Great words to have and use

 

abhor: to regard with extreme repugnance : to feel hatred or loathing for : loathe

Abhor implies strong feelings of repugnance, disgust, and aversion. This degree of distaste is seen in the word's history. In earlier use, abhor sometimes implied an actual shrinking away from something in horror or repugnance. Appropriately, the word's Latin source, the verb abhorrēre, comes from the prefix ab- ("from, away") and the verb horrēre ("to bristle, shiver, or shudder"). As you may have guessed, the Latin horrēre is also the source of the English words horror, horrify, and horrible.

 

smorgasbord a luncheon or supper buffet offering a variety of foods and dishes (such as hors d'oeuvres, hot and cold meats, smoked and pickled fish, cheeses, salads, and relishes)

 2 : an often large heterogeneous mixture : mélange

Although smorgasbord might make us think of a variety of foods, the Swedish word smörgås refers to a particular food item—an open sandwich or, alternatively, a slice of bread covered with butter—which is a staple of the traditional Swedish smorgasbord. (The word smör means "butter," and gås can mean "a lump of butter" as well as "goose.") Smörgås teamed up with the Swedish word bord, meaning "table" or "board," to form smorgasbord; the word first appeared in English in the later part of the 19th century. By the mid-20th century smorgasbord was being used outside of food-related contexts to refer to something that comprises a mixture or assemblage of different parts.

 

 

 

Interesting read

 

 

Death of a Defector: Ion Mihai Pacepa,

Ion Mihai Pacepa was never totally free. He was a wanted man, hunted by the Romanian government.

 

By Paul G. Kengor

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.

On February 14, 2021, the world quietly lost one of the most intriguing, enduring figures of the Cold War. He was Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet Bloc official ever to defect to the United States.

Throughout the 1970s, Pacepa had been arguably the top official in communist Romania, behind only the insane and vicious dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. He served Ceaușescu in numerous capacities, including as intelligence chief and liaison between the brutal Securitate and the KGB. He knew where bodies were buried.

After yet another request by Romanian goons to bloody his hands, Pacepa had enough. One day in the summer of 1978, he slipped into the U.S. embassy in West Berlin while on routine business for the Romanian madman who was his boss. He said he wanted to defect. He was hustled out in a late-night flight to the United States — a country he came to love.

“It was noon when the U.S. military plane bringing me to freedom landed at the U.S. presidential airport inside Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C.,” he later told our mutual friend David Kupelian. “It was a glorious, sunny day outside…. I had an overwhelming desire to dance around in a jig all by myself. I was a free man! I was in America! The joy of finally becoming part of this magnanimous land of liberty, where nothing was impossible, was surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive.” He continued, “On that memorable day of July 28, 1978, when I became a free man, I fell to my knees and I prayed out loud for the first time in more than a quarter of a century. It took me a while. It was not easy to find the right words to express my great joy and thanks to the good Lord. In the end, all that I asked for was forgiveness for my past, freedom for my daughter and strength for my new life.”

Forgiveness and freedom. And yet, Pacepa was never totally free. He was a wanted man, hunted by the Romanian government.

Once in the United States, Pacepa lived in undisclosed locations, dodging a $2 million bounty placed on his head by his homeland. Communists officials were enraged when Pacepa in 1987 published (via Regnery) his shocking memoir of the Ceausescu era: Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae & Elena Ceausescu’s Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption. (The book was reviewed with highest praise by Michael Ledeen in the April 1988 issue of The American Spectator.) Hit squads were dispatched to assassinate him. They never found him. And ironically, Pacepa’s grisly account of Nicolae and his equally cruel and crazy wife Elena would be used as evidence for their conviction and execution by a firing squad of Romanian citizens on Christmas Day 1989.

Pacepa long outlived the Ceaușescu menace. Now, over four decades after the brutal regime began targeting him, Pacepa’s life has ended. He died at the age of 92, a victim of COVID-19.

I never had the pleasure of directly meeting Pacepa, given that he was always in hiding, though we emailed frequently for years. He went by the name “Mike,” the Anglicized version of “Mihai.” He had at least two aliases that would pop up sometimes when I got emails from him. His email address was cryptic, starting with an upper-case letter and followed by seven numbers and then @aol.com. I’m tempted to share the email address here publicly, but doing so would offer no great value. Besides, I never had permission from him to share his email address publicly.

