1.
English Renaissance theatre
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English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, or as Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1562 and 1642. This is the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, English Renaissance theatre encompasses the period between 1562 and 1642. Strictly speaking, English Renaissance theatre may be said to encompass Elizabethan theatre from 1562 to 1603, Jacobean theatre from 1603 to 1625, along with the economics of the profession, the character of the drama changed towards the end of the period. Under Elizabeth, the drama was an expression as far as social class was concerned. With the development of the theatres, drama became more oriented towards the tastes and values of an upper-class audience. By the later part of the reign of Charles I, few new plays were being written for the public theatres, theatrical life was largely centred just outside London, as the theatre was banned inside the city itself, but plays were performed by touring companies all over England. English companies even toured and performed English plays abroad, e. g. in Germany, the period starts before the establishment of the first permanent theatres. Initially two types of location were used for performing plays, the courtyards of inns and the Inns of Court such as the Inner Temple and these venues continued to be used even after permanent theatres were established. The first permanent English theatre, the Red Lion opened in 1567, the first successful theatres, such as The Theatre, opened in 1576. The establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an enabling factor in the success of English Renaissance drama. Once they were in operation, drama could become a fixed and their construction was prompted when the Mayor and Corporation of London first banned plays in 1572 as a measure against the plague, and then formally expelled all players from the city in 1575. The Theatre was rapidly followed by the nearby Curtain Theatre, the Rose, the Swan, the Globe, the Fortune, the public theatres were three stories high, and built around an open space at the centre. The upper level behind the stage could be used as a balcony, as in Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra, or as a position from which an actor could harangue a crowd, the playhouses were generally built with timber and plaster, and were three stories high. Individual theatre descriptions give additional information to their construction, such as flint stones being used to build the Swan, theatres were also constructed to be able to hold large amounts of people. A different model was developed with the Blackfriars Theatre, which came into use on a long-term basis in 1599. The Blackfriars was small in comparison to the theatres and roofed rather than open to the sky. Other small enclosed theatres followed, notably the Whitefriars and the Cockpit, around 1580, when both the Theatre and the Curtain were full on summer days, the total theatre capacity of London was about 5000 spectators. With the building of new facilities and the formation of new companies
2.
John Fletcher (playwright)
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John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Though his reputation has been far eclipsed since, Fletcher remains an important transitional figure between the Elizabethan popular tradition and the drama of the Restoration. Fletcher was born in December 1579 in Rye, Sussex, and he cried out at her death, So perish all the Queens enemies. Richard Fletcher died shortly after falling out of favour with the queen and he appears to have been partly rehabilitated before his death in 1596, however, he died substantially in debt. The upbringing of John Fletcher and his seven siblings was entrusted to his paternal uncle Giles Fletcher and his uncles connections ceased to be a benefit, and may even have become a liability, after the rebellion of the Earl of Essex, who had been his patron. Fletcher appears to have entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University in 1591 and it is not certain that he took a degree, but evidence suggests that he was preparing for a career in the church. Little is known about his time at college, but he followed the same path previously trodden by the University wits before him. In 1606, he began to appear as a playwright for the Children of the Queens Revels, at the beginning of his career, his most important association was with Francis Beaumont. The two wrote together for close to a decade, first for the children and then for the Kings Men, according to an anecdote transmitted or invented by John Aubrey, they also lived together, sharing clothes and having one wench in the house between them. This domestic arrangement, if it existed, was ended by Beaumonts marriage in 1613, and their partnership ended after Beaumont fell ill, probably of a stroke. By this time, Fletcher had moved into an association with the Kings Men. He collaborated with Shakespeare on Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and the lost Cardenio, a play he wrote singly around this time, The Womans Prize or the Tamer Tamed, is a sequel to The Taming of the Shrew. In 1616, after Shakespeares death, Fletcher appears to have entered into an arrangement with the Kings Men similar to Shakespeares. Fletcher wrote only for that company between the death of Shakespeare and his own death nine years later and he never lost his habit of collaboration, working with Nathan Field and later with Philip Massinger, who succeeded him as house playwright for the Kings Men. His popularity continued unabated throughout his life, during the winter of 1621 and he died in 1625, apparently of the plague. He seems to have buried in what is now Southwark Cathedral, although the precise location is not known. His mastery is most notable in two types, tragicomedy and comedy of manners. In the preface to the edition of his play, Fletcher explained the failure as due to his audiences faulty expectations
3.
Ben Jonson
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Benjamin Jonson was an English playwright, poet, actor, and literary critic of the 17th century, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours, Ben Jonson said that his family originally came from the folk of the Anglo-Scottish border country, which genealogy is attested by the three spindles in the Jonson family coat of arms. One spindle is a heraldic device shared with the Border-country Johnstone family of Annandale. Jonsons clergyman father died two months before his birth, his mother married a master bricklayer two years later, Jonson attended school in St. Martins Lane. Later, a family friend paid for his studies at Westminster School, on leaving Westminster School, Jonson was to have attended the University of Cambridge, to continue his book learning but did not, because of his unwilled apprenticeship to his bricklayer stepfather. According to the churchman and historian Thomas Fuller, Jonson at this time built a wall in Lincolns Inn. After having been a bricklayer, Ben Jonson went to the Netherlands. After his military activity on the Continent, Jonson returned to England and worked as an actor, as an actor, Jonson was the protagonist “Hieronimo” in the play The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd, the first revenge tragedy in English literature. Regarding his marriage Jonson described his wife to William Drummond as a shrew, concerning the family of Anne Lewis and Ben Jonson, the St. Martins Church registers indicate that Mary Jonson, their eldest daughter, died in November 1593, at six months of age. Moreover,32 years later, a son, also named Benjamin Jonson. By summer 1597, Jonson had an engagement in the Admirals Men, then performing under Philip Henslowes management at The Rose. John Aubrey reports, on authority, that Jonson was not successful as an actor, whatever his skills as an actor. By this time Jonson had begun to write plays for the Admirals Men. None of his early tragedies survive, however, an undated comedy, The Case is Altered, may be his earliest surviving play. In 1597 a play which he co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Isle of Dogs, was suppressed after causing great offence, arrest warrants for Jonson and Nashe were issued by Queen Elizabeth Is so-called interrogator, Richard Topcliffe. Jonson was jailed in Marshalsea Prison and charged with Leude and mutynous behaviour, two of the actors, Gabriel Spenser and Robert Shaw, were also imprisoned. A year later, Jonson was again imprisoned, this time in Newgate Prison. While in jail Jonson converted to Catholicism, possibly through the influence of fellow-prisoner Father Thomas Wright, in 1598 Jonson produced his first great success, Every Man in His Humour, capitalising on the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had begun with An Humorous Days Mirth
4.
Jacobean era
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The Jacobean era refers to the period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James VI of Scotland, who also inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I. The practical if not formal unification of England and Scotland under one ruler was an important shift of order for both nations, and would shape their existence to the present day, in 1609 the Parliament of Scotland began the Plantation of Ulster. The most notorious event of James reign occurred on 5 November 1605, on that date, a group of English Catholics attempted to blow up the King and Parliament in the Palace of Westminster. However, the Gunpowder Plot was exposed and prevented, and the plotters were hanged, drawn. Frederick and Elizabeths election as King and Queen of Bohemia in 1619, before their Bohemian adventure, Elizabeth and Frederick were the focus of an outburst of romantic idealism. The Latin name Jacobus was transliterated from the Greek name Iakobos, in Hebrew, Jacob means Supplanter, and comes from the Hebrew verb aqab which means to take by the heel, assail, circumvent, or supplant. Political events and developments of the Jacobean era cannot be understood separately from the economic, James had inherited a debt of £350,000 from Queen Elizabeth, by 1608 the debt had risen to £1,400,000 and was increasing by £140,000 annually. The Jacobean era ended with an economic depression in 1620–1626. In literature, some of Shakespeares most prominent plays, including King Lear, Macbeth, Patronage came not just from James, but from James wife Anne of Denmark. Also during this period were powerful works by John Webster, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, Ben Jonson also contributed to some of the eras best poetry, together with the Cavalier poets and John Donne. In prose, the most representative works are found in those of Francis Bacon, the wildly popular tale of the Trojan War had until then been available to English readers only in Medieval epic retellings such as Caxtons Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. Jonson was also an important innovator in the literary subgenre of the masque. His name is linked with that of Inigo Jones as co-developers of the literary, the fine arts were dominated by foreign talent in the Jacobean era, as was true of the Tudor and Stuart periods in general. Daniel Mytens was the most prominent portrait painter during the reign of James, some would also claim, as part of this trend, Cornelius Johnson, or Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen, born and trained in London and active through the first two Stuart reigns. The decorative arts — furniture, for example — became increasingly rich in color, detail, materials from other parts of the world, like mother-of-pearl, were now available by world-wide trade and were used as decoration. Even familiar materials, such as wood and silver, were worked more deeply in intricate, architecture in the Jacobean era was a continuation of the Elizabethan style with increasing emphasis on classical elements like columns. European influences include France, Flanders, and Italy, st Paul’s Cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren in London. In the domain of customs, manners, and everyday life, James I published his A Counterblaste to Tobacco in 1604, but the book had no discernible effect, by 1612, London had 7000 tobacconists and smoking houses
5.
Tragedy
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Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. In the wake of Aristotles Poetics, tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, in the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre. Drama, in the sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialisation from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects against models of tragedy, taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation. The word tragedy appears to have used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from Classical Greek τραγῳδία, contracted from trag-aoidiā = goat song, scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animals ritual sacrifice. In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus of Naucratis says that the form of the word was trygodia from trygos and ode. There is some dissent to the origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested, friedrich Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book The Birth of Tragedy. Here, he suggests the name originates in the use of a chorus of goat-like satyrs in the original dithyrambs from which the genre developed. Scott Scullion writes, There is abundant evidence for tragoidia understood as song for the prize goat, and as prize was established the billy goat, the clearest is Eustathius 1769.45, They called those competing tragedians, clearly because of the song over the billy goat. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE, no tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days, each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play. The four plays sometimes featured linked stories, only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the air, on the side of a hill. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, the theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people
6.
Masque
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The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts, in the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The masque tradition developed from the elaborate pageants and courtly shows of ducal Burgundy in the late Middle Ages, masques were typically a complimentary offering to the prince among his guests and might combine pastoral settings, mythological fable, and the dramatic elements of ethical debate. There would invariably be some political and social application of the allegory, such pageants often celebrated a birth, marriage, change of ruler or a Royal Entry and invariably ended with a tableau of bliss and concord. Masque imagery tended to be drawn from Classical rather than Christian sources, Masque thus lent itself to Mannerist treatment in the hands of master designers like Giulio Romano or Inigo Jones. The New Historians, in works like the essays of Bevington, in English masques, purely musical interludes might be accompanied by a dumbshow. The rustic presentation of Pyramus and Thisbe as an entertainment in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream offers a familiar example. Spectators were invited to join in the dancing, at the end, the players would take off their masks to reveal their identities. A descriptive narrative of a processional masque is the masque of the Seven Deadly Sins in Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene, a particularly elaborate masque, performed over the course of two weeks for Queen Elizabeth, is described in the 1821 novel Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott. Later, in the court of James I, narrative elements of the masque became more significant, plots were often on classical or allegorical themes, glorifying the royal or noble sponsor. At the end, the audience would join with the actors in a final dance, Ben Jonson wrote a number of masques with stage design by Inigo Jones. Their works are thought of as the most significant in the form. Sir Philip Sidney also wrote masques, william Shakespeare wrote a masque-like interlude in The Tempest, understood by modern scholars to have been heavily influenced by the masque texts of Ben Jonson and the stagecraft of Inigo Jones. There is also a sequence in his Romeo and Juliet. John Miltons Comus is described as a masque, though it is reckoned a pastoral play. Reconstructions of Stuart masques have been few and far between, part of the problem is that only texts survive complete, there is no complete music, only fragments, so no authoritative performance can be made without interpretive invention. In the 18th-century, masques were even less frequently staged, but because of its ephemeral nature, not a lot of documentation related to masques remains, and much of what is said about the production and enjoyment of masques is still part speculation. While the masque was no longer as popular as it was at its height in the 17th Century, during the late 17th century, English semi-operas by composers such as Henry Purcell had masque scenes inset between the acts of the play proper
7.
Curtain Theatre
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The Curtain Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Hewett Street, Shoreditch, just outside the City of London. It opened in 1577, and continued staging plays until 1624, the Curtain was built some 200 yards south of Londons first playhouse, The Theatre, which had opened a year before, in 1576. Its remains were rediscovered in archaeological excavation in 2012, the most significant find was that the Curtain was rectangular not round. They found a 14m stage, and evidence of a tunnel under the stage, finds included a ceramic bird whistle, ceramic money boxes for collecting entry fees, beads possibility decorating stage costumes and a small statue of Bacchus. The Curtain Theatre was built in 1577 in Shoreditch, and was Londons second playhouse, little is known of the companies that performed there, or of the plays they performed. The first clear mention of the Curtain is in 1584, when the City of London petitioned the parish of Shoreditch to shut down their playhouses and it was the venue of several of Shakespeares plays, including Romeo and Juliet and Henry V. In this latter play the somewhat undistinguished Curtain gains immortal fame by being described by Shakespeare as this wooden O, the Lord Chamberlains Men also performed Ben Jonsons Every Man in His Humour here in 1598, with Shakespeare in the cast. Later that same year Jonson gained a certain notoriety by killing actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel in nearby Hoxton Fields, the Lord Chamberlains Men departed the Curtain when the Globe Theatre, which they built to replace the Theatre, was ready for use in 1599. For seven years Henry Lanman had an agreement with James Burbage that all profit would be shared between them and this deal is how many believe Lanman was able to afford to open the Curtain, the rest is all very unclear. J. Thomas Pope, one of the Lord Chamberlains Men, owned a share in the Curtain and left it to his heirs in his last will, kings Men member John Underwood did the same in 1624. The fact that both of these belonged to Shakespeares company may indicate that the re-organization of the Curtain occurred when the Lord Chamberlains Men were acting there. Otherwise, it would be very unwise of Burbage to pool profits if he did better in the first place, thus, the suggestion is given that both proprietors were doing equal business. Burbages father Richard had shares in the theatre at the time of his death, the London theatres, including the Curtain, were closed for much of the period from September 1592 to April 1594 due to the bubonic plague. In 1597, people wrote to the magistrates court demanding that no plays take place at the Curtain or the Theatre that year. The Curtain was named in John Stows Survey of London in 1598, in 1600, the Privy Council tried unsuccessfully to shut down the Curtain theatre, and in 1603, the Curtain became the playhouse of Queen Annes Men. In 1607, The Travels of the Three English Brothers, by Rowley, Day, the Curtain was in use from 1577 until at least 1624, after which its ultimate fate is obscure as there is no record of it after 1627. The reasons for its closure are not known, the Curtain was believed to have been built near The Theatre, but the exact location was for many years unknown. However, a plaque was erected at 18 Hewett Street
8.
Thomas Dekker (writer)
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Little is known of Dekkers early life or origins. From references in his pamphlets, Dekker is believed to have born in London around 1572. His last name suggests Dutch ancestry, and his work, some of which is translated from Latin, Dekker embarked on a career as a theatre writer in the middle 1590s. His handwriting is found in the manuscript of Sir Thomas More, More certain is his work as a playwright for the Admirals Men of Philip Henslowe, in whose account book he is first mentioned in early 1598. While there are connected with his name performed as early as 1594, it is not clear that he was the original author, his work often involved revision. Between 1598 and 1602, he was involved in about forty plays for Henslowe, to these years belong the collaborations with Ben Jonson and John Marston, which presumably contributed to the War of the Theatres in 1600 and 1601. But Dekker is credited as the author of The Shoemakers Holiday, his acknowledged masterpiece – a boisterous. Francis Meres includes Dekker in his list of notable playwrights in 1598, for Jonson, however, Dekker was a bumbling hack, a dresser of plays about town, Jonson lampooned Dekker as Demetrius Fannius in Poetaster and as Anaides in Cynthias Revels. Dekkers riposte, Satiromastix, performed both by the Lord Chamberlains Men and the actors of Pauls, casts Jonson as an affected. After this commission, however, the early Jacobean period was mixed for the author. In late 1602, he appears to have broken his association with Henslowe and he wrote for Worcesters Men for a time, then returned to the Admirals Men to produce The Honest Whore, an apparent success. In 1612, Dekkers lifelong problem with debt reached a crisis when he was imprisoned in the Kings Bench Prison on a debt of forty pounds to the father of John Webster and he continued as pamphleteer throughout his years in prison. On release, he resumed writing plays, now with collaborators both from his generation and slightly younger writers, among these plays is one, Keep the Widow Waking, which dramatized two recent murders in Whitechapel. In the latter half of the decade, Dekker turned once more to pamphlet-writing, revamping old work and writing a new preface to his most popular tract, The Bellman of London. Dekker published no more work after 1632, and he is associated with the Thomas Dekker, householder. When Dekker began writing plays, Thomas Nashe and Thomas Lodge were still alive, the majority of his surviving plays are comedies or tragicomedies. Most of Dekkers work is lost and his apparently disordered life, and his lack of a firm connection with a single company, may have militated against the preservation or publication of manuscripts. Close to twenty of his plays were published during his lifetime, of these, more than half are comedies, the first phase of Dekkers career is documented in Henslowes diary
9.
