Hazel Motes founded the Church Without Christ in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.”
A charlatan named Onnie Jay Holy started a rival sect, the Holy Church of Christ Without Christ.
Edward Alleyn played Doctor Faustus in the original production of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy, circa 1589. Alleyn also played the lead in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587).
In the Italian poem Orlando Furioso by Ariosto (1532), the knight Orlando goes crazy with rage when he learns that Angelica, the woman he loves, has married someone else. Orlando runs around naked, destroying everything in sight. By the poem’s end, he is cured.
The Chinese master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu appeared in 13 novels by Sax Rohmer beginning in 1913. He received his main opposition from Sir Denis Nayland Smith, loosely connected with Scotland Yard. Smith’s sidekick was Dr. Petrie.
John Newbery (1713-67) of England was one of the first publishers to publish books for children. The Newbery Medal, established in his name in 1921, is awarded each year for the best American children’s book.
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida was first performed around 1602 and first published in 1609.
Tess’s name before she becomes Tess of the d’Urbervilles is Tess Durbeyfield, daughter of Jack Durbeyfield, a carter. In the 1891 novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, she eventually becomes the kept woman of Alec d’Urbervilles, a member of the well-to-do family for whom she is working.