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50-515: Edgar Selwyn (October 20, 1875 – February 13, 1944) was an American actor, playwright , director and producer on Broadway . A prominent figure in American theatre and film in the first half of the 20th century, he founded a theatrical production company with his brother, Archibald Selwyn , and owned a number of Selwyn Theatres in the United States. He transferred his talents from

100-482: A murder mystery play which is the longest-running West End show , it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 29,500th performance having taken place as of February 2024. Contemporary playwrights in the United States are affected by recent declines in theatre attendance. No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must use ticket sales as

150-523: A false poet, a vain, careless writer who plagiarised the works of others and whose own works were marked by bizarre diction and ugly neologisms. For his part, Marston may have satirized Jonson as the complacent, arrogant critic Brabant Senior in Jack Drum's Entertainment and as the envious, misanthropic playwright and satirist Lampatho Doria in What You Will . The Return from Parnassus (II) ,

200-512: A form of playwright. Outside of the Western world there is Indian classical drama , with one of the oldest known playwrights being Śudraka , whose attributed plays can be dated to the second century BC. The Nāṭya Shāstra , a text on the performing arts from between 500BC-500AD, categorizes playwrights as being among the members of a theatre company, although playwrights were generally the highest in social status, with some being kings. In

250-553: A pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston or Thomas Dekker : Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term "playwright" later again lost this negative connotation. The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are

300-429: A place among the great accomplishments of the period, they remained aware of his inconsistency, what Swinburne in a later generation called his "uneven and irregular demesne". In the twentieth century, however, a few critics were willing to consider Marston as a writer who was very much in control of the world he creates. T. S. Eliot saw that this "irregular demesne" was a part of Marston's world and declared that "It

350-654: A playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000. Today, theatre companies have new play development programs meant to develop new American voices in playwriting. Many regional theatres have hired dramaturges and literary managers in an effort to showcase various festivals for new work, or bring in playwrights for residencies. Funding through national organizations, such as

400-562: A prefatory poem for Jonson's Sejanus in 1605 and dedicated The Malcontent to Jonson. Yet in 1607 , he criticized Jonson for being too pedantic to make allowances for his audience or the needs of aesthetics. Outside of these tensions, Marston's career continued to prosper. In 1603, he became a shareholder in the Children of Blackfriars company, at that time known for steadily pushing the allowable limits of personal satire, violence, and lewdness on stage. He wrote and produced two plays with

450-640: A satire of popular taste and the vain imaginings of wealth to be found in Virginia . Chapman and Jonson were arrested for, according to Jonson, a few clauses that offended the Scots, but Marston escaped any imprisonment. The actual cause of arrest and details of the brief detainment are not certainly known; in the event, charges were dropped. In 1606, Marston seems to have offended and then soothed King James. First, in Parasitaster, or, The Fawn, he satirized

500-405: A satirical play performed at St. John's College, Cambridge in 1601 and 1602, characterised Marston as a poet whose writings see him "pissing against the world". If Jonson can be trusted, the animosity between himself and Marston went beyond the literary. He claimed to have beaten Marston and taken his pistol. However, the two playwrights were reconciled soon after the so-called War; Marston wrote

550-849: A sequel to the latter play; all three were performed by the company at Paul's. In 1601, he contributed poems to Robert Chester 's Love's Martyr. For Henslowe, he may have collaborated with Dekker, Day, and Haughton on Lust's Dominion . By 1601, he was well known in London literary circles, particularly in his role as enemy to the equally pugnacious Ben Jonson . Jonson, who reported to Drummond that Marston had accused him of sexual profligacy, satirized Marston as Clove in Every Man Out of His Humour , as Crispinus in Poetaster , and as Hedon in Cynthia's Revels . Jonson criticised Marston for being

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600-525: A source of income, which has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works being produced. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002–03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973–74. Playwrights commonly encounter difficulties in getting their shows produced and often cannot earn a living through their plays alone, leading them to take up other jobs to supplement their incomes. Many playwrights are also film makers . For instance, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock began his career as

