drew upon him and killed him. But if he was eager in his own defence he was no less so in that of others. In 1721 a drunken nobleman reeled on to the stage of the theatre and assaulted the manager, Rich, whose life was saved by Quin’s prompt armed interference. This resulted in a riot, and thereafter a guard was stationed in all theatres. In 1732 Quin appeared at Covent Garden, returning to Drury Lane from 1734 to 1741, and in 1742 was again at Covent Garden, where he remained until the close of his career. On the 14th of November 1746 Quin played Horatio and Garrick Lothario to the Calista of Mrs Cibber in Rose’s Fair Penitent. The applause of the audience was so great as to disconcert if not actually to alarm the two actors. Public interest was yet more keenly stimulated in comparing Garrick’s and Quin’s impersonations of Richard III., the popular verdict being loudly in favour of Garrick. But Quin’s Falstaff in King Henry IV. was emphatically preferred to the Hotspur of his rival. In consequence of an attempt made by Garrick in 1750-51 to draw him away from Covent Garden, Quin was enabled to extort from his manager a salary of £1000 a year, the highest figure then reached in the profession. Quin’s last regular appearance was on the 15th of May 1757, as Horatio in the Fair Penitent, though in the following year he twice played Falstaff for the benefit of friends. He had retired to Bath, where he lived a happy life, with late hours and much eating and drinking, until his death on the 21st of January 1766. He was buried in the abbey church at Bath. Some coolness which had arisen between Quin and Garrick before the former’s retirement was dissipated on their subsequent meeting at Chatsworth at the duke of Devonshire’s, and Quin paid many a visit to Garrick’s villa at Hampton in the latter part of his life. The epitaph in verse on his tomb was written by Garrick. Quin’s will displayed a generous nature, and among numerous bequests was one of fifty pounds to “Mr Thomas Gainsborough, limner.”
In the Garrick Club in London are two portraits of the actor ascribed to Hogarth, and a portrait by Gainsborough is in Buckingham Palace. His personality was not gracious. His jokes were coarse; his temper irascible; his love of food, his important airs, and his capacity for deep drinking do not command respect; on the other hand, a few of his jokes were excellent, and there was no rancour in him. On many occasions he showed his willingness to help persons in distress. His character is summarized by Smollett in Humphrey Clinker. As an actor his manner was charged with an excess of gravity and deliberation; his pauses were so portentous as in some situations to appear even ludicrous; but he was well fitted for the delivery of Milton’s poetry, and for the portrayal of the graver rôles in his repertory.
See The Life of Mr. James Quin, Comedian, published in 1766 and reprinted in 1887.
QUINAULT, PHILIPPE (1635–1688), French dramatist and librettist, was born in Paris on the 3rd of June 1635. He was educated by the liberality of Tristan l’Hermite, the author of Mariamne. Quinault’s first play was produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, when he was only eighteen. The piece succeeded, and Quinault followed it up, but he also read for the bar; and in 1660, when he married a widow with money, he bought himself a place in the Cour des Comptes. Then he tried tragedies (Agrippa, &c.) with more success than desert. He received one of the literary pensions then recently established, and was elected to the Academy in 1670. Up to this time he had written some sixteen or seventeen comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies, of which the tragedies were mostly of very small value and the tragi-comedies of little more. But his comedies-especially his first piece Les Rivales (1653), L’Amant indiscret (1654), which has some likeness to Moliére’s Etourdi, Le Fantôme amoureux (1659), and La Mère coquette (1665), perhaps the best-are much better. But in 1671 he contributed to the singular miscellany of Psyché, in which Corneille and Moliere also had a hand, and which was set to the music of Lulli. Here he showed a remarkable faculty for lyrical drama, and from this time till just before his death he confined himself to composing libretti for Lulli’s work. This was not only very profitable (for he is said to have received four thousand livres for each, which was much