title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Wright insisted that young communist writers be given space to cultivate their talents. Wright later described this episode through his fictional character Buddy Nealson, an African-American communist in his essay "I tried to be a Communist," published in the "Atlantic Monthly" in 1944. This text was an excerpt of his autobiography scheduled to be published as "American Hunger" but was removed from the actual publication of "Black Boy" upon request by the Book of the Month Club. Indeed, his relations with the party turned violent; Wright was threatened at knife point by fellow-traveler co-workers, denounced as a Trotskyite in the street by strikers, and physically assaulted by former comrades when he tried to join them during the 1936 May Day march.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In Chicago in 1932, Wright began writing with the Federal Writer's Project and became a member of the American Communist Party. In 1937, he relocated to New York and became the Bureau Chief of the communist publication "The Daily Worker". He would write over 200 articles for the publication from 1937 to 1938. This allowed him to cover stories and issues that interested him, revealing depression era America into light with well written prose.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: He worked on the Federal Writers' Project guidebook to the city, "New York Panorama" (1938), and wrote the book's essay on Harlem. Through the summer and fall he wrote more than 200 articles for the "Daily Worker" and helped edit a short-lived literary magazine "New Challenge." The year was also a landmark for Wright because he met and developed a friendship with writer Ralph Ellison that would last for years. He was awarded the "Story" magazine first prize of $500 for his short story "Fire and Cloud".


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: After receiving the "Story" prize in early 1938, Wright shelved his manuscript of "Lawd Today" and dismissed his literary agent, John Troustine. He hired Paul Reynolds, the well-known agent of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, to represent him. Meanwhile, the Story Press offered the publisher Harper all of Wright's prize-entry stories for a book, and Harper agreed to publish the collection.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Wright gained national attention for the collection of four short stories entitled "Uncle Tom's Children" (1938). He based some stories on lynching in the Deep South. The publication and favorable reception of "Uncle Tom's Children" improved Wright's status with the Communist party and enabled him to establish a reasonable degree of financial stability. He was appointed to the editorial board of "New Masses." Granville Hicks, a prominent literary critic and Communist sympathizer, introduced him at leftist teas in Boston. By May 6, 1938, excellent sales had provided Wright with enough money to move to Harlem, where he began writing the novel "Native Son," which was published in 1940.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Based on his collected short stories, Wright applied for and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which gave him a stipend allowing him to complete "Native Son." During this period, he rented a room in the home of friends Herbert and Jane Newton, an interracial couple and prominent Communists whom Wright had known in Chicago. They had moved to New York and lived at 109 Lefferts Place in Brooklyn in the Fort Greene neighborhood.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: After publication, "Native Son" was selected by the Book of the Month Club as its first book by an African-American author. It was a daring choice. The lead character, Bigger Thomas, is bound by the limitations that society places on African Americans. Unlike most in this situation, he gains his own agency and self-knowledge only by committing heinous acts. Wright's characterization of Bigger led to him being criticized for his concentration on violence in his works. In the case of "Native Son," people complained that he portrayed a black man in ways that seemed to confirm whites' worst fears. The period following publication of "Native Son" was a busy time for Wright. In July 1940 he went to Chicago to do research for a folk history of blacks to accompany photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam. While in Chicago he visited the "American Negro Exposition" with Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps and Claude McKay.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Wright traveled to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to collaborate with playwright Paul Green on a dramatic adaptation of "Native Son." In January 1941 Wright received the prestigious Spingarn Medal of the NAACP for noteworthy achievement. His play "Native Son" opened on Broadway in March 1941, with Orson Welles as director, to generally favorable reviews. Wright also wrote the text to accompany a volume of photographs chosen by Rosskam, which were almost completely drawn from the files of the Farm Security Administration. The FSA had employed top photographers to travel around the country and capture images of Americans. Their collaboration, "," was published in October 1941 to wide critical acclaim.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Wright's memoir "Black Boy" (1945) describes his early life from Roxie up until his move to Chicago at age 19. It includes his clashes with his Seventh-day Adventist family, his troubles with white employers, and social isolation. It also describes his intellectual journey through these struggles. "American Hunger", which was published posthumously in 1977, was originally intended by Wright as the second volume of "Black Boy." The Library of America edition of 1991 finally restored the book to its original two-volume form.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: "American Hunger" details Wright's participation in the John Reed Clubs and the Communist Party, which he left in 1942. The book implies he left earlier, but he did not announce his withdrawal until 1944. In the book's restored form, Wright used the diptych structure to compare the certainties and intolerance of organized communism, which condemned "bourgeois" books and certain members, with similar restrictive qualities of fundamentalist organized religion. Wright disapproved of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the Soviet Union.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Following a stay of a few months in Québec, Canada, including a lengthy stay in the village of Sainte-Pétronille on the Île d'Orléans, Wright moved to Paris in 1946. He became a permanent American expatriate.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In Paris, Wright became friends with French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, whom he had met while still in New York, and he and his wife became particularly good friends with Simone de Beauvoir, who stayed with them in 1947. However, as Michel Fabre argues, Wright's existentialist leanings were more influenced by Soren Kierkegaard, Edmund Husserl, and especially Martin Heidegger. In following Fabre's argument, with respect to Wright's existentialist proclivities during the period of 1946 to 1951, Hue Woodson suggests that Wright's exposure to Husserl and Heidegger "directly came as an intended consequence of the inadequacies of Sartre's synthesis of existentialism and Marxism for Wright." His Existentialist phase was expressed in his second novel, "The Outsider" (1953), which described an African-American character's involvement with the Communist Party in New York. He also became friends with fellow expatriate writers Chester Himes and James Baldwin. His relationship with the latter ended in acrimony after Baldwin published his essay "Everybody's Protest Novel" (collected in "Notes of a Native Son"), in which he criticized Wright's portrayal of Bigger Thomas as stereotypical. In 1954 Wright published "Savage Holiday".


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: After becoming a French citizen in 1947, Wright continued to travel through Europe, Asia, and Africa. He drew material from these trips for numerous nonfiction works. In 1949, Wright contributed to the anti-communist anthology "The God That Failed;" his essay had been published in the "Atlantic Monthly" three years earlier and was derived from the unpublished portion of "Black Boy." He was invited to join the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which he rejected, correctly suspecting that it had connections with the CIA. Fearful of links between African Americans and communists, the FBI had Wright under surveillance starting in 1943. With the heightened communist fears of the 1950s, Wright was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives. But in 1950, he starred as the teenager Bigger Thomas (Wright was 42) in an Argentinian film version of "Native Son."


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In mid-1953, Wright traveled to the Gold Coast, where Kwame Nkrumah was leading the country to independence from British rule, to be established as Ghana. Before Wright returned to Paris, he gave a confidential report to the United States consulate in Accra on what he had learned about Nkrumah and his political party. After Wright returned to Paris, he met twice with an officer from the US State Department. The officer's report includes what Wright had learned from Nkrumah's adviser George Padmore about Nkrumah's plans for the Gold Coast after independence. Padmore, a Trinidadian living in London, believed Wright to be a good friend. His many letters in the Wright papers at Yale's Beinecke Library attest to this, and the two men continued their correspondence. Wright's book on his African journey, "Black Power," was published in 1954; its London publisher was Dennis Dobson, who also published Padmore's work.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Whatever political motivations Wright had for reporting to American officials, he was also an American who wanted to stay abroad and needed their approval to have his passport renewed. According to Wright biographer Addison Gayle, a few months later Wright talked to officials at the American embassy in Paris about people he had met in the Communist Party; at the time these individuals were being prosecuted in the US under the Smith Act.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Historian Carol Polsgrove explored why Wright appeared to have little to say about the increasing activism of the civil rights movement during the 1950s in the United States. She found that Wright was under what his friend Chester Himes called "extraordinary pressure" to avoid writing about the US. As "Ebony" magazine delayed publishing his essay, "I Choose Exile," Wright finally suggested publishing it in a white periodical. He believed that "a white periodical would be less vulnerable to accusations of disloyalty." He thought the "Atlantic Monthly" was interested, but in the end, the piece went unpublished.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In 1955, Wright visited Indonesia for the Bandung Conference. He recorded his observations on the conference as well as on Indonesian cultural conditions in "The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference." Wright was enthusiastic about the possibilities posed by this meeting of newly independent, former colonial nations. He gave at least two lectures to Indonesian cultural groups, including PEN Club Indonesia, and he interviewed Indonesian artists and intellectuals in preparation to write "The Color Curtain." Several Indonesian artists and intellectuals whom Wright met, later commented on how he had depicted Indonesian cultural conditions in his travel writing.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Other works by Wright included "White Man, Listen!" (1957) and a novel "The Long Dream" (1958), which was adapted as a play and produced in New York in 1960 by Ketti Frings. It explores the relationship between a man named Fish and his father. A collection of short stories, "Eight Men," was published posthumously in 1961, shortly after Wright's death. These works dealt primarily with the poverty, anger, and protests of northern and southern urban black Americans.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: His agent, Paul Reynolds, sent strongly negative criticism of Wright's 400-page "Island of Hallucinations" manuscript in February 1959. Despite that, in March Wright outlined a novel in which his character Fish was to be liberated from racial conditioning and become dominating. By May 1959, Wright wanted to leave Paris and live in London. He felt French politics had become increasingly submissive to United States pressure. The peaceful Parisian atmosphere he had enjoyed had been shattered by quarrels and attacks instigated by enemies of the expatriate black writers.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: On June 26, 1959, after a party marking the French publication of "White Man, Listen!," Wright became ill. He suffered a virulent attack of amoebic dysentery, probably contracted during his 1953 stay on the Gold Coast. By November 1959 his wife had found a London apartment, but Wright's illness and "four hassles in twelve days" with British immigration officials ended his desire to live in England.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: On February 19, 1960, Wright learned from his agent Reynolds that the New York premiere of the stage adaptation of "The Long Dream" received such bad reviews that the adapter, Ketti Frings, had decided to cancel further performances. Meanwhile, Wright was running into added problems trying to get "The Long Dream" published in France. These setbacks prevented his finishing revisions of "Island of Hallucinations," for which he was trying to get a publication commitment from Doubleday and Company.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In June 1960, Wright recorded a series of discussions for French radio, dealing primarily with his books and literary career. He also addressed the racial situation in the United States and the world, and specifically denounced American policy in Africa. In late September, to cover extra expenses for his daughter Julia's move from London to Paris to attend the Sorbonne, Wright wrote blurbs for record jackets for Nicole Barclay, director of the largest record company in Paris.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In spite of his financial straits, Wright refused to compromise his principles. He declined to participate in a series of programs for Canadian radio because he suspected American control. For the same reason, he rejected an invitation from the Congress for Cultural Freedom to go to India to speak at a conference in memory of Leo Tolstoy. Still interested in literature, Wright helped Kyle Onstott get his novel "Mandingo" (1957) published in France.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Wright's last display of explosive energy occurred on November 8, 1960, in his polemical lecture, "The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States," delivered to students and members of the American Church in Paris. He argued that American society reduced the most militant members of the black community to slaves whenever they wanted to question the racial status quo. He offered as proof the subversive attacks of the Communists against "Native Son" and the quarrels which James Baldwin and other authors sought with him. On November 26, 1960, Wright talked enthusiastically with Langston Hughes about his work "Daddy Goodness" and gave him the manuscript.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Wright died in Paris on November 28, 1960, of a heart attack at the age of 52. He was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Wright's daughter Julia has claimed that her father was murdered.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: A number of Wright's works have been published posthumously. In addition, some of Wright's more shocking passages dealing with race, sex, and politics were cut or omitted before original publication of works during his lifetime. In 1991, unexpurgated versions of "Native Son," "Black Boy," and his other works were published. In addition, in 1994, his novella "Rite of Passage" was published for the first time.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In the last years of his life, Wright had become enamored of the Japanese poetic form haiku and wrote more than 4,000 such short poems. In 1998 a book was published ("Haiku: This Other World") with 817 of his own favorite haiku. Many of these haiku have an uplifting quality even as they deal with coming to terms with loneliness, death, and the forces of nature.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: A collection of Wright's travel writings was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2001. At his death, Wright left an unfinished book, "A Father's Law," dealing with a black policeman and the son he suspects of murder. His daughter Julia Wright published "A Father's Law" in January 2008. An omnibus edition containing Wright's political works was published under the title "Three Books from Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain"; and "White Man, Listen!"


