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The Persian Princess
''The Persian Princess'' is a 1708 tragedy by the British writer Lewis Theobald. It was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It is also written as ''The Persian Princess: or, The Royal Villain''. The play was not a great success and Theobald himself wrote disparagingly of it, although its acceptance to be staged at a major theatre suggests that it was seen as having merit. Along with his later work ''The Perfidious Brother'', it has been examined for textual clues in light of the authorship of ''Double Falsehood'' a play that Theobald claimed to be based on a lost William Shakespeare work.Carnegie & Taylor p.136 The original Drury Lane cast included Theophilus Keene as Memnon, Robert Wilks as Artaban, John Mills as Oxartes, Barton Booth Barton Booth (168210 May 1733) was one of the most famous dramatic actors of the first part of the 18th century. Early life Booth was the son of The Hon and Very Revd Dr Robert Booth (priest), Robert Booth, Dean of Bristol, by his fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lewis Theobald
Lewis Theobald (baptised 2 April 1688 – 18 September 1744), English textual editor and author, was a landmark figure both in the history of Shakespearean editing and in literary satire. He was vital for the establishment of fair texts for Shakespeare, and he was the first avatar of Dulness in Alexander Pope's ''The Dunciad''. Life and work Lewis Theobald was the son of Peter Theobald, an attorney, and his second wife, Mary. He was born in Sittingbourne, Kent, and baptized there on 2 April 1688. When Peter Theobald died in 1690, Lewis was taken into the Rockingham household and educated with the sons of the family, which gave him the grounding in Greek and Latin that would serve his scholarship throughout his career. As a young man, he was apprenticed to an attorney and then set up his own law practice in London. In 1707, possibly while he was apprenticing, he published ''A Pindaric Ode on the Union of Scotland and England'' and ''Naufragium Britannicum.''. In 1708 his tragedy ... [...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] |
Tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain hatawakens pleasure", for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term ''tragedy'' often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it. From its origins in the theatre of ancient Greece 2500 years ago, from which there survives only a fra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Perfidious Brother
''The Perfidious Brother'' is a 1716 tragedy by the British writer Lewis Theobald. A dispute rose of the authorship of the play when a watchmaker and aspiring playwright Henry Meystayer claimed that Theobald had stolen it from him.Carnegie & Taylor p.94 Meystayer published his own version of the play presenting it as the work of the "original author". Theobald was later to be involved in a much more controversial dispute in 1727 when he presented ''Double Falsehood'' as being based on a lost work of William Shakespeare. The original Lincoln's Inn Fields cast included John Corey as Gonsalvo, Theophilus Keene Theophilus Keene (1680-1718) was an Anglo-Irish stage actor and theatre manager. Keene was from a Presbyterian background. He originally began acting at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Having arrived in London from Ireland in 1704, he appear ... as Sebastian, Thomas Smith as Roderick, John Leigh as Beaufort, Jane Rogers as Luciana and Jane Bullock as Selinda. Refe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double Falsehood
''Double Falsehood'' (archaic spelling: ''Double Falshood'') or ''The Distrest Lovers'' is a 1727 play by the English writer and playwright Lewis Theobald, although the authorship has been contested ever since the play was first published, with some scholars considering that it may have been written by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Editors of the Association for Psychological Science. ''Shakespeare’s Plays Reveal His Psychological Signature''. Association for Psychological Science. 9 April 2015. Some authors believe that it may be an adaptation of a lost play by Shakespeare and Fletcher known as ''''. Theobald himself claimed h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theophilus Keene
Theophilus Keene (1680-1718) was an Anglo-Irish stage actor and theatre manager. Keene was from a Presbyterian background. He originally began acting at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Having arrived in London from Ireland in 1704, he appeared as part of the company at the Drury Lane Theatre until 1714. Along with Christopher Bullock he took over the management of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in 1717, at the time one of two patent theatres in London. The co-managers worked together for one season after replacing the "broke" John Rich before Keene's death after a fall from a horse while riding in the county. Following his death in 1718 a biography of him ''Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Theophilus Keene'' was produced by Richard Savage.Wanko p.231 Selected roles * Balance in ''The Recruiting Officer'' by George Farquhar (1706) * Rodogune in ''The Royal Convert'' by Nicholas Rowe (1707) * Memnon in ''The Persian Princess'' by Lewis Theobald (1708) * Priscian in ''The Rival Foo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Wilks