George Chapman
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George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeares sonnets by William Minto, Chapman is best remembered for his translations of Homers Iliad and Odyssey, and the Homeric Batrachomyomachia. Chapman was born at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, there is conjecture that he studied at Oxford but did not take a degree, though no reliable evidence affirms this. Very little is known about Chapmans early life, but Mark Eccles uncovered records that much about Chapmans difficulties. Chapmans courtly ambitions led him into a trap and he apparently never received any money, but he would be plagued for many years by the papers he had signed. As Sadler died in 1587, this gives Chapman little time to have trained under him and it seems more likely that he was in Sadlers household from 1577–83, as he dedicates all his Homerical translations to him. Chapman spent the early 1590s abroad, and saw action in the Low Countries fighting under renowned English general Sir Francis Vere. His earliest published works were the obscure philosophical poems The Shadow of Night, the latter has been taken as a response to the erotic poems of the age, such as Philip Sidneys Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeares Venus and Adonis. The former was executed for treason by Elizabeth I in 1601, Chapmans resultant poverty did not diminish his ability or his standing among his fellow Elizabethan poets and dramatists. Chapman died in London, having lived his latter years in poverty and he was buried at St Giles in the Fields. A monument to him designed by Inigo Jones marked his tomb, by the end of the 1590s, Chapman had become a successful playwright, working for Philip Henslowe and later for the Children of the Chapel. Among his comedies are The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, An Humorous Days Mirth, All Fools, Monsieur DOlive, The Gentleman Usher, May Day, and The Widows Tears. With The Widows Tears, he was one of the first writers to meld comedy with more serious themes, creating the tragicomedy later made famous by Beaumont. He also wrote one play in collaboration. Eastward Ho, written with Jonson and John Marston, contained references to the Scots which landed Chapman. Various of their letters to the king and noblemen survive in a manuscript in the Folger Library known as the Dobell MS, in the letters, both men renounced the offending line, implying that Marston was responsible for the injurious remark. Chapmans friendship with Jonson broke down, perhaps as a result of Jonsons public feud with Inigo Jones, some satiric, scathing lines, written sometime after the burning of Jonsons desk and papers, provide evidence of the rift
10.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
11.
James VI and I
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James VI and I was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both were ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother Mary was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, in 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617 and he was a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonization of the Americas began, at 57 years and 246 days, Jamess reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his predecessors. He achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. James himself was a scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie, The True Law of Free Monarchies. He sponsored the translation of the Bible that would later be named after him, Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed the wisest fool in Christendom, an epithet associated with his character ever since. Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise Jamess reputation and treat him as a serious, James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Both Mary and Darnley were great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England through Margaret Tudor, Marys rule over Scotland was insecure, and she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by Protestant noblemen. James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and he was baptised Charles James or James Charles on 17 December 1566 in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France, Elizabeth I of England, Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she referred to as a pocky priest, spit in the childs mouth, as was then the custom. The subsequent entertainment, devised by Frenchman Bastian Pagez, featured men dressed as satyrs and sporting tails, Jamess father, Darnley, was murdered on 10 February 1567 at Kirk o Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for Rizzios death. James inherited his fathers titles of Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross, Mary was already unpopular, and her marriage on 15 May 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Darnley, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her. In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle and she was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567 in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent. The care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought in the security of Stirling Castle
12.
Thomas Nashe
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Thomas Nashe is considered the greatest of the English Elizabethan pamphleteers. He was a playwright, poet, and satirist and he is best known for his novel The Unfortunate Traveller. Thomas Nashe was the son of the parson William Nashe and Margaret and he was born and baptised in Lowestoft, on the coast of Suffolk, where his father, William Nashe, or Nayshe as it is recorded, was curate. Though his mother bore seven children, only two survived childhood, Israel and Thomas, the family moved to West Harling, near Thetford in 1573 after Nashes father was awarded the living there at the church of All Saints. Around 1581 Thomas went up to St Johns College, Cambridge as a sizar, from references in his own polemics and those of others, he does not seem to have proceeded Master of Arts there. Most of his biographers agree that he left his college about summer 1588, Some years later, William Covell wrote in Polimanteia that Cambridge has been unkind to the one to wean him before his time. Nashe himself claimed that he could have become a fellow had he wished, then he moved to London and started his literary career in earnest. The remaining decade of his life was dominated by two concerns, finding a patron and participating in controversies, most famously with Richard. He arrived in London with his one exercise in euphuism, The Anatomy of Absurdity and his first appearance in print was, however, his preface to Robert Greenes Menaphon, which offers a brief definition of art and overview of contemporary literature. After this he was drawn into the Martin Marprelate controversy on the side of the bishops, as with the other writers in the controversy, his share is difficult to determine. He was formerly credited with the three Pasquill tracts of 1589–1590, which were included in R. B, mcKerrows standard edition of Nashes works, however McKerrow himself later argued strongly against their being by Nashe. But there is no evidence Nashe had either time or means to go abroad, in 1590, he contributed a preface to an unlicensed edition of Philip Sidneys Astrophil and Stella, but the edition was called in, and the authorised second edition removed Nashes work. At some time in the early 1590s Nashe produced an erotic poem and it has been suggested that The Choice of Valentines was written possibly for the private circle of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby. The Choice of Valentines circulated only in manuscript and it describes the Valentines Day visit of a young man named Tomalin to the brothel where his lover, Mistris Francis, has recently become employed. Having paid ten gold pieces for her favours, Tomalin makes his way towards his erotic goal, and make me happie, stealing by degrees. First bare hir legs, then creepe up to her knees, the object of his desire, A pretty rising womb, is revealed. Unfortunately Tomalin finds the moment so exciting that he spends his all before the fight has begun, mistress Frances is disappointed and does what she can to revive things. Unhappyie me, quoth she, and wilt not stand, com, let me rubb and chafe it with my hand
13.
Pierce Penniless
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Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Divell is a tall tale, or a prose satire, written by Thomas Nashe and published in London in 1592. It was among the most popular of the Elizabethan pamphlets and it was reprinted in 1593 and 1595, and in 1594 was translated into French. It is written from the point of view of Pierce, a man who has not met with good fortune, who now bitterly complains of the world’s wickedness, at times the identity of Pierce seems to conflate with Nashes own. But Nashe also portrays Pierce as something of an arrogant and prodigal fool, the story is told in a style that is complex, witty, fulminating, extemporaneous, digressive, anecdotal, filled with wicked descriptions, and peppered with newly minted words and Latin phrases. The satire can be mocking and bitingly sharp, and at times Nashe’s style seems to relish its own obscurity, Pierce Penniless was printed and published as one of the many pamphlets or short quarto books that provided lively material to the reading public. Printed pamphlets had been a popular and longstanding tradition, but in London in the late 16th century, with the urban population booming, and literacy becoming widespread, they flourished. The content of these pamphlets often tended to be scandalous or scurrilous, shakespeare, in the dedication to his poem The Rape of Lucrece refers to its quarto publication as a pamphlet. Pamphlets also offered playwrights an opportunity to write and be published in those times when the plague had closed the theatres, such was the case with Shakespeares Venus and Adonis and Nashes Pierce Penniless, which were both written and published when the theatres were closed from 1592–1593. The plague is a motive for the story itself—the seven deadly sins that Nashes tale describes were said at the time to be the cause of the disease. Near the midpoint of the story, Nashes salvo begins, Gentlemen, I have read over thy sheepish discourse of The Lamb Of God And His Enemies, and. I could not refrain, but bequeath it to the privy, leaf by leaf as I read it, it was so ugly, dorbellical, but the two who are then suspected of writing it, Thomas Nashe and Henry Chettle, each denied being the author. A scald trivial lying pamphlet called Greenes Groatsworth of Wit is given out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soul, but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my pen, or if I were any way privy to the writing or printing of it. I am grown at length to see into the vanity of the more than ever I did. Nashes character, Pierce, occasionally has some words for his unnamed fellow authors. Nashe refers to them variously as sonnet-composing “upstarts”, who are not as well-born or as well educated as himself, who have little Latin, however, Nashe’s satire would have no point unless it could be seen to be striking an actual target. Nashe ends his epistle to his printer by mentioning that he would be available “, before the third impression come and alter whatsoever may be offensive to any man. The story of Pierce Penniless is told by Pierce himself, who is a scholar, author and he begins his story by bewailing his own lack of good fortune, saying
14.
