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Salzburg Festival

(Encyclopedia)Salzburg Festival, annual festival of music and drama held in Salzburg, Austria, for five weeks starting in late July. The festival may be considered a descendant of the Salzburg Music Festival Weeks ...

acting

(Encyclopedia)acting, the representation of a usually fictional character on stage or in films. At its highest levels of accomplishment acting involves the employment of technique and/or an imaginative ...

Oldfield, Anne

(Encyclopedia)Oldfield, Anne, 1683–1730, English actress. The successor of Mrs. Bracegirdle, she first won acclaim in 1704 for her brilliant portrayal of Lady Modish in Colley Cibber's Careless Husband. She had a...

Racan, Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de

(Encyclopedia)Racan, Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de ōnōräˈ də böˈyə sānyörˈ də räkäNˈ [key], 1589–1670, French poet. A disciple of Malherbe, he wrote some lyric poetry and a charming pastoral drama,...

ballad opera

(Encyclopedia)ballad opera, in English drama, a play of comic, satiric, or pastoral intent, interspersed with songs, most of them sung to popular airs. First and best was The Beggar's Opera (1728) by John Gay. The ...

dumb show

(Encyclopedia)dumb show, a theatrical pantomime included as part of a drama, especially in Elizabethan works, from the middle of the 16th cent. well into the 17th cent. Whether presented as a spectacle, with music,...

Howard, Sir Robert

(Encyclopedia)Howard, Sir Robert, 1626–98, English dramatist. He held several important government posts under Charles II. His introduction to his Foure New Plays (1665) initiated a dispute with his brother-in-la...

Cabral de Melo Neto, João

(Encyclopedia)Cabral de Melo Neto, João dĭ māˈlü nāˈtü [key], 1920–99, Brazilian poet and dramatist. Raised on his family's sugarcane plantation, he entered the foreign service in 1945 and retired in 1990...

Godfrey, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Godfrey, Thomas, 1736–63, American poet and playwright, b. Philadelphia. The son of Thomas Godfrey, who invented the quadrant, he became apprenticed to a watchmaker after his father's early death. G...

Swinnerton, Frank

(Encyclopedia)Swinnerton, Frank, 1884–1982, English novelist and critic, b. Wood Green, Middlesex. In addition to serving variously as an editor and a drama critic he wrote over 30 novels. For half a century, Swi...