Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Goddard, William (fl.1615)
GODDARD, WILLIAM (fl. 1615), satirist, probably belonged to the Middle Temple. He lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Holland, where he seems to have been employed in a civil capacity. In July 1634 one William Goddard, ‘doctor of physic of Padua,’ was incorporated in the same degree at Oxford, but his identity with the satirist seems doubtful. Goddard's volumes are very rare. His satire is gross, and is chiefly directed against women. The British Museum Library possesses only one of his volumes, that entitled ‘A Satirycall Dialogue, or a shaplye invective conference between Allexander the Great and that truelye woman-hater Diogynes. … Imprinted in the Low countryes for all such gentlewomen as are not altogeather Idle nor yet well occupyed’ [Dort? 1615?]. Some lines seem to refer to the burning of Marston's satires. Mr. Collier suggested that this volume might be identical with ‘The batynge of Dyogenes,’ licensed for printing to Henry Chettle 27 Sept. 1591 (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 141). In the library of Worcester College, Oxford, and at Bridgwater House, are copies of Goddard's ‘A Neaste of Waspes latelie found out and discovered in the Law [Low] Countreys yealding as sweete hony as some of our English bees. At Dort … 1615.’ A third work, from which Dr. Bliss prints extracts in his edition of Wood's ‘Fasti’ (i. 476–8), is ‘A Mastif Whelp, with other ruff-Island-lik Currs fetcht from amongst the Antipedes. Which bite and barke at the fantasticall humorists and abusers of the time. … Imprinted amongst the Antipedes, and are to bee sould where they are to be bought,’ 4to, n.d. This was published after 1598, for Bastard's ‘Chrestoleros,’ 1598, is one of the books specially abused. A copy is in the Bodleian Library. Bibliographers have wrongly assumed that ‘Dogs from the Antipodes’—the sub-title of the ‘Mastif Whelp’—is the title of another of Goddard's volumes. Dr. Furnivall printed in 1878 Goddard's three known books, with a view to republishing, but they have not yet been reissued.
[Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 476; Collier's Bibl. Cat. i. 313.]