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Love's Cruelty
''Love's Cruelty'' is a Caroline-era stage play, a tragedy written by James Shirley, and first published in 1640. The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 14 November 1631. Like the majority of Shirley's dramas, it was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 25 April 1639 by the booksellers Andrew Crooke and William Cooke, along with three other Shirley plays. (The three were ''The Opportunity,'' '' The Coronation,'' and ''The Night Walker.'') The play was published the next year, in a quarto printed by Thomas Cotes — though only Andrew Crooke's name is on the title page. Shirley based his plot on material from two sources: novel 36 of the '' Heptameron'' of Marguerite of Navarre, and novel 6, decade 3, of the ''Hecatomithi'' of Cinthio. Shirley may have accessed Marguerite's tale in English translation in ''The Palace of Pleasure'' by William Painter. Sh ...
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Literature In English
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines English literature more narrowly as, "the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present day. The major literatures written in English outside the British Isles are treated separately under American literature, Australian literature, Canadian literature, and New Zealand literature." However, despite this, it includes literature from the Republic of Ireland, "Anglo-American modernism", and discusses post-colonial literature. ; See also full articles on American literature and other literatures in the English language. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Fri ...
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English Restoration
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in continental Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the civil wars came to be known as the Interregnum (1649–1660). The term ''Restoration'' is also used to describe the period of several years after, in which a new political settlement was established. It is very often used to cover the whole reign of King Charles II (1660–1685) and often the brief reign of his younger brother King James II (1685–1688). In certain contexts it may be used to cover the whole period of the later Stuart monarchs as far as the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the Hanoverian King George I in 1714. For example, Restoration comedy typically encompasses works written as late as 1710. The Protectorate After Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector from 1658 to 1659, ceded power to the Rump Parliament, Charles Fleetwood and J ...
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Michael Mohun
Michael Mohun (1616? – buried 11 October 1684) was a leading English actor both before and after the 1642–60 closing of the theatres. Mohun began his stage career as a boy player filling female roles; he was part of Christopher Beeston's theatrical establishment at the Cockpit Theatre, "eventually becoming a key member of Queen Henrietta's Men." For the period from 1642 to 1659, Mohun was an officer in military units loyal to the House of Stuart; he served in England, Ireland, and the Low Countries, and rose to the rank of major. He was seriously wounded at Dublin, and was a prisoner of war for two extended periods. At the end of the English Interregnum, Mohun was one of the men — George Jolly and John Rhodes were others — who attempted to restart dramatic performance. In 1659 Mohun performed with other pre- Commonwealth actors in an unlicensed troupe at the Red Bull Theatre. As the manager of the troupe, Mohun came to an agreement with the Master of the Revels ...
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Nicholas Burt
Nicholas Burt (1621 ? — after 1689), or Birt or Burght among other variants, was a prominent English actor of the seventeenth century. In a long career, he was perhaps best known as the first actor to play the role of Othello in the Restoration era. A "Nicholas Bert" was christened on 27 May 1621, in Norwich; the record may refer to the actor, though this is not certain. According to James Wright's ''Historia Histrionica'' (1699), Burt began as a boy player with the King's Men, an apprentice of John Shank (died 1636). He was with the celebrated young company Beeston's Boys in the 1638–42 period. As a young actor filling female roles, Burt gained particular notice for playing Clariana in Shirley's ''Love's Cruelty''. After the theatres closed in 1642 at the start of the English Civil War, Burt, like some other actors, joined the Royalist army supporting the cause of King Charles I. Like fellow actors Charles Hart and Robert Shatterell, Burt served as an officer in t ...
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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 centur ...