Revenge tragedy
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Revenge tragedy defines a genre of plays made popular in early modern England. Ashley H. Thomas Kyds The Spanish Tragedy is often considered the inaugural revenge tragedy on the modern stage. Additionally, Thomases Norton and Sackvilles play Gorbuduc is considered a revenge tragedy. Other well-known revenge tragedies include William Shakespeares Hamlet and Titus Andronicus, the genre of revenge tragedy is a modern generic invention, developed as a means to talk about early modern tragedies that maintain a theme or motif of revenge in varying degrees. In respect to modern drama more broadly, generic classification is difficult and, at times, contentious. More or less, the genre came into existence simply because it had to, while Thorndike is rather conservative in his definition of a revenge tragedy, it has become common to consider any tragedy that maintains an element of revenge in it a revenge tragedy. A revenge tragedy thus can also be any tragedy where revenge is, more or less, as long as revenge is an underlying theme or motivation throughout the piece, it can be labeled as revenge tragedy. While these conventions dont apply to all plays that can be read as revenge tragedies, this list represents those things that commonly take place in the narrative of a revenge tragedy. He’s famous for helping shape the genre of tragedy with his ten plays, Hercules Furens, Troades, Phoenissae, Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules Oetaeus. The importance of his plays lies in the difficulty of the time period, while Elizabethan tragedy was considered more acceptable, revenge tragedy sought to unleash the carnal side of human nature on stage in a much more grotesque way. It was a time in the literary world that would eventually lead to some of the most grueling pieces of film. Seneca’s Thyestes, a tale of revenge and horror, with a prominent theme of cannibalism. In the power struggle between two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, there is a theme of revenge. The underlying story of the plot is that Thyestes has had an affair with Atreus wife, stolen his golden fleece, after a long period of exile, Thyestes is allowed to return to Rome. However, the conflict escalates when Atreus executes his revenge by tricking Thyestes into eating his own children, although, overtly grotesque, this is a piece of literature that follows the conventions of the revenge tragedy genre. Ultimately, everyone ends up dead and revenge has been taken to a level that would not be anticipated in the beginning, William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright from the 16th century. Shakespeare followed a style as Senecas tragedies. Throughout plays of Revenge Tragedy, numerous different types of revenge are played out, however, the biggest difference between each form of revenge is shown through which gender the revenge is coming from
15.
Mary Frith
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Mary Frith, alias Moll Cutpurse, was a notorious pickpocket and fence of the London underworld. The nickname Moll Cutpurse is a pun, Moll, apart from being a nickname for Mary, was a name in the 16th through 17th centuries for a young woman. Cutpurse referenced her reputation as a thief who would cut purses to steal the contents, the other name by which she was known, The Roaring Girl is taken from the phrase roaring boys, or young gentlemen who caroused in taverns and then picked fights on the street. The facts of her life are confusing, with many exaggerations. The Life of Mrs Mary Frith, a biography written in 1662. Mary Frith was born in the mid-1580s to a shoemaker and a housewife, mary’s uncle, who was a minister and her father’s brother, once attempted to reform her at a young age by sending her to New England. However, she jumped overboard before the ship set sail, Mary presented herself in public in a doublet and baggy breeches, smoking a pipe and swearing if she wished. She was recorded as having been burned on her four times. She was at one time sentenced to do penance standing in a sheet at St. Paul’s Cross during the Sunday morning sermon. It had little effect, since she still wore men’s clothing and her house was surprisingly rather feminine, due to the efforts of her three full-time maids. She kept parrots and bred mastiffs and her dogs were particularly special to her, each had its own bed with sheets and blankets. It is believed that she first came to prominence in 1600 when she was indicted in Middlesex for stealing 2s 11d on 26 August of that year and it is at that point she began to gain notoriety. In the following years, two plays were written about her, first the 1610 drama The Madde Pranckes of Mery Mall of the Bankside by John Day, the text of which is now lost. Another play came a year later by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, however, Mary seems to have been given a fair amount of freedom in a society that so frowned upon women who acted unconventionally. In 1611 Frith even performed at the Fortune Theatre, on stage she bantered with the audience and sang songs while playing the lute. It can be assumed that the banter and song were somewhat obscene, once a showman named William Banks bet Mary 20 pounds that she wouldn’t ride from Charing Cross to Shoreditch dressed as a man. Not only did she win the bet, she rode flaunting a banner and she also rode Marocco, a famous performing animal. Such public actions led to some reprisal, Frith was arrested for being dressed indecently on 25 December 1611 and accused of being involved in prostitution
16.
William Rowley
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William Rowley 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 Jamess, Clerkenwell in north London. Rowley was an actor-playwright who specialized in playing clown characters and he must also have been a large man, since his forte lay specifically in fat-clown roles. He played the Fat Bishop in Thomas Middletons A Game at Chess and he also wrote fat-clown parts for himself to play, Jaques in Alls Lost by Lust, and Bustopha in The Maid in the Mill, his collaboration with John Fletcher. The part of the otherwise-unnamed Clown in The Birth of Merlin shows signs of being another role that Rowley the playwright wrote with Rowley the actor in mind. As a writer, Rowley was almost exclusively a dramatist, the pamphlet A Search for Money is his only sustained work of non-dramatic prose, two plays are generally accepted as Rowleys solo works, A Shoemaker a Gentleman and Alls Lost by Lust. Three other works that might have been Rowley solo plays have not survived, Hymens Holidays or Cupids Vagaries, A Knave in Print, Rowley appears to have begun his career working for Queen Annes Men at the Red Bull Theatre. In 1609, he was part of a group of actors who set up a new playing company, the Duke of Yorks Men, which became known as Prince Charless Men after 1612. Most of Rowleys career was spent writing and clowning for this company, which was based at a series of different playhouses, including the Curtain, the Hope, Rowley was the troupes payee for their Court performances in the 1610–15 era. In 1623, Rowley left his company and joined the highly successful Kings Men at the Globe, though relatively brief, his stay with the troupe was eventful, in 1624 he was embroiled in both the Game at Chess controversy in August and the Spanish Viceroy affair in December. The roles he took with the company likely included Cacafogo in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, the Cook in Rollo Duke of Normandy, notably, Rowley did not necessarily restrict his playwriting efforts to the company to which he was committed as an actor. Rowleys canon is plagued by uncertainty and by the complexities of collaboration, Alls Lost by Lust The Birth of Merlin, or, The Child Hath Found its Father. The title page claims William Shakespeare as Rowleys co-writer, but this claim is disputed, attributed only to W. R. and stylistic analysis suggests that it may not be by Rowley. A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vexed, possibly a collaboration, George Wilkins and Thomas Heywood have been suggested as co-writers. The Old Law, or A New Way to Please You, co-written with Thomas Middleton, and, possibly, a third collaborator who may have been Philip Massinger or Thomas Heywood. A Shoemaker a Gentleman The Spanish Gypsy, although the title page attributes this play to Rowley and Thomas Middleton, stylistic analysis favours a different playwriting team, John Ford and Thomas Dekker. The title page attributes this play to Rowley and John Webster although few readers accept Websters presence, the Travels of the Three English Brothers. Co-written with George Wilkins and John Day, although it was first printed as part of the Beaumont and Fletcher folio, stylistic analysis suggests that this play was heavily revised by Rowley and Thomas Middleton
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A Fair Quarrel
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A Fair Quarrel is a Jacobean tragicomedy, a collaboration between Thomas Middleton and William Rowley that was first published in 1617. The play is thought to have written and performed most likely in the 1615–16 period. The second quarto, issued in 1622 and printed by Augustine Matthews, also includes the school scene and places it in its proper place as Act IV. The play was dedicated to Robert Grey, Esq. the dedication signed by Rowley, the title page of Q1 states that the play was acted before the King. The play was acted by Prince Charless Men, the company to which Rowley belonged at the time, after the deaths of both authors, the play would become the property of Queen Henriettas Men. By 1639 the play was in the repertory of Beestons Boys and it was revived at least once during the Restoration era, in 1662. The play was attributed to Middleton and Rowley on the page of Q1 in 1617. The rule is not rigidly applied, however, in The Changeling, Rowley composed the opening and closing scenes as well as the subplot. In A Fair Quarrel, Middleton as usual handles the main plot, as a result of this structure and division of labour, Rowley is the author of roughly two-thirds of the play, and Middleton only one third. David Lake divides their respective shares this way and this division is generally accepted by the scholarly consensus, with some occasional and minor dissent, Edward Engelberg assigned part of Act III, scene ii to Middleton instead of Rowley. Rowley had a habit of writing fat clown roles for himself to play, Chough, the clown in A Fair Quarrel, is a wrestler. The source for the Fitzallen subplot in A Fair Quarrel is one of the stories in the Hecatommithi of Cinthio. Rowley and Middleton derived the details of practice in IV, ii and V, i of their play from a guide to chirurgery published in 1612. The long opening scene, which all of Act I, introduces the linked first. The scene begins with a soliloquy by a citizen named Russell. Russells soliloquy ends with the arrival of his sister, the widowed Lady Ager, Russell informs her that the troop of soldiers in which her son serves has returned to England, much to her delight. Russell has a connection to the soldiers, Captain Ager is his nephew. When the Colonel and Captain visit with their friends, a quarrel quickly develops among the officers as to the merits of the Colonel
18.