I often got his emails in response to my articles here at The American Spectator, of which he was an avid reader. He and I even co-authored a piece, “Obama’s Sword and Shield,” for The American Spectator in May 2013 (he also did a piece for this magazine in June 2009). Pacepa was a fan of this publication.

I believe Pacepa first reached out to me in 2010, when I published my Cold War tome, Dupes. Pacepa was cited a number of times, particularly for his disturbing insights into how easily communist officials were able to manipulate gullible progressives in the West. That was a subject that troubled and perplexed Pacepa; it fascinated him but also nagged at him. He had seen it from the Truman years through Vietnam and still into the 21st century.

“They were like putty in our hands,” said Pacepa of the ability of Western liberals to be duped by communists, from the “strong leftist movements [in Western Europe] that we secretly financed” to the vast amounts of disinformation cooked up and spoon-fed to Western liberals who gobbled it up.

Consider Vietnam: “During the Vietnam War,” said Pacepa, “we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales.” (Recall a young John Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony.) They were lies. Nonetheless, said Pacepa, millions of Americans “ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy.”

According to Pacepa, it was the odious Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB, who conceived this dezinformatsiya campaign — that is, disinformation campaign — against the United States. The Soviets devoted exorbitant spending to that cause. “Vietnam,” Andropov told Pacepa, had been “our most significant success.”

Pacepa read my book and was very pleased to see that I had focused upon what he judged one of the most significant but underreported and least understood phenomena of our times: the cynical but remarkable power of disinformation.

In fact, it turned out that he was writing a book on precisely that subject and by that very name: Disinformation. He and co-author Ron Rychlak published the book in 2013 through WND Press, and they asked me to write the foreword (former CIA director James Woolsey wrote the introduction). It was a landmark book that everyone ought to read. It will indelibly impact the way you view history and current affairs.

That groundbreaking book exposed the KGB disinformation schemes against figures like Pope Pius XII (the smearing of Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope” was begun as a mass Soviet disinformation campaign launched by a Radio Moscow broadcast in 1945) and Cardinals Stepinac and Mindszenty and Wyszyński, as well as the duplicity of groups like the World Peace Council and World Council of Churches. The material on the Soviet promulgation of the insidious Protocols of the Elders of Zion conspiracy is an awakening. The authors chronicled Andropov’s anti-Zionism campaign, support of Islamic terrorism, and promotion of virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism among Middle East Arabs. By 1978, the Soviet bloc planted some 4,000 agents of influence in the Islamic world, armed with hundreds of thousands of copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (and military weapons). Militant atheistic communism sought a handmaiden in militant jihadist Islam, with extremist Muslims exploited by Soviet manipulators. They promulgated not only acts of terrorism but egregious acts of “diplomacy” like the infamous UN Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism a form of racism.

Pacepa revealed how many vicious myths created by communists have been unwittingly adopted by mainstream historians and journalists. He said the very handbook on Soviet/communist dezinformatsiya opened with this in capital letters: “IF YOU ARE GOOD AT DISINFORMATION, YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING.”

Pacepa would see these patterns in modern American “journalism,” though it wasn’t always clear if duped American journalists were wittingly or unwittingly spreading disinformation (or “fake news,” to use a modern term). Often, they simply believed what they wanted to believe — just as the Kremlin knew they would.

Beyond Disinformation, Pacepa wrote a number of fascinating works, including a remarkable 2007 book on the Kennedy assassination, titled Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination. Pacepa believed that the Soviets were involved in early steps leading toward or helping to precipitate the assassination. He argued that Oswald had been recruited by the KGB when he first entered the Soviet Union. Over the next two years, however, several things complicated the picture. By 1962, once Oswald was settled in Texas, Khrushchev (allegedly) changed his mind about killing Kennedy. Consequently, claims Pacepa, “the KGB tried to turn Oswald off.” It was too late.

