Nathaniel Richards

Nathanael Richards (fl. 1630–1654) was an English dramatist and poet, perhaps from Kent. He is not Nathaniel Richards (1611–1660), a cleric.

Works
Richards issued in 1630 The Celestiall Publican, a religious poem. At the end are epitaphs on James I, Sir Francis Carew, and others, with an anagram on Sir Julius Cæsar and verses on the author's friend, Sir Henry Hart, K.B. These poems were reprinted, with some additions, in 1641, as Poems Sacred and Satyricall, London, for H. Blunden, 1641.

Richards's major work was the tragedy Messallina (1640), a historical play based on Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the younger, and the sixth satire of Juvenal. There are anachronisms, such as firearms, and a hundred vestal virgins are gratuitously introduced. The work is dedicated to John Cary, Viscount Rochford, and there are complimentary verses by Robert Davenport, Thomas Jordan, Thomas Rawlins, and others. It is one of the few plays of the period that have a cast list: it includes William Cartwright senior (Claudius), John Robinson (Saufellus), Christopher Goad (Silius), John Barret (Messalina), and Thomas Jordan (Lepida).

Some verses by Richards were prefixed to Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women.


 * Attribution