page_title: Richard Bentley (writer)
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Bentley (writer) / Works
caption_attribution_description: English: Frontispiece for the illustrated 1753 edition of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard".
context_page_description: Richard Bentley was an English writer and designer, a friend of Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole.
context_section_description: Bentley made drawings for Gray's poems, and some were published in 1753, as Designs by Mr. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray. It was influenced by French style, a rococo work showing also Gothic aspects and traces of chinoiserie. He was one of Walpole's group of advisers, with John Chute and Thomas Pitt, who steered the design for Strawberry Hill, Pitt being Bentley's successor on the "Committee of Taste" when he fell out of favour. The poem illustrations have been thought connected with the style of Jean Bérain; Bentley's subsequent architectural designs were eclectic.
  Around 1761 Bentley turned playwright. His comedy The Wishes, or Harlequin's Mouth opened was acted at Drury Lane for three nights (27, 28, 80 July 1761), and at Covent Garden, 3 October 1761. It was written to ridicule the construction of Ancient Greek drama, especially the three unities and moralisings of the chorus: the chorus in the Wishes are informed that a madman, a torch in his hand, is just on the point of setting fire to a powder magazine, and commence in strophe and antistrophe to lament their own condition, proceeding to exclaim against the thrice-unhappy madman and against the six-times unhappy fate of themselves thus exposed to a madman's fury. His tragedy Philodamus (printed 1767), with its scenes of courtship, paternal vigilance, and spousal preparations, is said to have convulsed the house with laughter. A posthumous comedy of his, The Prophet, was acted for a few nights in 1788.
  Among Bentley's other writings were Patriotism, a Mock Heroic in five cantos, London, 1763; and A Letter to the Right Hon. C. F. Fox, 1793. He also translated the travels of Paul Hentzner; and verse for tomb inscription by Elizabeth Russell, Lady Russell.
caption: Richard Bentley, 1753 design for Thomas Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard
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