• Source: John Wilson (playwright)

John Wilson (1626–1696) was an English playwright and lawyer.




Life and work


He was son of Aaron Wilson, a royalist divine, and was born in London in 1626. He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1644, and entered Lincoln's Inn two years later, being called to the bar in 1649. His unswerving support of the royal pretensions recommended him to James, duke of York, through whose influence he became Recorder of Derry about 1681. His Discourse of Monarchy (1684), a tract in favour of the succession of the duke of York, was followed (1685) by a "Pindarique" on his coronation. In 1688 he wrote Jus regium Coronae, a learned defence of James's action in dispensing with the penal statutes. He died in obscurity, due perhaps to his political opinions, in 1696. Wilson was the author of four plays, showing a vigorous and learned wit, and a power of character-drawing that place him rather among the followers of Ben Jonson than with the Restoration dramatists.
The Cheats (written in 1662, printed 1664, 1671) was played with great success in 1663. John Lacy found one of his best parts in Scruple, a caricature of a Presbyterian minister of accommodating morality. Andronicus Comnenius (1664), a blank verse tragedy, is based on the story of Andronicus Comnenus as told by Peter Heylin in his Cosmography. It contains a scene between the usurper and the widow of his victim Alexius which follows very closely Shakespeare's treatment of a parallel situation in Richard III. The Projectors (1665), a prose comedy of London life, is, like Molière's The Miser, founded on the Aulularia of Plautus, but there is no evidence that Wilson was acquainted with the French play. Belphegor, or the Marriage of the Devil; a Tragi-coniedy (1690), treats of a theme familiar to Elizabethan drama, but Wilson took the subject from the Belphegor attributed to Machiavelli, and alludes also to Straparola's version in the Notti. He also translated into English Erasmus's Encomium Moriae (1668).




References



This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Wilson, John". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 694.
Seccombe, Thomas (1900). "Wilson, John (1627?-1696)" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 62. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Lesko, Kathleen Menzie. "Wilson, John (bap. 1626, d. 1695?)id=29663". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)




External links



Works by John Wilson at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about John Wilson at the Internet Archive

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Julius Robert Oppenheimer
• Barbara Loden
• Orde Merit
• Peter Stormare
• Academy Award untuk Skenario Asli Terbaik
• Pandangan agama Adolf Hitler
• Danai Gurira
• Daftar orang positif HIV
• Daftar film hilang
• Daftar tokoh yang meninggal akibat pandemi Covid-19
• John Wilson (playwright)
• John Wilson
• John Byrne (playwright)
• List of people with surname Wilson
• John Drinkwater (playwright)
• August Wilson
• Jason Miller (playwright)
• List of British playwrights
• Robert Wilson (dramatist)
• List of playwrights from the United States