JOHN

See also:

• WILSON, ALEXANDER (1766-1813)
• WILSON, HENRY (1812–1875)
• WILSON, HORACE HAYMAN (1786–1860)
• WILSON, JAMES (1742—1798)
• WILSON, JAMES (1835— )
• WILSON, JAMES HARRISON (1837– )
• JOHN WILSON (1627-1696)
• WILSON, JOHN (178 1854)
• WILSON, ROBERT (d. 1600)
• WILSON, SIR DANIEL (1816–1892)
• WILSON, SIR ROBERT THOMAS (1777—1849)
• WILSON, SIR WILLIAM JAMES ERASMUS
• WILSON, THOMAS (1663-1755)
• WILSON, THOMAS (c. 1525-1581)
• WILSON, WOODROW (1856— )

WILSON (1627-1696)  , English playwright, son of Aaron Wilson, a royalist divine, was born in London in 1627 . He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1644, and entered Lincoln's Inn two years later, being called to the bar in 1649 . His unswerving support of the royal pretensions recommended him to James, duke of York, through whose influence he became Recorder of Londonderry about 1681 . His Discourse of Monarchy (1684), a tract in favour of the succession of the duke of York, was followed (1685) by a " Pindarique " on his coronation . In 1688 he wrote Jus regium Coronae, a learned defence of James's action in dispensing with the penal statutes . He died in obscurity, due perhaps to his political opinions, in 1696 . Wilson was the author of four plays, showing a vigorous and learned wit, and a power of character-drawing that place him rather among the followers of Ben Jonson than with the Restoration dramatists . The Cheats (written in 1662, printed 1664, 1671, &c.) was played with great success in 1663 . John Lacy found one of his best parts in Scruple, a caricature of a Presbyterian minister of accommodating morality . Andronicus Comnenius (1664), a blank verse tragedy, is based on the story of Andronicus Comnenus as told by Peter Heylin in his Cosmography . It contains a scene between the usurper and the widow of his victim Alexius which follows very closely Shakespeare's treatment of a parallel situation in Richard III . The Projectors (1665), a prose comedy of London life, is, like Moliere's L'Avare, founded on the Aulularia of Plautus, but there is no evidence that Wilson was acquainted with the French play .

Belphegor, or the

Marriage of the Devil; a Tragi-comedy (169o), treats of a theme familiar to Elizabethan drama, but Wilson took the subject from the Belphegor attributed to Machiavelli, and alludes also to Straparola's version in the Notii . He also translated into English Erasmus's Encomium Moriae (1668) . See The Dramatic Works of John Wilson, edited with introduction and notes by James Maidment and W . H . Logan in 1874 for the " Dramatists of the Restoration " series .