 | John Patrick - Drama - 1975 - 68 pages
...Then why'd you laugh when you left me there? VELMA. To keep from crying. (Dramatically noble.) "For if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'tis that I may not weep." OTIS. Shakespeare. VELMA. Tennyson. MOONEY. Bullshit. OTIS. Count to ten, Velma. VELMA. (Winces.) I... | |
 | Robert Bechtold Heilman - Comedy - 320 pages
...reading of experience. Ionesco has declared that comedy may well produce tears. We remember Byron's "And if I laugh at any mortal thing, / Tis that I may not weep," and Shelley's "Our sincerest laughter / With some pain is fraught." The most that we can say for laughter... | |
 | Lia Noêmia Rodrigues Correia Raitt - Literary Criticism - 1983 - 168 pages
...in The Age of Bronze. 19 Thus he strikes basically the same pose as Byron when he says in Don Juan: 'and if I laugh at any mortal thing, / 'Tis that I may not weep'. 80 These lines explain the reason for the irony of Don Juan and apply equally well to Magrico. It is... | |
 | Roger B. Salomon - Literary Criticism - 2008 - 318 pages
...her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk Turns what was once romantic to burlesque. And if I laugh at any mortal thing Tis that I may...that our nature cannot always bring Itself to apathy. . . . [4.3-4] Byron goes on to defend his strange and complex point of view and the art form that has... | |
 | David L. Hall - Literary Criticism - 1992 - 448 pages
...sad face and wondered if she had ever read Byron's Don Juan and, if so, had she paused at the line And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'tis that I may not weep. 18 On the way to the airport, Michael loosened his tie and was relieved to discover that the constriction... | |
 | Andrew Rutherford - Literary Criticism - 1995 - 536 pages
...bosom of the North, So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.' 1 Written in Italy. 3 'And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep.' his 'death a victory.' When he heard the cry of nationality and liberty burst forth in the land he... | |
 | Konrad Boehmer - Art - 1997 - 248 pages
...is full of tears. The modern Pierrot is defined by the paradox that Lord Byron had already stated: "And if I laugh at any mortal thing, Tis that I may not weep." The state of world and society (Schonberg's "price of grain") is experienced as such that the sensitive... | |
 | Robert Andrews - Language Arts & Disciplines - 1997 - 666 pages
...Barbier de Seville, act 1 , se. 2 (1 775). Byron expressed a similar idea in Don ¡uan cto. 4, st. 4: "And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep." Nothing can confound A wise man more than laughter from a dunce. GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON, ÓTH BARON... | |
 | David L. Hall, Roger T. Ames - Philosophy - 1998 - 364 pages
...laugh when we forget the seriousness of things, or as a means of so forgerting. Recall Byron's line, "If I laugh at any mortal thing, 'tis that I may not weep." The closest thing in our own cultural inventory to humor as defined by the Daoist seems to be the ironic... | |
 | Jerome McGann - Literary Criticism - 2002 - 332 pages
...represented as a dialectical form. True, the work itself frequently encourages such a representation: And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may...that our nature cannot always bring Itself to apathy, for we must steep Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring Ere what we least wish to behold... | |
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And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep ; and if I weep, 'Tis that our nature cannot always bring Itself to apathy, for we must steep Our... 
