COMIC RELIEF

Comic relief: translation

   The melodramas that dominated the 19th-century American stage until the 1890s used comedic elements to heighten by contrast the emotional intensity of the main action. A comic character, often a dialect role, could give the audience a chance to catch its breath before the suspense would start to build again. Sometimes the eccentric comedian's role—Snorkey in Augustin Daly's Under the Gaslight, for example—was more prominently featured than that of the leading man.

   See also comedy.

1) театр. комическая сцена в трагедии; «разрядка смехом»

2) смешной эпизод в грустной или трагической ситуации; комический контраст