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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 ...
Beggar's Opera
*ballad opera in three acts arranged and partly composed by Pepusch to a libretto by John Gay (London, 1728). It was reworked several times in the 20th century, notably by ...
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 ...
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 ...
Covent Garden
(London). Anxious to restore his dilapidated estate (land belonging to the convent of Westminster prior to the dissolution of the monasteries), the 4th earl of Bedford commissioned Inigo Jones as ...
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 ...
gallery
In the 19th-century theatre building the highest and cheapest seats in the house, usually unbookable. The seating generally consisted of wooden benches, in some cases without backs. The occupants of ...
Hannah Pritchard
(1711–68)English actress who frequently performed with David Garrick, and was specially distinguished as Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, and Queen Katherine.
Henry Woodward
(1714–77)English actor, author, and manager, who spent nearly his entire life on the stage. He first appeared in a juvenile production of Gay's The Beggar's Opera in 1729 and ...
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 Home
(1722–1808)Playwright and churchman, the theatrical favourite son of Enlightenment Scotland. His romantic tragedy Douglas (1756) was rejected by Garrick and had its première at the Canongate Theatre, ...
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 ...
Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre
*Davenant's conversion in 1660–1 of Lisle's indoor tennis court in Portugal Street in London established the spatial arrangement used in British theatres for some 150 years. The proscenium arch ...
London
The first London ballet performances were given by French and Italians during the 17th and 18th centuries, though two English men, John Weaver (dancer, choreographer, teacher, and writer) and John ...
Lupino family
The family story begins with Georgius Luppino, a refugee from Bologna who arrived in Plymouth in 1634 with only his skills with puppets, and goes on to unverified tales of ...
pantomime
[Gk., all-imitating]A term that commonly refers to theatrical shows imparting action without the use of words or song. In Britain the term more specifically refers to a form of Christmas comic ...
Peg Woffington
(c. 1714–60),the celebrated actress. She had many lovers, and lived for some time with Garrick. She is the subject of Masks and Faces (1852), a play by C. Reade and Tom Taylor, on which Reade based ...
Tate Wilkinson
(1739–1803)English actor and manager. A highly skilled mimic, Wilkinson was sacked from John Rich's company because of his indiscreet imitations on stage of Peg Woffington. Lacking sensitivity—and ...
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