The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare: And Annals of the Stage to the Restoration, Volume 2J. Murray, 1831 - English drama |
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acted actors afterwards appears Beeston Ben Jonson Blackfriars Blackfriars theatre Cacurgus called characters Chester Christ Christopher Beeston comedy copy Court Coventry Custance Davenant Devil devyll doth dramatic English enters father fool French Harl hath hell Henry VIII Herbert Herod Heywood Histriomastix Humanum Genus interlude John Joseph Taylor King King's players Knight Lady London Lord Lord Chamberlain Malone Mary Mask Master mentioned Miracle-plays Misogonus Moral Moral-plays mynde pageant performance perhaps person Philogonus piece play playe playhouse poet printed Privy Council Privy Seal prologue Queen Queen's players Ralph Roister Doister reign of Henry representation Revels Satan says servants Shakespeare Shakespeare by Boswell shews Sir H speech stage stage-plays tell theatre thee theyr Thomas thou tion title-page tragedy tyme unto Vice warrant Warton Widkirk wife William William Beeston William Davenant wolde words written wyll
Popular passages
Page 424 - Now, of time they are much more liberal; for ordinary it is, that two young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is got with child; delivered of a fair boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falls in love, and is ready to get another child; and all this in two hours...
Page 436 - Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes factotum is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country.
Page 275 - ... mace on his shoulder, the other in red, with a drawn sword in his hand, and leaning with the other hand upon the other's shoulder, and so they two went along in a soft pace, round about by the skirt of the stage, till at last they came to the cradle...
Page 423 - Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock.
Page 424 - And do they not know that a tragedy is tied to the laws of poesy, and not of history; not bound to follow the story, but having liberty either to feign a quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical conveniency ? Again, many things may be told which cannot be showed, if they know the difference betwixt reporting and representing.
Page 423 - For it is faulty both in place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporal actions. For where the stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day, there is both many days and many places inartificially imagined.
Page 423 - Our Tragedies and Comedies (not without cause cried out against), observing rules neither of honest civility nor of skilful Poetry, excepting Gorboduc (again, I say, of those that I have seen), which notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca's style, and as full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach...
Page 425 - But besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion, so as neither the admiration and commiseration nor the right sportfulness is by their mongrel tragicomedy obtained.
Page 424 - By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster, with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave. While in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?
Page 442 - Hey wood,) of some abuse lately crept into the quality, as an inveighing against the state, the court, the law, the citty, and their governments, with the particularizing of private mens humours, yet alive, noblemen and others, I know it distastes many; neither do I any way approve it, nor dare I by any means excuse it.