William Davenant

Sir William Davenant , also William D'Avenant , (* February 1606 in Oxford , † April 7, 1668 in London ) was an English writer and theater director.

Sir William Davenant

Life

Davenant was the son of Oxford Mayor John Davenant and his wife Jane Shepherd . His godfather was possibly William Shakespeare , but rumors often assumed that he was a father. The writer Samuel Butler claimed to be able to prove a relationship based on a few text samples from Davenant and Shakespeare.

When the writer Ben Jonson died in 1637 , Davenant was appointed as his successor as Poet Laureate in 1638 . As a supporter of the Stuarts , Davenant supported King Charles I in the English Civil War. Persecuted by Parliament, Davenant managed to flee to France. Because of his military merits, he was ennobled by Charles I in 1643 as a Knight Bachelor and u. a. sent as unofficial ambassador to France . In 1649, King Charles II appointed Davenant treasurer of the Virginia colony.

After the defeat of the royalists in the English Civil War, he followed the Stuarts into exile in Paris, where he his unfinished epic poem Gondibert , a story of chivalry, in 1700 quatrains wrote.

After the deposition and execution of Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria sent Davenant as lieutenant governor to the English colony of Maryland to support the royalists . However, his ship was intercepted in the English Channel and Davenant was imprisoned for a long time in the Tower of London . Presumably, however, he was sponsored by John Milton , so he survived his imprisonment in the Tower unscathed and was able to perform a "slight so-styled opera" as early as 1656.

In 1660 Davenant founded the Duke Players Ensemble , also known as Duke's Company (Theater), one of the Patent Theaters , in Lincoln's Inn Fields . With this ensemble, to which the actor Thomas Betterton also belonged, Davenant rose to the leading theater producer in the first years of the Restoration and was able to bring mainly his own pieces to the stage. The license granted to him and Thomas Killigrew by the king to operate theaters gave Davenant a monopoly in the theater industry; at the same time the separation between the patent theater as a serious stage and the so-called illegimatimate theater for the popular or popular began at the same time . He and his wife took care of the future actress Elizabeth Barry as a child and gained her first stage experience with the Duke's Company.

Sir William Davenant died on April 7, 1668 after years of suffering from syphilis in London at the age of 62. He found his final resting place in the " Poet's Corner " of Westminster Abbey ; his gravestone reads: "O rare Sir William Davenant" .

Literary work

With his extensive work Davenant made an important contribution to the development of English theater. Following up on Ben Jonson , Davenant created the first plays of the Restoration period with his comedies and dramas. Under Charles I he produced courtly mask games; With his heroic drama, which he staged as a musical spectacle, he also laid the foundation for the creation of the opera in England. In addition, the moveable backdrop suggesting a large space in his pieces led to a major innovation in English restoration theater. His heroic play, which he himself called it in 1663, with its “ ideas of greatness and virtue ” or noble motifs and insoluble conflicts gave this genre its name ; his successful work Love and Honor indicates the accompanying program in the title.

Figures by Inigo Jones for Britannia Triumphans , 1638

Davenant's lavishly decorated mask games, in which members of the royal family or the court appeared, were mainly staged for Whitehall in collaboration with Inigo Jones , who is considered the most important architect and set designer of the time, for example The Temple of Love (1635) , Britannia Triumphans (1636) or his last mask play Salmacida Spolia (1640).

In contrast, in Davenant's early pieces such as The Cruel Brother (1630) or Albovine (1629) a clear reference to the tradition of the bloodthirsty Jacobean tragedy can be seen.

With The Siege of Rhodes , which already in its first version in 1656 in a definitive, recitative sung form with music a. a. was performed by Henry Lawes and Matthew Locke , Davenant is considered to be the founder of the first English opera in 1656 . With the occupation of female roles by actresses, Davenant ended the English theater custom of exclusively male roles that had been in effect until then. In 1658 Davenant apparently won the approval of Oliver Cromwell himself in Peru with his play The Cruelty of the Spaniards . In addition to his own works, Davenant's successful pieces also include his Shakespeare adaptations such as Macbeth (1674) and The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island (1670 together with John Dryden ) as well as the farce-like comedy The Man's the based on the model by Paul Scarron Master (1669). The great English actress and soprano Kitty Clive celebrated a success in 1735 with his adaptation of Macbeth and the songs of the witches contained therein.

Works

• Albovine, King of the Lombards (1629)
• The Wits (1636)
• The Platonick Lovers (1643)
• The Unfortunate Lovers (1643)
• Love and Honor (1649)
• Gondibert (1650)
• The Siege of Rhodes (1656)

Work editions

• William Davenant: Dramatic Works with prefatory memoir and notes. Edited by James Maidment and WH Logan. 5 vol. Edinburgh 1872-74. New edition Chizine Publications 2018, ISBN 978-13785-0672-1 .

literature

• Lothar Hönnighausen: The style change in the dramatic work of Sir William Davenant. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1965 ( English Studies 3, ISSN  0570-0930 , also: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 1963).
• Mary Edmond: Rare Sir William Davenant. Poet Laureate, Playwright, Civil War General, Restoration Theater Manager. Manchester University Press, Manchester et al. 1987, ISBN 0-7190-2286-X ( The Revels Plays Companion Library ).

Web links

Commons : William Davenant  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Wikiquote: William Davenant  - Quotes

• Sir William Davenant - English Writer - English entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Sir William Davenant - biography in English on PoemHunter
• The dramatic works of Sir William D'Avenant - Work edition by Maidman and Logan in the Internet Archive
• Works and audio books by William Davenant - at LibriVox

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann: Davenan, William [Sir]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 148 See also the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica , online at Sir William Davenant - English Writer . Retrieved July 24, 2018.
2. ^ Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann: Davenan, William [Sir]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 148 See also the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica , online at Sir William Davenant - English Writer . Retrieved July 24, 2018.
3. ↑ See the information on PoemHunter.com under Sir William Davenant . Retrieved July 24, 2018.
4. ^ Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann: Davenan, William [Sir]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 148 .
5. ^ Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann: Davenan, William [Sir]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 148 .