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Updated: June 27, 2025


At one o'clock, we happened upon a cluster of six or eight carts, drawn up for rest, and the company of travellers were warming themselves at little fires, or cooking a late supper. We learned that this gypsy-like group was a compania comica, a comic theatre troupe, who had been playing at Tuxtla, and were now on their way to Juchitan.

But for all that, he has a comfortable fund of the vis comica, upon which he rubs along pleasantly enough, hospitably entertaining not a few congenial spirits who can put up with him as they find him, relish his simple and often racy fare, and enjoy a decent quantum of jokes of his own growing, without pining after the brilliant banquets of comedy spread by opulent barons of the realm.

As none of them possess all the requisites for their several casts of parts, they take care to play no other than pieces of an equivocal kind, in which neither bon ton, nor vis comica is to be found. They avoid, above all, those of MOLIERE and REGNARD, and are extremely fond of the comedies of MARIVAUX, in which masters and lackies express themselves and act much alike.

"That would depend a good deal, I should think, on the nature of what you said," his counsellor suggested, smiling. "If I said point-blank I loved her ?" Miss Sandus looked hard at the fire, her brows drawn together, pondering. Her brows were drawn together, but the vis comica played about her lips. "I think, if I were in your place, I should try it," she decided at last.

An indiscreet remark of Cupido had even brought her to the bottom of that mysterious and perilous night trip down the flooded river not to rescue a "poor family," but to call on that comica that "chorus girl" as doña Bernarda called Leonora in a furious burst of scorn. Stormy scenes occurred that were to leave a strong undercurrent of bitterness and fear in Rafael's character.

There is, in the former, a versatility of talent that keeps him always ready; a happiness of retort, generally disastrous to the wit of the most established cross-examiner; an apparent simplicity, which is quite as impenetrable as the lawyer's assurance; a vis comica, which puts the court in tears; and an originality of sorrow, that often convulses it with laughter.

Plautus is his favorite author, not for the sake of the wit and the vis comica of his comedies, but upon account of the many obsolete words, and the cant of low characters, which are to be met with nowhere else.

What he uttered was not so much well said, as excellently acted: so we may hear every day the inexpressive language of a poorly written drama assume character and colour in the hands of a good player. No man had more of the vis comica in private life; he played no character on the stage as he could play himself among his friends.

Next to MOLIERE, but at a great interval, comes REGNARD, whom the French comedians have deserted, for much the same reason: they no longer give any plays from the pen of this author, who possessed the vis comica, except Les Folies Amoureuses, a pretty little comedy in three acts. We no longer hear of his Joueur and his Legataire Universel, which are chefs d'oeuvre.

Yet he felt that the peculiar twist of national character, the type of wit peculiar to a people and a country, the specialized conception of the vis comica revealed in Mark Twain's works, confined them to a restricted milieu.

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