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: In August 1939, with Ralph Ellison as best man, Wright married Dhimah Rose Meidman, a modern-dance teacher of Russian Jewish ancestry. It was a short-lived marriage that ended a year later.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: On March 12, 1941, he married Ellen Poplar ("née" Poplowitz), a Communist organizer from Brooklyn. They had two daughters: Julia, born in 1942, and Rachel, born in 1949.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Ellen Wright, who died on April 6, 2004, aged 92, was the executor of Wright's estate. In that capacity, she sued a biographer, the poet and writer Margaret Walker, in "Wright v. Warner Books, Inc." She was a literary agent, numbering among her clients Simone de Beauvoir, Eldridge Cleaver, and Violette Leduc.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: "Black Boy" became an instant best-seller upon its publication in 1945. Wright's stories published during the 1950s disappointed some critics who said that his move to Europe had alienated him from African Americans and separated him from his emotional and psychological roots. Many of Wright's works failed to satisfy the rigid standards of New Criticism during a period when the works of younger black writers gained in popularity.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: During the 1950s Wright grew more internationalist in outlook. While he accomplished much as an important public literary and political figure with a worldwide reputation, his creative work did decline.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: While interest in "Black Boy" ebbed during the 1950s, this has remained one of his best selling books. Since the late 20th century, critics have had a resurgence of interest in it. "Black Boy" remains a vital work of historical, sociological, and literary significance whose seminal portrayal of one black man's search for self-actualization in a racist society strongly influenced the works of African-American writers who followed, such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: It is generally agreed that the influence of Wright's "Native Son" is not a matter of literary style or technique. Rather, this book affected ideas and attitudes, and "Native Son" has been a force in the social and intellectual history of the United States in the last half of the 20th century. "Wright was one of the people who made me conscious of the need to struggle," said writer Amiri Baraka.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars published critical essays about Wright in prestigious journals. Richard Wright conferences were held on university campuses from Mississippi to New Jersey. A new film version of "Native Son," with a screenplay by Richard Wesley, was released in December 1986. Certain Wright novels became required reading in a number of American high schools, universities and colleges.


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Recent critics have called for a reassessment of Wright's later work in view of his philosophical project. Notably, Paul Gilroy has argued that "the depth of his philosophical interests has been either overlooked or misconceived by the almost exclusively literary inquiries that have dominated analysis of his writing."


title: Richard Wright (author)

text: Wright was featured in a 90-minute documentary about the WPA Writers' Project entitled "Soul of a People: Writing America's Story" (2009). His life and work during the 1930s is highlighted in the companion book, "Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America".


title: 2022 Hawaii gubernatorial election

text: The 2022 Hawaii gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the next governor of Hawaii. Incumbent Democratic Governor David Ige was term-limited and ineligible to run for a third term. Incumbent lieutenant governor Josh Green was the Democratic nominee, and faced former lieutenant governor Duke Aiona, the Republican nominee. This marked the third time Aiona had been the Republican gubernatorial nominee, having previously run unsuccessfully in 2010 and 2014. Green won the election with 63.2% of the vote with Aiona receiving 36.8% of the vote.


title: 2022 Hawaii gubernatorial election

text: Green's performance was the highest percentage of the vote ever received by any gubernatorial candidate in the state's history. Despite this, Aiona performed 3 points better and received 20,000 more raw votes than Andria Tupola did in 2018.


title: 2022 Hawaii gubernatorial election

text: Under Hawaii law, a nonpartisan candidate must either receive at least ten percent of the vote for that office (32,729 votes for governor or 30,918 votes for lieutenant governor) or receive a vote "equal to or greater than the lowest vote received by the partisan candidate who was nominated" (37,608 votes for governor or 35,798 votes for lieutenant governor) to qualify for the general election ballot. Because none of the nonpartisan candidates for governor or lieutenant governor met that threshold, no nonpartisan candidates for governor or lieutenant governor advanced to the general election.


title: A Little Night Music

text: A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film "Smiles of a Summer Night", it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade No. 13, K. 525, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik". The musical includes the popular song "Send In the Clowns", written for Glynis Johns.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Since its original 1973 Broadway production, the musical has enjoyed professional productions in the West End, by opera companies, in a 2009 Broadway revival, and elsewhere, and it is a popular choice for regional groups. It was adapted for film in 1977, with Harold Prince directing and Elizabeth Taylor, Len Cariou, Lesley-Anne Down, and Diana Rigg starring.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The setting is Sweden, around the year 1900. One by one, the Quintet – five singers who comment like a Greek chorus throughout the show – enter, tuning up. Gradually, their vocalizing becomes an overture blending fragments of "Remember", "Soon" and "The Glamorous Life", leading into the first "Night Waltz". The other characters enter waltzing, each uncomfortable with their partner. After they drift back off, the aging and sardonic Madame Armfeldt, a wealthy former courtesan, and her solemn granddaughter, Fredrika, enter. Madame Armfeldt tells the child that the summer night "smiles" three times: first on the young, second on fools, and third on the old. Fredrika vows to watch the smiles occur. Middle-aged successful lawyer Fredrik Egerman has recently married an 18-year-old trophy wife, Anne, a naive girl who loves Fredrik, but isn't attracted to him. The two have been married for eleven months, and Anne still protects her virginity. Fredrik plots how he might seduce his wife ("Now"). Meanwhile, his son Henrik, a seminary student a year older than his stepmother, is frustrated and ignored ("Later"). Anne promises her husband that shortly she will consent to have sex even though she can't help recoiling at his touch ("Soon"), which leads into all three of them lamenting at once. Anne's maidservant Petra, an experienced and forthright girl, slightly older than the teen herself, offers her worldly but crass advice.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Desiree Armfeldt is a prominent and glamorous actress who is now reduced to touring in small towns. Madam Armfeldt, Desiree's mother, has taken over the care of Desiree's daughter Fredrika. Fredrika misses her mother, but Desiree continually delays going to see her, preferring, somewhat ironically, "The Glamorous Life". She is performing near Fredrik's home, and Fredrik brings Anne to see the play. While there, Desiree notices Fredrik in the audience; the two had been lovers years earlier. Anne, suspicious and annoyed at Desiree's amorous glances, demands that Fredrik take her home immediately. Meanwhile, Petra tries to seduce a nervous and petulant Henrik.


