Antony and Cleoptra, is designated as a Shakespearean tragedy, though it involves historical figures and was first performed in which year?
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Shakespearean tragedy Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the History of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—"Julius Caesar", "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus"—are also based on historical figures, but because their source stories were foreign and ancient they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances (tragicomic plays) were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy featuring a high status central character but end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Several hundred years after Shakespeare's death, scholar F.S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that don't fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. The classifications of certain Shakespeare plays are still debated among scholars.
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Antony and Cleopatra Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The play was performed first circa 1607 at the Blackfriars Theatre or the Globe Theatre by the King's Men.
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Troilus and Cressida Troilus and Cressida ( ) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida. The work has in recent years "stimulated exceptionally lively critical debate". Throughout the play, the tone lurches wildly between bawdy comedy and tragic gloom, and readers and theatre-goers have frequently found it difficult to understand how one is meant to respond to the characters. However, several characteristic elements of the play (the most notable being its constant questioning of intrinsic values such as hierarchy, honour and love) have often been viewed as distinctly "modern," as in the following remarks on the play by author and literary scholar Joyce Carol Oates:
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Macbeth in popular culture The figure of Macbeth and related themes from the tragic play by William Shakespeare have appeared in many examples of popular culture since being authored by Shakespeare in the early 16th century.
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The Witch (play) The Witch is a Jacobean play, a tragicomedy written by Thomas Middleton. The play was acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. It is thought to have been written between 1613 and 1616; it was not printed in its own era, and existed only in manuscript until it was published by Isaac Reed in 1778.
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Oedipus (Voltaire play) Oedipus (French: "Œdipe" ) is a tragedy by the French dramatist and philosopher Voltaire that was first performed in 1718. It was his first play and the first literary work for which he used the pen-name Voltaire (his real name was François-Marie Arouet). In adapting Sophocles' Athenian tragedy "Oedipus Rex", Voltaire attempted to rationalise the plot and motivation of its characters. In a letter of 1719 he indicated that he found it improbable that the murder of Laius had not been investigated earlier and that Oedipus should take so long to understand the oracle's clear pronouncement. Voltaire adds a subplot concerning the love of Philoctète for Jocaste. He also reduces the prominence of the theme of incest.
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Sebastian (Twelfth Night) Sebastian is one of the main characters from William Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night", believed to have been written around 1600 or 1601. It has been played by several famous actors, and even by actress Vivien Leigh in an acclaimed production directed by John Gielgud in 1955.
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An Age of Kings An Age of Kings is a fifteen-part serial adaptation of the eight sequential history plays of William Shakespeare ("Richard II", "1 Henry IV", "2 Henry IV", "Henry V", "1 Henry VI", "2 Henry VI", "3 Henry VI" and "Richard III"), produced by the BBC in 1960. At the time, the show was the most ambitious Shakespearean television adaptation ever made, and was a critical and commercial success in both the UK and North America.
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Henry Fielding's early plays The early plays of Henry Fielding mark the beginning of Fielding's literary career. His early plays span the time period from his first production in 1728 to the beginning of the Actor's Rebellion of 1733, a strife within the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane that divided the theatrical community and threatened to disrupt London stage performances. These plays introduce Fielding's take on politics, gender, and morality and serve as an early basis for how Fielding develops his ideas on these matters throughout his career.
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The History of Timon of Athens the Man-hater The History of Timon of Athens the Man-hater by Thomas Shadwell is a 1678 adaptation of "Timon of Athens", the play by William Shakespeare.
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Livius Andronicus Lucius Livius Andronicus (c. 284 – c. 205 BC) was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family at Rome by translating Greek works into Latin, including Homer's "Odyssey". They were meant at first as educational devices in the school he founded. He wrote works for the stage—both tragedies and comedies—which are regarded as the first dramatic works written in the Latin language of ancient Rome. His comedies were based on Greek New Comedy and featured characters in Greek costume. Thus, the Romans referred to this new genre by the term comoedia palliata (fabula palliata). The Roman biographer Suetonius later coined the term "half-Greek" of Livius and Ennius (referring to their genre, not their ethnic backgrounds). The genre was imitated by the next dramatists to follow in Andronicus' footsteps and on that account he is regarded as the father of Roman drama and of Latin literature in general; that is, he was the first man of letters to write in Latin. Varro, Cicero, and Horace, all men of letters during the subsequent Classical Latin period, considered Livius Andronicus to have been the originator of Latin literature. He is the earliest Roman poet whose name is known.
