William Henry Brown (playwright)
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William Henry Brown (playwright)
William Alexander Brown, also known as William Henry Brown (1790–1884), was an American playwright and theatrical producer. He is considered the first known black playwright in America. Biography Brown was born in the West Indies, and worked there as a ship steward. After retiring from his maritime work, he settled in a community of free Blacks in the lower Manhattan district of New York City. In 1816 he opened a summer tea garden in New York called the African Grove Theatre, the first resident all-Black theatre company in America, to cater to the community of free Blacks. The African Grove featured music, theatrical and occasionally outdoor entertainment until officials closed it down in 1821. Brown reformed his group of performers in the African Theatre (also known as the African Company) and continued to perform outdoors. Brown's theatre company was constantly harassed by "White hoodlums". Eventually, the nearby Park Theatre, fearing competition, and the city sheriff ...
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Playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright). The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston: :''Epigram XLIX — On Playwright'' :PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns, :He says I want the tongue of epigrams ; :I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mea ...
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The Drama Of King Shotaway
''The Drama of King Shotaway, founded on Facts taken from the Insurrection of the Caravs on the Island of St. Vincent, written from Experience by Mr. Brown'' (1823) was a play believed to be by William Henry Brown. The first known play by a black playwright in the United States, no known copies of the play exist. Brown, who founded the African Theatre troupe in the 1820s, was from the West Indies and became established in New York. He was both a playwright and the proprietor of the African Grove Theatre, which produced the play. The play was based on the life of Joseph Chatoyer (''Satuye''), a Garifuna chief who led a revolt of Black Carib people on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent against British rule The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was hims ... in 1795. It was pro ...
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19th-century American Dramatists And Playwrights
The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolished in much of Europe and the Americas. The First Industrial Revolution, though it began in the late 18th century, expanding beyond its British homeland for the first time during this century, particularly remaking the economies and societies of the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Northern Italy, and the Northeastern United States. A few decades later, the Second Industrial Revolution led to ever more massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit, and prosperity, a pattern that continued into the 20th century. The Islamic gunpowder empires fell into decline and European imperialism brought much of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and almost all of Africa under colonial rule. It was also marked by the collapse of the la ...
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19th-century African-American People
The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolished in much of Europe and the Americas. The First Industrial Revolution, though it began in the late 18th century, expanding beyond its British homeland for the first time during this century, particularly remaking the economies and societies of the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Northern Italy, and the Northeastern United States. A few decades later, the Second Industrial Revolution led to ever more massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit, and prosperity, a pattern that continued into the 20th century. The Islamic gunpowder empires fell into decline and European imperialism brought much of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and almost all of Africa under colonial rule. It was also marked by the collapse of the large ...
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1884 Deaths
Events January–March * January 4 – The Fabian Society is founded in London. * January 5 – Gilbert and Sullivan's ''Princess Ida'' premières at the Savoy Theatre, London. * January 18 – Dr. William Price attempts to cremate his dead baby son, Iesu Grist, in Wales. Later tried and acquitted on the grounds that cremation is not contrary to English law, he is thus able to carry out the ceremony (the first in the United Kingdom in modern times) on March 14, setting a legal precedent. * February 1 – ''A New English Dictionary on historical principles, part 1'' (edited by James A. H. Murray), the first fascicle of what will become ''The Oxford English Dictionary'', is published in England. * February 5 – Derby County Football Club is founded in England. * March 13 – The siege of Khartoum, Sudan, begins (ends on January 26, 1885). * March 28 – Prince Leopold, the youngest son and the eighth child of Queen Victoria and Prin ...
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1815 Births
Events January * January 2 – Lord Byron marries Anna Isabella Milbanke in Seaham, county of Durham, England. * January 3 – Austria, Britain, and Bourbon-restored France form a secret defensive alliance treaty against Prussia and Russia. * January 8 – Battle of New Orleans: American forces led by Andrew Jackson defeat British forces led by Sir Edward Pakenham. American forces suffer around 60 casualties and the British lose about 2,000 (the battle lasts for about 30 minutes). * January 13 – War of 1812: British troops capture Fort Peter in St. Marys, Georgia, the only battle of the war to take place in the state. * January 15 – War of 1812: Capture of USS ''President'' – American frigate , commanded by Commodore Stephen Decatur, is captured by a squadron of four British frigates. February * February – The Hartford Convention arrives in Washington, D.C. * February 3 – The first commercial cheese factory is founded in S ...
