Charades - WikiHQ

thumb|right|Man acting out a word in the game of charades

Charades (, ) is a parlor or party word guessing game. Originally, the game was a dramatic form of literary charades: a single person would act out each syllable of a word or phrase in order, followed by the whole phrase together, while the rest of the group guessed. A variant was to have teams who acted scenes out together while the others guessed. Today, it is common to require the actors to mime their hints without using any spoken words, which requires some conventional gestures. Puns and visual puns were and remain common.

History

Literary charades

thumb|upright|The Triumph of [[Clytemnestra]]

thumb|upright|[[Becky Sharp (character)|Becky as a Louis-Quatorze Philomela]]

A charade was a form of literary riddle popularized in France in the 18th century where each syllable of the answer was described enigmatically as a separate word before the word as a whole was similarly described. The term charade was borrowed into English from French in the second half of the eighteenth century, denoting a "kind of riddle in which each syllable of a word, or a complete word or phrase, is enigmatically described or dramatically represented".

Written forms of charade appeared in magazines and books, and on the folding fans of the Regency. The answers were sometimes printed on the reverse of the fan, suggesting that they were a flirting device, used by a young woman to tease her beau. One charade composed by Jane Austen goes as follows:

When my first is a task to a young girl of spirit,

And my second confines her to finish the piece,

How hard is her fate! but how great is her merit

If by taking my whole she effects her release!

</poem>

The answer is "hem-lock".

William Mackworth Praed's poetic charades became famous.

Later examples omitted direct references to individual syllables, such as the following, said to be a favorite of Theodore Roosevelt:

I talk, but I do not speak my mind

I hear words, but I do not listen to thoughts

When I wake, all see me

When I sleep, all hear me

Many heads are on my shoulders

Many hands are at my feet

The strongest steel cannot break my visage

But the softest whisper can destroy me

The quietest whimper can be heard.

</poem>

The answer is "an actor".

In the early 20th century, the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica offered these two prose charades as "perhaps as good as could be selected":

and

with the answers being tartar and conundrum.

Acted charades

In the early 19th century, the French began performing "acting" or "acted charades"—with the written description replaced by dramatic performances as a parlor game—and this was brought over to Britain by the English aristocracy. Thus the term gradually became more popularly used to refer to acted charades, examples of which are described in William Thackeray's Vanity Fair and in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Thackeray snarked that charades were enjoyed for "enabling the many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and the fewer number who had cleverness, to exhibit their wit". acted out by Becky in the role of a singing French marquise, recalling both Lacoste's 1705 tragic opera Philomèle and an arriviste lover and wife of Louis XIV. Apart from its importance in the book, the scenes were subsequently considered models of the genre.

By the time of the First World War, "acting charades" had become the most popular form and, as written charades were forgotten, it adopted its present, terser name.