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William Poel (22 July 1852-13 December 1934) was an English actor, theatrical manager and dramatist best known for his presentations of Shakespeare.
A son of William Pole, he grew up among Pre-raphaelite painters and reportedly sat for William Holman Hunt in his painting The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. He took on the name Poel following a misspelling of his own name on a theatre billing. At St. George's Hall, London, in 1881 he revived Hamlet, using the text of the first quarto and doing without scenery. From 1881 to 1883 he was manager of Royal Victoria Hall, London, and then for a year manager of F. R. Benson's company.
In 1895 he founded the Elizabethan Stage Society and spent much of his career researching and lecturing on Elizabethan performance. He put his studies to work on stage, as he tried to recreate performances using an open stage, a unified acting ensemble, an uncut text, very little scenery and a swift pace of performance. His work affected many theatre practitioners, most of all Harley Granville Barker. His presentations included Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (1893) and Two Gentlemen of Verona (1910), plays by Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Milton's Samson Agonistes (1900) and Swinburne's Locrine (1900).
Poel also dramatized W. D. Howells's A Foregone Conclusion under the title Priest and Painter (produced 1884) and Baring-Gould's novel Mehala (produced 1886). He wrote several comediettas and a book, Shakespeare in the Theatre. The National Portrait Gallery contains a number of pictures by Henry Tonks of Poel in the role as Father Keegan in G. B. Shaw's play John Bull's Other Island. His great-nephew Rupert Pole (1919-2006) was married to Anaïs Nin.
The Poel Workshops, run and promoted by The Society for Theatre Research since 1952, emphasize Poel's approach to text in the delivery of which he desired speed, lightness, musicality and the effect of true speech. The Society for Theatre Research's project has constantly evolved and is now known as the Poel Workshops, but still keeps to its aims of the text-centric and verse-faithful to the plays of Shakespeare.
English Renaissance theatre, also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1558 and 1642.
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604 and first performed in 1604, according to available records. It was published in the First Folio of 1623.
The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period (1500–1750) in Britain and Europe. The library was established by Henry Clay Folger in association with his wife, Emily Jordan Folger. It opened in 1932, two years after his death.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is a regional repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States, founded in 1935 by Angus L. Bowmer. The Festival now offers matinee and evening performances of a wide range of classic and contemporary plays not limited to Shakespeare. During the Festival, between five and eleven plays are offered in daily rotation six days a week in its three theatres. It welcomed its millionth visitor in 1971, its 10-millionth in 2001, and its 20-millionth visitor in 2015.
Ben Iden Payne, also known as B. Iden Payne, was an English actor, director and teacher. Active in professional theater for seventy years, he helped the first modern Repertory Theatre in the United Kingdom, was an early and effective advocate for Elizabethan staging of Shakespeare plays, and served as an inspiration for Shakespeare Companies and University theater programs throughout North America and the British Isles. His name lives on as the name of a theater at the University of Texas as well as annual theater awards presented in Austin, Texas.
Harley Granville-Barker was an English actor, director, playwright, manager, critic, and theorist. After early success as an actor in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, he increasingly turned to directing and was a major figure in British theatre in the Edwardian and inter-war periods. As a writer his plays, which tackled difficult and controversial subject matter, met with a mixed reception during his lifetime but have continued to receive attention.
In his own time, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was rated as merely one among many talented playwrights and poets, but since the late 17th century has been considered the supreme playwright and poet of the English language.
Sejanus His Fall, a 1603 play by Ben Jonson, is a tragedy about Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the favourite of the Roman emperor Tiberius.
Walter Nugent Monck CBE (1878–1958) was an English theatre director and founder of Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich.
Sir Francis Robert Benson was an English actor-manager. He founded his own company in 1883 and produced all but two of Shakespeare's plays. His thirty-year association with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the annual Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon laid down foundations for the creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company after his death.
Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare. The exact number of plays as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise is a matter of scholarly debate. Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world. The plays have been translated into every major living language.
John Corbin was an American dramatic critic and author.
The Maddermarket Theatre is a British theatre located in St. John's Alley in Norwich, Norfolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Nugent Monck, and is situated next to Strangers' Hall.
Thousands of performances of William Shakespeare's plays have been staged since the end of the 16th century. While Shakespeare was alive, many of his greatest plays were performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men and King's Men acting companies at the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres. Among the actors of these original performances were Richard Burbage, Richard Cowley, and William Kempe.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare has been performed many times since the beginning of the 17th century.
John Paterson is a Canadian director, devisor, dramaturg, translator, actor and theatre creator who works across Canada, the United Kingdom, and internationally. His favourite credits include directing the installation of The List (BoucheWHACKED!), the site-specific The Women of Troy and F. Garcia Lorca’s The Love of Don Perlimplin for Belisa ; production dramaturgy on the English language premiere of H. Muller’s Macbeth: nach Shakespeare; and playing Adolf Hitler and Walt Disney in The Blue Light and Scheffler in The Ugly One.
Edward Knight was the prompter of the King's Men, the acting company that performed the plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, and other playwrights of Jacobean and Caroline drama.
The Elizabethan Stage Society was a theatrical society dedicated to putting on productions of drama from the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, particularly those of William Shakespeare. It was founded in 1895 by William Poel. Its minimal scenery, platform stage, quick scene changes and emphasis on the poetry was in direct and deliberate contrast to Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Henry Irving's large-set productions, and were a major influence on later staging and production of these works. Walter Nugent Monck was its stage manager in the 1920s, and its actors included Ben Greet
Clifford Leech (1909–1977) was a prolifically published British-born professor of English at University College at the University of Toronto 1963-74. In The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe (2004), Patrick Cheney, its editor, describes Leech's contribution to Christopher Marlowe studies "historically important." His publications mainly concerned Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, including William Shakespeare, John Webster and John Ford. He also wrote a book on American playwright Eugene O'Neill.
Louis James Calvert was a British stage and early film actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and an actor-manager. He is perhaps best remembered today for having created roles in plays by George Bernard Shaw and for appearing in King John (1899), the earliest known example of any film based on Shakespeare,
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