He has fifty things in hand,farces to supply the Adelphi for the season; a comedy for one of the great theatres, just ready; a whole entertainment by himself for Mathews and Yates to figure in; a meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly done by himself.

Lessing, who, with his sharp, sound criticism, and his clear perception of the beautiful, led the way to a higher state of things in literature, appears also to have been the first to discover the deep meaning buried in the popular farces of Faustus.

Though they have the word humeur among them: yet they have small use of it in their Comedies or Farces: they being but ill imitations of the ridiculum or that which stirred up laughter in the Old Comedy.

More than forty works, including farces, comedies of sentiment, and serious dramas of English life, attest his zeal as a dramatist.

Among his most successful farces are The Magistrate (1885), The School Mistress (1886), and The Amazons (1893).

Lady Gregory's farces have primarily made her fame.

Spreading the News (1904), Hyacinth Halvey (1906), The Image (1910), and The Bogie Men (1913) are representative of her vigorous and well-constructed farces.

It is interesting to note that Lady Gregory has continued to write farces because of the demand for them in the Irish National Theater, in order to offset the large number of tragedies by other authors.

In it is constructed a temporary theatre of wood, where they perform plays and farces in the open air.

Our law prescribes examinations, but forgets to provide for the competency of the examiners; so that few better farces offer than the course of question and answer on these occasions.

With these two remarkable men the great days of the Roman drama come to an end, and henceforward the favourite plays are merely farces, of which a word must here be said in the last place.

The origin of these farces, as indeed of all kinds of Latin comedy, and probably also of the literary satura, is to be found in the jokes and rude fun of the country festivals, and especially perhaps, as Horace tells us of the harvest amusements: Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit, Libertasque recurrentis accepta per annos Lusit amabiliter, etc. Epist.

In Cicero's day two kinds of farces were in vogue.

About the time of Sulla the mimes seem to have displaced these old farces in popular favour, perhaps because their fun was more varied; the mere fact that the actors did not wear masks shows that the improvisation could be freer and less stereotyped.

The audience scream frantically, Lord and Lady Overstone go back humbled, and the curtain falls on one of the most absurd farces I ever saw; not the least absurd part being Jonathan refusing to take possession of his inheritance of 17,000l.

In one of his monstrous farces, to which he has given the name of Tragedies, we find the jokes of the Roman shoemakers and cobblers introduced in the same scene with the orations of Brutus and Antony."

R112177, 18May53, David Garnett (A) Three farces, edited with introductions by Louise Brown Osborn. Contents.

The most implacable revenge, the most refined malice, the extremes of avarice and cruelty, are wrought into tragedies, and displayed as acting under the mask of religion and the impunity of a cloister; while operas and farces, with ridicule still more successful, exhibit convents as the abode of licentiousness, intrigue, and superstition.

These are all prohibited; and are replaced by fustian declamations, tending to promote anarchy and discord by vulgar and immoral farces, and insidious and flattering panegyrics on the vices of low life.

I have dwelt on this subject longer than I intended; but as I would not be supposed prejudiced nor precipitate in my assertions, I will, by the first occasion, send you some of the most popular farces and tragedies: you may then decide yourself upon the tendency; and, by comparing the dispositions of the French before, and within, the last two years, you may also determine whether or not my conclusions are warranted by fact.

You were left almost alone in your charming country, and I have no doubt that on mornings when the rest of us, half asleep, were sitting out stale farces, you were reading in your library.

and I played in several farces which the Keeleys and the great comedian Robson had made famous in London.

I say "ostensible," because Mr. Labouchere had something to do with it, and Miss Henrietta Hodson, whom he afterwards married, played in the burlesques and farces without which no theater bill in London at that time was complete.

and his court; wrote farces, the characters of which were drawn from real life, presumably not hard to identify at the time (1479-1565).

HOOK, THEODORE, comic dramatist, born in London; wrote a number of farces sparkling with wit and highly popular; appointed to be Accountant-General of the Mauritius, came to grief for peculation by a subordinate under his administration; solaced and supported himself after his acquittal by writing novels (1788-1841).