George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is revered as one of the great British dramatists, credited not only with memorable works, but the revival of the then-suffering English theatre. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, left mostly to his own devices after his mother ran off to London to pursue a musical career. He educated himself for the most part, and eventually worked for a real estate agent. This experience founded in him a concern for social injus ...
Little is known about the life of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), but we do know that in the early 1580s he was associated with a London theatre company. By 1594 he had completed one of the most famous plays of the 16th century: «The Spanish Tragedy.» At that time, the majority of English drama was stiff, and Kyd's new use of blank verse to present emotions on stage was revolutionary. He took foundations of Roman tragedy—a ghost, revenge and violen ...
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) was a man with many roles. He was not only a playwright and poet, he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons and owner of the London Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. Though born in Ireland, Sheridan and his family moved outside of London when he was seven. Both of his parents were theatrical influences for him, as his mother was a playwright and novelist, and his father was at one time an actor. I ...
William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin in 1865, and was encouraged from a young age to pursue a life in the arts. He attended art school for a short while, but soon found that his talents and interest lay in poetry rather than painting. As a writer in nearly every genre but the novel, he was an instrumental figure in the «Irish Literary Revival» of the 20th Century that redefined Irish writing. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ...
‘The Duchess of Padua’ is a five-act play by Oscar Wilde which was originally written for actress Mary Anderson in 1883. Due to her rejection of the play, it was not performed. It later appeared in its first publication in German in 1904. Fans of Wilde will delight in this fine play of his. ...
The 17th century dramatist Jean Racine was considered, along with Moliere and Corneille, as one of the three great playwrights of his era. The quality of Racine's poetry has been described as possibly his most important contribution to French literature and his use of the alexandrine poetic line is one of the best examples of such use noted for its harmony, simplicity and elegance. While critics over the centuries have debated the worth of ...
Euripides's «Medea» is one of the great dramatic tragedies from classical antiquity. It is the story of its title character, Medea, the wife of Jason of the Argonauts, who seeks revenge upon her unfaithful husband when he abandons her for a new younger bride. «Medea» broke many of the dramatic conventions of the time when it debuted and it is for this reason that it stands as one of the greatest of all works from the classical age of drama. ...
Originally published in George Bernard Shaw's 1901 collection «Three Plays for Puritans» and first performed in 1900, «Captain Brassbound's Conversion» is the drama of its title character, a sort of refined latter-day pirate who resides in Morocco. When two jaded English tourists, Sir Howard Hallam, a judge of the criminal bench, and Lady Cicely Waynflete, his sister-in-law, arrive at the Moroccan coast and endeavor to explore the inte ...
The 17th century dramatist Jean Racine was considered, along with Moliere and Corneille, as one of the three great playwrights of his era. The quality of Racine's poetry has been described as possibly his most important contribution to French literature and his use of the alexandrine poetic line is one of the best examples of such use noted for its harmony, simplicity and elegance. While critics over the centuries have debated the worth of ...
