a seventeenth-century English poet and playwright. Very little is well established about Townshend's life. He was one of the Cavalier poets, and his masque Tempe Restored was performed on Shrove Tuesday of 1632 and had in its cast Queen Henrietta Maria and fourteen court ladies. In 1613, he became the librettist of Inigo Jones. He became a friend of Thomas Carew's, and wrote poetry for around five years. Townshend's poetry is remarkably formal and simultaneously free. His language is delicate, and his lines musical.
