Author: Rafael Sabatini

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12-24

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13:

The Historical Nights' Entertainment. First published in 1917, this is a collection of thirteen stories each giving an account of a dramatic historical event. The stories are difficult to classify as they are not exactly fiction but not quite non-fiction either. This is how Sabatini himself describes the book in his preface:In approaching "The Historical Nights' Entertainment" I set myself the task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and with all the colour available from surviving records, a group of more or less famous events. I would select for my purpose those which were in themselves bizarre and resulting from the interplay of human passions, and whilst relating each of these events in the form of a story, I would compel that story scrupulously to follow the actual, recorded facts without owing anything to fiction, and I would draw upon my imagination, if at all, merely as one might employ colour to fill in the outlines which history leaves grey, taking care that my colour should be as true to nature as possible.ContentThe absolution: Affonso Henriques, first king of Portugal -- The false Demetrius: Boris Godunov and the pretended son of Ivan the Terrible -- The hermosa fembra: an episode of the Inquisition in Seville -- The pastry-cook of Madrigal: the story of the false Sebastian of Portugal -- The end of the "vert galant": the assassination of Henry IV -- The barren wooing: the murder of Amy Robsart -- Sir Judas: the betrayal of Sir Walter Raleigh -- His Insolence of Buckingham: George Villiers' courtship of Anne of Austria -- The path of exile: the fall of Lord Clarendon -- The tragedy of Herrenhausen: Count Philip Königsmark and the Princess Sophia Dorothea -- The tyrannicide: Charlotte Corday and Jean Paul Marat.