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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1715.
Nicholas Rowe, English dramatist, poet and miscellaneous writer, was appointed Poet Laureate in 1715. His plays and poems were well-received during his lifetime, with one of his translations described as one of the greatest productions in English poetry. He was also considered the first editor of the works of William Shakespeare.
Barton Booth was one of the most famous dramatic actors of the first part of the 18th century.
Anne Bracegirdle was an English actress.
Lothario is a male given name that came to suggest an unscrupulous seducer of women, based upon a character in The Fair Penitent, a 1703 tragedy by Nicholas Rowe. In Rowe's play, Lothario is a libertine who seduces and betrays Calista; and his success is the source for the proverbial nature of the name in the subsequent English culture. It was first mentioned in this sense in 1756 in The World, the 18th century London weekly newspaper, No. 202. Samuel Richardson used “haughty, gallant, gay Lothario” as the model for the self-indulgent Robert Lovelace in his novel Clarissa (1748), and Calista suggested the character of Clarissa Harlowe. Edward Bulwer-Lytton used the name allusively in his 1849 novel The Caxtons. Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers (1857) wrote of "the elegant fluency of a practised Lothario".
The Fair Penitent is Nicholas Rowe's stage adaptation of the tragedy The Fatal Dowry, the Philip Massinger and Nathan Field collaboration first published in 1632. Rowe's adaptation, premiered onstage in 1702 and first published in 1703, was a great popular success through much of the 18th century, and was praised by critics as demanding as Samuel Johnson.
The Biter is a 1704 play by the English writer Nicholas Rowe. Rowe was better known for his tragedies but chose to try his hand at comedy. Performed at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, it was not a great success and lasted for about six performances. It was overshadowed by the more popular The Careless Husband by Colley Cibber, which appeared at the Drury Lane Theatre. It was Rowe's only play in a contemporary setting, and he rapidly turned back to historical tragedies beginning with Ulysses (1705). Some sources reported Rowe defiantly and loudly laughing at the jokes during a performance, even while nobody else did.
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 Ambitious Stepmother is a 1700 tragedy by the British writer Nicholas Rowe. It was his debut play. Rowe set his play in Biblical times, but it had strong subtexts of the contemporary questions about the British succession that led to the Act of Settlement in 1701. At the court of Persia, Amestris schemes against her stepson Artaxerses.
The Royal Convert is a 1707 tragedy by the British writer Nicholas Rowe. The play is set in England during the Saxon era featuring two brothers in a love triangle with a young Christian woman.
The What D'Ye Call It is a 1715 farce by the British writer John Gay. It was written as a parody of tragic plays, with particular reference to Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd.
The Generous Conqueror is a 1701 tragedy by the English writer Bevil Higgons. It was published in January the following year, and is sometimes dated 1702 by this. Higgons was a well-known Jacobite who had been implicated in the 1696 Jacobite assassination plot against William III. In this play he effectively called for the peaceful succession of the pretender to the throne as James III.
Theophilus Keene (1680-1718) was an Anglo-Irish stage actor and theatre manager.
Hecuba is a 1726 tragedy by the British writer Richard West. It is named after Hecuba a figure in Greek Mythology from the time of the Trojan War.
The Virgin Prophetess, or The Fate of Troy is a 1701 tragedy by Elkanah Settle featuring music by Gottfried Finger. It is a semi-opera with masque-like elements breaking up the scenes.
The Victim is a 1714 tragedy by the British writer Charles Johnson.
George Pack was a British stage actor, singer and theatre manager of the eighteenth century. His first known performance on the London stage was as Westmoreland in Shakespeare's Henry IV at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and he remained with the company until it transferred to the Queens's Theatre in the Haymarket in 1705. He played in a mixture of comedies and tragedies, originating roles in plays by many of the leading dramatists of the era including Nicholas Rowe, Mary Pix, John Vanbrugh and Susanna Centlivre.
Elizabeth Bowman was an English stage actor of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The daughter of Sir Francis Watson, 1st Baronet she was adopted by the actor manager Thomas Betterton. In 1692 she married John Bowman and began acting at Drury Lane the following year as Mrs Bowman. She was a member of the United Company until 1695 then joined Betterton's breakaway at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre.
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.
The Tragedy of Jane Shore is a 1714 historical tragedy by the British writer Nicholas Rowe. It was his penultimate play, and was inspired by the life of Jane Shore the mistress of Edward IV.