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
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A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is a city comedy written c.1613 by English Renaissance playwright Thomas Middleton. Unpublished until 1630 and long-neglected afterwards, it is now considered among the best and most characteristic Jacobean comedies, the play was originally average staged by the Lady Elizabeths Men. The 1630 quarto was published by the bookseller Francis Constable, Moll loves Touchwood Junior, a poor gallant, her father, however, has betrothed her to Whorehound, a philandering knight eager for Molls dowry. As a kind of side-bargain, Sir Walter has promised Molls brother Tim a landed niece from Wales, Tim, a fatuous scholar, returns to London from Cambridge University with his Latin tutor. This landed niece is in reality one of Sir Walters mistresses, Sir Walter is also having an affair with the wife of Allwit, a knowing cuckold, his name an inversion of wittol, who lives happily on the money Sir Walter gives his wife. Meanwhile, Touchwood Senior prepares to depart from his wife, prodigiously fertile and he and his wife must separate to avoid another pregnancy, which they cannot afford. His salvation comes from the Kixes, a couple who have not been able to conceive. This is important because if they have a child, Sir Walter will not inherit their fortune, on which he has confidently depended, a maid tells the Kixes that Touchwood makes a special fertility potion, Touchwood deceives his way into the bed of Lady Kix. After an abortive attempt to elope with Touchwood Junior, Moll is guarded at home, the day before the wedding, Moll flees her parents home again. Caught while attempting to cross the Thames, she is drenched, Touchwood Junior and Sir Walter fight in the street, and both are wounded. Sir Walter believes that he is near death, at Allwits house, he repents all of his sins, condemning the Allwits for indulging him. When news is brought that Lady Kix is pregnant, the Allwits kick him out and plan to sell all Sir Walters gifts and move to a home in The Strand. Moll continues to be sick, when Touchwood Senior brings word that his brother has died, she faints and appears to die while Susan. Saddened, the Yellowhammers agree to Touchwood Seniors request that the young lovers receive a joint burial, at the funeral, Moll and Touchwood Junior rise from their coffins and the mourning turns to celebration. The two are wed, as Tim and the Welsh niece had been earlier that day, Kix promises to support the family of Touchwood Senior, all exit, headed for a celebratory dinner. The plays title page states that it was acted at the Swan Theatre by Lady Elizabeths Men, there is no evidence that the play was revived during the Restoration period, or that it was staged in any form between then and the twentieth century. A very limited excerpt from the play, titled A Posy for the Ring for the occasion, was acted at Earls Court on 16 September 1912, full text of the play, including notes and illustrations
19.
Michaelmas Term (play)
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Michaelmas Term is a Jacobean comedy by Thomas Middleton. It was first performed in 1604 by the Children of Pauls, and was entered into the Stationers Register on 15 May 1607, a second quarto was printed in 1630 by the bookseller Richard Meighen. His servant tells him that several country litigants are on their way to London, figures representing the other three terms enter, leading a poor man who is made rich as they present him with rich apparel, a page and a pander. The three terms greet Michaelmas and tell him that several more fools on are on their way and they express hope that he will spread the wealth around. Michaelmas promises them that there will be enough to last for the next four years. Scene 1, The middle aisle in St Pauls Cathedral Masters Rearage and Salewood, Master Cockstone, a gentleman, enters with Master Easy, a landowner from Essex. Easy has come to London because his Father has recently died, Cockstone takes Rearage aside and tells him that Easy is gullible and a poor judge of character — a fresh lad who wants the city powdring. Cockstone asks Rearage how the match between himself and Master Quomodos daughter is going. Rearage tells him that he faces fierce competition from a suitor, Andrew Lethe. Quomodos wife still prefers Rearage for a son-in-law, but Quomodo favors Lethe, Quomodo enters with his two accomplices, Shortyard and Falselight. Quomodo orders Shortyard to befriend and corrupt Easy, driving him into Quomodos debt so Quomodo can cheat him out of his land, Shortyard says he is the perfect man for the job, and exits. Rearage tells Salewood that Lethe is his rival, the suitor whom Master Quomodo prefers, Rearage and Salewood greet Lethe warmly. He invites all of the present to a venison dinner that evening. Lethe notes that his project to marry Quomodos daughter is going well except for one problem and he wonders aloud why she should despise him so much — he has enough money to provide her daughter with the finest possible husband. He reads out a letter he has composed for Mistress Quomodo, Lethe wonders aloud who he can get to deliver the letter for him — his page has been sent out on another errand and his pander has been sent to the country to find women. Lethe does not want to be talking to her because he wishes to disassociate himself from his former poverty in Scotland. Failing to recognize her own son, Mother Gruel asks Lethe if he has seen an Andrew Gruel, her son, his father has died, Lethe decides to hire his mother as his drudge. Scene 2, A street in London Lethes pander, Hellgill, has brought a Country Wench to the city to be Lethes whore and he promises her that life as a city prostitute will far surpass her former life as a country maid
20.
The Revenger's Tragedy
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The Revengers Tragedy is an English language, Jacobean revenge tragedy, formerly attributed to Cyril Tourneur but now generally recognized as the work of Thomas Middleton. It was performed in 1606, and published in 1607 by George Eld, a vivid and often violent portrayal of lust and ambition in an Italian court, the play typifies the satiric tone and cynicism of much Jacobean tragedy. Vindice, the revenger, frequently disguised as Piato, Hippolito, Vindices brother, sometimes called Carlo. Gratiana, a widow, mother of Vindice, Hippolito, the Duchess, the dukes second wife. Lussurioso, the son from an earlier marriage, and his heir. Spurio, the second son, a bastard. Junior Brother, the third son. Antonio, a lord at the Dukes court. Antonios wife, raped by Junior Brother Piero, a lord at the Dukes court. As mentioned above, Spurio is the son of the Duke. Nearly all action in the play involving Spurio consists of adultery, murder, as Thomas Laqueur puts it, while the legitimate child is from the froth of the father, the illegitimate child is from the seed of the mothers genitals, as if the father did not exist. The idea of Spurio and his character provides the function of bastardy in the misogynist gender politics of the play, the Duchess, Castiza, and Gratiana are the only three female characters found in the play. Gratiana, Vindices mother, exemplifies female frailty, the play is in accord with the medieval tradition of Christian Complaint, and Elizabethan satire in presenting sexuality mainly as symptomatic of general corruption. Even though Gratiana is the mother of a decent, strong-minded daughter and this personality-split is then repeated, in an episode exactly reversing the pattern, by her ironic, intelligent daughter. The play is set in an unnamed Italian court, Vindice broods over his fathers recent death and his desire for revenge on the lustful Duke for poisoning his beloved nine years before. Vindices brother Hippolito brings news, Lussurioso, the Dukes heir by his first marriage, has asked him if he can find a procurer to obtain a young virgin he lusts after. The brothers decide that Vindice will undertake this role in disguise, meanwhile, Lord Antonios wife has been raped by the new Duchesss youngest son Junior. He brazenly admits his guilt, even joking about it, but to widespread surprise the Duke suspends the proceedings, the Duchesss other sons, Ambitioso and Supervacuo, whisper a promise to have him freed, the Duchess vows to be unfaithful to the Duke
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City of London
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The City of London is a city and county within London. It constituted most of London from its settlement by the Romans in the 1st century AD to the Middle Ages, the City is now only a tiny part of the metropolis of London, though it remains a notable part of central London. Administratively, it one of the 33 local authority districts of Greater London, however, the City of London is not a London borough. The City of London is widely referred to simply as the City and is colloquially known as the Square Mile. Both of these terms are often used as metonyms for the United Kingdoms trading and financial services industries. The name London is now used for a far wider area than just the City. London most often denotes the sprawling London metropolis, or the 32 London boroughs and this wider usage of London is documented as far back as 1888, when the County of London was created. The local authority for the City, namely the City of London Corporation, is unique in the UK and has some unusual responsibilities for a local council and it is also unusual in having responsibilities and ownerships beyond its boundaries. The Corporation is headed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the current Lord Mayor, as of November 2016, is Andrew Parmley. The City is a business and financial centre. Throughout the 19th century, the City was the primary business centre. London came top in the Worldwide Centres of Commerce Index, published in 2008, the insurance industry is focused around the eastern side of the City, around Lloyds building. A secondary financial district exists outside of the City, at Canary Wharf,2.5 miles to the east, the City has a resident population of about 7,000 but over 300,000 people commute to and work there, mainly in the financial services sector. It used to be held that Londinium was first established by merchants as a trading port on the tidal Thames in around 47 AD. However, this date is only supposition, many historians now believe London was founded some time before the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD. They base this notion on evidence provided by both archaeology and Welsh literary legend, archaeologists have claimed that as much as half of the best British Iron Age art and metalwork discovered in Britain has been found in the London area. One of the most prominent examples is the famously horned Waterloo Helmet dredged from the Thames in the early 1860s and now exhibited at the British Museum. Also, according to an ancient Welsh legend, a king named Lud son of Heli substantially enlarged and improved a pre-existing settlement at London which afterwards came to be renamed after him, the same tradition relates how this Lud son of Heli was later buried at Ludgate
22.
