text:
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The present building, opened in 1812, is the most recent of four theatres that stood at the location since 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music).

The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initially known as "Theatre Royal in Bridges Street", the theatre's proprietors hired prominent actors who performed at the theatre on a regular basis, including Nell Gwyn and Charles Hart. In 1672, the theatre caught fire and Killigrew built a larger theatre on the same plot, renamed the "Theatre Royal in Drury Lane"; it opened in 1674. This building lasted nearly 120 years, under the leaderships of Colley Cibber, David Garrick and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the last of whom employed Joseph Grimaldi as the theatre's resident Clown.

In 1791, under Sheridan's management, the building was demolished to make way for a larger theatre which opened in 1794. This new Drury Lane survived for 15 years before burning down in 1809. The building that stands today opened in 1812. It has been the residency of well known actors including Edmund Kean, comedian Dan Leno and the musical composer and performer Ivor Novello. From the Second World War, the theatre has primarily hosted long runs of musicals, including Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, 42nd Street and Miss Saigon, the theatre's longest-running show. The theatre is owned by the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Since January 2019, the venue has had ongoing renovations, and in July 2021, the theatre reopened after over two years' of extensive work and closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disney's Frozen made its West End debut at Drury Lane on 27 August, with general shows starting from 8 September 2021.

First theatre: Theatre Royal, Bridges Street (1663)
A playhouse known as the Cockpit Theatre used by Queen Anne's Men on Drury Lane was targeted by rioting apprentices on 4 March 1617. After the eleven-year-long Puritan Interregnum, which had seen the banning of pastimes regarded as frivolous, such as theatre, the English monarchy was restored to the throne with the return of Charles II in 1660. Soon after, Charles issued Letters Patent to two parties licensing the formation of new acting companies. One of these went to Thomas Killigrew, whose company became known as the King's Company, and who built a new theatre in Drury Lane. The Letters Patent also granted the two companies a shared monopoly on the public performance of legitimate drama in London; this monopoly was challenged in the 18th century by new venues and by a certain slipperiness in the definition of "legitimate drama," but remained legally in place until 1843. The new playhouse, architect unknown, opened on 7 May 1663 and was known from the placement of the entrance as the "Theatre Royal in Bridges Street." It went by other names as well, including the "King's Playhouse." The building was a three-tiered wooden structure, 112 ft long and 59 ft wide; it could hold an audience of 700. Set well back from the broader streets, the theatre was accessed by narrow passages between surrounding buildings.

The King's Company was forced to commission the technically advanced and expensive Theatre Royal playhouse by the success of the rival Duke's Company, which was drawing fascinated crowds with their "moveable" or "changeable" scenery and visually gorgeous productions at the former Lisle's Tennis Court at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Imitating the innovations at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Theatre Royal also featured moveable scenery with wings or shutters that could be smoothly changed between or even within acts. When not in use, the shutters rested out of sight behind the sides of the proscenium arch, which also served as a visual frame for the on-stage happenings. The picture-frame-like separation between audience and performance was a new phenomenon in English theatre, though it had been found on the Continent earlier. Theatre design in London remained ambivalent about the merits of the "picture-box" stage, and for many decades to come, London theatres including Drury Lane had large forestages protruding beyond the arch, often including the thrust stages found in the Elizabethan theatres. The players could still step forward and bridge the distance between performer and audience, and in addition, it was not unusual for audience members to mount the stage themselves.

Killigrew's investment in the new playhouse put the two companies on a level as far as technical resources were concerned, but the offerings at the Theatre Royal nevertheless continued to be dominated by actor-driven "talk" drama, contrasting with William Davenant's baroque spectacles and operas at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Internal power structures were the main reason for this difference: while Davenant skilfully commanded a docile young troupe, Killigrew's authority over his veteran actors was far from absolute. Experienced actors Michael Mohun (who Pepys called "the best actor in the world" ) and Charles Hart held out for shares and good contracts in the King's Company. Such a division of power between the patentee, Killigrew, and his chief actors led to frequent conflicts that hampered the Theatre Royal as a business venture. Nevertheless, it was mostly at the struggling Theatre Royal, rather than at the efficiently run Lincoln's Inn Fields, that the plays were acted that are classics today. This applies especially to the new form Restoration comedy, dominated in the 1660s by William Wycherley and the Theatre Royal's house dramatist John Dryden. Actors such as Hart and Charles II's mistress Nell Gwyn developed and refined the famous scenes of repartee, banter and flirtation in Dryden's and Wycherley's comedies. With the appearance of actresses for the first time at Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields in the 1660s, British playwrights wrote parts for outspoken female characters, daring love scenes and provocative breeches roles. In any case, the competition between the King's Company and the Duke's was good for the rebirth and development of English drama. The King himself frequently attended the theatre's productions, as did Samuel Pepys, whose private diaries provide much of what we know of London theatre-going in the 1660s. The day after the Theatre Royal opened, Pepys attended a performance of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Humorous Lieutenant. He has this to say in his diary:

"The house is made with extraordinary good contrivance, and yet hath some faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the Pitt, and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am confident cannot hear; but for all other things it is well, only, above all, the musique being below, and most of it sounding under the very stage, there is no hearing of the bases at all, nor very well of the trebles, which sure must be mended."

Performances usually began at 3 pm to take advantage of the daylight: the main floor for the audience, the pit, had no roof in order to let in the light. A glazed dome was built over the opening, but according to one of Pepys' diary entries, the dome was not entirely effective at keeping out the elements: he and his wife were forced to leave the theatre to take refuge from a hail storm. Green baize cloth covered the benches in the pit and served to decorate the boxes (additionally ornamented with gold-tooled leather) and even the stage itself. The backless green benches in the pit were in a semicircular arrangement facing the stage, according to a May 1663 letter from one Monsieur de Maonconys: "All benches of the pit, where people of rank also sit, are shaped in a semi-circle, each row higher than the next." The three galleries formed a semicircle around the floor seats; both the first and second galleries were divided up into boxes.

The Great Plague of London struck in the summer of 1665, and the Theatre Royal, along with all other public entertainment, was shut down by order of the Crown on 5 June. It remained closed for 18 months until the autumn of 1666, during which time it received at least a little interior renovation, including widening of the stage. Located well to the west of the City boundary, the theatre was unaffected by the Great Fire of London, which raged through the City in September 1666, but it burned down six years later on 25 January 1672.

Second theatre: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (1674)

During the 20th century, one illustration was repeatedly – and wrongly – published as "Christopher Wren, design for the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 1674". Since 1964, this presumption has been disputed by scholars. Careful inspection of the drawing at All Souls' College, Oxford Library shows that it has one pencil inscription: "Play house" [sic], which may have been added by a librarian or by anyone else. No sign of a signature (by Wren or anyone else) or a date appears anywhere on the drawing. Robert D. Hume of Penn State University explained that use of the drawing "rests almost entirely on the supposition that the so-called "Wren section" at All Souls represents this theatre. It could just as easily be a discarded sketch unconnected to Drury Lane in any way."

Comparative evidence for Drury Lane's 1674 design can be found in the Theatre Royal, Bristol, built in 1766, whose design was modelled, in part, on Drury Lane's. The site measured 112 ft east-west and 59 ft north-south. The building was smaller than this, as reliable surveys and maps of the period show three passageways measuring between 5 and 10 ft wide surrounding the Theatre Royal on three sides. The building probably measured between 40 and 50 ft wide (the average width of all "Restoration" Theatres) and between 90 and 100 ft long. Architect Robert Adam designed Drury Lane's 1674 interior. The theatre was managed, from 1747 to Adam's retirement in the 1770s, by David Garrick.

The King's Company never recovered financially from the loss of the old Theatre Royal Bridges Street. The cost of constructing the new theatre, replacing their costumes and scenery lost in the fire and competitive pressure from the rival Duke's Company contributed to its decline. Eventually, in 1682, the King's Company merged with the Duke's. The 1674 Theatre Royal building contained a warren of rooms, including storage space and dressing rooms used by the management and performers, nearly seventy people in total, as well as some fifty technical staff members. Additionally three rooms were provided for scripts, including a library for their storage, a separate room for copying actors' parts and a special library for the theatre's account books, ledger books and music scores. This jumble of rooms often made communication among various departments difficult, a problem that Garrick corrected during his tenure as manager. The entire complex occupied 13134 sqft bounded by Drury Lane (east), Brydges Street (west), Great Russell Street (north) and Little Russell Street (south).

From 1674, theatregoers accessed the Drury Lane via a long ten-foot-wide passageway from Bridges Street. The passageway opened onto a yard (previously a "Riding Yard" ) in which the theatre stood. It is likely that the yard remained open to the sky at this date, on three sides of the Theatre Royal walls. Henri Misson, a visitor from France, offers a description of the theatre in 1698: his use of the word "amphitheatre" supports the view that Drury Lane had a circular line of boxes surrounding its pit:

"The Pit is an Amphitheatre, fill'd with Benches without Backboards, and adorn'd and cover'd with green Cloth. Men of Quality, particularly the younger Sort, some Ladies of Reputation and Virtue, and abundance of Damsels that haunt for Prey, sit all together in this Place, Higgledy-piggledy, chatter, toy, play, hear, hear not. Farther up, against the Wall, under the first Gallery and just opposite to the Stage, rises another Amphitheatre, which is taken by persons of the best Quality, among whom are generally very few Men. The Galleries, whereof there are only two Rows, are fill'd with none but ordinary People, particularly the Upper one."

