English actor and theatre manager whose most popular roles include Jaffeir in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd, Sir John Brute in John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife, and the eponymous hero of Joseph Addison's Cato, as well as several Shakespearean characters such as Macbeth, Shylock, King Lear, and Wolsey.

Philosopher, novelist, playwright, translator, and critic, Diderot was for his rationalism, religious skepticism, and scientific empiricism a key figure in the Enlightenment. His Encyclopédie stands as a landmark in the systemization and popular dissemination of technical and scientific knowledge.

An actor, dramatist, and songwriter known for his sea songs.

Cookbook author and sister to Mary Delany.

Character in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s Devereux (1829). An impeccably dressed, philosophical French valet.

Wife of Othello in William Shakespeare's tragedy, Othello, the Moor of Venice. In the play, she is murdered by her jealous, manipulated husband.

English critic and dramatist. Dennis was engaged in a long quarrel with Alexander Pope as a result of the former's assertion of the importance of passion in poetry.

Anglo-Irish poet, Member of Parliament, and Royalist during the English Civil War. During the transitional literary period in which he wrote, Denham established the genre of the local meditative poem, in which a single, familiar landscape is leisurely explored. He is best remembered for his poem Cooper's Hill.

Ancient Greek statesman and orator in opposition to Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, Demosthenes lived from 384-322 BCE. His speeches provide valuable insight into fourth-century Athenian society and politics.

French author, primarily of poetry, whose first fame rested on his translations of Virgil.