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Lionel Benjamin Rayner
Lionel Benjamin Rayner (10 October 1788 – 24 September 1855) was an English actor, usually playing rustic characters. As an actor-manager he opened in 1831 a short-lived theatre in the Strand, London. Life Rayner was born in Heckmondwike in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1788. His father, a farmer and cloth manufacturer, died before he was seven years old. After seeing, at Leeds, Charles Mathews as Farmer Ashfield in Thomas Morton's ''Speed the Plough'', he ran away from home and joined a company at Cheadle, Staffordshire, where he opened as Jeremy Diddler in James Kenney's farce ''Raising the Wind''. His manager played the light-comedy parts which Rayner wanted to play, so he left and joined, at a salary of three shillings weekly, a company in Stone, Staffordshire, where he stayed for three years. In Stratford-on-Avon, by his performance of Solomon Lob in ''Love laughs at Locksmiths'', he raised his position and his salary. He appeared in Manchester as Robin Roughhead in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Actor-manager
An actor-manager is a leading actor who sets up their own permanent theatrical company and manages the business, sometimes taking over a theatre to perform select plays in which they usually star. It is a method of theatrical production used consistently since the 16th century, particularly common in 19th-century Britain and the United States. History The first actor-managers, such as Robert Browne, appeared in the late 16th century, to be followed by another Robert Browne (no relation) and George Jolly in the 17th century. In the 18th century, actor-managers such as Colley Cibber and David Garrick gained prominence. The system of actor-management generally produced high standards of performance, as demonstrated by such 19th-century actors as William Macready, Charles Wyndham, Henry Irving, Frank Benson and Herbert Beerbohm Tree, by husband-wife teams such as Squire Bancroft and Effie Bancroft, Frank Wyatt and Violet Melnotte, William Hunter Kendal and Madge Robertson Ken ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The building is the most recent in a line of four theatres which were built at the same location, the earliest of which dated back to 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music). The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayle Bernard
William Bayle Bernard (27 November 1807 – 5 August 1875), often referred to as "Bayle Bernard", was a well-known American-born London playwright and drama critic. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of English comic actor John Bernard (actor), John Bernard, he came to Britain with his family in 1820, where he first worked as a clerk in an army accounts office. His plays include ''The Four Sisters'' and ''Casco Bay'' (1832), ''The Kentuckian'' (1833), ''The Nervous Man'' (1833), ''The Mummy (play), The Mummy'' (1833), ''Marie Ducange'' (1837), ''The Round of Wrong'' (1846), ''The Doge of Venice'' (1867), ''The Passing Cloud'' (1850) and ''A Storm in a Teacup'' (1854), as well as adaptations of Washington Irving's ''Rip Van Winkle'' (1834) and Wilkie Collins's ''No Name (novel), No Name'' (1863). He also wrote the five-volume historical romance ''The Freebooter's Bride'' (1829). His play ''The Mummy'', a popular success on its debut at the Adelphi Theatre, Theatre Royal, Adelph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harriet Waylett
Harriet Waylett (7 February 1798 – 29 April 1851) was an English actress and theatre manager. Early life The daughter of a tradesman in Bath, Somerset, Harriet Waylett, née Cooke, was born there in 1798. Her uncle was a member of the Drury Lane Theatre company, and Sarah Cooke was her cousin. After receiving some instruction in music from John David Loder, she first appeared on the Bath stage on 16 March 1816 as Elvina in W. R. Hewetson's ''Blind Boy''. She then acted at Coventry, where she met and married on 24 July 1819 Mr. Waylett, an actor in the company. In 1820 she was at the Adelphi Theatre, where she was the original Amy Robsart in James Planché's adaptation of ''Kenilworth'', and the first Sue to her husband's Primefit in William Moncrieff's ''Tom and Jerry''. She played as "Mrs. Waylett late Miss Cooke of Bath". In 1823 she was acting in Birmingham under Alfred Bunn, playing in Sally Booth's part of Rose Briarly in ''Husbands and Wives''. Her singing of ''Rest th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Leman Rede
William Leman Rede (31 January 1802 – 3 April 1847), often referred to as simply Leman Rede, was one of the many prolific and successful playwrights who composed farces, melodramas, burlettas (light musical and comedies) and travesties, primarily for theatres such as the Olympic, Strand, and Adelphi, in the early nineteenth century. He proudly proclaimed himself a follower of Thomas Frognall Dibdin, W. T. Moncrieff, James Robinson Planché, Douglas William Jerrold and John Baldwin Buckstone—writers who established the "minor drama". This term referred to plays that were produced at venues other than Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Haymarket, the "patent theatres" that had a legal monopoly on the presentation of serious, non-musical productions. The minor dramas did so well, however, that the patent theatres soon augmented their own bills with the same type of fare. Family Rede's father, Leman Thomas Rede, was a barrister and member of the Inner Temple.''The Times'', 21 Octo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burletta
