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This was the most popular of the early Elizabethan plays; it was revised again and again, and Ben Jonson is said to have written one version and to have acted the chief part of Hieronimo. Even a brief glance at the life and work of these first playwrights shows three noteworthy things which have a bearing on Shakespeare's career: These men were usually actors as well as dramatists.
On the other hand, one has heard of playwrights whose first step in setting to work upon a particular act was to construct a complete model of the scene, and people it with manikins to represent the characters. As a general practice, this is scarcely to be commended.
In 1899, with a fund of two hundred and fifty dollars, Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, G.W. Russell, and other playwrights and patrons succeeded in establishing in Dublin the Irish Literary Theater now known as the Irish National Theater. The object of this theater is twofold. In the first place, it aims to produce "literary" plays, not the vapid, panoramic kind that merely pass away the time.
After my riding lesson, went and sat in the library to hear Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Hunchback." Mr. Bartley and my father and mother were his only audience, and he read it himself to us. A real play, with real characters, individuals, human beings, it is a good deal after the fashion of our old playwrights, and does not disgrace its models.
I enclose herewith a contract in duplicate, and if the terms are acceptable to you, will you kindly return one copy signed, and retain the other yourself." Thyrsis read, not long after that, of a young playwright who died of heart-failure; and he was not surprised if all playwrights had to go through experiences such as that.
That he soon fell under Marlowe's influence is evident from the atrocities and bombast of Titus Andronicus and Richard III. The former may have been written by both playwrights in collaboration, or may be one of Marlowe's horrors left unfinished by his early death and brought to an end by Shakespeare.
The pamphlet, aside from its jealousy of Shakespeare, is a sad picture of a man of genius dying of dissipation, and contains a warning to other playwrights of the time, whose lives were apparently almost as bad as that of Greene. Prior to 1588 only three true Chronicle plays are known to have been acted.
... I have been cherishing the bold dream of summing up all that has hitherto been written about whining, miserable people, and with my Ivanov saying the last word. It seemed to me that all Russian novelists and playwrights were drawn to depict despondent men, but that they all wrote instinctively, having no definite image or views on the subject.
To attempt any comparison of the living playwrights or actors in the two countries would be a thorny and perilous undertaking; and if any comparison is to be made at all it must be done lightly and as far as possible examples must be drawn from those who are no longer actively on the boards.
'I am taking care of myself; I am here for that purpose; but it is dreary work. 'What! dreary work to live in this lovely place, and with such a sweet wife! But I know you never liked the country. 'I frankly detest it. 'And you miss the intellectual society to which you are accustomed in London literary men poets playwrights. How delightful it must be to know the men who write books!
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