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John Rhodes (17th Century)
John Rhodes ( fl. 1624 – 1665) was a theatrical figure of the early and middle seventeenth century. He rose to a brief prominence in 1660 when the London theatres re-opened at the start of the English Restoration era. Beginning Rhodes was connected with the King's Men during the final phase of the development of English Renaissance drama. On 6 December 1624, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, listed Rhodes among the "necessary attendants," the hired men of the company, who could not be arrested or "pressed for soldiers" without the consent of the Master of the Revels or the Lord Chamberlain. Rhodes served as the wardrobe-keeper at the Blackfriars Theatre. Once the theatres were closed at the start of the English Civil War in 1642, Rhodes, like fellow King's Men Alexander Gough and Andrew Pennycuicke, became a stationer, or bookseller. Rhodes's shop was at the sign of the Bible, in Charing Cross. There are also cryptic references to Rhodes being the "keeper" of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floruit
''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicating the time when someone flourished. Etymology and use la, flōruit is the third-person singular perfect active indicative of the Latin verb ', ' "to bloom, flower, or flourish", from the noun ', ', "flower". Broadly, the term is employed in reference to the peak of activity for a person or movement. More specifically, it often is used in genealogy and historical writing when a person's birth or death dates are unknown, but some other evidence exists that indicates when they were alive. For example, if there are wills attested by John Jones in 1204, and 1229, and a record of his marriage in 1197, a record concerning him might be written as "John Jones (fl. 1197–1229)". The term is often used in art history when dating the career ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, first as a senior commander in the Parliamentarian army and then as a politician. A leading advocate of the execution of Charles I in January 1649, which led to the establishment of the Republican Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, he ruled as Lord Protector from December 1653 until his death in September 1658. Cromwell nevertheless remains a deeply controversial figure in both Britain and Ireland, due to his use of the military to first acquire, then retain political power, and the brutality of his 1649 Irish campaign. Educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Cromwell was elected MP for Huntingdon in 1628, but the first 40 years of his life were undistinguished and at one point he contemplated emigration ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Bull Theatre
The Red Bull was an inn-yard conversion erected in Clerkenwell, London operating in the 17th century. For more than four decades, it entertained audiences drawn primarily from the City and its suburbs, developing a reputation over the years for rowdiness. After Parliament closed the theatres in 1642, it continued to host illegal performances intermittently, and when the theatres reopened after the Restoration, it became a legitimate venue again. There is a myth that it burned down in the Great Fire of London but the direct reason for its end is unclear. Design The Red Bull was constructed in about 1605 on St John Street in Clerkenwell on a site corresponding to the eastern end of modern-day Hayward's Place. Contemporary documents reveal that it was converted from a yard in an inn. This origin accounts for its square-ish shape, shared, for example, by the original Fortune Theatre among playhouses of the time. The Red Bull inn's name may relate to drovers bringing cattle down S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King's Company
The King's Company was one of two enterprises granted the rights to mount theatrical productions in London, after the London theatre closure had been lifted at the start of the English Restoration. It existed from 1660 to 1682, when it merged with the Duke's Company to form the United Company. History On 21 August 1660, King Charles II granted Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant each official permission in the form of a temporary "privilege" to form acting companies. Killigrew's King's Company fell under the sponsorship of Charles himself; Davenant's Duke's Company under that of Charles's brother, then the Duke of York, later James II of England. The temporary privileges would be followed later by letters patent, issued on 25 April 1662 in Killigrew's case, cementing a hereditary monopoly on theatre for the patent-holders.Milhous, p. 4. The first permanent venue for the King's Company was Gibbon's Tennis Court; in 1663, responding to competition from the Duke's Compan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke's Company
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During hats period, theatres began to flourish again after they had been closed from the restrictions throughout the English Civil War and the Interregnum. The Duke's Company existed from 1660 to 1682, when it merged with the King's Company to form the United Company. History The Duke's Company was one of the two theatre companies (the other being the King's Company) that were chartered by King Charles II at the start of the English Restoration era, when the London theatres re-opened after their eighteen-year closure (1642–60) during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. The Duke's Company had the patronage of the King's younger brother Prince James, Duke of York and of Albany (later King James II & VII). It was managed by Sir William Davenant. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Davenant
Sir William Davenant (baptised 3 March 1606 – 7 April 1668), also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum. Biography Early life Davenant is believed to have been born in late February, 1606 in Oxford, the son of Jane Shepherd Davenant and John Davenant, proprietor of the Crown Tavern (or Crown Inn) and Mayor of Oxford. He was baptised on 3 March, his godfather sometimes being said to have been William Shakespeare, who, according to John Aubrey, had stayed frequently at the Crown during his travels between London and Stratford-upon-Avon.Edmond, M., ''Yeomen, Citizens, Gentlemen, and Players: The Burbages and Their Connections'', R. B. Parker (ed), ''Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum'', Universi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Killigrew
