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The Great Favourite
''The Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma'' is a stage play written by Sir Robert Howard, a historical drama based on the life of Francisco Goméz de Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Lerma, the favourite of King Philip III of Spain. The play has often been considered Howard's best dramatic work, as well as a step in the development of the heroic drama of the Restoration era. Performance and publication The play was premiered onstage on 20 February 1668, acted by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Nell Gwyn played Lerma's daughter Maria. Samuel Pepys saw the play in the company of King Charles II and his court at its first performance, as he recorded in his Diary. (Pepys interpreted the play as a veiled criticism of Charles's conduct with his mistress, and wrote that he had expected the King to interrupt the performance — though this did not occur.) The play was published in a quarto edition that same year by Henry Herringman, and printed again in a folio coll ...
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Robert Howard (playwright)
Sir Robert Howard (January 1626 – 3 September 1698) was an English playwright and politician. He fought for the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. Life He was born the 6th son of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire and his wife Elizabeth. As the 18-year-old son of a Royalist family, he fought at the battle of Cropredy Bridge and was knighted for the bravery he showed there. In the years after the English Civil War his royalist sympathies led to his imprisonment at Windsor Castle in 1658. After the Restoration, he quickly rose to prominence in political life, with several appointments to posts which brought him influence and money. He was Member of Parliament for Stockbridge in the Cavalier Parliament (1661 to 1679) and for Castle Rising (1679 to 1681 and 1689 to 1698), and believed in a balance of parliament and monarchy. All his life he continued in a series of powerful positions; in 1671 he became secretary to the Treasury, and in 1673 auditor of the Exchequer. He ...
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1692 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1692. Events *November **Nahum Tate becomes Poet Laureate of England. **Thomas Rymer is made Historiographer Royal, and mounts a major effort to preserve and publish historical documents. *December 9 – Playwright William Mountfort is attacked in a London street and stabbed; he dies the next day. New books Prose * Richard Ames – ''The Jacobite Coventicle'', ''Sylvia's Complaint, of Her Sexes Unhappiness'' (in answer to Robert Gould) *Madame d'Aulnoy – ''Histoire de Jean de Bourbon, Prince de Carency (The Prince of Carency)'' *Richard Baxter – ''Paraphrase on the Psalms of David'' *Richard Bentley – three "confutations" of Atheism and ''The Folly of Atheism, and (what is now called) Deism'' *Gilbert Burnet – ''A Discourse on the Pastoral Care'' *William Congreve – ''Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconcil'd: A novel'' *Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway – ''The Principles of the Most Ancie ...
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Edward Hyde, 1st Earl Of Clarendon
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (18 February 16099 December 1674), was an English statesman, lawyer, diplomat and historian who served as chief advisor to Charles I during the First English Civil War, and Lord Chancellor to Charles II from 1660 to 1667. Hyde largely avoided involvement in the political disputes of the 1630s until elected to the Long Parliament in November 1640. Like many moderates, he felt attempts by Charles to rule without Parliament had gone too far but by 1642 felt its leaders were, in turn, seeking too much power. A devout believer in an Episcopalian Church of England, his opposition to Puritan attempts to reform it drove much of his policy over the next two decades. He joined Charles in York shortly before the First English Civil War began in August 1642, and initially served as his senior political advisor. However, as the war turned against the Royalists, his rejection of attempts to build alliances with Scots Covenanters or Irish Catholics led to ...
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Philip II Of Spain
Philip II) in Spain, while in Portugal and his Italian kingdoms he ruled as Philip I ( pt, Filipe I). (21 May 152713 September 1598), also known as Philip the Prudent ( es, Felipe el Prudente), was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from 1580, and King of Naples and Sicily from 1554 until his death in 1598. He was '' jure uxoris'' King of England and Ireland from his marriage to Queen Mary I in 1554 until her death in 1558. He was also Duke of Milan from 1540. From 1555, he was Lord of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands. The son of Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, Philip inherited his father's Spanish Empire in 1556 and succeeded to the Portuguese throne in 1580 following a dynastic crisis. The Spanish conquests of the Inca Empire and of the Philippines, named in his honor by Ruy López de Villalobos, were completed during his reign. Under Philip II, Spain reached the height of its influence and power, sometimes called the Spanish Golden Age, and r ...
