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Martin Powell (puppetry)
Martin Powell, (''fl''. 1709–1720; d. 1729) was an Irish master puppeteer and puppetry, puppet show impresario, who put on a repertoire of satirical and parodical marionette shows that invariably featured the Pulcinella, Punch character. He drew audiences first at provincial towns such as Bath, Somerset, Bath, then moving his venue to London. His theatre (dubbed "Punch's Opera" or "Punch's Theatre") established itself in early 1710 at its first location, at the north end of St. Martin's Street intersected by Litchfield St., not quite in Covent Garden. But by 1711 he relocated the theatre to the galleries of Covent Garden, at Little Piazza, opposite St. Paul's, Covent Garden, St. Paul's Church. He has been credited with establishing the stock form of the Punch and Judy plays. Charles Magnin, the learned author of the ''Histoire des Marionnettes en Europe'', calls the years of Powell's pre-eminence "the golden age of marionettes in England." It has been commented "Powell is describ ...
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Second Tale Of A Tub(1715)-frontispc-Powell-with-Punch
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of Time in physics, time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Units (SI) is more precise:The second [...] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, Δ''ν''Cs, the unperturbed Ground state, ground-state hyperfine structure, hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium-133, caesium 133 atom, to be when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1. This current definition was adopted in 1967 when it became feasible to define the second based on fundamental properties of nature with caesium clocks. Because the speed of Earth's rotation varies and is slowing ΔT (timekeeping), ever so slightly, a leap second is added at irregular intervals to civil time to ke ...
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King Bladud
Bladud or Blaiddyd is a legendary king of the Britons, although there is no historical evidence for his existence. He is first mentioned in Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''Historia Regum Britanniae'' ( 1136), which describes him as the son of King Rud Hud Hudibras, and the tenth ruler in line from the first king, Brutus, saying Bladud was contemporaneous with the biblical prophet Elijah (9th century BC). A Bleydiud son of Caratauc is mentioned in the Welsh Harley MS 3859 genealogies (in the British Library), suggesting to some that Geoffrey misinterpreted a scrap of Welsh genealogy (such as the Harleian genealogies itself or a related text). The Welsh form of the name is given as ''Blaiddyd'' in manuscripts of the ''Brut Tysilio'' (Welsh translations of Geoffrey's ''Historia''). The meaning of the name is "Wolf-lord" (Welsh ''blaidd'' "wolf" + ''iudd'' "lord"). In the text he is said to have founded the city of Bath. He was succeeded by his son Leir (the Shakespearean King Lear). The ...
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Ofspring Blackall
Ofspring Blackall (26 April 1655 (baptised) – 29 November 1716), Bishop of Exeter and religious controversialist, was born in London. Early life and education Baptized on 26 April 1655 at St Gregory by Paul's, he was the son of Thomas Blackall (bapt. 1621; died 1688), freeman of the Haberdashers' Company and later alderman of the City of London, and his wife, Martha (bapt. 1625; d. 1701?), daughter of Charles Ofspring, rector of St Antholin, Budge Row, and trier of the second presbyterian classis (or eldership) of London. Blackall's father owned land in several counties as well as property in the city, and although he conformed to the established church may have retained some puritan sympathies. During Blackall's youth his parents resided in Lordshold Manor, an 'ancient brick house' in Dalston, Middlesex ( VCH Middlesex, 10.89). He was educated in nearby Hackney, perhaps at the free school of which Robert Skingle was master, before being admitted as a pensioner to St Ca ...
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Benjamin Hoadly
Benjamin Hoadly (14 November 1676 – 17 April 1761) was an English clergyman, who was successively Bishop of Bangor, of Hereford, of Salisbury, and finally of Winchester. He is best known as the initiator of the Bangorian Controversy. Life He was educated at St Catharine's College, Cambridge and ordained a priest in 1700. He was rector of St Peter-le-Poer, London, from 1704 to 1724, and of St Leonard's, Streatham, from 1710 to 1723. His participation in controversy began at the beginning of his career, when he advocated conformity of the religious rites from the Scottish and English churches for the sake of union. He became a leader of the low church and found favour with the Whig party. He battled with Francis Atterbury, who was the spokesman for the high church group and Tory leader on the subject of passive obedience and non-resistance (i.e. obedience of divines that would not involve swearing allegiance or changing their eucharistic rites but would also not invo ...
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Isaac Bickerstaff
Isaac Bickerstaff Esq was a pseudonym used by Jonathan Swift as part of a hoax to predict the death of then famous Almanac–maker and astrologer John Partridge. “All Fools' Day” (now known as April Fools' Day which falls on 1 April) was Swift's favourite of holidays and he often used this day to aim his biting satirical wit at non-believers in an attempt to “make sin and folly bleed.” Disgruntled by Partridge's sarcastic attack about the “''infallible'' Church” written in his 1708 issue of Merlinus Almanac, Swift carefully projected three letters and a eulogy as an elaborate plan to “predict” Partridge's “''infallible'' death” on March 29, the anniversary of the famous 1652 "Black Monday" eclipse, widely seen as discrediting to astrology. The first of the three letters, Predictions for the Year 1708, published in January 1708, predicts, among other things, the death of Partridge by a “raging fever.” The second letter, The Accomplishment of the First of M ...
