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The Widow (play)
''The Widow'' is a Jacobean stage play first published in 1652, but written decades earlier. On the limited evidence available, the play is usually dated to c. 1615–17, partially on the basis of a "yellow bands" reference to the execution of Mrs. Anne Turner (15 November 1615) for her part in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Authorship The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 12 April 1652, and published later that year in quarto by the bookseller Humphrey Moseley. The title page assigns ''The Widow'' to Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, and Thomas Middleton, though the consensus of modern scholarship judges the play to be the work of Middleton alone. The play is known to have been in the repertory of the King's Men. The tripartite attribution is repeated in Alexander Gough's address "To the Reader" prefacing the quarto text; Gough acted with the King's Men in the 1626–36 era. Nineteenth and early twentieth century critics, like E. H. C. Oliphant, made attempts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Overbury
Sir Thomas Overbury (baptized 1581 – 14 September 1613) was an English poet and essayist, also known for being the victim of a murder which led to a scandalous trial. His poem ''A Wife'' (also referred to as ''The Wife''), which depicted the virtues that a young man should demand of a woman, played a large role in the events that precipitated his murder. Background Thomas Overbury was born near Ilmington in Warwickshire, a son of the marriage of Nicholas Overbury, of Bourton-on-the-Hill, Gloucester, and Mary Palmer. In the autumn of 1595, he became a gentleman commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, took his degree of BA in 1598, and came to London to study law in the Middle Temple. He soon found favour with Sir Robert Cecil, travelled on the Continent, and began to enjoy a reputation for an accomplished mind and free manners. Robert Carr About 1601, whilst on holiday in Edinburgh, he met Robert Carr, then an obscure page to the Earl of Dunbar. A great friendship was struck ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The World Tossed At Tennis
''The World Tossed at Tennis'' is a Literature in English#Jacobean literature, Jacobean era masque composed by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, first published in 1620. It was likely acted on 4 March 1620 (Old Style and New Style dates, new style) at Somerset House, Denmark House. Middleton and Rowley conducted one of the most interesting collaborative efforts in English Renaissance theatre, English Renaissance drama; together they produced significant works, ''The Changeling (play), The Changeling'' and ''A Fair Quarrel''. Their only masque is one of the stranger and more original literary products of their generation. Publication ''A Courtly Masque; the Device called, the World tost at Tennis'' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 4 July 1620, and published later that year in a book size, quarto printed by George Purslowe for the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, stationer Edward Wright. The title page assigns authorship to Middleton and Rowley ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from ''folio'' (the largest), to ''quarto'' (smaller) and ''octavo'' (still smaller). Historically, these terms referred to the format of the book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto (from Latin ''quartō'', ablative form of ''quartus'', fourth) historically was a book printed on sheets of paper folded in half twice, with the first fold at right angles to the second, to produce 4 leaves (or 8 pages), each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed – note that a ''leaf'' refers to the single piece of paper, whereas a ''page'' is one side of a leaf. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humphrey Moseley
Humphrey Moseley (died 31 January 1661) was a prominent London publisher and bookseller in the middle seventeenth century. Life Possibly a son of publisher Samuel Moseley, Humphrey Moseley became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers Company, the guild of London booksellers, on 7 May 1627; he was selected a Warden of the company on 7 July 1659. His shop was located at the sign of the Prince's Arms in St Paul's Churchyard. One of the most productive publishers of his era, Moseley's imprint exists on 314 surviving books. Drama and poetry Moseley is best known for the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, which he published in partnership with stationer Humphrey Robinson. Moseley partnered with Robinson on other projects too, and also with Nicholas Fussell (to 1635) and Francis Constable. Moseley issued a range of important Jacobean and Caroline playwrights, including Thomas Middleton, Philip Massinger, James Shirley, Richard Brome, and Sir William D'Avenant. In ... [...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] |
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher (1579–1625) was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's. He collaborated on writing plays with Francis Beaumont, and also with Shakespeare on three plays. Though his reputation has declined since, Fletcher remains an important transitional figure between the Elizabethan popular tradition and the popular drama of the Restoration. Biography Early life Fletcher was born in December 1579 (baptised 20 December) in Rye, Sussex, and died of the plague in August 1625 (buried 29 August in St. Saviour's, Southwark). His father Richard Fletcher was an ambitious and successful cleric who was in turn Dean of Peterborough, Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Worcester and Bishop of London (shortly before his death), as well as chaplain to Queen Elizabeth. As Dean of Pete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt ''Midleton'') was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jacobean period, and among the few to gain equal success in comedy and tragedy. He was also a prolific writer of masques and pageants. Life Middleton was born in London and baptised on 18 April 1580. He was the son of a bricklayer, who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman and owned property adjoining the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. Middleton was five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a 15-year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister – an experience that informed him about the legal system and may have incited his repeated satire against the legal profession. Middleton attended The Queen's College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate. Before he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King's Men (playing Company)
The King's Men is the acting company to which William Shakespeare (1564–1616) belonged for most of his career. Formerly known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, they became the King's Men in 1603 when King James I ascended the throne and became the company's patron. The royal patent of 19 May 1603 which authorised the King's Men company named the following players, in this order: Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Heminges, Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armin, Richard Cowley, "and the rest of their associates...." The nine cited by name became Grooms of the Chamber. On 15 March 1604, each of the nine men named in the patent was supplied with four and a half yards of red cloth for the coronation procession. Chronologically typed To 1610 In their first winter season, between December 1603 and February 1604 the company performed eight times at Court and eleven times in their second, from N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Gough
Alexander Gough ( fl. 1626 – 1655), also Goughe or Goffe, was an English actor in the Caroline era. He started out as a boy player filling female roles; during the period of the English Civil War and the Interregnum (1642–1660) when the theatres were closed and actors out of work, Gough became involved in the publication of plays. Alexander Gough was born in 1614, the son of Robert Gough, an actor with the King's Men. Like some other sons of actors (Theophilus Bird; Robert Pallant), Gough started acting as a boy — in his case, with his father's company. Alexander Gough played: * Caenis in Massinger's '' The Roman Actor'', 1626 * Acanthe in Massinger's '' The Picture'', 1629 * Eurinia in Wilson's '' The Swisser'', 1631 * Lillia-Bianca in Fletcher's ''The Wild Goose Chase'', the 1632 revival. Gough also had roles in Ford's '' The Lover's Melancholy'' (1628) and Clavell's ''The Soddered Citizen'' (1630). Gough remained with the company at least until 163 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Careless Shepherdess
''The Careless Shepherdess'' is a Jacobean era stage play, a pastoral tragicomedy generally attributed to Thomas Goffe. Its 1656 publication is noteworthy for the introduction of the first general catalogue of the dramas of English Renaissance theatre ever attempted. Date and performance The dates of authorship and first performance for the play are not known with any certainty; the 1619–29 era is usually cited, with "c. 1625" as a common approximation. The play was revived at the Salisbury Court Theatre in 1638, and also was twice performed at Court before King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, in 1629 and 1632. The play was well-enough known to have influenced Ben Jonson as he wrote his final work, ''The Sad Shepherdess'' (1637). Authorship All of the external evidence, including the 1656 first edition, assigns the authorship of the play to Thomas Goffe; one modern scholar, however, has argued that this may have been an error for John Gough, author of ''The Strange ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