title: A Little Night Music

text: That night, as Fredrik remembers his past with Desiree, he sneaks out to see her; the two have a happy but strained reunion as they "Remember". They reflect on their new lives, and Fredrik tries to explain how much he loves Anne ("You Must Meet My Wife"). Desiree sarcastically boasts of her own adultery, as she has been seeing the married dragoon, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm. Upon learning that Fredrik has gone for eleven months without sex, she agrees to accommodate him as a favor for an old friend.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Madam Armfeldt offers advice to young Fredrika. The elderly woman reflects poignantly on her own checkered past, and wonders what happened to her refined "Liaisons". Back in Desiree's apartment, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm proclaims his unannounced arrival in his usual booming tones. Fredrik and Desiree fob off the Count with an innocent explanation for their disheveled appearance, but he is still suspicious. He instantly dislikes Fredrik and returns to his wife, Countess Charlotte. Charlotte knows of her husband's infidelity, but Carl-Magnus is too absorbed in his suspicions of Desiree to talk to her ("In Praise of Women"). When she persuades him to blurt out the whole story, a twist is revealed—Charlotte's little sister is a schoolfriend of Anne's.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Charlotte visits Anne and describes Fredrik's tryst with Desiree. Anne is shocked and saddened, but Charlotte explains that such is the lot of a wife, and love brings pain ("Every Day a Little Death"). Meanwhile, Desiree asks Madam Armfeldt to host a party for Fredrik, Anne and Henrik. Madam Armfeldt reluctantly agrees, and sends out a personal invitation; its receipt sends Anne into a frenzy, imagining "A Weekend in the Country" with the Armfeldts. Anne does not want to accept the invitation, but Charlotte convinces her to do so to heighten the contrast between the older woman and the young and beautiful teenager. Charlotte relates this to the Count, who (much to her chagrin) decides to visit the Armfeldts uninvited. Carl-Magnus plans to challenge Fredrik to a duel, while Charlotte hopes to seduce the lawyer to make her husband jealous and end his philandering. The act ends as all characters head to Madam Armfeldt's estate.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Madam Armfeldt's country estate is bathed in the golden glow of perpetual summer sunset at this high latitude ("Night Waltz One and Two"). Everyone arrives, each with their own amorous purposes and desires—even Petra, who catches the eye of Armfeldt's fetching manservant, Frid. The women begin to quarrel with one another. Fredrik is astonished to learn the name of Desiree's daughter. Henrik meets Fredrika, and confesses to her he deeply loves Anne. Meanwhile, in the garden, Fredrik and Carl-Magnus reflect on the difficulty of being annoyed with Desiree, agreeing "It Would Have Been Wonderful" had she not been quite so wonderful. Dinner is served, and the characters' "Perpetual Anticipation" enlivens the meal.


title: A Little Night Music

text: At dinner, Charlotte attempts to flirt with Fredrik, and trades insults with Desiree. Soon, everyone is shouting and scolding everyone else, except for Henrik, who finally speaks up. He accuses the whole company of being amoral, and flees the scene. Stunned, everyone reflects on the situation and wanders away. Fredrika tells Anne of Henrik's secret love, and the two dash off searching for him. Meanwhile, Desiree meets Fredrik and asks if he still wants to be "rescued" from his life. Fredrik answers honestly that he loves Desiree, but cannot bring himself to part with Anne. Hurt and bitter, Desiree can only reflect on the nature of her life and relationship to Fredrik ("Send In the Clowns"). Anne finds Henrik, who is attempting to commit suicide. The clumsy boy cannot complete the task, and Anne tells him that she loves him, too. The pair begins to kiss, which leads to Anne's first sexual encounter. Meanwhile, not far away, Frid sleeps in Petra's lap. The maid imagines advantageous marriages, but concludes that in the meantime, "a girl ought to celebrate what passes by" ("The Miller's Son"). Charlotte confesses her plan to Fredrik, and both watch Henrik and Anne, happy together, run away to start their new life. The two commiserate on a bench. Carl-Magnus, preparing to romance Desiree, sees this and challenges Fredrik to Russian Roulette; Fredrik nervously misfires and simply grazes his own ear. Victorious, Carl-Magnus begins romancing Charlotte, finally granting her wish.


title: A Little Night Music

text: After the Count and Countess leave, Fredrika and Madam Armfeldt discuss the recent chaotic turns-of-events. The elderly woman then asks Fredrika a surprising question: "What is it all for?" Fredrika thinks about this, and decides that love, for all of its frustrations, "must be worth it". Madam Armfeldt is surprised, ruefully noting that she rejected love for material wealth at Fredrika's age. She praises her granddaughter and remembers true love's fleeting nature.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Fredrik finally confesses his love for Desiree, acknowledging that Fredrika is his daughter, and the two promise to start a new life together ("Send in the Clowns" (Reprise)). Madam Armfeldt sits alone with Fredrika, who tells her grandmother that she has watched carefully, but still has not seen the night smile. Madam Armfeldt laughs and points out that the night has indeed smiled twice: first on Henrik and Anne, the young, and second on Desiree and Fredrik, the fools. As the two wait for the "third smile... on the old", it occurs: Madam Armfeldt closes her eyes, and dies peacefully with Fredrika beside her.


title: A Little Night Music

text: "A Little Night Music" opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973. It played there until September 15, 1973, then moved to the Majestic Theatre, on September 17, and closed there on August 3, 1974, after 601 performances and 12 previews. It was directed by Harold Prince with choreography by Patricia Birch and design by Boris Aronson. The cast included Glynis Johns (Desiree Armfeldt), Len Cariou (Fredrik Egerman), Hermione Gingold (Madame Armfeldt), Victoria Mallory (Anne Egerman), Judith Kahan (Fredrika Armfeldt), Mark Lambert (Henrik Egerman), Laurence Guittard (Carl-Magnus Malcolm), Patricia Elliott (Charlotte Malcolm), George Lee Andrews (Frid), and D'Jamin Bartlett (Petra). It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony Award for Best Musical.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The first international production opened at Her Majesty's Theatre in Sydney, Australia in November 1973, with a cast including Taina Elg, Bruce Barry, Jill Perryman, Doris Fitton, Anna Russell and Geraldine Turner. Australian revivals have been presented by the Sydney Theatre Company (featuring Geraldine Turner and a young Toni Collette) in 1990, Melbourne Theatre Company (featuring Helen Morse and John O'May) in 1997, Opera Australia (featuring Sigrid Thornton and Anthony Warlow) in 2009, and Victorian Opera (featuring Ali McGregor, Simon Gleeson and Verity Hunt-Ballard) in 2019.


title: A Little Night Music

text: A US national tour began on February 26, 1974, at the Forrest Theatre, Philadelphia, and ended on February 13, 1975, at the Shubert Theatre, Boston. Jean Simmons as Desiree Armfeldt, George Lee Andrews as Fredrik Egerman and Margaret Hamilton as Madame Armfeldt headed the cast.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The musical premiered in the West End at the Adelphi Theatre on April 15, 1975, and starred Jean Simmons, Joss Ackland, David Kernan, Liz Robertson, and Diane Langton, with Hermione Gingold reprising her role as Madame Armfeldt. It ran for 406 performances. During the run, Angela Baddeley replaced Gingold, and Virginia McKenna replaced Simmons.


title: A Little Night Music

text: A revival opened in the West End on October 6, 1989, at the Piccadilly Theatre, directed by Ian Judge, designed by Mark Thompson, and choreographed by Anthony Van Laast. It starred Lila Kedrova as Madame Armfeldt, Dorothy Tutin as Desiree Armfeldt, Peter McEnery as Fredrick, and Susan Hampshire. The production ran for 144 performances, closing on February 17, 1990.


title: A Little Night Music

text: A revival by the Royal National Theatre opened at the Olivier Theatre on September 26, 1995. It was directed by Sean Mathias, with set design by Stephen Brimson Lewis, costumes by Nicky Gillibrand, lighting by Mark Henderson and choreography by Wayne McGregor. It starred Judi Dench (Desiree), Siân Phillips (Madame Armfeldt), Joanna Riding (Anne Egerman), Laurence Guittard (Fredrik Egerman), Patricia Hodge (Countess Charlotte) and Issy van Randwyck (Petra). The production closed on August 31, 1996. Dench received the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The third London revival ran at the Menier Chocolate Factory from November 22, 2008, until March 8, 2009. The production was directed by Trevor Nunn, with musical supervision by Caroline Humphris, choreography by Lynne Page, sets and costumes by David Farley and new orchestrations by Jason Carr. The cast included Hannah Waddingham as Desiree, Alexander Hanson as Frederik, Jessie Buckley (Anne), Maureen Lipman (Madame Armfeldt), Alistair Robins (the Count), Gabriel Vick (Henrik), Grace Link (Fredrika) and Kasia Hammarlund (Petra). This critically acclaimed production transferred to the Garrick Theatre in the West End for a limited season, opening on March 28, 2009 and running until July 25, 2009. The production then transferred to Broadway with a new cast.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The 2008 Menier Chocolate Factory production opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in previews on November 24, 2009, and officially on December 13, 2009, with the same creative team. The cast starred Angela Lansbury as Madame Armfeldt and, in her Broadway debut, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desiree. Also featured were Alexander Hanson as Frederik, Ramona Mallory (the daughter of original Broadway cast members Victoria Mallory and Mark Lambert) as Anne, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Henrik, Leigh Ann Larkin as Petra, Erin Davie as the Countess, Aaron Lazar as the Count, and Bradley Dean as Frid. Zeta-Jones received the award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical at the 64th Tony Awards.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Originally, Katherine Doherty and Keaton Whittaker played Fredrika in alternating performances, beginning with the November 2009 previews. The official show album, which was recorded in January 2010, features both Doherty and Whittaker as Fredrika (on different songs). However, Katherine McNamara replaced Doherty in February 2010. McNamara and Whittaker stayed with the production until it ended in January 2011.


