The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru was an innovative 1658 theatrical presentation, a hybrid entertainment or masque or "operatic show", written and produced by Sir William Davenant. The music was composed by Matthew Locke.
The work was significant in the evolution of English opera and musical theatre, and also of English drama; Davenant brought into the public theatre the techniques of scenery and painted backdrops that had previously been employed only in the courtly masque. It was by presenting his work in a musical rather than a dramatic context that Davenant was able to circumvent the Puritan Commonwealth's prohibition on plays. Indeed, Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell encouraged the production of this work and Davenant's ensuing The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659) as anti-Spanish propaganda. (The English had been at war with Spain since 1655.)
Read more about The Cruelty Of The Spaniards In Peru: The Show, The Music, Publication, Sources
Famous quotes containing the words cruelty, spaniards and/or peru:
“It is cruelty to children to keep five-year-olds sitting still, gazing into vacancy even for one hour at a time. We have little idea of the torture we thus inflict.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“... when the Spaniards persecuted heretics they may have been crude, but they were not being unreasonable or unpractical. They were at least wiser than the people of to-day who pretend that it does not matter what a man believes, as who should say that the flavour and digestibility of a pudding will have nothing to do with its ingredients.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard—it is absurd, unreal, dangerous.... The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)