Bob Acres
' valor oozed,
So Juan's virtue ebbed, I know not how.
Byron, Don Juan.
Joseph Jefferson's impersonation of Bob Acres is inimitable for fidelity to the spirit of the original, and informed throughout with exquisite humor that never degenerates into coarseness.
Acris'ius, father of Dan'aê. An oracle declared that Danaê would give birth to a son who would kill him, so Acrisius kept his daughter shut up in an apartment under ground, or (as some say) in a brazen tower. Here she became the mother of Per'seus (2 syl.), by Jupiter in the form of a shower of gold. The king of Argos now ordered his daughter and her infant to be put into a chest, and cast adrift on the sea, but they were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman. When grown to manhood, Perseus accidentally struck the foot of Acrisius with a quoit, and the blow caused his death. This tale is told by Mr. Morris in The Earthly Paradise (April).
Actae'on, a hunter, changed by Diana into a stag. A synonym for a cuckold.
Divulge Page himself for a secure and wilful
Actæon [cuckold].
Shakespeare, Merry Wives, etc., act iii. sc. 2 (1596).