A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Munday, Anthony

Munday, Anthony (1553-1633). -- Dramatist, poet, and pamphleteer, s. of a draper in London, appears to have had a somewhat chequered career. He went to Rome in 1578, and pub. The Englyshe Romayne Life, in which he gives descriptions of rites and other matters fitted to excite Protestant feeling; and he appears to have acted practically as a spy upon Roman Catholics. He had a hand in 18 plays, of which four only are extant, including two on Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (Robin Hood) (1598), and one on the Life of Sir John Oldcastle. He was ridiculed by Ben Jonson in The Case is Altered. He was also a ballad-writer, but nothing of his in this kind survives, unless Beauty sat bathing in a Spring be correctly attributed to him. He also wrote city pageants, and translated popular romances, including Palladino of England, and Amadis of Gaule. He was made by Stow the antiquary (q.v.) his literary executor, and pub. his Survey of London (1618).