Satire
A Family of Noblemen
Meet the Golovliovs, the ultimate dysfunctional family. In the difficult transition years before and after the liberation of Russia’s serfs,…
Bob And Ray
These files need identification and dating. Please place any information you may have on the Bob and Ray For The Truly Desperate Forum. The …
Candida
This play tells the story of Candida, the wife of a famous clergyman, the Reverend James Mavor Morell. Morell is a Christian Socialist, po…
The Princess Pourquoi
Once upon a time, a princess was born, and a fairy cursed her with a mind: "She is a woman-child, and yet she shall think. She shall be…
The Vegetable
"Any man who doesn’t want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, has…
The Magnificent Lovers
"The King [Louis XIV], who will have nothing but what is magnificent in all he undertakes, wished to give his court an entertainment wh…
The New Republic
A group of upper class men and women gather together in an English country house to discuss their ideas for a utopia (their "New Republ…
Monsieur De Pourceaugnac
'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac', acted on October 6, 1669, is nothing but a farce. But Molière excels in farce as well as in higher comedy…
The Celebrity
The Celebrity is a sharp satire that explores the complexities of fame and the literary world through the lens of a young novelist's rise to…
The Knight of the Burning Pestle
The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a play in five acts, first performed in 1607. It is the first whole parody (or pastiche) play in English…
How to Make a Man of Consequence
Mark Lemon had a natural talent for journalism and the stage, and, at twenty-six, retired from less congenial business to devote himself to …
The Litigants
This play, which is neither a comedy or a farce but has elements in common with each, was first performed in 1668 at Paris, and afterwards a…
A Treatise of Religion
Part diatribe, part discourse, part sermon and part stand-up comedy, this is Fulke Greville's 114 stanza, verse-poem about religious hypocri…
Cinderella
If you are expecting glass slippers and pumpkin coaches, look elsewhere... This is "a pantomime as Ibsen would have written it, if only…
The Conscious Lovers
As early as 1720 Steele spoke in the Theatre of "a friend of mine" who was lately preparing a comedy according to the just laws of…
The Pleasures of Ignorance
From the pen of the Irish poet and essayist, Robert Lynd, comes a collection of humorous and satirical essays on topics as wide ranging as c…
The History of Pompey the Little
"Pompey, the son of Julio and Phyllis, was born A.D. 1735, at Bologna in Italy, a place famous for lap-dogs and sausages." At an e…
Zadig or The Book of Fate
"there is no Evil under the Sun, but some Good proceeds from it:" -- this quote from this novel sums it up. One of Voltaire's most…
The Physician In Spite of Himself
The Physician In Spite of Himself … is written in a most unbounded spirit of mirth, the matrimonial breezes wafting a certain amount of refr…
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The five-volume work chronicling the adventures of father Gargantua and son Pantagruel is a vehicle for Rabelais' satire of sixteenth-centur…