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Lysistrata Lysistrata ( or ; Attic Greek: Λυσιστράτη , "Lysistrátē", "Army Disbander") is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BCE, it is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War by denying all the men of the land any sex, which was the only thing they truly and deeply desired. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. Additionally, its dramatic structure represents a shift from the conventions of Old Comedy, a trend typical of the author's career. It was produced in the same year as the "Thesmophoriazusae", another play with a focus on gender-based issues, just two years after Athens' catastrophic defeat in the Sicilian Expedition. At this time, Greek theatre was a profound form of entertainment, which was extremely popular for all audiences as it addressed political issues relevant to that time.
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The Battle of Hastings (play) The Battle of Hastings is a 1778 play by the English writer Richard Cumberland. It is a tragedy set around the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It was staged at the Drury Lane Theatre in October 1778 by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Sheridan later mocked Cumberland's sensitivity to criticism by modelling the character Sir Fretful Plagiary, in his 1779 play "The Critic", after him.
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She-tragedy The term she-tragedy, also known as ""pathetic tragedy"" refers to a vogue in the late 17th and early 18th centuries for tragic plays focused on the sufferings of a woman, sometimes innocent and virtuous but often a woman who has committed some sort of sexual sin. Prominent she-tragedies include Thomas Otway's "The Orphan" (1680), John Banks' "Virtue Betrayed, or, Anna Bullen" (1682), Thomas Southerne's "The Fatal Marriage" (1694) and Nicholas Rowe's "The Fair Penitent" (1703) and "Lady Jane Grey" (1715). Rowe was the first to use the term "she-tragedy," in 1714.
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Medea (play) Medea (Ancient Greek: Μήδεια , "Mēdeia") is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the "barbarian" kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by killing Jason's new wife as well as her own children, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.
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Bourgeois tragedy Bourgeois tragedy (German: "Bürgerliches Trauerspiel") is a form of tragedy that developed in 18th-century Europe. It is a fruit of the enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class and its ideals. It is characterized by the fact that its protagonists are ordinary citizens.
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Chorus of the elderly in classical Greek drama The chorus of the elderly in classical Greek drama is a common trope in the theater of that period. Out of the thirty or so plays that are extant from the classical period, seven have choruses that consist of elderly people. Choruses in ancient drama often provided some moralizing lesson to the protagonist, especially in tragedy. However, the figures of the elderly chorus often seem to imply a traditional way of thinking that has become outdated with time, or, in some cases, provide a model of inefficacy. As history progressed from the early stages of Greek drama (with Aeschylus) the chorus became more integrated with the happenings on stage, rendering the chorus a messenger between the world of the audience and that of the actors.
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Oresteia The Oresteia (Ancient Greek: Ὀρέστεια ) is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytaemnestra, the murder of Clytaemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and pacification of the Erinyes. The trilogy—consisting of "Agamemnon" (Ἀγαμέμνων ), "The Libation Bearers" (Χοηφóρoι ), and "The Eumenides" (Εὐμενίδες )—also shows how the Greek gods interacted with the characters and influenced their decisions pertaining to events and disputes. The only extant example of an ancient Greek theatre trilogy, the "Oresteia" won first prize at the Dionysia festival in 458 BC. Many consider the "Oresteia" to be Aeschylus' finest work. The principal themes of the trilogy include the contrast between revenge and justice, as well as the transition from personal vendetta to organized litigation. "Orestia" originally included a satyr play, "Proteus" (Πρωτεύς ), following the tragic trilogy, but all except a single line of "Proteus" has been lost.
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Oedipus Rex Oedipus Rex, also known by its Greek title, Oedipus Tyrannus (Ancient Greek: Οἰδίπους Τύραννος IPA: [oidípuːs týranːos]), or Oedipus the King, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC. Originally, to the ancient Greeks, the title was simply "Oedipus" ("Οἰδίπους"), as it is referred to by Aristotle in the "Poetics". It is thought to have been renamed "Oedipus Tyrannus" to distinguish it from "Oedipus at Colonus". In antiquity, the term “tyrant” referred to a ruler, but it did not necessarily have a negative connotation.
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Arden of Faversham Arden of Faversham (original spelling: Arden of Feversham) is an Elizabethan play, entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 3 April 1592, and printed later that same year by Edward White. It depicts the murder of Thomas Arden by his wife Alice Arden and her lover, and their subsequent discovery and punishment. The play is notable as perhaps the earliest surviving example of domestic tragedy, a form of Renaissance play which dramatized recent and local crimes rather than far-off and historical events.
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Shakespeare Theatre Company production history The Shakespeare Theatre Company is a regional theatre company located in Washington, United States. The theatre company focuses primarily on plays from the Shakespeare canon, but its seasons include works by other classic playwrights such as Euripides, Henrik Ibsen and Oscar Wilde.
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King's Men (playing company) The King's Men was the acting company to which William Shakespeare (1564–1616) belonged for most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, they became The King's Men in 1603 when King James I ascended the throne and became the company's patron.