For the record, this theory of Soviet involvement is disputed by Kennedy assassination investigators and by the Warren Commission, but this much we do know: Moscow did its damnedest to direct eyes of suspicion elsewhere. The Kremlin blamed the Kennedy shooting on (as Pacepa put it) “racists, the Ku Klux Klan, and Birchists.” Pacepa confirmed that the KGB had a thorough, ongoing disinformation campaign to blame the Kennedy assassination on domestic elements in the United States. He reported that on November 26, 1963, Soviet General Aleksandr Sakharovsky landed unannounced in Bucharest and met with Pacepa and other high-level members of Romanian intelligence and leadership. This was his first stop in a “blitz” tour of KGB “sister” services in the Communist Bloc. “From him,” recalled Pacepa, “we in the DIE [Romanian intelligence] learned that the KGB had already launched a worldwide disinformation operation aimed at diverting public attention away from Moscow in respect to the Kennedy assassination, and at framing the CIA as the culprit.” Nikita Khrushchev himself, said Sakharovsky, wanted it made clear to the sister services that “this was by far our first and most important task.” They circulated rumors that “the CIA was responsible for the crime” and that Lyndon Johnson and the “military-industrial complex” had been involved.

The effort would be called Operation Dragon. It became, said Pacepa, one of the most successful disinformation operations in contemporary history. Pacepa pointed to Hollywood film director Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, “JFK,” which blamed the Kennedy assassination on a cabal that included the CIA, Lyndon Johnson, and the military-industrial complex. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

There are so many intriguing items like this from this intriguing figure that was Ion Mihai Pacepa. I could go on and on. One more item of interest to readers here:

The scourge that is Liberation Theology has rotten roots. Those roots go back not only to twisted Jesuit theologians in Latin America in the 1970s but, according to Pacepa, to the KGB. Pacepa went so far as to claim that Liberation Theology was created by the KGB. “The movement was born in the KGB,” stated Pacepa unequivocally, “and it had a KGB-invented name: Liberation Theology.” He said that “the birth of Liberation Theology” came from a 1960 “super-secret Party-State Dezinformatsiya [Disinformation] Program” approved by Aleksandr Shelepin, then-chairman of the KGB, and by Politburo member Aleksey Kirichenko, who coordinated the Communist Party’s international policies. The program “demanded that the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches,” which was based in Geneva, and use it “as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool.”

Again, I could go on. The late Lt. Gen. Pacepa knew a lot.

Ion Mihai Pacepa died on February 14. Fittingly, he passed away at an undisclosed hospital in an undisclosed location somewhere in the United States. There was no official announcement.

The loss of Mike Pacepa is a loss for many, especially his beloved wife and family. It is also a loss for history and contemporary understanding of certain events. He shared with us gems of information and even disinformation. Perhaps most helpful of all, he warned us not only about what to believe but what not to believe.

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and chief academic fellow of the Institute for Faith and Freedom at Grove City College. His latest book (April 2017) is A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century. He is also the author of 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative. His other books include The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

A little detective work

 

I wanna live here

 

 

Hohenschwangau Castle (German: Schloss Hohenschwangau) is a 19th-century palace in southern Germany. It was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was built by his father, King Maximilian II of Bavaria. It is located in the German village of Hohenschwangau near the town of Füssen, part of the county of Ostallgäu in southwestern Bavaria, Germany, very close to the border with Austria.

The fortress Schwangau, which was first mentioned in historical records dating from the 12th Century, stood high up on a rock on the site of the present 19th-century Neuschwanstein castle. The knights, later counts of Schwangau, were ministerialis of the Welfs. Hiltbolt von Schwangau (1195–1254) was a minnesinger. Margareta von Schwangau was the wife of minnesinger Oswald von Wolkenstein.

The present day Hohenschwangau ("Upper Schwangau") castle was first mentioned in 1397, though under the name of Schwanstein. Only in the 19th century the names of the two castles have switched. It was built on a hill above lake Alpsee, below the older fortress. Between 1440 and 1521 the Lords had to sell their fief with Imperial immediacy to the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria, but continued to occupy the castle as Burgraves. In 1521 they became owners again but had to sell their land in 1535.

The purchaser, Johann Paumgartner, a wealthy Augsburg merchant, had the lower castle reconstructed by Italian architect Lucio di Spazzi who already worked on the Hofburg, Innsbruck. He kept the exterior walls and the towers but rebuilt the inner parts until 1547, on a floor plan that still today exists. The older Schwangau fortress however continued to fall into ruins. Paumgartner, after having been elevated to the rank of baron, died in 1549 and his sons sold their new castle to Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria.