Allegory
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As a literary device, an allegory is a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences. Many ancient religions are based on astrological allegories, that is, allegories of the movement of the sun, in classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Platos Republic and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa. One of the examples of allegory, Platos Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in an all of their lives. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israels exile to Rome. Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances, if, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ. This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition, since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. S, lewis and A Kingdom Far and Clear, The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy by Mark Helprin. The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newtons head is another famous allegory and it simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale. According to Henry Littlefields 1964 article, L. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that, A fairy tale is not an allegory, I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and this further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention. Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning, some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works, Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, The several knights in the poem actually stand for several virtues. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown, The Devils Staff symbolises defiance of God, the characters names, such as Goodman and Faith, ironically serve as paradox in the conclusion of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, The scarlet letter symbolises many things, the characters, while developed with interiority, are allegorical in that they represent ways of seeing the world. George Orwell – Animal Farm, The pigs stand for political figures of the Russian Revolution, lászló Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance and the film Werckmeister Harmonies, It uses a circus to describe an occupying dysfunctional government
23.
A Game at Chess
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A Game at Chess is a comic satirical play by Thomas Middleton, first staged in August 1624 by the Kings Men at the Globe Theatre, notable for its political content. The drama seems to be about a match, and even contains a genuine chess opening. Instead of personal names, the characters are known as the White Knight, however, audiences immediately recognized the play as an allegory for the stormy relationship between Spain and Great Britain. King James I of England is the White King, King Philip IV of Spain is the Black King, in particular, the play dramatizes the struggle of negotiations over the proposed marriage of the then Prince Charles with the Spanish princess, the Infanta Maria. It focuses on the journey by Prince Charles and George Villiers, among the secondary targets of the satire was the former Archbishop of Split, Marco Antonio de Dominis, who was caricatured as the Fat Bishop. De Dominis was a famous turncoat of his day, he had left the Roman Catholic Church to join the Anglican Church—and then returned to Rome again. The former Spanish ambassador to London, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña and his successor recognized the satire and complained to King James. The play was stopped after nine performances, but not before it had become the greatest box-office hit of early modern London, the Privy Council opened a prosecution against the actors and the author of the play on 18 August. The Globe Theatre was shut down by the prosecution, though Middleton was able to acquit himself by showing that the play had been passed by the Master of the Revels, nevertheless, further performance of the play was forbidden and Middleton and the actors were reprimanded and fined. An obvious question arises, if the play was clearly offensive, if this is true, Middleton and the Kings Men were themselves pawns in a geopolitical game of chess. The characters are based on political figures. The identifications below are suggested by Gary Taylor in Thomas Middleton, The Collected Works, Prologue Ignatius Loyola, ghost of the founder of the Jesuits Error, an allegorical personification of religious heresy White King. Based on King James I of England, a spy for the Black House, most often identified as based on Lionel Cranfield, earl of Middlesex. Based on Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of King James White Queens Pawn, a young virgin, former fiancee of the White Bishops Pawn. Based on Prince Charles, son of King James White Duke, based on George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, favourite of King James and friend of Charles Fat Bishop. Based on Marc Antonio de Dominis, Bishop of Spalato, a former bishop of the Black House who has recanted to join the White House. A comic role, written for the actor William Rowley, based on the Archbishop of Canterbury. A Protestant minister, former fiance of the White Queens Pawn who has been castrated by the Black Bishops Pawn White Pawn, a servant pawn of unspecified allegiance
24.
King's Men (playing company)
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The Kings Men was the acting company to which William Shakespeare belonged for most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlains Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, they became The Kings Men in 1603 when King James I ascended the throne, the nine cited by name became Grooms of the Chamber. On 15 March 1604, each of the nine men named in the patent was supplied with four and this represented a workload twice as great as was typical under Elizabeth. The Kings Men needed more men and in 1604 the number of sharers was increased from eight or nine, ten, eleven, the new sharers included John Lowin, Alexander Cooke, and Nicholas Tooley. May 1605 brought the death of Augustine Phillips, in his will, Phillips left legacies to Shakespeare, Burbage, and eight other members of the company, plus two apprentices, and £5 to the hired men of the company which I am of. The company gave ten Court performances in the winter of 1605–6 and, unusually, each Court performance earned them £10. They also toured that summer, and were in Oxford at the end of July, nine performances at Court marked the winter of 1606–7, including a performance of 26 December of King Lear, the following winter, 1607–8, saw thirteen Court appearances. From July to December 1608 the theatres were closed due to plague, the Kings Men toured the countryside, they were in Coventry in late October. Sly, however, died soon after, and his share was split among the other six, the acquisition of the Blackfriars represented an enormous advantage for the company. It allowed the company to perform year round instead of only in clement weather, the Blackfriars hall is thought to have been 66 feet by 46 feet, including the stage, its maximum capacity was likely in the hundreds of spectators. This can be compared with the capacity at the Globe Theatre of 2500 to 3000. Yet the ticket prices at the Blackfriars were five to six times higher than those at the Globe, Globe tickets ranged from a penny to sixpence, tickets at the Blackfriars ranged from sixpence to two shillings sixpence. The cheapest admission at the Blackfriars equalled the most expensive at the Globe, adding the Blackfriars to the Globe should have allowed the Kings Men to at least double their income from public performances. 1609 was another year during which the company travelled, although nine plays were still performed at Court. 1610 was a year, with public performances at the Globe — Othello. By this time the company had been augmented by John Underwood and William Ostler, in 1611 Jonsons Catiline was performed, apart from Richard Robinsons substitution for Armin, the cast roster was the same as for Sejanus the previous year. This may have been John Heminges last production, in 1613 hes described as stuttering, Heminges normally received the payments for the companys Court performances, as far back as 1595, he continued to be active in the companys financial affairs even after he left the stage. Between October 1611 and April 1612 the Kings Men performed 22 plays at Court, including The Winters Tale and The Tempest
25.
Conceit
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In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, extended conceits in English are part of the poetic idiom of Mannerism, during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. In English literature the term is associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets. The metaphysical conceit differs from an analogy in the sense that it does not have a clear-cut relationship between the things being compared. An example of the latter occurs in John Donnes A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning, the metaphysical conceit is often imaginative, exploring specific parts of an experience. John Donnes The Flea is a poem seemingly about fleas in a bed, when Sir Philip Sidney begins a sonnet with the conventional idiomatic expression My true-love hath my heart and I have his. He takes the metaphor literally and teases out a number of possibilities in the exchange of hearts. The result is a fully formed conceit, the Petrarchan conceit is a form of love poetry wherein a mans love interest is referred to in hyperbole. For instance, the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, the paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using oxymoron, for instance uniting peace and war, burning and freezing, and so forth. But images which were novel in the sonnets of Petrarch became clichés in the poetry of later imitators, romeo uses hackneyed Petrarchan conceits when describing his love for Rosaline as bright smoke, cold fire, sick health. In the Renaissance, the term indicated any particularly fanciful expression of wit, within this critical sense, the Princeton Encyclopedia makes a distinction between two kinds of conceits, the Metaphysical conceit, described above, and the Petrarchan conceit. (1989} More than Cool Reason, A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, Princeton, NJ, University of Chicago Press Preminger, Alex and T. V. F. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press George Herbert, Praise Shakespeares Sonnet 130, from Wikisource
26.
