Excerpt from The History of the Harlequinade, Vol. 2 From the Greek comedies down to our own modern vaude villes, from the old satyr besmeared With grape-juice down to Cassandre besmeared With snuff, at the hands of Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, Macchiavelli, Beolco, Moliere and Goldoni, the old man of the comedy, like the old man of the farce, has always been more or less niggardly, credulous, libertine, duped and mocked, af icted With rheum and coughs, and, above all, unhappy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."