The Scruffy Scoundrels by Annibal Caro offers the student, scholar, and general reader a sixteenth-century masterpiece in modern English translation.
From one vantage point, The Scruffy Scoundrels would appear to be no more than a series of unrelated scenes and sketches grouped around a highly conventionalized and loosely structured love plot: the arrival of Pilucca and Tindaro in Rome abounding in topical references; the appearance of the two ragged brothers so arbitrarily related to the rest of the events of the play; the love squabble between two servants that leads to Nuta’s memorably comic invective; the stock farcical routines of the Mirandola episodes; the long pathetic tale of Tindaro so little of which actually takes place on the stage.
There is a sense, however, in which each scene contains its own ethos and milieu and hails from a particular comic genre, each with its own topoi and character types. This efficient management of plot is simply a measure of Caro’s comic genius.
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Language
English -
Original language
English -
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Page count
126 -
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About the author
Annibal Caro
Annibal Caro was born June 19, 1507, in Civitanova Marche. He was an accomplished poet, a skilful and elegant translator of Latin and Greek, an experienced collector of coins and archaeological rarities and a comic writer of enormous talent. He is the talented writer of this renaissance play, The Scruffy Scoundrels.