James Armstrong, Playwright

The actor Colley Cibber made his debut as a dramatist in 1696 with a play called Love's Last Shift , which while rooted in Restoration ...

Nicholas Rowe's play The Fair Penitent , based loosely on Philip Massinger and Nathan Field's  The Fatal Dowry , contains an excelle...

In a famous essay in 1772, the author Oliver Goldsmith tried to make a comparison between laughing and sentimental comedy. Borrowing th...

I've written in the past about Mr. Punch , the puppet descendant of the commedia dell'arte character Punchinello. He first showed ...

"Though every poet-laureat must be expected to attract a considerable portion of envy, few have been so severely han...