Reprinted from the Morning Post.

Release date is 2026-01-10

Catherine Parr -- The drawback -- Pious Æneas -- The death of Alexander -- The Greek vase -- The fatal rubber -- The rehearsal -- The blue Harlequin -- The Member for Literature -- Caligula's picnic -- The Aulis difficulty -- Don Juan's failure -- Calpurnia's dinner-party -- Lucullus's dinner-party -- The stoic's daughter -- After Euripides' "Electra" -- Jason and Medea -- King Alfred and the neat-herd -- Rosamund and Eleanor -- Ariadne in Naxos -- Velasquez and the "Venus" -- Xantippe and Socrates.

Dori Allard and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"Diminutive dramas" by Maurice Baring is a collection of short comic plays written in the early 20th century. Sprightly, parodic, and urbane, the pieces recast history, myth, literature, and everyday manners into brisk one-act dialogues with ironic twists. Expect quibbling monarchs, punctured heroics, and theatrical in-jokes as classical figures and modern types collide in miniature stage scenes.

The opening of the collection presents a rapid suite of sketches: Henry VIII and Catherine Parr bicker over boiled eggs and the color of Bucephalus until a death sentence is issued and un-issued; a Kensington romance founders when a suitor’s “drawback” (his father is the hangman) is eclipsed by the heroine’s pique over his former crushes; Dido confronts Æneas as he blames destiny for abandoning her; and a mock-Elizabethan tragedy narrates Alexander’s death in high-flown pastiche. Next, a dying sculptor refuses a predatory dealer and smashes his own “Greek” masterpiece; the French royal family’s card game devolves into squabbling that tips the king into madness; a shambolic Globe rehearsal of Macbeth shows actors browbeating the playwright; and a misty, Maeterlinck-like pantomime sees Harlequin spirit Columbine away while a befogged constable nabs the wrong man. These first pieces set the tone: swift setups, sharp dialogue, and comic reversals that lampoon vanity, pedantry, and theatrical pretensions. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: BOSTON: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911