The Wittelsbachs used the castle for bear hunting or as a retreat for agnatic princes. In 1743 it was plundered by Austrian troops. In the German mediatization the county of Schwangau became officially a part of the Electorate of Bavaria in 1803. King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria sold the castle in 1820. Only in 1832 his grandson Maximilian II of Bavaria, then crown prince, bought it back. In April 1829, he had discovered the historic site during a walking tour and reacted enthusiastically to the beauty of the surrounding area. He acquired the dilapidated building – then still known as Schwanstein – in 1832, abandoning his father's wish that he should move into the old castle (Hohes Schloss) in the nearby town of Füssen.

 In February 1833, the reconstruction of the castle began, continuing until 1837, with additions up to 1855. The architect in charge, Domenico Quaglio, was responsible for the neogothic style of the exterior design. He died in 1837 and the task was continued by Joseph Daniel Ohlmüller (died 1839) and Georg Friedrich Ziebland.

More than 90 wall paintings represent the history of Schwangau (literally translated the Swan District), as well as medieval German romances such as Parzival and the story of Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan, on which Richard Wagner later based his operas Lohengrin of 1848 and Parsifal of 1882, sponsored by Ludwig II who had grown up with these stories at Hohenschwangau.

Hohenschwangau was the official summer and hunting residence of Maximilian, his wife Marie of Prussia, and their two sons Ludwig (the later King Ludwig II of Bavaria) and Otto (the later King Otto I of Bavaria). The young princes spent many years of their adolescence here. Queen Marie who loved to hike in the mountains created an alpine garden with plants gathered from all over the alps. The King and the Queen lived in the main building, and the boys in the annex. The Queen's cousin, Frederick William IV of Prussia, had Stolzenfels Castle on the Rhine rebuilt at the same time in the Gothic Revival style.

King Maximilian died in 1864 and his son Ludwig succeeded to the throne, moving into his father's room in the castle. As Ludwig never married, his mother Marie was able to continue living on her floor during the summer months. King Ludwig enjoyed living in Hohenschwangau, however mostly in the absence of his disliked mother, especially after 1869 when the building of his own castle, Neuschwanstein, began on the site of the old Schwangau fortress, high above his parent's castle.

After Ludwig's death in 1886, Queen Marie was the castle's only resident until she in turn died in 1889. Her brother-in-law, Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria, lived on the 3rd floor of the main building. He was responsible for the electrification in 1905 and the installation of an electric elevator. Luitpold died in 1912 and the palace was opened as a museum during the following year.

During World War I and World War II, the castle suffered no damage. In 1923, the Bavarian State Parliament recognised the right of the former royal family to reside in the castle. From 1933 to 1939, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and his family used the castle as their summer residence, and it continues to be a favourite residence of his successors, currently his grandson Franz, Duke of Bavaria. In May 1941, Prince Adalbert of Bavaria was purged from the military under Hitler's Prinzenerlass and withdrew to the family castle Hohenschwangau, where he lived for the rest of the war.

More than 300,000 visitors from all over the world visit the palace each year.

Papa

 

Jack London

 

Write!!!!!!

 

I promise

 

Good in the world

 "There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Greetings NYCPlaywrights

 Greetings NYCPlaywrights

*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***

CLOSE (BUT NOT TOO CLOSE!)

Project Y Theatre Company and Women in Theatre Festival (Live and Online!) presents CLOSE (But Not Too Close!), a premiere digital musical.

Book by Palmona Sierra, Lyrics by Julia Koyfman, Compositions by Dusty Sanders.

Welcome to CLOSE (BUT NOT TOO CLOSE!) a website designed for people who want to meet that special someone, but aren't really ready for an in-person relationship.

Computer savvy scammer, Alex, catfishes an unsuspecting introvert, Louis, who is trying out online dating for his first time. Alex sets up a double date where she can figure out his credit card information. She brings along her Uncle Leslie as wingman and Louis brings his friend, Ellie, who can't bother to put on clothes for a digital date. Technical difficulties arise - as they always do in chat boxes - allowing Alex to learn Louis' wildest hopes and dreams.

