#robert walpole

[kindercelery]

Peep my yaoi

[beansontoastttt]

I cannot with life anymore man what did i even make 😭😭😭

[quietparanoiac]

Your Majesty, you cannot make this problem just go away simply by repeating "yes" after everything... I say.

Horrible Histories (2009-2014), 3x07

[unwelcome-ephestion]

What was the first musical...?

...is sort of a redundant question. Theatre has been musical for as long as there has been theatre. The earliest musical that we would recognise as fitting the modern genre? Some say Show Boat; some go further back to the Black Crook - but the earliest play normally posited is John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1727).

Don't let the title fool you - it's not an opera so much as it is a parody of opera. It's closer to a jukebox musical - all the songs are well known tunes parodied. Some opera, mainly Handel within that, but also a lot of popular song - near the end you get Greensleeves. But this isn't jukebox in the modern sense - the lyrics are changed to apply to the play, and often to take aim at government figures, in this case the corruption of the government of Prime Minister Walpole.

Ballad opera, as the style came to be known, was phenomenally popular and also controversial. Polly, the sequel to the Beggar's Opera, was censored and so never staged, though scripts were pirated and sold. The same is true of many other ballad operas, more highly censored than other stage works because their popularity with the masses was so dangerous. By the end of the 1730s, censorship had all but killed the genre - but not without a prolific decade of government criticism. The use of popular songs was particularly useful, because the use of well known songs could reference certain scandals or politics without ever actually lyrically mentioning them, making them very tricky to clamp down on.

(I specialised in this in university so if anyone wants to read more about this absolutely let me know.)

The Beggar's Opera is now best known in the form of the Threepenny Opera, into which it was adapted by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill - with new music. The most famous song from which is none other than Mack the Knife! So the show still, in its way, resonates in popular culture today.

[georgiansuggestion]

spend as much on wine as a gentleman earns in a year

[whattolearntoday]

A bit of April 3rd history...

1312 - 2nd Council of Vienna, Knights Templar suppressed

1721 - Robert Walpole becomes Britain’s 1st Lord of the Treasury - effective Prime Minister, although that term was never officially used (considered an insult) until much later

1860 - Pony Express began between Missouri and California (pictured)

1882 - American outlaw Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford at home in Missouri

1948 - US President Truman signs Marshal Plan ($5billion to 16 European countries)

2016 - Panama Papers published - 11.5 million confidential documents from off shore law firm Mossack Fonseca expose widespread illegal activities including fraud and tax evasion by the world’s elite in the world’s largest ever data leak

[triviareads]

Maria, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh (10 July 1736 – 22 August 1807)

I just found out about Maria, the Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh, who I found fascinating for her rise in society, which similarly parallels one of my characters, Selina Bridgerton, who is the illegitimate daughter of Anthony Bridgerton and Siena Rosso. I love history, so I was always on the lookout for historical precedent for the unique position in society Selina occupies, as well as her rise, and while I found vague parallels in other historical families, I found a pretty close match in Maria.

Maria was born as Maria Walpole, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole and Dorothy Clement, who never married, but lived together.

Maria's grandfather was Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, who was considered to be the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Her mother Dorothy Clement was the daughter of a postmaster. Sir Edward likely never married her because of her low birth, but she lived with him, and their 4 children were all given his last name.

Maria's social standing, despite all her connections, were somewhat hindered because of her illegitimate status, but it seemed to have worked out for her, because her first husband was the Earl Waldegrave, with whom she had three children. All of them made appropriately aristocratic matches later on, one of them even being an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Maria's second husband, after the Earl died, was actually Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, a brother of King George III. She had three more children with him. They were all afforded the HH title at birth courtesy of being great-grandchildren of a George II, and the two that survived infancy were later afforded the HRH titles.

[lothiriel84]

Oh, did you understand that? Or are you just saying some English words you remembered?