A Servant To Two Masters (Modern Plays)

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A battle ensues and Merlin risks using his magic to save Arthur, but is struck by a mace and knocked unconscious in the process. Although he is also a Zanni, Brighella often appears as the stricter and more cutthroat counterpart to the pleasantly benign Arlecchino. Beatrice's servant, the exceptionally quirky and comical Harlequin (known in English also as Truffaldino, which can be translated into English as Fraudolent), is the central figure of this play. Read all Cowley appears to have stolen two canisters of a new nerve gas and is recorded trying to sell them to German Otto Hahn.

She often serves as a confidant to the Innamorati or the other servants, giving her greater insight into the other characters’ intentions. Disguising herself as her dead brother, Beatrice travels to Venice to find Florindo, the man responsible for his death. In the end, with the help of Clarice and Smeraldina (Pantalone's feisty servant, who is smitten with Truffaldino), Beatrice and Florindo finally find each other, and with Beatrice exposed as a woman, Clarice is allowed to marry Silvio. The set – composed, I am told, almost entirely of parts recycled from other productions, such as the Christmas panto – was ingeniously designed by Immy Howard, with free-hanging windows providing a framework for festoons of flowers and foliage, menus, posters, drapes, portraits, curtains etc to be rapidly hung or removed to allow a quick succession of scene-changes from garden to city square to inn to hotel bedroom to merchant’s house.The mercenaries find them as they continue their journey back to Camelot and Arthur engages them in combat. With a zany plot featuring lost love, mistaken identity, ravenous servants, and lots of letter mix-ups, Goldoni’s classic The Servant of Two Masters makes a wonderful addition to any theater season! Mr Hall's introduction to this edition gives a really good background to the history of the play and explains why he felt it necessary to adapt it the way he did; in essence restoring the play to it's truest form after years of being performed in versions that were at least poor, but possibibly travesties. Many comic scenarios in the commedia dell’arte revolve around the Innamorati (the lovers), and their fervent desire to be together. Later, on the street, the servant Truffaldino is approached by Florindo who, having recently escaped from Turin after killing Federigo, is seeking a servant himself.

The three tall chimneys on the right-hand side are the tell-tales here as all the other buildings in the vicinity have been replaced! Eventually, through a series of comic mishaps and mix-ups, Beatrice and Florindo come to believe that the other is dead.

This isn't the first time, and it won't be the last, that audiences at a show transferred to the West End wonder why it has arrived with such enthusiastic notices. Recovering and angered, Merlin summons a great whirlwind to attack Morgana, knocking her unconscious.