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The Faithful Shepherdess
''The Faithful Shepherdess'' is a Jacobean era stage play, the work that inaugurated the playwriting career of John Fletcher. Though the initial production was a failure with its audience, the printed text that followed proved significant, in that it contained Fletcher's influential definition of tragicomedy. Like many of Fletcher's later tragicomedies, ''The Faithful Shepherdess'' deals with the darker side of sexuality and sexual jealousy, albeit within a comic framework. Plot summary The play's eponymous heroine is Clorin, a virgin shepherdess who values chastity and devotion above all. A skilled healer, Clorin has chosen to live in solitude near the grave of her first love. During the course of the play, various couples will find themselves thrown into erotic turmoil, and it is Clorin who heals them and facilitates their reconciliation. In the first storyline, the shepherd Perigot and the shepherdess Amoret are in love, though their love is unconsummated and pure. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literature In English
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Ango-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, are called Old English. ''Beowulf'' is the most famous work in Old English. Despite being set in Scandinavia, it has achieved national epic status in England. However, following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Old English, Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society.Baugh, Albert and Cable, Thomas. 2002. ''The History of the English Language''. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. pp. 79–81. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1609 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1609. Events *January 1 – The Children of the Blackfriars perform Thomas Middleton's '' A Trick to Catch the Old One'' at the English royal court. *January 15 – '' Avisa Relation oder Zeitung'', an early newspaper, begins publication in Wolfenbüttel (Holy Roman Empire). *May 20 – The London publisher Thomas Thorpe issues '' Shake-speares Sonnets'', with a dedication to "Mr. W. H.", and the poem '' A Lover's Complaint'' appended. It is unclear whether this has Shakespeare's authority. *July 28 – The '' Sea Venture'' is wrecked in Bermuda – an event thought to be an inspiration for Shakespeare's play ''The Tempest''. * October 12 – A version of the rhyme "Three Blind Mice" appears in ''Deuteromelia or The Seconde part of Musicks melodie'' (London). The editor and possible author of the verse is the teenage Thomas Ravenscroft. * December 8 – The ''Sala Fredericiana'', the first readin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1679 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1679. Events *April 30 – John Locke, returning to England from France, moves into Thanet House in London. *June – Nathaniel Lee's play ''The Massacre at Paris'' (about the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, as was Christopher Marlowe's play of the same title) is suppressed by King Charles II of England as anti-French, the French being English allies at this time. *August – Thomas Otway returns to England from military service in the Netherlands. *October – Thomas Otway's ''The History and Fall of Caius Marius'', his adaptation of ''Romeo and Juliet'', is written. When performed the following year, it will drive Shakespeare's original off the stage for more than sixty years. * December 18 – Rose Alley ambuscade: John Dryden is set upon by three assailants in London, thought to have been instigated by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester in retaliation for an attack on "want of wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beaumont And Fletcher Folios
The Beaumont and Fletcher folios are two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama. The first folio, 1647 The 1647 folio was published by the booksellers Humphrey Moseley and Humphrey Robinson. It was modelled on the precedents of the first two folio collections of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623 and 1632, and the first two folios of the works of Ben Jonson of 1616 and 1640–1. The title of the book was given as ''Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher Gentlemen,'' though the prefatory matter in the folio recognised that Philip Massinger, rather than Francis Beaumont, collaborated with Fletcher on some of the plays included in the volume. (In fact, the 1647 volume "contained almost nothing of Beaumont's" work.) Seventeen works in Fletcher's canon that had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund Kerchever Chambers
Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers, (16 March 1866 – 21 January 1954), usually known as E. K. Chambers, was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. His four-volume work on ''The Elizabethan Stage'', published in 1923, remains a standard resource. Life Chambers was born in West Ilsley, Berkshire. His father was a curate there, and his mother was the daughter of a Victorian theologian. He was educated at Marlborough College before matriculating at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He won a number of prizes, including the chancellor's prize in English for an essay on literary forgery in 1891. He took a job with the national education department, and married Eleanor Bowman in 1893. In the newly created Board of Education, Chambers worked principally to oversee adult and continuing education. There, he rose to the position of second secretary, but the work for which he is remembered took place outside the office, sometime before he retired from the Board in 1926. He wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustine Matthews
