Comedie Francaise is the national subsidised theatre of France, formed in 1680 by the fusion of the two bodies into which Moliere's company of actors had split. Research Comedie Francaise
Japanese drama commenced around the 7th century and to date has evolved a wide variety of genres characterised generally by the fusion of dramatic, musical, and dance elements. The music and dance, as well as the subjects, settings, costumes, and acting styles, were rigidly stylised and, until recent times, offered relatively few realistic or naturalistic qualities. Some genres utilise almost exclusively a fixed repertoire of plays, often many centuries old. The earliest known type of Japanese theatrical entertainment is gigaku, which was introduced into Japan in 612 from southern China; it is thought to have been ultimately of Indian or possibly even of Greek origin. Gigaku dances, performed with masks, seem to have been humorous. In the 8th century gigaku fell into disfavour because its frivolous character displeased the Japanese rulers of the period. It was supplanted largely by bugaku, an entertainment introduced from China. Bugaku dances portrayed simple situations such as the return of a general from war.
The performers wore impressive robes, and their dances had exotic splendour. Japanese rulers, intent on imitating Chinese courtetiquette, favoured bugaku, both because of its solemnity and because of its similarity to Chinese court entertainments, and it quickly acquired a ritual character. Bugaku may now be seen only at ceremonies. A type of acrobatic entertainment known as sangaku, transmitted similarly to Japan from the Asian continent and popular in the 8th century, also influenced Japanese drama. Typical acts included tightrope walking, juggling, and sword swallowing. A Combination of these secular entertainments and the sacred dances and songs associated with the Shinto religion gradually evolved into more complex forms of drama. Surviving documents from the 11th century describe comic playlets, and one play still performed, the ritual dance Okina, may date from this period.
Plays were also performed at shrine festivals in support of prayers for harvests or to depict the history of the shrine. The actors and musicians were organised into troupes. By the 14th century the theatre had developed one of its foremost artistic achievements, No drama. These plays included solemn dances intended to suggest the deepest emotions of the principal character and were written in the poetic language of the Japanese classics. A program also often included kyo gen, or farces written in colloquial language. No was brought to the level of great art by the genius of two dramatists, Kanami Kiyotsugu and his son Zeami Motokiyo. No was patronised by the Ashikaga shogunate after a shogun saw the boy Zeami perform in 1374. Zeami developed No into refined aristocratic drama, but after his death it tended to lose its creative vitality and become ritualistic. Many No plays performed at present are by Zeami, and his books of criticism are considered the final authority on the subject.
For a short period after the Meiji restoration in 1868, No was threatened with extinction because of its connections with the discredited shogunate. It survived the threat, however, and thereafter enjoyed popularity with specialised audiences. An entire program of No drama traditionally consists of five No plays in poetry with music and four kyo gen farces in prose without music, performed alternately. Kyogen farces feature representational acting, and the actors wear neither masks nor makeup. No plays avoid representational accuracy in favour of a symbolic treatment of subjects concerning the worlds of the living and the dead. The principal types of No plays are those dealing with deities, the ghosts of warriors, women with tragic destinies, mad persons, and devils or festive spirits. The actors, who often wear masks, are richly and elaborately costumed. The No drama is performed in a theatre with a roofed stage. The audience is seated on two or, less commonly, three sides of the stage. The actors reach the stage by a passageway, called the bridge, which is marked by three pine trees. The only backdrop is a large painted pine. The scenery consists entirely of impressionistic props suggesting the outlines of a building, a boat, or any other object of importance to the play. Only male actors perform in No dramas. When they play the roles of women or of men whose age is markedly different from their own, they wear masks, many of which are exceptionally beautiful. The No drama also includes a chorus that sits at one side of the stage and recites for the actors when they dance, but the chorus has no identity in the drama. Full programs are seldom presented any longer, but kyo gen continues to be an indispensable part of the entire performance, for it presents the humorous aspects of life with which No is never concerned.
At the end of the 15th century two new popular forms appeared; they were the puppet theatre, jo ruri, also called bunraku, and a form known as kabuki. The puppet theatre combines three elements: the puppets; the chanters who sing and declaim for the puppets; and the players of the samisen, a three-stringed instrument, who provide the accompaniment. The greatest Japanese dramatist, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, wrote chiefly for the puppet theatre, the artistic level of which is perhaps higher in Japan than anywhere else in the world. The puppet theatre, after attaining its greatest popularity in the 18th century, lost in public favour to the kabuki, which has continued to be the most popular traditional dramatic genre. By the mid-1980s kabuki was popular with American audiences, and troupes made annual appearances in the USA Kabuki tends to be spectacle rather than drama. Original kabuki texts, as opposed to those adapted from the puppet theatre, are of lesser importance than the remarkable acting, the music and dance, and the brilliantly collared settings.