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1634 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1634. Events *January 1 – The King's Men perform ''Cymbeline'' at the court of King Charles I of England. * January 22 – The King's Men perform Davenant's ''The Wits'' at the Blackfriars Theatre in the City of London. * February 3 – James Shirley's spectacular masque ''The Triumph of Peace'' is staged in London. A second performance takes place on February 13. * February 6 – Shirley's play '' The Gamester'' is performed at court. *February 18 – Thomas Carew's masque ''Coelum Britannicum'' is staged at Whitehall Palace. *March – The Académie française begins life as a project sponsored by Cardinal Richelieu. *February 29 – Under pressure from the Duke de Medinaceli, Francisco de Quevedo marries Doña Esperanza de Aragón. *April **The first Théâtre du Marais is founded at a tennis court in Paris. **The first Oberammergau Passion Play is performed in Bavaria. *April 7 – The Kin ...
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The Triumph Of Peace
''The Triumph of Peace'' was a Caroline era masque, "invented and written" by James Shirley, performed on 3 February 1634 and published the same year. The production was designed by Inigo Jones. Inspiration The masque was lavishly sponsored by the four Inns of Court, through a political and social motive. In 1632 the Puritan controversialist William Prynne (himself an Inns of Court man) had dedicated his anti-theatre diatribe ''Histriomastix'' to the Inns; since ''Histriomastix'' was perceived as insulting to Queen Henrietta Maria, the masque was the Inns' signal of their total rejection of any connection with Prynne's book or his views. Shirley was chosen to write the masque because he was a member of Gray's Inn. He was not a law student or a lawyer; rather, he was a gentleman boarder, an arrangement preferred by some literary figures of the time. (John Ford was another gentleman boarder). Shirley produced an acceptable text – though he was bold enough to offer some tactful ...
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Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones (; 15 July 1573 – 21 June 1652) was the first significant architect in England and Wales in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As the most notable architect in England and Wales, Jones was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to Britain. He left his mark on London by his design of single buildings, such as the Queen's House which is the first building in England designed in a pure classical style, and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, as well as the layout for Covent Garden square which became a model for future developments in the West End. He made major contributions to stage design by his work as theatrical designer for several dozen masques, most by royal command and many in collaboration with Ben Jonson. Early life and career Beyond the fact that he was born in Smithfield, London, as the son of clothworker Inigo Jones Snr., and ...
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Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque involved music, dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Masquers who did not speak or sing were often courtiers: the English queen Anne of Denmark frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I of England performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Development The masque tradition developed from the elaborate pageants and cou ...
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A Woman Killed With Kindness
A'' Woman Killed with Kindness'' is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a tragedy written by Thomas Heywood. Acted in 1603 and first published in 1607, the play has generally been considered Heywood's masterpiece, and has received the most critical attention among Heywood's works. Along with the anonymous ''Arden of Faversham,'' Heywood's play has been regarded as the apex of Renaissance drama's achievement in the subgenre of bourgeois or domestic tragedy. The play was originally performed by Worcester's Men, the company for which Heywood acted and wrote in the early Jacobean era. The records of Philip Henslowe show that Heywood was paid £6 for the play in February and March 1603. The 1607 quarto was printed by William Jaggard for the bookseller John Hodgets. A second quarto was issued in 1617 by William Jaggard's son Isaac Jaggard. The plot of Heywood's play derives from an Italian novel by Illicini, which was translated into English and published in ''The Palace of Pleasure ...
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Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood (early 1570s – 16 August 1641) was an English playwright, actor, and author. His main contributions were to late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre. He is best known for his masterpiece ''A Woman Killed with Kindness'', a domestic tragedy, which was first performed in 1603 at the Rose Theatre by the Worcester's Men company. He was a prolific writer, claiming to have had "an entire hand or at least a maine finger in two hundred and twenty plays", although only a fraction of his work has survived. Early years Few details of Heywood's life have been documented with certainty. Most references indicate that the county of his birth was most likely Lincolnshire, while the year has been variously given as 1570, 1573, 1574 and 1575. It has been speculated that his father was a country parson and that he was related to the half-century-earlier dramatist John Heywood, whose death year is, again, uncertain, but indicated as having occurred not earlier than 1575 and n ...
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