Augustine Matthews ( fl. 1615 – 1637) was a printer in London in the Jacobean and Caroline eras. Among a wide variety of other work, Matthews printed notable texts in English Renaissance drama. Matthews became a freedman (a full member) of the Stationers Company on 9 May 1615. By 1619 he was established in his own business (in Cow Lane), and for the next two decades he produced a range of literature for many of the booksellers of his generation. In the field of drama, Matthews printed these editions of these plays: * Q2 of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's '' A Fair Quarrel'', 1622 * Q3 of '' The Troublesome Reign of King John'', 1622 * Q1 of John Webster's '' The Devil's Law Case'', 1623 * Q1 of the anonymous ''Tragedy of Nero'', 1624 (with printer John Norton) * Q2 of Beaumont and Fletcher's '' The Scornful Lady'', 1625 ** Q4 of the same play, 1635 * Q3 of Beaumont and Fletcher's '' Philaster'', 1628 * Q3 of George Wilkins's '' The Miseries of Enforced Marr ... [...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 (scholar), Richard James lends Oliver St John a manuscript tract on the bridling of parliaments which was written in 1612 by Sir Robert Dudley (explorer), 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 (playing company), King's Men perform ''Othello'' at the Blackfriars Theatre in London. *''unknown dates'' **The first known performance is given at the Corral de comedias de Almagro in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1628 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1628. Events * July 29 (Tuesday) – The King's Men perform ''Henry VIII'' at the Globe Theatre, London. George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham is in the audience, but leaves after watching the play's Duke of Buckingham beheaded. The character is based on the historical Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, who had been executed for treason in 1521. Villiers is assassinated less than a month later. *Ten-year-old Abraham Cowley produces his ''Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe''. *Construction of St John's College Old Library, Cambridge, is completed after five years. New books Prose * Robert Arnauld d'Andilly – ' * John Clavell – ''A Recantation of an Ill Led Life'' *Sir John Coke – ''The First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England, or, a Commentary upon Littleton'' * Thomas Dekker – ''Wars, Wars, Wars'' * John Earle, Bishop of Salisbury – ''Microcosmographie'' * N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Meighen
Richard Meighen (died 1641) was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He is noted for his publications of plays of English Renaissance drama; he published the second Ben Jonson folio of 1640/41, and was a member of the syndicate that issued the Second Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays in 1632. Life and career Meighen came from a family with strong connections to Shrewsbury School; his father, John Meighen (son of a Richard Meighen who was a tanner in Shrewsbury), was named headmaster in 1583 and continued in the post for a remarkable 52 years, until his death in September 1635. Several members of the Meighen family (including at least two named Richard) attended the school as students. Meighen the publisher maintained a lifelong connection with the school, and published works relating to it. Meighen was active as a publisher during the years 1615 to 1641; his shops, as his title pages specify, were "under St. Clement's Church" in the Strand, and "next ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. This was a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with England's publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers. The company's charter gave it the right to seize illicit editions of published works and to bar the publication of unlicensed books, and allowed publishers to document their right to produce a particular printed work in the register, which thus constituted an early form of copyright law. For the study of English literature of the later 16th and the 17th centuries (covering the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline eras), and especially for English Renaissance theatre, the Stationers' Register is a crucial and essential resource: it provides factual information and hard data that is available nowhere else. Together with the records of the Master of the Revels (which relate to dramatic perform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nathan Field
Nathan Field (also spelled Feild occasionally; 17 October 1587 – 1620) was an English dramatist and actor. Life His father was the Puritan preacher John Field, and his brother Theophilus Field became the Bishop of Llandaff. One of his brothers, named Nathaniel, often confused with the actor, became a printer. Nathan's father opposed London's public entertainments: he delivered a sermon that attributed Divine judgment to the collapse of the public seating area, during a bear baiting on a Sunday, at Beargarden in 1583, which resulted in several deaths. Nathan presumably did not intend a career in the theatre; he was a student of Richard Mulcaster at St. Paul's School in the late 1590s. At some point before 1600, he was impressed by Nathaniel Giles, the master of Elizabeth's choir and one of the managers of the new troupe of boy players at Blackfriars Theatre, called alternately the Children of the Chapel Royal and the Blackfriars Children. He remained in this profession ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont ( ; 1584 – 6 March 1616) was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher. Beaumont's life Beaumont was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace Dieu, near Thringstone in Leicestershire, a justice of the common pleas. His mother was Anne, the daughter of Sir George Pierrepont (d. 1564), of Holme Pierrepont, and his wife Winnifred Twaits. Beaumont was born at the family seat and was educated at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford) at age thirteen. Following the death of his father in 1598, he left university without a degree and followed in his father's footsteps by entering the Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional association for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practice as a barrister in England and Wa ... in London in 1600. Accounts suggest that Beaum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
