Word: serio
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...forensic vein as inspired his essay on the Democratic Donkey: "He is a braying compendium of stately dignity, stanch endurance, fortitude and patience. ... In our quadrennial Presidential campaigns there is more music in his raucous hee-haw than in the midnight minstrelsy of a nightingale. The donkey is a serio-comic philosopher, whose stamina and stoicism conquered the wilderness . . . a sure-footed creature of epicurean taste and gargantuan appetite, but whose appetite and taste, happily enough, may be assuaged and satisfied by a nibble at a desert cactus, and he then is ready for another long and arid journey...
...Kaufman; Sam Harris, producer). In collaboration for the first time since they wrote The Royal Family, Playwrights Kaufman & Ferber have turned out a piece in which they should take pleasure and profit, too. Dinner at Eight is seriocomic, and it may be inferred that Miss Ferber supplied the serio-element, Mr. Kaufman the comic. The deft Kaufman hand, however, is thoroughly evident in this excellent play's shrewd direction...
Hollis.--"Nice People", by Rachel Crothers and with Francine Larrimore; a serio-comedy in which we see ourselves as others...
...Pusuit of Pamela", as has been more than suggested above is not comedy--the plot, the characters, the procedure are all too outrageous for that; but played as a tremendous joke with a little serio-comic sentimental trimming, it succeeds admirably. No-one could take the adventures of the unsophisticated young American girl, who leaves her aged husband five minutes after marrying him to chase around the world after a penniless Englishmen, too seriously. The rapid geographical movements of the characters--from Hawaii via Japan, China, the North Pole, and Russia to Canada--are in themselves too preposterous for anything...
...very dissimilar subjects, both show the habit of observation and analysis and some ability at realistic portrayal. The description, by the latter, of "The New England Grandmother" is straightforward, simple and homely; so much so, in fact, that the solemn verse quotation with which it concludes has a serio-comic effect which seems hardly in place. Mr. Burlingame's story perhaps depends too much, for its impression, on the squalid and the revolting; and his narrative is inferior, on the whole, to his description. Mr. Rogers's account of "Griggs," the English butler, on the other hand, is effective...