Thomas Drue

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Thomas Drue (also Drewe) (c. 1586–1627) was an English Protestant playwright. He wrote The Life of the Duchess of Suffolk.

There is some dispute about his other works. The Bloody Banquet (1620) is sometimes credited to him, but many scholars attribute it to Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton. An unpublished play, The Woman's Mistake, is listed in the Stationers’ Registers (Sept. 9, 1653) as by Robert Davenport and Drue. He may also be the Thomas Drewe who translated and published Daniel Ben Alexander in 1621.

Drue is also credited with a historical drama, The Life of the Dvtches of Svffolke (The Life of the Duchesses of Suffolk), published in 1631 (4to). It appeared anonymously, but the Stationers’ Registers (Nov. 13, 1629) and Sir Henry Herbert’s Office-book attribute it to Drue, and later writers repeated the misattribution to Thomas Heywood.

The play appeared during a time when James I was suppressing criticism of his foreign policy, especially the plan to marry Charles I to Maria Anna of Spain. It was staged by the Palsgrave's Men, a theatre troupe sponsored by Frederick of the Palatinate.

Drawing on the exile of Catherine Willoughby (a Marian exile) and expanding on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the drama links that story to Elizabeth of Bohemia, James I’s daughter, who had been exiled from the Palatinate after the Protestant cause’s defeat at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620.