|
Children Of Her Majesty's Revels
The Children of the Chapel are the boys with unbroken voices, choristers, who form part of the Chapel Royal, the body of singers and priests serving the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they were called upon to do so. They were overseen by the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. The Children of the Chapel Royal Sometime in the 12th century or earlier, a distinct establishment known as the Chapels Royal was created within the English Royal Court and its musical establishment now claims to be the oldest continuous musical organization in the world. Children sang in church because their high voices were considered closest to the angels and Queen Elizabeth’s need for entertainment and care for her “spiritual well being”. Boy groups from grammar and choir school, ages 7–14, were royally patronized to perform songs for the Queen and her court. The Choir's, now just ten, boys are traditionally known as the Children of the Chapel Royal, and wear the distin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chorister
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures. The term ''choir'' is very often applied to groups affiliated with a church (whether or not they actually occupy the quire), whereas a ''chorus'' performs in theatres or concert halls, but this distinction is not rigid. Choirs may sing without instruments, or accompanied by a piano, pipe organ, a small ensemble, or an orchestra. A choir can be a subset of an ensemble; thus one speaks of the "woodwind choir" of an orchestra, or different "choirs" of voices or instruments in a polychoral composition. In typical 18th century to 21st century oratorios and masses, 'chorus' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Theatre
The Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse in Shoreditch (in Curtain Road, part of the modern London Borough of Hackney), just outside the City of London. It was the first permanent theatre ever built in England. It was built in 1576 after the Red Lion, and the first successful one. Built by actor-manager James Burbage, near the family home in Holywell Street, The Theatre is considered the first theatre built in London for the sole purpose of theatrical productions. The Theatre's history includes a number of important acting troupes including the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which employed Shakespeare as actor and playwright. After a dispute with the landlord, the theatre was dismantled and the timbers used in the construction of the Globe Theatre on Bankside. History The Mayor and Corporation of London banned plays in 1572 as a measure against the plague, not wanting to attract crowds of strangers. In 1575 they formally expelled all players from the city. This prompted the constr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nathan Field
Nathan Field (also spelled Feild occasionally; 17 October 1587 – 1620) was an English dramatist and actor. Life His father was the Puritan preacher John Field, and his brother Theophilus Field became the Bishop of Llandaff. One of his brothers, named Nathaniel, often confused with the actor, became a printer. Nathan's father opposed London's public entertainments: he delivered a sermon that attributed Divine judgment to the collapse of the public seating area, during a bear baiting on a Sunday, at Beargarden in 1583, which resulted in several deaths. Nathan presumably did not intend a career in the theatre; he was a student of Richard Mulcaster at St. Paul's School in the late 1590s. At some point before 1600, he was impressed by Nathaniel Giles, the master of Elizabeth's choir and one of the managers of the new troupe of boy players at Blackfriars Theatre, called alternately the Children of the Chapel Royal and the Blackfriars Children. He remained in this profession for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Poetaster
''Poetaster'' is a late Elizabethan satirical comedy written by Ben Jonson that was first performed in 1601. The play formed one element in the back-and-forth exchange between Jonson and his rivals John Marston and Thomas Dekker in the so-called ''Poetomachia'' or War of the Theatres of 1599–1601. ''Poetaster'' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 21 December 1601, and was first published in quarto in 1602 by the bookseller Matthew Lownes. The title page of the first edition states that the play was performed by the Children of the Chapel, one of the companies of boy actors popular at the time. The play was next published in the first folio collection of Jonson's works ( 1616). A prefatory note to the folio text identifies the main actors in the 1601 production as Nathan Field, John Underwood, Salomon Pavy, William Ostler, Thomas Day, and Thomas Marton. The quarto and folio texts both supply subtitles, with slight variants: in the quarto, the title is ''Poetaste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays ''Every Man in His Humour'' (1598), '' Volpone, or The Fox'' (c. 1606), '' The Alchemist'' (1610) and '' Bartholomew Fair'' (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I." Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642)."Ben Jonson", ''Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge'', volume 10, p. 388. His ancestor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs, and who from 1576 to 1584 staged plays in the vast hall of the former monastery. The second theatre dates from the purchase of the upper part of the priory and another building by James Burbage in 1596, which included the Parliament Chamber on the upper floor that was converted into the playhouse. The Children of the Chapel played in the theatre beginning in the autumn of 1600 until the King's Men took over in 1608. They successfully used it as their winter playhouse until all the theatres were closed in 1642 when the English Civil War began. In 1666, the entire area was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. First theatre Blackfriars Theatre was built on the grounds of the former Dominic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Evans (theatre)
