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Anne Bracegirdle
(?1673/4–1748),a famous actress, the friend of Congreve, to the success of whose comedies on stage she largely contributed. She was finally eclipsed by Mrs Oldfield in 1707 and retired from the stage.
Anthony Aston
(fl. first half of 18th century), actor and playwright.A vagabond player, he generally is considered to have been the first professional actor to appear on an American stage. In ...
Aphra Behn
(1640–89).Dramatist and novelist, Aphra Behn was born on 10 July 1640 at Wye, Kent. Her early childhood, spent in the West Indies, later provided inspiration for her novel Oroonoko, a forerunner to ...
Barton Booth
(1681–1733)English actor and manager. Along with Wilks and Colley Cibber, Booth was part of the triumvirate of actor-managers who ruled Drury Lane during the 1710s and 1720s. He achieved ...
box, pit, and gallery
*Audience areas in the auditorium first established in English indoor playhouses of the seventeenth century, such as the first Drury Lane. The highest prices were charged for seats in a ...
Charles Macklin
(?1699–1797),an Irish‐born actor who made his reputation by his impersonation of Shylock. He wrote several plays, of which the most successful were Love à la Mode, performed 1759, and The Man of the ...
Christopher Rich
(c.1657–1714)English manager. Taking control of the ailing patent company at Drury Lane around 1693, Rich is cast as the tyrannical villain of theatre history largely because he made the ...
Colley Cibber
(1671–1757),became an actor in 1690. His first play, Love's Last Shift (1696), introduced the character of Sir Novelty Fashion, who was transformed into Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's The Relapse. ...
Comedy of Errors
A comedy by Shakespeare, first printed in the First Folio of 1623, acted 1594.Syracuse and Ephesus being at enmity, any Syracusan found in Ephesus is put to death unless he can pay a ransom of 1,000 ...
Covent Garden
London's premier opera house and home of the Royal Ballet since 1946. It opened in 1732 as a dramatic theatre but was destroyed by fire in 1809 and rebuilt the following year. It became the Royal ...
Drury Lane
The site in London of the Theatre Royal, one of London's most famous theatres, where Nell Gwyn (1650–87) is said to have sold oranges. While under Sheridan's managament in the late 18th century, it ...
Edward Kynaston
(1643–1712)English actor. One of the few boy actors to continue playing female roles after the Restoration, Kynaston's offstage performances extended to appearances in Hyde Park, where fashionable ...
Elizabeth Barry
(1658–1713),a celebrated actress who owed her entrance to the stage to the patronage of the earl of Rochester. She created more than 100 roles, including Monimia in Otway's The Orphan. Otway was ...
Elkanah Settle
(1648–1724),the author of a series of bombastic oriental melodramas which threatened Dryden's popularity and aroused his hostility. His The Empress of Morocco (1673) had such a vogue that Dryden, ...
Henry Harris
(c.1634–1704),English actor of the Restoration period, accounted by some contemporary critics superior even to Betterton. He joined Davenant's company at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in 1661, ...
James Quin
(1693–1766),an actor who took leading parts in tragedy. He was the last of the old school of actors, which gave place to that of Garrick.
John Downes
(fl.1661–1719)Prompter and bookkeeper for the Duke's, United, and Players' companies at Lincoln's Inn Fields in London, Downes is the author of Roscius Anglicanus (1708), an incomplete but invaluable ...
John Gay
(b Barnstaple, 1685; d London, 1732).Eng. poet, playwright, and theatre manager. Wrote lib. for Handel's Acis and Galatea, and for The Beggar's Opera (1728) and its sequel Polly (1729). Built first ...
John Rich
(1692–1761)English dancer, actor, and manager. The son of Christopher Rich, John took over the refurbished theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields on his father's death in 1714. The elegant house ...
Lewis Theobald
(1688–1744)Poet, critic, and Shakespearian scholar. His Shakespeare Restored (1726) exposed Pope's faults as an editor of Shakespeare; Pope retaliated with a devastating portrait of Theobald (or ...