650-562: A stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities , of action, place, and time. This meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, and that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed

700-632: Is Hans Sachs (1494–1576) who wrote 198 dramatic works. In England, The Second Shepherds' Play of the Wakefield Cycle is the best known early farce. However, farce did not appear independently in England until the 16th century with the work of John Heywood (1497–1580). Playwright William Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Most playwrights of

750-438: Is an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright ). The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in

800-542: Is still useful to playwrights today is the " French scene ", which is a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. Notable playwrights: Greek theater was alive and flourishing on the island of Crete. During the Cretan Renaissance two notable Greek playwrights Georgios Chortatzis and Vitsentzos Kornaros were present in

850-491: Is … by giving us the sense of something behind, more real than any of the personages and their action, that Marston establishes himself among the writers of genius". Marston's tragic style is Senecan and although his characters may appear, on Eliot's own admission, "lifeless", they are instead used as types to convey their "theoretical implications". Eliot in particular admired Sophonisba and saw how Marston's plays, with their apparently stylised characters and bitter portrayal of

900-469: The Ancient Greeks . These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides . The origins of Athenian tragedy remain obscure, though by

950-726: The Inns of Court . Traditionally, though without strong external attribution, Histriomastix has been regarded as his first play; performed by either the Children of Paul's or the students of the Middle Temple in around 1599 , it appears to have sparked the War of the Theatres , the literary feud between Marston, Jonson and Dekker that took place between around 1599 and 1602. In c. 1600, Marston wrote Jack Drum's Entertainment and Antonio and Mellida , and in 1601 he wrote Antonio's Revenge ,

1000-624: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Theatre Communications Group , encouraged the partnerships of professional theatre companies and emerging playwrights. Playwrights will often have a cold reading of a script in an informal sitdown setting, which allows them to evaluate their own plays and the actors performing them. Cold reading means that the actors haven't rehearsed the work, or may be seeing it for

1050-515: The RMS Titanic but did not make the trip as he had a prior engagement to hear the reading of a new play in Paris . They had had plans to accompany Broadway producer Henry B. Harris and his wife Renee with whom they had been touring Europe and Algiers . Selwyn's commitment to hearing the play, while others tried to goad him to board the ship, more than likely saved his life. His second wife

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1100-691: The Restoration . The subplot of the latter was converted to a droll during the Commonwealth ; after the Stuart Restoration, either Aphra Behn or Thomas Betterton updated the main plot for The Revenge, or The Match in Newgate , although this adaptation makes the play both more sentimental and less morally complex. Gerard Langbaine makes a laudatory but superficial comment about Marston in his survey of English dramatic poets. After

1150-449: The 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics , in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy. He then considered elements of drama: plot ( μύθος mythos ), character ( ἔθος ethos ), thought ( dianoia ), diction ( lexis ), music ( melodia ), and spectacle ( opsis ). Since the myths on which Greek tragedy were based were widely known, plot had to do with

1200-543: The 5th century it was institutionalised in competitions ( agon ) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility ). As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama), playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. For

1250-561: The Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and folk material such as faeries and other supernatural occurrences. Farces also rose dramatically in popularity after the 13th century. The majority of these plays come from France and Germany and are similar in tone and form, emphasizing sex and bodily excretions. The best known playwright of farces

1300-611: The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn . As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray. The Italian Renaissance brought about

1350-488: The Restoration, Marston's works were largely reduced to the status of a curiosity of literary history. The general resemblance of Antonio's Revenge to Hamlet and Marston's role in the war of the poets ensured that his plays would receive some scholarly attention, but they were not performed and were not even widely read. Thomas Warton preferred Marston's satires to Bishop Hall's; in the next century, however, Henry Hallam reversed this judgment. William Gifford , perhaps

