Regarded as a minor poet and translator, Richard Lynche has received almost no critical attention, yet his sonnet sequence is one of only half a dozen Elizabethan sonnet sequences that were originally printed accompanied by a long narrative poem. Diella and The Love of Dom Diego and Ginevra (1596) therefore must be considered in the context of Samuel Daniel's Delia and The Complaint of Rosamond (1592), Thomas Lodge's Phillis and The Complaint of Elstred (1593), Giles Fletcher the Elder's Licia and Richard III (1593), Edmund Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595), and William Shakespeare's Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint (1609).

Nothing is known of Lynche other than his name, and even that is sometimes spelled Linche. It is tempting to believe that a sonnet in Richard Barnfield's Poems in Divers Humors (1598) dedicated "to his friend Master R. L." might be addressed to Lynche, but there is no evidence to support such an identification. Unfortunately, no...