As Misson points out, the seating was divided by class, and tickets were priced accordingly. Box seats, used by the nobility and wealthy gentry, cost 5 shillings; the benches in the pit where some gentry sat, but also critics and scholars, cost 3 shillings; tradesmen and professionals occupied the first gallery with seats costing 2 shillings, while servants and other "ordinary people", as Misson refers to them, occupied the 1 shilling seats of the upper gallery. Seats were not numbered and were offered on a "first come, first served" basis, leading many members of the gentry to send servants to reserve seats well ahead of performances. The stage was 45 ft wide and 30 ft deep with a raked floor from the footlights to the backdrop. The angle of the rake rose one inch for every 24 in of horizontal stage. The stage floor included grooves for wings and flats in addition to trap doors in the floor. The proscenium arch covered the stage equipment above the stage that included a pair of girondels – large wheels holding many candles used to counteract the light from the footlights. Towards the latter part of the 18th century, doors were placed on either side of the stage, and a series of small spikes traced the edge of the stage apron to prevent audiences from climbing onto the stage. At the very back of the stage, a wide door opened to reveal Drury Lane.

An added difficulty for Killigrew and his sons Thomas and Charles was the political unrest of 1678–1684 with the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill crisis distracting potential audiences from things theatrical. This affected both the King's and the Duke's companies, but most of all the King's which had no profit margin to carry them through the lean years. In 1682, the companies merged, or rather, the King's was absorbed by the Duke's. Led at the time by Thomas Betterton, the United Company, as it was now called, chose Drury Lane as their production house, leaving the Duke's Company's theatre in Dorset Garden closed for a time. In 1688, Betterton was removed from managerial control by Alexander Davenant, son of William Davenant, the original patent holder for the Duke's Company. Davenant's management (with Charles Killigrew) proved brief and disastrous, and by 1693 he was fleeing to the Canary Islands in the wake of embezzlement charges. The Theatre Royal found itself in the hands of lawyer Christopher Rich for the next 16 years.

Neither Davenant's nor Killigrew's sons were much better than crooks, and Rich attempted to recoup their depredations of the company's resources by cost-cutting tyranny, pitting actor against actor and slashing salaries. By 1695, the actors, including day-to-day manager and acting legend Thomas Betterton, were alienated and humiliated enough to walk out and set up a cooperative company of their own. Nine men and six women departed, all of them established professional performers, including such draws as tragedian Elizabeth Barry and comedian Anne Bracegirdle, leaving the United Company – henceforth known as the "Patent Company" – in "a very despicable condition," according to an anonymous contemporary pamphlet:

"The disproportion was so great at parting, that it was almost impossible, in Drury Lane, to muster up a sufficient number to take in all the parts of any play; and of them so few were tolerable, that a play must of necessity be damned, that had not extraordinary favour from the audience. No fewer than sixteen (most of the old standing) went away; and with them the very beauty and vigour of the stage; they who were left being for the most part learners, boys and girls, a very unequal match for them that revolted."

A private letter from 19 November 1696 reported that Drury Lane "has no company at all, and unless a new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break." The new play is assumed to have been John Vanbrugh's The Relapse, and it turned out the success the company needed. Christopher Rich continued as its head until 1709, when the patent in question was actually revoked amid a complex tangle of political machinations. A lawyer named William Collier was briefly given the right to mount productions in Drury Lane, but by 1710 the troupe was in the hands of the actors Colley Cibber, Robert Wilks, and Thomas Doggett – a triumvirate that eventually found themselves sharply satirised in Alexander Pope's Dunciad. In 1713, Barton Booth replaced Doggett. On 2 March 1717 was the premiere of the ballet The Loves of Mars and Venus choreographed by John Weaver, and was the first ballet to be performed in England.

Cibber was the de facto leader of the triumvirate, and he led the theatre through a controversial but generally successful period until 1733, when he sold his controlling interest to John Highmore. It is likely that the sale was at a vastly inflated price and that Colley's goal was simply to get out of debts and make a profit (see Robert Lowe in his edition of Cibber's Apology). Members of the troupe at the time were most displeased; an actor's revolt was organised and executed; Charles Fleetwood came to control the theatre. Fleetwood's tenure was tumultuous; his abolition of the practice of allowing footmen free access to the upper gallery led to riots in 1737, and Fleetwood's gambling problems entangled the theatre in his own financial difficulties. It was during this period that actor Charles Macklin (a native of Inishowen in County Donegal in Ulster) rose to fame, propelled by a singular performance as Shylock in an early 1741 production of The Merchant of Venice, in which he introduced a realistic, naturalistic style of acting, abandoning the artificial bombast typical of dramatic roles prior.

In 1747, Fleetwood's playhouse patent expired. The theatre and a patent renewal were purchased by actor David Garrick (who had trained under Macklin earlier) and partner James Lacy. Garrick served as manager and lead actor of the theatre until roughly 1766 and continued on in the management role for another ten years after that. He is remembered as one of the great stage actors and is especially associated with advancing the Shakespearean tradition in English theatre – during his time at Drury Lane, the company mounted at least 24 of Shakespeare's plays. Some of Shakespeare's surge in popularity during this period can be traced to the Licensing Act of 1737, which mandated governmental approval of any play before it could be performed and thereby created something of a vacuum of new material to perform. Garrick shared the stage with company including Peg Woffington, Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, Kitty Clive, Spranger Barry, Richard Yates, and Ned Shuter. It was under Garrick's management that spectators were for the first time barred from the stage itself.

Garrick commissioned Robert Adam and his brother James to renovate the theatre's interior, which they did in 1775. Their additions included an ornate ceiling and a stucco facade facing Bridges Street. This facade was the first time any structure that might be considered part of the theatre proper actually abutted the street: the building, like the 1663 original, had been built in the centre of the block, hemmed in by other structures. The narrow passage from Bridges street to the theatre now became an interior hallway; some theatre office space also went up behind the new facade.

With a series of farewell performances, Garrick left the stage in 1776 and sold his shares in the theatre to the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Sheridan and his partners, Thomas Linley the elder and Doctor James Ford (court physician to King George III ), completed their purchase of Drury Lane two years later, and Sheridan owned it until 1809. Sheridan premiered his own comedy of manners The School for Scandal in 1777. Active management of the theatre was carried out by several parties during Sheridan's ownership, including himself, his father Thomas, and, from 1788 to 1796 and 1800 to 1802, the popular actor John Philip Kemble. Linley took up the post of Musical Director at the theatre, receiving a retainer of £500 per annum.

Sheridan employed dozens of children as extras at Drury Lane including Joseph Grimaldi who made his stage debut at the theatre in 1780. Grimaldi became best known for his development of the modern day white-face clown and popularised the role of Clown in many Pantomimes and Harlequinades. Towards the end of the 1790s, Grimaldi starred in Robinson Crusoe, which confirmed him as a key Christmas pantomime performer. Many pantomimes followed, but his career at Drury Lane became turbulent, and he left the theatre for good in 1806.

Third theatre (1794)

The theatre was in need of updating by the end of the 18th century and was demolished in 1791, with the company moving temporarily to the new King's Theatre, in the Haymarket. A third theatre was designed by Henry Holland and opened on 12 March 1794. In the design of the theatre boxes, Henry Holland asked John Linnell for assistance. The designs by Linnell survive in the V&A Print Room – there are also designs by Henry Holland and Charles Heathcote Tatham who were involved in the design process. This was a cavernous theatre, accommodating more than 3,600 spectators. The motivation behind building on such a large scale? In the words of one owner:

"I was aware of the very popular notion that our theatres ought to be very small; but it appeared to me that if that very popular notion should be suffered to proceed too far it would in every way deteriorate our dramatic performances depriving the proprietors of that revenue which is indispensable to defray the heavy expenses of such a concern."

New technology facilitated the expansion: iron columns replaced bulky wood, supporting five tiers of galleries. The stage was large, too: 83 ft wide and 92 ft deep. Holland, the architect, said it was "on a larger scale than any other theatre in Europe." Except for churches, it was the tallest building in London.

The "very popular notion that our theatres ought to be very small" proved hard to overcome. Various accounts from the period bemoan the mammoth size of the new theatre, longing for the "warm close observant seats of Old Drury," as one May 1794 theatregoer put it. Actress Sarah Siddons, then part of the Drury Lane company, called it "a wilderness of a place" (and left Drury Lane along with her brother John Philip Kemble in 1803). Not only was any sense of intimacy and connection to the company on stage lost, but the very size of the theatre put a great deal of the audience at such a distance from the stage so as to make hearing a player's voice quite difficult. To compensate, the productions mounted in the new theatre tended more toward spectacle than the spoken word. An example of such a spectacle is a 1794 production that featured real water flowing down a rocky stream into a lake large enough on which to row a boat. This water issued from tanks in the attics above the house, which were installed – along with a much-touted iron safety curtain – as proof against fire.

Richard Sheridan continued as theatre owner during the entire lifetime of this third building. He had grown in stature as a statesman during this time, but troubled finances were to be his undoing. The 1794 rebuilding had cost double the original estimate of £80,000, and Sheridan bore the entirety of the debt. Productions were more expensive to mount in the larger structure, and increased audience revenues failed to make up the difference.

An assassination attempt against King George III took place at the theatre on 15 May 1800. James Hadfield fired two pistol shots from the pit toward the King, sitting in the royal box. The shots missed by inches, Hadfield having been jostled by a Mr Dyte. Hadfield was quickly subdued, and George, apparently unruffled, ordered the performance to continue.

The comedy actor John Bannister became acting manager in 1802. With Sheridan's son Tom, and in the circle of Richard Wroughton (stage-manager), William Dowton, Michael Kelly, Tom Dibdin and their likes, he helped to see the Theatre Royal through its next catastrophe. On 24 February 1809, despite the previously mentioned fire safety precautions, the theatre burned down. On being encountered drinking a glass of wine in the street while watching the fire, R.B. Sheridan was famously reported to have said: "A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside." Already on the shakiest financial ground, Sheridan was ruined entirely by the loss of the building. He turned to brewer Samuel Whitbread, an old friend, for help. As well as investing strongly in the project, Whitbread agreed to head a committee that would manage the company and oversee the rebuilding of the theatre, but asked Sheridan to withdraw from management himself, which he did entirely by 1811.

