Word: comical
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Comic Glimpses of Royalty...
...pieces of royal buffoonery, introducing--first Queen Bess and Will Shakespeare, and second a red-haired Oedipus Rex. The act ended with "Her Wedding Day" buffoonery rather less royal, but more effective. The second act was very much in keeping with the first; while throughout the play were comic interludes, with all varieties of horse play, and a good many really original jokes...
...spendthrift of merriment, a caricature instead of a nightmare. Similarly, in Octave Mirbeau's play about business his funnybone seems constantly elbowing out the dramatic elements. Instead of suggesting the ironhanded vulgarian of a millionaire, whose god is business, De Feraudy reminds one of Mr. Jiggs in the comic supplement series, Bringing Up Father. In an intense scene he puts his finger on a rocking wine bottle for a laugh. He is very expert in putting his finger on any laugh...
...play must have a story, and human nature, in order to be studied, must have situations to react upon; but in the last two acts there seems to be a lack of balance between comic situation and characterization, the latter being, we are given to understand, the main purpose of the Kentucky plays. The people tend to be obscured by the very plot which never fails to keep us laughing. And after the story is done, back we come in a short tag-ending to Beem's poetry of life, as if the author had suddenly remembered what the play...
...course, like the old discussion of the hen and the egg, it might be debated whether the American comic moulded American life or American life expressed itself through the comic. Actually, however, the comic has developed into an organ of social satire, an ogre which sees, as Mencken says of women, "with bright and horrible eyes" all of the weaknesses and vices of men and broadcasts this knowledge to the world. The "funnies" are terribly realistic, destructive, usually pessimistic criticisms of everything although the most popular subjects are domestic life, business and personal adventure. But the delight of ridiculing...