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Holinshed
Raphael Holinshed ( – before 24 April 1582) was an English chronicler, who was most famous for his work on ''The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande'', commonly known as ''Holinshed's Chronicles''. It was the "first complete printed history of England composed as a continuous narrative". The ''Holinshed Chronicles'' was a major influence on many Renaissances writers, such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Daniel, and Marlowe. Biography Little is known about Holinshed's life and for the most part his early years are primarily a matter of speculation. Holinshed was most likely born to Ralph Holinshed of Cophurst in Sutton Downes, Cheshire. The date of his birth is unknown. Holinshed is assumed to have received an education from student records from Christ's College in Cambridge, which show a student under the name Holinshed attending the school from 1544 to 1545. In his later years, he lived in London where he worked as a translator for the printer, Reginald Wolfe. Wolfe gav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holinshed's Chronicles
''Holinshed's Chronicles'', also known as ''Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland'', is a collaborative work published in several volumes and two editions, the first edition in 1577, and the second in 1587. It was a large, comprehensive description of British history published in three volumes (England, Scotland and Ireland). The ''Chronicles'' have been a source of interest because of their extensive links to William Shakespeare's history plays, as well as ''King Lear'', ''Macbeth'' and ''Cymbeline''. Recent studies of the ''Chronicles'' have focused on an inter-disciplinary approach; numerous literary scholars have studied the traditional historiographical materials through a literary lens, with a focus on how contemporary men and women would have read historical texts. The ''Chronicles'' would have been a primary source for many other literary writers of the Renaissance such as Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser and George Daniel. Description In 154 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Lear
''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane and a proscribed crux of political machinations. The first known performance of any version of Shakespeare's play was on Saint Stephen's Day in 1606. The three extant publications from which modern editors derive their texts are the 1608 quarto (Q1) and the 1619 quarto (Q2, unofficial and based on Q1) and the 1623 First Folio. The quarto versions differ significantly from the folio version. The play was often revised after the English Restoration for audiences who disliked its dark and depressing tone, but since the 19th century Shakespeare's original play has been regarded as one of his supreme achievements. Both the title role and the supporting roles have been coveted by accomplished actors, and the play has been widely adapted. In his ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth
''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, ''Macbeth'' most clearly reflects his relationship with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy '' Macbeth'' (). As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth (a Scottish nobleman), Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes, and commits suicide offstage. Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act is a turning point in the play, and her line "Out, damned spot!" has become a phrase familiar to many speakers of the English language. The report of her death late in the fifth act provides the inspiration for Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Harrison (priest)
William Harrison (18 April 1534 – 24 April 1593) was an English clergyman, whose ''Description of England'' was produced as part of the publishing venture of a group of London stationers who produced Raphael Holinshed's ''Chronicles'' (1577 and 1587). His contribution to Holinshed's work drew heavily on the earlier work of John Leland. Biography Early life and education William Harrison was born in London, in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, to John and Anne Harrison. As a boy, Harrison attended St Paul's School and the Westminster School of Alexander Nowell. Raised in Protestant circles, Harrison entered Christ Church, Oxford and in 1560 was awarded his bachelor's degree. During the reign of Queen Mary I of England, Christ Church became a centre of Catholic support, and Harrison converted to Catholicism. Harrison claimed that he returned to Protestant belief before Mary's death in 1558 after hearing the words of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, three Protestant mart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hooker (English Constitutionalist)