Modern theatre (1812–present)

The present Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, designed by Benjamin Dean Wyatt on behalf of the committee led by Whitbread, opened on 10 October 1812 with a production of Hamlet featuring Robert Elliston in the title role. The new theatre made some concessions toward intimacy, seating 3,060 people, about 550 fewer than the earlier building (though this size is still considered an extremely large theatre). On 6 September 1817, gas lighting was extended from the audience area to the stage, making it the first British theatre to be gaslit throughout. In 1820, the portico that still stands at the theatre's front entrance on Catherine Street was added, and in 1822 the interior underwent a significant remodelling. The colonnade running down the Russell Street side of the building was added in 1831.

Productions relying more on scenery and effects than on dialogue and acting remained commonplace in the new facility. The 1823 production of Cataract of the Ganges had a finale featuring a horseback escape up a flowing cataract "with fire raging all around." Effects for an 1829 production were produced by hydraulic apparatus that reportedly could discharge 39 tons of water.

There were those concerned that the theatre was failing in its role as one of the very few permitted to show legitimate drama. Management of the theatre after it reopened in 1813 fell to Samuel James Arnold, overseen by an amateur board of directors and a subcommittee focusing on the theatre as a centre for national culture. (Lord Byron was briefly on this subcommittee, from June 1815 until leaving England in April 1816.) Actor Edmund Kean was the on-stage highlight; like Macklin before him, he made his reputation as Shylock, premiering in the role in 1814. Kean remained until 1820 through praise and notorious disputes with local playwrights such as Charles Bucke.

Elliston leased the theatre from 1819 until he went bankrupt in 1826. An American, Stephen Price of New York City's Park Theatre, followed from 1826 to 1830.

Through most of the remainder of the 19th century, Drury Lane passed quickly from one proprietor to another. A colonnade was added to the Russell Street frontage, in 1831, by architect Samuel Beazley. In 1833, Alfred Bunn gained control of both Drury Lane and Covent Garden, managing the former from 1833 to 1839, and again from 1843 to 1850. Following the lead of the Lyceum Theatre, London, Bunn championed English opera, rather than the Italian operas that had played earlier at the theatre. These included Fair Rosamond and Farinelli by John Barnett; a series of twelve operas by Michael Balfe including The Maid of Artois and The Bohemian Girl; Maritana and others by William Vincent Wallace and several by Julius Benedict. In 1837, actor-manager Samuel Phelps (1804–1878) joined the company at Drury Lane, appearing with William Charles Macready, the gifted actor-manager in several Shakespeare plays. He also created the role of Captain Channel in Douglas Jerrold's melodrama, The Prisoner of War (1842), and of Lord Tresham in Robert Browning's A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843). Macready was briefly manager in 1841–1843, putting significant reforms in place. Nevertheless, most productions there were financial disasters.

The theatrical monopoly first bestowed by Royal Letters Patent 183 years earlier was abolished by the Theatres Act 1843, but the patent had been largely toothless for decades and this had little immediate effect. On the other hand, other theatres, used to presenting musical entertainments, continued to do so, and Drury Lane continued as one of the most accepted venues for legitimate theatre. The 19th-century run of financial and artistic failures at Drury Lane was interrupted by four plays produced over a twenty-five-year period by the actor-playwright Dion Boucicault: The Queen of Spades (1851), Eugenie (1855), Formosa (1869), and The Shaughraun (1875). But this period of general decline culminated with F. B. Chatterton's 1878 resignation; in his words, "Shakespeare spells ruin, and Byron bankruptcy." During the 19th century, Drury Lane staged ballet as well, with performers including Italy's Carlotta Grisi.

One famous musical director of Drury Lane was the eccentric French conductor and composer of light music Louis-Antoine Jullien (1812–1860), who successfully invited Berlioz to visit London and give concerts in the Theatre.

The house's fortunes rose again under the management of Augustus Harris from 1879. In the 1880s and 1890s, the theatre hosted many of the productions of the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Harris focused increased resources on the theatre's annual pantomime, beginning at Christmas 1888, adding a well-known comedian, Dan Leno. These spectacular Christmas shows were a major success, often playing into March. They were choreographed by the theatre's dance master, John D'Auban. Many of the designs under Harris were created by the imaginative designer C. Wilhelm, including the spectacular drama, Armada (1888), and many of the pantomimes. Productions relying on spectacle became the norm at Drury Lane under the managements first of Harris, from 1879 to 1896, and then of Arthur Collins from 1896 to 1923. Examples include the 1909 play, The Whip, which featured not only a train crash, but also twelve horses recreating the 2,000 Guineas Stakes on an on-stage treadmill. Jimmy Glover, Director of Music from 1893 to 1923, was a significant figure at the theatre during the Collins years and wrote books which record much more than its musical life.

Interior renovation (1922)
In 1922, under the ownership of managing director Sir Alfred Butt, the theatre underwent its last major interior renovation of the 20th century. At a cost of £150,000, it became a four-tiered theatre able to seat just over 2,000 people. It was decorated with one of the most notable interiors produced by the specialist ornamental plasterwork company of Clark and Fenn. Composer and performer Ivor Novello, immensely popular in his time though little-remembered today, presented his musicals in Drury Lane from 1931 to 1939.

The theatre was closed in 1939 because of the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, it served as the headquarters for the Entertainments National Service Association, sustaining some minor bomb damage. It reopened in 1946 with Noël Coward's Pacific 1860.

The building was Grade I listed in February 1958.

In 2000, Theatre Royal Drury Lane was purchased by Andrew Lloyd Webber. , it has been owned and managed by LW Theatres, Lloyd Webber's management company. The seating plan for the theatre remains the same and the auditorium is still one of the largest in London's West End. It is one of the 40 theatres featured in the 2012 DVD documentary series Great West End Theatres, presented by Donald Sinden.

350th anniversary renovation (2013)
On 15 May 2013, Lloyd Webber revealed a £4 million restoration of the theatre to mark its 350th anniversary. Using a team of specialists, the detailed restoration has returned the public areas of the Rotunda, Royal Staircases and Grand Saloon, all of which were part of the 1810 theatre, to their original Regency style.

Major productions of the 20th and 21st centuries
Four of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals made their London debuts in Drury Lane, holding the stage almost continuously for nearly a decade, including Oklahoma! (1947–1950), Carousel (1950–1951), South Pacific (1951–1953) and The King and I (1953–1956). American imports also included Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, which began a five-year run in 1958. Productions in the 1960s included Camelot (1964–1965), Hello, Dolly! (1965–1967) and The Great Waltz (1970–1972). In 1974, Monty Python recorded an album at the theatre, Live at Drury Lane.

Later long runs at the theatre include productions of A Chorus Line (1976–1979), 42nd Street (1984–1989), Miss Saigon (1989–1999, the theatre's longest-running show), The Producers (2004–2007), The Lord of the Rings (2007–2008), Oliver! (2009–2011), Shrek The Musical (2011–2013), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Musical (2013–2017), and Frozen (2021–2024).

Notable productions since 1919 have included:

Hauntings
The author Tom Ogden calls the Theatre Royal one of the world's most haunted theatres. The appearance of almost any one of the handful of ghosts that are said to frequent the theatre signals good luck for an actor or production. The most famous ghost is the "Man in Grey", who appears dressed as a nobleman of the late 18th century: powdered hair beneath a tricorne hat, a dress jacket and cloak or cape, riding boots and a sword. Legend says that the Man in Grey is the ghost of a knife-stabbed man whose skeletal remains were found within a walled-up side passage in 1848. Various people have reported seeing the ghost, including W. J. MacQueen-Pope, who described its usual path as starting at the end of the fourth row in the upper circle and then proceeding via the rear gangway to the wall near the royal box, where the remains were found.

The ghosts of actor Charles Macklin and clown Joseph Grimaldi are also supposed to haunt the theatre. Macklin appears backstage, wandering the corridor which now stands in the spot where, in 1735, he killed fellow actor Thomas Hallam in an argument over a wig ("Goddamn you for a blackguard, scrub, rascal!" he shouted, thrusting a cane into Hallam's face and piercing his left eye). Grimaldi is reported to be a helpful apparition, purportedly guiding nervous actors skillfully about the stage on more than one occasion. The comedian Stanley Lupino said he had seen the ghost of Dan Leno in a dressing room.

title: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane


license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: File:JT-age-42.jpg


text:
User:BrokenBot

This username is being reserved by user BrokenSegue for some future time when he might stop being lazy and write some code for a bot. No purpose has been made for this bot yet and it hasn't been approved by the community. Any votes coming from this account should be nullfied if the puppet master has also voted. Basically if i vote from this account I forgot to sign off.

BrokenBot 02:19, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

title: User:BrokenBot


text:
O Estado de S. Paulo

O Estado de S. Paulo (lit. 'The State of São Paulo'), also known as Estadão (lit. 'Big State'), is a daily newspaper published in São Paulo, Brazil. It is the third largest newspaper in Brazil, and its format changed from broadsheet to berliner on October 17, 2021.

It has the second-largest circulation in the city of São Paulo, behind only Folha de S. Paulo. The journal was founded on 4 January 1875, and was first called A Província de São Paulo (lit. 'The Province of São Paulo'). An active supporter of the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985), O Estado de S. Paulo is described by observers as having a right-wing, conservative editorial stance. It is considered a newspaper of record for Brazil.

