Andreas Gryphius

Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664), German poet and dramatist, one of the leading figures in German Baroque literature. Originally surnamed Grief, he was born in Glogau (now Głogow, Poland) and studied and taught at the University of Leiden. His poetry is marked by morbidness and indignation, reflecting the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War. Many poems in the collection Kirchhofsgedanken (Thoughts of a Cemetery, 1656) reveal his concern at the prevalence of vanity and preoccupation with earthly values.

Unlike his verse, Gryphius's plays have much charm and humour; perhaps best known is Peter Squentz (1663), based on the farcical episode of Pyramus and Thisbe in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Among his other plays are Die geliebte Dornrose (The Thorny Rose, 1660), a pastoral written in his native Silesian dialect, and the satirical play Horribilicrifax (1663). His tragedies, in the bombastic style of the Roman poet Seneca and the Dutch playwright Joost van den Vondel, include Leo Armenius (1646); Carolus Stuardus (1649), on Charles I of England; and Cardenio und Celinde (1657).