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A tetralogy (from Greek τετρα- tetra- , "four" and -λογία -logia, "discourse") is a compound work that is made up of four distinct works. The name comes from the Attic theater, in which a tetralogy was a group of three tragedies followed by a satyr play, all by one author, to be played in one sitting at the Dionysia as part of a competition. [1]
| Tetralogy | Dates | Author |
| The Ring Cycle [4] | 1848-1874 | Richard Wagner |
| Parade's End | 1924–1928 | Ford Madox Ford |
| The Master of Hestviken series | 1925-1927 | Sigrid Undset |
| Joseph and His Brothers | 1933-1943 | Thomas Mann |
| The Once and Future King | 1938–1958 | T. H. White |
| The Alexandria Quartet | 1957–1960 | Lawrence Durrell |
| Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy | 1960–1990 | John Updike |
| The Raj Quartet | 1965–1975 | Paul Scott |
| The History of the Runestaff | 1967–1969 | Michael Moorcock |
| The Space Odyssey series | 1968–1997 | Arthur C. Clarke |
| The Sea of Fertility | 1969–1971 | Yukio Mishima |
| The Quartet [5] | 1978–2002 | A. S. Byatt |
| The Book of the New Sun | 1980–1983 | Gene Wolfe |
| The Buru Quartet | 1980–1988 | Pramoedya Ananta Toer |
| The Hannibal Lecter series | 1981–2006 | Thomas Harris |
| The Lonesome Dove series | 1985–1997 | Larry McMurtry |
| The L.A. Quartet | 1987-1992 | James Ellroy |
| The Neapolitan Novels | 2011-2014 | Elena Ferrante |
In the early modern period of literature, Shakespeare drafted a pair of tetralogies, the first consisting of the three Henry VI plays and Richard III , and the second, what we now call a prequel because it is set earlier, consisting of Richard II , the two Henry IV plays, and Henry V . [7]
As an alternative to "tetralogy", "quartet" is sometimes used, particularly for series of four books. The term "quadrilogy", using the Latin prefix quadri- instead of the Greek, and first recorded in 1865, [8] has also been used for marketing the Alien movies.
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.
Sir Patrick Stewart is an English actor who has a career spanning seven decades in various stage productions, television, film and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 16 December 1996. In 2010, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama.
Prospero is a fictional character and the protagonist of William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, whose usurping brother, Antonio, had put him to sea on a "rotten carcass" of a boat to die, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda had survived and found exile on a small island. He has learned sorcery from books, and uses it while on the island to protect Miranda and control the other characters.
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor, narrator, and theatre director. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor in theatre, film, television, and radio. He has appeared as reciter with orchestras and performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2002. He has narrated several documentary series, including five for the BBC about the Second World War.
Sir Derek George Jacobi is an English actor. Jacobi is known for his work at the Royal National Theatre and for his film and television roles. He has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, two Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Tony Award. He was given a knighthood for his services to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt, is an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer. Her books have been widely translated, into more than thirty languages.
Annette Carol Bening is an American actress. She has received various accolades throughout her career spanning over four decades, including a British Academy Film Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, and four Academy Awards.
William Louis Petersen is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his role as Gil Grissom in the CBS drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–2015), for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award; he was further nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards as a producer of the show. He reprised his role as Gil Grissom in the sequel CSI: Vegas, which premiered on October 6, 2021.
In Shakespearean scholarship, Henriad refers to a group of William Shakespeare's history plays. It is sometimes used to refer to a group of four plays, but some sources and scholars use the term to refer to eight plays. In the 19th century, Algernon Charles Swinburne used the term to refer to three plays, but that use is not current.
Dame Harriet Mary Walter is a British actress. She has received a Laurence Olivier Award as well as numerous nominations including for a Tony Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2011, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to drama.
A pentalogy is a compound literary or narrative work that is explicitly divided into five parts. Although modern use of the word implies both that the parts are reasonably self-contained and that the structure was intended by the author, historically, neither was necessarily true: in fact, a pentalogia could be assembled by a later editor, just as Plotinus's Enneads were arranged in nines by Porphyry in order to create an overarching structure of six which would express the idea of perfection.
History is one of the three main genres in Western theatre alongside tragedy and comedy, although it originated, in its modern form, thousands of years later than the other primary genres. For this reason, it is often treated as a subset of tragedy. A play in this genre is known as a history play and is based on a historical narrative, often set in the medieval or early modern past. History emerged as a distinct genre from tragedy in Renaissance England. The best known examples of the genre are the history plays written by William Shakespeare, whose plays still serve to define the genre. History plays also appear elsewhere in British and Western literature, such as Thomas Heywood's Edward IV, Schiller's Mary Stuart or the Dutch play Gijsbrecht van Aemstel.
"Richard II" is first episode of the first series of the British television series The Hollow Crown, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name. "Richard II" was directed by Rupert Goold, who adapted the screenplay with Ben Power. Ben Whishaw stars as the titular Richard II of England. It was first broadcast on 30 June 2012 on BBC Two.
The Hollow Crown is a series of British television film adaptations of William Shakespeare's history plays.
The Star Trek franchise, begun in 1965, has frequently included stories inspired by and alluding to the works of William Shakespeare. The science fiction franchise includes television series, films, comic books, novels and games, and has material both Star Trek canon and non-canon. Many of the actors involved have been part of Shakespearean productions, including Patrick Stewart and Christopher Plummer.
A Whistling Woman is a 2002 novel by A. S. Byatt. The novel was published by Chatto & Windus in 2002.
I have always had a romantic idea that the writer or the artist was, as Coleridge and Virginia Woolf said, androgynous. The whole of The Virgin in the Garden quartet is about the desirability of an androgynous mind... JN & JF: I notice that the quartet which begins with The Virgin in the Garden is sometimes called The Frederica Quartet. ASB: My paperback publisher, you will be glad to hear, is going to make it a boxed set, and it's just going to be called The Quartet. It isn't Frederica's book--though she's the sort of person who would muscle in and try to take it!