History
The term Província ("Province") was preserved until January 1890, one month after the fall of the monarchy and the subsequent republican regime in Brazil. Although the newspaper supported the change, it showed that it was completely independent, refusing to serve the interests of the ascendant Republican Party of São Paulo.

When the then editor in chief Francisco Rangel Pestana left to work in a project of the Constitution, in Petrópolis, the young editor Julio de Mesquita effectively took control of Estado and initiated a series of innovations. One of the innovations was the engagement of the agency Havas, once the largest in the world.

The Estadão pioneered the newspaper selling system in 1875, where it was sold on the streets, instead of by the subscription-only system adopted by all other newspapers in Brazil before that time. At first, this new way of selling resulted in jokes and mockery, but ultimately all rivals adopted the same system. Today, newspapers in Brazil are sold in small street newspapers/magazines shops, and by single sellers located in the main avenues of the biggest cities. Back in the 19th century, the Estadão was sold by only one man, a French immigrant, who carried his newspapers in a bag, while riding a horse, and announcing himself with a cornet.

19th century
In the end of the 19th century, the Estado was already the largest newspaper in São Paulo, exceeding the circulation of the Correio Paulistano. Property of the Mesquita family since 1902, the Estado supported the Allied cause in World War I, suffering reprisals from the German community in the city, which removed all advertising announcements from the newspaper. Despite this, the Mesquitas maintained their editorial position. During the war, the afternoon edition of the newspaper began to circulate throughout the country. It was known as Estadinho (lit. "Little Estado"), directed by the then young Júlio de Mesquita Filho.

In 1924, the newspaper Estado was banned from circulation for the first time, after the defeat of the tenants' rebellion that shook the city. Júlio Mesquita, who tried to mediate a dialogue between the rebels and the government, was imprisoned and taken to Rio de Janeiro, before being freed shortly thereafter.

With the death of the old director of 1927, his son Júlio de Mesquita Filho assumed the directory along with his brother Franscisco, the latter managing the financial aspects of the newspaper. In 1930, the Estado, connected to the Democratic Party, supported the candidature of Getúlio Vargas for the Liberal Alliance. With the victory of Vargas, the newspaper saw the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 as a mark of the end of the oligarchy system. The Grupo Estado assumed in 1932 the leadership of the constitutionalist revolution. With its defeat, many people from the directory were exiled, including Júlio de Mesquita Filho and Francisco Mesquita. One year later, in August, Getúlio Vargas invited Armando de Salles Oliveira to be the governor in São Paulo. Armando Salles, son-in-law of Júlio Mesquita (by then already deceased), imposed as a condition for his acceptance the position the amnesty of the rebels of 1932 and a convocation of a constituent assembly. Vargas agreed and Júlio de Mesquita Filho and Francisco Mesquita, as well as other exiled people, returned to Brazil.

Years later, with the appearance of the "Estado Novo", the newspaper maintained its opposition to the regime, and in March 1940 it was invaded by DOPS (part of the government that controlled and restrained opponents and movements that were antithetical to the Estado Novo regime) and the paper was altered by them to state that, with absurdity and mockery, "guns were arrested" in the redaction. The newspaper was initially closed and afterwards was confiscated by the dictatorship, being administrated by DIP (Department of the Press [Port."Imprense"] and Propaganda) until 1945, when the Estado was returned by the Supreme Federal Court to its legitimate owners. The numbers published during this governmental intervention are not considered part of the actual history of the paper.

Shortly after World War II the Estado enjoyed great advances, with the increase in editing and of its good reputation. In the 1950s, the Major Quedinho Street headquarters were built, adjacent to the Hotel Jaraguá. That was the phase when the section Internacional ("International") of the newspaper, directed by the journalist Giannino Carta and by Ruy Mesquita, became known as the most complete of any national newspaper. From that time until the 1970s, O Estado showed almost exclusively international news on its first page.

República Nova
During the República Nova ("New Republic") (1946–1964) the Estado profiled itself to the National Democratic Union of Carlos Lacerda and opposed all the other governments, especially João Goulart. In 1954, O Estado de S. Paulo led a national campaign against the elected democratic President, Getúlio Vargas, leading him to commit suicide. In 1962, the director Júlio de Mesquita Filho even wrote a Roteiro da Revolução ("Guide to Revolution"), in an attempt to unify civilian opposition against the army, the then called "boasting party", which had intervened in Brazilian politics since the beginning of the Republic. In 1964, the Estado supported the military coup and the indirect election of Castelo Branco. Shortly after the Institutional Act n° 2 which dissolved the other political parties, the journal broke away from the regime.

Censorship
On 13 November 1968, the editor of the Estado was arrested because of Mesquita Filho's refusal to eliminate from the section Notas e Informações ("Notes and Information") the editorial Instituições em Frangalhos ("Institutions in Frazzles"). where he denounced the end of any normal and simple democratic appearance. From then on, the newspaper began disputing censored editions of its news by the Brazilian Federal Police, unlike other national newspapers that did not dispute censorship by the government.

With the death of Mesquita Filho, the Estado was directed by Julio de Mesquita Neto. Then, the newspaper gained worldwide visibility when it denounced the preemptive censorship of articles and replaced them with verses of the Portuguese classic The Lusiads, by Luís de Camões. In 1974, it received the Golden Pen of Freedom Award, bestowed by the International Federation of Editions and Newspapers.

In the 1970s, the newspaper ran into debt because of the construction of its new headquarters by the Tietê river, leading to a financial crisis, as it competed with a new standard of journalism represented by Folha de S. Paulo.

After military dictatorship
In 1986, the Estado hired the renowned journalist Augusto Nunes to be its chief editor. He updated the news bulletin of Estado and endeavored upon a series of reformed graphics, that would result in the adoption, in 1991, of colored printing in its daily editions. Before that, Estado was not issued on Monday and holidays. In 1996, Júlio de Mesquita Neto died and Ruy Mesquita, his brother, became the new director. Previously, Ruy directed Jornal da Tarde, owned by the Estado network.

After an unsuccessful experience in the area of telecommunications, the Estado network was restructured in 2003 and most of the Mesquita family lost their directorship roles. Massive layoffs also occurred. After balancing its budget, the Estado embarked upon a new graphic reformulation in October 2004. It also created new notebooks and received many prizes for excellence in graphic displays.

Grupo Estado
Besides the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, the Estado network has control over the OESP Mídia (1984), a company that runs advertisements. Grupo Estado also owns the radios Rádio Eldorado AM and FM (1972) and the Estado Agency (1970), the largest news agency in Brazil. Jornal da Tarde (1966) was discontinued in 2012.

In 2013, another big reorganization followed. Employees were laid off and the paper reduced the number of pages.

Political stance
The oldest of all the sections, known as Notas e Informações ("Notes and Information"), appears on page 3 and presents a republican institutionalist view, emphasizing liberty of expression, economic liberalism and Rechtsstaat – one of flagship columns of O Estado de S. Paulo. It was, initially, a supporter of the 1964 military coup d'état in Brazil and of the military dictatorship that then ensued. To this day, the newspaper is perceived to hold "right-wing" or "conservative" positions along the Brazilian political spectrum.

title: O Estado de S. Paulo


text:
Tanglish

Tanglish (தமிங்கிலம்) refers to the code-mixing or code-switching of the Tamil and English languages, in the context of colloquial spoken language. In the context of colloquial written language, Tanglish refers to the Tamil language written in English alphabet (that is, using Roman script instead of Tamil script), with extensive usage of English vocabulary.

The name is a portmanteau of the names of the two languages and has been variously composed. The earliest form is Tamilish (dating from 1972), then Tinglish (1974), Tamglish (1991), Tamlish (1993), Thanglish (1997), and Tanglish (1999).

Tamil Nadu
The use of Tanglish has been common in Chennai, possibly due in part to the use of English in education. Also, the influx to the city of speakers of other languages (such as Telugu, Gujarati, and Kannada) has increased the importance of English as the language that people have in common. In The Hindu in 2010, a student in Chennai told of the widespread use of Tanglish by teenagers in her city. She said Tanglish was "something almost every teenager in Chennai uses", but noted that her mother said Tanglish was "murdering the [Tamil] language". That same year, a Tamil teacher in a matriculation school in Chennai reported that few of her students had a large enough Tamil vocabulary to be able to speak Tamil without including some words of English.

Tanglish is increasingly used in advertising aimed at consumers in Tamil Nadu, particularly for promotion of international products. For example, Pepsi has mixed English with Tamil in its slogan "ullam kekkuthae more". In 2004, The Hindu commented on a mobile phone advertising campaign in Chennai that used slogans that combined Tamil and English, such as "Konjam Samaiyal... Konjam Serial", "Konjam Advice... Konjam Udaans", and "Konjam Kadhal... Konjam Modhal." It also is common for advertising to use the Tamil language rendered in the English alphabet, a trend that leads to concern that people are losing the ability to read Tamil script.

The Tanglish lyrics of the film song "Why This Kolaveri Di", which went viral on Internet social networking sites in November 2011, have been identified as a factor in the song's popularity.

Tamil diasporas
Use of Tanglish has been reported among Tamil-speaking immigrant populations in Malaysia and Canada, particularly by young people. Singaporean rapper Yung Raja is known for his extensive use of Tanglish in his lyrics.

Characteristics
A study of code switching in everyday speech in Tamil Nadu found that English words are commonly inserted into sentences that otherwise follow Tamil syntax.