1400-1245: The United States including the Park Square Theatre in Boston; the Hanna Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio; the Selwyn in Chicago; and the Selwyn , Apollo , and Times Square theatres in New York City. Selwyn also worked in Hollywood, producing and directing eight films between 1929 and 1942. Among these was The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), which Selwyn directed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . The film starred Helen Hayes , who won an Academy Award for her performance. Additionally, Selwyn wrote two screenplays and many more films were adapted from his original plays. He died in Los Angeles, California . In April 1912 Selwyn and his wife, playwright Margaret Mayo , held tickets to New York on

1450-420: The ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis , "the act of making". This is the source of the English word poet . Despite Chinese Theatre having performers dated back to the 6th century BC with You Meng , their perspective of theatre was such that plays had no other role than "performer" or "actor", but given that the performers were also the ones who invented their performances, they could be considered

1500-404: The arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by choice and by action. Tragedy is mimesis —"the imitation of an action that is serious". He developed his notion of hamartia , or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist , which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play. There were also a number of secular performances staged in

1550-569: The company of Blackfriars. His departure from the literary scene may have been because of another play, now lost, which offended the king. It seems that the French ambassador complained to King James about the disrespectful treatment of the French court in plays by Chapman performed at Blackfriars. To strengthen his case he added that another play had been performed in which James himself was depicted drunk. Incensed, James suspended performances at Blackfriars and had Marston imprisoned. This suggests that he

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1600-677: The company. The first was The Malcontent in 1603; this satiric tragicomedy is Marston's most famous play. This work was originally written for the children at Blackfriars, and was later taken over (perhaps stolen) by the Kings' Men at the Globe, with additions by John Webster and (perhaps) Marston himself. Marston's second play for the Blackfriars children was The Dutch Courtesan , a satire on lust and hypocrisy, in 1604–5. In 1605, he worked with George Chapman and Ben Jonson on Eastward Ho ,

1650-402: The eighteenth century's most devoted reader of Jonson, called Marston "the most scurrilous, filthy and obscene writer of his time". The Romantic movement in English literature resuscitated Marston's reputation, albeit unevenly. In his lectures, William Hazlitt praised Marston's genius for satire; however, if the romantic critics and their successors were willing to grant Marston's best work

1700-539: The first time, and usually, the technical requirements are minimal. The O'Neill Festival offers summer retreats for young playwrights to develop their work with directors and actors. Playwriting collectives like 13P and Orbiter 3 gather members together to produce, rather than develop, new works. The idea of the playwriting collective is in response to plays being stuck in the development process and never advancing to production. John Marston (playwright) John Marston (baptised 7 October 1576 – 25 June 1634)

1750-477: The hope that he would give up such vanities. He married Mary Wilkes in 1605, daughter of the Reverend William Wilkes, one of King James 's chaplains . Marston's brief career in literature began with a foray into the then-fashionable genres of erotic epyllion and satire . In 1598, he published The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and Certaine Satyres , a book of poetry in imitation of, on

1800-501: The king specifically. However, in the summer of that year, he put on a production of The Dutch Courtesan for the King of Denmark 's visit, with a Latin verse on King James that was presented by hand to the king. Finally, in 1607, he wrote The Entertainment at Ashby , a masque for the Earl of Huntingdon . At that point, he stopped his dramatic career altogether, selling his shares in

1850-490: The latter part of the 16th century. The plays of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , and other Sturm und Drang playwrights inspired a growing faith in feeling and instinct as guides to moral behavior and were part of the German romanticism movement. Aleksandr Ostrovsky was Russia's first professional playwright). Author and playwright Agatha Christie wrote The Moustrap ,

1900-410: The legend " Oblivioni Sacrum " ("Sacred to Oblivion"), which was probably composed by Marston, and, according to Joshua Scodel, the short "epitaph is thus both self-abasing and witty in its novel inversion of tradition". Marston's reputation has varied widely, like that of most of the minor Renaissance dramatists. Both The Malcontent and The Dutch Courtesan remained on stage in altered forms through

