|
Renegado
''The Renegado, or The Gentleman of Venice'' is a late Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger and first published in 1630. The play has attracted critical attention for its treatment of cultural conflict between Christian Europe and Muslim North Africa. Massinger based the plot of his play on a novel by Miguel de Cervantes titled ''Los Baños de Argel,'' which had been printed in 1615. Performance and publication ''The Renegado'' was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 17 April 1624. It was acted at the Cockpit Theatre by the Lady Elizabeth's Men; when that troupe was merged or re-organized into Queen Henrietta's Men in the following year, 1625, the play remained in their repertory. The 1630 quarto was printed by Augustine Matthews for the bookseller John Waterson; it bears commendatory verses, including one by James Shirley. Massinger dedicated his drama to George Harding, 8th Baron Berkeley, a prominent literary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen Henrietta's Men
Queen Henrietta's Men was an important playing company or troupe of actors in Caroline era in London. At their peak of popularity, Queen Henrietta's Men were the second leading troupe of the day, after only the King's Men. Beginnings The company was formed in 1625, at the start of the reign of King Charles I, by theatrical impresario Christopher Beeston under royal patronage of the new queen, Henrietta Maria of France. They were sometimes called the Queen's Majesty's Comedians or other variations on their name. The company was founded after an eight-month closure of the London theatres due to bubonic plague (March to October, 1625). The Lady Elizabeth's Men, then called the Queen of Bohemia's Men, had been resident at Beeston's Cockpit Theatre up to the plague closing, and provided the foundation of the new organization. Success Theatre manager Beeston had had several different companies acting in his Cockpit Theatre since he started it in 1617; it was with Queen Henrietta's Men ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger (1583 – 17 March 1640) was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including ''A New Way to Pay Old Debts'', ''The City Madam'', and '' The Roman Actor'', are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes. Early life The son of Arthur Massinger or Messanger, he was baptised at St. Thomas's Salisbury on 24 November 1583. He apparently belonged to an old Salisbury family, for the name occurs in the city records as early as 1415. He is described in his matriculation entry at St. Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a gentleman. His father, who had also been educated at St. Alban Hall, was a member of parliament, and was attached to the household of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Herbert recommended Arthur in 1587 for the office of examiner in the Court of the Marches. William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, who would come to oversee the London Stage and the royal company as King James's Lord Chamberlain, succ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Elizabeth's Men
The Lady Elizabeth's Men, or Princess Elizabeth's Men, was a company of actors in Jacobean London, formed under the patronage of King James I's daughter Princess Elizabeth. From 1618 on, the company was called The Queen of Bohemia's Men, after Elizabeth and her husband the Elector Palatine had their brief and disastrous flirtation with the crown of Bohemia. (In the winter of 1618–19, the two had their brief reign as the King and Queen of Bohemia, to start the Thirty Years' War.) The company received its royal patent on 27 April 1611; it is thought to have been composed largely of former child actors from the children's troupes – the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's — who were now grown to manhood. They may have started out playing at the Swan Theatre. On 29 August 1611, the company signed a bond with Philip Henslowe; they would rely on Henslowe for financing and would in the future act at Henslowe's new theatre, the Hope. Soon after their inception, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Fair Maid Of The West
''The Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold, Parts 1 and 2'' is a work of English Renaissance drama, a two-part play written by Thomas Heywood that was first published in 1631. Date The dates of authorship of the two parts of ''The Fair Maid of the West'' are not known with certainty. ''Part 1'' involves historical events of 1596 and 1597, and refers to Queen Elizabeth I in terms suggesting she was still alive at the time of its authorship; scholars therefore date ''Part 1'' to the 1597–1603 period. Significant differences in tone between the two parts suggest that they were written separately, perhaps widely separately, in time: "What slight evidence there is...indicates that Heywood wrote Part II some twenty-five or thirty years after Part I." Publication The drama was entered into the Stationers' Register on 16 June 1631; later that year, both parts were published together, in a quarto by the bookseller Richard Royston. The volume may have been typeset in the shop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King John And Matilda
''King John and Matilda'' is a Caroline era stage play, a historical tragedy written by Robert Davenport. It was initially published in 1655; the cast list included in the first edition provides valuable information on some of the actors of English Renaissance theatre. Performance and publication No certain information survives on the play's date of authorship or earliest production. Scholars generally date the play to c. 1628–29, though dates as early as 1624 and as late as 1634 have been proposed. The title page of the first edition states that the play was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre; the actors in the cast list belonged to that company. The troupe staged a revival of Davenport's play c. 1638–39, perhaps a decade after its initial appearance. The 1655 quarto was published by actor-turned-stationer Andrew Pennycuicke. The volume includes an epistle addressed "To the knowning Reader" that is signed with the initials "R. D." This has been t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hannibal And Scipio
''Hannibal and Scipio'' is a Caroline era stage play, a classical tragedy written by Thomas Nabbes. The play was first performed in 1635 by Queen Henrietta's Men, and was first published in 1637. The first edition of the play contained a cast list of the original production, making the 1637 quarto an important information source on English Renaissance theatre. Literary connections As its title indicates, the play relates the historical rivalry between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus. Out of the vast array of historical source material on the subject, Nabbes relied primarily upon the account of the Second Punic War given by Livy in his history of Rome, ''Ab Urbe condita'', and upon Plutarch's ''Lives of Hannibal and Scipio.'' Earlier English plays on the subject had been written and acted. A ''Scipio Africanus,'' author unknown, was staged at the English Court on 3 January 1580; a ''Hannibal and Hermes'' by Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton, and Robert Wilson dated from 1598; it w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Harding, 8th Baron Berkeley
George Berkeley, 8th Baron Berkeley, KB (1601 – 10 August 1658) was a seventeenth-century English nobleman and a prominent patron of literature in his generation. Family George Berkeley, baptized 26 October 1601 at Low Leyton, Essex, was the only surviving son of Sir Thomas Berkeley (11 July 1575 – 22 November 1611) and Elizabeth Carey, daughter and sole heir of George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon. He was the grandson of Henry Berkeley, 7th Baron Berkeley (d. 26 November 1613), by his first wife, Katherine Howard (d. 7 April 1596), third daughter of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Frances de Vere, daughter of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford and Elizabeth Trussell. Career Berkeley's childhood was spent in Warwickshire, where he was a pupil of the translator, Philemon Holland of Coventry, and of Henry Ashwood. He succeeded to his titles of Baron Berkeley of Berkeley, Mowbray, Segrave, & Breuse of Gower at the death of his grandfather, Henry Berkeley, 7th Baron Berkeley, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Waterson
John Waterson (died 10 February 1656) was a London publisher and bookseller of the Jacobean and Caroline eras; he published significant works in English Renaissance drama, including plays by William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, John Webster, and Philip Massinger. Beginning Waterson was the scion of a family of publishers: his grandfather Richard and his father Simon were both in the book trade. Simon Waterson (1585–1634) was also the brother-in-law of William Ponsonby, the prominent publisher of Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney; when Ponsonby died in 1604, Simon acquired many of Ponsonby's copyrights. John Waterson became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers Company on 27 June 1620, and soon after was an active independent publisher. He took over the management of his father's shop, at the sign of the Crown at Cheap Gate in St. Paul's Churchyard. (Simon Waterson is thought to have gone into semi-retirement when his son took over, though his name appeared on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gentleman Of Venice
''The Gentleman of Venice'' is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by James Shirley, and first published in 1655. The play was licensed for performance in London by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 30 October 1639. It was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre in that year, though Shirley himself still seems to have been in Ireland at the time. It is possible, however, that the play was performed earlier at the Werburgh Street Theatre in Dublin, where Shirley worked as producer/director and house dramatist in the later 1630s. In 1655, ''The Gentleman of Venice'' was published twice in alternative quarto and octavo formats by the bookseller Humphrey Moseley, who issued the play both as a solo work and bound together with Shirley's ''The Politician''. (Moseley issued the octavo edition so that owners of his 1653 octavo collection ''Six New Plays'' could have the two newly printed works bound together with the earlier texts if they so desi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustine Matthews
Augustine Matthews ( fl. 1615 – 1637) was a printer in London in the Jacobean and Caroline eras. Among a wide variety of other work, Matthews printed notable texts in English Renaissance drama. Matthews became a freedman (a full member) of the Stationers Company on 9 May 1615. By 1619 he was established in his own business (in Cow Lane), and for the next two decades he produced a range of literature for many of the booksellers of his generation. In the field of drama, Matthews printed these editions of these plays: * Q2 of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's ''A Fair Quarrel'', 1622 * Q3 of ''The Troublesome Reign of King John'', 1622 * Q1 of John Webster's ''The Devil's Law Case'', 1623 * Q1 of the anonymous ''Tragedy of Nero'', 1624 (with printer John Norton) * Q2 of Beaumont and Fletcher's ''The Scornful Lady'', 1625 ** Q4 of the same play, 1635 * Q3 of Beaumont and Fletcher's ''Philaster'', 1628 * Q3 of George Wilkins's ''The Miseries of Enforced Marriage'', 1629 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragedy, tragic and comedy, comic forms. Most often seen in drama, dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending. Tragicomedy, as its name implies, invokes the intended response of both the tragedy and the comedy in the audience, the former being a genre based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis and the latter being a genre intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter. In theatre Classical precedent There is no concise formal definition of tragicomedy from the classical antiquity, classical age. It appears that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had something like the Renaissance meaning of the term (that is, a serious action with a happy ending) in mind when, in ''Poetics (Aristotle), Poetics'', he discusses tragedy with a dual ending. In this respect, a number of An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1630 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1630. Events *April 10 – English literature, drama, and education lose a major patron and benefactor when William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chamberlain of England, dies at Baynard's Castle in London. * June – Scottish-born Presbyterian Alexander Leighton is brought before Archbishop William Laud's Star Chamber court in England for publishing the seditious pamphlet ''An Appeale to the Parliament, or, Sions Plea Against the Prelacy'' (printed in the Netherlands, 1628). He is sentenced to be pilloried and whipped, have his ears cropped, one side of his nose slit, and his face branded with "SS" (for "sower of sedition"), to be imprisoned, and be degraded from holy orders. New books Prose *Johann Heinrich Alsted – ''Encyclopaedia'' * Thomas Dekker – ''London Look Back'' * Thomas Randolph – ''Aristippus, or The Jovial Philosopher'' and ''The Conceited Pedlar'' (in one volume) Dra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_title_page.jpg "Click for more on -> Augustine Matthews")