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Sir Courtly Nice
''Sir Courtly Nice: Or, It Cannot Be'' is a 1685 comedy play by the English writer John Crowne. Rehearsals by the United Company were underway when the death of Charles II of England, Charles II in February led to the closure of all theatres as a mark of respect. The play was eventually staged on 9 May at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It is the tradition of the Restoration Comedy. A popular hit it became a stock part of the repertoire for more than a century, with Colley Cibber and Anne Oldfield appearing in a celebrated 1709 revival. The original cast included William Mountfort as Sir Courtly, Cave Underhill as Hothead, Thomas Gillow as Testimony, William Mountfort as Lord Beaugard, Philip Griffin as Surly, Anthony Leigh as Sir Nicholas Callico and Elizabeth Barry as Leonora. Crowne made an attempt to balance the politics of the time by creating a Hothead, a hardline Tory character to balance out the Puritan Whigs (British political party), Whig zealot Testimony but the play sti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Crowne
John Crowne (6 April 1641 – 1712) was a British dramatist. His father "Colonel" William Crowne, accompanied the earl of Arundel on a diplomatic mission to Vienna in 1637, and wrote an account of his journey. He emigrated to Nova Scotia where he received a grant of land from Cromwell, but the French took possession of his property, and the home government did nothing to uphold his rights. Biography He was born in London on 6 April 1641, and emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1657 with his father, a joint proprietor of the colony, aboard the ship ''Satisfaction'', and studied at Harvard College. While studying at Harvard, Crowne lived with Puritan divine John Norton. Crowne left without graduating, however, and returned to England with his father in 1660. When the son came to England his poverty compelled him to act as gentleman usher to an independent lady of quality, and his enemies asserted that his father had been an Independent minister. He began his literary career with a roman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Griffin
Philip Griffin was an English stage actor of the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century. He joined the King's Company at Drury Lane during the 1670s, and was later a member of the merged United Company from 1685. He was named as a manager at Drury Lane in 1695, but then took military service and was styled as Captain Griffin. In 1699 he went to act in Dublin as part of Joseph Ashbury's company at the Smock Alley Theatre, but was back in London where he acted until retired from the stage in 1707.Highfill, Burnim & Langhans p.369-71 Selected roles * Sanchez in ''The Spanish Rogue'' by Thomas Duffett (1673) * Laula in ''The Empress of Morocco'' by Thomas Duffett (1673) * Caligula's Ghost in ''Nero'' by Nathaniel Lee (1674) * Menander in ''Sophonisba'' by Nathaniel Lee (1675) * Grimani in '' Love in the Dark'' by Francis Fane (1675) * Mecaenas in ''Gloriana'' by Nathaniel Lee (1676) * Vernish in ''The Plain Dealer'' by William Wycherley (1676) * Rash in ''The Country Innoce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West End Plays
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance languages (''ouest'' in French, ''oest'' in Catalan, ''ovest'' in Italian, ''oeste'' in Spanish and Portuguese). As in other languages, the word formation stems from the fact that west is the direction of the setting sun in the evening: 'west' derives from the Indo-European root ''*wes'' reduced from ''*wes-pero'' 'evening, night', cognate with Ancient Greek ἕσπερος hesperos 'evening; evening star; western' and Latin vesper 'evening; west'. Examples of the same formation in other languages include Latin occidens 'west' from occidō 'to go down, to set' and Hebrew מַעֲרָב maarav 'west' from עֶרֶב erev 'evening'. Navigation To go west using a compass for navigation (in a place where magnetic north is the same dire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1685 Plays
Events January–March * January 6 – American-born British citizen Elihu Yale, for whom Yale University in the U.S. is named, completes his term as the first leader of the Madras Presidency in India, administering the colony on behalf of the East India Company, and is succeeded by William Gyfford. * January 8 – Almost 200 people are arrested in Coventry by English authorities for gathering to hear readings of the sermons of the non-conformist Protestant minister Obadiah Grew * February 4 – A treaty is signed between Brandenburg-Prussia and the indigenous chiefs at Takoradi in what is now Ghana to permit the German colonists to build a third fort on the Brandenburger Gold Coast. * February 6 – Catholic James Stuart, Duke of York, becomes King James II of England and Ireland, and King James VII of Scotland, in succession to his brother Charles II (1660–1685), King of England, Scotland, and Ireland since 1660. James II and VII reigns unt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Butler, 1st Duke Of Ormond
Lieutenant-General James FitzThomas Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, KG, PC (19 October 1610 – 21 July 1688), was a statesman and soldier, known as Earl of Ormond from 1634 to 1642 and Marquess of Ormond from 1642 to 1661. Following the failure of the senior line of the Butler family, he was the second representative of the Kilcash branch to inherit the earldom. His friend, the Earl of Strafford, secured his appointment as commander of the government army in Ireland. Following the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, he led government forces against the Irish Catholic Confederation; when the First English Civil War began in August 1642, he supported the Royalists and in 1643 negotiated a ceasefire with the Confederation which allowed his troops to be transferred to England. Shortly before the Execution of Charles I in January 1649, he agreed the Second Ormonde Peace, an alliance between the Confederation and Royalist forces which fought against the Cromwellian conquest of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whigs (British Political Party)