This funny new musical is co-directed by Michole Biancosino and Andrew W. Smith. Digital Sound Mix by Neel Murgai. Digital Media and Editing by Courtney Smith. Graphic Design by Christopher Ulloth.

Featuring: Kevin R. Free, Iris Beaumier, Nathan Salstone, and Robyn Parrish.

Video Design by Courtney Smith

Digital Music Technician by Neel Murgai (of Brooklyn Raga Massive)

Produced by Project Y Theatre Company www.projectytheatre.org

Order your ticket and we'll send you the dedicated link to the show -

available March 17th through September 16th!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/close-but-not-too-close-world-premiere-digital-musical-tickets-142626203815?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&aff=escb&utm-source=cp&utm-term=listing

 

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre is seeking to commission a playwright to adapt a verse play by a forgotten woman writer from history. The commissioning award is $1,000.

As part of Hedgepig’s Expand the Canon (www.expandthecanon.com) effort, we are commissioning an adaptation loosely based on Mercy Otis Warren’s verse drama, The Ladies of Castile. This play grapples with revolution, women’s roles in the status quo, and a country divided. 

We are especially interested in proposals from playwrights that identify as Global Majority (does not identify as "white") women or non-binary playwrights. Playwrights must be 18+ and based in the New York City Metro Area. The ideal candidate has experience working from historical source material, comfort in a devising setting, and interest in both prose and verse writing. 

***

Awarded for the best playwriting response theme of the Alpine Fellowship 2021 - Untamed: On Wilderness and Civilization. 

The prize will be £3,000 plus a rehearsed reading at the Fellowship’s annual Symposium to which the winner will be invited to attend. Runners up will be invited to attend the Fjällnäs symposium to exhibit their work, all food and accommodation covered. Travel expenses will be reimbursed up to a total of £500.

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Red Eagle Soaring seeks plays between 10 - 30 minutes written by Native playwrights.

These plays will be performed by Native Youth as part of Red Eagle Soaring's inaugural short play festival in June 2021. The playwright of each selected play will be compensated with a licensing fee of $100 per performance.

For this year's play festival we are excited to focus on the question: Who do you want to be?

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***

*** FUNNY HAH HAH ***

First produced at the City Dionysia of 423 BC, THE CLOUDS is, arguably, Aristophanes’ best-known comedy – though for all the wrong reasons. A critical assessment of sophistry in Ancient Athens, the play satirizes and lampoons the city’s greatest philosopher, Socrates, and may have contributed to his trial and execution about two decades later. However, originally it wasn’t well received and only won the third prize at the festival, prompting Aristophanes to revise it a few years later. The play that has reached us is an incomplete version of this revision. It begins with the farmer Strepsiades (meaning “Twister” or “Cheater”) bemoaning his fate: his son Pheidippides has run him into debt because of his passion for horses. Now, he wants him to become a student at the Thinkery, the philosophical school of Socrates and there learn how to turn lies into truth and use this knowledge to get him out of debt. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades has no choice but to go himself. At the Thinkery – located just next door to his own house – Strepsiades meets a student who tells him all about Socrates’ supposedly great discoveries, and soon enough, at his bequest, he is introduced to Socrates himself, who is seated in a floating basket and studying the sun. Strepsiades is accepted as a student at the school and his induction is celebrated with a parade, at which the Clouds, the patron-deities of the Thinkery, suddenly appear (representing simultaneously the worldliness and the impracticality of Socrates’ teachings).

More...

https://www.greekmythology.com/Plays/Aristophanes/The_Clouds/the_clouds.html

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Humor to us means jokes, stand-up comics, sit-com TV shows, funny movies, comic plays, musical-comedy Broadway shows. To an Elizabethan audience, similar genre of humor existed. But, to that audience humor also meant the body fluids that governed someone’s general personality and emotional outlook on life.   Ben Jonson’s 1598 (revised in 1616) play, EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOR combines both of these ideas. But, humor often covers our darkness. In Every Man in his Humor, anger, anxiety, jealous, and insecurity are the internal experiences, which the characters attempt to hide behind the jokes.

