage, which apparently wearied his patron of his company. Gosson took holy orders, was made lecturer of the parish church atStepney (1585), and was presented by QueenElizabeth I to the rectory ofGreat Wigborough,Essex, which he exchanged in 1600 forSt Botolph's, Bishopsgate.
Ananti-theatrical writer, Gosson by his own confession wrote plays, for he speaks ofCatiline's Conspiracies as a "Pig of mine own Sowe." Because of their moral standpoint, he excludes such plays as these from the general condemnation of stage plays in hisSchoole of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters and such like Caterpillars of the Commonwealth (1579).
Theeuphuistic style of this pamphlet and its ostentatious display of learning were in the taste of the time, and do not necessarily imply insincerity. Gosson justified his attack on the grounds of the disorder which the love ofmelodrama and of vulgar comedy was introducing into the social life of London.Edmund Spenser, in hisTeares of the Muses (1591), laments the same evils, if only in general terms. The tract was dedicated toSir Philip Sidney, who seems to have resented being connected with it. Edmund Spenser wrote toGabriel Harvey (16 October 1579) of the dedication that the author "was for hys labor scorned." Gosson dedicated, however, a second tract,The Ephemerides of Phialo ... and A Short Apologie of the Schoole of Abuse, to Sidney on 28 October 1579.
Gosson's attack on poets seems to have had a large share in inducing Sidney to write hisApologie for Poetrie, which probably dates from 1581. The publication of his polemic provoked many retorts, the most formidable of which wasThomas Lodge'sDefence of Playes (1580). The players themselves retaliated by reviving Gosson's own plays. Gosson replied to his various opponents in 1582 by hisPlayes Confuted in Five Actions, dedicated to SirFrancis Walsingham.Pleasant Quippes for Upstart New-fangled Gentlewomen (1595), a coarse satiric poem, is also ascribed to Gosson.
TheSchoole of Abuse andApologie were edited (1868) byEdward Arber in hisEnglish Reprints. Two poems of Gosson's are included.
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gosson, Stephen".Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.