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George Rowell (historian)
George Rowell (1923 – 1 November 2001) was a British theatre historian, lecturer and authority on the 19th century. His specialisms included Victorian melodrama and the theatre of Henry Irving, W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Wing Pinero. Biography Rowell lectured in drama at Bristol University from around 1950, joining a fledgling department that consisted of Glynne Wickham, George W. Brandt and John Lavender. Bristol became the first British University to offer Drama as a degree subject—as distinct from English—when the visionary Vice-Chancellor, Sir Philip Morris, appointed Wickham (then 26) as the first junior academic in Drama in 1947. As part of this department—a team dubbed 'the four musketeers' by Wickham—Rowell played a key part in defining how drama would be taught as a discipline. They developed a distinctive conception of their subject now largely accepted: of drama as a 'laboratory' subject, involving practice as well as library study, and indeed b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victorian Era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the ''Belle Époque'' era of Continental Europe. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists and the evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period, and an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism in religion, social values, and arts. This era saw a staggering amount of technological innovations that proved key to Britain's power and prosperity. Doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards a science-based approach; medicine advanced thanks to the adopti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include '' The Birthday Party'' (1957), '' The Homecoming'' (1964) and '' Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include '' The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between'' (1971), '' The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), '' The Trial'' (1993) and '' Sleuth'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His major works include ''Brand'', ''Peer Gynt'', ''An Enemy of the People'', ''Emperor and Galilean'', '' A Doll's House'', '' Hedda Gabler'', ''Ghosts'', ''The Wild Duck'', ''When We Dead Awaken'', ''Rosmersholm'', and ''The Master Builder''. Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and ''A Doll's House'' was the world's most performed play in 2006. Ibsen's early poetic and cinematic play ''Peer Gynt'' has strong surreal elements. After ''Peer Gynt'' Ibsen abandoned verse and wrote in realistic prose. Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pantomime
Pantomime (; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) in other English-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas and New Year season. Modern pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing. It employs gender-crossing actors and combines topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale.Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. "Pantomime", ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature'', Jack Zipes (ed.), Oxford University Press (2006), Pantomime is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is encouraged and expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers. Pantomime has a long theatrical history in Western culture dating back to the era of classical theatre. It developed partly from the 16th century ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Two Roses
2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and only even prime number. Because it forms the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual significance in many cultures. Evolution Arabic digit The digit used in the modern Western world to represent the number 2 traces its roots back to the Indic Brahmic script, where "2" was written as two horizontal lines. The modern Chinese and Japanese languages (and Korean Hanja) still use this method. The Gupta script rotated the two lines 45 degrees, making them diagonal. The top line was sometimes also shortened and had its bottom end curve towards the center of the bottom line. In the Nagari script, the top line was written more like a curve connecting to the bottom line. In the Arabic Ghubar writing, the bottom line was completely vertical, and the digit looked like a dotless closing question mark. Restoring the bottom line to its original hor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Albery
James Albery (4 May 1838 – 15 August 1889) was an English dramatist. Life and career Albery was born in London. On leaving school he entered an architect's office and started to write plays. His farce ''A Pretty Piece of Chiselling'' was given its first production by the Ingoldsby Club in 1864. After some failures, his adaptation, ''Dr Davy'', was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London (1866). His most successful piece, ''Two Roses'', a comedy, was produced at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1870, in which Sir Henry Irving made one of his earliest London successes as Digby Grant. The production ran for 300 performances. Albery was the author of a large number of other plays and adaptations, including ''Coquettes'' (1870); ''Pickwick'', a four-act drama (based on Dickens's ''The Pickwick Papers'' (1871); ''The Pink Dominos'' (1877), a farce that ran for an extremely successful 555 performances and was one of a series of adaptations from the French which he made for the Criteri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Money (play)