John Hooker (or "Hoker") ''alias'' John Vowell (c. 1527–1601) of Exeter in Devon, was an English historian, writer, solicitor, antiquary, and civic administrator. From 1555 to his death he was Chamberlain of Exeter. He was twice MP for Exeter in 1570/1 and 1586, and for Athenry in Ireland in 1569 and wrote an influential treatise on parliamentary procedure. He wrote an eye-witness account of the siege of Exeter during the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549. He spent several years in Ireland as legal adviser to Sir Peter Carew, and following Carew's death in 1575 wrote his biography. He was one of the editors of the second edition of Raphael Holinshed's ''Chronicles'', published in 1587. His last, unpublished and probably uncompleted work was the first topographical description of the county of Devon. He founded a guild of Merchant Adventurers under a charter from Queen Mary. He was the uncle of Richard Hooker, the influential Anglican theologian. Origins Hooker was born at Bou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna Hall, Susanna, and twins Hamnet Shakespeare, Hamnet and Judith Quiney, Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Duncan
King Duncan is a fictional character in Shakespeare's ''Macbeth.'' He is the father of two youthful sons (Malcolm and Donalbain), and the victim of a well-plotted regicide in a power grab by his trusted captain Macbeth. The origin of the character lies in a narrative of the historical Donnchad mac Crinain, King of Scots, in Raphael Holinshed's 1587 '' The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,'' a history of Britain familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Unlike Holinshed's incompetent King Duncan (who is credited in the narrative with a "feeble and slothful administration"), Shakespeare's King Duncan is crafted as a sensitive, insightful, and generous father-figure whose murder grieves Scotland and is accounted the cause of turmoil in the natural world. Analysis King Duncan is a father-figure who is generous and kind. Duncan is also firm ("No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive / Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death / And with his former ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reginald Wolfe
Reginald (or Reyner) Wolfe (died 1573) was a Dutch-born English Protestant printer and one of the original members of the Royal Stationers' Company. Life Wolfe was born in Druten in the Netherlands. A learned and devout Protestant, he settled in England some time before 1530 and established himself as a bookseller at St. Paul's Churchyard, London. Wolfe began to print in 1542. He was the first printer in England to maintain a large stock of Greek type. Edward VI made him Royal Printer in Latin, Greek and Hebrew and awarded him an annuity of 26s. 8d. for life. Despite his Protestantism, Mary made him one of the original members of the Stationers' Company. Under Elizabeth, he served as Master of the Company in 1559, 1564, 1567 and 1572. Wolfe published works by Archbishop Cranmer, the antiquarian John Leland, Robert Recorde and Archbishop Parker. In 1548, he conceived a project for a "Universal Cosmography of the whole world, and therewith also certain particular histories of ev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cymbeline
''Cymbeline'' , also known as ''The Tragedie of Cymbeline'' or ''Cymbeline, King of Britain'', is a play by William Shakespeare set in British Iron Age, Ancient Britain () and based on legends that formed part of the Matter of Britain concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobeline. Although it is listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify ''Cymbeline'' as a Shakespeare's late romances, romance or even a Shakespearean comedy, comedy. Like ''Othello'' and ''The Winter's Tale'', it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While the precise date of composition remains unknown, the play was certainly produced as early as 1611. Characters ;In Britain * Cymbeline – Modelled on the historical King of Britain, Cunobeline, and father to Imogen * Queen – Cymbeline's second wife and mother to Cloten * Imogen (Cymbeline), Imogen/Innogen – Cymbeline's daughter by a former queen, later disguised as the page Fidele * Posthumus Leonatus – Innoge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Stanyhurst
Richard Stanyhurst (1547–1618) was an Anglo-Irish alchemist, translator, poet and historian, who was born in Dublin. Life His father, James Stanyhurst, was Recorder of Dublin, and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons in 1557, 1560 and 1568. His grandfather was Nicholas Stanihurst, Mayor of Dublin in 1543. His mother was Anne Fitzsimon, daughter of Thomas Fitzsimon, Recorder of Dublin. Richard was sent to Peter White's Kilkenny College after which, in 1563, he continued to University College, Oxford, where he took his degree five years later. At Oxford, he became intimate with Edmund Campion. After leaving the university he studied law at Furnival's Inn and Lincoln's Inn. He contributed in 1587 to ''Holinshed's Chronicles'' "a playne and perfecte description" of Ireland, and a ''History of Ireland during the reign of Henry VIII'', which were severely criticized in Barnabe Rich's ''New Description of Ireland'' (1610) as a misrepresentation of Irish affairs written from the Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
