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John Thompson (actor)
John Thompson (died December 1634) was a noted boy player acting women's roles in English Renaissance theatre. He served in the King's Men, the acting troupe formerly of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage. Thompson's career is notable for his length. Some boy actors, like John Honyman and Stephen Hammerton, filled female roles for only three to five years before switching to male roles; others, like Richard Sharpe, appear to have continued in women's roles for a decade. Thompson is known to have played women for at least ten years, if not more. Beginnings Thompson began as an apprentice of veteran comedian and teacher John Shank. In 1636, Shank claimed in legal testimony to have spent £40 to acquire Thompson as an apprentice. (Apprentices' contracts were sometimes purchased from their "masters," as with the case of Stephen Hammerton.) According to the cast list in the 1623 first edition of Webster's ''The Duchess of Malfi'', Thompson played Julia, the "Cardinals Mis." T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boy Player
Boy player refers to children who performed in Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for the adult companies and performed the female roles as women did not perform on the English stage in this period. Others worked for children's companies in which all roles, not just the female ones, were played by boys.   Children's companies In the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, troupes appeared that were composed entirely of boy players. They are famously mentioned in Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'', in which a group of travelling actors has left the city due to rivalry with a troupe of "little eyases" (II, ii, 339); the term "eyas" means an unfledged hawk. The children's companies grew out of the choirs of boy singers that had been connected with cathedrals and similar institutions since the Middle Ages. (Similar boy choirs exist to this day.) Thus the choir attached to St. Paul's Cathedral in London since the 12th century was in the 16th century ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Maid In The Mill
''The Maid in the Mill'' is a late Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and William Rowley. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. Performance The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 29 August 1623. The play was performed by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre. The second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 provides a cast list for the original production that mentions Joseph Taylor, John Thompson, John Lowin, Robert Benfield, John Underwood, Thomas Pollard, and Rowley himself, who had joined the King's Men in 1623 for the final two years of his acting career, and who in this play filled the comic role of Bustopha. The play was acted at Court in 1628, though with a different cast, since both Rowley and Underwood had died in the intervening years. Authorship In his records, Herbert assigns the authorship of the work to Fletcher and Rowley; and scholars have lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Duke Of Milan
''The Duke of Milan'' is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger. First published in 1623, the play is generally considered among the author's finest achievements in drama. Performance Massinger's play was first performed in 1621 (performed from 1621–1623); an apparent allusion to the imprisonment of the poet George Wither in Act III, scene 2 makes sense at that point in time. There is no record of a revival of ''The Duke of Milan'' during the Restoration era. A heavily adapted version by Richard Cumberland was staged at Covent Garden in 1779, but lasted only three performances. Massinger's original was revived by Edmund Kean at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1816; Kean hoped to repeat his sensational success as Sir Giles Over-reach in '' A New Way to Pay Old Debts'', another Massinger play. Kean, however, was not able to achieve the same result with ''The Duke of Milan''. Publication The play was first published in quarto by the stationer Edward Blac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1630 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1630. Events *April 10 – English literature, drama, and education lose a major patron and benefactor when William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chamberlain of England, dies at Baynard's Castle in London. * June – Scottish-born Presbyterian Alexander Leighton is brought before Archbishop William Laud's Star Chamber court in England for publishing the seditious pamphlet ''An Appeale to the Parliament, or, Sions Plea Against the Prelacy'' (printed in the Netherlands, 1628). He is sentenced to be pilloried and whipped, have his ears cropped, one side of his nose slit, and his face branded with "SS" (for "sower of sedition"), to be imprisoned, and be degraded from holy orders. New books Prose *Johann Heinrich Alsted – ''Encyclopaedia'' * Thomas Dekker – ''London Look Back'' * Thomas Randolph – ''Aristippus, or The Jovial Philosopher'' and ''The Conceited Pedlar'' (in one volume) Dra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Soddered Citizen
''The Soddered Citizen'' is a Caroline era stage play, a city comedy now attributed to John Clavell. The play was lost for three centuries; the sole surviving manuscript was rediscovered and published in the twentieth century. History ''The Soddered Citizen'' was produced onstage, most likely in 1630, by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register in 1632, but no edition was printed in the seventeenth century. Thereafter, the play was thought to be lost; it was known only by its title, and widely attributed to Shackerley Marmion. The manuscript surfaced in 1932, when its owner, Lt. Col. E. G. Troyte-Bullock, brought it to the British Museum for examination. It was studied by scholar John Henry Pyle Pafford and published in 1936. The manuscript, now kept in the collection of the Wiltshire Record Office, is written in the hand of a professional scribe, and bears notations in five other hands; one of them is the hand of Edwar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Clavell
John Clavell (1601–1643) was a highwayman, author, lawyer, and doctor. He is known for his poem ''A Recantation of an Ill Led Life'', and his play '' The Soddered Citizen''.John H. P. Pafford, ''John Clavell 1601–1643: Highwayman, Author, Lawyer, Doctor'', Oxford, Leopard Head's Press, 1993. His life is mainly split into two parts: his early life in England, where he grew up, lived as a highwayman, and started his reformation, and the latter part of his life in England and Ireland where he was a lawyer and physician. Early life and family John Clavell was the youngest of six children. He was baptized at Wootton Glanville and grew up in Sherborne, England where he spent 18 years of his life. Clavell's heritage comes from an 11th-century family, the Clavell family. John Clavell's parents were Frances and John Clavell Senior.Pafford, "An Early Falstaff Echo?" p. 6. Clavell's father was plagued by a life of financial trouble; he borrowed money from his son-in-law Robert Freak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Deserving Favourite
''The Deserving Favourite'' is a Literature in English#Caroline and Cromwellian literature, Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Lodowick Carlell that was first published in 1629. The earliest of Carlell's plays "and also the best," it is notable for its influence on other plays of the Caroline era. Performance and publication The play was first printed in 1629 in a book size, quarto issued by the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, stationer Matthew Rhodes. (The work was not entered into the Stationers' Register prior to publication. This violation of the rules was unusual, though not unprecedented; the same is true of a few other plays of the era, like ''Greene's Tu Quoque'' in 1614, and ''A Fair Quarrel'' in 1617.) The title page states that the play had "lately" been acted, first at Court before King Charles I of England, Charles I and then "publicly" at the Blackfriars Theatre, by the King's Men (playing company), King's Men. Carlell dedicate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lodowick Carlell
Lodowick Carlell (1602–1675), also Carliell or Carlile, was a seventeenth-century English playwright, was active mainly during the Caroline era and the Commonwealth period. Courtier Carlell's ancestry was Scottish. He was the son of Herbert Carlell of Bridekirk in Dumfriesshire, and the third of four brothers. He was not educated at university, though he did produce translations from French and Spanish during his lifetime; he probably had the informal though not always contemptible education of a courtier, which he was from about the age of 15. In his extra-literary life, Carlell was a courtier and royal functionary; he held the offices of Gentleman of the Bows to King Charles I, and Groom to the King and Queen's Privy Chamber. He was also Keeper of the Great Forest at Richmond Park. In the latter post, he assisted the King in his frequent hunts, and throughout the 1630s he lived in the Park at Petersham Lodge. In this same period he accomplished most of his dramatic auth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger (1583 – 17 March 1640) was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including '' A New Way to Pay Old Debts'', ''The City Madam'', and ''The Roman Actor'', are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes. Early life The son of Arthur Massinger or Messanger, he was baptised at St. Thomas's Salisbury on 24 November 1583. He apparently belonged to an old Salisbury family, for the name occurs in the city records as early as 1415. He is described in his matriculation entry at St. Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a gentleman. His father, who had also been educated at St. Alban Hall, was a member of parliament, and was attached to the household of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Herbert recommended Arthur in 1587 for the office of examiner in the Court of the Marches. William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, who would come to oversee the London Stage and the royal company as King James's Lord Chamberlain, suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1629 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1629. Events *January – Pedro Calderón de la Barca and his friends break into a convent in an attempt to seize Pedro de Villegas, who had stabbed Calderón's brother. *April 6 – Tommaso Campanella is released from custody in Rome, and gains the confidence of Pope Urban VIII. *July – Richard James lends Oliver St John a manuscript tract on the bridling of parliaments which was written in 1612 by Sir Robert Dudley, titular Duke of Northumberland. St John circulates it among parliamentary supporters, and James is arrested as a result. *September – Pierre Corneille brings his first play, ''Mélite'' to a group of travelling actors. *November 22 – The King's Men perform ''Othello'' at the Blackfriars Theatre. *''unknown dates'' **The first known performance is given at the Corral de comedias de Almagro in Spain (rediscovered in the 1950s) by Juan Martinez's theatrical company ''Autor''. **In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Picture (Massinger Play)
''The Picture'' is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger, and first published in 1630. The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 8 June 1629; it was acted by the King's Men at both of their theatres, the Globe and the Blackfriars. The play was published in quarto the following year; Massinger dedicated the work to the members of the Inner Temple. The play was popular and highly regarded in its own era; in 1650 Richard Washington wrote an elegy on Massinger in his own copy of the quarto of ''The Picture.'' Massinger's sources for his plot were the 28th novel in Volume 2 of ''The Palace of Pleasure'' (1567) by William Painter, and an anonymous English translation of ''The Theatre of Honour and Knighthood'' (1623) by André Favyn. Cast The 1630 quarto contains an unusually full cast list of the original King's Men's production of the play: The list is informative on the state of the King's Men co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1626 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1626. Events *February – The King's Men premiere Ben Jonson's satire on the new newsgathering enterprise ''The Staple of News'', his first new play in almost a decade, at the Blackfriars Theatre in London. *November – The deaths of Lancelot Andrewes and Nicholas Felton, Bishop of Ely, prompt John Milton, then a student at Cambridge, to write elegies in Latin for both. *December 27 – Izaak Walton marries Rachel Floud (died 1640). New books Prose *Francis Bacon – ''The New Atlantis'' *Nicholas Breton – '' Fantastickes'' * Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – ''Jornadas alegres'' *Robert Fludd – ''Philosophia Sacra'' *Marie de Gournay – ''Les Femmes et Grief des Dames'' (The Ladies' Grievance) *Francisco de Quevedo – ''El Buscón'' (first published edition – unauthorized) Drama * Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft – ''Baeto, oft oorsprong der Holanderen'' * John Fletcher and collaborators â ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