1950-564: The literary scene as the fad for verse satire was to be checked by censors. The Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and the Bishop of London Richard Bancroft banned the Scourge and had it publicly burned, along with copies of works by other satirists, on 4 June 1599. In September 1599, John Marston began to work for Philip Henslowe as a playwright. Following the work of O. J. Campbell, it has commonly been thought that Marston turned to

2000-571: The one hand, Ovid , and, on the other, the Satires of Juvenal . He also published another book of satires, The Scourge of Villanie , in 1598. (Marston issued these satires under the pseudonym "W. Kinsayder.") The satire in these books is even more savage and misanthropic than was typical for the decade's satirists. Marston's style is, moreover, in places contorted to the point of unintelligibility: he believed that satire should be rough and obscure, perhaps because he thought (as did many other writers of

2050-407: The period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. In England, after the interregnum , and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy. Between

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2100-738: The stage to motion pictures, and directed a film for which Helen Hayes received the Academy Award for Best Actress . Selwyn co-founded Goldwyn Pictures in 1916. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio , Selwyn flourished in the Broadway theater as an actor, playwright , director , and producer from 1899 to 1942. With his brother Archibald Selwyn (November 3, 1877 – June 21, 1959) he founded the theatrical production company The Selwyns which produced plays on Broadway from 1919 to 1932 (see, e.g., Wedding Bells ). The Selwyns owned several theatres in

2150-557: The subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for behavior and language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, thus, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, and Shakespeare 's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy, improvised and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. One structural unit that

2200-464: The theatre in response to the Bishops' Ban of 1599 ; more recent scholars have noted that the ban was not enforced with great rigor and might not have intimidated prospective satirists at all. At any rate, Marston proved a good match for the stage—not the public stage of Henslowe, but the "private" playhouses where boy players performed racy dramas for an audience of city gallants and young members of

2250-477: The time) that the term 'satire' was derived from the Greek ' satyr plays '. Marston seems to have been enraged by Joseph Hall 's claim to be the first satirist in English; Hall comes in for some indirect flyting in at least one of the satires. Some see William Shakespeare 's Thersites and Iago , as well as the mad speeches of King Lear as influenced by The Scourge of Villanie . Marston had, however, arrived on

2300-555: Was actress Ruth Selwyn , a sister of director Fred M. Wilcox and sister-in-law of Nicholas Schenck . Playwright The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks . William Shakespeare is amongst the most famous playwrights in literature, both in England and across the world. The word "play" is from Middle English pleye , from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word wright

2350-462: Was an English playwright, poet and satirist during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods. His career as a writer lasted only a decade. His work is remembered for its energetic and often obscure style, its contributions to the development of a distinctively Jacobean style in poetry, and its idiosyncratic vocabulary. Marston was born to John and Maria Marston née Guarsi, and baptised 7 October 1576, at Wardington , Oxfordshire . His father

2400-553: Was an eminent lawyer of the Middle Temple who first argued in London and then became the counsel to Coventry and ultimately its steward. John Marston entered Brasenose College, Oxford , in 1592 and received his BA in 1594. By 1595, he was in London, living in the Middle Temple, where he had been admitted a member three years previously. He had an interest in poetry and play writing, although his father's will of 1599 expresses

2450-608: Was assigned the living of Christchurch, Hampshire . He died on 24 June 1634, aged 57, in London and was buried in the Middle Temple Church . Tombs at that time often started with the formulaic " Memoriae Sacrum " ("Sacred to the memory") followed by the name of the tomb's occupant and an account of their achievements even though such words are hubristic and a contradiction to the Christian virtues of modesty. According to Anthony à Wood John Marston's tomb stone bore

2500-518: Was the author of the offending play. After the end of his literary career, he moved into his father-in-law's house and began studying philosophy . In 1609, he became a reader at the Bodleian Library at Oxford , was made a deacon on 24 September and a priest on 24 December 1609. Contemporary authors were bemused or surprised by Marston's change of career, with several of them commenting on its seeming abruptness. In October 1616, Marston

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