ISBN: 9781236445438

RareBooksClub. Paperback. New. This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 80 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.2in.This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purc… More...

RareBooksClub. Paperback. New. This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 80 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.2in.This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 Excerpt: . . . Moliere as the best comic poet of any nation; and treats the posthumous hostility which made a difficulty about his burial as a reproach both to France and to the Catholic religion. Professing to have reperused the comedians of antiquity for the purpose of comparison, he gives it as his judgment, that the French dramatist is entitled to the preference. He grounds this decision on the art and regularity of the modern theatre, contrasted with the unconnected scenes of the ancients, their weak intrigues, and the strange practice of declaring by the mouths of the actors, in cold and nil natural monologues, what they had done and what they intended to do. He concludes by saying that Moliere did for comedy what Corneille had done for tragedy; and that the French were superior on this ground to all the people upon earth. A country possessing such a comic drama as ours, throughout the course of about two centuries, with Much ado about Nothing at one end of the list, and The School for Scandal at the other, will be inclined to demur to this broad national assumption: but we, in our turn, must in candour confess, that though the chronological precedence of Shakspeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, and Ford, had established a glorious stage for us before Moliere was born, or while he was yet in petticoats; yet our most eminent comic writers in the reigns of William III. , Anne, and George I. , drank deep and often from the abundant source of French comedy. But Molieres influence was most beneficially exerted in reclaiming his countrymen from a fondness for such Italian conceits as ringing the changes upon odours and ardours, and c, to which authors like Scudery, Voiture, and Balzac had given an ephemeral fashion. Boileau and Moliere principally contributed to arm the . . . This item ships from La Vergne,TN., RareBooksClub<