Richard Lovelace - Collegiate Career

Collegiate Career

Richard Lovelace attended Oxford University and he was praised by one of his contemporaries, Anthony Wood. for being "the most amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld; a person also of innate modesty, virtue and courtly deportment, which made him then, but especially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex" At the age of eighteen, during a three-week celebration at Oxford, he was granted the degree of Master of Arts. While at school, he tried to portray himself more as a social connoisseur rather than a scholar, continuing his image of being a Cavalier. Being a Cavalier poet, Lovelace wrote to praise a friend or fellow poet, to give advice in grief or love, to define a relationship, to articulate the precise amount of attention a man owes a woman, to celebrate beauty, and to persuade to love. Lovelace wrote a comedy, The Scholars, and a tragedy titled The Soldiers, while at Oxford. He then left for Cambridge University for a few months where he met Lord Goring, who led him into political trouble.