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Children Of Paul's
The Children of Paul's was the name of a troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Along with the Children of the Chapel, they were an important component of the companies of boy players that constituted a distinctive feature of English Renaissance theatre. Education The youth who would become choirboys and boy players for the Children of Paul's ranged in age from six to their mid-teens. They would be educated and boarded at the choir school, trained in not only singing but in grammar and literacy. Although their basic needs were taken care of, choirboys sometimes made some money for themselves. When fashionably dressed men wearing spurs, which could be loud and distracting to other church-goers, would enter the chapel, the choirboys would sometimes demand money as a fee. This fee was called "spur money". Choirboys were allowed time to play on Thursday afternoons, and in one document from 1598, a verger named John Howe notes an occasion when the boys broke window ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boy Player
A boy player was a male child or teenager who performed in Medieval theatre, Medieval and English Renaissance theatre, English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for adult companies and performed the female roles, since women were not allowed to perform on the English stage during 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 era, Elizabethan and Jacobean era, Jacobean periods, troupes appeared that were composed entirely of boy players. They are famously mentioned in William Shakespeare, 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 exis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallathea
''Gallathea'' or ''Galatea'' is an English literature#Elizabethan era, Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy by John Lyly. The first record of the play's performance was at Palace of Placentia, Greenwich Palace on New Year's Day, 1588 where it was performed before Queen Elizabeth I and her court by the Children of Paul's, Children of St Paul's, a troupe of boy actors. At this point in his literary career, Lyly had already achieved success with his prose romance Euphues and was a writer in residence at Blackfriars Theatre, Blackfriars theatre. The play is set in a village on the Lincolnshire shore of the Humber estuary and in the neighboring woods. It features a host of characters including Greek deities, nymphs, Fairy, fairies, and some shepherds. Plot The play opens in a small village somewhere in Lincolnshire with the shepherd Tyterus informing his daughter Gallathea of Neptune's demands. Every five years, the village must sacrifice the fairest virgin to Neptune (mythology), Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Drum's Entertainment
''Jack Drum's Entertainment, or the Comedy of Pasquil and Katherine'' is a late Elizabethan play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston in 1600. It was first performed by the Children of Paul's, one of the troupes of boy actors popular in that era. The play can be dated to 1600 on internal evidence, including a reference to William Kempe's famous morris dance from Norwich to London in the early spring of that year. It was entered into the Stationers' Register by the bookseller Felix Norton on 8 September 1600. On 23 October the rights were transferred to Richard Olive (i.e., Oliff), and the first edition was printed for Oliff in 1601. A second edition, issued by Philip Knight, appeared in 1616, and was reprinted in 1618 by Nathaniel Fosbrooke. All three quartos are anonymous, but the play has long been attributed to Marston on stylistic grounds, and his authorship is explicitly confirmed by extracts quoted in the commonplace book of Edward Pudsey (1573–1613). The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Of The Theatres
The War of the Theatres is the name commonly applied to a controversy from the later Elizabethan theatre; Thomas Dekker termed it the ''Poetomachia''. Because of an actual ban on satire in prose and verse publications in 1599 (the Bishops' Ban of 1599), the satirical urge had no other remaining outlet than the stage. The resulting controversy, which unfolded between 1599 and 1602, involved the playwright Ben Jonson on one side and his rivals John Marston and Thomas Dekker (with Thomas Middleton as an ancillary combatant) on the other. The role Shakespeare played in the conflict, if any, has long been a topic of dispute among scholars. Sequence of events The least disputed facts of the matter yield a schema like this: # In his play ''Histriomastix'' (1599), Marston satirized Jonson’s pride through the character Chrisoganus. # Jonson responded by satirizing Marston's wordy style in ''Every Man out of His Humour'' (1599), a play acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men. (Note: th ... [...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 h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Chapman
George Chapman ( – 12 May 1634) was an English dramatist, translator and poet. He was a classical scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman is seen as an anticipator of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century. He is best remembered for his translations of Homer's ''Iliad'' and '' Odyssey'', and the Homeric '' Batrachomyomachia''. Shakespeare was a contemporary of Chapman, and there is evidence that he knew some of Chapman's work. William Minto proposed Chapman as a candidate for being the " Rival Poet" mentioned in Shakespeare's sonnets. Life and work Chapman was born at Hitchin in Hertfordshire. His father appears to have been reasonably well off, but George was the younger son, and would need to earn his living. From his literary work it is evident that he acquired a good command of Latin and Greek (although he drew on the work of earlier scholars in his Greek translations). There is conjecture that he attended the University of Oxford without t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Marston (poet)
John Marston (baptised 7 October 1576 – 25 June 1634) was an English playwright, poet and satirist during the late Elizabethan era, Elizabethan and early Jacobean era, Jacobean periods. His career as a writer lasted only a decade. His work is remembered for its energetic and often obscure style, its contributions to the development of a distinctively Jacobean style in poetry, and its idiosyncratic vocabulary. Life Marston was born to John and Maria Marston ''née'' Guarsi, and baptised 7 October 1576, at Wardington, Oxfordshire. His father was an eminent lawyer of the Middle Temple who first argued in London and then became the counsel to Coventry and ultimately its steward. John Marston entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1592 and received his BA in 1594. By 1595, he was in London, living in the Middle Temple, where he had been admitted a member three years previously. He had an interest in poetry and play writing, although his father's will of 1599 expresses the hope that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wisdom Of Doctor Dodypoll
''The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll'' is a later Elizabethan stage play, an anonymous comedy first published in 1600. It is illustrative of the type of drama staged by the companies of child actors when they returned to public performance in that era. Date, performance, publication ''The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll'' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 7 October 1600, and was published before the end of that year, in a quarto printed by Thomas Creede for the bookseller Richard Olive. This was the only edition of the play prior to the nineteenth century. The title page states the drama had been acted by the Children of Paul's, the troupe of boy actors that had resumed public dramatic performances in 1599 or 1600 after a decade's absence. Various internal features in the play point to a date of authorship in the 1599–1600 interval. Like many plays of the children's companies, ''Doctor Dodypoll'' parodies the works of the established adult companies, including those of Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Maid's Metamorphosis
''The Maid's Metamorphosis'' is a late Elizabethan stage play, a pastoral first published in 1600. The play, "a comedy of considerable merit," was published anonymously, and its authorship has been a long-standing point of dispute among scholars. Date, performance, publication ''The Maid's Metamorphosis'' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 24 July 1600, and published later that year in a quarto printed by Thomas Creede for the bookseller Richard Olive. The title page of the first edition states that the play was acted by the Children of Paul's, one of the companies of boy actors popular at the time. That company resumed dramatic performances in 1599, and the play itself refers to a leap year and a year of drought, which was true only of 1600 in the relevant period – indicating that the play was performed in that year. Authorship The earliest attribution of authorship was on Edward Archer's play list of 1656, which assigned the play to John Lyly. The play is writte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marprelate Controversy
The Marprelate Controversy was a war of pamphlets waged in England and Wales in 1588 and 1589, between a puritan writer who employed the pseudonym Martin Marprelate, and defenders of the Church of England which remained an established church. Character and reception Martin's tracts are characterised by mockery of Anglican dignitaries and satire against the corruptions of the Church of England. The style is 'a heady mixture of nonsense, satire, protest, irony and gossip', combined with pungent wit, 'full of the language of the street'. While Martin maintained puritan doctrines as a whole, the special point of his attack was the episcopacy. The pamphlets were printed at a secret press established by John Penry, a Welsh puritan, with the help of the printer Robert Waldegrave, about midsummer 1588, for the issue of puritan literature was forbidden by the authorities. The first tract by "Martin Marprelate," known as the ''Epistle'', was printed at the home of Mistress Crane at Eas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs, and who from 1576 to 1584 staged plays in the vast hall of the former monastery. The second theatre dates from the purchase of the upper part of the priory and another building by James Burbage in 1596, which included the Parliament Chamber on the upper floor that was converted into the playhouse. The Children of the Chapel played in the theatre beginning in the autumn of 1600 until the King's Men took over in 1608. They successfully used it as their winter playhouse until all the theatres were closed in 1642 when the English Civil War began. In 1666, the entire area was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. First theatre Blackfriars Theatre was built on the grounds of the former Do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Love's Metamorphosis
''Love's Metamorphosis'' is an Elizabethan era stage play, an allegorical pastoral written by John Lyly. It was the last of his dramas to be printed. Performance and Publication ''Love's Metamorphosis'' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 25 November 1600, and was first published in 1601 in a quarto issued by the bookseller William Wood. The title page of the 1601 quarto calls the play a "witty and courtly pastoral," and states that it was first staged by the Children of Paul's, the troupe of child actors that was Lyly's regular company, and "now" (c. 1600) by the Children of the Chapel. "Probably the Paul's boys produced it c. 1589–90, and the Chapel revived it in 1600–1." ''Love's Metamorphosis'' was left out of ''Six Court Comedies'' (1632), the first collected edition of Lyly's plays; and there is no evidence that it was ever a "Court comedy," that it was ever acted at Court. The play was not reprinted until F. W. Fairholt's 1858 edition of Lyly's coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