In theater and music history, a burletta (Italian, meaning "little joke", sometimes burla or burlettina) is a brief comic opera. In eighteenth-century Italy, a burletta was the comic intermezzo between the acts of an ''opera seria''. The extended work Pergolesi's ''La serva padrona'' was also designated a "burletta" at its London premiere in 1758. In England, the term began to be used, in contrast to burlesque, for works that satirized opera but did not employ musical parody. Burlettas in English began to appear in the 1760s, the earliest identified as such being ''Midas'' by Kane O'Hara, first performed privately in 1760 near Belfast, and produced at Covent Garden in 1764. The form became debased when the term ''burletta'' began to be used for English comic or ballad operas, as a way of evading the monopoly on "legitimate drama" in London belonging to Covent Garden and Drury Lane. After the passage of the Theatres Act of 1843, which repealed crucial regulations of the Licensing A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Strand Theatre
The Royal Strand Theatre was located in the Strand in the City of Westminster. The theatre was built on the site of a panorama in 1832, and in 1882 was rebuilt by the prolific theatre architect Charles J. Phipps. It was demolished in 1905 to make way for Aldwych tube station. History From 1801, Thomas Edward Barker set up a rival panorama to his father's in Leicester Square, at 168/169 Strand. On the death of Robert Barker, in 1806, his younger brother, Henry Aston Barker took over management of the Leicester Square rotunda. In 1816, Henry bought the panorama in the Strand, which was then known as Reinagle and Barker's Panorama,Sherson, Erroll, ‘Lost London Playhouses’, ''The Stage'', 28 June 1923, p. 21. One of a series of articles later published in a book of same name in 1925. and the two panoramas were then run jointly until 1831. Their building was then used as a dissenting chapel and was purchased by Benjamin Lionel Rayner, a noted actor, in 1832.''From Stage to Platf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burford's Panorama
Robert Burford (1791 - 30 January 1861) was an English painter of panoramas. Life Burford was born in 1791 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812 with ''A View of Westminster Hall''. In conjunction with fellow artist Henry Aston Barker, he opened a panorama on a site later occupied by the Strand Theatre. It was then moved to Leicester Square, where for many years it formed one of the chief attractions of London. Burford exhibited a succession of panoramas of the chief places of interest in Europe, all of which he visited himself in order to obtain accurate drawings. John Ruskin visited the exhibition as a boy, and spoke in high praise of Burford's abilities in his autobiography ''Praeterita'' (1885, p200). Burford died at his home, 35 Camden Road Villas, Camden, London, on 30 January 1861, just after finishing a view of Naples and Messina Messina (, also , ) is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest cit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caliban
Caliban ( ), son of the witch Sycorax, is an important character in William Shakespeare's play '' The Tempest''. His character is one of the few Shakespearean figures to take on a life of its own "outside" Shakespeare's own work: as Russell Hoban put it, "Caliban is one of the hungry ideas, he's always looking for someone to word him into being ... Caliban is a necessary idea". Character Caliban is half human, half monster. After his island becomes occupied by Prospero and his daughter Miranda, Caliban is forced into slavery. While he is referred to as a calvaluna or mooncalf, a freckled monster, he is the only human inhabitant of the island that is otherwise "not honour'd with a human shape" (Prospero, I.2.283). In some traditions, he is depicted as a wild man, or a deformed man, or a beast man, or sometimes a mix of fish and man, a dwarf or even a tortoise. Banished from Algiers, Sycorax was left on the isle, pregnant with Caliban, and died before Prospero's arrival. C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ivanhoe
''Ivanhoe: A Romance'' () by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. Set in England in the Middle Ages, this novel marked a shift away from Scott’s prior practice of setting stories in Scotland and in the more recent past. ''Ivanhoe'' became one of Scott’s best-known and most influential novels. Set in 12th-century England, with colourful descriptions of a tournament, outlaws, a witch trial, and divisions between Jews and Christians, Normans and Saxons, ''Ivanhoe'' was credited by many, including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, with inspiring increased interest in chivalric romance and medievalism. As John Henry Newman put it, Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the Middle Ages". ''Ivanhoe'' was also credited with influencing contemporary popular perceptions of historical figures such as Richard the Lionheart, King John, and Robin Hood. Composition and sources In June 1819, Walter Scott ... [...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] |
Covent Garden Theatre
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, maki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_Henry_Wyatt_(1794–1840)_Royal_Shakespeare_Theatre.jpg "Click for more on -> Charles Kemble")
