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London theaters reopen; actresses appear onstage for the first time
For nearly 20 years, the London theatres were closed to the public, but in 1660, when King Charles II at last returned from exile in Europe, the theatre started up again.
The new King enjoyed theatre and he issued a licence re-opening the theatres the moment he was back in England. One such licence went to William Davenport, who opened a theatre at Covent Garden, and another went to Thomas Killigrew, who opened a theatre not far away in Drury Lane. -
Charles II is proclaimed king of England (crowned in 1661).
Charles's English parliament enacted laws known as the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. Charles acquiesced to the Clarendon Code even though he favoured a policy of religious tolerance. The major foreign policy issue of his early reign was the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1670, he entered into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France. -
Plague claims more than 68,000 people in London.
The largest of these were the Plague of Justinian of 541–542, The Black Death of the 1340s, continuing in the Second plague pandemic to break out at intervals, and the Third plague pandemic beginning in 1855 and considered inactive from 1959. -
Great Fire destroys much of London.
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666.[1] The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. It threatened, but did not reach, the aristocratic district of Westminster, Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, and most of the suburban slums. -
Glorious (Bloodless): Revolution James II is succeeded by Protestant rulers of William and Mary.
The Glorious Revolution,[b] also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland) by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange). William's successful invasion of England with a Dutch fleet and army led to his ascending of the English throne as William III of England. -
Alexander Pope publishes part of The Rape of the Lock
At the beginning of "The Rape of the Lock," Pope identifies the work as a “heroi-comical poem.” Today, the poem and others like it—is referred to as a mock-epic and sometimes as a mock-heroic -
Swift publishes A Modest Proposal, protesting English treatment of the Irish poor.
The two references aptly describe the difference in the lives of Ireland's Catholics and the Protestant English living in Ireland. Irish Catholics made up the Irish poor who constituted 80 percent of the population and owned less than one-third of the land. As the Protestant English landowners "ascended" to the gentrified class in the 1700s, the Irish Catholics descended deeper into lives of desperation and deprivation. -
Voltaire publishes Candide
he novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: or, Optimism (1947).[6] It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism (or simply "optimism") by his mentor, Professor Pangloss.[7] The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnes -
George III is crowned king of England; becomes known as the king who lost the American Colonies.
King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was concurrently Duke and prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg ("Hanover") in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two predecessors he was born in Britain, spoke English. -
British Parliament passes Stamp Act for taxing American Colonies
he Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. -
African American poet Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subject, Religious and Moral is published in London
The publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) brought her fame both in England and the American colonies; figures such as George Washington praised her work. During Wheatley's visit to England with her master's son, the African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in his own poem. Wheatley was emancipated after the death of her master John Wheatley.[2] She married soon after. Two of her children died as infants. After her husband was imprisoned for debt. -
Boston Tea Party occurs
The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773. The Boston Tea Party happened in 3 British ships in the Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party took place because the colonists did not want to have to pay taxes on the British tea. -
Napoleon heads revolutionary government in France
was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France that lasted from 1789 until 1799, and was partially carried forward by Napoleon during the later expansion of the French Empire. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon that rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas. -
Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, basically the first feminist philosophical work, was published in 1792. Yup. That's less than twenty years after the good ol' U.S. of A. was founded. That's back when huge curled wigs were super stylin'.