A characteristic of Tanglish or Tamil-English code-switching is the addition of Tamil affixes to English words. The sound "u" is added at the end of an English noun to create a Tamil noun form, as in "soundu" and the words "girl-u heart-u black-u" in the lyrics of "Why This Kolaveri Di". English nouns often are combined with Tamil case markers, as in "journeyai" (accusative case), "driverkku" (dative case, used to mean "for the driver"), and "teacheroṭa" (of the teacher, genitive case). Verbs and some nouns from the English language are converted to Tamil verb forms by adding Tamil verbalizers that indicate verb tense. For example, the Tamil verb "paṇṇu" is added to the English verb "drive", resulting in "drive paṇṇu", used to mean "do the driving". Another pattern that has been noted by speakers or observers of Tanglish is the addition of the syllable "fy" at the end of a Tamil word (e.g., maattify, Kalaachify).

title: Tanglish


text:
Celia Adler

Celia Feinman Adler (December 6, 1889 – January 31, 1979) was an American actress, known as the "First Lady of the Yiddish Theatre".

Early life
Tzirele Adler was born in New York City on December 6, 1889, to daughter of Jacob Adler and Dinah Shtettin, who were both actors in the Yiddish theater. From a young age, she was referred to as Celia. She was the half-sister of Stella Adler, Luther Adler, and Jacob Adler's five other children. Unlike Stella and Luther, who became well known for their work with the Group Theater and their film work and as theorists of the craft of acting, she was almost exclusively a stage actress.

Celia's mother, Dinah Shtettin, was the second wife of Jacob Adler, whose first wife had died. The couple had met and married in London, and they arrived in the United States from there shortly before Celia's birth. They divorced when Celia was a young child when Adler eloped with Sara Heine, although they continued to work together in the theater.

Shtettin subsequently married the actor and playwright Sigmund Feinman, and Celia was raised by her mother and stepfather. Needing work, Shtettin continued to work with Adler's troupe and brought Celia onstage as a prop at as young as six months old. When Celia was four, she acted in The Yiddish King Lear alongside her father and step-mother, in a role playwright Jacob Gordin had written specifically for her.

Celia used her stepfather's last name when she was growing up but later changed her name to "Adler" for her stage career.

Career
After playing many child roles in the Yiddish theater, Adler distanced herself from the theater for a time during her teenage years, but then resumed her acting career in 1909 as Celia Feinman with the encouragement of the actress Bertha Kalisch, with whom she co-starred in a production of Hermann Sudermann's play Heimat. Adler acted alongside her mother in the London Pavilion Theatre, and they toured together in 1910. When she was hired by Boris Thomashefsky as an understudy for the New York People’s Theater, and she signed on as Celia Adler. Her first several years of acting were difficult, as she moved between temporary contracts in the male-dominated field.

Adler's first major dramatic success was in Ossip Dymou's “The Eternal Wanderer,” at Boris Thomashefsky's National Theater in New York in 1913. In 1918, she was hired by the Yiddish Art Theater, which put on as many as thirty-five plays per season and relied on actors ad-libbing their lines. Adler was typically cast as a weeping maiden or desperate mother. Adler and Jacob Ben-Ami convinced director Maurice Schwartz to stage a serious drama, which was an instant hit, but did not ultimately change Schwartz's directing style. Because of this, in 1919, Ben-Ami separated into the Jewish Art Theater, which Adler joined. This theater Jewish playwrights and Yiddish translations of English, Russian, and German plays at the Irving Palace Theater. The next year, she, along with and others, left to create the Jewish Art Theater. However, this theater was short-lived due to a conflict with the financial backer.

In 1921-22, Adler was the leading lady in Schwartz's troupe. the next year, she was a guest star in Philadelphia with Anshel Schorr and touring Europe and America with Ludwig Satz. In 1927-28, she directed her own repertory company. The next year, she re-encountered her childhood acquaintance theater manager and actor Jack Cone, who suggested he marry her so he could join her on her journey to perform in Buenos Aires and appease her fear of traveling alone.

During her career, Adler created leading roles in Yiddish versions of many classic plays, including the work of Hauptmann, Sudermann, Ibsen, Shaw and Shakespeare. As Yiddish-language theater became less popular with the dispersal of the Jewish community and decrease in Yiddish-speakers, Adler made her loyalty to the genre clear; when she acted in an English version of David Pinski's The Treasure, she wrote a letter in the Yiddish World assuring her fans that this was temporary.

After World War II, Adler was contracted by the Jewish Welfare Board to entertain troops in American military camps with an English and Yiddish program that she later brought off-Broadway. In 1946, Adler gave one of the first theatrical portrayals of a Holocaust survivor in Luther Adler's Broadway production A Flag Is Born (written by Ben Hecht and featuring a 22-year-old Marlon Brando, Stella Adler's prize pupil in method acting). Adler, along with co-stars Paul Muni and Marlon Brando, refused to accept compensation above the Actor's Equity minimum wage because of her commitment to the cause of creating a Jewish State in Israel. While this play was expected to run for a month, it lasted thirty weeks.

Adler's last appearance on stage was in 1961 in Women in Horseradish. After her death, she continued to occasionally act at recitals, benefits, and lectures until her death.

Film
In 1937, Celia Adler starred in the Henry Lynn Yiddish film, Where Is My Child. From 1937-1952, she appeared in several films and television programs. Her last film was a 1985 British documentary with archive footage, Almonds and Raisins, narrated by, among others, Orson Welles, Herschel Bernardi and Seymour Rechzeit.

Personal life
She was married three times, to actor Lazar Freed, theatrical manager Jack Cone, and businessman Nathan Forman. She and Freed married in 1914; they had one child, Selwyn (Zelig) Freed and divorced in 1919. In 1930 Adler married Cone, who was her manager at the time; he died in 1959. Later that same year she married Forman, who died just one month before Adler, in 1979.

Death
Adler is buried in the Yiddish Theatre Section of Mount Hebron Cemetery in New York City having died from a stroke.

title: Celia Adler


text:
E. J. Dionne

Eugene Joseph Dionne Jr. is an American journalist, political commentator, and long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at the McCourt School of Public Policy of Georgetown University, and an NPR, MSNBC, and PBS commentator.

Early life and education
Dionne was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Fall River, Massachusetts. He is the son of the late Lucienne (née Galipeau), a librarian and teacher, and Eugène J. Dionne, a dentist. He is of French-Canadian descent. He attended Portsmouth Abbey School (then known as Portsmouth Priory), a Benedictine college preparatory school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

Dionne graduated in 1973 with a B.A., summa cum laude, in social studies from Harvard University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was affiliated with Adams House. He also earned a DPhil in sociology in 1982 from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Career
Dionne's published works include the influential 1991 bestseller Why Americans Hate Politics, which argued that several decades of political polarization was alienating a silent centrist majority. It was characterized as radical centrist by Time. Later books include They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996), Stand up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and Politics of Revenge (2004), Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (2008), Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent (2012), and One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet Deported (2017), coauthored with Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. His most recent book is Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country (2020).

Dionne is a columnist for Commonweal, a liberal Catholic publication. Before becoming a columnist for the Post in 1993, he worked as a reporter for that paper as well as The New York Times. He has joined the left-liberal The National Memo news-politics website.

Personal life
Dionne lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Mary Boyle; they have three children: James, Julia, and Margot.

Writings

 * Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. ISBN 978-0671682552.
 * They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN 978-0684807683.
 * Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (editor). Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998 ISBN 0815718675.
 * Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 978-0743258586.
 * Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. ISBN 0691134588.
 * Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012. ISBN 1608192016.
 * Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. ISBN 978-1476763798.
 * One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported. With Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2017. ISBN 9781250164056.
 * Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2020. ISBN 9781250256478.

title: E. J. Dionne


text:
User:Vadim Makarov

Vadim Makarov's personal homepage Email: makarov@vad1.com

If you dispute any of my edits, it is better to email me for sources and explanation.

ru:Участник:Vadim Makarov

title: User:Vadim Makarov


text: User talk:68.57.170.94

title: User talk:68.57.170.94


text:
Robin Cousins

Robin John Cousins MBE (born 17 August 1957) is a British former competitive figure skater who was BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1980. He was the 1980 Olympic champion, the 1980 European champion, a three-time World medalist (1978–1980) and four-time British national champion (1977–1980), winning all of these titles during his amateur career. He followed this with a successful career as a professional figure skater and later starred in ice shows as well as producing several of his own. He is able to spin in either direction, both clockwise and anti-clockwise, which is an unusual skill for a figure skater.

Off the ice, Cousins has commentated on figure skating events for the BBC, and he assumed the position of head judge on ITV's Dancing on Ice show from 2006 to 2014. He has also appeared in theatre productions, including the West End.

Early life
Robin Cousins was born in Bristol to Jo, a secretary, and Fred, a civil servant, who was formerly a goalkeeper for Millwall F.C. Cousins has two older brothers, Martin and Nick. He attended Henbury School but left at the age of 15.

Cousins first stepped onto the ice at age six at Westover Road Ice Rink while on holiday in Bournemouth. Having enjoyed the experience, he requested lessons for Christmas eighteen months later.

As a young skater, Cousins trained in ice dancing at the same time as singles. His first coach was Pamela Davies. He was later coached by Gladys Hogg at Queens Ice Rink and then by Carlo Fassi.

Cousins left school at the age of sixteen to focus on figure skating. In 1974, he moved alone from Bristol to London, where he would live in a small apartment that "amounted to a converted closet." He found a job stacking shelves at Whiteley's department store.

Competitive career
Cousins won his first national title in 1969, aged 12, at novice level. By the age of 14, he was Britain's junior champion, and he made his international debut that same year.

Cousins represented the United Kingdom as an amateur figure skater for eight years. He won the British National Senior Championships for four consecutive years (1977–1980); the free skating portion of the World Championships three times (1978–1980); and the silver medal at the World Championships in 1979 and 1980.

He reached the pinnacle of his amateur career by winning gold medals both in the European Championships and in the Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, in 1980. At the Olympics, he was in second place behind Jan Hoffman after the compulsory figures and the short programme. Cousins skated a spectacular long programme, receiving 5.9/6.0 from eight of the nine judges for artistic impression. The silver medalist Hoffmann skated a technically superior performance, but six out of nine judges gave first place to Cousins, giving him the overall win and the gold medal. He was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 1980.

He turned professional in 1980 and went on to win the World Professional Men's Figure Skating Championships twice (1985 and 1987) and was a World Professional singles medalist four times (1986, 1990, 1991, 1992).

Later career
After turning professional in 1980, Cousins starred in various professional skating shows such as Holiday on Ice and Ice Capades, whilst continuing to be a regular competitor in the World Professional Championships.

He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to ice skating in the 1980 Birthday Honours. He hit both the longest Axel jump and the longest back flip on figure skates in the Guinness Book of World Records, reaching 5.81 metres (19 ft 1 in) and 5.48 metres (18 ft) on 16 November 1983.

In 1983, Cousins formed his own ice skating performance company, which toured the world with professional ice shows Electric Ice and Ice Majesty. He has starred in, produced, directed, and/or choreographed many international TV ice shows, including The Nutcracker: A Fantasy on Ice, Sleeping Beauty on Ice, The Wizard of Oz on Ice, Toy Story on Ice, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express on Ice, numerous productions for Holiday on Ice, and the movie The Cutting Edge.

Over several years, Cousins has been a regular guest presenter and commentator for BBC Sport, for the European and World Figure Skating Championships and the Winter Olympics. He appeared as the head judge on the show Dancing on Ice in each series from 2006 to 2014, but did not return to the show when it was revived in 2018.

Cousins has also performed on stage. He played the Prince in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, Munkustrap in Cats, Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, Teen Angel in Grease, and Billy Flynn in Chicago in the West End. He has performed pantomime, playing Jack Frost in Santa Clause the return of Jack Frost at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton. Prior to this he played the Prince in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Grand Opera House, Belfast.

Cousins has worked with the British synchronized swimming team.

In 2005, he was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

In March 2016, Cousins joined the Art of the Olympians (AOTO) program.

In May 2021, Cousins was elected as Vice Chair of the British Ice Skating board for a 4-year term and appointed as its President.

Personal life
Cousins has undergone a total of eight operations, including a knee replacement in his fifties. His problems began at the 1974 World Championships, where he withdrew before the event started and returned to Bristol to have his first of two meniscus surgeries the second came immediately after the 1977 World Championships when his left knee cartilage ripped and locked in place. By 1980, he had undergone major surgery on both his left and right knees.

In March 1980, Cousins was the subject of This Is Your Life, after being surprised by Eamonn Andrews in his home city of Bristol.

On 10 March 2012, he appeared on the gameshow All Star Family Fortunes with his nephews Tristan, Robin, James and Oliver. He also appeared on the gameshow Tipping Point Lucky Stars in August 2013.

Charity work
Cousins is a significant patron of the Meningitis UK organization and the Starr Trust children's charity in Brighton.

title: Robin Cousins


text:
Swivel gun

A swivel gun (or simply swivel) is a small cannon mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun with two barrels that rotated along their axes to allow the shooter to switch between either the rifled or the smoothbore barrels.

Swivel guns should not be confused with pivot guns, which were far larger weapons mounted on a horizontal pivot, or screw guns, which are a mountain gun with a segmented barrel.

An older term for the type is peterero (alternative spellings include "paterero" and "pederero"). The name was taken from the Spanish name for the gun, pedrero, a combination of the word piedra (stone) and the suffix -ero (-er), because stone was the first type of ammunition fired.

It had a high rate of fire, as several chambers could be prepared in advance and quickly fired in succession and was especially effective in anti-personnel roles. It was used for centuries in Europe, Asia and Africa.

History
Although breech-loading is often considered a modern innovation which facilitated the loading of cannons, breech-loading swivel guns were invented in the 14th century, and used worldwide from the 16th century onward by numerous countries, many of them non-European. They have been called by many names, sometimes "Murderer", "Base", "Sling", "Port-Piece", "Serpentine", "Culverin", "Pierrier", "Stock Fowler", and "Patterero" in English;  "Pierrier à boîte" in French; "Berço" in Portuguese; "Verso" in Spanish; "Prangi" in Turkish;  "Kammerschlange" (lit. "chamber snake", properly means "breech-loading falconet") in German; "Folangji" (佛郎机, from Turkish "Prangi" or Turkic "Farangi"),  "Folangji chong"  (佛郎机铳, Prangi or Farangi gun),  "Fo-lang-chi p'ao" (佛朗机炮 or 佛朗機砲, Portuguese cannon) in Chinese; "Bulang-kipo" ("불랑기포[佛郞機砲]") in Korean; "Furanki" (仏郎機砲, "Frankish gun") or 子砲 ("Child cannon") in Japanese; and "Bedil" or "bḍil" (ꦧꦣꦶꦭ) in Javanese. Some of them were used until the 20th century.

Swivel guns were developed and used from 1364 onward. The guns were loaded with mug-shaped chambers, in which gunpowder and projectile had been filled in advance. The chamber was then put in place, blocked with a wedge, and then fired. As the loading was made in advance and separately, breech-loading swivel guns were quick-firing guns for their time. An early description of a swivel gun puts the weight of the gun at 118 kg, equipped with three chambers for rotations, each 18 kg in weight, and firing a 280 g lead shot. The guns had a disadvantage: they leaked and lost power around the chambers, but this was compensated by the high rate of fire as multiple chambers could be prepared in advance. A swivel gun could fire either cannonballs against obstacles, or grapeshot against troops.

During the Middle Ages, breech-loading swivel guns were developed by the Europeans also partly as a cheaper alternative to the very expensive bronze cast muzzle-loading cannons, as bronze was many times more expensive than iron. As cast iron was not yet technologically feasible for the Europeans, the only possibility was to use wrought iron bars hammered together and held with hoops like barrels. With this method, a one-piece design was very difficult, and a fragmental structure, with separated chamber and barrel, was then selected.

Around 1500, Europeans learnt how to cast iron, and shifted their cannon productions to one-piece iron muzzleloaders. China started to adopt European swivel guns from 1500 onward, limiting at the same time the production of their own muzzleloaders, because of the high effectiveness of the swivel gun as an anti-personnel gun, which to them was more interesting than the sheer power of a cannonball.

Usage of breech-loading swivel guns continued in Europe however, with, as early as the 17th century, characteristics very similar to the modern machine-gun or mitrailleuse.

Use
Breech-loading swivel guns were used to advantage at the bow and stern on warships, but were also used in fortifications.

Breech-loading guns were used by Burgundians as early as 1364. The Portuguese had versos (Berços) in c. 1410, while England has a picture of port-pieces of 1417, although the picture itself was made c. 1485. The Ottomans used the prangi from the mid-15th century onwards in field battles, aboard their ships, and in their forts, where prangis often comprised the majority of the ordnance. These weapons would spread eastward to Indian ocean, eventually reaching Southeast Asia in c. 1460 AD.

In China and Japan, breech-loading swivel guns were brought after China defeated the Portuguese in the 16th century. At the Battle of Xicaowan in 1522, after defeating the Portuguese in battle, the Chinese captured Portuguese breech-loading swivel guns and then reverse engineered them, calling them "Folangji" or "Fo-lang-chi" (佛郎機 – Frankish) guns, since the Portuguese were called "Folangji" by the Chinese. A shipwreck in 1523 apparently brought the gun to China, but the transmission may have occurred earlier. Views diverge on whether the origin of the cannon is Portuguese or Turkish. There was a confusion whether folangji was supposed to be the name of a people (the Portuguese) or name of a weapon. In fact the word folangji represent 2 different words with different etymology. The term folangji as a weapon is related to the prangi carried in Ottoman galleys and farangi used by Babur. The word folangji as an ethnonym (Frankish or Portuguese) is unrelated. The Ottoman prangi guns may have reached Indian ocean before either Ottoman or Portuguese ships did. They may also reach China through the Silk Road. In the History of the reign of Wan Li (萬厲野獲編), by Shen Defu, it is said that "After the reign of Hong Zhi (1445–1505), China started having Fu-Lang-Ji cannons, the country of which was called in the old times Sam Fu Qi". In volume 30 about "The Red-Haired Foreigners" he wrote "After the reign of Zhengtong (1436–1449) China got hold of Fu-Lang-Ji cannons, the most important magic instrument of foreign people". He mentioned the cannons some 60 or 70 years prior to the first reference about Portuguese. It was impossible for the Chinese to get hold of the Portuguese cannons prior to their arrival. Pelliot viewed that the folangji gun reached China before Portuguese did, possibly by anonymous carriers from Malaya. Needham noted that breech-loading guns were already familiar in Southern China in 1510, as a rebellion in Huang Kuan was destroyed by more than 100 folangji. It may even be earlier, brought to Fujian by a man named Wei Sheng and used in quelling a pirate incident in 1507.

In Japan, Ōtomo Sōrin seems to have been the first recipient of the guns, possibly as early as 1551. In 1561 the Portuguese, allied with Otomo in the Siege of Moji, bombarded rival Japanese position, possibly with swivel guns. In the Battle of Takajō in 1587, Ōtomo Sōrin used two swivel guns obtained from the Portuguese. The guns were nicknamed Kunikuzushi (国崩し).

In the later portions of the Ming dynasty (mid 16th century onward) it appears that these type of guns were the most common and numerous type of artillery used by the Ming forces. a great deal of variation of such cannons were produced, and it appeared in pretty much all of the conflicts of this time, including the Imjin War. Until the introduction of heavy Dutch cannons in the early 17th century, there were even attempts by the Ming to make large heavy versions of such guns.