title: A Little Night Music

text: When the contracts of Zeta-Jones and Lansbury ended, the production temporarily closed on June 20, 2010 and resumed on July 13, with new stars Bernadette Peters as Desiree Armfeldt and Elaine Stritch as Madame Armfeldt. In an interview, Peters said that Sondheim had "proposed the idea to her this spring and urged the producers of the revival to cast her." Trevor Nunn directed rehearsals with the two new stars, and the rest of the original cast remained. Peters and Stritch extended their contracts until January 9, 2011, when the production closed with 20 previews and 425 regular performances. Before the production closed, it recouped its initial investment.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Zarah Leander played Madame Armfeldt in the original Austrian staging (in 1975) as well as in the original Swedish staging in Stockholm in 1978 (here with Jan Malmsjö as Fredrik Egerman). The successful Stockholm staging was directed by Stig Olin. In 2010 the musical was scheduled to return to Stockholm and the Stockholm Stadsteater. The cast included Pia Johansson, Dan Ekborg, Yvonne Lombard and Thérese Andersson.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris production ran from February 15, 2010, through February 20, 2010. Lee Blakeley directed and Andrew George was the choreographer. Italian-born actress Greta Scacchi played Désirée, and Leslie Caron played Madame Armfeldt.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The Turku City Theatre staged the musical in 2011 with in the role as Désirée. directed and Jussi Vahvaselkä was musical director.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The musical has also become part of the repertoire of a few opera companies. Michigan Opera Theatre was the first major American opera company to present the work in 1983, and again in November 2009. Light Opera Works (Evanston, Illinois) produced the work in August 1983. New York City Opera staged it in 1990, 1991 and 2003, the Houston Grand Opera in 1999, the Los Angeles Opera in 2004, and Hartford Opera Theater in 2014. New York City Opera's production in August 1990 and July 1991 (a total of 18 performances) won the 1990 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival and was telecast on the PBS show "Live at Lincoln Center" on November 7, 1990. The cast included both stage performers: Sally Ann Howes and George Lee Andrews as Desiree and Frederick and opera regular Regina Resnik as Madame Armfeldt (in 1991). The 2003 production featured a young Anna Kendrick as Fredrika Armfeldt, alongside Jeremy Irons as Frederick, Juliet Stevenson as Desiree, Claire Bloom as Madame Armfeldt, Danny Gurwin as Henrik, Michele Pawk as Charlotte, and Marc Kudisch as Carl-Magnus.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Opera Australia presented the piece in Melbourne in May 2009, starring Sigrid Thornton as Desiree Armfeldt and Nancye Hayes as Madame Armfeldt. The production returned in 2010 at the Sydney Opera House with Anthony Warlow taking on the role of Fredrik Egerman. The production was directed by Stuart Maunder, designed by Roger Kirk, and conducted by Andrew Greene. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis performed the musical in June 2010. Designer Isaac Mizrahi directed and designed the production, with a cast that starred Amy Irving, Siân Phillips and Ron Raines.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The piece has also become a popular choice for amateur musical theatre and light opera companies. In 2017, the musical was performed by students at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.


title: A Little Night Music

text: A film version of "A Little Night Music" was released in 1977, starring Elizabeth Taylor as Desiree, Lesley-Anne Down as Anne and Diana Rigg as Charlotte, with Len Cariou, Hermione Gingold and Laurence Guittard reprising their Broadway roles. The setting for the film was moved from Sweden to Austria. Stephen Sondheim wrote lyrics for the "Night Waltz" theme ("Love Takes Time") and wrote an entirely new version of "The Glamorous Life", which has been incorporated into several subsequent productions of the stage musical. However, other songs, including "In Praise of Women", "The Miller's Son" and "Liaisons", were cut and remain heard only as background orchestrations. The film marked Broadway director Harold Prince's second (and final) time as a motion picture director. Critical reaction to the film was mostly negative, with much being made of Taylor's wildly fluctuating weight from scene to scene. Some critics talked more positively of the film, with "Variety" calling it "an elegant looking, period romantic charade". There was praise for Diana Rigg's performance, and orchestrator Jonathan Tunick received an Oscar for his work on the score. A soundtrack recording was released on LP, and a DVD release was issued in June 2007.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The score for "A Little Night Music" presents performance challenges more often seen in operetta or light opera pieces than in standard musical comedy. The demands made on the singing cast are considerable; although the vocal demands of the role of Desiree are rather small, most of the other singing roles require strong, legitimately-trained voices with fairly wide ranges. Sondheim's liberal use of counterpoint extends to the vocal parts, including a free-structured round (the trio "Perpetual Anticipation") as well as songs in which characters engage in interior monologues or even overt dialogue simultaneously ("Now/Later/Soon", "A Weekend in the Country"). Critic Rex Reed noted that "The score of 'Night Music' ...contains patter songs, contrapuntal duets and trios, a quartet, and even a dramatic double quintet to puzzle through. All this has been gorgeously orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick; there is no rhythm section, only strings and woodwinds to carry the melodies and harmonies aloft."


title: A Little Night Music

text: Sondheim's engagement with threes extends to his lyrics. He organizes trios with the singers separated, while his duets are sung together, about a third person.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The work is performed as an operetta in many professional opera companies. For example, it was added to the New York City Opera Company repertoire in 1990.


title: A Little Night Music

text: Virtually all of the music in the show is written in waltz meter (time). Some parts adopt compound meter, with a time signature such as . Passages in "Overture", "Glamorous Life", "Liaisons", and "The Miller's Son" are in duple meter.


title: A Little Night Music

text: At several points, Sondheim has multiple performers each sing a different song simultaneously. This use of counterpoint maintains coherence even as it extends the notion of a round, familiar in songs such as the traditional "Frère Jacques", into something more complex. Sondheim said: "As for the three songs ... going together well, I might as well confess. In those days I was just getting into contrapuntal and choral writing...and I wanted to develop my technique by writing a trio. What I didn't want to do is the quodlibet method...wouldn't it be nice to have three songs you don't think are going to go together, and they do go together ... The trick was the little vamp on "Soon" which has five-and six-note chords." Steve Swayne comments that the "contrapuntal episodes in the extended ensembles ... stand as testament to his interest in Counterpoint."


title: A Little Night Music

text: The show's best-known and Sondheim's biggest hit song was almost an afterthought, written several days before the start of out-of-town tryouts. Sondheim initially conceived Desiree as a role for a more or less non-singing actress. When he discovered that the original Desiree, Glynis Johns, was able to sing (she had a "small, silvery voice") but could not "sustain a phrase", he devised the song "Send in the Clowns" for her in a way that would work around her vocal weakness, e.g., by ending lines with consonants that made for a short cut-off. "It is written in short phrases in order to be acted rather than sung ... tailor-made for Glynis Johns, who lacks the vocal power to sustain long phrases."


title: A Little Night Music

text: In analyzing the text of the song, Max Cryer wrote that it "is not intended to be sung by the young in love, but by a mature performer who has seen it all before. The song remains an anthem to regret for unwise decisions in the past and recognition that there's no need to send in the clowns – they're already here."


title: A Little Night Music

text: Graham Wolfe has argued, "What Desirée is referring to in the famous song is a conventional device to cover over a moment when something has gone wrong on stage. Midway through the second Act she has deviated from her usual script by suggesting to Fredrik the possibility of being together seriously and permanently, and, having been rejected, she falters "as" a show-person, finds herself bereft of the capacity to improvise and wittily cover. If Desirée could perform at this moment – revert to the innuendos, one-liners and blithe self-referential humour that constitutes her normal character – all would be well. She cannot, and what follows is an exemplary manifestation of Sondheim’s musico-dramatic complexity, his inclination to write music that performs drama. That is, what needs to be covered over (by the clowns sung about in the song) is the very intensity, ragged emotion and utter vulnerability that comes forward through the music and singing itself, a display protracted to six minutes, wrought with exposed silences, a shocked Fredrik sitting so uncomfortably before Desirée while something much too real emerges in a realm where he – and his audience – felt assured of performance."


title: A Little Night Music

text: There is a Mozart reference in the title—"A Little Night Music" is an occasionally-used translation of "Eine kleine Nachtmusik", the nickname of Mozart's Serenade No. 13, K. 525. The elegant, harmonically-advanced music in this musical pays indirect homage to the compositions of Maurice Ravel, especially his "Valses nobles et sentimentales" (whose opening chord is borrowed for the opening chord of the song "Liaisons"); part of this effect stems from the style of orchestration that Jonathan Tunick used. There is also a direct quotation in 'A Weekend in the Country' (just as it moves to A major) of Octavian's theme from Strauss' 'Der Rosenkavalier', another comedy of manners with partner-swapping at its heart.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The 2008 revival of the show modified the orchestrations to an 8 piece pit, re-orchestrated by Jason Carr.


title: A Little Night Music

text: In addition to the original Broadway and London cast recordings, and the motion picture soundtrack (no longer available), there are recordings of the 1990 studio cast, the 1995 Royal National Theatre revival (starring Judi Dench), and the 2001 Barcelona cast recording sung in Catalan. In 1997 an all-jazz version of the score was recorded by Terry Trotter.


title: A Little Night Music

text: The 2009 Broadway revival with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury recorded a cast album on January 4, 2010, which was released on April 6.


title: A Little Night Music

text: In his review of the original 1973 Broadway production, Clive Barnes in "The New York Times" called the musical "heady, civilized, sophisticated and enchanting." He noted that "the real triumph belongs to Stephen Sondheim...the music is a celebration of 3/4 time, an orgy of plaintively memorable waltzes, all talking of past loves and lost worlds...There is a peasant touch here." He commented that the lyrics are "breathtaking".


title: A Little Night Music

text: In its review of the 1989 London revival, the reviewer for "The Guardian" wrote that the "production also strikes me as infinitely superior to Harold Prince's 1975 version at the Adelphi. Mr Judge's great innovation is to transform the Liebeslieder Singers from the evening-dressed, after-dinner line-up into 18th century ghosts weaving in and out of the action...But Mr Judge's other great realisation is that, in Sondheim, the lyrics are not an adornment to a song but their very essence: understand them and the show will flow. Thus Dorothy Tutin as Desiree, the touring thesp eventually reunited with her quondam lover, is not the melting romantic of previous productions but a working mother with the sharpness of a hat-pin."


title: A Little Night Music

text: The "Independent" review of the 1995 National Theatre revival praised the production, writing "For three hours of gloriously barbed bliss and bewitchment, Sean Mathias's production establishes the show as a minor miracle of astringent worldly wisdom and one that is haunted by less earthy intimations." The review went on to state that "The heart of the production, in both senses, is Judi Dench's superb Desiree Armfeldt...Her husky-voiced rendering of "Send in the Clowns" is the most moving I've ever heard."


