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Sack (wine)
Sack is an antiquated wine term referring to white fortified wine imported from mainland Spain or the Canary Islands.Oxford Companion to Wine: Sack There was sack of different origins such as: * Canary sack from the Canary Islands, * Malaga sack from , * Palm sack from , and * Sherris sack from The term ''Sherris sack'' later gave way to |
Malvasia
Malvasia (, also known as Malvazia) is a group of wine grape varieties grown historically in the Mediterranean region, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands and the island of Madeira, but now grown in many of the winemaking regions of the world. In the past, the names Malvasia, Malvazia, and Malmsey have been used interchangeably for Malvasia-based wines; however, in modern oenology, "Malmsey" is now used almost exclusively for a sweet variety of Madeira wine made from the Malvasia grape. Grape varieties in this family include Malvasia bianca, Malvasia di Schierano, Malvasia negra, , Malvasia nera di Brindisi, Malvasia di Candia aromatica, Malvasia odorosissima, and a number of other varieties. Malvasia wines are produced in Greece (regions of Peloponnese, Cyclades and Crete), Italy (including Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lombardia, Apulia, Sicily, Lipari, Emilia-Romagna, and Sardinia), Slovenia, Croatia (including Istria), Corsica, the Iberian Peninsula, the Canary Islands, the island ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no maritime experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, diligence, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy. The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Early life Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London, on 23 Februar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, ''Poems, Chiefly Lyrical'', in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Tennyson also excelled at short lyrics, such as "Break, Break, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears", and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his verse was based on classical mytho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dryden
'' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romanticist writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John". Early life Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was the rector of All Saints. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Barone t (1553–1632), and wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift. As a boy, Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh, where it is likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westminst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poet Laureate Of The United Kingdom
The British Poet Laureate is an honorary position appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom, currently on the advice of the prime minister. The role does not entail any specific duties, but there is an expectation that the holder will write verse for significant national occasions. The origins of the laureateship date back to 1616 when a pension was provided to Ben Jonson, but the first official holder of the position was John Dryden, appointed in 1668 by Charles II. On the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who held the post between November 1850 and October 1892, there was a break of four years as a mark of respect; Tennyson's laureate poems "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" were particularly cherished by the Victorian public. Three poets, Thomas Gray, Samuel Rogers and Walter Scott, turned down the laureateship. The holder of the position as at October 2022 is Simon Armitage who succeeded Carol Ann Duffy in May 2019. Backgr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mermaid Tavern
The Mermaid Tavern was a tavern on Cheapside in London during the Elizabethan era, located east of St. Paul's Cathedral on the corner of Friday Street and Bread Street. It was the site of the so-called "Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen", a drinking club that met on the first Friday of every month that included some of the Elizabethan era's leading literary figures, among them Ben Jonson, John Donne, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, Thomas Coryat, John Selden, Robert Bruce Cotton, Richard Carew, Richard Martin, and William Strachey. A popular tradition has grown up that the group included William Shakespeare, although most scholars think that was improbable. The building According to Jonson, the Tavern was situated on Bread Street ("At Bread Street's Mermaid, having dined and merry..."). It probably had entrances on both Bread Street and Friday Street. The location corresponds to the modern junction between Bread Street and Cannon Street.Ed Glinert, ''Literary London: A S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays ''Every Man in His Humour'' (1598), '' Volpone, or The Fox'' (c. 1606), '' The Alchemist'' (1610) and '' Bartholomew Fair'' (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I." Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642)."Ben Jonson", ''Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge'', volume 10, p. 388. His ancestor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Herrick (poet)
Robert Herrick (baptised 24 August 1591 – buried 15 October 1674) was a 17th-century English lyric poet and Anglican cleric. He is best known for ''Hesperides'', a book of poems. This includes the '' carpe diem'' poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", with the first line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may". Early life Born in Cheapside, London, Robert Herrick was the seventh child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith."Robert Herrick," Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, Web, 20 May 2011. He was named after an uncle, Robert Herrick (or Heyrick), a prosperous Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester, who had bought the land Greyfriars Abbey stood on after Henry VIII's dissolution in the mid-16th century. Nicholas Herrick died in a fall from a fourth-floor window in November 1592, when Robert was a year old (whether this was suicide remains unclear). [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Taming Of The Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly's diversion. The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship; however, Petruchio "tames" her with various psychological and physical torments, such as keeping her from eating and drinking, until she becomes a desirable, compliant, and obedient bride. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina's younger sister, Bianca, who is seen as the "ideal" woman. The question of whether the play is misogynistic has become the subject of considerable controversy, particularly among mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Sly
Christopher Sly is a minor character in William Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew.'' He is a drunk man who is easily dominated by women, set up as a Foil (literature), foil to Petruchio, the central male character in the play. Role ''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a play within a play. The frame play, where the action opens (called the "Induction (play), Induction," just prior to Act One), shows a drunk Christopher Sly being ejected from a bar by its hostess. A wealthy lord arrives, finds Sly in a drunken stupor, and decides to play a prank on him. With Sly asleep in his intoxication, the lord's men dress Sly in fine apparel and the men in turn dress up as servants and one even as Sly's wife, in an effort to persuade Sly when he wakes up that he is an aristocrat. After this task is accomplished, the lord’s men perform what we know as ''The Taming of the Shrew''. He briefly is seen again making a comment about having some privacy with his "wife" (actually a pageboy drag (clot ... [...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] |
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