Cato; A Tragedy, In Five Acts - Addison, Joseph

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Résumé :
A powerful reminder that tragedy can illuminate the politics of a nation as deftly as its passions. Cato...

Biographie:
Addison was born in Milston, Wiltshire, but shortly after his birth, his father, Lancelot Addison, was appointed Dean of Lichfield, and the family relocated to the cathedral grounds. His father was an erudite English clergyman. Joseph was educated at Charterhouse School in London, where he met Richard Steele, and at The Queen's College, Oxford. He excelled in classics, particularly in Neo-Latin verse, and was appointed a fellow of Magdalen College. In 1693, he wrote a poem for John Dryden, and his first major work, a book about the lives of English poets, was published in 1694. His translation of Virgil's Georgics was released the following year. The Spectator was a daily periodical in England published by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele that ran from 1711-1712. Each paper or number was around 2,500 words long, with the first run consisting of 555 numbers commencing on March 1, 1711. These were gathered in seven volumes. The periodical was relaunched without Steele's involvement in 1714, appearing three times a week for six months, and these papers were compiled into the eighth book. The publication also included contributions by Addison's cousin, Eustace Budgell, and poet John Hughes....

Sommaire:
A Tragedy, In Five Acts re-emerges with a renewed voice, inviting today's readers into a cornerstone of neoclassical drama. This restoration of Joseph Addison's classic tragedy blends taut verse, disciplined structure, and urgent ideas. Its form-five-act architecture, poised rhetoric, and keen eye for character-speaks to theatre lovers and academic study alike. The drama's spine is a dialogue between virtue and tyranny, a meditation on republican virtue, political liberty, and the moral costs of power. With its early eighteenth-century sensibility, the play sits squarely in the English theatre tradition while speaking to contemporary concerns about governance and conscience. A note of literary and historical significance accents the page: Cato helped shape a generation of readers and writers, contributing to the lineage of London theatre and to the broader conversation about liberty, virtue, and duty. This edition is more than a reprint...