1659 Plays (Study Guide): The History of Sir Francis Drake, Honoria and Mammon, Les Precieuses Ridicules

This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: The History of Sir Francis Drake, Honoria and Mammon, Les Precieuses Ridicules. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The History of Sir Francis Drake was a hybrid theatrical entertainment, a masque or "operatic tableau" with an English libretto written by Sir William Davenant and music by Matthew Locke. The masque was most likely first performed in 1659 and produced by Davenant. As with his earlier The Siege of Rhodes (1656) and The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658), Davenant cast The History of Sir Francis Drake as a musical drama to avoid the Puritan prohibition of stage plays during the English Commonwealth era. The three Davenant works were important in the evolution of English opera and musical theatre, and heralded the coming revival of drama with the Restoration of 1660. Like The Cruelty before it, Drake was acted at the Cockpit Theatre. Drake was first published in quarto in 1659, and most likely staged in that year or in late 1658. Drake is generally seen as a companion piece to The Cruelty; the first editions of the two works (1658 and 1659), both issued by Henry Herringman, were published with the same frontispiece, and both works were furnished with the same subtitle, Exprest by Instrumentall and Vocall Musick, and by the Art of Perspective in Scenes,