Shadwell, Thomas (c. 1642–1692)

English dramatist and poet. His plays include Epsom-Wells (1672) and Bury-Fair (1689). He was involved in a violent feud with the poet Dryden, whom he attacked in The Medal of John Bayes (1682) (believed to be his work). Shadwell became poet laureate in 1689.

Early life and works Shadwell was born in Weeting, Norfolk, and studied at Cambridge. His first play, The Sullen Lovers (based on the French dramatist Molière's Les Fâcheux), was produced in 1668. After other adaptations, he wrote Epsom-Wells, The Squire of Alsatia (1688), and Bury-Fair. Other comedies, based on Ben Jonson's ‘comedy of humours’ (see humours, theory of), are Royal Shepherdess (1669), The Humorists (1671), and The Miser (1672).

Quarrel with Dryden Shadwell was offended by Dryden's attack on the middle-class Whigs in Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Medal (1682), and assailed him in The Medal of John Bayes. Dryden retaliated the by ridiculing him in 1682 in MacFlecknoe (largely written earlier) and the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, in which Shadwell figures as ‘Og’.