Drama was introduced to Britain from Europe by the Romans, and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose.
The Abbey Theatre, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland, in Dublin, Ireland, is one of the country's leading cultural institutions. First opening to the public on 27 December 1904, and moved from its original building after a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day. The Abbey was the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world; from 1925 onwards it received an annual subsidy from the Irish Free State. Since July 1966, the Abbey has been located at 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1.
Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, writer, collector of folklore, and a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival. His best known play The Playboy of the Western World was poorly received, due to its bleak ending, depiction of Irish peasants, and idealisation of parricide, leading to hostile audience reactions and riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre, which he had co-founded with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. His other major works include In the Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), and The Tinker's Wedding (1909).
The history of Irish theatre begins in the Middle Ages and was for a long time confined to the courts of the Gaelic and "Old English" – descendants of 12th-century Norman invaders – inhabitants of Ireland. The first theatre building in Ireland was the Werburgh Street Theatre, founded in 1637, followed by the Smock Alley Theatre in 1662.
The well-made play is a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre, developed by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. It is characterised by concise plotting, compelling narrative and a largely standardised structure, with little emphasis on characterisation and intellectual ideas.
Victorian literature is English literature during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The 19th century is considered by some to be the Golden Age of English Literature, especially for British novels. It was in the Victorian era that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. English writing from this era reflects the major transformations in most aspects of English life, from scientific, economic, and technological advances to changes in class structures and the role of religion in society. The number of new novels published each year increased from 100 at the start of the period to 1000 by the end of it. Famous novelists from this period include Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, the three Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling.
Maire O'Neill was an Irish actress of stage and film. She holds a place in theatre history as the first actress to interpret the lead character of Pegeen Mike Flaherty in John Millington Synge's controversial masterpiece The Playboy of the Western World (1907).
Nineteenth-century theatre describes a wide range of movements in the theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. In the West, they include Romanticism, melodrama, the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou, the farces of Feydeau, the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism, Wagner's operatic Gesamtkunstwerk, Gilbert and Sullivan's plays and operas, Wilde's drawing-room comedies, Symbolism, and proto-Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen.
John Ramsay Allardyce Nicoll was a Scottish literary scholar and teacher.
Elizabeth Baker was an English playwright whose plays explored class, gender and the domestic and professional lives of the lower middle classes.
Theatre of United Kingdom plays an important part in British culture, and the countries that constitute the UK have had a vibrant tradition of theatre since the Renaissance with roots going back to the Roman occupation.
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, are called Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. However, following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form of English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became widespread. Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), author of The Canterbury Tales, was a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the King James Bible (1611), and the Great Vowel Shift.
John Palgrave Simpson (1807–1887), commonly referred to as "Palgrave Simpson", was a Victorian playwright. He wrote more than fifty pieces in a variety of genres, including dramas, comedies, operas, and spectacles, between 1850 and 1885. Simpson also published novels, travel books and journalistic commentaries. He served as secretary of the Dramatic Authors' Society from 1868 to 1883. He is buried in St Thomas's Roman Catholic cemetery in Fulham.
The Woman's World was a Victorian women's magazine published by Cassell between 1886 and 1890, edited by Oscar Wilde between 1887 and 1889, and by Ella Hepworth Dixon from 1888.
George Rowell was a British theatre historian, lecturer and authority on the 19th century. His specialisms included Victorian melodrama and the theatre of Henry Irving, W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Wing Pinero.
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory.
The history of theatre charts the development of theatre over the past 2,500 years. While performative elements are present in every society, it is customary to acknowledge a distinction between theatre as an art form and entertainment, and theatrical or performative elements in other activities. The history of theatre is primarily concerned with the origin and subsequent development of the theatre as an autonomous activity. Since classical Athens in the 5th century BC, vibrant traditions of theatre have flourished in cultures across the world.
Mark Melford born in Fareham, Hampshire, was a British "dramatic author, actor and variety artiste".
Strafford is an 1837 tragedy by the British writer Robert Browning. It portrays the downfall and execution of Lord Strafford, the advisor to Charles I shortly before the English Civil War.
Old Maids is an 1841 comedy play by the Irish writer James Sheridan Knowles. It was first staged at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 12 October 1841. The cast included John Harley as John Blount, George Vandenhoff as Thomas Blount, Walter Lacy as Robert, Robert William Honner as Harris, William Payne as Stephen, Alfred Wigan as Jacob, Lucia Elizabeth Vestris as Lady Blance and Louisa Nisbett as Lady Anne. It was produced towards the end of the theatrical career of Sheridan Knowles, before he turned to novel-writing.
