The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces

by John Kendrick Bangs

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

102 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

John Kendrick Bangs was an American author and satirist, and the creator of modern Bangsian fantasy, the school of fantasy writing that sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife.

Reviews

[Tom Godfrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book as a curio for a dollar at the local library, mostly because it was printed in 1894. The author, John Kendrick Bangs, was a celebrated humorist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but I'd never heard of him before. The farces are four short plays(one of them not so short)that are comedies of manners. The best is The Bicyclers. At the time, what were called "safety bikes" were a very new thing, and weren't all that safe. It was considered rather daring to ride one. On the other hand, women had discovered this new mode of transportation they could use any time they chose, requiring no horses, no drivers, no cabs, no men. Freedom! In the play, one of the husbands is going to attempt his first ride in the company of two single friends. This goes disastrously. Meanwhile the wife of another character has been arrested! Why? Because she had been cycling without a lamp, an offense worthy of being jailed. In all of this, what surprised me was that there were lines that actually made me laugh. It might well be worth a revival in a theatre.

[Hal Brodsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoever told us the Sit-com started with television lied. These four short plays by sometime Fantasy Author Bangs rely on misunderstandings, miscommunication, and funny asides to the audience for their humor.
I was drawn to them because of the first piece, "The Bicyclers", a short farce about upper class New Yorkers dealing with the explosion in popularity of bicycles at the Turn of the 20th Century. They take riding lesson, crash their bikes regularly, and debate bike vs horse as a mode of transportation. This is a pubic domain book and free for Kindle.