MARC-ANTOINE MURET, French humanist and philosopher, born (d: 1586); Known as Muretus, he was a French humanist who was among the revivers of a Ciceronian Latin style and is among the usual candidates for the best Latin prose stylist of the Renaissance. It wasn’t exactly easy to be a humanist in the 16^th century. The slightest misstep and you’d end up seeing your entrails popping right before your very eyes as you burned at the stake.

In France, in particular, the Church had a couple of effective ways to dispatch those whose views were too liberal. Charge them with sodomy or Protestantism, much the same abnormality to the official medieval mind. Muret was regularly charged with both offenses.

Only one of them was true. His success made him many enemies, and he was thrown into prison on a charge of homosexuality, but released by the intervention of powerful friends. The same accusation was brought against him at Toulouse. 

Muret had taken up with Memmius Fremot only to face, once again, charges of sodomy. The two men fled the city separately and were convicted in absentia, but Muret continued to communicate with Fremot of their overwhelming love that grew daily. The records of the town show that he was burned in effigy as a Huguenot and as sodomite (1554).

Muret would flee to Venice and later Rome before finding a teaching position in an environment that offered more privacy, After a wandering and insecure life of some years in Italy, he received and accepted the invitation of the Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este to settle in Rome in 1559. In 1561 Muret revisited France as a member of the cardinal's suite at the conference between Roman Catholics and Protestants held at Poissy.

WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN, a playwright, was born in New York City on this date (d: 2017). Hoffman's earliest works either were mounted in small, experimental off-off-Broadway theaters in New York City.

He achieved critical acclaim and public recognition in 1985 when the Broadway production of his play, As Is, one of the first plays to focus on AIDS, opened in New York City at the Lyceum Theater, where it ran for 285 performances. Hoffman won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play (1985) and an Obie (1984-85 for Playwriting) and nominations for a tony Award for Best Play (1985). The following year, he adapted the work for a television production directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.

In 1991, Hoffman was commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera to write the libretto for The Ghosts of Versailles first produced in celebration of the company's centennial. A 1993-televised production starred Teresa Stratas, Renee Fleming and Graham Clark for which Hoffman earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

As an editor at Hill and Wang, Hoffman promoted the careers of Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen, and Joe Orton, among others, by including their plays in either his New American Plays series or his anthology, Gay Plays: A First Collection. Hoffman was an Associate Professor of  Theater at Lehman College at The City University of New York.

Hoffman died of a heart attack in April 2017 just seventeen days after his birth date.

TOM WILSON WEINBERG, American composer and musician, was born; A songwriter and singer who has written words and music for the Off-Broadway shows Ten Percent Revue and Get Used To It!, two solo albums, Gay Name Game and All-American Boy, and the Stonewall 25 CD, Don’t Mess With Mary. His songs have appeared on several recordings by other artists, including the soundtrack of Beavis and Butthead Do America, Feeding the Flame, an AIDS benefit compilation, Ron Romanofsky’s Hopeful Romantic and Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus CD,SING OUT. Gay Name Game (1979) and All-American Boy (1982) were among the first gay-themed albums. Both were released by Aboveground Records under the name Tom Wilson. In 1982 he assumed the family name Weinberg.

Ten Percent Revue opened in Boston in 1985 and played four summers in Provincetown, produced by Laura Green, who took the show to New York in 1988. On tour the show earned two Los Angeles Drama-Logue Awards, three Golden Gull Awards (Provincetown), and the Bessie Smith Award (Boston).