Thomas Killigrew (7 February 1612 – 19 March 1683) was an English dramatist and theatre manager. He was a witty, dissolute figure at the court of King Charles II of England. Life Killigrew was one of twelve children of Sir Robert Killigrew of Hanworth, a courtier to James I, and his wife Mary née Woodhouse; he became a page to King Charles I at about the age of thirteen. According to Samuel Pepys, the boy Killigrew used to volunteer as an extra, or "devil," at the Red Bull Theatre, so that he could see the plays for free. The young Killigrew had limited formal education; the Court and the playhouse were his schoolroom. Killigrew was present at the exorcism of the possessed nuns of Loudun. In 1635 he left a sceptical account of the proceedings. Before the English Civil War, Killigrew wrote several plays— tragicomedies like ''Claracilla'' and ''The Prisoners'', as well as his most popular play, ''The Parson's Wedding'' (1637). The latter play has been criticized for its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boy Player
Boy player refers to children who performed in Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for the adult companies and performed the female roles as women did not perform on the English stage in this period. Others worked for children's companies in which all roles, not just the female ones, were played by boys. Children's companies In the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, troupes appeared that were composed entirely of boy players. They are famously mentioned in Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'', in which a group of travelling actors has left the city due to rivalry with a troupe of "little eyases" (II, ii, 339); the term "eyas" means an unfledged hawk. The children's companies grew out of the choirs of boy singers that had been connected with cathedrals and similar institutions since the Middle Ages. (Similar boy choirs exist to this day.) Thus the choir attached to St. Paul's Cathedral in London since the 12th century was in the 16th century ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Kynaston (actor)
Edward Kynaston (c. 1640 – January 1706) was an English actor, one of the last Restoration "boy players", young male actors who played women's roles. Career Kynaston was good looking and made a convincing woman: Samuel Pepys called him "the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life" after seeing him in a production of John Fletcher's '' The Loyal Subject'' at the Cockpit-in-Court, "only her voice snot very good". He also played the title role in Ben Jonson's '' Epicoene''. Pepys had dinner with Kynaston after this production on 18 August 1660. Simultaneously, Kynaston played male roles as well. He filled the role of Otto in '' Rollo Duke of Normandy'' on 6 December 1660, having played the female role of Arthiope in the same play in previous weeks. On 7 January 1661, Kynaston played three roles in a performance of Jonson's '' Epicoene'', one female and two male. Part of Kynaston's appeal may have been his ambiguous sexuality. The actor Colley Cibber recalled: "the Ladi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Gildon
Charles Gildon (c. 1665 – 1 January 1724), was an English hack writer who was, by turns, a translator, biographer, essayist, playwright, poet, author of fictional letters, fabulist, short story author, and critic. He provided the source for many lives of Restoration figures, although he appears to have propagated or invented numerous errors with them. He is remembered best as a target of Alexander Pope's in both '' Dunciad'' and the '' Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot'' and an enemy of Jonathan Swift's. Gildon's biographies are, in many cases, the only biographies available, but they have nearly without exception been shown to have wholesale invention in them. Because of Pope's caricature of Gildon, but also because of the sheer volume and rapidity of his writings, Gildon has come to stand as the epitome of the hired pen and the literary opportunist. Biography Gildon was born in Gillingham, Dorset to a Roman Catholic family that had been active in support of the Royalist side dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Betterton
Thomas Patrick Betterton (August 1635 – 28 April 1710), the leading male actor and theatre manager during Restoration England, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London. Apprentice and actor Betterton was born in August 1635 in Tothill Street, Westminster.''The National Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge'', Vol.III, London, Charles Knight, 1847, p.273 He was apprenticed to John Holden, Sir William Davenant's publisher, and possibly later to a bookseller named John Rhodes, who had been wardrobe-keeper at the Blackfriars Theatre. In 1659, Rhodes obtained a license to set up a company of players at the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane; and on the reopening of this theatre in 1660, Betterton made his first appearance on the stage. Betterton's talents at once brought him into prominence, and he was given leading parts. On the opening of the new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1661, Davenant, the patentee of the Duke's Company, engaged Betterton and all Rhodes' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pericles, Prince Of Tyre
''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio. It was published in 1609 as a quarto, was not included in Shakespeare's collections of works until the third folio, and the main inspiration for the play was Gower's ''Confessio Amantis''. Various arguments support the theory that Shakespeare was the sole author of the play, notably in DelVecchio and Hammond's Cambridge edition of the play, but modern editors generally agree that Shakespeare was responsible for almost exactly half the play — 827 lines — the main portion after scene 9 that follows the story of Pericles and Marina. Modern textual studies suggest that the first two acts, 835 lines detailing the many voyages of Pericles, were written by a collaborator, who may well have been the victualler, panderer, dramatist and pamphleteer Geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
