Thomas d urfey biography of michael

​D'URFEY, THOMAS (1653–1723), poet and dramatist, generally known as ‘Tom Durfey,’ was born at Exeter in 1653.

Thomas D'Urfey () was a very popular poet/songwriter and a productive dramatist in the period between the closing years of the reign of Charles II.

Tom Durfey ( – 26 February ) was a prolific but somewhat scurrilous writer of burlesque songs, tales, satires, melodramas and farces.

The earliest known ancestor of Old MacDonald had a farm is A charming country life in Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to purge melancholy (–20); while the verses.

[X-Info] Dates and performances of Thomas D'Urfey's plays.

The song was probably written by Thomas d'Urfey for an opera in , before existing as a folk song in Britain, Ireland and North America for hundreds of years.

The date usually given, 1649, appears to be erroneous. He was of Huguenot descent, and maintained his protestantism to his last hour. His grandfather quitted La Rochelle before the siege ended in 1628, bringing his son with him, and settled in Exeter, where D'Urfey's father married Frances, a gentlewoman of Huntingdonshire, of the family of the Marmions, and thus connected with Shackerley Marmion the dramatist.

Tom's uncle was Honoré D'Urfé, author of the romance of ‘Astrée,’ so much admired by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a relationship which is proudly referred to in D'Urfey's own writings. He had been intended for the law, but says: ‘My good or ill stars ordained me to be a knight-errant in the fairy ​field of poetry.’ His first play was produced at the King's Theatre in 1676, and printed in 4