Henry IV of France | |
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Written by | Charles Beckingham |
Date premiered | 7 November 1719 [1] |
Place premiered | Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre |
Original language | English |
Genre | Tragedy |
Henry IV of France is a 1719 tragedy by the British writer Charles Beckingham. It portrays the reign of Henry IV of France, who was assassinated in 1610.
The play was written and produced a time when the Catholic Jacobite pretender James III was attempting to launch an invasion of Britain with the assistance of Spain, and reflects Whig concerns about Catholic power and the persecution of French Huguenots. Although a Catholic by the time of his death, Henry IV is portrayed as a defender of liberty and a victim of plotting by the Catholic factions at his court. [2]
The original cast included James Quin as Henry, Lacy Ryan as Prince of Conde, John Leigh as Duke of Vendome, John Ogden as Duke of Boullion, Thomas Smith as Villeyor, Richard Diggs as Rosny, John Harper as Montmorency, Christopher Bullock as Nuncio, Anthony Boheme as French Bishop, John Egleton as Ravillac and Jane Rogers as Charlotta. The epilogue was written by George Sewell.
George IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 29 January 1820 until his death in 1830. At the time of his accession to the throne, he was acting as prince regent for his father, King George III, having done so since 5 February 1811 during his father's final mental illness.
Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written near 1599. It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. In the First Quarto text, it was titled The Cronicle History of Henry the fift, and The Life of Henry the Fifth in the First Folio text.
Henry V, also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England from 1413 until his death in 1422. Despite his relatively short reign, Henry's outstanding military successes in the Hundred Years' War against France made England one of the strongest military powers in Europe. Immortalised in Shakespeare's "Henriad" plays, Henry is known and celebrated as one of the greatest warrior-kings of medieval England.
Henry VI was King of England from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471, and disputed King of France from 1422 to 1453. The only child of Henry V, he succeeded to the English throne at the age of nine months upon his father's death, and succeeded, disputedly, to the French throne on the death of his maternal grandfather, Charles VI, shortly afterwards.
Elizabeth Woodville, later known as Dame Elizabeth Grey, was Queen of England from her marriage to King Edward IV on 1 May 1464 until Edward was deposed on 3 October 1470, and again from Edward's resumption of the throne on 11 April 1471 until his death on 9 April 1483. She was a key figure in the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic civil war between the Lancastrian and the Yorkist factions between 1455 and 1487.
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, was the sixth child and third surviving son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the brother of English kings Edward IV and Richard III. He played an important role in the dynastic struggle between rival factions of the Plantagenets now known as the Wars of the Roses.
James IV was King of Scotland from 11 June 1488 until his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. He inherited the throne at the age of fifteen on the death of his father, James III, at the Battle of Sauchieburn, following a rebellion in which the younger James was the figurehead of the rebels. James IV is generally regarded as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs. He was responsible for a major expansion of the Scottish royal navy, which included the founding of two royal dockyards and the acquisition or construction of 38 ships, including the Michael, the largest warship of its time.
Henry IV, also known by the epithets Good King Henry or Henry the Great, was King of Navarre from 1572 and King of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first monarch of France from the House of Bourbon, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. He pragmatically balanced the interests of the Catholic and Protestant parties in France as well as among the European states. He was assassinated in 1610 by a Catholic zealot, and was succeeded by his son Louis XIII.
Henry Benedict Thomas Edward Maria Clement Francis Xavier Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York was a Roman Catholic cardinal, as well as the fourth and final Jacobite heir to publicly claim the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland. Unlike his father, James Francis Edward Stuart, and brother, Charles Edward Stuart, Henry made no effort to seize the thrones. After Charles's death in January 1788, the papacy did not recognise Henry as the lawful ruler of Great Britain and Ireland. It instead referred to him as the Cardinal Duke of York.
Henry III was King of France from 1574 until his assassination in 1589, as well as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.
Duke of York is a title of nobility in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Since the 15th century, it has, when granted, usually been given to the second son of English monarchs. The equivalent title in the Scottish peerage was Duke of Albany. However, King George II and King George III granted the titles Duke of York and Albany.
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was a prominent English politician and nobleman of the Tudor era. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of his dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.
James VI and I was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death in 1625. Although he long tried to get both countries to adopt a closer political union, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, both ruled by James in personal union.
Henry I, Prince of Joinville, Duke of Guise, Count of Eu, sometimes called Le Balafré ('Scarface'), was the eldest son of Francis, Duke of Guise, and Anna d'Este. His maternal grandparents were Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and Renée of France. Through his maternal grandfather, he was a descendant of Lucrezia Borgia and Pope Alexander VI.
Edmund, Earl of Rutland was the fourth child and second surviving son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. He was a younger brother of Edward, Earl of March, the future King Edward IV who came to the throne in 1461, the year after Edmund's death. He was born in Rouen, then the capital of English-occupied France and his father held the office of Lieutenant of France. He was killed at the age of 17 either during or shortly after the Battle of Wakefield, during the Wars of the Roses.
The siege of Rouen was an unsuccessful attempt by Henry IV of France to capture Rouen, the historical capital city of Normandy. The battle took place as part of the French Wars of Religion, the Eighty Years' War, and the Anglo–Spanish War (1585–1604). Although he had claimed the throne in 1589, Henry, a Huguenot, was not recognized by many of his Catholic subjects, and he was forced to fight against a Catholic League determined to resist his rule, and which was aided by Spain.
The Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey, often shortened to Lady Jane Grey, is a 1715 tragedy by the British writer Nicholas Rowe. It portrays the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey, a pretender to the English throne following the death of Edward VI and her defeat and execution by Mary I in 1554. The title role was played by the prominent actress Anne Oldfield. The cast also included John Mills as the Duke of Northumberland, Barton Booth as Lord Guilford Dudley and Lacy Ryan as the Earl of Sussex, Colley Cibber as Bishop Gardiner, James Quin as the Lieutenant of the Tower and Mary Porter as the Duchess of Suffolk.
The Non-Juror is a 1717 comedy play by the British writer Colley Cibber. It is inspired by Molière's 1664 work Tartuffe.
The Massacre of Paris is a 1689 tragedy by the English writer Nathaniel Lee. It was first staged by the United Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It is based around the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre which led the killing of many Huguenots during the French Wars of Religion. The events had previously been portrayed in Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan play The Massacre at Paris.
Tamerlane is a 1701 history play by the English writer Nicholas Rowe. A tragedy, it portrays the life of the Timur, the fourteenth century conqueror and founder of the Timurid Empire. Rowe, a staunch Whig, used the historical story as an allegory for the life of William III who resembles his portrayal of Tamerlane while his opponent the Ottoman leader Bayezid I was equivalent to William's longstanding opponent Louis XIV of France. An earlier version of the story Tamburlaine was written by Christopher Marlowe during the Elizabethan era with a very different focus in the context of the English Renaissance.