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History (theatrical Genre)
History is one of the three main genres in Western theatre alongside tragedy and comedy, although it originated, in its modern form, thousands of years later than the other primary genres. For this reason, it is often treated as a subset of tragedy. A play in this genre is known as a history play and is based on a historical narrative, often set in the medieval or early modern past. History emerged as a distinct genre from tragedy in Renaissance England. The best known examples of the genre are the history plays written by William Shakespeare, whose plays still serve to define the genre. History plays also appear elsewhere in British and Western literature, such as Thomas Heywood's '' Edward IV'', Schiller's '' Mary Stuart'' or the Dutch play '' Gijsbrecht van Aemstel''. Precursors Plays with some connection to historic narratives date to the beginnings of Athenian theatre. For one, although many early Greek plays covered subjects that modern audiences consider myth (rather t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falstaff Plays The King
Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare and is eulogised in a fourth. His significance as a fully developed character is primarily formed in the plays ''Henry IV, Part 1'' and '' Part 2'', where he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V of England. Falstaff is also featured as the buffoonish suitor of two married women in ''The Merry Wives of Windsor''. Though primarily a comic figure, Falstaff embodies a depth common to Shakespeare's major characters. A fat, vain, and boastful knight, he spends most of his time drinking at the Boar's Head Inn with petty criminals, living on stolen or borrowed money. Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is ultimately repudiated after Hal becomes king. Falstaff has since appeared in other media, including operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Otto Nicolai, and in Orson Welles' 1966 film ''Chimes at Midnight''. The operas focus on his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry VII Of England
Henry VII (28 January 1457 – 21 April 1509) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death in 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor. Henry's mother, Margaret Beaufort, was a descendant of the Lancastrian branch of the House of Plantagenet. Henry's father, Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, a half-brother of Henry VI of England and a member of the Welsh Tudors of Penmynydd, died three months before his son Henry was born. During Henry's early years, his uncle Henry VI was fighting against Edward IV, a member of the Yorkist Plantagenet branch. After Edward retook the throne in 1471, Henry Tudor spent 14 years in exile in Brittany. He attained the throne when his forces, supported by France, Scotland, and Wales, defeated Edward IV's brother Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the culmination of the Wars of the Roses. He was the last king of England to win his throne on the field of battle. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of The Monarchs Of The Kingdom Of England
This list of kings and reigning queens of the Kingdom of England begins with Alfred the Great, who initially ruled Wessex, one of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which later made up modern England. Alfred styled himself King of the Anglo-Saxons from about 886, and while he was not the first king to claim to rule all of the English, his rule represents the start of the first unbroken line of kings to rule the whole of England, the House of Wessex. Arguments are made for a few different kings thought to have controlled enough Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to be deemed the first king of England. For example, Offa of Mercia and Egbert of Wessex are sometimes described as kings of England by popular writers, but it is no longer the majority view of historians that their wide dominions are part of a process leading to a unified England. Historian Simon Keynes states, for example, that "Offa was driven by a lust for power, not a vision of English unity; and what he left was a reputation, not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shakespearean Tragedy
Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—''Julius Caesar'', ''Antony and Cleopatra'' and ''Coriolanus''—are also based on historical figures, but because their sources were foreign and ancient they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances ( tragicomic plays) were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare's death, the scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that do not fit neatly i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shakespearean Comedies
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies; and modern scholars recognize a fourth category, ''romance'', to describe the specific types of comedy that appear in Shakespeare's later works. Plays This alphabetical list includes everything listed as a comedy in the First Folio of 1623, in addition to the two quarto plays (''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' and ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'') which are not included in the Folio but generally recognised to be Shakespeare's own. Plays marked with an asterisk (*) are now commonly referred to as the '' romances''. Plays marked with two asterisks (**) are sometimes referred to as the ''problem plays''. * ''All's Well That Ends Well**'' * ''As You Like It'' * ''The Comedy of Errors'' * ''Love's Labour's Lost'' * ''Measure for Measure**'' * ''The Merchant of Venice**'' * ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' * ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' * ''Much Ado About Nothing'' * ''Peri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is considered one of the most influential books ever published. Printed in folio format and containing 36 plays (see list of Shakespeare's plays), it was prepared by Shakespeare's colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell. It was dedicated to the "incomparable pair of brethren" William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery (later 4th Earl of Pembroke). Although 19 of Shakespeare's plays had been published in quarto before 1623, the First Folio is arguably the only reliable text for about 20 of the plays, and a valuable source text for many of those previously published. Eighteen of the plays in the First Folio, including '' The Tempest'', ''Twelfth Night'', and ''Measure for Measure'' among others, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Thomas More (play)