Kabuki plays are performed in large theatres, with a hanamichi, or raised platform, extending from the back of the theatre to the stage. In addition to the traditional drama, a modern theatrical repertoire consisting of original Japanese plays in a modern idiom and of translations of European plays has been active in Japan since the beginning of the 20th century. Some 20th-century playwrights have attempted to compromise between traditional Japanese forms and essentially Western idioms, either by introducing modern psychology into their treatment of the ancient tales or by making kabuki-style plays out of such European classics as Shakespeare's Macbeth. Highly successful modern presentations of traditional themes are offered in Five Modern No Plays (1956) by Mishima Yukio. Other plays, notably Twilight Crane, produced in 1949, by Kinoshita Junji, are derived from old folktales. Many contemporary Japanese playwrights deal with such themes as conflict in modern Japanese society and problems of social injustice; other playwrights prefer to work out Japanese equivalents of modern symbolic drama or of the American musical comedy. Research Japanese Drama
Prince Rupert's Drops are drops of glass thrown while in a state of fusion into water, and thus suddenly consolidated, taking generally a form somewhat like a tadpole. The thick end may be struck with a hammer without breaking, but should the smallest part of the tail be nipped off, or the surface scratched with a diamond, the whole flies into fine dust with an almost explosive force. This phenomena is due to the state of strain in the interior of the mass of glass, caused by the sudden consolidation of the crust which is formed while the internal mass is still liquid. This tends to contract on cooling, but is prevented by the molecular forces which attach it to the crust. This philosophical toy gets its name from being invented or being brought first into notice by Prince Rupert, nephew of Charles I. Research Prince Rupert's Drops
The Readjusters were an American political faction formed from the Democratic party of Virginia in 1878. Its formation was due to a bill which passed the State Legislature in March of that year for refunding the State debt. The party was led by William Mahone and was violently opposed to the payment of the debt. In 1879 and 1881, by a fusion with the Republicans they gained control of the State government, and sent William Mahone to the United States Senate. Research Readjusters
Spider (Araneidae) is an order of animals of the class Arachnida, all having eight legs. Most spiders are terrestial, but some live in fresh water.
The spiders have a body that is divided into two parts: the head and breast, fused into one piece; and the abdomen, usually all in one piece, and only in rare cases with hints of segmentation. Between these two parts there is typically a narrow waist. The region corresponding to the head bears two pairs of mouth parts: a pair of two-jointed poison-jaws or chelicerae; and a pair of sensitive, usually six-jointed pedipalps.
All spiders have a poisonous bite, but the bite is not severe except in a few tropical forms. The poison of the bird-catching spider (Mygale) kills a bird in a few minutes. In male spiders the tip of the pedipalp is complicated, it becomes a reservoir for spermatozoa at the mating season, and is used to transfer them into the female, where they fertilise the eggs just prior to the eggs being laid. In the main the pedipalps are organs of touch, with very sensitive tactile qualities.
On the top of the head are several pairs of simple short-sighted eyes. From the region corresponding to the thorax there arise four pairs of seven-jointed legs, ending in minute curved claws, by means of which spiders grip the surface on which they creep. At the end of the abdomen there are between four and six minute appendages transformed into spinnerets, from which the silken threads emerge. Each spinneret resembles the rose of a watering-can, and contains numerous minute tubes known as spinning-spools through which the silk issues. There may be hundreds of these spinning-spools and each is connected with an internal gland which produces the silk. The gland is enclosed in a muscular envelope, the contraction of which acting like a syringe, forces the liquid silk down a duct and out at the spinning-spool. There are sometimes three kinds of glands, producing different kinds of silk, and it rests with the spider to use more or fewer at one time, thereby adjusting the thickness of the thread produced. The thread is a fusion of many jets of liquid silk, which solidifies instantly it is exposed to the air.
A small minority of spiders breathe by two pairs of lung-books; all the rest breathe by two lung-books and by two or four tracheae like those of insects. The air enters the compartments of the lung-books through an external slit flush with the skin. In the partitions between the compartments of the lung-books the blood circulates and is purified. Research Spider
A zygospore is a zygote with a thick resistant wall, formed by some algae and fungi. It results from the fusion of two gametes, neither of which is retained by the parent in any specialized sexorgan (such as an oogonium). It enters a resting phase before germination. Research Zygospore
Sir Henry Bessemer was an English inventor and engineer. He was born in 1813 and died in 1898. He invented the bessemer converter which is a three stage process for making cheap steel from pig-iron by blowing a blast of air through it when in a state of fusion, so as to clear it of all carbon, and then adding just the requisite quantity of carbon to produce steel. He was knighted in 1879. Research Henry Bessemer
James Hutton was a Scottish geologist. He was in 1726 born at Edinburgh and died in 1797. He studied at the university of Edinburgh and at Leyden, where he graduated as MD in 1749. Returning to Scotland he settled for a time on a farm of his own in Berwickshire, but about 1768 went to Edinburgh, and devoted himself to scientific researches. His name is especially connected with a geological system, the chief features of which are his recognition of the similarity of processes in the past and present, and his theory of igneous fusion as accounting for most geological phenomena. Among his numerous works are an Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, Theory of Rain, Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations (1795). Research James Hutton
Lyman Spitzer is an American astrophysicist. He was bon in 1914 at Toledo, Ohio. He has developed influential theories about the formation of stars and planetary systems proposing that only a magnetic field could contain gases at temperatures as high as 100 million degrees, by which point hydrogen gas fuses to form helium, and he devised a figure-of-eightdesign to describe this field. His model was important to later attempts to bring about the controlled fusion of hydrogen. He criticized the theory that our planetary system is the result of a gas cloud or gaseous filaments breaking off from the Sun to become planetary fragments, showing that a gas would be dispersed into interstellar space long before it had cooled sufficiently to condense into planets. Research Lyman Spitzer
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Comedie Francaise
