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John Day (dramatist)
John Day (1574–1638?) was an English dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Life He was born at Cawston, Norfolk, and educated at Ely. He became a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1592, but was expelled in the next year for stealing a book. He became one of Philip Henslowe's playwrights, collaborating with Henry Chettle, William Haughton, Thomas Dekker, Richard Hathwaye and Wentworth Smith. There are 22 plays to which he is linked. However his almost incessant activity does not seem to have paid, to judge by the small loans, of five shillings and even two shillings, that he obtained from Henslowe. Little is known of his life beyond these small details, and disparaging references by Ben Jonson in 1618/19, describing him, (with Dekker and Edward Sharpham) as a "rogue" and (with Thomas Middleton and Gervase Markham) as a "base fellow". It may be indicative of his abilities that of all the writers who did a substantial amount of work for Henslowe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Parliament Of Bees
''The Parliament of Bees'' is the best-known of the works of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatist John Day. It was probably written some time between 1608 and 1616, but not published until 1641. The poem was entered into the Stationers' Register on 23 March 1641 and printed later in the year by the bookseller William Lee. The quarto is titled "The Parliament of Bees, with their Proper Characters. Or a beehive furnished with twelve honeycombs, as pleasant as profitable. Being an allegorical description of the actions of good and bad men in these our days. By John Day, sometimes student of Caius College in Cambridge". (Spellings modernized.) The quarto is dedicated to George Butler. The poem also exists in manuscript, identified as Lansdowne MS. 725. The manuscript's title is "An old manuscript containing the Parliament of Bees, found in a hollow tree in a garden in Hibla, in a strange language, and now faithfully translated into easy English verse by John Day, Cantabridg". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Francis Meres
Francis Meres (1565/1566 – 29 January 1647) was an English churchman and author. His 1598 commonplace book includes the first critical account of poems and plays by Shakespeare. Career Francis Meres was born in 1565 at Kirton Meres in the parish of Kirton, Lincolnshire. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a BA in 1587 and an MA in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an MA of Oxford. His relative, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career. In 1602 he became rector of Wing, Rutland, where he also ran a school. Both his son Francis and his grandson Edward received their BA and MA from Cambridge and became rectors. Meres is especially known for his '' Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury'' (1598), a commonplace book that is important as a source on the Elizabethan poets, and more particularly as the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare. Its list ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Robert Shirley
Sir Robert Shirley (or Sherley; c. 1581 – 13 July 1628) was an English traveller and adventurer, younger brother of Sir Anthony Shirley and Sir Thomas Shirley. He is notable for his help modernising and improving the Persian Safavid The Guarded Domains of Iran, commonly called Safavid Iran, Safavid Persia or the Safavid Empire, was one of the largest and longest-lasting Iranian empires. It was ruled from 1501 to 1736 by the Safavid dynasty. It is often considered the begi ... army according to the British model, by the request of Shah Abbas the Great. This proved to be highly successful, as from then on the Safavids proved to be an equal force to their archrival, the Ottoman Empire. Family Robert Shirley was the third son of Thomas Shirley (died 1612), Sir Thomas Shirley of Wiston, Sussex, and Anne Kempe, the daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe (d. 7 March 1591) of Olantigh in Wye, Kent. He had two elder brothers, Sir Thomas Shirley and Sir Anthony Shirley, and six sist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Anthony Shirley
Sir Anthony Shirley (1565 – 1633/1635/1638) also spelled ''Sherley'', was an English adventurer, soldier, diplomat, and political theorist who became a prominent figure in early modern European and Middle Eastern affairs. Initially rising to prominence through military service under the Earl of Essex, he later led a failed privateering expedition and subsequently entered the service of Shah Abbas of Safavid Iran, becoming one of the first Englishmen to hold an official diplomatic role in Safavid Iran. Over the following decades, Shirley operated as a freelance envoy, spy, and political adviser across Europe and North Africa, offering his services to multiple courts, including the Habsburgs and the Spanish crown, often simultaneously. Though never formally trusted by the English government, he remained in contact with Robert Cecil and other high officials while maintaining parallel allegiances abroad. A convert to Catholicism, Shirley styled himself “Count of the East” () ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Thomas Shirley
Sir Thomas Shirley (c. 1564 – c. 1634) was an English soldier, adventurer and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1584 and 1622. His financial difficulties drove him into privateering which culminated in his capture by the Turks and later imprisonment in the Tower of London. Family Thomas Shirley was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Shirley of Wiston House, Sussex, and Anne Kempe, the daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe (d. 7 March 1591) of Olantigh in Wye, Kent. Sir Anthony Shirley and Sir Robert Shirley were his younger brothers. Career Shirley matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford in 1579, but left the university without taking a degree. In 1584 he was elected Member of Parliament for Steyning. He went on military service with his father and brother in the Low Countries in 1585, and later saw some in Ireland. He was knighted at Kilkenny in Ireland by the lord deputy, Sir William Fitz-William, on 26 October 1589. Shirley later came to the court. In the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Travels Of The Three English Brothers
