The Author's Farce
''The Author's Farce and the Pleasures of the Town'' is a play by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding, first performed on 30 March 1730 at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. Written in response to the Theatre Royal's rejection of his earlier plays, ''The Author's Farce'' was Fielding's first theatrical success. The Little Theatre allowed Fielding the freedom to experiment, and to alter the traditional comedy genre. The play ran during the early 1730s and was altered for its run starting 21 April 1730 and again in response to the Actor Rebellion of 1733. Throughout its life, the play was coupled with several different plays, including ''The Cheats of Scapin'' and Fielding's ''Tom Thumb''. The first and second acts deal with the attempts of the central character, Harry Luckless, to woo his landlady's daughter, and his efforts to make money by writing plays. In the second act, he finishes a puppet theatre play titled ''The Pleasures of the Town'', about the Goddess No ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including '' The Rape of the Lock'', '' The Dunciad'', and ''An Essay on Criticism,'' and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted author in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations'', some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. " damning with faint praise" or " to err is human; to forgive, divine"). Life Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution. His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was a successful linen merchant in the Strand, London. His mother, Edith (1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York. Both parents were Catholics. His mother's sister was ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber (6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir ''Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber'' (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style. He wrote 25 plays for his own company at Drury Lane, half of which were adapted from various sources, which led Robert Lowe and Alexander Pope, among others, to criticise his "miserable mutilation" of "crucified Molière ndhapless Shakespeare". He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed. Cibber's brash, extroverted personality did not sit well with his contemporaries, and he was frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, shady business methods, and a social and political opportunism that was thought to have gained him the laureateship over far better poets. He rose to ignominious fame when he becam ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Colley Cibber As Lord Foppington In The Relapse By John Vanbrugh1
Colley may refer to: * Colley (given name), a masculine given name * Colley (surname), a surname * Colley, Virginia, United States * Colley Township, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, United States See also * Colley Matrix The Colley Matrix is a computer-generated sports rating system designed by Dr. Wesley Colley. It is one of more than 40 polls, rankings, and formulas recognized by the NCAA in its list of national champion selectors in college football.

William Hogarth
William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series '' A Harlot's Progress'', '' A Rake's Progress'' and '' Marriage A-la-Mode''. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". Hogarth was born in London to a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune, and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of outstanding debts, an event that is thought to have informed William's paintings and prints with a hard edge. Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving, Hogarth's works are mostly ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded
''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'' is an epistolary novel first published in 1740 by English writer Samuel Richardson. Considered one of the first true English novels, it serves as Richardson's version of conduct literature about marriage. ''Pamela'' tells the story of a fifteen-year-old maidservant named Pamela Andrews, whose employer, Mr. B, a wealthy landowner, makes unwanted and inappropriate advances towards her after the death of his mother. Pamela strives to reconcile her strong religious training with her desire for the approval of her employer in a series of letters and, later in the novel, journal entries all addressed to her impoverished parents. After various unsuccessful attempts at seduction, a series of sexual assaults, and an extended period of kidnapping, the rakish Mr. B eventually reforms and makes Pamela a sincere proposal of marriage. In the novel's second part Pamela marries Mr. B and tries to acclimatise to her new position in upper-class society. The full ti ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Epistolary Novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered to include novels composed of documents even if they don't include letters at all. More recently, epistolaries may include electronic documents such as recordings and radio, blog posts, and e-mails. The word ''epistolary'' is derived from Latin from the Greek word ἐπιστολή ''epistolē'', meaning a letter (see epistle). In German, this type of novel is known as a Briefroman. The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator. An important strategic device in the epistolary novel for creating the impression of authenticity of the letters is the fictional editor. Early ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson (baptised 19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) was an English writer and printer known for three epistolary novels: ''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'' (1740), '' Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady'' (1748) and ''The History of Sir Charles Grandison'' (1753). He printed almost 500 works, including journals and magazines, working periodically with the London bookseller Andrew Millar. Richardson had been apprenticed to a printer, whose daughter he eventually married. He lost her along with their six children, but remarried and had six more children, of which four daughters reached adulthood, leaving no male heirs to continue the print shop. As it ran down, he wrote his first novel at the age of 51 and joined the admired writers of his day. Leading acquaintances included Samuel Johnson and Sarah Fielding, the physician and Behmenist George Cheyne, and the theologian and writer William Law, whose books he printed. At Law's request, Richardson printed some poems by ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Farce
Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense; satire, parody, and mockery of real-life situations, people, events, and interactions; unlikely and humorous instances of miscommunication; ludicrous, improbable, and exaggerated characters; and broadly stylized performances. Genre Despite involving absurd situations and characters, the genre generally maintains at least a slight degree of realism and narrative continuity within the context of the irrational or ludicrous situations, often distinguishing it from completely absurdist or fantastical genres. Farces are often episodic or short in duration, often being set in one specific location where all events occur. Farces have historically been performed for the stage and film. Historical context The term ''farce'' is der ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Beggar's Opera
''The Beggar's Opera'' is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today. Ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of opera, but without recitative. The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time. ''The Beggar's Opera'' premiered at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre on 29 January 1728 and ran for 62 consecutive performances, the second-longest run in theatre history up to that time (after 146 performances of Robert Cambert's '' Pomone'' in Paris in 1671). The work became Gay's greatest success and has been played ever since; it has been called "the most popular play of the eighteenth century". In 1920, ''The Beggar's Opera'' began a revival run of 1,463 ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Dulness
Dulness is the goddess who presides over Alexander Pope's ''The Dunciad''. She is the central character, introduced at the start of the work. Dulness is the daughter of Chaos and "eternal Night", and her mission is to convert all the world to stupidity ("To hatch a new Saturnian age, of Lead"). Her triumph is part of the (the inverse of the ). As "enlightenment" moves ever westward, darkness follows behind. In Pope's poem, she already has control of all political writing and seeks to extend her reign to drama. Hence, she chooses as a champion Lewis Theobald (''Dunciad A'') and Colley Cibber (''Dunciad B''). Pope presents the power of Dulness as inexorable and irresistible, and in Book IV of the ''Dunciad B'' he asks only that she pause a moment to let him write his poem before she takes "the singer and the song" into her oblivion. She is not motivated by any particular malice, and she even shows mercy at one point, if being reduced to insensibility is mercy, for, when a deflowe ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

The Dunciad
''The Dunciad'' is a landmark, mock-heroic, narrative poem by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times from 1728 to 1743. The poem celebrates a goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the Kingdom of Great Britain. Versions The first version – the "three-book" ''Dunciad'' – was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the ''Dunciad Variorum'', was published anonymously in 1729. The ''New Dunciad'', in a new fourth book conceived as a sequel to the previous three, appeared in 1742, and ''The Dunciad in Four Books'', a revised version of the original three books and a slightly revised version of the fourth book with revised commentary was published in 1743 with a new character, Bays, replacing Theobald as the "hero". Origins Pope told Joseph Spence (in ''Spence's Anecdotes'') that he had been working on a general satire of Dulness, with characters of contemporary G ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]