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Drawing Room Play
A drawing room play is a type of play, developed during the Victorian period in the United Kingdom, in which the actions take place in a drawing room or which is designed to be reenacted in the drawing room of a home. The common practice of entertaining a guest in the home led to the creation of this category of plays and while the drawing room itself has fallen out of favour, the play format has continued to provide a source of entertainment. While there is no date or authority directly ascribed to the term drawing room play, there is evidence that the term was derived from the English habit of putting on these short works for guests while entertaining in the drawing room of the home. In French usage the room and the social gathering it contained are equally the salon. Types Beginning with the early forms of drama, the drawing room play has evolved to encompass comedy as well as to include the forms of the dramatic monologue. The play format itself has also grown out of the tradit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Play (theatre)
A play is a work of drama, usually consisting mostly of dialogue between characters and intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. The writer of a play is called a playwright. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from London's West End and Broadway in New York City – which are the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world – to regional theatre, to community theatre, as well as university or school productions. A stage play is a play performed and written to be performed on stage rather than broadcast or made into a movie. Stage plays are those performed on any stage before an audience. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term "play" can refer to both the written texts of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance. Comedy Comedies are plays which are designed to be humorous. Comedies are often filled ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modern Era
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history. The modern era can be further divided as follows: * The early modern period lasted from c. AD 1500 to 1800 and resulted in wide-ranging intellectual, political and economic change. It brought with it the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and an Age of Revolutions, beginning with those in America and France and later spreading in other countries, partly as a result of upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars. * The late modern period began around 1800 with the end of the political revolutions in the late 18th century and involved the transition from a world dominated by imperial and colonial powers into one of nations and nationhood following the two great world wars, World War I and W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamber Play
A chamber play is a play of usually three acts which can be performed with a small cast and practically no sets or costumes in a small space. The form became popular in the early 20th century, with leading exponents being Max Reinhardt and August Strindberg. The first cinema adaptation was ''Kammerspielfilm'' in the 1920s, and the format was later adapted for cinema by Ingmar Bergman. and Carl Theodor Dreyer. The name is derived from the term chamber music. See also * Closet drama * Drawing room play A drawing room play is a type of play, developed during the Victorian period in the United Kingdom, in which the actions take place in a drawing room or which is designed to be reenacted in the drawing room of a home. The common practice of entertai ... References Drama {{drama-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Bennett
Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He wrote prolifically: between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboration with other writers), and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information in the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. The sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day. Born into a modest but upwardly mobile family in Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, Bennett was intended by his father, a solicitor, to follow him into the legal profession. Bennett worked for his father, before moving to another law firm in London as a clerk, aged 21. He became assistant editor and then editor of a women's magazine, before becoming a ful ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Besant
Sir Walter Besant (14 August 1836 – 9 June 1901) was an English novelist and historian. William Henry Besant was his brother, and another brother, Frank, was the husband of Annie Besant. Early life and education The son of wine merchant William Besant (1800–1879), he was born at Portsmouth, Hampshire and attended school at St Paul's, Southsea, Stockwell Grammar, London and King's College London. In 1855, he was admitted as a pensioner to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1859 as 18th wrangler. After a year as Mathematical Master at Rossall School, Fleetwood, Lancashire, and a year at Leamington College, he spent six years as professor of mathematics at the Royal College, British Mauritius. A decline in health compelled him to resign, and he returned to England and settled in London in 1867. From 1868 to 1885, he held the position of Secretary to the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1871, he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn. In 1874, Besant married Mary Gar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clement Scott
Clement William Scott (6 October 1841 – 25 June 1904) was an influential English theatre critic for ''The Daily Telegraph'' and other journals, and a playwright, lyricist, translator and travel writer, in the final decades of the 19th century. His style of criticism, acerbic, flowery and (perhaps most importantly) carried out on the first night of productions, set the standard for theatre reviewers through to today. Scott accumulated enemies among theatre managers, actors and playwrights as years went on, picking quarrels with William Archer, Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw and others. After he gave a particularly ill-considered 1898 interview, in which he attacked the morals of theatre people, especially actresses, he was forced to retire as a theatre critic and his reputation and prospects suffered badly until, by the end of his life, he was impoverished. Life and career Born the son of William Scott, the perpetual curate of Hoxton in north London, Scott converted to Roman Cat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Rudnick
Paul Rudnick (born December 29, 1957) is an American writer. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and around the world. He is also known for having written the screenplays for several movies, including ''Sister Act'', ''Addams Family Values'', ''Jeffrey'', and ''In & Out''. Ben Brantley, when reviewing Rudnick's ''The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told'' in ''The New York Times'', wrote that, "Line by line, Mr. Rudnick may be the funniest writer for the stage in the United States today." Early life Rudnick was born and raised in a Jewish family in Piscataway, New Jersey, where his mother, Selma, was a publicist and his father, Norman, was a physicist. Rudnick attended Piscataway High School. He attended Yale College before moving to New York City, where he wrote book jacket copy and worked as an assistant to his friend, the costume designer William Ivey Long. Rudnick began writing for magazines, including '' Esquire'', ''Vogue'', '' Vanity Fair'' and ''Spy''. P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"."Noel Coward at 70" ''Time'', 26 December 1969, p. 46 Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as '' |
The Importance Of Being Earnest
''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian morality, Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' Wilde's most enduringly popular play. The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at age 46. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Literae Humaniores#Greats, Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional Classics, classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Elder Statesman
''The Elder Statesman'' is a play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ... in verse by T. S. Eliot first performed in 1958 and published in 1959. ''City Paper''. Retrieved 2014-5-5. Synopsis When the play opens, the setting is that of Lord Claverton's drawing room. Lord Claverton is a man of distinction, who is well known and well respected in society, where he exerts considerable influence. In the play's first production at The 1958 Edinburgh Festival this character bore a strong visual resemblance to the then Premier, Ha ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy Of Manners
In English literature, the term comedy of manners (also anti-sentimental comedy) describes a genre of realistic, satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1710) that questions and comments upon the manners and social conventions of a greatly sophisticated, artificial society. The satire of fashion, manners, and outlook on life of the social classes, is realised with stock characters, such as the braggart soldier of Ancient Greek comedy, and the fop and the rake of English Restoration comedy.George Henry Nettleton, Arthu''British dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan''p.149 The clever plot of a comedy of manners (usually a scandal) is secondary to the social commentary thematically presented through the witty dialogue of the characters, e.g. ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1895), by Oscar Wilde, which satirises the sexual hypocrisies of Victorian morality. The comedy-of-manners genre originated in the New Comedy period (325–260 BC) of Classical Greece (510–323 BC ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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