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Essay Of Dramatick Poesie
''Essay of Dramatic Poesie'' is a work by John Dryden, England's first Poet Laureate, in which Dryden attempts to justify drama as a legitimate form of "poetry" comparable to the epic, as well as defend English drama against that of the ancients and the French. The Essay was probably written during the plague year of 1666, and first published in 1668. In presenting his argument, Dryden takes up the subject that Philip Sidney had set forth in his '' Defence of Poesie'' in 1580. The treatise is a dialogue among four speakers: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander. The four speakers are Sir Robert Howard rites Charles Sackville (then Lord Buckhurst) ugenius Sir Charles Sedley isedeius and Dryden himself (''neander'' means "new man" and implies that Dryden, as a respected member of the gentry class, is entitled to join in this dialogue on an equal footing with the three older men who are his social superiors). On the day that the English fleet encounters the Dutch at sea ne ...
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1664 In Literature
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1664. Events *February – London publisher John Twyn is hanged, drawn and quartered, having been convicted of treason for distributing seditious literature. *April 6 – Moses ben Isaac Bonems is the first signatory of the approbations to works given by the members of the Council of Four Lands at the ''Gramnitza'' (candlestick) fair. *May 12 – Molière's comedy ''Tartuffe'' is performed in its original version as part of "The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island" at the court of King Louis XIV of France to mark the start of construction of the Palace of Versailles, but objections to its presentation of a hypocritical religious impostor ban it from later public presentation. *June – ''Gazzetta di Mantova'' is first published in Mantua, Italy. By 2009 it will be the world's oldest private newspaper still published, and the oldest one continuously published in print. * June 20 – Racine's tragedy ''La Thébaï ...
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The Indian Queen (play)
''The Indian Queen'' is a play by Sir Robert Howard, written in collaboration with John Dryden, his sister's husband. It was first performed in 1664 with incidental music by John Banister the elder (1630–1679). In 1695, the play was expanded with additional music to create a new semi-opera of the same name by the composer Henry Purcell Henry Purcell (, rare: September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Purcell's style of Baroque music was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest E .... Protagonists The plot is set at the courts of Peru and Mexico right before the Spanish invasion. It is difficult to follow due to an information gap which is filled only in the last scenes, and due to changes of location which the reader is likely to miss (here the spectator will have an advantage). The play's protagonists can be divided into the groups of two countries and their respective ...
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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 ...
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Literature In English
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines English literature more narrowly as, "the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present day. The major literatures written in English outside the British Isles are treated separately under American literature, Australian literature, Canadian literature, and New Zealand literature." However, despite this, it includes literature from the Republic of Ireland, "Anglo-American modernism", and discusses post-colonial literature. ; See also full articles on American literature and other literatures in the English language. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Fri ...
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Stationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England. The Register itself allowed publishers to document their right to produce a particular printed work, and constituted an early form of copyright law. The company's charter gave it the right to seize illicit editions and bar the publication of unlicensed books. For the study of English literature of the later sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries—for the Elizabethan era, the Jacobean era, the Caroline era, and especially for English Renaissance theatre—the Stationers' Register is an crucial and essential resource: it provides factual information and hard data that is available nowhere else. Together with the records of the Master of the Revels (which relate to dramatic perform ...
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John Ford (dramatist)
John Ford (1586c. 1639) was an English playwright and poet of the Jacobean and Caroline eras born in Ilsington in Devon, England. His plays deal mainly with the conflict between passion and conscience. Although remembered primarily as a playwright, he also wrote a number of poems on themes of love and morality. Origins John Ford was baptised 17 April 1586 at Ilsington Church, Devon. He was the second son of Thomas Ford (1556–1610) of Bagtor in the parish of Ilsington, and his wife Elizabeth Popham (died 1629) of the Popham family of Huntworth in Somerset. Her monument exists in Ilsington Church. Thomas Ford's grandfather was John Ford (died 1538) of Ashburton (the son and heir of William Ford of Chagford) who purchased the estate of Bagtor in the parish of Ilsington, which his male heirs successively made their seat. The Elizabethan mansion of the Fords survives today at Bagtor as the service wing of a later house appended in about 1700. Life and work Ford left home to s ...
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Alfred Harbage
Alfred Bennett Harbage (July 18, 1901 – May 1976) was an influential Shakespeare scholar of the mid-20th century. Life He was born in Philadelphia and received his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. He lectured on Shakespeare both there and at Columbia University, Columbia before becoming a professor at Harvard University, where he taught for many years. He was the General Editor of the Pelican Books edition of the works of Shakespeare. He also wrote a number of well-received books on Shakespeare's works, among them ''Shakespeare's Audience'' (1941), ''As They Liked It'' (1947), ''Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions'' (1952), and ''Shakespeare Without Words'' (1966). Though best known for his work on Shakespeare, Harbage's literary scholarship extended to his successors too; he did important work on a range of seventeenth-century figures. In this area, his books ''Thomas Killigrew, Cavalier Dramatist 1612-1683'' (1930), ''Sir Will ...
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