Anthony, an English dramatist of the age of Shakspeare, was born in 1553. After having been successively a stage-player and an apprentice, he visited Italy, and was a student, or, as he himself called it, "the Pope's scholar," in the English college at Rome. On his return he became connected with the theatres, both as an actor and as a writer. His ready pen was also employed by the booksellers in compiling and in writing pamphlets. The Mirror of Mutabilitie, a tract published in 1579, was the first of a series of ephemeral prose works which began to proceed from his hand. Several of these were devoted to the confutation of Popery, the religion in which he had been trained, and from which he had been recently converted. But not until the close of the sixteenth century did Munday attain his celebrity as a dramatist. He then wrote several dramas in conjunction with other authors, especially Chettle and Drayton. One of the most popular of these, The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, is enlivened by a gay and spirited description of Robin Hood's life in "merrie Sherwood." Shortly after this period he became a city poet and a composer of city pageants. In this office he seems to have found his proper sphere; for Meres calls him "the best plotter," and Webbe mentions him as having written "very excellent works, especially upon nymphs and shepherds, well worthy to be viewed and to be esteemed as rare poetry." He even became a worthy object for the envy of Ben Jonson, and was ridiculed, in the character of Don Antonio Ballendino the pageant-poet, in The Case is Altered. Towards the close of his life Munday appears to have held a respectable position as a tradesman, since he was fond of styling himself, on the title-pages of his later works, "citizen and draper of London." His death took place in August 1633, and he was buried in St Stephen's church, Coleman Street. A monument was erected over his grave. Fourteen of the dramas which Munday contributed to write are enumerated, and two of them are reprinted in Collier's supplementary volume to Dodsley's Munden Old Plays.