Spanish Match
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The Spanish Match was a proposed marriage between Prince Charles, the son of King James I of Great Britain, and Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, the daughter of Philip III of Spain. Negotiations took place over the period 1614 to 1623, and during this time became closely related to aspects of British foreign and religious policy, the wedding never took place despite the signing of a marriage contract by King James, criticism instead led to the dissolution of Parliament. A Spanish marriage for Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, Charless elder brother who had died in 1612, had proposed by his mother Anne of Denmark. After his death she supported the idea of a Spanish marriage for her daughter Elizabeth, for her second son Charles, there were candidate marriages mooted from Savoie and Tuscany, as well as Spain and France. At the beginning of 1618 James I and VI was in a diplomatic position. His efforts against wars in Europe had been effective. Success in reducing the factor in international relations then deteriorated for James, in parallel with the failure of the Spanish Match. There was in fact no chance that Pope Paul V would have issued the dispensation for the Infanta to marry a Protestant. This fact was known to the Spanish king, but apparently Gondomar was kept in ignorance of the correspondence, Paul V died early in 1621, and his successor Pope Gregory XV was thought amenable to the idea of the match. James sent George Gage to Rome to lobby, putting the case on behalf of English Catholics, the matter was passed to a small group of cardinals, who emphasised that improved treatment for English Catholics was a prerequisite. By the 1620s, events on the continent had stirred up anti-Catholic feeling to a new pitch, James reluctantly summoned parliament as the only means to raise the funds necessary to assist his daughter Elizabeth and Frederick, who had been ousted from Prague by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1620. The Commons on the one hand granted subsidies inadequate to finance military operations in aid of Frederick. When James heard of the petition, he is said to have cried, urged on by Buckingham and the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, James ripped the protest out of the record book and dissolved Parliament. Outside the political process, feelings that were both anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic ran high, pamphleteering attacks aimed at the Spanish Match through the court, deploying defamation, forgery and partisan distortion. Smears in the form of fabricated personal details about figures associated with the Spanish Party were published, thomas Scott is particularly noted for his part in this campaign, from 1619. In 1620, and again in 1621, James issued decrees against writing or speaking on state affairs, john Everard preached against the match in February 1621, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, and spent about half a year in the Gatehouse Prison. Thomas Middletons 1624 play A Game at Chess allegorized the events surrounding the Spanish Match and it was particularly harsh on Gondomar, represented by the Black Knight. Plays were in any case censored, and Henry Herbert as Master of the Revels passed it for performance and it has been suggested that Herbert connived at the unheard-of dramatic liberties taken in portraying members of the royal family, in a court now dominated by the anti-Spanish party
27.
Newington Butts
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Newington Butts is a former hamlet, now an area of the London Borough of Southwark, that gives its name to a segment of the A3 road running south-west from the Elephant and Castle junction. The road continues as Kennington Park Road leading to Kennington, a right is Kennington Lane. It is believed to take its name from an archery butts, the area gave its name to an Elizabethan theatre which saw the earliest recorded performances of some Shakespearean plays. The Middle English word butt referred to a strip of land. The 1955 Survey of London published by London County Council could find no reference to archery butts in Newington although the connection is mentioned elsewhere. The name may have derived from the triangle of land between the roads, as the word butts is used elsewhere in Surrey to refer to odd corners or ends of land. Newington was a village that grew up on the Walworth Road at its junction with the Portsmouth Road. Being outside the jurisdiction of the City of London it became home to such as plays that were banned near London during hot weather. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the triangle of ground between the roads was known as the Three Falcons and was copyhold of the manor of Walworth, in 1791 the leading scientist Michael Faraday was born at Newington Butts. In 1802, Thomas Hardwick reported that the estate consisted of a number of tenements in bad condition. In the spring of 2008, St Marys Churchyard, the open space on the northern border of Newington Butts, was given a face lift. The largely grassy area now contains a childrens playground, dotted about within the playground and on the grass elsewhere are concrete mounds with rubber surfaces which were designed to add interest and topography to the developed area. These mounds might recall archery butts but this has been denied by the Elephant, in Cockney rhyming slang, Newington Butts means guts. 320–329, ISBN 978-0-521-23012-4 transcribes the original manuscripts relating to Newington Butts playhouse, Shakespearean Playhouses, by Joseph Quincy Adams, Jr. from Project Gutenberg Newington Butts, Kennington photograph, c
28.
Southwark
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Southwark is a district of Central London and part of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated 1.5 miles east of Charing Cross, it one of the oldest parts of London. It historically formed an ancient borough in the county of Surrey, made up of a number of parishes, as an inner district of London, Southwark experienced rapid depopulation during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It is now at a stage of regeneration and is the county town of Greater London which is the location of the City Hall offices of the Greater London Authority. Southwark had a population of 30,119 in 2011, Southwark is recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as Sudweca. The name means southern defensive work and is formed from the Old English sūth, the southern location is in reference to the City of London to the north, Southwark being at the southern end of London Bridge. The ancient borough of Southwark was also simply as The Borough—or Borough—and this name. Southwark was also referred to as the Ward of Bridge Without when administered by the City. Southwark is on a marshy area south of the River Thames. Recent excavation has revealed prehistoric activity including evidence of ploughing, burial mounds. The area was originally a series of islands in the River Thames and this formed the best place to bridge the Thames and the area became an important part of Londinium owing its importance to its position as the endpoint of the Roman London Bridge. Two Roman roads, Stane Street and Watling Street, met at Southwark in what is now Borough High Street, archaeological work at Tabard Street in 2004 discovered a plaque with the earliest reference to London from the Roman period on it. Londinium was abandoned at the end of the Roman occupation in the fifth century. Archaeologically, evidence of settlement is replaced by a largely featureless soil called the Dark Earth which probably represents an urban area abandoned, Southwark appears to recover only during the time of King Alfred and his successors. Sometime about 886 AD, the burh of Southwark was created and it was probably fortified to defend the bridge and hence the re-emerging City of London to the north. He failed to force the bridge during the Norman conquest of England, Southwark appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as held by several Surrey manors. Southwarks value to the King was £16, much of Southwark was originally owned by the church—the greatest reminder of monastic London is Southwark Cathedral, originally the priory of St Mary Overie. During the early Middle Ages, Southwark developed and was one of the four Surrey towns which returned Members of Parliament for the first commons assembly in 1295
29.
Elephant and Castle
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The Elephant and Castle is a major road junction in South London, England, in the London Borough of Southwark. The name is derived from a coaching inn. The Elephant, as abbreviated, consists of major traffic junctions connected by a short road called Elephant and Castle. Between these junctions, on the side, is the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre. To the north of this, bounded by Newington Causeway and New Kent Road is the large Metro Central Heights residential block, the 43-storey Strata residential block lies just south of the shopping centre on Walworth Road. Newington Butts and Walworth Road adjoin the southern junction, the whole junction forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. The Elephant has two linked London Underground stations, on the Northern and Bakerloo lines, and a National Rail station served by Southeastern, the Cuming Museum is nearby on Walworth Road. The name Elephant and Castle is derived from a coaching inn, the earliest surviving record of this name relating to the area appears in the Court Leet Book of the Manor of Walworth, which met at Elephant and Castle, Newington on 21 March 1765. Shakespeare mentions the Elephant Lodgings in Twelfth Night, in Act 3 Scene 3 Antonio says In the south suburbs, at the Elephant, is best to lodge. Although the play is set in Illyria in the Balkans, Shakespeare often used local London references, the theatres were all in Southwark, so Shakespeares line may represent an advertisement for a local hostelry. The Elephant is a common nickname for the Elephant and Castle. Newington is one of the most common names in England, and from 1750 the area became more important. Compare Angel at Islington, or Bricklayers Arms, a distance along New Kent Road. The inn site was rebuilt in 1816 and again in 1898, however, Eleanor of Castile was not an infanta. María has a strong British connection because she was once engaged to Charles I. Infanta de Castilla therefore seems to be a conflation of two Iberian royals separated by 300 years, however, Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, was indeed an Infanta de Castille. She lived well into the 1500s so it is possible that the original name Elephant, known previously as Newington, in the medieval period it was part of rural Surrey, in the manor of Walworth. The parish was called St Mary, Newington, which occupied the southwest side of todays southern roundabout, near the Tabernacle
30.
