Davenant, William (1606–1668)

English poet and dramatist. His Siege of Rhodes (1656) is sometimes considered the first English opera. His plays include The Wits (1633) and Love and Honour (1634). He was poet laureate from 1638.

Earlier plays were The Tragedy of Albovine, King of the Lombards (1629), and The Cruel Brother (1630); Davenant also wrote the words for some masques designed by Inigo Jones, such as The Temple of Love (1634). An active supporter of Charles I, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London 1650–52 during the Civil War. In 1656 he evaded the ban on stage plays by producing the opera The Siege of Rhodes, with Mrs Coleman, the first female actor to appear on the English stage.

Davenant is important in British theatrical history as the holder of the patent under which Covent Garden still operates, granted to him by Charles II in 1663. With it he opened the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. He later built a new theatre in Dorset Garden, but died before it opened.