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Eliard Swanston
Eliard Swanston (died 1651), alternatively spelled Heliard, Hilliard, Elyard, Ellyardt, Ellyaerdt, and Eyloerdt, was an English actor in the Caroline era. He became a leading man in the King's Men, the company of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, in the final phase of its existence. Career Swanston started his acting career with Prince Charles's Men around 1620. In 1622 he moved to the Lady Elizabeth's Men, and two years later transferred to the King's Men. He may have been brought into that company to replace the veteran John Underwood, who died in 1624. By 1631 he had acquired a role in the management of the company, along with Joseph Taylor and John Lowin; the three men received the company's payments for their performances at Court. In some cases, Swanston was the sole payee for the King's Men's Court performances; he received sums of £120 (February 1632), £270 (March 1633), and £220 (April 1634), and other amounts, in trust for the company. Being a leader was not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caroline Era
The Caroline era is the period in English and Scottish history named for the 24-year reign of Charles I (1625–1649). The term is derived from ''Carolus'', the Latin for Charles. The Caroline era followed the Jacobean era, the reign of Charles's father James I & VI (1603–1625), overlapped with the English Civil War (1642–1651), and was followed by the English Interregnum until The Restoration in 1660. It should not be confused with the Carolean era which refers to the reign of Charles I's son King Charles II. The Caroline era was dominated by growing religious, political, and social discord between the King and his supporters, termed the Royalist party, and the Parliamentarian opposition that evolved in response to particular aspects of Charles's rule. While the Thirty Years' War was raging in continental Europe, Britain had an uneasy peace, growing more restless as the civil conflict between the King and the supporters of Parliament worsened. Despite the friction betwe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher (1579–1625) was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's. He collaborated on writing plays with Francis Beaumont, and also with Shakespeare on three plays. Though his reputation has declined since, Fletcher remains an important transitional figure between the Elizabethan popular tradition and the popular drama of the Restoration. Biography Early life Fletcher was born in December 1579 (baptised 20 December) in Rye, Sussex, and died of the plague in August 1625 (buried 29 August in St. Saviour's, Southwark). His father Richard Fletcher was an ambitious and successful cleric who was in turn Dean of Peterborough, Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Worcester and Bishop of London (shortly before his death), as well as chaplain to Queen Elizabeth. As Dean of Pete ... [...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] |
Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend, and grandson, Sir Matthew Brend, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and stayed open until the London theatre closures of 1642. A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997 approximately from the site of the original theatre.Measured using Google earth Locations Examination of old property records has identified the plot of land occupied by the Globe as extending from the west side of modern-day Southwark Bridge Road eastwards as far as Porter Street and from Park Street southwards as far as the back of Gatehouse Square. The precise location of the building remained unknown until a small part of the foundations, including one original p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Shank
John Shank (also spelled Shanke or Shanks) (died January 1636) was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a leading comedian in the King's Men during the 1620s and 1630s. Early career By his own testimony, Shank began his stage career with Pembroke's Men and Queen Elizabeth's Men. "Presumably the Pembroke's company in question was that of 1597–1600, and the Queen Elizabeth's Men the travelling company of the latter years of the reign" – that is to say, the later years of Elizabeth I. Shank was with Prince Henry's Men by 1610, and was a sharer in the company (that is, a partner who shared in the profits rather than a hired man) by 1613. Shank seems to have fulfilled the function that clowns had filled at least since the time of Richard Tarleton: he was a "jigging clown" who sang and danced the jig that concluded each performance. In the controversy surrounding the Prince's Men's production of '' The Roaring Girl'' in 1611, Shank seems to have temporarily lost his jig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield (died July 1649) was a seventeenth-century actor, noted for his longtime membership in the King's Men in the years and decades after William Shakespeare's retirement and death. Nothing is known of Benfield's early life. He was most likely with the Lady Elizabeth's Men in 1613, and acted in their productions of Fletcher's ''The Coxcomb'' and the Fletcher/Massinger play ''The Honest Man's Fortune'' in that year. Benfield soon joined the King's Men, possibly to replace William Ostler, who died unexpectedly in December 1614. He acted in the company's production of John Webster's ''The Duchess of Malfi'' c. 1621. He was a shareholder in the company by 1619, when he is listed in the renewed patent for the King's Men issued in that year. Benfield also eventually became a sharer in both the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, but only after a conflict: in 1635 he was one of three King's Men (the others were Thomas Pollard and Eliard Swanston) who petitioned the Lord Chamber ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1631 In Literature