Other countries also used swivel guns. In Bali, such a gun was found in the possession of the Raja of Badung, and is now located in the Bali Museum. Numerous such guns were also used in Northern Africa by Algerian rebels in their resistance to French forces.

Breech-loading swivel guns were also used extensively in Southeast Asia as early as the 16th century, apparently even before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spanish there, and continued to be in use as a preferred anti-personnel weapon as late as the 20th century. The Americans fought Moros equipped with breech-loading swivel guns in the Philippines in 1904. In early 20th century, Chinese junks were armed with old-fashioned swivel guns, both muzzleloader and breechloader. The breech-loading guns were called "breech loading culverin" by Cardwell, they were 8 ft long with 1-2 in bore. These guns were fired using percussion cap mechanism. Dyer c. 1930 noted the use of cannon by Makassan trepanger in Northern Australia, in particular the bronze breechloader with 2 in bore.

Steel rifled breech-loading swivel guns are known which were manufactured by the United States towards the end of the 19th century, and used in colonial theaters such as in Madagascar.

Configuration
Swivel guns are among the smallest types of cannon, typically measuring less than 1 m in length and with a bore diameter of up to 3.8 cm. They can fire a variety of ammunition but were generally used to fire grapeshot and small caliber round shot. They were aimed through the use of a wooden handle, somewhat similar in shape to a baseball bat, attached to the breech of the weapon.

Most swivel guns were muzzleloaders, but there were some breech-loading swivel guns as early as the 1410, making them among the first such examples of this type of weapon (see berços). Breech-loading swivel guns had a breech shaped like a beer mug, which the gunner would take by the handle and insert into the body of the swivel gun with the breech's opening facing forwards. The gunpowder and projectiles were loaded into the breech before it was inserted into the gun. If a number of breeches were prepared beforehand, the gunner could maintain a high rate of fire for a brief period simply by swapping out the used breech and replacing it with a freshly loaded one.

Applications

Swivel guns were used principally aboard sailing ships, serving as short-range anti-personnel ordnance. They were not ship-sinking weapons, due to their small caliber and short range, but could do considerable damage to anyone caught in their line of fire. They were especially useful against deck-to-deck boarders, against approaching longboats bearing boarding parties, and against deck gun crews when ships were hull to hull.

Due to their relatively small size, swivel guns were highly portable and could be moved around the deck of a ship quite easily (and certainly much more easily than other types of cannon). They could be mounted on vertical timbers (pillars) which were either part of the ship's structure or were firmly bolted to that structure along either side, which provided the gunner with a reasonably steady platform from which to fire. Their portability enabled them to be installed wherever they were most needed; whereas larger cannon were useless if they were on the wrong side of the ship, swivel guns could be carried across the deck to face the enemy.

The small size of swivel guns enabled them to be used by a wide variety of vessels, including those too small to accommodate larger cannons, and also permitted their use on land; they were commonly issued to forts in North America in the 18th century, and Lewis and Clark took one with them on their famous expedition into the American interior in 1804. Swivel guns also had peaceful uses. They were used for signalling purposes and for firing salutes, and also found uses in whaling, where bow-mounted swivel guns were used to fire harpoons, and fowling, where swivel guns mounted on punts were used to shoot flocks of waterfowl (see also punt gun).

Swivel guns were extensively used by the kingdoms and empires of Asia, particularly Ottoman, China, Korea, and Nusantara. The Ottomans used the prangi from the mid-15th century onwards in field battles, aboard their ships, and in their forts, where prangis often comprised the majority of the ordnance. These weapons would spread eastward to Indian ocean, eventually reaching Southeast Asia in c. 1460 AD.

The Chinese knew breech-loading swivel guns since at least 1507, when it was brought to Fujian by a man named Wei Sheng and used in quelling a pirate incident in 1507. Needham noted that breech-loading guns were already familiar in Southern China in 1510, as a rebellion in Huang Kuan was destroyed by more than 100 folangji. Korea followed suit by the 1560s. During the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), Korean naval forces used swivel guns and larger cannon to great effect in interdicting the invading Japanese forces.

title: Swivel gun


text:
Talk:United Software Association

This article was proposed for deletion February 2005. The discussion is archived at Votes for deletion/United Software Association. Joyous 02:25, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on United Software Association. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20041216172939/http://www.phrack.org:80/phrack/38/P38-04 to http://www.phrack.org/phrack/38/P38-04

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 06:43, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:United Software Association


text:
Jayne Torvill

Jayne Torvill, OBE (born 7 October 1957) is a British professional ice dancer and former competitor. With Christopher Dean, she won a gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics and a bronze medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics, becoming one of the oldest figure skating Olympic medalists.

Early life
Torvill was born in Clifton, Nottingham, England, and grew up in Nottingham. She attended Clifton Hall Girls' Grammar School and worked in the city as an insurance clerk at Norwich Union.

Ice skating
She became hooked on ice skating at age 8 following an after-school trip to the local ice rink. In 1971 at age 14 Torvill became the British National Pairs Champion with her then-partner Michael Hutchinson.

After parting from Hutchinson, Torvill continued to skate on her own for a while before teaming up with Christopher Dean in 1975. On placing 5th in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, Dean gave up his job as a policeman and Torvill gave up hers as an insurance clerk to skate together full-time. Torvill and Dean's free programme at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, performed to the music of Maurice Ravel's Boléro, became world-famous. They received twelve perfect 6.0 marks, one of five occasions they were awarded all perfect scores for artistic impression. It was one of the most popular achievements in the history of British sport, watched by a British television audience of 24 million people. Since the time limit was four minutes and ten seconds and their music was four minutes 28 seconds, they began on their knees and moved their bodies to the music for 18 seconds before starting to skate.

Torvill and Dean turned professional after their 1984 Olympic win and under then-existing Olympic Committee rules their professional status made them ineligible to compete in the Olympics again. However, in 1993 the International Skating Union relaxed the rules for professional skaters, allowing the pair to participate in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer where they won a bronze medal.

Torvill took a seven-year break from skating from 1998 to 2005.

From January 2006 to 2023, she and Dean have participated in the ITV show Dancing on Ice as "judges". Each season, the show runs from January to March and then goes on tour to arenas across the United Kingdom. In November 2011, Torvill said, "the standard each year has gotten higher and higher, which is exciting for us – to think what we can achieve with people who have never skated or are relatively unknown to skating." Dancing on Ice is scheduled to return in 2024.

Torvill and Dean were ambassadors for the 2012 European Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield, England. In February 2014, Torvill and Dean visited Sarajevo for the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Olympics, and recreated their Bolero routine in the same arena where they won the gold.

Personal life
Torvill currently resides in Heathfield, East Sussex, England, with her husband Phil Christensen and their adopted children Kieran and Jessica.

In 2021 Torvill took part in an episode of DNA Journey where she found out she was related to footballer Charlie Bicknell, a cousin on her mother's side.

In popular culture
Torvill was portrayed by Poppy Lee Friar in the 2018 biopic Torvill & Dean.

title: Jayne Torvill


text:
Talk:The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Comment 1
It might be worth noting that a snake couldn't hear a whistle. i think this book is lame —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.79.145.128 (talk) 21:12, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment 2
Cheetahs were present in India until they became extinct in 1950's tamalhazra 10:55, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Comment 3
The whistle wasn't used to signal the snake to attack, it was used to signal the snake to return. The sound that Watson heard was a hiss. I'm changing the article accordingly. 24.199.113.126 23:15, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Comment 4
The snake/deaf thing has been removed 3 times, eventhough the whole debacle was cited in the link. Just so this thing won't be removed again, here's the quote hosted on San Diego Natural History museum: "But these discrepancies in the choice of some specific snake are immaterial compared with the basic fact that the culprit could not, by any possibility, have been a snake at all. Consider these obvious absurdities: The creature lives on milk, not the natural food of any snake, and one that it will accept only rarely as a substitute for water, if the latter be unobtainable. [b]It is recalled to the doctor's room by a whistle: how could this be when it is well known that snakes are quite deaf? It is true that they are extraordinarily sensitive to vibrations of the substratum upon which they rest, so they often appear to hear sounds of sufficient magnitude to affect such a vibrator as a box in which they may be kept; but this could not be the case with a snake clinging tenuously to a flimsy bell-rope[\b]. Finally, while admitting that a snake might slide down a bell-rope, it could certainly not climb up one, particularly with the lower end swinging loose above the fatal bed. For snakes do not climb -- as many think -- by twining themselves around an object; they climb by wedging their bodies into any crannies and interstices, taking advantage of every irregularity or protrusion upon which a loop of body may be hooked. It is by this method that they progress rapidly up the rough bark of branching trees or the tangled skein of a vine. And, to add to the difficulty of the Roylott snake, it is required to climb on a cold night, for one tragedy took place when the "wind was howling outside, and the rain was beating and splashing against the windows" and the other when there was "a chill wind blowing in our faces." Central heating, of course, was unheard of then; and we know that no grate fire[10] was burning in either room at the time of the final fatality because Holmes insisted "We must sit without a light. He [Roylott] would see it through the ventilator"; and after midnight, when the doctor's stealthy activities began, there was a "momentary gleam of light up in the direction of the ventilator." So we have a creature performing the -- for it -- impossible feat of climbing a loose bell-rope at a temperature at which an ectothermic animal, such as a snake, would be practically comatose. There are eleven other reasons, evident to any beginner in ophiology, why the theory of a snake having caused either death is untenable, but I shall not labor the subject. A small work of my own upon the principles involved can be seen at the British Museum." [] Suredeath 22:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

But this article is not about "ophiology" is it? You should stick to your museum work and natural sciences. This is about literature.

