Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
Kartaphalos, the shoemaker, sat in his shop by the Acarnanian Gate, and repaired cothurns for the Dionysian theatre, which was about to make a last attempt to revive the tragic drama, which had been eclipsed by the farces of Aristophanes.
In Cicero's day two kinds of farces were in vogue. They were doubtless very comic, but it was possible to get tired of them, for the number of stock characters was limited, and the masks were always the same for each character the old man Pappus, the glutton Bucco, Dossennus the sharper, etc.
He trots about a briefless little barrister, a scribbler, devilish clever and impudent, who does his farces for him. Tenby 's the fellow's name, and it's the only thing I haven't heard him pun on. Puns are the smallpox of the language; we're cursed with an epidemic. By gad, the next time I meet him I 'll roar out for vaccine matter.
When by this arrangement the business of the scenic performances was called away from laughter and intemperate mirth, and the amusement became gradually converted into an art, the young men, leaving to regular actors the performance of plays, began themselves, according to the ancient usage, to throw out ludicrous jests comprised in verses, which from that time were called exodia, and were collected chiefly from the Atellan farces.
Can accommodate ye with a box at the Theatre Royal, Westminster play the very best sort of patent farces in that national place of amusement. Then they've an audience so forbearing, that it makes no matter what they play, and the fun of that establishment beats bull-fighting all holler.
I do not mean by this to condemn farces; a farce implies between the poet and the spectator a tacit consent that no truth is to be expected in the piece. In a farce we exempt the poet from all faithfulness in his pictures; he has a kind of privilege to tell us untruths. Here, in fact, all the comic consists exactly in its contrast with the truth, and so it cannot possibly be true.
From what has been stated, I consider myself warranted to assert, in opposition to the prevailing opinion, that Moliere succeeded best with the coarse and homely comic, and that both his talents and his inclination, if unforced, would have determined him altogether to the composition of farces such as he continued to write even to the very end of his life.
Farces were enacted in every street; the odious ecclesiastics figuring as the principal buffoons. These representations gave so much offence, that renewed edicts were issued to suppress them. The prohibition was resisted, and even ridiculed in many provinces, particularly in Holland.
Among the sources from which his material is drawn he assigns the first place to the Memoirs of Tate Wilkinson and its sequel, The Wandering Patentee, and the summary which he gives, as far as possible in the narrator's own language, presents a graphic picture of the provincial stage at a period when it formed a real nursery of talent for the metropolitan theatres, enriched with anecdotes of Foote and Garrick as lively and dramatic as any of the scenes in their own farces, and affording the strongest confirmation of their protégé's account of his unrivaled mimicry.
"But it is very absurd," Billy murmured, in the mere ghost of a voice, "because men don't propose by mistake except in farces. Somebody told me that, but I can't remember who, because I am a misogynist. That is a Greek word, and I would explain it to Peggy, if she would only give me a chance, but she can't because she has those seventeen hundred and fifty thousand children to look after.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking