Reg´ulus, a Roman general, who conquered the Carthaginians (B.C. 256), and compelled them to sue for peace. While negotiation was going on, the Carthaginians, joined by Xanthippos, the Lacedemonian, attacked the Romans at Tunis, and beat them, taking Regulus prisoner. The captive was sent to Rome to make terms of peace and demand exchange of prisoners, but he used all his influence with the senate to dissuade them from coming to terms with their foe. On his return to captivity, the Cathaginians cut off his eyelids and exposed him to the burning sun, then placed him in a barrel armed with nails, which was rolled up and down a hill till the man was dead.
*** This subject has furnished Pradon and Dorat with tragedies (French), and Metastasio, the Italian poet, with an opera called Regolo (1740).
“Regulus” was a favorite part of the French actor, François J. Talma.
Rehearsal (The), a farce by George Villiers, duke of Buckingham (1671). It was designed for a satire on the rhyming plays of the time. The chief character, Bayes (1 syl.), is meant for Dryden.
The name of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, demands cordial mention by every writer on the stage. He lived in an age when plays were chiefly written in rhyme, which served as a vehicle for foaming sentiment clouded by hyperbolê.... The dramas of Lee and Settle ... are made up of blatant couplets that emptily thundered through five long acts. To explode an unnatural custom by ridiculing it, was Buckingham’s design in The Rehearsal, but in doing this the gratification of private dislike was a greater stimulus than the wish to promote the public good.—W. C. Russell, Representative Actors.
Reichel (Colonel), in Charles XII., by J. R. Planché (1826).
Rejected Addresses, parodies on Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, Scott, Coleridge, Crabbe, Byron, Theodore Hook, etc., by James and Horace Smith; the copyright after the sixteenth edition was purchased by John Murray, in 1819, for £131. The directors of Drury Lane Theatre had offered a premium for the best poetical address to be spoken at the opening of the new building, and the brothers Smith conceived the idea of publishing a number of poems supposed to have been written for the occasion and rejected by the directors (1812).
“I do not see why they should have been rejected,” said a Leicestershire clergyman, “for I think some of them are very good.”—James Smith.
Reksh, Sir Rustam’s horse.
Relapse, (The), a comedy by Vanbrugh (1697). Reduced to three acts, and adapted to more modern times by Sheridan, under the title of A Trip to Scarborough (1777).