Background
He was born about 1642, at Santon Hall, Norfolk, according to his son's account.
(To the mbft l Uuftrious Prince WILL I AM, Duke, Marcluis,...)
To the mbft l Uuftrious Prince WILL I AM, Duke, Marcluis, and Ear iO FS(EJF JST LE; dec: May it pkafe your Grace, He Fa vours haie been fo many and fo great which your Grace suntpearied Bounty has conferred upon me ,that I cannot omit this oportunity of telling the World how much I haye been obliged and by whom. My Gratitude mil notfuffer me .to fmother the favours in file nee nor the Pride they have raised me to let me conceal the Name offo Excellent a Patron. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org
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( First published in 1676, The Virtuoso set a standard fo...)
First published in 1676, The Virtuoso set a standard for theatrical satire. It was the most extensive dramatic treatment of modern science since Jonson's The Alchemist and took as its target no less than the Royal Society of London. Shadwell's barbs hit their targets often and cleanly. In 1689 he became Poet Laureate of England, a position he held until his death in 1692. The virtuoso of the title is Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, who like many after him confuses the extent of a collection with the depth of a science. Sir Gimcrack is fascinated by the geography of the moon, the worlds in his microscope, and the possibilities of human flight. More seriously andfor Shadwell's audiencemore comically, his obsession with his arrays of worms and spiders proceeds at the expense of his wife and two beautiful nieces. The play also introduces Sir Formal Trifle, a pedantic ciceronian orator and coxcomb. His character established thereafter the theatrical type of the know-it-all blowhard. Famous for its wit and high-speed changes, The Virtuoso is also a display of the prestige of modern science and the pomposity of its ameteurs.
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(Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692) wrote a number of comic plays...)
Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692) wrote a number of comic plays during his life. His drama featured broadly-based, coarse humor, and is filled with crude-but-vibrant characters drawn from the streets of Restoration London, individuals such as sharpers, whores, and eccentrics. His work is essentially plotless, but reeks with the odor of real people. Frank J. Morlock has created a composite drama (with plot!) from Shadwell's many works, but particularly employing pieces of The Woman Captain, The Squire of Alsatia, The Sullen Lovers, and The Virtuoso. The result is an hilarious masterpiece that's as timeless and as entertaining as the best of modern comedy.
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(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. It was produced from digital images created through the libraries mass digitization efforts. The digital images were cleaned and prepared for printing through automated processes. Despite the cleaning process, occasional flaws may still be present that were part of the original work itself, or introduced during digitization. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library at www.hathitrust.org.
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He was born about 1642, at Santon Hall, Norfolk, according to his son's account.
He was educated at Bury St Edmund's School, and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he was entered in 1656. He left the university without a degree, and joined the Middle Temple.
In 1668 he produced a prose comedy, The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents, based on Les Fdcheux of Moliere, and written in avowed imitation of Ben Jonson. His best plays are Epsom Wells (1672), for which Sir Charles Sedley wrote a prologue, and the Squire of Alsatia (1688). Alsatia was the cant name for Whitefriars, then a kind of sanctuary for persons liable to arrest, and the play represents, in dialogue full of the argot of the place, the adventures of a young heir who falls into the hand of the sharpers there. For fourteen years from the production of his first comedy to his memorable encounter with Dryden, Shadwell produced a play nearly every year. These productions display a genuine hatred of shams, and a rough but honest moral purpose. They are disfigured by indecencies, but present a vivid picture of contemporary manners.
Shadwell is chiefly remembered as the unfortunate Mac Flecknoe of Dryden's satire, the "last great prophet of tautology, " and the literary son and heir of Richard Flecknoe: "The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. " Dryden had furnished Shadwell with a prologue to his True Widow (1679), and in spite of momentary differences, the two had been apparently on friendly terms. But when Dryden joined the court party, and produced Absalom and Achitophel and The Medal, Shadwell became the champion of the true-blue Protestants, and made a scurrilous attack on the poet in The Medal of John Bayes: a Satire against Folly and Knavery (1682). Dryden immediately retorted in Mac Flecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T. S. (1682), in which Shadwell's personalities were returned with interest. A month later he contributed to Nahum Tate's continuation of Absalom and Achitophel satirical portraits of Elkanah Settle as Doeg and of Shadwell as Og. In 1687 Shadwell attempted to answer these attacks in a version of the tenth satire of Juvenal. At the Whig triumph in 1688 he superseded his enemy as poet laureate and historiographer royal. He died at Chelsea on the 19th of November 1692.
(To the mbft l Uuftrious Prince WILL I AM, Duke, Marcluis,...)
(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
( First published in 1676, The Virtuoso set a standard fo...)
(Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692) wrote a number of comic plays...)
Quotations:
"The haste of a fool is the slowest thing in the world. "
"Hope is a very thin diet. "
'Every man loves what he is good at. "
"I am, out of the ladies' company, like a fish out of the water. "
His son, Charles Shadwell was also a playwright.