title: A Little Night Music

text: In reviewing the 2008 Menier Chocolate Factory production, the "Telegraph" reviewer wrote that "Sondheim's lyrics are often superbly witty, his music here, mostly in haunting waltz-time, far more accessible than is sometimes the case. The score positively throbs with love, regret and desire." But of the specific production, the reviewer went on to note: "But Nunn's production, on one of those hermetic sets largely consisting of doors and tarnished mirrors that have become such a cliché in recent years, never penetrates the work's subtly erotic heart. And as is often the case with this director's work, the pace is so slow and the mood so reverent, that initial enchantment gives way to bored fidgeting."


title: A Little Night Music

text: In his "New York Times" review of the 2009 Broadway production, Ben Brantley noted that "the expression that hovers over Trevor Nunn's revival...feels dangerously close to a smirk...It is a smirk shrouded in shadows. An elegiac darkness infuses this production." The production is "sparing on furniture and heavy on shadows", with "a scaled-down orchestra at lugubriously slowed-down tempos..." He goes on to write that "this somber, less-is-more approach could be effective were the ensemble plugged into the same rueful sensibility. But there is only one moment in this production when all its elements cohere perfectly. That moment, halfway through the first act, belongs to Ms. Lansbury, who has hitherto been perfectly entertaining, playing Madame Armfeldt with the overripe aristocratic condescension of a Lady Bracknell. Then comes her one solo, "Liaisons", in which her character thinks back on the art of love as a profession in a gilded age, when sex 'was but a pleasurable means to a measurable end.' Her face, with its glamour-gorgon makeup, softens, as Madame Armfeldt seems to melt into memory itself, and the wan stage light briefly appears to borrow radiance from her. It's a lovely example of the past reaching out to the present..."


title: A Little Night Music

text: Steven Suskin, reviewing the new Broadway cast for "Variety", wrote "What a difference a diva makes. Bernadette Peters steps into the six-month-old revival of "A Little Night Music" with a transfixing performance, playing it as if she realizes her character's onstage billing -- "the one and only Desiree Armfeldt"—is clichéd hyperbole. By figuratively rolling her eyes at the hype, Peters gives us a rich, warm and comedically human Desiree, which reaches full impact when she pierces the façade with a nakedly honest, tears-on-cheek 'Send in the Clowns.'"


title: Mother (video game)

text: Writer and director Shigesato Itoi pitched "Mother"s concept to Shigeru Miyamoto while visiting Nintendo's headquarters for other business. Though Miyamoto rejected the proposal at first, he eventually gave Itoi a development team. A North American version of the game was localized into English, but was abandoned as commercially nonviable. A copy of this prototype was later found and circulated on the Internet under the informal title "EarthBound Zero". The game was eventually released globally as "EarthBound Beginnings" for the Wii U Virtual Console in June 2015 and Nintendo Switch Online in February 2022.


title: Mother (video game)

text: "Mother" was the sixth best-selling game of 1989 in Japan, where it sold about 400,000 copies and received a "Silver Hall of Fame" score from "Famitsu" magazine. "Mother" was praised for its similarities to the "Dragon Quest" series and its simultaneous parody of the genre's tropes; however, many considered its sequel "Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū" (known outside as "EarthBound") to be similar and a better overall implementation of "Mother" gameplay ideas, with the game's high difficulty level polarizing critics, along with balance issues. Jeremy Parish of "1UP.com" wrote that "Mother" importantly generated interest in video game emulation and the historical preservation of unreleased games. The game was re-released in Japan on the single-cartridge compilation "Mother 1+2" for the Game Boy Advance in 2003.


title: Mother (video game)

text: "Mother" is a single-player, role-playing video game set in a "slightly offbeat", late 20th-century United States as interpreted by Japanese author Shigesato Itoi. The game deliberately avoids traits of its Japanese role-playing game contemporaries: it is not set within the fantasy genre and only enters science fiction for its final sequence. The player fights in warehouses and laboratories instead of in standard dungeons. Instead of swords, assault weapons, and magic, the player uses baseball bats, toy guns, and psychic abilities. The game's protagonist, Ninten, is about 12 years old.


title: Mother (video game)

text: Like the "Dragon Quest" series, "Mother" uses a random encounter combat system. The player explores the overworld from a top-down perspective and occasionally enters a first-person perspective battle sequence where the player chooses attack options from a series of menus. On their turn, the player selects between options to fight, guard, check enemy attributes, run away, use items, or use offensive, defensive, or healing psychic powers. The player can also set the battle on autopilot with the "auto" option. Critical hits register with the series' signature "SMAAAASH" text and sound.


title: Mother (video game)

text: The player can press a button to have Ninten "check" or "talk" with nearby people, animals, and objects. The game shares similarities with its sequel, "EarthBound": there is a game save option through using a phone to call Ninten's father, an option to store items with Ninten's sister at home, and an automated teller machine for banking money (ATM). The members of Ninten's party are all visible on the overworld screen at once, and are analogous to "EarthBound" party members in style and function. "Mother" world map does not keep locations separate, and instead connects all areas (akin to the "Pokémon" game series). The game's story begins as Ninten discovers a music box and receives the journal of his great-grandfather, who studied psychic powers nearly a century earlier. Ninten is attacked by household items, and ventures outside to find a crazy world with hostile everyday objects and other odd events.


title: Mother (video game)

text: "Mother" begins with the story of a young, married, American couple who mysteriously vanish from their small, rural town. Two years later, the husband, George, returned as mysteriously as he vanished, and began a strange study in complete seclusion. His wife, Maria, was never heard from again. Years later, in 1988 (changed to an ambiguous point in the 1980s in later releases), a young American boy named Ninten is attacked at home in a paranormal event. His father explains that Ninten's great-grandfather studied psychic powers, and asks Ninten to investigate a crisis occurring across the world, later revealed to be the work of an invading alien race. After resolving crises in the town of Mother's Day (Podunk in later translations), Ninten is warped to the world of Magicant, where the land's ruler, Queen Mary, asks Ninten to rediscover a song that appears in her dreams by collecting the parts and playing them for her. Ninten returns to Earth and befriends a young boy, Roido (also called Roid, Loid, or Lloyd in later translations), who is being bullied at an elementary school. The two travel to the town of Snowman to deliver a lost hat to Ana, a young girl with psychic powers. Ana tells Ninten she saw him in a vision, and joins the party in hopes of finding her missing mother.


title: Mother (video game)

text: After finding multiple parts of Queen Mary's song, Ninten is harassed at a karaoke bar by Teddy, the leader of a local gang. Teddy surrenders after battling Ninten in a fistfight, and joins Ninten's party with the intent to avenge the deaths of his parents, who were killed at Holy Loly Mountain (Mt. Itoi in later versions). Roido stays behind. In a cottage at the base of Holy Loly Mountain, Ana pulls Ninten aside and asks him to always be by her side. The two dance and profess their mutual love. Soon after, Teddy warns the party of a strange noise, and a giant robot attacks Ninten and his friends. Roido arrives with a tank and destroys the robot, but accidentally hits the party and critically wounds Teddy, so Lloyd re-joins the party. They take a boat out on Holy Loly Lake and a whirlpool pulls them into an underwater laboratory, where they find a robot who claims to have been built by George to protect Ninten. When the laboratory floods, they leave for the mountain's peak and the robot helps them ascend. Another robot (implied to be an upgraded version of the one fought at the cabin) attacks them at the summit, and George's robot self-destructs to destroy it, leaving behind the seventh part of Queen Mary's song. After learning this melody, the party travels back to Magicant, where Ninten sings the melodies he had learned to Queen Mary. She recalls the rest of the song, thus teaching Ninten the eighth and final melody in the process, and reminisces about an alien named Giygas that she loved as her own child. Queen Mary reveals that she is George's wife, Maria, and vanishes. Magicant, revealed to be a mirage created by her consciousness, vanishes with her. In later translations of the game, Ninten first visits George's grave at the top of Holy Loly Mountain, where George's spirit teaches Ninten the final melody.


title: Mother (video game)

text: The party is warped back to the top of Holy Loly Mountain. Large rocks block the entrance to a cave inside Holy Loly Mountain, but are cleared by the power of Maria's consciousness. In that cave, they find an area with human prisoners including Ana's mother. They need to defeat the Mother Ship to free the prisoners. The party encounters the ship that the fully-grown Giygas is on. The alien expresses its gratefulness to Ninten's family for raising it, but explains that George stole vital information from its people that could have been used to betray them, and proceeds to accuse Ninten of interfering with their plans. Giygas offers to save Ninten alone if he boards the Mother Ship, only for Ninten to decline, leading Giygas to attack Ninten's party. The party begins to sing Queen Mary's lullaby while Giygas tries to quiet the party through his attacks. However, the party persists and finishes the lullaby, causing Giygas to become overwhelmed with emotion at the thought of Maria's motherly love. Giygas swears that they will meet again and flies off in the mother ship.


title: Mother (video game)

text: In the original Famicom release, the game then ends with Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd facing the player as the credits roll behind them. Later releases feature an extended ending with the kids returning home and reuniting with their families. Teddy recovers from his injuries and becomes a singer, Lloyd is now treated like a hero among his classmates and Ana is shown receiving a letter from Ninten. Ninten goes to bed as the cast of characters appear at the bottom of the screen before the credits. After the credits, the game freezes on an image of a man, presumably Ninten's father, trying to call his son, stating, "I know that boy is home. Come on son and answer the phone. Something new has come up and . . ."


title: Mother (video game)

text: "Mother" was developed by Ape and Pax Softnica and published by Nintendo. While visiting Nintendo for other work, copywriter Shigesato Itoi pitched his idea for a role-playing game set in contemporary times to the company's Shigeru Miyamoto. He thought the setting would be unique for its incongruence with role-playing genre norms, as daily life lacked the pretense for magic powers and they could not simply give the child characters firearms as weapons. Itoi's project proposal suggested how the natural limitations could be circumvented. Miyamoto met with him and praised the idea, though he was not sure whether Itoi "could pull it off". As an advertiser, Itoi was used to concept proposals preceding the staffing process, but Miyamoto explained that video game concepts needed people who signed on to "make" the product. Itoi was overcome with "powerlessness".