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the new Liberal Party with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s, and other Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Liberals' rival, the modern day Conservative Party, in 1912. The Whigs began as a political faction that opposed absolute monarchy and Catholic Emancipation, supporting constitutional monarchism with a parliamentary system. They played a central role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and were the standing enemies of the Roman Catholic Stuart kings and pretenders. The period known as the Whig Supremacy (1714–1760) was enabled by the Hanoverian succession of George I in 1714 and the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1715 by Tory rebels. The Whig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. Puritanism played a significant role in English history, especially during the Protectorate. Puritans were dissatisfied with the limited extent of the English Reformation and with the Church of England's toleration of certain practices associated with the Roman Catholic Church. They formed and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and corporate piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology, and in that sense they were Calvinists (as were many of their earlier opponents). In church polity, some advocated separation from all other established Christian denominations in favour of autonomous gathered churches. These English Dissenters, Separatist and Indepe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tory
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The Tory ethos has been summed up with the phrase "God, King, and Country". Tories are monarchists, were historically of a high church Anglican religious heritage, and opposed to the liberalism of the Whig faction. The philosophy originates from the Cavalier faction, a royalist group during the English Civil War. The Tories political faction that emerged in 1681 was a reaction to the Whig-controlled Parliaments that succeeded the Cavalier Parliament. As a political term, Tory was an insult derived from the Irish language, that later entered English politics during the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–1681. It also has exponents in other parts of the former British Empire, such as the Loyalists of British America, who opposed US secession duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Barry
Elizabeth Barry (1658 – 7 November 1713) was an English actress of the Restoration period. Elizabeth Barry's biggest influence on Restoration drama was her presentation of performing as the tragic actress. She worked in large, prestigious London theatre companies throughout her successful career: from 1675 in the Duke's Company, 1682 – 1695 in the monopoly United Company, and from 1695 onwards as a member of the actors' cooperative usually known as Betterton's Company, of which she was one of the original shareholders. Her stage career began 15 years after the first-ever professional actresses had replaced Shakespeare's boy heroines on the London stage. The actor Thomas Betterton said that her acting gave "success to plays that would disgust the most patient reader", and the critic and playwright John Dennis described her as "that incomparable Actress changing like Nature which she represents, from Passion to Passion, from Extream to Extream, with piercing Force and w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Leigh
Anthony Leigh (died 1692) was a celebrated English comic actor. Life He was from a Northamptonshire family, and was not closely related to the actor John Leigh (c.1689–1726?). He joined the Duke of York's company about 1672, and appeared in that year at the recently opened theatre in Dorset Garden, as the original Pacheco in ''The Reformation'' (1673), a comedy ascribed by Gerard Langbaine to one Arrowsmith, a Cambridge M.A. graduate. At Dorset Garden, Leigh played many original parts. After the merger of the duke's company with the king's in 1682, Leigh did not immediately go to the Theatre Royal. He was in 1683, however, at that theatre the original Bartoline in John Crowne's ''City Politics'', and played Bessus in a revival of ''A King and No King''. Here he remained until his death, creating many characters.They included: Beaugard's Father in Otway's ''The Atheist'', Rogero in Thomas Southerne's ''The Disappointment'', Sir Paul Squelch in Richard Brome's ''Northern Lass'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Gillow
Thomas Gillow (died 1687) was an English stage actor of the Restoration era. His name was sometimes written Gilloe or Gillo. His first known role was at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in Samuel Pordage's ''Herod and Mariamne'' in 1671. He remained with the Duke's Company at the Dorset Gardens Theatre until the merger that created the United Company in 1682. His first role at Drury Lane was in John Dryden's '' The Duke of Guise'' in November that year. He remained a prominent member of the company, appearing in a mixture of comedies and tragedies. He died in May 1687 and was buried at St Bride's Church in the City of London. An actress billed as Mrs Gillow appeared at the Dorset Street Theatre between 1675 and 1678 and this may have been his wife Mary Gillow.Highfill, Burnim & Langhans p.214 Selected roles * Sosius in ''Herod and Mariamne'' by Samuel Pordage (1671) * Lamot in '' Love and Revenge'' by Elkanah Settle (1674) * Polyndus in '' Alcibiades'' by Thomas Otway (1675 ... [...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] |
