Showing results by author "F L Light"

The Persians: A Translation from Aeschylus There is no drama where the total multiplicity of horror in defeat is more cogently presented than in the Persians by Aeschylus, who fought in the Athenian triumph at Salamis, where the Persian fleet was rammed and wrecked.

The fifty daughters of Danaos have with their father fled by ship from Egypt, escaping compulsatory marriage with their fifty cousins, the sons of Aegyptos. They arrive in Argos, where, by supplication to the king and people, they seek refuge from their cousins, who sailed in pursuit. Their devout abhorrence of the marriage is the weightiest theme of the play.

A passage of diverse heroics and distant perseverance in quest of the Golden Fleece is with transcendent narrative and canonic rhythm in the Argonautica recounted. Jason and the Argonauts, sailing from Iolcos on the Argo, pass into the Euxine, or Black Sea, on their voyage to Colchis at the eastern end of the sea. F L Light's translation re-embodies the motive energy of metric Apollonius in this epic of golden probation in endurance and dispatch.

Aristotle's assertion that in Greek tragedy there is no loftier work than Oedipus the King cannot be lightly contradicted. This drama is endued fearfully with nature, as she works against the conscientiousness of measure found in man. Heretofore no translation of this play has been a poem of Sophoclean worthiness and work. The rhythmic stature of this translation runs with the Greek in heat and light.

After Zeus has learned that Prometheus stole his sovereign property, fire, and conveyed it to mankind, he orders Hephaistos, under the direction of Power and Force, to bind his adversary to an arduous crag of most difficult remoteness on the earth. As the Titan responds to this punishment, the reader is inspired with the fire of individual affirmation, devoted indomitably to life and liberty.

Prince Kreon, enforcing an arbitrary mandate, is enraged that Antigone would abide by a natural law of sisterly respect in contradiction of his will. As neither can be reconciled with the other's acts, the drama grows devoutly tenebrous. This translation is iambic, as is most of the text in Greek.

Frederick Lazarus Light's resolve to write a greater Iliad in English than Homer composed in Greek is manifest. This translation impersonates Homeric Greek. It runs with Achilleus and like man-shattering Hector in the shock of arms is resolutely sharp. As unrelenting as sublimity, not yielding lyrically, unprosaically vindicating Homer's vision, the brightest labor has been attempted and is brought over as a consummate attempt.

Cuthbert and Richard Burbage inherited the theater from their father, James, who was its builder and manager. Upon jarred transactions with their landlord, they resolve both to raze and restore the theater, preparing for a shift across the Thames. The Siblings Burbage presents the dramatic troubles of this action. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English, with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

The day before the rebellion of the Earl of Essex in London, the Lord Chamberlain's Men performed upon commission Richard II, a play wherein Bolingbroke might be taken for Essex and King Richard for Queen Elizabeth. Amazing Insecurity presents two scenes from that performance, as revised by F. L. Light in Sophoclean English classicized. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

Cato, the enemy of Caesar, escaped with other Roman senators and remnant legions from the battle of Pharsalus to the Libyan coast, where again Caesar defeated them. The senatorial generals decide to sail for Spain, but Cato prefers to stay in Utica, where no pardon from Caesar he'd permit.

In three forcible disruptions, first in April 1885 and last in March-April 1886, the Knights of Labor assailed locomotive operations or stopped work on railroads which were controlled directly or influentially by Jay Gould. Though both Terence Powderly, the chief executive of the Knights, and Gould decried the strikes, they could not easily resolve their labored variance. This play is one of the Gouldium, a series of dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould. As in most of these plays there are seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral episodes.

In 1564, Shakespearean judgments on Keynesian legislation, Shakespear Versus Keynes reveals that winning never multiplies from wasting, that affluence is not accrued from effluence, that profit is no fruit of prodigality, that thrift befits a thriver more than losses of lavishment, and that owners are more procreant than the disowners taxing them. Each judgment is a couplet in compact pentameter. No slackness is allowed.

A few months after the accession of King James in 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh and his friend, Henry Lord Cobham, among others, were accused of treason. I am the Raleigh is a drama of Sir Walter’s trial, when he strove with Edward Coke, the great accuser, to exonerate himself.

In 1580, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord Arthur Grey de Wilton, came to Dublin with 3000 troops to end the Desmond Rebellion. Accompanied with his secretary, Edmund Spenser, the great English poet, he proved, in battle and in transactions with the enemy, formidable but flawed. This play follows the historical relation closely. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, under erosive overflows from eight inches of rain, dissolved, a flood unloosing on the narrow valley below, with Johnstown 14 miles down. This drama presents Henry Clay Frick, a founding member of the South Fork Fishing Club, which owned the dam and Lake Conemaugh behind it. His response to the devastation is dramatic. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

In the 1870's, almost all capital for major mines in California and other western states or territories was centered in San Francisco, where William Ralston, chief officer of the Bank of California, pursued investments. When his associates were persuaded that a diamond lode of secret location had been discovered, he with them incorporated the Golconda Diamond Mine. The Exhilarated Suckers represents the course of their investment.

In San Francisco, the new Bank of California would branch itself in Virginia City, Nevada, a mining town situated on a mountain side over the Comstock Lode of silver. As the branch's moment bigger grows under the direction of William Sharon, so a monopolistic sovereignty of mills and mines is ventured. This drama sets forth the actions of monopolist temerity and what success or miss the principals had. F. L. Light is the author of the Gouldium, a series of 24 dramas (all framed to his peculiar form of Athenian tragic poetry), on the life and times of Jay Gould.

The earls of Essex and Southampton are tried together for high treason before a jury of the noblest peers. Pleading not guilty, they strive in angry and arrant disputation with Attorney General Edward Coke and Francis Bacon. This drama is the third part of an Aeschylean trilogy and maintains the classical form of tragedy in English, with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

There was no larger steel mill in the United States than the Homestead works, a division of Carnegie Steel. The discord between the employed, represented by the Amalgamated Association, and the employers, defended by Henry Clay Frick, a major shareholder and chief officer for all parts of Carnegie Steel, was, when the contract expired at the end of June, 1892, unsettled and provoked severe hostilities.

Rodrigo Lopez, former physician to Queen Elizabeth, and his supposed accessories are questioned in the Tower on the charge of treason. Both the Earl of Essex and Lord Burghley agree that his confession must conform to the charge. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances. By Aristotelian standards it may be recognized.