The Country Attorney

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The Country Attorney
Written by Richard Cumberland
Date premiered July 7, 1787 (1787-07-07)
Place premiered Haymarket Theatre

The Country Attorney is a 1787 comic play by the British writer Richard Cumberland. It was first performed at the Haymarket Theatre on 7 July 1787. [1] The play was reworked and much of it used again by Cumberland for the 1789 play The School for Widows .

A comedy is entertainment consisting of jokes intended to make an audience laugh. For ancient Greeks and Romans a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, the Divine Comedy.

Richard Cumberland (dramatist) English dramatist and civil servant (1732–1811)

Richard Cumberland was an English dramatist and civil servant. In 1771 his hit play The West Indian was first staged. During the American War of Independence he acted as a secret negotiator with Spain in an effort to secure a peace agreement between the two nations. He also edited a short-lived critical journal called The London Review (1809). His plays are often remembered for their sympathetic depiction of colonial characters and others generally considered to be on the margins of society.
N.b. Cambridgeshire Family History Society have transcribed his baptism record & quote his birth as 19th Feb 1731, Baptism date 5 Mar 1731.
The Oxford University and City Herald 18 May 1811 : Deaths : Richard Cumberland esq., author of the Observer Aged 80.
The Society of Genealogists have a burial record for Richard Cumberland 1731-1811 buried at Westminster Abbey.

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References

  1. Watson p.1968

Bibliography