''The Travels of the Three English Brothers'' is an early Literature in English#Jacobean literature, Jacobean era stage play, an adventure drama written in 1607 in literature, 1607 by John Day (dramatist), John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins. The drama was based on the true-life experiences of the three Shirley brothers, Sir Anthony Shirley, Sir Thomas Shirley, and Robert Shirley (later Sir Robert). The play illustrates the trend toward extreme topicality in some works of English Renaissance theatre, English Renaissance drama. Date and source The play was based on an account of the Shirleys' travels by Anthony Nixon, published in pamphlet form and titled ''The Three English Brothers''. (The Shirley brothers had been the subjects of two previous pamphlets, in 1600 and 1601; but Nixon's work is thought to have been backed by the Shirley family.) The pamphlet was entered into the Stationers' Register on 8 June 1607, and was published soon after. The play was entered into the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
George Wilkins
George Wilkins (died 1618) was an English dramatist and pamphleteer best known for his possible collaboration with William Shakespeare on the play ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre''. By profession he was an inn-keeper, but he was also apparently involved in criminal activities. Life Wilkins was an inn-keeper in Cow-Cross, London, an area that was "notorious as a haunt of whores and thieves".Roger Warren, Gary Taylor, MacDonald Pairman Jackson, ''A reconstructed text of Pericles, Prince of Tyre'', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.6-7. Most biographical information about him derives from his regular appearance in criminal court records for thievery and acts of violence. Many of the charges against him involved violence against women, including kicking a pregnant woman in the belly, and knocking down and stomping another woman. The latter appears in other records as a known "bawd", or keeper of prostitutes. These facts have led to the suggestion that his inn functioned as a bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
William Rowley
William Rowley (c. 1585 – February 1626) was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626 in the graveyard of St James's, Clerkenwell in north London. (An unambiguous record of Rowley's death was discovered in 1928, but some authorities persist in listing his year of death as 1642.) Life and work Rowley was an actor-playwright who specialised in playing clown characters (that is, characters whose function is to provide low comedy). He must also have been a large man, since his forte lay specifically in fat-clown roles. He played the Fat Bishop in Thomas Middleton's '' A Game at Chess'', and Plumporridge in the same author's ''Inner Temple Masque''. He also wrote fat-clown parts for himself to play: Jaques in ''All's Lost by Lust'' (a role "personated by the Poet", the 1633 quarto states), and Bustopha in ''The Maid in the Mill' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Bleak House
''Bleak House'' is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode Serial (literature), serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of ''Bleak House'' is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, ''Jarndyce and Jarndyce'', which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably ''Thellusson v Woodford'', in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, ''Bleak House'' helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of Judicature Acts, legal reform in the 1870s. Some scholars debate when ''Ble ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. Puritanism played a significant role in English and early American history, especially in the Protectorate in Great Britain, and the earlier settlement of New England. Puritans were dissatisfied with the limited extent of the English Reformation and with the Church of England's religious toleration of certain practices associated with the Catholic Church. They formed and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and corporate piety. Puritans adopted a covenant theology, and in that sense they were Calvinists (as were many of their earlier opponents). In church polity, Puritans were divided between supporters of episcopal, presbyterian, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays – all tragedies – and collections of poetry such as '' Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the Eleventh Edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, sadomasochism, and antitheism. His poems have many common motifs, such as the ocean, time, and death. Several historical people are featured in his poems, such as Sappho ("Sapphics"), Anactoria ("Anactoria"), and Catullus ("To Catullus"). Biography Swinburne was born at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, on 5 April 1837. He was the eldest of six children born to Captain (later Admiral) Charles Henry Swinburne (1797–1877) and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham, a wealthy Northumbrian family. He grew up at East Dene in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight. The Swinburnes also had a London home at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include a sonnet sequence, '' Astrophil and Stella'', a treatise, '' The Defence of Poesy'' (also known as ''The Defence of Poesie'' or ''An Apology for Poetrie'') and a pastoral romance, '' The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia''. He died fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands, age 31, and his funeral procession in London was one of the most lavish ever seen. Biography Early life Born at Penshurst Place, Kent, of an aristocratic family, he was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His mother was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and the sister of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. His sister, Mary, was a writer, translator and literary patron, and married Henry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
