A Royal Farce


Book Description

Enjoy this hilarious Boston-based romantic comedy series by award-winning author Laura Heffernan. Lila needs to pay her soul-crushing debt. Pierre needs a wife. Maybe they can help each other. Once she finishes these renovations, Lila can finally sell her money pit and get back on her feet. But on box store wages, that’ll take decades. Then her friend Pierre proposes the perfect solution: he needs a green card. If Lila marries him, he'll pay for the job. One problem: who is going to believe the gorgeous, brilliant investment banker fell for little Lila? Everyone, if they have any say. Not even their closest friends can suspect the truth. Lila fakes the walk of shame, feigns shock at Pierre's staged public proposal, and plans their wedding with a single-minded determination rivaled only by her Yorkie begging for treats. Their fake relationship is so perfect, Lila starts to wish it was real. Then Pierre's brother drops a bombshell: they are royalty, princes to a tiny island nation, and Lila isn't princess material. Now, instead of studs and sandpaper, Lila finds herself worrying about titles and tiaras. Will she get her happily ever after, or will Lila's prince decide she's not so charming after all? A Royal Farce is the first book in the charming new Retail to Riches series. Get ready for a fun fake engagement romcom with a royal twist. This series is great for people who love Bostonian charm, heroes with accents, down-on-their luck heroines, secret royalty, and friends-to-lovers stories. Fans of popular comcom authors Ali Hazelwood, Christina Lauren, Melanie Summers, Becky Monson, Whitney Dineen, and Annabelle Costa will swoon for this delightful duo. Praise for A Royal Farce "Heffernan has a way with the back-and-forth banter that I love to read between characters...This really was a sweet, funny, five-star experience!" - Sara, Chick Lit Central "Wonderful banter and I loved all the quirky characters." - Comfy Chair Books "Heffernan has a way with the back-and-forth banter that I love to read between characters, and what I really like is when the protagonist discovers new things about themselves that really creates the character evolution I hold so dear to my heart." - The Book Bag "If you enjoy the hugely popular royal romance genre then you will enjoy this :) ...Laura is a 'new to me' author and I really enjoyed her writing style." - Jo, Reading is My Bliss




High life below stairs


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Laughing Matters


Book Description

Bawdy satirical plays—many starring law clerks and seminarians—savaged corrupt officials and royal policies in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century France. The Church and the royal court tolerated—and even commissioned—such performances, the audiences for which included men and women from every social class. From the mid-sixteenth century, however, local authorities began to temper and in some cases ban such performances. Sara Beam, in revealing how theater and politics were intimately intertwined, shows how the topics we joke about in public reflect and shape larger religious and political developments. For Beam, the eclipse of the vital tradition of satirical farce in late medieval and early modern France is a key aspect of the complex political and cultural factors that prepared the way for the emergence of the absolutist state. In her view, the Wars of Religion were the major reason attitudes toward the farceurs changed; local officials feared that satirical theater would stir up violence, and Counter-Reformation Catholicism proved hostile to the bawdiness that the clergy had earlier tolerated. In demonstrating that the efforts of provincial urban officials prepared the way for the taming of popular culture throughout France, Laughing Matters provides a compelling alternative to Norbert Elias's influential notion of the "civilizing process," which assigns to the royal court at Versailles the decisive role in the shift toward absolutism.




The Farce of Sodom: Or the Quintessence of Debauchery


Book Description

The Farce of Sodom is a sexually explicit play which satirizes the reign of Charles II of England during the Restoration of the English monarchy. Explicit and uncompromising in tone, this send-up of the Royal Court grossly exaggerates the rumors surrounding the court of the king. We witness the homosexual King Bolloximian ban ordinary sexual intercourse in his kingdom, decreeing that only anal intercourse be permitted among the entire population. The excesses of the wealthy are shown in a sequence of erotic acts in a court preoccupied with luxuriating in debauchery. Eventually the nature of the acts the wealthy are consigned to perform upsets enough members of the court, and King Bolloximian is violently deposed. He and his closest companions are then consigned to hellfire. Banned for centuries, during recent years The Farce of Sodom has attracted renewed appreciation, with a version of the drama staged at the 2011 Edinburgh Festival.







May the Farce Be With You


Book Description

It seems a long way from Moliere to Ray Cooney. There are immense distances between the worlds of Aristophanes, Plautus, Georges Feydeau, Ben Travers, Joe Orton and Basil Fawlty. But as one of the oldest genres in the history of the theatre, farce bridges the gaps by generating gales of helpless belly laughter across the generations. Inspired by John Mortimer’s observation that farce is 'tragedy played at a thousand revolutions a minute', theatre critic Roger Foss embarks on a lightning tour of the rib-tickling world of confused characters, absurd situations, ruined reputations, sexual innuendo and bravura comic acting and finds out if farce really is a force to be reckoned with in the 21st century. The latest addition to the Oberon Masters series, May The Farce Be With You celebrates the great creators and performers of farce, notably master farceur Ray Cooney, who celebrates his 80th birthday in 2012, in essays that will inform and entertain both the aficionado and anyone with a sense of humour.




Rabelais's Radical Farce


Book Description

In the first extended investigation of the importance of dramatic farce in Rabelais studies, Bruce Hayes makes an important contribution to the understanding of the theater of farce and its literary possibilities. By tracing the development of farce in late medieval and Renaissance comedic theater in comparison to the evolution of farce in Rabelais's work, Hayes distinguishes Rabelais's use of the device from traditional farce. While traditional farce is primarily conservative in its aims, with an emphasis on maintaining the status quo, Rabelais puts farce to radical new uses, making it subversive in his own work. Bruce Hayes examines the use of farce in Pantagruel, Gargantua, and the Tiers and Quart livres, showing how Rabelais recast farce in a humanist context, making it a vehicle for attacking the status quo and posing alternatives to contemporary legal, educational, and theological systems. Rabelais's Radical Farce illustrates the rich possibilities of a genre often considered simplistic and unsophisticated, disclosing how Rabelais in fact introduced both a radical reformulation of farce, and a new form of humanist satire.




Air Farce


Book Description

A rollicking, behind-the-scenes look at Canada's favourite comedy troupe A staple of CBC television for fifteen years, with diehard fans numbering in the millions, Canada's Royal Canadian Air Farce exemplifies brilliant comedic mayhem. Written by the founding members of Air Farce—Roger Abbott and Don Ferguson—this candid memoir, full of anecdotes, photographs, scripts, and other memorabilia from the authors' private collection describes every aspect of their hard-scrabble early life in 1970 as an onstage comedy troupe, their historic run on radio, and their spectacular success on prime-time television. With contributions from many of their longtime friends and collaborators, including Dave Broadfoot (whose "When I regained consciousness" tagline is now part of the Canadian vernacular), and the irrepressive Luba Goy, Air Farce takes readers behind the scenes, and onstage, into the day-to-day creative vortex of one of the most popular comedy shows in the history of Canadian television. Offers unprecedented access to the intimate workings of Canada's legendary comedy troupe—from their days as "something fun to do on Sunday nights" in theatres to their arrival on Canadian television, as one of its highest rated shows The authors share the highlights, lowlights, successes, and tragedies that resulted from their Air Farce collaboration Offering a no-holds-barred look at the key players that turned comedy talent into prime-time gold, Air Farce offers their legions of fans a genuine keepsake destined to last at least as long as the troupe's forty-year career—if not longer.







The Era Almanack


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