Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the preeminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.
Timothy James Curry is an English actor and singer. He rose to prominence as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), reprising the role he had originated in the 1973 London, 1974 Los Angeles, and 1975 Broadway musical stage productions of The Rocky Horror Show.
Alfred Leslie Rowse was a British historian and writer, best known for his work on Elizabethan England and books relating to Cornwall.
Anne Gwendolyn "Wendy" Craig is an English actress who is best known for her appearances in the sitcoms Not in Front of the Children, ...And Mother Makes Three, ...And Mother Makes Five and Butterflies. She played the role of Matron in the TV series The Royal (2003–2011).
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.
Harry Stewart Fleetwood Andrews, CBE was an English actor known for his film portrayals of tough military officers. His performance as Regimental Sergeant Major Wilson in The Hill (1965) alongside Sean Connery earned Andrews the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination for the 1966 BAFTA Award for Best British Actor. The first of his more than 80 film appearances was in The Red Beret in 1953.
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration. A handful of these plays, including Rumpole of the Bailey, subsequently became television series in their own right.
Nicholas Anthony Phillip Clay was an English actor.
The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer, known as Edward II, is a Renaissance or early modern period play written by Christopher Marlowe. It is one of the earliest English history plays, and focuses on the relationship between King Edward II of England and Piers Gaveston, and Edward's murder on the orders of Roger Mortimer.
Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington is an English actor, director and writer. Together with director Michael Bogdanov, he founded the English Shakespeare Company in 1986 and was its Joint Artistic Director until 1992. He has written ten books, directed in the UK, US, Romania and Japan, and is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is best known for his role as Moff Jerjerrod in the original Star Wars trilogy film Return of the Jedi.
Eric Richard Porter was an English actor of stage, film and television.
Christopher Benjamin is an English retired actor with many stage and television credits since the 1960s. His television roles include three appearances in Doctor Who, portraying Sir Keith Gold in Inferno (1970), Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) and Colonel Hugh Curbishley in The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008). He also provided the voice of Rowf in the animated film The Plague Dogs (1982). His radio acting career included two BBC Radio adaptations of Christopher Lee's crime drama Colvil and Soames.
Robert Emrys James was a Welsh Shakespearean actor. He also performed in many theatre and TV parts between 1960 and 1989, and was an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was born in Machynlleth, the son of a railwayman, and attended the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
David Schofield is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Ian Mercer in the films Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007). He also appeared in the films An American Werewolf in London (1981), Gladiator (2000), From Hell (2001), Valkyrie (2008), The Wolfman (2010) and Darkest Hour (2017).
Dominic Jephcott is a RADA-trained English actor and writer. He is known for his work in The Beiderbecke Affair, The Beiderbecke Connection, Midsomer Murders, and in Holby City and Casualty, as the adulterous Doctor Alistair Taylor.
Julian Burnlee Curry was an English actor best known for playing Claude Erskine-Browne in ITV's legal comedy-drama Rumpole of the Bailey.
Bill is a 2015 British family adventure comedy film from the principal performers behind children's TV series Horrible Histories and Yonderland. It was produced by Punk Cinema, Cowboy Films and BBC Films and was released in the UK on 18 September 2015 by Vertigo Films. The film is a fictional take on the young William Shakespeare's search for fame and fortune, as written by Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond and directed by Richard Bracewell who co-produced with Tony Bracewell, Alasdair Flind and Charles Steel. It features the six lead performers playing several different roles each including Mathew Baynton, Martha Howe-Douglas, Ben Willbond, Simon Farnaby, Jim Howick and Laurence Rickard. Bill has received mostly positive reviews from critics and grossed $968,534 worldwide. The film also received nominations for the Evening Standard British Film Award for Award for Comedy and the Into Film Award for Family Film of the Year.
Isabella of France was Queen of England and the daughter of Philip IV of France. Sometimes called the "She-Wolf of France", she was a key figure in the rebellion which deposed her husband, Edward II of England, in favor of their eldest son Edward III. This event, as well as Isabella's affair with Roger Mortimer and Edward II's relationships with Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser the Younger, have prompted Isabella's portrayal multiple times in literature and visual media.
Upstart Crow is a British sitcom based on the life of William Shakespeare written by Ben Elton. The show premiered on 9 May 2016 on BBC Two as part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Its title quotes "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers", a critique of Shakespeare by his rival Robert Greene in the latter's Groats-Worth of Wit.
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), English playwright and poet, has appeared in works of fiction since the nineteenth century. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, and has been suggested as an alternative author of Shakespeare's works, an idea not accepted in mainstream scholarship. Marlowe, alleged to have been a government spy and frequently claimed to have been homosexual, was killed in 1593.
