Cyril Tourneur

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Cyril Tourneur (around 1575 - February 28, 1626 in Kinsale , County Cork , Kingdom of Ireland ) was an English playwright .

Life

Little is known about the life of Tourneur, whose last name also appears in the spellings Turner and Turnour. For a long time he was in the service of two politically influential families of the English nobility, the Veres and the Cecils, for whom he worked in various military positions, as secretary and courier in the Netherlands and probably also in France and Germany. In one of his poems he describes himself as a "soldier". In 1617 Tourneur was imprisoned in the Tower for unknown reasons , but released after a month in prison at the instigation of Edward Cecil . In 1625 he took part in a naval expedition under Cecil to the Spanish port of Cádiz . On the return voyage, an epidemic broke out on the ships and the sick, including Tourneur, were put ashore at the Kinsale naval base on the Irish coast. He died there on February 28, 1626.

plant

In 1600 he wrote the political - clerical satire The Transformed Metamorphosis , which was not rediscovered until 1872. The Revenger's Tragedy was published anonymously in 1607. Tourneur was considered to be the author for a long time, but is now believed to have been written by Thomas Middleton . In 1611 The Atheist's Tragedy appeared , the only surviving drama that can be assigned with certainty to Tourneur. The "tragic comedy" The Nobleman , recorded in the Stationer's Register in 1612 under Tourneur's name, has been lost, as has the play The Bellman of London , whose co-author is named Tourneur. Both The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy are variations of the popular revenge tragedy of Tourneur's time . Stylistically and atmospherically they are close to the stage works by John Marston and John Webster .

In addition, Tourneur wrote a number of shorter poems, including a funeral poem in honor of Sir Francis Vere , a military leader who died in 1609 during the Eighty Years' War . In 1613 he also published an elegy on Prince Henry of Almain with the simple title Elegy .

The Revenger's Tragedy is still played today: In 1972 it was performed at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus under the title "The Avengers' Tragedy" in a translation by HC Artmann and directed by Claus Peymann . Dieter Ohlendiek played the role of "Sordido" . Michael Urie embodied the "Lussurio" at the Culture Project 2005. The Atheist's Tragedy is performed less often, but saw a successful production in 1994 at the Birmingham Repertory Theater.

Work editions

  • The Plays and Poems of Cyril Tourneur , ed. With crit. introd. and notes by John Churton Collins, in 2 Vol., London 1878, Reprint: Freeport 1972.
  • The Works of Cyril Tourneur , ed. With introd. by Allardyce Nicoll, London 1929, Reprint: New York 1963.

literature

  • TS Eliot: "Cyril Tourneur", in: Selected Essays , London 1932, pp. 182-192.
  • PB Murray: A Study of Cyril Tourneur , Philadelphia 1964.

Translations into German

  • Cyril Tourneur: The Tragedy of the Atheist , translated from English and with an afterword by Andreas Fliedner, Edition Nachtgang, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-9814191-1-5 .
  • Cyril Tourneur: Tragedy of the Avengers. Translated to English: HC Artmann . Vienna: Universal Edition, 1971.

Web links and sources

  • Meyers Großes Personenlexikon , Mannheim 1968, p. 1327
  • Chamber's Biographical Dictionary , Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 0-550-10051-2 , p. 1510

Individual evidence

  1. ^ MacDonald P. Jackson, "The Revenger's Tragedy," in: Gary Taylor, Jon Lavagnino (eds.), Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture. A Companion to the Collected Works , Oxford 2007, pp. 360-363.
  2. ↑ Poison in the skull . In: Der Spiegel , 26/1972. Retrieved July 14, 2013.
  3. ↑ Gray matter: Paul Taylor reviews The Atheist's Tragedy at the Birmingham Rep . In: The Independent , February 23, 1994. Retrieved July 14, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Tourneur, Cyril
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Turner, Cyril; Turnour, Cyril
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English poet and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH around 1575
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1626
Place of death Kinsale , County Cork , Kingdom of Ireland