Portal:Theatre

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two teenage "star-cross'd lovers" whose untimely deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both, but developed supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris, in order to expand the plot. Believed to be written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The play ascribes different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character develops. John Gielgud's 1935 version kept very close to Shakespeare's text, and used Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the drama. In the 20th century the play has been adapted in versions as diverse as MGM's comparatively faithful 1936 film, the 1950s stage musical West Side Story, and 1996's MTV-inspired Romeo + Juliet.

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• November 1773 – Christoph Willibald Gluck moved to Paris and fused the Italian and French operatic styles, revolutionizing 18th-century opera
• 1 November 1611 – First recorded performance of Shakespeare's play The Tempest was held at the Palace of Whitehall in London, exactly seven years after the first certainly known performance of his tragedy Othello in the same building
• 3 November 1793 – French playwright, journalist and outspoken feminist Olympe de Gouges was guillotined for her revolutionary ideas
• 4 November 1737 – The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, currently the oldest active opera house in Europe, was inaugurated
• 6 November 1884 – Death of William Wells Brown (pictured), widely regarded as the first published African-American playwright
• 7 November 1956 – Premiere of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, for which he won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• 16 November 1922 – John Barrymore began playing Hamlet on Broadway for 101 consecutive performances, breaking a record previously set by Edwin Booth
• 22 November 1903 – Pope Pius X ended the practice of producing castrati, replacing them with boys

Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) was an English actor, comedian, dancer, and the Regency era's most successful entertainer. He popularised and expanded the role of "Clown" in the harlequinade that formed a part of British pantomimes during the 1800s, and became a key pantomime performer at the Drury Lane, Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden theatres. While a boy, he appeared on stage at Drury Lane as "Little Clown" in the pantomime The Triumph of Mirth; or, Harlequin's Wedding. Other successful roles at the theatre followed, but he left in 1806 to take up theatrical residencies at the Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells theatres. As he matured, he began performing as Clown, for which character he created the whiteface make-up design still used in pantomime and by many other clowns today. The numerous injuries he received as a result of his energetic performances eventually led to a decline in his health and to his semi-retirement in 1823. Living in obscurity during his final years, he became an impoverished alcoholic. Grimaldi died at home in Islington, aged 59, having outlived his wife and his actor son Joseph Samuel.

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• ... that the Missoula Children's Theatre works with more than 65,000 children every year?
• ... that Anne Cooke Reid founded the first Black summer theater in the United States?
• ... that Lunt and Fontanne retired from Broadway after the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was renamed after them?
• ... that the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre was known as the John Golden Theatre before the John Golden Theatre was?
• ... that Hong Kong native Grace Ho gave birth to her fourth child, Bruce Lee, while on a one-year tour through the United States with the Mandarin Theatre?
• ... that illustrator Al Hirschfeld knew he would get his own Broadway theater for his 100th birthday, but he died before the renaming?

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice. — George Bernard Shaw

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