title: Mother (video game)

text: Miyamoto was also hesitant to work with Itoi at a time when companies were pushing major celebrity product endorsements, as Itoi's involvement would be for such a game. When the two met next, Miyamoto brought the documentation from a text adventure game and told Itoi that he would have to write similar documentation himself. Miyamoto said that he knew from his own experience that the game would only be as good as the effort Itoi invested, and that he knew Itoi could not invest the appropriate time with his full-time job. Itoi restated his interest and reduced his workload, so Miyamoto assembled a development team. Upon assessing for compatibility, they began production in Ichikawa, Chiba. Itoi had said earlier that he wanted his work environment to feel like an extracurricular club consisting of volunteers and working out of an apartment, which Miyamoto tried to accommodate. Itoi wrote the game's script and commuted from Tokyo, a process he found "exhausting". Even with asking Itoi to prioritize the development process, Miyamoto received criticism of acquiescing to celebrity and of hiring a copywriter not up for the task. Miyamoto said that his decision to pursue the project was based on his confidence in Itoi. According to Itoi in a 1989 "Famitsu" interview, the word "mothership" was the influence for the game's title, although he states the title had other meanings too. "Mother" was released in Japan on July 27, 1989, for the Famicom (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan).


title: Mother (video game)

text: The game was scheduled for a U.S. release as "Earth Bound", but the project was cancelled. According to Phil Sandhop, the director of "Mother" localization, in an interview with LostLevels.org, "the "Mother" project and localizing it really opened up a few eyes at Nintendo. They began working closer with Nintendo of America and the other subsidiaries to produce artwork for games that would be appropriately received anywhere in the world and not need localization". In later years, a completely localized ROM file was found, and was distributed online under the fan-coined title "EarthBound Zero".


title: Mother (video game)

text: In June 2015, "Mother" was officially released via the Wii U's Virtual Console service, and released worldwide for the first time under the official title "EarthBound Beginnings". In addition, the protagonist from the third entry, Lucas from "Mother 3", was released as downloadable content for "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U".


title: Mother (video game)

text: In February 2022, Nintendo released the game as "EarthBound Beginnings" for Nintendo Switch Online alongside its sequel "EarthBound".


title: Mother (video game)

text: The game's soundtrack was composed by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. Tanaka was a video game composer working for Nintendo who had previously composed for games such as "Super Mario Land" and "Metroid", while Suzuki was a composer and musician for bands of many different genres. The NES was only able to play three notes at a time, which Suzuki has noted greatly limited what he was able to produce, as he could not create some of the sounds he wanted.


title: Mother (video game)

text: An eleven-track album of songs inspired by the game's soundtrack was recorded in Tokyo, London, and Bath and released by CBS/Sony Records on August 21, 1989. The album contained mostly vocal arrangements in English and was likened by "RPGFan" reviewer Patrick Gann to compositions by the Beatles and for children's television shows. He found the lyrics "cheesy and trite" but appreciated the "simple statements" in "Eight Melodies" and the "quirky and wonderful" "Magicant". Only the last song on the album is in chiptune. Gann ultimately recommended the 2004 remastered release over this version. The game's soundtrack contains several tracks later used in subsequent series games.


title: Mother (video game)

text: "Mother" was the sixth best-selling game of 1989 in Japan, where it sold about 400,000 copies. "Mother" received a "Silver Hall of Fame" score of 31/40 from Japanese magazine "Famitsu". Reviewers noted the game's similarities with the "Dragon Quest" series and its simultaneous "parody" of the genre's tropes. They thought the game's sequel, "EarthBound", to be very similar and a better implementation of "Mother" gameplay ideas. Critics also disliked the game's high difficulty level and balance issues.


title: Mother (video game)

text: Jeremy Parish of "USgamer" described the game as a mild-mannered parody ("between satire and pastiche") of the role-playing game genre, specifically the "Dragon Quest" series. He noted that "Mother", like many Japanese role-playing games, emulated the "Dragon Quest" style: the windowed interface, first-person perspective in combat, and graphics, but differed in its contemporary setting and non-fantasy story. Parish commented that Atlus's 1987 "" was similarly set in the modern day, though it devolved into science fiction and fantasy in ways "Mother" did not. He added that the game has "a sense of wonder and magic realism ... in the context of childhood imagination", as Ninten can feel more like someone "pretending" to be a "Dragon Quest"-style hero than a hero in his own right. Parish said this makes the player wonder which game events are real and which are Ninten's imagination. Parish cited Itoi's interest in entering the games industry to make a "satirical" role-playing game as proof of the genre's swift five-year rise to widespread popularity in Japan.


title: Mother (video game)

text: Cassandra Ramos of "RPGamer" praised the game's graphics and music, and considered it among the console's best, with "rich, ... nicely detailed" visuals, "Peanuts"-style characters, and "simple but effective" audio. In contrast, she found the battle sequences aesthetically "pretty bland" and, otherwise, the game's "least interesting" aspect. Overall, she found "Mother" "surprisingly complex ... for its time", and considered its story superior to (but less "wacky" than) its sequel. She especially recommended the game for "EarthBound" fans.


title: Mother (video game)

text: Parish credited Itoi for the game's vision and compared his ability and literary interests with American author Garrison Keillor. Parish felt that Itoi's pedigree as a writer and copywriter was well suited for the space-limited, 8-bit role-playing game medium, which privileged "Mother" ahead of other games written by non-writers. "USgamer" Parish noted how the game's non-player characters would "contemplate the profound and trivial" instead of reciting the active plot. He added that the game's lack of an official North American release has bolstered the reputation and revere of its immediate sequel.


title: Mother (video game)

text: While Parish said "Mother" script was "as sharp as "EarthBound"", he felt that the original's game mechanics did not meet the same level of quality. "Mother" lacked the "rolling HP counter" and non-random encounters for which later entries in the series were known. Parish also found the game's balance to be uneven, as the statistical character attributes and level of difficulty scaled incorrectly with the game's progression. Rose Colored Gaming, a company that made custom reproductions of the NES cartridge, noted that the Japanese release's was more challenging than the unreleased English localization. "RPGamer" Ramos similarly found balance issues, with a high number of battles, difficult enemies, reliance on grinding, and some oversized levels. Parish wrote earlier for "1UP.com" that in comparison to "EarthBound", "Mother" is "worse in just about every way", a clone where its sequel was "a satirical deconstruction of RPGs". He wrote that the game's historical significance is not for its actual game but for the interest it generated in video game emulation and the preservation of unreleased games.


title: Mother (video game)

text: "Mother" was rereleased in Japan as the single-cartridge "Mother 1+2" for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. This version uses the extended ending of the unreleased English prototype, but is only presented in Japanese. Starmen.net hosted a "Mother" 25th Anniversary Fanfest in 2014 with a livestream of the game and plans for a remixed soundtrack. Later that year, fans released a 25th Anniversary Edition ROM hack that updated the game's graphics, script, and gameplay balance.


title: Mother (video game)

text: A film group known as 54&O Productions developed a fan-made documentary entitled "Mother to Earth". The documentary focused on the road to "Mother"'s localization in North America, and includes interviews with key people behind the process. It was released on Vimeo in August 2020.


title: Shtreimel

text: A shtreimel ( , plural: or ) is a fur hat worn by some Ashkenazi Jewish men, mainly members of Hasidic Judaism, on Shabbat and Jewish holidays and other festive occasions. In Jerusalem, the shtreimel is also worn by Litvak Jews (non-Hasidim who belong to the original Ashkenazi community of Jerusalem, also known as Perushim). The shtreimel is generally worn after marriage, although it may be worn by boys after bar-mitzvah age in some communities.


title: Shtreimel

text: There is speculation surrounding the origin of the shtreimel. Different theories hold that it is of Tatar, Turkish, Russian, or Polish origin, but it is not possible to establish a clear chronology. A common view is that the shtreimel was adapted by Jews living in Europe as a warm winter hat, possibly inspired by nobility; the shtreimel is comparable in construction to fur hats historically worn by nobles or gentiles across Europe, Scandinavia and Russia. According to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the shtreimel could come from a period in the 17th century when Oriental costumes were considered fashionable by the nobility of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Sarmatism). One legend says that the initial reason for adopting the shtreimel was that the Jews were forced to wear an animal tail as a public humiliation.


title: Shtreimel

text: Shtreimels worn by the Hasidim of Galicia, Romania, and Hungary, and Lithuanian Jews up until the 20th century were made of a large circular piece of black velvet surrounded by fur. The shtreimel of Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (also known as the "Tzemach Tzedek") was white velvet. Hasidim originating from Congress Poland wear a high shtreimel (often called a spodik). The shtreimel of the Rebbes of the Ruzhin and Skolye dynasties is pointed upward.


title: Shtreimel

text: While there is strong religious custom for Jewish males to cover their heads, from the standpoint of Jewish law there is no religious significance to the use of the shtreimel as the head covering. However, the wearing of two head coverings (the shtreimel is always worn over a "yarmulke") is considered to add additional spiritual merit, plus the presence of beautiful craftsmanship adds beautification and honour to the custom. Such headgear is worn on special occasions (such as Shabbat), in the synagogue, or by office-holders such as rabbis.


title: Shtreimel

text: According to Rabbi Aaron Wertheim, Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz (1726–1791) stated that "[t]he acronym for Shabbos is: "Shtreimel Bimkom Tefillin" - the shtreimel takes the place of tefillin." Since wearing special clothing on Shabbat is a form of sanctification, among the Hasidim of Galicia and Hungary the shtreimel is associated with the holiness of Shabbat, a crown such as that worn by royalty, which enhances and beautifies Shabbat.


