plaudite

(28) Concluding the Prologue to his Jewell house of art and nature (1594), Plat casts the household experiments that follow as actors in the drama of the book: "But now it is high time for the prologue to giue place because the Actors are at hand, who are readie to present such choice and varietie of matter, as that notwithstanding they may happily faile in gesture or action, yet I doubt not but that they wil either procure a friendly & thankefull plaudite, which is the most that I can desire, or a most free & liberal pardon, which is the least that I can deserue." Ayesha Mukherjee argues that this image of the theater works, like much of Plat's rhetoric, to draw in his readers, setting off the pages that follow as potential sites of active engagement.

Echoing the plays of Plautus and Terence, that typically end with actors calling for a round of applause ('Plaudite'), (56) The First Part has all the characters onstage agreeing that the play's bitter conclusion reflects contempt for learning in the wider world, and asking all the discontented scholars watching to 'giue vs a Plaudite' (5.3.1571).

El danzar que entonces y en aquellos tiempos la santa Madre y sus hijas usaban, era no arregladamente, ni con viguela, sino daban unas palmadas -como dice el rey David: omnes gentes plaudite manibus--, y discurrian asi con mas armonia y gracia de espiritu que de otra cosa (43).

These include footnotes telling when to applaud (plaudite) and laugh (ridete) and cheer (conclamate).

In the same year Biber's mass and motet Plaudite tympana were recorded by the Italian ensembles La Stagione Armonica and Tibicines with Sergio Balestracci conducting.

1610-1), including perhaps (though not certainly) a long speech put in the mouth of Time, foretelling the fate of a 'Princocke' who: shall Player-like, be stript out of those silken Trappings: he plaid a brave roans part on the Theatre of this world, but he has his Exit, and I [Time] am in the Tyring-house and will dis-robe him; he shall know, Mundus Universus exercet Histrionem; Earth is but a stage, the life an Enterlude, the people Actors; onely I am left to empty the Stage with my Epilogue, but none of these for my paines will give mee a Plaudite (17)

Beethoven's last words that are rarely recalled were, nevertheless, no less meaningful and beautiful than Chekhov's last remark that every Chekhov scholar knows by heart--"It's been such a long time since I've had champagne." Shortly before his death, Beethoven (who died in Vienna in 1826), according to the eyewitnesses, ordered wine and uttered in Latin, "Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est." "When the four bottles of wine arrived, Beethoven murmured his last words: 'Pity, pity, too late"' (Hayden 83).

Hovering in the background of such speeches as these perhaps is the popular account of Augustus Caesar's death according to which the emperor's last words were "Acta est fabula, plaudite," the word "fabula" conveying the sense both of a stage play and of a story.