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Barley-Break
Barley-Break is an old English country game frequently mentioned by the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was played by three pairs, each composed of a man and a woman, who were stationed in three bases or plots, contiguous to each other. The couple occupying the middle base, called ''hell'' or ''prison'', endeavoured to catch the other two, who, when chased, might ''break'' to avoid being caught. If one was overtaken, he and his companion were condemned to ''hell''. From this game was taken the expression "the last couple in hell", often used in old plays. Its use in literature usually has sexual connotations. The best known example is in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's play '' The Changeling'', in which an adulterer tells his cuckold "I coupled with your mate at barley-break; now we are left in hell". The use of the phrase in Thomas Morley Thomas Morley (1557 – early October 1602) was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of the Renaissance. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or written), or they may also perform their art to an audience. The work of a poet is essentially one of communication, expressing ideas either in a literal sense (such as communicating about a specific event or place) or metaphorically. Poets have existed since prehistory, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary greatly in different cultures and periods. Throughout each civilization and language, poets have used various styles that have changed over time, resulting in countless poets as diverse as the literature that (since the advent of writing systems) they have produced. History In Ancient Rome, professional poets were generally sponsored by patrons, wealthy supporters including nobility and military officials. F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt ''Midleton'') was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jacobean period, and among the few to gain equal success in comedy and tragedy. He was also a prolific writer of masques and pageants. Life Middleton was born in London and baptised on 18 April 1580. He was the son of a bricklayer, who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman and owned property adjoining the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. Middleton was five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a 15-year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister – an experience that informed him about the legal system and may have incited his repeated satire against the legal profession. Middleton attended The Queen's College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate. Before he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
The Changeling (play)
''The Changeling'' is a Jacobean tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. Widely regarded as being among the best tragedies of the English Renaissance, the play has accumulated a large amount of critical commentary. The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 7 May 1622, and was first published in 1652 by the bookseller Humphrey Moseley. Authorship The title page of the first edition of ''The Changeling'' attributes the play to Middleton and Rowley. The division of authorship between the two writers was first delineated by Pauline Wiggin in 1897, and is widely accepted. David Lake, in his survey of authorship problems in the Middleton canon, summarises the standard division of shares this way: : Middleton – Act II; Act III, scenes i, ii, and iv; Act IV, scenes i and ii; Act V, scenes i and ii; : Rowley – Act I; Act III, scene iii; Act IV, scene iii; Act V, scene iii. Lake differs from previous commentators only in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuckold
A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is aware of and tolerates his wife's infidelity is sometimes called a wittol or wittold. History of the term The word ''cuckold'' derives from the cuckoo bird, alluding to its habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests. The association is common in medieval folklore, literature, and iconography. English usage first appears about 1250 in the medieval debate poem '' The Owl and the Nightingale''. It was characterized as an overtly blunt term in John Lydgate's "Fall of Princes", . Shakespeare's writing often referred to cuckolds, with several of his characters suspecting they had become one. The word often implies that the husband is deceived; that he is unaware of his wife's unfaithfulness and may not know until the arrival or growt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Morley
Thomas Morley (1557 – early October 1602) was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of the Renaissance. He was one of the foremost members of the English Madrigal School. Referring to the strong Italian influence on the English madrigal, ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' states that Morley was "chiefly responsible for grafting the Italian shoot on to the native stock and initiating the curiously brief but brilliant flowering of the madrigal that constitutes one of the most colourful episodes in the history of English music." Living in London at the same time as Shakespeare, Morley was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England. He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare. Morley was active in church music as a singer, composer and organist at St Paul's Cathedral. He was also involved in music publishing. From 1598 up to his death he held a printing paten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural History Of The United Kingdom
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylor, Edward. (1871). Primitive Culture. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Son Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