We can begin to see the humor awaiting us by reading the program to acquaint ourselves with the characters’ names. Knowell (Christopher Seiler), his son Edward Knowell (Chris Johnston), and their man Brainworm (Allison Glenzer) obviously do not know well and can use their brains only so much. Master Stephan (Benjamin Reed) and Master Matthew (Nathan C. Crocker) seem neutral enough, though they are the insecure fools who make themselves the butt of most jokes. The Kitely family, Thomas (Rene Thornton, Jr), Dame (Sara Hymes), and Mistress Bridget (Lauren Ballad), are not as sharp or fast as their bird-of-prey sir-name suggest (Master Stephan has a whole series of jokes about hawking and falconry early in the play). Their retinue, Thomas Cash (Michael Amendola), George Downright (John Harrell) and his half-brother, Wellbred (Bridget Rue) each are defined by how the Kitelys have provided for them, as each name suggests. The water-bearer, Oliver Cob (John Harrell) and his wife Tib (Lauren Ballard), wander in and out of scenes, doing the grunt work that allows all these city folks to be buffoons. Captain Bobadill (Patrict Midgley) is the soldier who links all these characters, their anxieties, and antics together. Justice Clement (Michael Amendola) will adjudicate the intertwined conflicts, issuing verdicts and clemency to resolve the play.

More...

https://hermitsdoor.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/theatre-review-every-man-in-his-humor-by-ben-jonson/

***

As a comedy of manners, THE COUNTRY WIFE satirizes Restoration London’s patriarchal hierarchy through cuckolding, wherein Horner, the play’s licentious libertine posing as a eunuch, undermines the power of the patriarchy by having affairs with married women and deceiving their unsuspecting husbands. Engaging in sexual conquests and challenging social taboos may appear to be Horner’s literal purpose. However, his rhetorical purpose is to expose how the patriarchy’s assumptions toward the weaknesses of women, as well as the sexual ineptness of men, not only allow their power to be usurped from them, but also help to ridicule English society’s chauvinism and need to propagate the idea of gender hegemony. One way in which Wycherley achieves this is through the “china” scene, where Horner and Lady Fidget carry out their affair through double entendre without making Fidget’s husband or the grandmother of Mrs. Squeamish aware of their sexual escapades in the china closet. Lady Fidget, relating to Horner’s knowledge of “china,” tells her husband, “Why, the unmannerly toad knows China very well and has himself very good, but will not let me see it, lest I should beg some. But I will find it out and have what I came for yet” (Wycherley 48). While Sir Jasper believes his wife’s use of the word “china” is to be taken literally, the truth of the matter is that she intends for it to represent her sexual escapades with Horner behind closed doors. Lady Fidget’s use of witty double entendre in this scene provides “thesis and justification for the manipulation of others,” such as Sir Jasper, and her verbal dexterity determines “influence and power,” while her “verbal obtuseness isolates and debases” (McNamara 60). This not only creates an opportunity for her to exploit Sir Jasper for his naiveté, but it also allows Wycherley to satirize the imprudence of the patriarchy in believing that it cannot be duped by those it considers to be inferior.

More...

https://thequixoticpedagogue.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/the-country-wife-as-a-comedy-of-manners/

***

Moliere's comedy LA TARTUFFE is unchallengeably a classic, and that is what the French Company, Le Treteau de Paris has given us. There is nothing fandangled about their interpretation of the 17th century comedy; it's a very faithful production, based on the conviction that Moliere is still funny.

They are right. Director Jean de Rigault carves his laughs out of the rich lines of iambic pentameter, relying very heavily on the full tone range of his actor's voices, their bodies--especially arm gesturing--and the expanse of the stage. A fine example comes in one of the very first scenes when Orgon, the master of the house, returns from a business trip and asks the maid, Dorine, what has happened during his absence. She answers that his wife has been sick, indeed had to be bled. But Orgon is interested only in hearing about Tartuffe, the religious man he has gathered into his home. There is a wonderful, almost song-like exchange between the two as Dorine tells of her mistress' suffering, and Orgon answers over and over with the refrain "What about Tartuffe?" And as Dorine describes his glutonous feasting, Orgon answers with "Poor fellow!"

And then there is some very fine slap-stick. The credit here belongs wholly to de Rigault as Moliere has left vitually no stage directions. The greatest moment comes at the climax of the play when Orgon discovers that the trusted, devout Tartuffe is a hypocritical lecher thirsting after his wife. As Tartuffe lunges forward to embrace her, the virtuous lady steps quickly aside and Tartuffe lands in her husband's no longer quite so fond embrace.

