Thomas Tomkis

Who was Thomas Tomkis?

Thomas Tomkis was an English playwright of the late Elizabethan and the Jacobean eras, and arguably one of the more cryptic figures of English Renaissance drama.

Tomkis was the son of a Staffordshire clergyman. He matriculated in Trinity College, Cambridge in 1597. Tomkis earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1600, and his Master of Arts degree in 1604; he became a minor fellow of Trinity College in 1602, and a major fellow in 1604. He remained at the college until 1610, when he moved to Wolverhampton and set up a successful legal practice. His college called him back five years later, to prepare an entertainment of King James I.

Tomkis is credited with two academic plays of the early seventeenth century: Lingua and Albumazar. He is also regarded as a likely author of Pathomachia. Tomkis represented an important break in the academic drama of the two universities: he wrote in English rather than the traditional Latin. The accessibility of his works facilitated their popularity: Lingua was printed in six editions between 1607 and 1657, while Albumazar went through five editions between 1615 and 1668.