''Money'' is a comic play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, premièred at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket on 8 December 1840. Plot As relations gather for the reading of the wealthy Mr. Mordaunt's will, Sir John Vesey's poor cousin Alfred Evelyn and the equally poor Clara part ways for fear that a marriage without money would bring them both misery. Sir John Vesey expects his own daughter Georgina to be the will's main beneficiary, but this instead turns out to be Evelyn, previously employed by Vesey as his secretary to make Vesey appear more generous (and thus more wealthy) than he really is. Evelyn decides that - if Clara would not marry him poor - she is too principled to accept him now he is rich and so leaves their relationship broken off. Vesey suggests Evelyn marries Georgina and he makes a show of acquiescence, but Evelyn simultaneously embarks on schemes to convince Vesey to break off the engagement by tricking him into believing Evelyn has lost his new fortune. Another rich man, Gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, PC (25 May 180318 January 1873) was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whigs (British political party), Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative Party (UK), Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866. Bulwer-Lytton's works sold and paid him well. He coined famous phrases like "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", "Guardian of the Threshold, dweller on the threshold", and the opening phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." The sardonic Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held annually since 1982, claims to seek the "opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels". Life Bulwer was born on 25 May 1803 to General ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bells (play)
''The Bells'' is a play in three acts by Leopold David Lewis which was one of the greatest successes of the British actor Henry Irving. The play opened on 25 November 1871 at the Lyceum Theatre in London and initially ran for 151 performances. Irving was to stage the play repeatedly throughout his career, playing the role of Mathias for the last time the night before his death in 1905. Background ''The Bells'' is a translation by Leopold Lewis of the 1867 play ''Le Juif Polonais'' (''The Polish Jew'') by Erckmann-Chatrian. ''Le Juif Polonais'' was also adapted into an opera of the same name in three acts by Camille Erlanger, composed to a libretto by Henri Caïn. In 1871, Irving began his association with the Lyceum Theatre with an engagement under the management of Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman. The fortunes of the house were at a low ebb when the tide was turned by Irving's sudden success as Mathias in ''The Bells,'' a property which Irving had found for himself. Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leopold Lewis
Leopold David Lewis (19 November 1828 – 23 February 1890), was an English dramatist. Lewis was born in London in 1828, the son of Elizabeth and David Leopold Lewis, a surgeon, and was educated at the King's College School, and upon graduation became a solicitor, practising as such from 1850 to 1875.Leopold David Lewis in the , Volumes 1-22 In 1868 he married ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Audley's Secret
''Lady Audley's Secret'' is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862.John Sutherland. "Lady Audley's Secret" in ''The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction'', 1989. It was Braddon's most successful and well-known novel. Critic John Sutherland (1989) described the work as "the most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels". The plot centres on "accidental bigamy" which was in literary fashion in the early 1860s. The plot was summarised by literary critic Elaine Showalter (1982): "Braddon's bigamous heroine deserts her child, pushes husband number one down a well, thinks about poisoning husband number two and sets fire to a hotel in which her other male acquaintances are residing". Elements of the novel mirror themes of the real-life Constance Kent case of June 1860 which gripped the nation for years.. Ppg. 217-18 A follow-up novel, '' Aurora Floyd'', appeared in 1863. Braddon set the story in Ingatestone Hall, Essex, inspired by a visit there. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colin Henry Hazlewood
Colin Henry Hazlewood (1823– 31 May 1875) was an English playwright. Hazlewood became a low comedian on the Lincoln, York and western circuits. In 1850, he wrote and produced at the City of London Theatre a farce entitled ''Who's the Victim?'' which was received with favour, and he commenced writing stories for the penny weekly publications. In 1851, he was engaged at the Surrey Theatre, appearing as Bob Blackberry in ''The Rover's Bride'', and was next engaged by Nelson Lee and Johnson for the City of London Theatre as a low comedian. Here he remained ten years, producing numerous dramas, farces and burlesques, among his successes being ''The Bonnet Builders' Tea Party'' at the Royal Strand Theatre; ''Jenny Foster, the Sailor's Child'' and ''Jessie Vere, or the Return of the Wanderer'', two dramas each in two acts, produced in 1854 and 1856 at the Britannia Saloon, where they had long runs; and ''Waiting for the Verdict'', first given at the City of London Theatre. Hazlewood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
