Chapter Colours to Comus of C by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Comedy (The Father of), Aristophanês the Athenian (B.C. 444–380).

The Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanês (B.C. 444–380).

The Prince of New Comedy, Menander (B.C. 342–291).

Comedy of Errors, by Shakespeare (1593). Æmilia wife of Ægeon had two sons at a birth, and named both of them Antipholus. When grown to manhood, each of these sons had a slave named Dromio, also twin- brothers. The brothers Antipholus had been shipwrecked in infancy, and, being picked up by different vessels, were carried one to Syracuse and the other to Ephesus. The play supposes that Antipholus of Syracuse goes in search of his brother, and coming to Ephesus with his slave Dromio, a series of mistakes arises from the extraordinary likeness of the two brothers and their two slaves. Andriana, the wife of the Ephesian, mistakes the Syracusian for her husband; but he behaves so strangely that her jealousy is aroused, and when her true husband arrives he is arrested as a mad man. Soon after, the Syracusian brother being seen, the wife, supposing it to be her mad husband broken loose, sends to capture him; but he flees into a convent. Andriana now lays her complaint before the duke, and the lady abbess comes into court. So both brothers face each other, the mistakes are explained, and the abbess turns out to be Æmilia the mother of the twin-brothers. Now, it so happened that Ægeon, searching for his son, also came to Ephesus, and was condemned to pay a fine or suffer death, because he, a Syracusian, had set foot in Ephesus. The duke, however, hearing the story, pardoned him. Thus Ægeon found his wife in the abbess, the parents their twin-sons, and each son his long-lost brother.

The plot of this comedy is copied from the Menœchmi of Plautus.

Comhal or Combal, son of Trathal, and father of Fingal. His queen was Morna, daughter of Thaddu. Comhal was slain in battle, fighting against the tribe of Morni, the very day that Fingal was born.—Ossian.

Fingal said to Aldo, “I was born in the midst of battle.”—Ossian: The Battle of Lora.

Comic Annual (The), from 1830 to 1842, Hood.

Comic Blackstone, by Gilbert à Beckett (1846). In 1847–8 he published a Comic History of England; and in 1849–50 a Comic History of Rome.

Comines [Cûm-in]. Philip des Comines, the favourite minister of Charles “the Bold,” duke of Burgundy, is introduced by sir W. Scott in Quentin Durward (time, Edward IV.).

Coming Race (The), a work of fiction by lord Lytton (1871). It is the supposed manners and customs of a race several ages hence, and is a sort of Utopia, where the present evils will be redressed.

Comleach , a mountain in Ulster. The Lubar flows between Comleach and Cromal.—Ossian.

Commander of the Faithful [Emir al Mumenin], a title assumed by Omar I., and retained by his successors in the caliphate (581, 634–644).

Commandment (The Eleventh), Thou shalt not be found out.

After all, that Eleventh Commandment is the only one that it is vitally important to keep in these days.—B. H. Buxton: Jennie of the Prince’s, iii. 314.

Committee (The), a comedy by the hon. sir R. Howard. Mr. Day, a Cromwellite, is the head of a Committee of Sequestration, and is a dishonest, canting rascal, under the thumb of his wife. He gets into his hands the deeds of two heiresses, Anne and Arbella. The former he calls Ruth, and passes her off as his own daughter; the latter he wants to marry to his booby son Abel. Ruth falls in love with colonel Careless, and Arbella with colonel Blunt. Ruth contrives to get into her hands the deeds, which she delivers over