John Dancer (dramatist)
John Dancer () was an Irish dramatist, connected with the Theatre Royal, Dublin. His works consist of several translations from Italian and French, original plays, and some miscellaneous stories and poems. Life. John Dancer lived for some time in Dublin, where two of his dramatic translations were performed with some success at the Theatre Royal. To the Duke of Ormonde and to the Duke's children, Thomas, Earl of Ossory, and Lady Mary Cavendish, he dedicated his books, and in 1673 he wrote that he owed to the Duke "all I have and all I am". It is  probable that he was in Ormonde's service while he was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Identity. Langbaine groundlessly credits him with the alternative name of Dauncy, and identifies him with one John Dauncy, who was a voluminous translator living at the same time. But John Dancer and John Dauncy were clearly two persons. Works. Dancer's two translated plays - the one from Corneille and the other from Quinault - are in rhyming couplets. The original "love verses" at the close of the translation of Tasso's "Amintas" are "writ in imitation of Mr. Cowley's 'Mistris'". Dancer's works are as  follows: Appraisal. According to Leslie Birkett Marshall, Dancer's original poems, appended to the translation of "Aminta", are "light, competent lyrics of inconstancy, farewells, resolutions and persuasions to love". Alastair Fowler included one of them ("The Variety") in his Oxford poetry anthology, "The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century English Verse", 1991.