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The Spectator (1711)
''The Spectator'' was a daily publication founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in England, lasting from 1711 to 1712. Each "paper", or "number", was approximately 2,500 words long, and the original run consisted of 555 numbers, beginning on 1 March 1711. These were collected into seven volumes. The paper was revived without the involvement of Steele in 1714, appearing thrice weekly for six months, and these papers when collected formed the eighth volume. Eustace Budgell, a cousin of Addison's, and the poet John Hughes also contributed to the publication. Aims In Number 10, Mr. Spectator states that ''The Spectator'' will aim "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality". The journal reached an audience of thousands of people every day, because "the ''Spectators'' was something that every middle-class household with aspirations to looking like its members took literature seriously would want to have." He hopes it will be said he has "brought philosop ...
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Tatler (1709 Journal)
''The Tatler'' was a British literary and society journal begun by Richard Steele in 1709 and published for two years. It represented a new approach to journalism, featuring cultivated essays on contemporary manners, and established the pattern that would be copied in such British classics as Joseph Addison, Addison and Steele's ''The Spectator (1711), Spectator'', Samuel Johnson's ''The Rambler, Rambler'' and ''The Idler (1758–60), Idler'', and Oliver Goldsmith, Goldsmith's ''Citizen of the World''. The ''Tatler'' would also influence essayists as late as Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. Addison and Steele liquidated ''The Tatler'' in order to make a fresh start with the similar ''Spectator'', and the collected issues of ''Tatler'' are usually published in the same volume as the collected ''Spectator''. 1709 journal ''Tatler'' was founded in 1709 by Richard Steele, who used the pen name "Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire". This is the first known such consistently adopted journal ...
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Richard Steele
Sir Richard Steele (bap. 12 March 1672 – 1 September 1729) was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine ''The Spectator''. Early life Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland, in March 1672 to Richard Steele, a wealthy attorney, and Elinor Symes (''née'' Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year. He was the grandson of Sir William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and his first wife Elizabeth Godfrey. His father lived at Mountown House, Monkstown, County Dublin. His mother, of whose family background little is known, was described as a woman of "great beauty and noble spirit". His father died when he was four, and his mother a year later. Steele was largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne (secretary to James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde), and Lady Katherine Mildmay. A member of the Protestant gentry, he was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Add ...
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Robin Hood And Little John
Robin Hood and Little John is Child ballad 125. It is a story in the Robin Hood canon which has survived as, among other forms, a late seventeenth-century English broadside ballad, and is one of several ballads about the medieval folk hero that form part of the Child ballad collection, which is one of the most comprehensive collections of traditional English ballads. When Robin Hood is twenty years old he meets another brisk and fit young man named Little John. Although called "little", John is seven feet tall, large-limbed, and fearsome to behold. This is the story of how they met: Robin is out and about with his men and leaves them on call to rove the forest on his own in search of " ort" (5.1). In his roving, Robin meets a stranger on a bridge over a brook who won't give way. They challenge each other with their respective weapons, and the stranger remarks it's unfair that Robin has a bow and arrows while he has only a staff, so Robin agrees to take up a staff for the fight. He ...
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Mother Goose
The figure of Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. As a character, she appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. This, however, was dependent on a Christmas pantomime, a successor to which is still performed in the United Kingdom. The term's appearance in English dates back to the early 18th century, when Charles Perrault’s fairy tale collection, ''Contes de ma Mère l'Oye'', was first translated into English as ''Tales of My Mother Goose''. Later a compilation of English nursery rhymes, titled ''Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle'', helped perpetuate the name both in Britain and the United States. The character Mother Goose's name was identified with English collections of stories and nursery rhymes popularised in the 17th century. English readers would already have been familiar with Mother Hubbard, a stock figure when Edmund Spenser pub ...
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Venus And Adonis (opera)
''Venus and Adonis'' is an opera in three act (theater), acts and a prologue by the English Baroque music, Baroque composer John Blow, composed in about 1683 in music, 1683. It was written for the Noble court, court of Charles II of England, King Charles II at either London or Windsor Castle, Windsor. It is considered by some to be either a semi-opera or a masque, but ''Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The New Grove'' names it as the earliest known English opera. The author of the libretto was surmised to have been Aphra Behn due to the Feminism, feminist nature of the text, and that she later worked with Blow on the play ''The Lucky Chance''.Price, ''Grove Dictionary'', op. cit. However, according to the musicologist Bruce Wood, in his 2008 Critical edition (opera), critical edition of the work for the Purcell Society, the librettist "has been identified by James Winn as Anne Kingsmill, subsequently married as Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Anne Finch". The story is ...
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Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540). The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain. The Faust of early books—as well as the ballads, dramas, movies, and puppet-plays which grew out of them—is irrevocably damned because he prefers human knowledge over divine knowledge: "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of medicine". Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout ...
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