More...

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1968/10/11/tartuffe-pbmbolieres-comedy-ila-tartuffei-is/

***

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is an 1895 play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. It is a farce on the societal conventions and restrictions of late-Victorian society, and remains enormously popular today.

The play follows the lives of two best friends, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. Jack lives in the country with his ward, Cecily Cardew, but spends much of his time in London — where he calls himself "Ernest Worthing," so that he can do as he likes without anything getting traced back to his real identity. Furthermore, as luck would have it, his girlfriend Gwendolen (Algernon's cousin) has always dreamed of marrying a man named "Ernest." Algernon finds out Jack's ruse, but keeps Jack's secret for his own mischievous purposes: since he knows that there is no such person as "Ernest Worthing," he can sneak off to Jack's country home and pose as "Ernest Worthing," where he meets and falls in love with Cecily.

Jack, meanwhile, had "killed" his fictional brother Ernest, only to find that Cecily had already met "Ernest" in the form of Algernon. Not long after, Gwendolen arrives and meets Cecily, and the ladies soon find that both of them are engaged to a man named Ernest Worthing.

It makes... more sense if you actually read it. And keep in mind that Wilde specifically ordered that the comedic script should be acted with the utmost seriousness. Plus the finale ending with the multiple plays on the word/name "Ernest" is much funnier if played seriously.

More...

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest

***

Tragicomedy is a play which claims a plot apt for tragedy however which ends happily like a comedy. The action is critical in theme and subject matter and tone additionally generally however it appears to be a tragic catastrophe till a surprising turn in events brings out the joyful ending. The characters of a tragicomedy are noble however they’re concerned in improbabilities. In such a play tragic and comic parts are blended up collectively. 

“A tragic-comedy is not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants death which is enough to make it no tragedy. Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’ may also be categorized as tragicomedy.”

WAITING FOR GODOT revealed in 1956 describes the play as a “tragicomedy” in two acts. There are many dialogues, gestures, conditions and actions which can be stuff of pure comedy. All musical devices are employed to create laughter in such a tragic scenario of waiting. The complete environment of the play may be very akin to dark-comedy. For instance, Vladimir is set to not hear Estragon’s nightmare. The latter pleads with him in vain to listen to him, saying that there’s no person else to whom he might talk his personal nightmares.

More...

https://literaturetimes.com/waiting-for-godot-as-tragicomedy/

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The two London hits that reached Broadway last season, ''Nicholas Nickleby'' and ''The Dresser,'' both made wild comic hay out of the misadventures of fleabag British theatrical troupes touring Shakespeare in the provinces. Now the West End has a new hit farce, Michael Frayn's NOISES OFF that takes the same basic premise to its ludicrous apotheosis and just possibly to its most dizzying comic heights yet.

The theatrical company we meet in ''Noises Off'' is not of the past but the present, and the play it is performing is not ''Romeo or Juliet'' or ''King Lear'' but a cheesy sex farce titled ''Nothing On.'' As madly invented by Mr. Frayn, ''Nothing On'' is a reductio ad absurdum of mainstay West End entertainments like ''There's a Girl in My Soup'' or ''No Sex Please, We're British'': it's an idiotic trifle involving eight slamming doors, two illicit couples in various states of undress, an Arab sheik and a contantly misplaced plate of sardines. But we never see all of ''Nothing On'' in ''Noises Off.'' It's Mr. Frayn's devilish conceit that, instead, we watch Act I of his play-within-the-play three times over - in each case from a different perspective, at a different stop along a calamity-ridden tour of such backwater towns as Weston-Super-Mare, Stockton-on-Tees and Goole.

Funnier still, Mr. Frayn has seen to it that ''Nothing On'' is not only a nutty parody of a quintessentially British theatrical genre but also a funhouse-mirror reflection of the private lives of the third-rate actors who perform it. In Act II of ''Noises Off,'' in which we watch a sorry Wednesday matinee of ''Nothing On'' from the wings, the sleazy onstage and backstage love triangles on view finally merge so completely that the act can only end with parallel climaxes, and the simultaneous dropping of two curtains.

More...

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/16/theater/theater-noises-off-and-other-london-comedies.html

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