Henry Evans (c. 1543 – after 1612) was the Welsh scrivener. and theatrical producer primarily responsible (apparently with the active collaboration of John Lyly) for organising and co-ordinating the activities of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's at Blackfriars Theatre for a short period in 1583–84. He later led a consortium of investors who leased the theatre during a much longer second phase, after the property was revived by Richard Burbage and Cuthbert Burbage. Theatre historian David Grote describes Evans as an "unsavoury" and "devious" character who was not above kidnapping young boys to perform in his theatre. First Blackfriars In 1583 William Hunnis and John Newman transferred their sub-lease of property in the Blackfriars, which was being legally contested by the owner, Sir William More, to Evans. This was part of a complicated series of transactions apparently designed to ensure that the building could continue to be used as a theatre, something ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nathaniel Giles
Nathaniel Giles (1558 – 1633 or 1634) was an English Renaissance organist and composer. He was the organist for Worcester Cathedral and wrote Anglican anthems. While Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal he took over Blackfriars Theatre in a business arrangement with producer Henry Evans and there he worked with Ben Jonson on a children's company. Giles had the power under a royal warrant to impress children for service in the Chapel Royal. He allowed Evans and others to use the warrant to legally abduct children not for service as choir boys, but to work in their theatre. When in 1600 they abducted the son of a nobleman, this led to the Clifton Star Chamber Case. He was also a master of the Choir of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle and an organist at Westminster Abbey. His ''Te Deum'' (Durham Cathedral manuscript A2, folio 56) has instructions for the organist to play an octave lower than written, and one assumes this is to give the 'dark' sonority of a 10 ft org ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1594 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1594. Events *c. February – The Shakespeare play ''Titus Andronicus'' is the first to be published, anonymously in London. His poem ''The Rape of Lucrece'' is published after May. *Spring – The London theaters reopen after two years of general inactivity due to the bubonic plague epidemic of 1592–94. Many actors who used to be Lord Strange's Men form a new company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, under the patronage of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain of England at the time. *April 6 and April 9 – Members of Queen Elizabeth's Men and Sussex's Men perform the early ''King Leir'' at the Rose Theatre in London. *May 14 – The reorganized Admiral's Men begin performances with Christopher Marlowe's ''The Jew of Malta''. *October – The first firmly recorded performance of Marlowe's '' The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus'' is given by the Admiral's Men with Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dido, Queen Of Carthage (play)
''Dido, Queen of Carthage'' (full title: ''The Tragedie of Dido Queene of Carthage'') is a short play written by the English playwright Christopher Marlowe, with possible contributions by Thomas Nashe. It was probably written between 1587 and 1593, and was first published in 1594. The story focuses on the classical figure of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. It tells an intense dramatic tale of Dido and her fanatical love for Aeneas (induced by Cupid), Aeneas' betrayal of her and her eventual suicide on his departure for Italy. The playwrights relied on Books 1, 2, and 4 of Virgil's ''Aeneid'' as primary source. Characters * Dido – Queen of Carthage *Aeneas – a Trojan royal hero, son of Anchises and the goddess Venus *Ascanius – son of Aeneas *Iarbas – King of Gaetulia who is in love with Dido *Achates – friend of Aeneas *Ilioneus – Greek Slave * Cloanthus *Sergestus – Commander of the Five armies *Anna – Dido's sister *Jupiter * Ganymede *Cupid *Mercury *Venus *Juno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play ''Tamburlaine,'' modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his caterin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marprelate Controversy
The Marprelate Controversy was a war of pamphlets waged in England and Wales in 1588 and 1589, between a puritan writer who employed the pseudonym Martin Marprelate, and defenders of the Church of England which remained an established church. Character and reception Martin's tracts are characterised by mockery of Anglican dignitaries and satire against the corruptions of the Church of England. The style is 'a heady mixture of nonsense, satire, protest, irony and gossip', combined with pungent wit, 'full of the language of the street'. While Martin maintained puritan doctrines as a whole, the special point of his attack was the episcopacy. The pamphlets were printed at a secret press established by John Penry, a Welsh puritan, with the help of the printer Robert Waldegrave, about midsummer 1588, for the issue of puritan literature was forbidden by the authorities. The first tract by "Martin Marprelate," known as the ''Epistle'', was printed at the home of Mistress Crane at East Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> The Poetaster")