''Sir Thomas More'' is an Elizabethan play and a dramatic biography based on particular events in the life of the Catholic martyr Thomas More, who rose to become the Lord Chancellor of England during the reign of Henry VIII. The play is considered to be written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle and revised by several writers. The manuscript is particularly notable for a three-page handwritten revision now widely attributed to William Shakespeare. Content This play is not a biography; it is a drama that deals with certain events in More’s life. Other significant facts are not described: There is no mention of his literary career, his book ''Utopia'', or the dispute between Henry VIII and the Pope in Rome. Also the life of More is at times expanded beyond what actually occurred and beyond the sources that were used, in order to suit the drama. What the play is about has been debated, but the issues revolve around obedience to the crown and rule of law, particularly when a pop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Of Woodstock (play)
''Thomas of Woodstock'' and ''Richard the Second Part One'' are two names for an untitled, anonymous and apparently incomplete manuscript of an Elizabethan play depicting events in the reign of King Richard II. Attributions of the play to William Shakespeare have been nearly universally rejected, and it does not appear in major editions of the Shakespeare apocrypha. The play has been often cited as a possible influence on Shakespeare's ''Richard II'', as well as '' Henry IV, Parts 1'' and '' 2'', but new dating of the text brings that relationship into question. Characters Dramatis Personae after Corbin and Sedge (2002) * Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester – uncle to the king and Lord Protector * John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster –uncle to the king * Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York – uncle to the king * Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel, Lord Admiral of England * Earl of Surrey (possibly Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey) * Sir Thomas Cheney, su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward III (play)
''The Raigne of King Edward the Third'', commonly shortened to ''Edward III'', is an Elizabethan play printed anonymously in 1596, and probably partly written by William Shakespeare. It began to be included in publications of the complete works of Shakespeare only in the late 1990s. Scholars who have supported this attribution include Jonathan Bate, Edward Capell, Eliot Slater, Eric Sams, Giorgio Melchiori,Melchiori, Giorgio, ed. ''The New Cambridge Shakespeare: King Edward III'', 1998, p. 2. and Brian Vickers. The play's co-author remains the subject of debate: suggestions have included Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, Thomas Nashe, and George Peele. The play contains several gibes at Scotland and the Scottish people, which has led some critics to think that it is the work that incited George Nicholson, Queen Elizabeth's agent in Edinburgh, to protest against the portrayal of Scots on the London stage in a 1598 letter to William Cecil, Lord Burghley. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perkin Warbeck (play)
''Perkin Warbeck'' is a Caroline era history play by John Ford regarding pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck. It is generally ranked as one of Ford's three masterpieces, along with '' 'Tis Pity She's a Whore'' and ''The Broken Heart''. T. S. Eliot went so far as to call ''Perkin Warbeck'' "unquestionably Ford's highest achievement...one of the very best historical plays outside of the works of Shakespeare in the whole of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama." Date, performance, publication The play's date of authorship is uncertain, though it is widely thought to have been written in the 1629–34 period. It was first published in 1634, as ''The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck. A Strange Truth.'' The quarto was issued by the bookseller Hugh Beeston, with a dedication by Ford to William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle. The title page bears Ford's anagrammatic motto, "Fide Honor," and states that the play was performed "(some-times)" by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Phoenix or Coc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward II (play)
''The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer'', known as ''Edward II'', is a Renaissance or early modern period play written by Christopher Marlowe. It is one of the earliest English history plays, and focuses on the relationship between King Edward II of England and Piers Gaveston, and Edward's murder on the orders of Roger Mortimer. Marlowe found most of his material for this play in the third volume of Raphael Holinshed's ''Chronicles'' (1587). Frederick S. Boas believes that "out of all the rich material provided by Holinshed" Marlowe was drawn to "the comparatively unattractive reign of Edward II" due to the relationship between the King and Gaveston. Boas elaborates, "Homosexual affection ... has (as has been seen) a special attraction for Marlowe. Jove and Ganymede in ''Dido'', Henry III and his 'minions' in ''The Massacre'', Neptune and Leander in ''Hero and Leander'', and all akin, altho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
