JOHN

See also:

• WEEVER
• JOHN WEEVER (1576-1632)

WEEVER (1576-1632)  , English poet and antiquary, a native of Lancashire, was born in 1576 . He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge; where he resided for about four years from 1594, but he took no degree . In 1599 he published Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, containing a sonnet on Shakespeare, and epigrams on Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, William Warner and Christopher Middleton, all of which are valuable to the literary historian . In 16o1 he published The Mirror of Martyrs or The Life and Death of . . . Sir John Oldcastie, which he calls in his preface the " first trew Oldcastle," perhaps on account of the fact that Shakespeare's Falstaff first appeared as Sir John Oldcastle . In the fourth stanza of this long poem, in which Sir John is his own panegyrist, occurs a reminiscence of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which serves to fix the date of the play . After travelling in France, the Low Countries and Italy, Weever settled in Clerkenwell, and made friends among the chief antiquaries of his time . The result of extensive travels in his own country appeared in Ancient Futter all Monuments (1631), now valuable on account of the later obliteration of the inscriptions . The Huth Library contains a unique copy of a thumb-book Agnus Dei (i6o6), containing a history of Christ . The Mirror of Martyrs has been reprinted for the Roxburghe Club (1872) .