Many eighteenth-century comedies are single-adventure plays, or dual-adventure plays, in the sense that the main action sometimes stands aside to let an underplot take the stage.
In the last chapter I attempted to describe the depth of servitude to which the States of Italy were severally reduced at the end of the wars between France and Spain.
To dissociate the two-fold sacrament from Milan and from Rome was the same as robbing it of its main virtue, the virtue of a mystical conception.
On the contrary, it gave occasion for a counter-council, held at the Lateran under the auspices of Julius II.
An Emperor of the Swabian House would have been compelled by precedent and superstition to observe this form.
Militant Protestantism threatened the civil no less than the ecclesiastical order.
After a tranquil sojourn of some years in Italy, these devils had everywhere spread desolation and corruption.
His son, Ottavio, with some difficulty, maintained his hold upon this principality, until in 1559 he established himself and his heirs, with the approval of Philip II.
The Council he so much dreaded was destined to exalt his office, and to recombine the forces of Catholic Christendom under the absolute supremacy of his successors.
Meanwhile the passion of Dorinda for Silvio, and the accident whereby he is brought to return her affection at the moment when his dart has wounded her, form a picturesque underplot of considerable interest.
Both plot and underplot are so connected in the main action and so interwoven by links of mutual dependency that they form one richly varied fabric.
After a fashion soon to become general, there is an underplot which, like the main plot, presents a problem of social ethics, the question of the sacrifice of chastity to save a brother's honor.
The Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery" introduces the Enoch Arden story, attached to an outrageous comic underplot derived in part from Fletcher's "Nightwalker.
The underplot is subordinated and closely united to the main action, and there are no delays and new excitements between crisis and catastrophe as in "Hamlet" and "Lear.
The play, of course, has a farcical underplot which is only connected very slightly with the main story by Sir Tophas' ridiculous passion for Dipsas.
He and the pages form an underplot of farce, upon which Lyly improved in his later plays, bringing it also more into connexion with the main plot.
From this it will be seen that the underplot is more embroidered with incident and is, in every way, better arranged than in the earlier plays.
Likewise, the characters in the prose underplot (except Costard) have too little connection with the story of the king and his friends.
For the underplot and a number of details in the working out of the main plot, no source is known.
If this be the original, Shakespeare improved on it as much as he did on Rosalynde, condensing the beginning, knitting together the loose strands at the end, and introducing the whole of the underplot with its rich variety of characters.
Thunder and lightning are the fearful accompaniment of the song; and like faint antiphonal responses from the underplot come the voices of the wronged Edgar and the outraged Gloucester.
The underplot he drew from the story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in Arcadia, a long, rambling novel of adventure by Sir Philip Sidney.
It is perhaps due to their habit of mixing tragedy and comedy that the Elizabethan dramatists made so much use of the double plot; for the main plot was often tragical and the underplot comical or farcical.
Further multiplication of Stories by the addition of an Underplot 74 and Chapter III.
Thus all three tragedies which together make up the resultant of the intrigue constituting the underplot reach their climax of agitation in the scene in which Lear and Edgar meet.
The underplot an Intrigue Action:] Again, as the main plot consisted in the initiation of a problem and its solution, so the underplot consists in the development of an intrigue and its consequences.
The main and underplotparallel and contrasted throughout.
Thus the portion of the drama we have so far considered yields us a pattern within a pattern, a series of Nemesis Actions woven into a complete underplot by a connecting-link which is also Nemesis.
The passions of the underplot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Edgar.
A Main story in the family of Lear has an Underplot in the family of Gloucester.
The underplot hits to the life the licentious endeavours of an old man to seduce his inferior; but, as usual, it reveals vice too broadly.
The underplot of the lawyer and his wife, while it shows how licentious in principle as well as indecent in language the stage had become, is conducted with incomparable humour and amusement.
Another argument against Shakspere's responsibility for the whole play is the manner in which the minor characters are introduced and the underplot managed.
As far as my own recollection serves, I do not believe that in any play undoubtedly Shakspere's we have a single instance of an underplot like that of the Gaoler's Daughter.
If this underplot is due to Shakspere, why is there none like it in all his works?
I presented you a fine snuff-box; you gave it to that coxcomb Underplot, and Underplot gave it to my wife.
This Underplotis a confounded villain, he would make me jealous of an honest civil gentleman, only for an opportunity to cuckold me himself.
Underplot in the Alligator crawls forward, then rises up and embraces her.
Plotwell and Underplot leap from their places; the doctors are frighted.
The same play has an intriguing valet named Plotwell; here our authors found the name for one of their gallants--Underplot was a happy invention of their own.
Olympias: Underplot in his verses alludes, mock-heroically, to the fabled begetting of Alexander the Great.
He and Underplot are simply gentlemen who spend so much of their time in intrigues in real life that they would have no time for play-writing.
This is my evil geniusUnderplot that still haunts me.
So far it is manifest, Underplot has a design upon my honour.
Although Hawkesworth’s version was not tolerated, the underplot was none the less pruned in later productions to such an extent that it perforce lost nearly all its pristine wit and fun.
It is entitled L’Adultère Innocent; but the comic underplot is very sketchily analyzed, scene by scene, and the whole is very mediocre withal.
