Columbina is a stock character in the commedia dell'arte. She is Harlequin's mistress, a comic servant playing the tricky slave type, and wife of Pierrot. Rudlin and Crick use the Italian spelling Colombina in Commedia dell'Arte: A Handbook for Troupes.
John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
Eleanor Gwyn was an English stage actress and celebrity figure of the Restoration period. Praised by Samuel Pepys for her comic performances as one of the first actresses on the English stage, she became best known for being a long-time mistress of King Charles II of England.
Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet, was an English noble, dramatist and politician. He was principally remembered for his wit and profligacy.
Hermione Youlanda Ruby Clinton-Baddeley was an English actress of theatre, film and television. She typically played brash, vulgar characters, often referred to as "brassy" or "blowsy". She found her milieu in revue, in which she played from the 1930s to the 1950s, co-starring several times with the English actress Hermione Gingold.
Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel first published in 1740 by the English writer Samuel Richardson. Considered one of the first true English novels, it serves as Richardson's version of conduct literature about marriage.
François de Blanchefort de Créquy, later Marquis de Marines, 2 October 1629 to 3 February 1687, was a 17th-century French noble and soldier, who served in the wars of Louis XIV of France.
A Mad World, My Masters is a Jacobean stage play written by Thomas Middleton, a comedy first performed around 1605 and first published in 1608. The title had been used by a pamphleteer, Nicholas Breton, in 1603, and was later the origin for the title of Stanley Kramer's 1963 film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
The heroic drama Oedipus: A Tragedy, is an adaption of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, written by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee. After being licensed in 1678 and published in 1679, it became a huge success on stage during the Restoration period.
Northward Ho is an early Jacobean era stage play, a satire and city comedy written by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, and first published in 1607. Northward Ho was a response to Eastward Ho (1605) by Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston, which in its turn was a response to Westward Ho, an earlier play by Dekker and Webster. Taken together, the three dramas form a trilogy of "directional plays" that show the state of satirical and social drama in the first decade of the 17th century.
The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter is a Restoration comedy by George Etherege, written in 1676. The play is set in Restoration London and follows the womanizer Dorimant as he tries to win over the young heiress Harriet and to disengage himself from his affair with Mrs. Loveit. Despite the subtitle, the fop Sir Fopling is only one of several minor characters; the rake Dorimant is the protagonist.
Oliver Twist is the title character and protagonist of the 1838 novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. He was the first child protagonist in an English novel.
A Mad Couple Well-Match'd is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Richard Brome. It was first published in the 1653 Brome collection Five New Plays, issued by the booksellers Humphrey Moseley, Richard Marriot, and Thomas Dring.
Sullivan was a three-act comedy by Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier de Mélésville, based on the short story Garrick Médecin. It was first played at Paris, in the Théâtre-Français, November 11, 1852. The original cast was:
The Author's Farce and the Pleasures of the Town is a play by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding, first performed on 30 March 1730 at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. Written in response to the Theatre Royal's rejection of his earlier plays, The Author's Farce was Fielding's first theatrical success. The Little Theatre allowed Fielding the freedom to experiment, and to alter the traditional comedy genre. The play ran during the early 1730s and was altered for its run starting 21 April 1730 and again in response to the Actor Rebellion of 1733. Throughout its life, the play was coupled with several different plays, including The Cheats of Scapin and Fielding's Tom Thumb.
Dear Brutus is a 1917 fantasy play by J. M. Barrie, depicting alternative realities for its characters and their eventual return to real life. The title is a reference to a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves".
The Uncanny is a 1977 British-Canadian anthology horror film directed by Denis Héroux, written by Michel Parry, and starring Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, Ray Milland, Joan Greenwood, Donald Pilon, Samantha Eggar, and John Vernon.
The Speckled Band is a 1931 British mystery film directed by Jack Raymond and starring Lyn Harding, Raymond Massey and Angela Baddeley. It is an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's original 1892 story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and the 1910 play he adapted from it, The Speckled Band.
Corporal Nym is a fictional character who appears in two Shakespeare plays, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry V. He later appears in spin-off works by other writers. Nym is a soldier and criminal follower of Sir John Falstaff and a friend and rival of Ancient Pistol.
If Winter Comes is a novel by A. S. M. Hutchinson, first published in 1921. It deals with an unhappy marriage, eventual divorce, and an unwed mother who commits suicide. It was a bestseller on publication, and was adapted into film in 1923 and 1947.
