Lyly, John

1553/4 to 1606. English poet and playwright known for using euphuism, an especially intricate style of writing that utilizes a variety of literary devices (alliteration, antitheses, rhetorical questions, etc). Potentially influential on Shakespeare’s witty dialogue in plays such Much Ado about Nothing. Lyly was born in Canterbury and studied at Magdalen College. When he was turned down for a post-graduate fellowship, he left the university. Lyly became a very successful writer and was referred to a “noted wit” and produced a number of successful plays.  He was distraught after another, Edmund Tylney, was given the post as Master of the Revels, a post he had hoped to fill himself. He appealed to Queen Elizabeth I about this “negligence” but eventually, he fell from favor and trend and died in poverty during the reign of James I. 
A brief connection between Lyly and Stevens can be found in John Logan: The Collected Fiction (John Logan Literary Estate, 1991). In the foreword, Jerome Mazzaro makes the connection between them based on their use of poetry “as a vehicle for apprehending order through metaphor” (ix). The more obvious connection between Wallace Stevens and John Lyly is found through the use of euphuism, the style attributed to Lyly. Stevens’s writing can be described as euphuistic in that it contains a great deal of ornate, imbedded allusions, and literary devices. In order to more fully understand Stevens’s poetry, it is necessary to make connections to classical and more remote cultures and philosophies. 
==References:==
John Lyly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lyly
Euphuism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphuism