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The Ambitious Slave
''The Ambitious Slave; Or, A Generous Revenge'' is a 1694 tragedy by the English writer Elkanah Settle. It was first staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane by the United Company. The original cast included John Bowman (actor), John Bowman as King of Persia, John Verbruggen as Tygranes, George Powell (playwright), George Powell as Orontes, John Freeman (actor), John Freeman as Briomar, Jane Rogers (17th-century actress), Jane Rogers as Mirvan, Frances Maria Knight as Herminia, Anne Bracegirdle as Clarismunda, Elizabeth Barry as Celestina and Elinor Leigh as Rosalin.Van Lennep p.433 References Bibliography

* Van Lennep, W. ''The London Stage, 1660-1800: Volume One, 1660-1700''. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960. 1694 plays West End plays Tragedy plays Plays by Elkanah Settle {{17thC-play-stub ...
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Elkanah Settle
Elkanah Settle (1 February 1648 – 12 February 1724) was an English poet and playwright. Biography He was born at Dunstable, and entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1666, but left without taking a degree. His first tragedy, '' Cambyses, King of Persia'', was produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1667. The success of this play led the Earl of Rochester to encourage the new writer as a rival to John Dryden. Through his influence, Settle's '' The Empress of Morocco'' (1673) was twice performed at Whitehall, and proved a great success. It is said by John Dennis to have been "the first play that was ever sold in England for two shillings, and the first play that was ever printed with cuts." These illustrations represent scenes in the theatre, and make the book very valuable. The play was printed with a preface to the Earl of Norwich, in which Settle described with scorn the effusive dedications of other dramatic poets. Dryden was obviously aimed at, and he co-operated with John Crowne ...
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Jane Rogers (17th-century Actress)
Jane Rogers (died 1718) was an English stage actress. To distinguish her from her daughter she is sometimes referred to as Jane Rogers the Elder. She first appeared at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1692 in Thomas Shadwell's '' The Volunteers''. Following the split of the United Company in 1695, she remained at Drury Lane with Christopher Rich's company rather than join the breakaways under Thomas Betterton. She benefited from the departed of Anne Bracegirdle with whom she had been competing for roles and became one of the leading members of the company. Sometimes in the 1690s she gave birth to Jane Rogers reportedly following a liaison with fellow actor Robert Wilks. Her daughter later became an actress as part of the Lincoln's Inn Fields company, where she married Christopher Bullock and was consequently known by his surname. The elder Rogers continued at Drury Lane until 1706, when she switched to the new Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket. She then returned to Drury Lane wher ...
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West End Plays
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance languages (''ouest'' in French, ''oest'' in Catalan, ''ovest'' in Italian, ''oeste'' in Spanish and Portuguese). As in other languages, the word formation stems from the fact that west is the direction of the setting sun in the evening: 'west' derives from the Indo-European root ''*wes'' reduced from ''*wes-pero'' 'evening, night', cognate with Ancient Greek ἕσπερος hesperos 'evening; evening star; western' and Latin vesper 'evening; west'. Examples of the same formation in other languages include Latin occidens 'west' from occidō 'to go down, to set' and Hebrew מַעֲרָב maarav 'west' from עֶרֶב erev 'evening'. Navigation To go west using a compass for navigation (in a place where magnetic north is the same dir ...
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1694 Plays
Events January–March * January 16 – Francesco Morosini, the Doge of Venice since 1688, dies after ruling the Republic for more than five years and a few months after an unsuccessful attempt to capture the island of Negropont from the Ottoman Empire during the Morean War. * January 18 – Sir James Montgomery of Scotland, who had been arrested on January 11 for conspiracy to restore King James to the throne, escapes and flees to France. * January 21 (January 11 O.S.) – The Kiev Academy, now the national university of Ukraine, receives official recognition by Tsar Ivan V of Russia. * January 28 – '' Pirro e Demetrio'', an opera by Alessandro Scarlatti, is given its first performance, debuting at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples. The opera is adapted in 1708 in London as Pyrrhus and Demetrius and becomes the second most popular opera in 18th century London. * January 29 – French missionary Jean-Baptiste Labat arrives in the "New World", landing at the Caribb ...
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Elinor Leigh
Elinor Leigh was a British stage actor of the seventeenth century. Born Elinor Dixon, she was billed as Mrs Leigh or Mrs Lee after she married the actor Anthony Leigh in 1671. This has led to some difficulty distinguishing on playbills between her and the actress Mary Slingsby who also acted under her married name of Lee at the time. In addition another actress with the name Elizabeth Leigh was also active during the period. She was a member of the Duke's Company in the 1670s which was then merged into the United Company from 1682, acting mainly at Drury Lane. Her husband died in 1692, and in 1695 she joined those who left to form a new company under Thomas Betterton at the Lincoln's Inn Fields TheatreThe Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama p.lvi Selected roles * Melvissa in '' The Women's Conquest'' by Edward Howard (1670) * Petilla in '' The Six Days' Adventure'' by Edward Howard (1671) * Orinda in '' Cambyses, King Of Persia'' by Elkanah ...
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Elizabeth Barry
Elizabeth Barry (1658 – 7 November 1713) was an English actress of the Restoration period. Elizabeth Barry's biggest influence on Restoration drama was her presentation of performing as the tragic actress. She worked in large, prestigious London theatre companies throughout her successful career: from 1675 in the Duke's Company, 1682 – 1695 in the monopoly United Company, and from 1695 onwards as a member of the actors' cooperative usually known as Betterton's Company, of which she was one of the original shareholders. Her stage career began 15 years after the first-ever professional actresses had replaced Shakespeare's boy heroines on the London stage. The actor Thomas Betterton said that her acting gave "success to plays that would disgust the most patient reader", and the critic and playwright John Dennis described her as "that incomparable Actress changing like Nature which she represents, from Passion to Passion, from Extream to Extream, with piercing Force ...
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Anne Bracegirdle
Anne Bracegirdle (possibly 167112 September 1748) was an English actress. Biography Bracegirdle was born to Justinian and Martha (born Furniss) Bracegirdle in Northamptonshire. She was baptised in Northampton on 15 November 1671, although her tombstone says that she died at the age of 85 (suggesting that she was born around 1663)."Anne was baptized, probably as an infant, at St Giles, Northampton, on 15 November 1671 and was about seventy-seven when she died in 1748, rather than eighty-five, as recorded on her tombstone in Westminster Abbey." J. Milling, "Bracegirdle, Anne (bap. 1671, d. 1748)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 201accessed 1 June 2012/ref> She was probably raised by actors Thomas and Mary Betterton from an early age,J. Milling, "Bracegirdle, Anne (bap. 1671, d. 1748)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 201accessed 1 June 2012/ref> and it is speculated t ...
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Frances Maria Knight
Frances is a French and English given name of Latin origin. In Latin the meaning of the name Frances is 'from France' or 'free one.' The male version of the name in English is Francis. The original Franciscus, meaning "Frenchman", comes from the Franks who were named for the francisca, the axe they used in battle. https://nameberry.com/babyname/frances Notable people and characters with the name include: People * Frances, Countess of Périgord (died 1481) * Frances (musician) (born 1993), British singer and songwriter * Frances Estill Beauchamp (1860-1923), American temperance activist, social reformer, lecturer * Frances Burke, Countess of Clanricarde (1567–1633), English noblewoman and Irish countess * Frances E. Burns (1866-1937), American social leader and business executive * Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset (1590–1632), central figure in a famous scandal and murder * Frances Lewis Brackett Damon (1857–1939), American poet, writer * Frances Davidson, Viscountess ...
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John Freeman (actor)
John Freeman may refer to: Politicians *John Freeman (Australian politician) (1894–1970), Australian politician *John Freeman (British politician) (1915–2014), British politician, broadcaster and television presenter * John Freeman (Wyoming politician) (born 1954), member of the Wyoming House of Representatives *John Bailey Freeman (1835–1890), Canadian politician *John D. Freeman (1817–1886), U.S. Representative from Mississippi Sportspeople *John Freeman (cricketer) (1883–1958), English cricketer * John Freeman (baseball) (1901–1958), American baseball player *John Freeman (footballer) (born 2001), English footballer * John Freeman (rugby) (1934–2017), Welsh rugby union and professional rugby league footballer *John Childe-Freeman (born 1935), known as John Freeman, cricketer for Queensland *John Ripley Freeman (1855–1932), American civil engineer *Buck Freeman (John Frank Freeman, 1871–1949), American baseball player Writers and editors *John Freeman (poet) (18 ...
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Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The building is the most recent in a line of four theatres which were built at the same location, the earliest of which dated back to 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music). The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initial ...
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George Powell (playwright)
George Powell (1668? – 1714) was a 17th-century London actor and playwright who was a member of the United Company. He was the son of the actor Martin Powell, a long-standing member of the King's Company. Plays In his playwrighting Powell has been called 'an unscrupulous and opportunistic appropriator, gleaning materials from a variety of sources'. He was embroiled in a plagiarism scandal after writing a misogynistic play called ''The Imposture Defeated; or, A Trick to Cheat the Devil'', first performed in September 1697. This play portrayed the proper treatment of an adulteress as brutal confinement and isolation from others to punish her and prevent the spread of her attitude. It is widely accepted that Powell had plagiarised from the then unpublished manuscript of Mary Pix's '' The Deceiver Deceived''. Theatre critic Charles Gildon called Powell's version the inferior of the two. Powell also wrote the plays '' Alphonso, King of Naples'' (first performed in December ...
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John Verbruggen
John Baptista Verbruggen, d. 1708, was an English actor working in London. Verbruggen is first mentioned as a member of the United Company in a Lord Chamberlain's warrant in 1688. His name does not appear in any cast lists until October 1690. The ''Biographical Dictionary of Actors'' contains an inconclusive discussion of the statement in Thomas Davies's ''Dramatic Miscellanies'' (1784) that Verbruggen was identical to the actor referred to in 1680s and 90s cast lists as "Mr. Alexander", supposedly an alias based on the part of Alexander the Great in John Dryden's ''Rival Queens''. The evidence is confusing, and there is no independent support for Davies's anecdote, written down a century later. Verbruggen had never played the part of Alexander the Great and was not to do so until January 1703. One reason for Verbruggen to use a different name might have been that his own was often misspelled: Verbrugen, Verbrogell, Verkruggan, Verbrugger. As "John Verbuggin", he is recorded a ...
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