title: Shtreimel

text: Arnon asserts that the number of furs used in the manufacture of the shtreimel has some significance. Common numbers are 13, 18, and 26, corresponding respectively to the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, the numerical value (gematria) of the word for life (), and the numerical value of the Tetragrammaton. Contemporary "shtreimlach" may include higher numbers of tails. At least one maker creates shtreimelach with 42 tails, symbolizing the 42-letter Divine Name.


title: Shtreimel

text: Male Orthodox Jews can be highly conservative regarding headgear, and some traditional Jews still wear fedoras or homburgs. Although the traditional Jewish headgear is of Gentile origin and has specific historical and geographical roots, it continues to be worn by traditional Jews even when non-Jews in the country of origin have long stopped wearing it.


title: Shtreimel

text: The shtreimel is typically custom-made from the tails of Canadian or Russian sable, beech marten, baum marten (European pine marten), or gray fox. The shtreimel is almost always the most costly article of Hasidic clothing. Usually the bride's father purchases the shtreimel for the groom upon his wedding. Nowadays, it is customary in the United States to purchase two shtreimels: a cheaper version, called the "regen" shtreimel ("rain shtreimel"), is for occasions when the expensive one may get damaged. In Israel, due to the economic circumstances of most members of the Hasidic community in that country, the vast majority of shtreimel-wearers own only one shtreimel. The shtreimel manufacturers ("shtreimel machers") keep their trade a closely guarded secret.


title: The Blacklist (season 4)

text: The fourth season of the American crime thriller television series "The Blacklist" premiered on NBC on September 22, 2016. The season was produced by Davis Entertainment, Universal Television and Sony Pictures Television, and the executive producers are Jon Bokenkamp, John Davis, John Eisendrath, John Fox, and Joe Carnahan. The season contained 22 episodes and concluded on May 18, 2017.


title: The Blacklist (season 4)

text: The fourth season resolves the question of Alexander Kirk's (Ulrich Thomsen) relationship to Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). Kirk discovers that Liz is not his daughter and abandons his obsession with winning her trust and loyalty. Reddington (James Spader) attempts to kill Mr. Kaplan (Susan Blommaert) for her efforts in hiding Liz and her baby from him, but Mr. Kaplan survives the attack and begins exposing the trail of dead bodies left by Reddington’s criminal activities. Mr. Kaplan attempts to dismantle Reddington’s organization. FBI Agent Julian Gale (Enrique Murciano), the former partner of Donald Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) on the Reddington Task Force, is assigned to the Reddington investigation and Gale tries to use Mr. Kaplan's knowledge to bring down Reddington. The final episodes reveal the existence of a suitcase containing human bones of unknown origins that figure prominently in the next season.


title: The Blacklist (season 4)

text: The fourth season of "The Blacklist" received positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 88% approval rating based on eight reviews, with an average score of 7/10.


title: Codeine/paracetamol

text: Codeine/paracetamol, also known as codeine/acetaminophen and co-codamol, is a compound analgesic consisting of a combination of codeine phosphate and paracetamol (acetaminophen). Codeine/paracetamol is used for the relief of mild to moderate pain when paracetamol or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen, aspirin or naproxen alone do not sufficiently relieve symptoms.


title: Codeine/paracetamol

text: In 2020, it was the 187th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 2million prescriptions. Combination products containing codeine are available over the counter in Barbados, United Kingdom, Israel and Costa Rica. Of the European Union (EU) member states, 12 countries (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia) allow the sale of OTC codeine solid dosage forms.


title: Codeine/paracetamol

text: Other side effects may include blood from mouth, skin rashes, dizziness, sedation, shortness of breath, hypersensitivity reaction, fainting (syncope or near syncope), confusion, loss of short-term memory, changes in blood, allergic reactions, euphoria, dysphoria, abdominal pain, itchiness, easy bruising, bleeding gums, vivid dreams, dry mouth and addiction.


title: Codeine/paracetamol

text: Genetic differences between people give rise to differing rates of metabolism of codeine to morphine. In about 5% of people this may happen particularly fast, leading to higher levels of morphine being passed through breast milk in amounts potentially able to cause fatal respiratory depression of a breastfed baby.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The German Peasants' War, Great Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt () was a widespread popular revolt in some German-speaking areas in Central Europe from 1524 to 1525. It failed because of intense opposition from the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. The survivors were fined and achieved few, if any, of their goals. Like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, the war consisted of a series of both economic and religious revolts in which peasants and farmers, often supported by Anabaptist clergy, took the lead. The German Peasants' War was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising before the French Revolution of 1789. The fighting was at its height in the middle of 1525.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The war began with separate insurrections, beginning in the southwestern part of what is now Germany and Alsace, and spread in subsequent insurrections to the central and eastern areas of Germany and present-day Austria. After the uprising in Germany was suppressed, it flared up briefly in several Swiss cantons.


title: German Peasants' War

text: In mounting their insurrection, peasants faced insurmountable obstacles. The democratic nature of their movement left them without a command structure and they lacked artillery and cavalry. Most of them had little, if any, military experience. Their opposition had experienced military leaders, well-equipped and disciplined armies, and ample funding.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The revolt incorporated some principles and rhetoric from the emerging Protestant Reformation, through which the peasants sought influence and freedom. Radical Reformers and Anabaptists, most famously Thomas Müntzer, instigated and supported the revolt. In contrast, Martin Luther and other Magisterial Reformers condemned it and clearly sided with the nobles. In "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants", Luther condemned the violence as the devil's work and called for the nobles to put down the rebels like mad dogs. The movement was also supported by Ulrich Zwingli, but the condemnation by Martin Luther contributed to its defeat.


title: German Peasants' War

text: In the sixteenth century, many parts of Europe had common political links within the Holy Roman Empire, a decentralized entity in which the Holy Roman Emperor himself had little authority outside of his own dynastic lands, which covered only a small fraction of the whole. At the time of the Peasants' War, Charles V, King of Spain, held the position of Holy Roman Emperor (elected in 1520). Aristocratic dynasties ruled hundreds of largely independent territories (both secular and ecclesiastical) within the framework of the empire, and several dozen others operated as semi-independent city-states. The princes of these dynasties were taxed by the Roman Catholic church. The princes stood to gain economically if they broke away from the Roman church and established a German church under their own control, which would then not be able to tax them as the Roman church did. Most German princes broke with Rome using the nationalistic slogan of "German money for a German church".


title: German Peasants' War

text: Princes often attempted to force their freer peasants into serfdom by increasing taxes and introducing Roman civil law. Roman civil law advantaged princes who sought to consolidate their power because it brought all land into their personal ownership and eliminated the feudal concept of the land as a trust between lord and peasant that conferred rights as well as obligations on the latter. By maintaining the remnants of the ancient law which legitimized their own rule, they not only elevated their wealth and position in the empire through the confiscation of all property and revenues, but increased their power over their peasant subjects.


title: German Peasants' War

text: During the Knights' Revolt the "knights", the lesser landholders of the Rhineland in western Germany, rose up in rebellion in 1522–1523. Their rhetoric was religious, and several leaders expressed Luther's ideas on the split with Rome and the new German church. However, the Knights' Revolt was not fundamentally religious. It was conservative in nature and sought to preserve the feudal order. The knights revolted against the new money order, which was squeezing them out of existence.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Martin Luther, the dominant leader of the Reformation in Germany, initially took a middle course in the Peasants' War, by criticizing both the injustices imposed on the peasants, and the rashness of the peasants in fighting back. He also tended to support the centralization and urbanization of the economy. This position alienated the lesser nobles, but shored up his position with the burghers. Luther argued that work was the chief duty on earth; the duty of the peasants was farm labor and the duty of the ruling classes was upholding the peace. He could not support the Peasant War because it broke the peace, an evil he thought greater than the evils the peasants were rebelling against. At the peak of the insurrection in 1525, his position shifted completely to support of the rulers of the secular principalities and their Roman Catholic allies. In "Against the Robbing Murderous Hordes of Peasants" he encouraged the nobility to swiftly and violently eliminate the rebelling peasants, stating,"[the peasants] must be sliced, choked, stabbed, secretly and publicly, by those who can, like one must kill a rabid dog." After the conclusion of the Peasants War, he was criticized for his writings in support of the violent actions taken by the ruling class. He responded by writing an open letter to Caspar Muller, defending his position. However, he also stated that the nobles were too severe in suppression of the insurrection, despite having called for severe violence in his previous work. Luther has often been sharply criticized for his position.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Thomas Müntzer was the most prominent radical reforming preacher who supported the demands of the peasantry, including political and legal rights. Müntzer's theology had been developed against a background of social upheaval and widespread religious doubt, and his call for a new world order fused with the political and social demands of the peasantry. In the final weeks of 1524 and the beginning of 1525, Müntzer travelled into south-west Germany, where the peasant armies were gathering; here he would have had contact with some of their leaders, and it is argued that he also influenced the formulation of their demands. He spent several weeks in the Klettgau area, and there is some evidence to suggest that he helped the peasants to formulate their grievances. While the famous Twelve Articles of the Swabian peasants were certainly not composed by Müntzer, at least one important supporting document, the "Constitutional Draft", may well have originated with him. Returning to Saxony and Thuringia in early 1525, he assisted in the organisation of the various rebel groups there and ultimately led the rebel army in the ill-fated Battle of Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Müntzer's role in the Peasant War has been the subject of considerable controversy, some arguing that he had no influence at all, others that he was the sole inspirer of the uprising. To judge from his writings of 1523 and 1524, it was by no means inevitable that Müntzer would take the road of social revolution. However, it was precisely on this same theological foundation that Müntzer's ideas briefly coincided with the aspirations of the peasants and plebeians of 1525: viewing the uprising as an apocalyptic act of God, he stepped up as 'God's Servant against the Godless' and took his position as leader of the rebels.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Luther and Müntzer took every opportunity to attack each other's ideas and actions. Luther himself declared against the moderate demands of the peasantry embodied in the twelve articles. His article "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants" appeared in May 1525 just as the rebels were being defeated on the fields of battle.


