Nathaniel Lee
Nathaniel Lee (* around 1653 ; † May 6, 1692 in London ) was an English playwright . He was called the "crazy poet " by his contemporaries .
Life
Nathaniel Lee was the son of Richard Lee, a Presbyterian clergyman who joined the Church of England after the Restoration and refused to consent to the execution of Charles I.
Lee received his education at Westminster School (according to some sources at the Charterhouse School ) and received his bachelor's degree in 1668 from Trinity College , Cambridge . He then moved to London , possibly as a protégé of George Villiers , and tried to earn a living as an actor, but this was impossible because of his acute stage fright . His first tragedy, Nero, Emperor of Rome , was performed in the Drury Lane Theater in 1675 .
Lee built his reputation in 1677 with a tragedy in blank verse : The Rival Queens , or the Death of Alexander the Great ("The rival queens, or the death of Alexander the Great"), which was set to music by Daniel Purcell and Gottfried Finger . This piece deals with the jealousy of Roxane , Alexander the Great's first wife , of his second wife, Stateira . It was a great success on the English stage until the 19th century in the time of Edmund Kean . In collaboration with John Dryden Lee wrote the tragedy Oedipus , an adaptation of the classic by Sophocles . The Princess of Cleve (1681) is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Madame de La Fayette .
Lucius Junius Brutus, Father of His Country ("Landesvater Brutus", listed in 1681) caused a scandal at court . The play was canceled after the third performance because some verses describing Tarquin were understood as an allusion to the character of Charles II . Lee's next literary production took place again together with Dryden: in The Duke of Guise ("The Duke of Guise ") events of the Paris Bartholomew Night come to the language. Lee's Mithridates, King of Pontus (1678), Caesar Borgia (1680) and Constantine the Great (1684) also deal with historical subjects.
Lee spent the following years in the extravagant company of John Wilmots and his friends, who called themselves Merry Gang ("merry gang") and were noticeable for excessive alcohol consumption. As his reputation worsened, he lost support at court and eventually it was said that he was mad. He spent five years in the infamous Bedlam Hospital , lamenting his situation in a letter: "They said I was crazy and I said they were crazy - and damn it, they overruled me!" But he recovered and was discharged in 1689.
He died in a fit of drunkenness in 1692 and was buried in St Clement Danes' church on May 6th .
His dramatic works were published in 1734. Despite their extravagance, they also contain very beautiful spots.
literature
- Lee, Nathaniel . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 16 : L - Lord Advocate . London 1911, p. 361 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge
- ↑ They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. Roy Porter in: A Social History of Madness: The World Through the Eyes of the Insane . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. ISBN 978-1-55584-185-0 . Introduction.
- ^ Henry Southern: The retrospective review. Act IV — Plays, written by Mr. Nathaniel Lee. London, 1821. p. 240. Partial online view
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lee, Nathaniel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English playwright |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1653 |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 6, 1692 |
| Place of death | London |