This article is a summary of the literary events and publications of 1631. Events * January 9 – '' Love's Triumph Through Callipolis'', a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is staged at Whitehall Palace. *January 11 – The Master of the Revels in England refuses to license Philip Massinger's new play, ''Believe as You List'', because of its seditious content; it is first performed in a revised version on May 7. * February 5 – Puritan minister and theologian Roger Williams emigrates from England to Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. *February 22 – ''Chloridia'', the year's second Jonson/Jones masque, is performed. *June 10 – The King's Men perform ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' (c.1607/8) at the Globe Theatre. *The young Blaise Pascal moves with his family to Paris. *Thomas Hobbes is employed as a tutor by the Cavendish family, to teach the future Earl of Devonshire. *Publication of the "Wicked Bible" by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Swisser
''The Swisser'' is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Arthur Wilson. It was performed by the King's Men in the Blackfriars Theatre in 1631, and is notable for the light in throws on the workings of the premier acting company of its time. (In seventeenth-century parlance, "Swisser," or "Swizzer" or "Switzer," referred to a Swiss mercenary soldier.) Though Humphrey Moseley entered the play into the Stationers' Register on 4 September 1646, no edition of the drama was printed in the seventeenth century. The play remained in manuscript until it was published in the early 1900s. The manuscript, now ''Add. MS. 36,749'' in the collection of the British Museum, is in the author's hand. The play ''The Swisser'' shares the primary fault of Caroline drama as a whole; it is unoriginal and highly derivative of earlier works. Felix Schelling catalogued the play's stock elements as "the lecherous tyrant; the love-lorn girl page; the banished lord...; two old men of noble ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Wilson (17th Century)
Arthur Wilson (baptised 14 December 1595 – October 1652) was a 17th-century English playwright, historian and poet. Born a commoner, he worked as a gentleman-in-waiting and steward to several powerful Parliamentarians in the period up to the English Civil War. He is remembered as a minor playwright, who wrote several plays for London's Blackfriars Theatre, and as the author of ''The History of Great Britain, being the Life and Reign of King James I'', which documents the anti-Stuartism prevalent in the late Caroline era. Biography Wilson was born in Great Yarmouth, England, the son of John Wilson and his wife Suzan, according to the baptismal register, but of Richard Wilson, according to an entry in the matriculation register at Trinity College, Oxford, which he later attended. In the 1620–1625 period he served as secretary to Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, whom he accompanied on military campaigns on the Continent. Despite getting on well with Essex for 15 years, Wils ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Believe As You List
''Believe as You List'' is a Caroline era tragedy by Philip Massinger, famous as a case of theatrical censorship. Censorship The play originally dealt with the legend that Sebastian of Portugal had survived the battle of Alcácer Quibir, and the efforts of Philip II of Spain to suppress the "false Sebastians." On 11 January 1631, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, noted in his records that he refused to license the play because "it did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian, king of Portugal, by Philip the Second, and there being a peace sworn between the kings of England and Spain." To avoid the censor, Massinger was obliged to move the setting of his play to the ancient world, substituting ancient Rome for Spain and a Seleucid King Antiochus for Sebastian. The revised play was licensed by the Master of the Revels on 6 May 1631, and was premiered the next day, 7 May, by the King's Men. (If the play was intended for the winter season, it was meant for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Picture (Massinger Play)
''The Picture'' is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger, and first published in 1630. The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 8 June 1629; it was acted by the King's Men at both of their theatres, the Globe and the Blackfriars. The play was published in quarto the following year; Massinger dedicated the work to the members of the Inner Temple. The play was popular and highly regarded in its own era; in 1650 Richard Washington wrote an elegy on Massinger in his own copy of the quarto of ''The Picture.'' Massinger's sources for his plot were the 28th novel in Volume 2 of ''The Palace of Pleasure'' (1567) by William Painter, and an anonymous English translation of ''The Theatre of Honour and Knighthood'' (1623) by André Favyn. Cast The 1630 quarto contains an unusually full cast list of the original King's Men's production of the play: The list is informative on the state of the King's Men co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Roman Actor
''The Roman Actor'' is a Caroline era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger. It was first performed in 1626, and first published in 1629. A number of critics have agreed with its author, and judged it one of Massinger's best plays. Performance The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 11 October 1626, and performed later that year by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. Joseph Taylor, then the company's leading man, played the role of Paris, the title character. There is no record of another production of the play till 1692, when Thomas Betterton played Paris in a production by the United Company. The play was performed again in 1722 at Lincoln's Inn Fields. After that date the complete play fell out of fashion, though many actors, starting with John Philip Kemble in 1781, performed Paris's defense of the acting profession in Act I, scene 3 "as a short dramatic show-piece". Kemble also cut Massinger's text down t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
