Robert Tofte | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1562 |
| Died | January 1620 (age 57) Holborn, London, England |
| Resting place | St Andrew, Holborn |
| Occupation | translator and poet |
| Language | Early Modern English |
| Nationality | English |
| Alma mater | Oxford University |
| Period | Elizabethan era–Jacobean era |
| Genre | verse |
| Subject | love, marriage, jealousy, The Woman Question |
Robert Tofte (bap. 1562 – d. Jan. 1620) was an English translator and poet.[1] He is known for his translations of Ariosto's Satires and his sonnet sequences Alba, The Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover (1598) and Laura, The Toyes of a Traveller: Or, The Feast of Fancie (1597). He also authored a partial translation of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and was possibly responsible for the popular and anonymous Batchelar's Banquet (1603) as well. Tofte is perhaps most famous for his incidental reference to Love's Labour's Lost in Alba, the first mention of that Shakespeare play in print.