-

Snakes aren't deaf. They have ears, just not external ones. If you're going to discuss the merits and flaws of a story on the basis of science, get your science straight.

http://pet-snakes.com/how-snakes-hear —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.60.143.194 (talk) 19:27, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

That Article
I hate that article. It puts all the blame on poor, innocent John Watson and completely ignores Sherlock Holmes's part in the inaccuracies. Holmes was the one who perpetuated the bizarre story of the Indian swamp adder and it was he who should have checked Dr. Watson's report for any misunderstandings or inaccuracies. The article so conveniently neglects to mention his part and instead foists a crazy, insulting theory upon the reader. While it is academically sound, I find that its total lack of objectivity with regards to the results of Watson's and Holmes's mistakes is downright shameful.
 * Excuse me? What shameful theory? Everything said in that article is the truth. Its such a relief to hear it. it boils me to hear so many people talk as though Holmes stories have some clever solutions.Its easy to have a clever solution if you make up physical facts. Like that a snake can hear. The article calls out the fact that the Holmes stories are full of inaccuracies. They are not blaming the fictional characters, but the author for having so little knowledge and doing no research at all!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.148.192 (talk) 02:04, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Ummmmmm, you do realise that both Holmes and Watson are fictional characters, don't you?

 * Yes. The important thing is that people realize that the Holmes stories are not logical. I think thats why these huge errors made by Conan Doyle must be included. i agree it is very on topic, and needs to be a part of the article. Its not a question of Holmes or Watson being wrong, but Conan Doyle not being a very bright guy. I insist it be included.

Let's be serious
Notwithstanding that the Klauber article is published in what looks like a reputable source, I think it's clearly a joke (and the lowest form, in that it's a pun). I wonder if Wikipedia should be citing it as factual. The comments on this page that appear to be playing along with the joke, aren't helping. 129.97.79.144 18:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The fact that the author of the story did no research and put in huge mistakes is not relevant? especially an author so esteemed for his intellect as Doyle did not even know that snakes are deaf even though he usus one as a murder weapon in the story. I disagree.Many people think that these stories are truly clever solutions to physically possible problems. that the story is built on nothing but errors is certainly a big part of its description. I will not allow it to be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.148.192 (talk) 02:09, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don`t agree, that's why I deleted it. The discussion about the very emotional reception of the characters Holmes and Watson, and the confusion of fact and fiction should be the topic of another article, don`t you think? Although I admit it is an important part of the reader`s reception but this rather belongs to "reception of the story" or sth. like that. This does not have anything to do with sound interpretation.

ps. no, the scientific accuracy of the story is not relevant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.160.186.26 (talk) 10:27, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

 * As you admit, it is about "reception of the story", which should be a section of this article; such info generally cannot have a separate article of its own. I reverted your blanking. --BorgQueen (talk) 19:44, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

but then, at least, shouldn`t it be under a new header like "reception of the story"? I think the way it is now, one might think this is actually an important fact to the story itself... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.0.148.50 (talk) 07:10, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Out of Place
Should the whole article on the Swamp Adder be included on this page? I think thats kind of off topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.211.88.240 (talk) 23:40, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please see Talk:Swamp adder (Sherlock Holmes). --BorgQueen 02:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Fine, but the errors in the story are a very important part of its description. Any story that tries to pass itself of as clever, but is in fact full of malarky should be noted as such. Please make sure some mention of the errors in logic are included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.148.192 (talk) 01:59, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Bungarus fasciatus?
Wouldn`t this snake be a good guess? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.73.11.146 (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I do not really understand the discussion about the snake, the question is whether the story as piece of literature has anything to do with the fact that a certain snake could have existed in reality? I think this fact is not important for the interpretation of the story as a piece of literature... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.160.186.26 (talk) 09:41, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Literature vs. Science
I think the discussion of the snake relates to a common misunderstanding of literature as a scientific report whereas in literature such positivist confirmation (as: is it this or that snake for real?) are only of minor importance... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.160.186.26 (talk) 09:49, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

open to changes???
Since all my proposals to changes are "rejected", I give up, because this is childish to me. This is not even a semi-scientific discussion, it seems to me people just want to push their ego here... Just another reason why not to use wikipedia.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.0.148.50 (talk) 07:19, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

 * To me the value of a piece of "literature" is damaged if the story could not even happen.  "The Speckled Band" is not the only example.  The tragic ending of Ibsen's "Ghosts"  involves the male lead being driven insane by "hereditary syphilis".   Syphilis is not hereditary and this was already known in Ibsen's time.  2601:C2:201:2B85:40B0:DBB:CA21:AE5F (talk) 05:12, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Summary Mistake
After Helen leaves, Dr. Roylott comes to visit Holmes, having traced his stepdaughter. He demands to know what Helen has said to Holmes, but Holmes refuses to say. Dr. Roylott bends an iron poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes, but Holmes is unaffected as he maintains a rather jovial demeanor during the encounter. After Roylott leaves, Holmes straightens the poker out again, "thus showing that he is just as strong as the doctor." The part in quotes is wrong, last time I checked it is harder to unbend an object than to bend it. So it should be mentioned that Holmes is stronger than the Doctor. What do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.27.76.75 (talk) 23:27, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 07:55, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Adventure of the Speckled Band


text:
User:RoyBoy/The 800 Club

http://blackpudding.blog.onet.pl/Durnie-i-Elity,2,ID404513781,n

The 800 Club is the last line of defense to ensure Wikipedia articles are 800x600 friendly, while meeting a high standard of aesthetics in other resolutions such as 1024x768. This means a browser on a 800x600 screen sized edge to edge (not maximized) should be able to display an article with no horizontal bar.

800x600 Compliance (R8C)
Found an article that isn't 800x600 compliant? Name'er here and well get get'er back into liner.

Ironically, this page isn't compliant when using IE 5.1 on a Mac at 800x600. Then again, none of the Wikipedia pages are... stupid IE side nav tabs. WAvegetarian (talk) (email)   (contribs) 08:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Articles Fixed

 * 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities

 * Adolf Hitler
 * Alan Rickman
 * American_Civil_War
 * Apollo moon landing hoax accusations
 * Arantxa Sánchez Vicario

 * Blade Runner (soundtracks)
 * Break Every Rule

 * Canadian current events
 * Cassini-Huygens
 * Cheyenne
 * Chicago Cubs
 * Collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center
 * Computer-generated imagery
 * Counter-Strike
 * Crane (machine)
 * Current sports events

 * Diplomatic_immunity
 * Donations_for_victims_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake

 * East Gippsland Shire
 * Erasmus_Darwin

 * Falkirk Wheel
 * Female_circumcision
 * Football_World_Cup_2002_%28squads%29
 * Foreign Affair
 * FoxTrot

 * GO_Transit
 * Googol
 * Gottfried Semper
 * Great Crested Grebe
 * Great Dividing Range

 * Half-Life 2
 * Hamilton%2C_Ontario
 * Highway 400 (Ontario)
 * Houston, Texas
 * Huygens_probe

 * In_Utero
 * Insulating concrete forms
 * Iranian Architecture

 * Jack Abramoff
 * John McEnroe

 * Karl Liebknecht
 * King City, Ontario
 * Kuiper belt

 * Large Hadron Collider
 * List of songs by "Weird Al" Yankovic
 * Little Rock, Arkansas
 * Loch Ard Gorge
 * Los Angeles, California

 * Melt-Banana
 * Middle_Ages

 * Nova_Scotia

 * Observer pattern

 * Panspermia
 * Phishing
 * Pizza
 * PlayStation_2
 * Private Dancer

 * Qazvin (city)
 * Quebec_City%2C_Quebec

 * Red-necked Grebe
 * Rifle
 * Roman military tactics

 * Same-sex marriage in Canada
 * Sistine Chapel
 * Solvay Conference
 * Something Awful
 * Space_Shuttle_program
 * Star Trek: Voyager

 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
 * Thailand_legislative_election%2C_2005
 * The_Da_Vinci_Code
 * The_UNIX_Virus
 * Toronto, Ontario
 * Tuamotus
 * Twenty Four Seven (album)

 * Template:Current events
 * Template:Featured
 * Template:US_Constitution
 * Template:Mercedes-Benz vehicles
 * Template:Microsoft products
 * Template:NoMultiLicense
 * Template:Sprotected
 * Template:Trans-Canada

 * U.S._state
 * University of California, Berkeley

 * User:Arthur Rubin
 * Wiki-Hell
 * User:Camillus McElhinney
 * User:Hadal
 * User:Jimbo Wales
 * User:Jimbo Wales/Funny pictures
 * User:RadioKirk
 * User:Tony Sidaway

 * Vladimir_Putin

 * War_on_Terrorism
 * Weight_training
 * Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
 * Picture_of_the_day
 * Template messages
 * William_A._Dembski
 * Winnipeg%2C_Manitoba
 * Winter Olympic Games

Members
Username – followed by a self important title of your choosing.

 * RoyBoy – Founding Father
 * SushiGeek – Founding Father Emeritus
 * Randy Johnston

Known Bugs

 * Internet Explorer 6 will interpret italics with an extra space making a horizontal bar appear when italics is on the edge of an article. So disambiguation notices and titles can make articles not fit. Hopefully that will be corrected in the next version; Firefox does not have this problem.
 * When tables are coded with width=100% MediaWiki will render them with extra margin. The easiest thing is to remove the width entirely, but if necessary reduce it to width=98%. (99% works for Firefox 1.0, 98% works for IE6 as well)
 * A bug in Gecko (Firefox 1.0) CSS rendering will result in the top margin value not being recognized for images.

FAQ

 * Q: Is The 800 Club derived from The 700 Club?
 * A: Probably. :"D

 * Q: Isn't 800x600 an awful resolution?
 * A: So?

Touches
Either spelling, British or American, is okay by me. :) NetK 19:55, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

title: User:RoyBoy/The 800 Club