Word: gloriosus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...comic figure in English literature, and more will agree with Orson Welles that it is "the best role that Shakespeare ever wrote" than will share Bernard Shaw's narrow view of the man as "a besotted and disgusting old wretch." We find in him features drawn from the miles gloriosus of ancient Roman comedy, from the stage Vice, Devil, Fool, and Lord of Misrule, from Rabelais and Heaven knows what else-all heightened through Shakespeare's astonishing inventiveness into something far greater than the sum of his parts...