Language: en
Meaning: (obsolete,idiomatic,acting)Tooveract; to violentlyrantandraveon stage.c.1595–1596,William Shakespeare,A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 1, scene 2:Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play / Ercles rarely, or a part totear a catin, to make all split.c.1599,John Marston,Histriomastix[1], act 5, scene 1, page[53]:Sirha is this you would rend andteare the Cat/ Upon a Stage, and now march like drown'd rat?1835, George Daniel, “The Conversazione”, inThe Modern Dunciad, William Pickering, page224:Till, in his periwig combustion / Will. Shakespeare sounds like Irish fustian, / In which Macreadytears a cat, / And Shiel, the patriot, writes so pat;1970, Alfred Rossi,Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs Hamlet, University of California Press,→ISBN, page21:From this performance there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Hamlet is an amateur actor having a fling at histrionics, or as Guthrie might say, "tearing a cat."
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