United States or Benin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without design.
Being thus discovered, they, as soon as they could, got to their horses; but as many of the faire as had horses got up, with their wives, children, sweet harts, or neighbours, behind them, to get as much gape as they could, till they brought them to the court gate. Thus, by ill conduct, was a merry frolick turned into a penance." I've's Select Papers, p. 39.
A little while after I had told this story, I differed from Dr Johnson, I suppose too confidently, upon some point, which I now forget. He did not spare me. I was so successful in this boyish frolick, that the universal cry of the galleries was, 'Encore the cow! Encore the cow! In the pride of my heart, I attempted imitations of some other animals, but with very inferior effect.
This day Pierce do tell me, among other news, the late frolick and debauchery of Sir Charles Sidly and Buckhurst, running up and down all the night with their arses bare, through the streets; and at last fighting, and being beat by the watch and clapped up all night; and how the King takes their parts; and my Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the constable by the heels to answer it next Sessions: which is a horrid shame.
"Why," says he, "it is my sister of Richmond's, some frolick or other of hers of some certain person; and there is nothing of the King's name in it, but it is only said to be his by supposition, as is said."
This day Pierce do tell me, among other news, the late frolick and debauchery of Sir Charles Sidly and Buckhurst, running up and down all the night with their arses bare, through the streets; and at last fighting, and being beat by the watch and clapped up all night; and how the King takes their parts; and my Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the constable by the heels to answer it next Sessions: which is a horrid shame.
There are men that boast of debaucheries, of which they never had address to be guilty; ruin, by lewd tales, the characters of women to whom they are scarcely known, or by whom they have been rejected; destroy in a drunken frolick the happiness of families; blast the bloom of beauty, and intercept the reward of virtue.
When I mentioned to him this account as given me by Dr. Adams, he said; 'Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority. The Bishop of Dromore observes in a letter to me,
"In this manner, they thumped us In ye Back and Sides, with their knees and feet, and Twitched our hair and Ears to such a Degree, that I am Incapable to express it, and ye others that was Dancing Round if they saw any man falter, and did not hold up his Neck, they Dached ye Scalps In our faces with such Violence, yt every man endeavored to bear them hanging by their hair in this manner, Rather then to have a Double Punishment; after they had finished their frolick, that lasted about two hours and a half, we was carried to one of their Camps, where we Saw Some of ye Prisoners that Came in ye montague; at this place we Incamped yt Night with hungrey Belleys."
Sir Charles Sedley and Lord Brockhurst were also notable as having been engaged in another piece of what has been called "frolick and debauchery," when "they ran up and down all night almost naked through the streets, at last fighting and being beaten by the watch, and clapped up all night."
Word Of The Day