Author, Soldier, Politician. England's first great literary innovator of the Elizabethan period. His play "Supposes" (1566), translated from Ariosto, was the earliest English prose comedy. Shakespeare used it for the subplot of "The Taming of the Shrew". Gascoigne's adaptation of "Jocasta" (1566), after Euripides, was the first Ancient Greek drama presented in Britain and possibly the first written in blank verse. As a poet he helped introduce the sonnet form to his country. Gascoigne was born in Bedfordshire, the son of Sir John Gascoigne. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, became a member of Gray's Inn in 1555, and served two terms in Parliament (1557 to 1559), representing Bedford. His later political ambitions were stymied by his reputation as "a notorious ruffian, a godless person". Disinherited by his father for his excesses, Gascoigne spent time in prison for killing a man in a duel, gambling, and debt, the last of which hounded him throughout his life. In 1568 he married a wealthy country widow but her estate was tied up in legal hassles and he hardly saw a penny from it. By 1572 he was serving as a soldier of fortune under William of Orange in Holland, where he was captured by the Spanish and returned to England in disgrace. Despite this calamity he was entrusted with a probable spying mission to Antwerp in 1575 and in return was allowed to present a copy of his writings to the Queen. His luck was finally starting to improve when he fell ill and died at the home of his friend, the poet George Whetstone, who wrote an elegy in his memory. Gascoigne was one of the first of the Elizabethan gentry to turn to literature as a tool of career advancement. He wrote plays for Gray's Inn and Oxford University and circulated verses (sometimes bawdy and slanderous) in manuscript, but most of his output dates from after 1572, when he tried to win a place at the Royal Court. His restless personality informed his writing, which is often marked by bold experimentation. Perhaps his most remarkable work is the tale of court intrigue, "The Adventures of Master F.J." (1573). Written in a plain, straightforward style, unique for the time, it is comparable only to the later prose narratives of Thomas Nashe and Thomas Deloney as 16th Century forerunners of modern English fiction. Gascoigne's other books include "A Hundred Sundrie Flowers" (1573), "Posies" (1575), "The Fruits of Wars" (1575), and "The Steel Glass" (1576).