Robert Wilks (''c.'' 1665 – 27 September 1732) was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its heyday of the 1710s. He was, with Colley Cibber and Thomas Doggett, one of the "triumvirate" of actor-managers that was denounced by Alexander Pope and caricatured by William Hogarth as leaders of the decline in theatrical standards and degradation of the stage's literary tradition. The family was based for many generations in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. His great-uncle, Judge Wilks, had served Charles I of England during the English Civil War, for whom he raised a troop at his own expense. After Oliver Cromwell won the civil war, Wilks' father moved to Dublin, where Robert Wilks was born. He was a clerk to Robert Southwell until he joined the Williamite army. As soon as he was discharged from the army, he worked in the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin from 1691 to 1693. According to Wilks's version of the story ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Mills (stage Actor)
John Mills (c.1670–1736) was a British stage actor. A long-standing part of the Drury Lane company from 1695 until his death, he appeared in both comedies and tragedies. His wife Margaret Mills was an actress, and his son William Mills also became an actor at Drury Lane. He was a friend of the playwright Richard Steele and Robert Wilks the lead actor and manager at Drury Lane with whom he frequently appeared on stage. He died on 17 December 1736, thirteen days after performing in his final role as the King in '' Henry IV, Part 2''.Highfill, Burnim & Langhans p.249 Selected roles * Pedro in '' Agnes de Castro'' by Catherine Trotter (1695) * Castillio in ''Neglected Virtue'' by Charles Hopkins (1696) * Pisano in ''The Unhappy Kindness'' by Thomas Scott (1696) * Lovewell in ''Love and a Bottle'' by George Farquhar (1698) * Colonel Darange in '' The Campaigners'' by Thomas D'Urfey (1698) * Vizard in ''The Constant Couple'' by George Farquhar (1699) * Don Duart in ''Love Makes a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barton Booth
Barton Booth (168210 May 1733) was one of the most famous dramatic actors of the first part of the 18th century. Early life Booth was the son of The Hon and Very Revd Dr Robert Booth (priest), Robert Booth, Dean of Bristol, by his first wife and distant cousin Ann Booth, daughter of Sir Robert Booth (judge), Robert Booth, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and was educated at Westminster School, where his success in the Roman comedy ''Andria (comedy), Andria'' gave him a gave him an inclination for the stage. He was intended for the church, and to attend Trinity College, Cambridge; but in 1698 he ran away and obtained employment in a theatrical company in Dublin, where he made his first appearance as the title character in Aphra Behn's ''Oroonoko''. London success After two seasons in Ireland he returned to London, where Thomas Betterton, who had previously failed to help him, probably out of regard for Booth's family, now gave him all the assistance in his power. At the Lincoln's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Corey (actor)
John Corey was an English stage actor and playwright of the eighteenth century. His name is sometime written as John Cory. Born in Barnstaple in North Devon of a Cornish family, he first acted on the London stage in 1701 have originally studied law at the Inns of Chancery. He was therefore unlikely to have been the son of the Restoration actress Katherine Corey. Between 1701 and 1735 he was a mainstay of the Drury Lane, Haymarket and Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre companies, and also appeared at the Goodman's Fields Theatre run by Henry Giffard late in his career.Highfill, Burnim & Langhans p.492-93 He also wrote two plays which were performed at Lincoln's Inn Fields early in his career there. Selected roles * Seleuchus in ''Antiochus the Great'' by Jane Wiseman (1701) * Mirvan in ''Tamerlane'' by Nicholas Rowe (1701) * Colonel Many in '' The Beau's Duel'' by Susanna Centlivre (1702) * Careles in '' The Different Widows'' by Mary Pix (1703) * Dorante in '' The Gamester'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Smith (actor)
Thomas Smith (died 1766) was a British stage actor of the eighteenth century. He first joined the Drury Lane company in the late seventeenth century. He spent time at the Queen's Theatre in Haymarket and in 1715 joined John Rich's company at Lincoln's Inn Fields. He remained with the company, although acting elsewhere such as Dublin's Smock Alley Theatre, until 1728. There another Smith, named Charles, at the company in his latter years and their roles are sometimes confused. After leaving Lincoln's Inn, Thomas Smith moved to the Haymarket Theatre and then to Goodman's Fields where he acted in Henry Giffard's company until 1733. His daughter, was also an actress, making her debut at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1716.Highfill, Burnim & Langhans p.162 Selected roles * Cyaxeres in '' Cyrus the Great'' by John Banks (1695) * Peter in '' Imposture Defeated'' by George Powell (1697) * Brisson in ''The Unhappy Penitent'' by Catherine Trotter (1701) * Phorbas in ''The Virgin Prophetess' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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