David Drew-Smythe
Bio: David Drew-Smythe is a specialist Drama teacher, stage director and freelance writer. He has published articles, poetry and short stories as well as material for stage and screen. In 1975 he co-wrote the libretto for The Ballad of Salomon Pavey, an Elizabethan Ballad Opera, set in the late 1500s and based on the theatrical exploits of Queen Elizabeth Ist's Children of The Chapel Royal. They, with the boys of St. Paul's, were serious revenue rivals to William Shakespeare's company in the hey-day of their popularity--a popularity which lasted some twenty five years. Winning a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976, 'The Ballad of Salomon Pavey' was chosen as one of the Queen's Silver Jubilee Celebration productions (Young Vic 1977) and was subsequently adapted for television by Jeremy James Taylor and broadcast by ATV Network (U.K.) in December of that same year. The work was published by Oxford University Press in 1979 and re-issued by Josef Weinberger (London) in 1989. The Ballad Opera was staged by the National Youth Music Theatre of Great Britain in October 1999 at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London, for the launch of the theatre's "Globe 400" Education Season. David was born in England, midway through the twentieth century. He grew up with an interest in history and, in later years, mastered the art of computer manipulation as a research tool. At the turn of the millennium, he set about an exploration of cyberspace. By this time, he had also developed an interest in genealogy which, in turn, led to the remarkable and, quite frankly, extraordinary discoveries outlined in this work.
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