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Jan 1, 1672 — Jan 1, 1729· 57 yrs

IRELAND AUTHOR · ESSAYS · HISTORY

Sir Richard Steele

Also known as: Richard Steele, Steele, Richard, Sir

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Dublin, Ireland
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In the years since Jim had died, Julie Barenson had somehow found a way to start living again.

— from The guardian

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The theatre

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A history of the drama and the stage. There are facts about the great playhouses, dramatists, plays, poetry, actors, producers and vagabonds of the theatre, etc.

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The guardian

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Some men strive for greatness. And some men find themselves thrust into the role of their nation's saviors. Such are the two heroes who reshaped and reconfigured the entire destiny of the kingdom of Scotland. Wallace the Braveheart would become the only legendary, heroic, commoner in medieval British history; the undying champion of the common man. The other, Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick, would perfect the techniques of guerrilla warfare developed by Wallace and use them to create his own place in history as the greatest king of Scots. In the spring of 1297, the two men meet in Ayr, in the south of Scotland, each having recently lost a young wife, one in childbirth and the other by murder. Each is heartbroken but determined in his grief to defy the ambitions of England and its malignant king, Edward Plantagenet, whose lust to conquer and consume the realm of Scotland is blatant and unyielding. Their combined anger at the injustices of the invading English is about to unleash a storm in Scotland that will last for sixteen years--and destroy England's military power for decades--before giving rise to a new nation of free men.

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The conscious lovers

1824

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The Conscious Lovers was first performed in 1722 at Drury Lane and is generally acknowledged as the first “sentimental comedy.” Borrowing heavily from Roman playwright Terence’s Andria, Richard Steele veers away from the traditional lewdness of Restoration comedy by deliberately focusing on restrained passion and patience over bawdy or salacious behavior. Laughter is replaced with a more sentiment-based set of comedic values. Steele’s model proved so influential that not until 1773 with Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer does the “laughing comedy” return to the English stage. The plot revolves around Bevil Junior who, though promised to a young women by his father, has fallen in love with another. On his wedding day he discovers his friend Myrtle loves the young woman he is to marry, and he becomes consumed with jealousy. Steele states in his Preface that he very intentionally wrote the play around a crucial “dueling” scene, attempting to nudge his audience towards more restrained and refined behavior, hoping that “it may have some effect upon the Goths and Vandals that frequent the theaters.” Whether it did or not is debated, but it certainly affected the nature of English comedy for decades to follow.

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