Timon of Athens
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Timon of Athens is a play by William Shakespeare, published in the First Folio and probably written in collaboration with another author, most likely Thomas Middleton, in about 1605–1606. It is about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon, the central character is a well beloved citizen of Athens who through tremendous generosity spends his entire fortunes on corrupt hangers-on only interested in getting the next payout. The earliest known production of the play was in 1674, when Thomas Shadwell wrote an adaptation under the title The History of Timon of Athens, multiple other adaptations followed over the next century, by writers such as Thomas Hull, James Love and Richard Cumberland. The straight Shakespearean text was at Smock Alley in Dublin in 1761, Timon of Athens was originally grouped with the tragedies, but some scholars name it one of the problem plays. In the beginning, Timon is a wealthy and generous Athenian gentleman and he hosts a large banquet, attended by nearly all the main characters. Timon gives away money wastefully, and everyone wants to him to get more, except for Apemantus. He accepts art from Poet and Painter, and a jewel from the Jeweller, Timons servant, Lucilius, has been wooing the daughter of an old Athenian. The man is angry, but Timon pays him three talents in exchange for the couple being allowed to marry, because the happiness of his servant is worth the price, Timon is told that his friend, Ventidius, is in debtors prison. He sends money to pay Ventidiuss debt, and Ventidius is released, Timon gives a speech on the value of friendship. The guests are entertained by a masque, followed by dancing, as the party winds down, Timon continues to give things away to his friends, his horses, and other possessions. The act is divided arbitrarily into two scenes but the experimental and/or unfinished nature of the play is reflected in that it does not naturally break into a five-act structure. Now Timon has given all his wealth. Shadowing Timon is another guest at the banquet, the cynical philosopher Apemantus and he was the only guest not angling for money or possessions from Timon. Along with a Fool, he attacks Timons creditors when they show up to make their demands for immediate payment, Timon cannot pay, and sends out his servants to make requests for help from those friends he considers closest. Timons servants are turned down, one by one, by Timons false friends, elsewhere, one of Alcibiadess junior officers has reached an even further point of rage, killing a man in hot blood. Alcibiades pleads with the Senate for mercy, arguing that a crime of passion should not carry as severe a sentence as premeditated murder, the senators disagree, and, when Alcibiades persists, banish him forever. He vows revenge, with the support of his troops, the act finishes with Timon discussing with his servants the revenge he will carry out at his next banquet. Timon hosts a party, intended only for those he feels have betrayed him
31.
Macbeth
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Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, it is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I and it was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is his shortest tragedy. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland, consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness, the events of the tragedy are usually associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, over the course of many centuries, the play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comics, the play opens amidst thunder and lightning, and the Three Witches decide that their next meeting shall be with Macbeth. Macbeth, the Kings kinsman, is praised for his bravery, in the following scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. As they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches enter, though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and that he shall be King hereafter. Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence, when Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond paradoxically, saying that he will be less than Macbeth, yet happier, less successful, yet more. He will father a line of kings though he himself will not be one, while the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another thane, Ross, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title, Thane of Cawdor. The first prophecy is fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously skeptical. King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and declares that he spend the night at Macbeths castle at Inverness. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husbands uncertainty and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husbands objections by challenging his manhood and he and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncans two chamberlains drunk so that they will black out, the next morning they will blame the chamberlains for the murder. They will be defenseless as they remember nothing. While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and he is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge
32.
Measure for Measure
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Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. Originally published in the First Folio of 1623, where it was listed as a comedy, the plays main themes include justice, mortality and mercy in Vienna, and the dichotomy between corruption and purity, some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. Mercy and virtue predominate, since the play does not end tragically, additionally, traces of Christian virtues such as compassion and forgiveness can be identified in the ending of the production. While the play focuses on justice overall, the scene illustrates that Shakespeare intended for Christian justice to be restored more so than true civil justice. This is highlighted through a number of the characters receiving understanding and leniency, instead of the punishment they, according to the law. Measure for Measure is often called one of Shakespeares problem plays and it was, and continues to be, classified as comedy, though its tone may defy those expectations. Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, makes it known that he intends to leave the city on a diplomatic mission and he leaves the government in the hands of a strict judge, Angelo. In the next scene, we find a group of soldiers on a Vienna street, expressing their hopes, in irreverent banter, that a war with Hungary is afoot, and that they will be able to take part. Mistress Overdone, the operator of a whorehouse frequented by these soldiers, appears. She tells them that it is Signor Claudio, and that within three days his head to be chopped off as punishment for getting Madam Julietta with child. Lucio, one of the soldiers who is revealed to be Claudios friend, is astonished at this news. He then informs Mistress Overdone of Angelos new proclamation, that All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down, the brothels in the city shall stand for seed, they had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them. Mistress Overdone is distraught, as her business is in the suburbs, Pompey replies with a characteristic mixture of bawdy humor and folk-wisdom, fear you not, good counselors lack no clients, though you change your place, you need not change your trade. There will be pity taken on you, you that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, Claudio is then led past Pompey and Overdone on his way to prison, and we learn what has happened to him. Claudio married Juliet, but, as they have not completed all the technicalities, Angelo, as the interim ruler of the city, decides to enforce a law that fornication is punishable by death, so Claudio is sentenced to be executed. Claudios friend, Lucio, visits Claudios sister, Isabella, a novice nun, Isabella obtains an audience with Angelo, and pleads for mercy for Claudio. Isabella refuses, but when she threatens to expose his lechery, he tells her that no one will believe her. Instead, she visits her brother in prison and counsels him to himself for death
33.
All's Well That Ends Well
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Alls Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623. Helena, the ward of a French countess, is in love with the countess son Bertram. Bertram goes to Paris to replace his father as attendant to the ailing King of France. Helena, the daughter of a deceased doctor, follows Bertram. The King is sceptical, and she guarantees the cure with her life, if he dies, she will be put to death, the King is cured and Helena chooses Bertram, who rejects her, owing to her poverty and low status. The King forces him to marry her, but after the ceremony Bertram immediately goes to war in Italy without so much as a goodbye kiss and he says that he will only marry her after she has borne his child and wears his family ring. In Italy, Bertram is a warrior and also a successful seducer of local virgins. Helena follows him to Italy, befriends Diana, a virgin with whom Bertram is infatuated, Diana obtains Bertram’s ring in exchange for one of Helena’s. In this way Helena, without Bertram’s knowledge, consummates their marriage, Helena returns to the Spanish countess, who is horrified at what her son has done, and claims Helena as her child in Bertram’s place. Helena fakes her death, and Bertram, thinking he is free of her and he tries to marry a local lord’s daughter, but Diana shows up and breaks up the engagement. Helena appears and explains the ring swap, announcing that she has fulfilled Bertram’s challenge, Bertram, impressed by all she has done to win him, there is a subplot about Parolles, a disloyal associate of Bertram’s. A recurring theme throughout the play is the similarity between love and war – conquering/seducing/betraying/outmaneuvering, Bertrams father has recently died and Bertram is to be the Kings ward and attendant. Parolles, a military man and parasite on Bertram, trades wits with Helena, as they liken amorous love. Helena nearly admits her love of Bertram to Parolles before he leaves for Paris with Bertram, alone again, Helena convinces herself to strive for Bertram despite the odds, mentioning the Kings illness alongside her decision. In Paris, the King and noble lords discuss the Tuscan wars, Bertram, Parolles and Lafew arrive, and the King praises Bertrams father as more truly honorable, humble and egalitarian than the lords of his day or Bertrams. He welcomes Bertram as he would his own son, in Rousillon, the Clown asks permission to marry which he and the Countess debate. The Steward explains to the Countess that he has overheard Helena lamenting her love for Bertram despite their social difference, the Countess, with sympathy and seeing Helena as her own daughter, coaxes a confession out of her
34.
Freelance
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A freelancer or freelance worker is a term commonly used for a person who is self-employed and is not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. 20% of freelancers listed their primary skills as design, next on the list was translating, web development, and marketing. Elance, a web platform that connects freelancers with contractors, surveyed its members, depending on the industry, freelance work practices vary and have changed over time. In some industries such as consulting, freelancers may require clients to sign written contracts, while in journalism or writing, freelancers may work for free or do work on spec to build their reputations or a relationship with a publication. Some freelancers may provide written estimates of work and request deposits from clients, payment for freelance work also depends on industry, skills, and experience. Freelancers may charge by the day, hour, a piece rate, instead of a flat rate or fee, some freelancers have adopted a value-based pricing method based on the perceived value of the results to the client. By custom, payment arrangements may be upfront, percentage upfront, for more complex projects, a contract may set a payment schedule based on milestones or outcomes. One of the drawbacks of freelancing is that there is no guaranteed payment, in writing and other artistic fields, freelance and its derivative terms are often reserved for workers who create works on their own initiative and then seek a publisher. They typically retain the copyright to their works and sell the rights to publishers in time-limited contracts, traditionally, works would be submitted to publishers, where they would become part of the slushpile, and would either elicit an offer to buy or a rejection slip. People who create intellectual property under a work for hire situation are sometimes referred to as independent contractors or other similar terms. Creators give up their rights to their works in a made for hire situation. The protection of the property rights that give the creator of the work are considered to have been sold into a work for hire agreement. Of employees, however in a rather than employment relationship. The total number of freelancers in USA is inexact, as the most recent governmental report on independent contractors was published in 2005 by the U. S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. At that time, there were approximately 10.3 million United States workers employed as independent contractors of all sorts, in 2011, Jeffrey Eisenach, an economist at George Mason University, estimated that number of freelancers had grown by one million. The total number of freelancers in UK is also inexact, however and it has been estimated that there are approximately 1.7 million freelancers in the UK, however. Freelancing is a form of work. The 2012 Freelance Industry Report estimates that more than 71% of freelancers are women between the ages of 30 and 50, surveys of other specific areas of freelancing have similar trends
