Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
The principal roles were all represented; and if occasionally a re-enforcement was required, they could almost always pick up some provincial actress, or even an amateur, at a pinch. The actors were five in number: The pedant, already described, who rejoiced in the name of Blazitis; Leander; Herode, the tragic tyrant; Matamore, the bully; and Scapin, the intriguing valet.
Happy had it been for him if he had confined himself to this sphere; but his chief, if not only blemish, was, that he would sometimes, from an humility in his nature too pernicious to true greatness, condescend to an intimacy with inferior things and persons. Thus the Spanish Rogue was his favourite book, and the Cheats of Scapin his favourite play.
Matamore's body was laid in the chariot, and carefully covered with a large piece of white linen they fortunately happened to have among their heterogeneous belongings, the women resumed their seats, not without a slight shudder as they thought of their ghastly companion, and the men walked Scapin going in front with the lantern, and Herode leading the horse.
It must proceed from some wild creature of the wood that our invasion has disturbed; perhaps we may be lucky enough to capture it and find it edible; that would be a piece of good fortune, indeed, quite like a fairy-tale." Meantime Scapin was listening attentively to the strange, incomprehensible sound, and watching keenly that part of the thicket from which it seemed to come.
Meanwhile Lampourde and Scapin had shown the duke's lackeys that it would not be a very easy matter to put them out, and were handling them rather roughly, when the cowardly fellows, seeing that their master was wounded, and leaning against the wall, deathly pale, thought that he was done for, and although they were fully armed, took to their heels and fled, deaf to his feeble cry for assistance.
Accordingly, all of the party turned back towards Paris, excepting de Sigognac, the tyrant and Scapin, who had decided to go on to the next village, where they hoped to be able to procure horses, with which to prosecute their search for Isabelle and her abductors.
Scapin, for his part, had seized Labriche suddenly round the waist from behind, pinning down his arms so that he could not use his club at all, and raising him from the ground quickly, with one dexterous movement tripped him up, and sent him rolling on the pavement ten paces off, so violently that he was knocked senseless the back of his neck coming in contact with a projecting stone and lay apparently lifeless where he fell.
Closely followed by his valet, Scapin, who is in imminent danger of having an eye put out by the end of his master's big sword, he marches several times around the stage, taking preternaturally long strides, rolling his eyes about fiercely, twisting the long ends of his huge mustache, and indulging in a variety of ridiculous gestures indicative of exaggerated rage and fury, which are irresistibly funny all the more so because there is nothing whatever to provoke this display of ferocity.
Cf. in "Madame de Remusat," I., 108, one of his confessions to Talleyrand: he crudely points out in himself the distance between natural instinct and studied courage. Here and elsewhere, we obtain a glimpse of the actor and even of the Italian buffoon; M. de Pradt called him "Jupiter Scapin."
The upshot of all this is, that in point of fact the debtor appoints his assignees, audits his own accounts, and draws up the certificate of bankruptcy himself. Given these premises, it is easy to imagine the devices of Frontin, the trickeries of Sganarelle, the lies of Mascarille, and the empty bags of Scapin which such a system develops.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking