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Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on July 22, 2013 at 8:31am

Jul 22, 1598:
The Merchant of Venice is entered on the Stationers' Register

On this day in 1598, William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice is entered on the Stationers' Register. By decree of Queen Elizabeth, the Stationers' Register licensed printed works, giving the Crown tight control over all published material. Although its entry on the register licensed the printing of The Merchant of Venice, its first version would not be published for another two years.

The publication of Shakespeare's plays was a haphazard matter. Playwrights at the time were not interested in publication: They sold their plays to theater companies, which tried to prevent rivals from literally stealing the show. The writer produced only one complete written script for a play, and the players received only their own lines and cues, not the entire play. Sometimes, however, disgruntled actors would prepare their own version of the play from notes cribbed during performances. Among other plays, there are pirated versions, or "bad quartos," for Henry VI and Hamlet. Scholars believe, however, that the first printing, in 1600, of The Merchant of Venice came from a clean manuscript of the complete play.

During his lifetime, no authorized versions of Shakespeare's plays were printed. However, his sonnets were published in 1609, seven years before his death.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on July 12, 2013 at 8:30am

Jul 12, 1389:
Geoffrey Chaucer is named chief clerk by Richard II

King Richard II appoints Geoffrey Chaucer to the position of chief clerk of the king's works in Westminster on this day in 1389.

Chaucer, the middle-class son of a wine merchant, served as a page in an aristocratic household during his teens and was associated with the aristocracy for the rest of his life. In 1359, he fought in France with Edward III, and was captured in a siege. Edward III ransomed him, and he later worked for Edward III and John of Gaunt. One of his earliest known works was an elegy for the deceased wife of John of Gaunt, Book of the Duchesse.

In 1372, Chaucer traveled to Italy on diplomatic missions, where he may have been exposed to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He also visited Flanders and France, and was appointed comptroller of customs. He wrote several poems in the 1380s, including The Parlement of Foules and Troilus and Criseyde. In the late 1380s or early 1390s, he began work on the Canterbury Tales, in which a mixed group of nobles, peasants, and clergy make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The work, a compilation of tales told by each character, is remarkable for its presentation of the spectrum of social classes. Although Chaucer intended the book to include 120 stories, he died in 1399, with only 22 tales finished.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on May 3, 2013 at 9:11pm

May 3, 1469:

On this day in 1469, the Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli is born. A lifelong patriot and diehard proponent of a unified Italy, Machiavelli became one of the fathers of modern political theory.

Machiavelli entered the political service of his native Florence by the time he was 29. As defense secretary, he distinguished himself by executing policies that strengthened Florence politically. He soon found himself assigned diplomatic missions for his principality, through which he met such luminaries as Louis XII of France, Pope Julius II, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and perhaps most importantly for Machiavelli, a prince of the Papal States named Cesare Borgia. The shrewd and cunning Borgia later inspired the title character in Machiavelli's famous and influential political treatise The Prince (1532).

Machiavelli's political life took a downward turn after 1512, when he fell out of favor with the powerful Medici family. He was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured and temporarily exiled. It was an attempt to regain a political post and the Medici family's good favor that Machiavelli penned The Prince, which was to become his most well-known work.

Though released in book form posthumously in 1532, The Prince was first published as a pamphlet in 1513. In it, Machiavelli outlined his vision of an ideal leader: an amoral, calculating tyrant for whom the end justifies the means. The Prince not only failed to win the Medici family's favor, it also alienated him from the Florentine people. Machiavelli was never truly welcomed back into politics, and when the Florentine Republic was reestablished in 1527, Machiavelli was an object of great suspicion. He died later that year, embittered and shut out from the Florentine society to which he had devoted his life.

Though Machiavelli has long been associated with the practice of diabolical expediency in the realm of politics that was made famous in The Prince, his actual views were not so extreme. In fact, in such longer and more detailed writings as Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy (1517) and History of Florence (1525), he shows himself to be a more principled political moralist. Still, even today, the term "Machiavellian" is used to describe an action undertaken for gain without regard for right or wrong.

 

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on April 25, 2013 at 2:58pm

Apr 23, 1564:

Historians believe Shakespeare was born on this day in 1564, the same day he died in 1616.

Although the plays of William Shakespeare may be the most widely read works in the English language, little is known for certain about the playwright himself. Some scholars even believe the plays were not written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon but by some other well-educated, aristocratic writer who wished to remain anonymous.

Shakespeare's father was probably a common tradesman. He became an alderman and bailiff in Stratford-upon-Avon, and Shakespeare was baptized in the town on April 26, 1564. At age 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had a daughter in 1583 and twins in 1585. Sometime later, Shakespeare set off for London to become an actor and by 1592 was well established in London's theatrical world as both a performer and a playwright. His earliest plays, including The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, were written in the early 1590s. Later in the decade, he wrote tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet (1594-1595) and comedies including The Merchant of Venice (1596-1597). His greatest tragedies were written after 1600, including Hamlet (1600-01), Othello (1604-05), King Lear (1605-06), and Macbeth (1605-1606).

He became a member of the popular theater group the Lord Chamberlain's Men, who later became the King's Men. The group built and operated the famous Globe Theater in 1599. Shakespeare ultimately became a major shareholder in the troupe and earned enough money to buy a large house in Stratford in 1597. He retired to Stratford in 1610, where he wrote his last plays, including The Tempest (1611) and The Winter's Tale (1610-11). Meanwhile, he had written more than 100 sonnets, which were published in 1609. Although pirated versions of Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet and some other plays were published during Shakespeare's lifetime, no definitive collection of his works was published until after his death. In 1623, two members of Shakespeare's troupe collected the plays and printed what is now called the First Folio (1623).

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on March 21, 2013 at 2:24pm

Mar 21, 1678:
Reward offered for identity of pamphlet author

The London Gazette offers a reward to anyone revealing the author of a pamphlet called An Account of the Growth of Popery. The pamphlet, it was later revealed, had been published anonymously by Andrew Marvell in 1677.

Although today Marvell is best remembered as the gifted metaphysical poet who composed witty works like To His Coy Mistress (1681), during his own time he was known as a political figure and pamphleteer. Educated at Cambridge, Marvell supported himself as a tutor both abroad and at home in England for many years. After tutoring the ward of Sir Oliver Cromwell, head of the English government after the overthrow and execution of King Charles I, Marvell went to work as assistant to John Milton, a secretary to the government. Milton, who had recently gone blind, would not write his masterpiece Paradise Lost until 1667.

While Marvell had been skeptical of Cromwell, his admiration for the man grew until Cromwell's death in 1659. After his death, however, Marvell became a supporter of the Restoration movement that brought Charles II to the throne. In 1659, Marvell ran for Parliament from his hometown of Hull and won the position, which he held for the rest of his life. Marvell wrote several political pamphlets in the 1670s, including the anonymous Account of the Growth of Popery. Three years after his death in 1678, Marvell's housekeeper, claiming to be his widow, published Miscellaneous Poems, the only collection of Marvell's poetic works.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on March 19, 2013 at 9:58am

Mar 15, 44 B.C.:
Julius Caesar is stabbed

"Beware the Ides of March," the soothsayer urges Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's Tragedy of Julius Caesar (act I, scene ii). Despite the forewarning, Caesar is stabbed in the back by his friend Marcus Brutus. Caesar falls and utters his famous last words, "Et tu, Brute?" (And you, Brutus?)

Shakespeare's source for the play was Thomas North's Lives of the Nobel Grecians and Romans, which detailed the murder of Caesar in 44 B.C. Caesar's friends and associates feared his growing power and his recent self-comparison to Alexander the Great and felt he must die for the good of Rome. North's work translated a French version of Plutarch, which itself had been translated from Latin. Shakespeare's version was written about 1599 and performed at the newly built Globe Theater.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 27, 2013 at 9:44am

Feb 26, 1564:
Christopher Marlowe is baptized

On this day, poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe is baptized in Canterbury, England, two months before the birth of his fellow playwright William Shakespeare.

Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, was a bright student. He won scholarships to prestigious schools and earned his B.A. from Cambridge in 1584. Historians believe Marlowe served as a spy for Queen Elizabeth while at Cambridge. He was nearly denied his master's degree in 1587, until the queen's advisers intervened, recommending he receive the degree and referring obliquely to his services for the state.

While still in school, Marlowe wrote his play Tamburlaine the Great, about a 14th-century shepherd who became an emperor. The blank verse drama caught on with the public, and Marlowe wrote five more plays before his death in 1593, including The Jew of Malta and Dr. Faustus. He also published a translation of Ovid's Elegies.

In May of 1593, Marlowe's former roommate, playwright Thomas Kyd, was arrested and tortured for treason. He told authorities that "heretical" papers found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who was subsequently arrested. While out on bail, Marlowe became involved in a fight over a tavern bill and was stabbed to death.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on December 16, 2012 at 11:20pm

Dec 14, 1640:
Aphra Behn is baptized

On this day in 1640, Aphra Behn is baptized at Harbledown, near Canterbury, England. A successful playwright and novelist, Behn has been called the first Englishwoman to make her living as a writer.

Behn's origins are unclear, but historians believe she was probably the daughter of Bartholomew Johnson and Elizabeth Denham of Harbledown. She appears to have lived in Surinam, then an English colony known as Dutch Guiana, for several years as a young woman. In the mid-1660s, she married a merchant by the last name of Behn in England who died several years later.

After her husband's death, Behn allegedly served as a secret agent in the Netherlands for Charles II of England but was not paid for her services, and was put in prison for debt when she returned to England. She began writing to support herself, and her first play, The Forced Marriage, was produced in 1671 at Lincoln's Inn Fields by the Duke's Company. The play was a hit, and Behn wrote many more successful comedies, of which 17 survive. Her most popular work, The Rover, was produced in two parts, in 1677 and 1681. She also wrote poetry prolifically. Her novel Orinooko (1688) told the story of an enslaved African prince.

Behn, a lively and charming woman, became very popular among her many friends. Although one of her plays irritated the Duke of Monmouth, the king's illegitimate son, enough to land Behn in jail briefly, she continued to write lively, satiric plays and poetry until her death in 1689. She was the first woman to be buried in Westminster Abbey in recognition of her own achievements.

Comment by miyoko canter on November 28, 2012 at 12:00pm

interesting.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on November 28, 2012 at 11:35am

Nov 28, 1582:
William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway
On this day in 1582, William Shakespeare, 18, and Anne Hathaway, 26, pay a 40-pound bond for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Six months later, Anne gives birth to their daughter, Susanna, and two years later, to twins.

Little is known about Shakespeare's early life. His father was a tradesman who became an alderman and bailiff, and Shakespeare was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. Sometime after the birth of his own children, Shakespeare set off for London to become an actor and by 1592 was well established in London's theatrical world as an actor and playwright. His earliest plays, including The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, were written in the early 1590s. Later in the decade, he wrote tragedies like Romeo and Juliet (1594-1595) and comedies including The Merchant of Venice (1596-1597). His greatest tragedies were written after 1600, including Hamlet (1600-01), Othello (1604-05), King Lear (1605-06), and Macbeth (1605-1606).

Shakespeare became a member of the popular theater troupe the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which later became the King's Men. The group built and operated the famous Globe Theater in London in 1599. Shakespeare became a major shareholder in the troupe and earned enough money to buy a large house in Stratford in 1597. He retired to Stratford in 1610, where he wrote his last plays, including The Tempest (1611) and The Winter's Tale (1610-11). Meanwhile, he had written more than 100 sonnets, which were published in 1609. Shakespeare's plays were not published during his lifetime. After his death, two members of his troupe collected copies of his plays and printed what is now called the First Folio (1623)

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