more than was usually paid even for tragedy), but it established Quinault’s reputation as the master of a new style,—so that even Boileau, who had previously satirized his dramatic work, was converted, less to the opera, which he did not like, than to Quinault’s remarkably ingenious and artist-like work in it. His libretti are among the very few which are readable without the music, and which are yet carefully adapted to it. They certainly do not contain very exalted poetry or very perfect drama. But they are quite free from the ludicrous doggerel which has made the name libretto a byword, and they have quite enough dramatic merit to carry the reader, much more the spectator, along with them. It is not an exaggeration to say that Quinault, coming at the exact time when opera became fashionable out of Italy, had very much to do with establishing it as a permanent European genre. His first piece after Psyché was a kind of classical masque. Les Fêtes de l’Amour et de Bacchus (1672), Then came Cadmus (1674), Alceste (1674), Thésée (1675), Atys (1676), one of his best pieces, and Isis (1677). All these were classical in subject, and so was Proserpine (1680), which was superior to any of them. The Triumph of Love (1681) is a mere ballet, but in Persée (1682) and Phaeton (1683) Quinault returned to the classical opera. Then he finally deserted it for romantic subjects, in which he was even more successful. Amadis de Gaule (1684), Roland (1685), and Armide (1686) are his masterpieces, the last being the most famous and the best of all. The very artificiality of the French lyric of the later 17th century, and its resemblance to alexandrines cut into lengths, were aids to Quinault in arranging lyrical dialogue. Lulli died in 1687, and Quinault, his occupation gone, became devout, and began a poem called the “Destruction of Heresy.” He died on the 26th of November 1688.
The best edition of his works is that of 1739 (Paris, 5 vols.).
QUINAZOLINES (Phenmiazines or benzopyrimidines), in organic chemistry, heterocyclic compounds of the structure shown in the inset formula.
| (4) | |
|
N(3) |
| (2) | |
| N(1) |
They may be regarded as resulting from the fusion of a benzene with a pyrimidine nucleus in the 5.6 position. They are isomeric with the cinnolines, phthalazines and quinoxalines. They may be obtained by the action of alcoholic ammonia on the acidyl derivatives of orthoaminobenzaldehydes and ortho-aminoketones (A. Bischler, Ber., 1891–95):
C6H4
|
CHO | +NH3 = C6H4
|
CH : N |
| | | + 2 H2O; | ||
| NH.CO.R | N : CR |
and from the corresponding dihydro compounds on oxidation with potassium permanganate. They are stable, tertiary bases, and may be distilled without decomposition; they form addition products with alkyl iodides and double salts with mercuric and platinum chlorides. On reduction with sodium in presence of alcohol they yield dihydro derivatives. Those in which the :CH group adjacent to the benzene nucleus is unsubstituted are oxidized by chromic acid to ketodihydroquinazolines (quinazolones).
Quinazoline (C6H2N8) is obtained by oxidizing its dihydro-derivative with potassium ferricyanide. The dihydro derivatives exist in three different series, since the addition of two atoms of hydrogen in the diazine ring can take place in three different positions, namely, in the 3.4, 1.4 and 1.2 positions, and these different types are distinguished by the symbols Δ1, Δ2, Δ3, denoting that the double linkage is between the first and second, second and third, and third and fourth atoms in the diazine ring. The Δ1 series, which are obtained by the elimination of the elements of water from the acidyl derivatives of ortho-aminobenzylamines, are rather strong bases which form stable salts and yield the corresponding keto derivatives on oxidation (C. Paal, Bef., 1889–1896). 4-Keto-dihydroquinazoline (β-quinazolone) is formed by oxidizing the dihydro base with potassium permanganate; by boiling acidyl-ortho-aminobenzamide with water (A. Weddige, Jour. prak. Chem., 1885, (2) 31, p. 124);or by heating anthranilic acid with form amide (S. Niementowski, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 443). It reacts both in the enol and keto forms, yielding both N-ethers and O-ethers, the latter being obtained by the action of sodium alcoholates on 4-chlorquinazolines. The Δ2 series is obtained by heating acidyl-orthoaminobenzylamines with zinc chloride, whilst the Δ3 series, which
