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Edwin Forrest
Edwin Forrest (March 9, 1806December 12, 1872) was a prominent nineteenth-century American Shakespearean actor. His feud with the British actor William Macready was the cause of the deadly Astor Place Riot of 1849. Early life Forrest was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Rebecca (''née'' Lauman) and William Forrest. His father, a Scottish merchandise peddler, moved from Dumfriesshire to Trenton, New Jersey in 1791. His mother was a member of an affluent German-American family. A business setback led William to relocate to Philadelphia, where he married Rebecca and was able to secure a position with a local branch of the United States Bank. As boys, Forrest and his brother William joined a local juvenile thespian club and participated in theatrical performances staged in a sparsely decorated woodshed. At the age of 11, Forrest made his first appearance on the legitimate stage at Philadelphia's South Street Theatre, playing the female role Rosalia de Borgia in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gladiator (1831 Play)
''The Gladiator'' is a tragic melodrama in five acts written by Robert Montgomery Bird originally starring Edwin Forrest. It first premiered on September 26, 1831, at the Park Theatre in New York City. Background This theatrical piece was written at the request of Edwin Forrest, an American actor seeking to further his career. He wanted to solidify his fame by acquiring the rights to perform in plays customized to highlight his talents and physical attributes so he devised a contest to encouraged dramaturgs to author new works in return for a cash price. Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags, a play by John Augustus Stone won Forrest's inaugural play prize in 1829. A huge success, ''Metamora'' inspired Forrest to continue offering the prize. Robert Montgomery Bird, a doctor without "an all-consuming passion for medicine," hearing of the prize, penned and submitted his first play, the blank verse tragedy ''Pelopidas, or The Fall of the Polemarchs''. Although ''Pelopidas'' won ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathew Brady
Mathew B. Brady ( – January 15, 1896) was one of the earliest photographers in American history. Best known for his scenes of the American Civil War, Civil War, he studied under inventor Samuel Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York City in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, among other public figures. When the Civil War started, his use of a mobile studio and darkroom enabled vivid battlefield photographs that brought home the reality of war to the public. Thousands of war scenes were captured, as well as portraits of generals and politicians on both sides of the conflict, though most of these were taken by his assistants, rather than by Brady himself. After the war, these pictures went out of fashion, and the government did not purchase the master-copies as he had anticipated. Brady's fortunes declined sharply, and he died in debt. Early life Brady left little recor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas (play)
''Douglas'' is a blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and Pa ... tragedy by John Home. It was first performed in 1756 in Edinburgh. The play was a big success in both Scotland and England for decades, attracting many notable actors of the period, such as Edmund Kean, who made his debut in it. Margaret Woffington, Peg Woffington played Lady Randolph, a part which found a later exponent in Sarah Siddons. The opening lines of the second act are probably the best known: Plot Lady Randolph opens the play mourning for her brother. Shortly thereafter, she discloses to her maid that she was married to the son of her father's enemy. She was not able to acknowledge the marriage or the son that she bore. She sent her maid away with her son to the maid's sister's house. They ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princess's Theatre
The Princess's Theatre or Princess Theatre was a theatre in Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and as ..., London. The building opened in 1828 as the "Queen's Bazaar" and housed a diorama by Clarkson Stanfield and David Roberts. It was converted into a theatre and opened in 1836 as the Princess's Theatre, named for then Queen Victoria, Princess Victoria before her accession as queen. After an unsuccessful series of promenade concerts, alterations were made on the interior, and the theatre was reopened on 26 December 1842 with Vincenzo Bellini's opera ''La sonnambula''. The theatre, by now under the management of John Medex Maddox, presented operas and other entertainments, such as General Tom Thumb. The theatre is best remembered for Charles Kean's Shakespe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Montgomery Bird
Robert Montgomery Bird (February 5, 1806 – January 23, 1854) was an American novelist, playwright, and physician. Early life and education Bird was born in New Castle, Delaware on February 5, 1806.Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. ''The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 217. He was born into a pioneer family. His father was a prosperous partner in the firm of Bird and Riddle, Navy agents. Following the death of his father when Bird was four years old, his mother and brothers moved to Philadelphia, but he was taken in by a rich uncle, Nicholas Van Dyke, in New Castle. Bird then attended New Castle Academy, where he was encouraged to develop his musical skills. He later wrote that his school years were not pleasant. After attending the New Castle Academy and Germantown Academy, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1824.Looby, xxii Bird started to write commentary on Latin, American, and English lit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine Norton Sinclair
Catherine Norton Sinclair (1817–1891) was an actress-manager who worked with such notable actors as Junius Brutus Booth, Edwin Booth, and Laura Keene. Her sensational divorce from Edwin Forrest captivated the American public in the mid-1800s. Early life Sinclair was born in London, the eldest of John and Catherine Sinclair's four children. The Sinclairs were originally from Edinburgh, Scotland. Mr. Sinclair became a successful drummer in the militia and later a well-known singer, who toured the U.S. in the early 1830s. She was well-educated, and welcomed in the social and cultural circles of London society. At age nineteen, Sinclair attended a performance of ''The Gladiator'', starring the popular American actor, Edwin Forrest, as Spartacus. She arranged to meet him and on June 23, 1837 they were married at a church in Covent Garden. Shortly thereafter, the Forrests moved to New York City, New York and lived there for the next twelve years. Life in the U.S. and the For ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Talfourd
Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd SL (26 May 179513 March 1854) was an English judge, Radical politician and author. Life The son of a well-to-do brewer, Talfourd was born in Reading, Berkshire. He received his education at Hendon and Reading School. At the age of 18, he was sent to London to study law under Joseph Chitty, a special pleader. Early in 1821, he joined the Oxford circuit, having been Called to the Bar at Middle Temple earlier in the year. Fourteen years later, he was created a serjeant-at-law and led the court with William Fry Channell until 1846, when serjeants lost their monopoly of audience. In 1849 he succeeded Thomas Coltman as judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In politics At the general election in 1835 he was elected MP for the Parliamentary Borough of Reading as a Radical, a result repeated in the general election of 1837. He chose not to run in the general election of 1841, but stood again in the general election of 1847 and was elected. In the House of Commo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in the heart of London founded in 1831. It is one of the oldest members' clubs in the world and, since its inception, has catered to members such as Charles Kean, Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Arthur Sullivan, Laurence Olivier, Raymond Raikes, Stephen Fry and John Gielgud. From the literary world came writers such as Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne, and Kingsley Amis. The visual arts have been represented by painters such as John Everett Millais, Lord Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In 1956 the rights to A. A. Milne's Pooh books were left to four beneficiaries: his family, the Royal Literary Fund, Westminster School and the Garrick Club. , the club has around 1,400 members (with a seven-year waiting list) including many actors and men of letters in the United Kingdom. New candidates must be proposed by an existing member before election in a secret ballot, the original assurance of the committee be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Kemble
Charles Kemble (25 November 1775 – 12 November 1854) was a Welsh-born English actor of a prominent theatre family. Life Charles Kemble was one of 13 siblings and the youngest son of English Roman Catholic theatre manager/actor Roger Kemble, and Irish-born actress Sarah Ward. He was the younger brother of, among others, John Philip Kemble, Stephen Kemble and Sarah Siddons. He was born at Brecon in South Wales. Like his brothers he was raised in his father's Catholic faith, while his sisters were raised in their mother's Protestant faith. He and John Philip were educated at Douai School. After returning to England in 1792, he obtained a job in the post office, but soon resigned to go on the stage, making his first recorded appearance at Sheffield as Orlando in '' As You Like It'' in that year. During the early part of his career as an actor he slowly gained popularity. For a considerable time he played with his brother and sister, chiefly in secondary parts, and received li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drury Lane
Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster. Notable landmarks The street originated as an early medieval lane referred to in Latin as the ''Via de Aldwych'', which probably connected St. Giles Leper Hospital with the fields of Aldwych Close, owned by the hospital but traditionally said to have been granted to the Danes as part of a peace treaty with King Alfred the Great in Saxon times. It acquired its name from the Suffolk barrister Sir Robert Drury, who built a mansion called Drury House on the lane around 1500. After the death in 1615 of his great-great-grandson, another Robert Drury, the property passed out of the family. It became the London house of the Earl of Craven, then a public house under the sign of his reputed mistress, the Queen of Bohemia. Subsequently, the gardens and courtyards ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Augustus Stone
John Augustus Stone (December 15, 1801 – June 1, 1834) was an American actor, dramatist, and playwright, best known as the author of ''Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags''. Biography He appeared on the New York stage beginning in 1822. He wrote ''Metamora'', as a vehicle for Edwin Forrest, who offered as a prize $500 and half of the proceeds from the third night. William Cullen Bryant headed a committee which chose Stone's play as the best of 14 submitted. The play, first produced in 1829, told the life of King Philip. He married Mrs. Amelia Greene Legge, an actress. She later married Nathaniel Harrington Bannister. Stone suffered periods of insanity and he committed suicide by jumping into the Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It fl ....Ehrlich, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metamora; Or, The Last Of The Wampanoags
''Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags'' is a play written in 1829 by John Augustus Stone. It was first performed December 15, 1829, at the Park Theater in New York City, starring Edwin Forrest. History On November 28, 1828, a contest was posted in the New York Critic by American actor Edwin Forrest offering a prize of 500 dollars for an original play which met such criteria as, “a tragedy, in five acts, of which the hero, or principal character, shall be an aboriginal of this country". Forrest, looking to produce a play suiting his strengths, created the contest as an opportunity to boost his acting career. With his play, ''Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags'', playwright and actor John Augustus Stone stood out among his competitors and took home the prize. The play, which opened on December 15, 1829, was an instant hit. Due to a combination of the highly publicized contest, Forrest's growing celebrity, and the timely subject matter of the play itself, the performance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_Henry_Wyatt_(1794–1840)_Royal_Shakespeare_Theatre.jpg "Click for more on -> Charles Kemble")