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William Moncrieff
William Thomas Moncrieff (24 August 1794 – 3 December 1857) commonly referred as W.T. Moncrieff was an English people, English dramatist and author. Biography He was born in London, the son of a Strand tradesman named Thomas. The name Moncrieff he assumed for theatrical purposes. Moncrieff's first success was at Astley's Amphitheatre, Astley's circus with ''The Dandy Family'' an equestrian drama, and in 1820 ''The Lear of Private Life'', with Junius Brutus Booth as hero, enjoyed a long run. He supplied Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Drury Lane with a romantic melodrama called ''The Cataract of the Ganges; or, The Rajah’s Daughter'' which gave the national theatre an opportunity of displaying upon its stage both real horses and a real waterfall. This work became very popular with performances at provincial theatres throughout England. His 1819 play, ''Wanted: a wife'', was a comedy that gently ridiculed personal advertisements, "lonely heart" ads. In 1830, he conceived the operatic ...
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Richard III (play)
''Richard III'' is a play by William Shakespeare. It was probably written c. 1592–1594. It is labelled a history in the First Folio, and is usually considered one, but it is sometimes called a tragedy, as in the quarto edition. ''Richard III'' concludes Shakespeare's first tetralogy (also containing ''Henry VI, Part 1'', ''Henry VI, Part 2'', and ''Henry VI, Part 3'') and depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England. It is the second longest play in the Shakespearean canon and is the longest of the First Folio, whose version of ''Hamlet'', otherwise the longest, is shorter than its quarto counterpart. The play is often abridged for brevity, and peripheral characters removed. In such cases, extra lines are often invented or added from elsewhere to establish the nature of the characters' relationships. A further reason for abridgment is that Shakespeare assumed his audiences' familiarity with his ''Henry VI'' plays, frequentl ...
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Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa that had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders,Thornton, p. 112. while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; Europeans gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade (which was prior to the widespread availability of quini ...
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Second Carib War
The Second Carib War (1795–1797) took place on the island of Saint Vincent between 1795 and 1797. The conflict pitted large numbers of British military forces against a coalition of Black Carib, runaway slaves, and French forces for control of the island. The First Carib War (1769–1773) was fought over British attempts to extend colonial settlements into Black Carib territories, and resulted in a stalemate and an unsatisfactory peace agreement. France captured Saint Vincent in 1779 during the American War of Independence, but it was restored to Britain by the Treaty of Paris (1783). Begun by the Caribs (who harboured long-standing grievances against the British colonial administration, and were supported by French Revolutionary advisors) in March 1795, the Caribs successfully gained control of most of the island except for the immediate area around Kingstown, which repelled direct assault on several occasions after the arrival of British reinforcements. British efforts t ...
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Kingdom Of Great Britain
The Kingdom of Great Britain (officially Great Britain) was a Sovereign state, sovereign country in Western Europe from 1 May 1707 to the end of 31 December 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the kingdoms of Kingdom of England, England (which included Wales) and Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland to form a single kingdom encompassing the whole island of Great Britain and its outlying islands, with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The unitary state was governed by a single Parliament of Great Britain, parliament at the Palace of Westminster, but distinct legal systems – English law and Scots law – remained in use. The formerly separate kingdoms had been in personal union since the 1603 "Union of the Crowns" when James VI of Scotland became King of England and King of Ireland. Since James's reign, who had been the first to refer to himself as "king of Great Britain", a political un ...
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Joseph Chatoyer
Joseph Chatoyer, also known as Satuye (died 14 March 1795), was a Garifuna ('' Carib'') chief who led a revolt against the British colonial government of Saint Vincent in 1795. Killed that year, he is now considered a national hero of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and also of Belize and Costa Rica. Vincentian politician Camillo Gonsalves described him in 2011 as his country's "sole national hero". History In 1772, the population rebelled. Led by Chatoyer, the First Carib War forced the British to sign a treaty with them in 1773. This was the first time Britain had been forced to sign an accord with non-white people in the Caribbean since the Maroon treaty of Jamaica in 1739. By 1795, it became apparent to the local population that Britain had no intention of obeying the treaty. The people of the Caribbean then rose in rebellion and were joined by a group of French radicals, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, who saw Britain as a traditional enemy of France. I ...
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