DIVAN · Genres
Comedy
11 published works. Explore books by literary genre and discover new works.
A Trick for a Trick
A Trick for a Trick — Jovan Sterija Popović. A purse changes hands in a garden, and neighbourly advice becomes a weapon. A Trick for a Trick needs only two people and one hiding place. Its action is small enough to follow at a glance; its arguments expand to take in marriage, learning, commerce and conscience. Both men are gifted explainers, especially when an explanation makes self-interest sound respectable.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookAn Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband — Oscar Wilde. A respected politician’s past threatens his marriage and public reputation when Mrs Cheveley arrives with a demand. Wilde’s comedy uses polished conversation and shifting loyalties to question moral certainty and the idea of an ideal husband.
Oscar WildeDramaeBookSympathy and Antipathy
Sympathy and Antipathy — Jovan Sterija Popović. Agnica reads a story and decides to turn it into a performance. Her parents dislike the man she wants to marry, so she devises an illness that only his presence can relieve. The audience hears the plan before the household sees its effects. This difference in knowledge is the play’s engine: each new sign confirms a theory to the doctor while revealing a piece of stagecraft to us.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Enchanted Donkey
The Enchanted Donkey — Jovan Sterija Popović. The donkey in this comedy never speaks. Everyone else speaks a great deal, and their eloquence makes the animal seem increasingly sensible. Three students discover a sleeping peasant and a donkey they would like to turn into money. Their solution depends on a theatrical substitution: one student stays behind in the animal’s place, ready to explain the miracle when the owner wakes.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Fate of a Mind
The Fate of a Mind — Jovan Sterija Popović. A Doctor of Philosophy has misplaced his mind. His servants look for it as though it were an object left in a room, and the Doctor eventually advertises a reward for its return. The joke grows out of the language he teaches: once a mind can sit at home, a river can have shoulders and a school can float, figures of speech become things that can walk, quarrel and get lost.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Liar and His Accomplice
The Liar and His Accomplice — Jovan Sterija Popović. Two hungry adventurers stop before a respectable house and invent a social position for themselves. Aleksa becomes Baron Golić, Mita his servant. Yet skill in lying is not all that opens the door: within the house is already a desire to hear exactly what they offer.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Marriage of Peter Carrington
The Marriage of Peter Carrington — Svetozar Ćorović. Peter Carrington’s friends send him on a search for a wife, leading him into one comic entanglement after another. Ćorović brings vanity, friendship and small-town life into the marriage quest.
Svetozar ĆorovićNoveleBook · AudiobookThe Miser or Kir Janja
Jovan Sterija Popović’s Tvrdica ili Kir Janja (The Miser or Kir Janja) turns a merchant’s household into a counting house. Bread, a hat, a servant’s wages and a daughter’s marriage all pass through Janja’s private arithmetic. His thrift repeatedly destroys what it should preserve. Yet his attachment to money also makes him vulnerable: a promising return can overcome the caution that governs every ordinary expense.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Patriots
The Patriots — Jovan Sterija Popović. A cockade can be taken off in a moment. In The Patriots, that small action becomes a political system. The same men discover first that freedom requires Hungarian colours, then that Serbian colours are indispensable, then that both may be worn at once. Their explanations grow more elaborate as their principles grow cheaper.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Quarrelsome Husband
The Quarrelsome Husband — Jovan Sterija Popović. Maksim can find fault with a clean room because too much cleaning wears out the floor. An untidy room would condemn his wife just as surely. The trouble in The Quarrelsome Husband is therefore more stubborn than a disagreement about housework: any answer can be made wrong by a man determined to complain.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe World
The World — Branislav Đ. Nušić. The clock strikes three, a daughter brings her father back from sleep, and the newspaper offers the comforting question of what Russia thinks. In Toma Melentijević’s house, even the old furniture has its place in the family. His friend Sima has a programme for retirement that would turn every passing incident into entertainment. Toma prefers the garden, the poultry and a quiet cup of coffee.
Branislav Đ. NušićDramaeBook