“If Rome be earthly, why should any knee with bending adoration worship her? She’s vicious … Therefore ‘tis fitter I should reverence the thatched houses where the Britons dwell.”
John Fletcher’s “Tragedy of Bonduca” (c.1609) | Stephen Basdeo
Robert Greene’s “George-a-Greene: The Pinner of Wakefield” (1599) | Stephen Basdeo
The name of the Pinder to Wakefield locals is, as Shakespeare might say, ‘familiar in [their] mouths as household words’. The Pinders Fields, however, reveal an exciting history of rebellion, outlawry, and patriotism; so expressed in Robert Greene’s play in 1599 titled “The Pinner of Wakefield.”
The Catacombs of Paris (1840) | George W. M. Reynolds
“Vengeance! Vengeance! I will yet be avenged! In the meantime, let me seek an hour’s repose!”
“I am a public thing”: Victor Hugo as Political Symbol | Stephen Basdeo
Hugo worked tirelessly on his self-imposed mission: poetry was so important, Hugo believed, that it should be a part of every aspect of life and had a central role to play in the story of national regeneration.
Victor Hugo’s Early Modern Outlaw Play: “Hernani” (1830)
Fans of outlaw stories, if they were ever able to time travel, might travel back to the 1820s and 1830s when Victor Hugo’s outlaw drama premiered.