title: German Peasants' War

text: In this era of rapid change, modernizing princes tended to align with clergy burghers against the lesser nobility and peasants.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Many rulers of Germany's various principalities functioned as autocratic rulers who recognized no other authority within their territories. Princes had the right to levy taxes and borrow money as they saw fit. The growing costs of administration and military upkeep impelled them to keep raising demands on their subjects. The princes also worked to centralize power in the towns and estates. Accordingly, princes tended to gain economically from the ruination of the lesser nobility, by acquiring their estates. This ignited the Knights' Revolt that occurred from 1522 through 1523 in the Rhineland. The revolt was "suppressed by both Catholic and Lutheran princes who were satisfied to cooperate against a common danger".


title: German Peasants' War

text: To the degree that other classes, such as the bourgeoisie, might gain from the centralization of the economy and the elimination of the lesser nobles' territorial controls on manufacture and trade, the princes might unite with the burghers on the issue.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The innovations in military technology of the Late Medieval period began to render the lesser nobility (the knights) militarily obsolete. The introduction of military science and the growing importance of gunpowder and infantry lessened the importance of heavy cavalry and of castles. Their luxurious lifestyle drained what little income they had as prices kept rising. They exercised their ancient rights in order to wring income from their territories.


title: German Peasants' War

text: In the north of Germany many of the lesser nobles had already been subordinated to secular and ecclesiastical lords. Thus, their dominance over serfs was more restricted. However, in the south of Germany their powers were more intact. Accordingly, the harshness of the lesser nobles' treatment of the peasantry provided the immediate cause of the uprising. The fact that this treatment was worse in the south than in the north was the reason that the war began in the south.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The knights became embittered as their status and income fell and they came increasingly under the jurisdiction of the princes, putting the two groups in constant conflict. The knights also regarded the clergy as arrogant and superfluous, while envying their privileges and wealth. In addition, the knights' relationships with the patricians in the towns was strained by the debts owed by the knights. At odds with other classes in Germany, the lesser nobility was the least disposed to the changes.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The clergy in 1525 were the intellectuals of their time. Not only were they literate, but in the Middle Ages they had produced most books. Some clergy were supported by the nobility and the rich, while others appealed to the masses. However, the clergy was beginning to lose its overwhelming intellectual authority. The progress of printing (especially of the Bible) and the expansion of commerce, as well as the spread of renaissance humanism, raised literacy rates, according to Engels. Engels held that the Catholic monopoly on higher education was accordingly reduced. However, despite the secular nature of nineteenth century humanism, three centuries earlier Renaissance humanism had still been strongly connected with the Church: its proponents had attended Church schools.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Over time, some Catholic institutions had slipped into corruption. Clerical ignorance and the abuses of simony and pluralism (holding several offices at once) were rampant. Some bishops, archbishops, abbots and priors were as ruthless in exploiting their subjects as the regional princes. In addition to the sale of indulgences, they set up prayer houses and directly taxed the people. Increased indignation over church corruption had led the monk Martin Luther to post his 95 Theses on the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, as well as impelling other reformers to radically re-think church doctrine and organization. The clergy who did not follow Luther tended to be the aristocratic clergy, who opposed all change, including any break with the Roman Church.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The poorer clergy, rural and urban itinerant preachers who were not well positioned in the church, were more likely to join the Reformation. Some of the poorer clergy sought to extend Luther's equalizing ideas to society at large.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Many towns had privileges that exempted them from taxes, so that the bulk of taxation fell on the peasants. As the guilds grew and urban populations rose, the town patricians faced increasing opposition. The patricians consisted of wealthy families who sat alone in the town councils and held all the administrative offices. Like the princes, they sought to secure revenues from their peasants by any possible means. Arbitrary road, bridge, and gate tolls were instituted at will. They gradually usurped the common lands and made it illegal for peasants to fish or to log wood from these lands. Guild taxes were exacted. No revenues collected were subject to formal administration, and civic accounts were neglected. Thus embezzlement and fraud became common, and the patrician class, bound by family ties, became wealthier and more powerful.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The town patricians were increasingly criticized by the growing burgher class, which consisted of well-to-do middle-class citizens who held administrative guild positions or worked as merchants. They demanded town assemblies made up of both patricians and burghers, or at least a restriction on simony and the allocation of council seats to burghers. The burghers also opposed the clergy, whom they felt had overstepped and failed to uphold their principles. They demanded an end to the clergy's special privileges such as their exemption from taxation, as well as a reduction in their numbers. The burgher-master (guild master, or artisan) now owned both his workshop and its tools, which he allowed his apprentices to use, and provided the materials that his workers needed. F. Engels cites: "To the call of Luther of rebellion against the Church, two political uprisings responded, first, the one of lower nobility, headed by Franz von Sickingen in 1523, and then, the great peasant's war, in 1525; both were crushed, because, mainly, of the indecisiveness of the party having most interest in the fight, the urban bourgeoisie". (Foreword to the English edition of: 'From Utopy Socialism to Scientific Socialism', 1892)


title: German Peasants' War

text: The plebeians comprised the new class of urban workers, journeymen, and peddlers. Ruined burghers also joined their ranks. Although technically potential burghers, most journeymen were barred from higher positions by the wealthy families who ran the guilds. Thus their "temporary" position devoid of civic rights tended to become permanent. The plebeians did not have property like ruined burghers or peasants.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The heavily taxed peasantry continued to occupy the lowest stratum of society. In the early 16th century, no peasant could hunt, fish, or chop wood freely, as they previously had, because the lords had recently taken control of common lands. The lord had the right to use his peasants' land as he wished; the peasant could do nothing but watch as his crops were destroyed by wild game and by nobles galloping across his fields in the course of chivalric hunts. When a peasant wished to marry, he not only needed the lord's permission but had to pay a tax. When the peasant died, the lord was entitled to his best cattle, his best garments and his best tools. The justice system, operated by the clergy or wealthy burgher and patrician jurists, gave the peasant no redress. Generations of traditional servitude and the autonomous nature of the provinces limited peasant insurrections to local areas.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The Swabian League fielded an army commanded by Georg, Truchsess von Waldburg, later known as "Bauernjörg" for his role in the suppression of the revolt. He was also known as the "Scourge of the Peasants". The league headquarters was in Ulm, and command was exercised through a war council which decided the troop contingents to be levied from each member. Depending on their capability, members contributed a specific number of mounted knights and foot soldiers, called a contingent, to the league's army. The Bishop of Augsburg, for example, had to contribute 10 horse (mounted) and 62 foot soldiers, which would be the equivalent of a half-company. At the beginning of the revolt the league members had trouble recruiting soldiers from among their own populations (particularly among peasant class) due to fear of them joining the rebels. As the rebellion expanded many nobles had trouble sending troops to the league armies because they had to combat rebel groups in their own lands. Another common problem regarding raising armies was that while nobles were obligated to provide troops to a member of the league, they also had other obligations to other lords. These conditions created problems and confusion for the nobles as they tried to gather together forces large enough to put down the revolts.


title: German Peasants' War

text: Foot soldiers were drawn from the ranks of the . These were mercenaries, usually paid a monthly wage of four guilders, and organized into regiments () and companies ( or little flag) of 120–300 men, which distinguished it from others. Each company, in turn, was composed of smaller units of 10 to 12 men, known as . The clothed, armed and fed themselves, and were accompanied by a sizable train of sutlers, bakers, washerwomen, prostitutes and sundry individuals with occupations needed to sustain the force. Trains () were sometimes larger than the fighting force, but they required organization and discipline. Each maintained its own structure, called the , or community assembly, which was symbolized by a ring. The had its own leader (), and a officer who policed the ranks and maintained order. The use of the landsknechte in the German Peasants' War reflects a period of change between traditional noble roles or responsibilities towards warfare and practice of buying mercenary armies, which became the norm throughout the 16th century.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The league relied on the armored cavalry of the nobility for the bulk of its strength; the league had both heavy cavalry and light cavalry, (), which served as a vanguard. Typically, the were the second and third sons of poor knights, the lower and sometimes impoverished nobility with small land-holdings, or, in the case of second and third sons, no inheritance or social role. These men could often be found roaming the countryside looking for work or engaging in highway robbery.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The peasant armies were organized in bands (), similar to the . Each was organized into , or and . The bands varied in size, depending on the number of insurgents available in the locality. Peasant divided along territorial lines, whereas those of the drew men from a variety of territories. Some bands could number about 4,000; others, such as the peasant force at Frankenhausen, could gather 8,000. The Alsatian peasants who took to the field at the Battle of Zabern (now Saverne) numbered 18,000.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The peasant army was governed by a so-called , in which peasants gathered in a circle to debate tactics, troop movements, alliances, and the distribution of spoils. The ring was the decision-making body. In addition to this democratic construct, each band had a hierarchy of leaders including a supreme commander and a marshal (), who maintained law and order. Other roles included lieutenants, captains, standard-bearers, master gunner, wagon-fort master, train master, four watch-masters, four sergeant-majors to arrange the order of battle, a (sergeant) for each company, two quartermasters, farriers, quartermasters for the horses, a communications officer and a pillage master.


title: German Peasants' War

text: The peasants possessed an important resource, the skills to build and maintain field works. They used the wagon fort effectively, a tactic that had been mastered in the Hussite Wars of the previous century. Wagons were chained together in a suitable defensive location, with cavalry and draft animals placed in the center. Peasants dug ditches around the outer edge of the fort and used timber to close gaps between and underneath the wagons. In the Hussite Wars, artillery was usually placed in the center on raised mounds of earth that allowed them to fire over the wagons. Wagon forts could be erected and dismantled quickly. They were quite mobile, but they also had drawbacks: they required a fairly large area of flat terrain and they were not ideal for offense. Since their earlier use, artillery had increased in range and power.