Diderot's intention in writing the dialogue is disputed ; whether it is merely a satire on contemporary manners, or a reduction of the theory of self-interest to an absurdity, or the application of irony to the ethics of ordinary convention, or a mere setting for a discussion about music, or a vigorous dramatic sketch of a parasite and a human original.

In North America, contemporary sketch comedy is largely an outgrowth of the improvisational comedy scene that flourished during the 1970s, largely growing out of Chicago's The Second City.

Notable contemporary American stage sketch comedy groups include The Second City, the Upright Citizens Brigade and The Groundlings.

Engraving from contemporary sketch depicting the British ascent to the Plains of Abraham in 1759

In painting and drawing, Conrad figures in a small contemporary manuscript sketch of his ship sailing to Tyre in the Annals of Genoa, and various illustrations to Scott's The Talisman.

Te Rauparaha, contemporary sketch

( This contemporary soldier's sketch shows the disposition of some of Morris's troops just northwest of Philippi on the threshold of the battle.

Interior of the first Semperoper | Dresden Opera House, where Rienzi was premiered in 1842 ( contemporary sketch by J. C. A. Richter )

A smaller scale version of Leonardo da Vinci's Golden Horn Bridge was brought to life in 2001 near Oslo, Norway by the contemporary artist Vebjørn Sand, the first civil engineering project based on a Leonardo da Vinci sketch to be constructed.

In the popular Canadian sketch comedy show, Second City Television ( which ran from 1976 to 1984 ), the news segment skit " SCTV News " regularly included news bulletins about natural catastrophes in " Togoland ," though no contemporary country had that name.

* Performances by the school's improvisation troupe, Spontaneous Generation, and sketch comedy troupe, Nitrous Oxide, and of contemporary musical theater, Cabaret Troupe, in concert style.

A contemporary sketch of the original Town Hall, built 1839.

Due to their involvement in both Canned Carrott and the contemporary The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis also got their own sketch show, called The Imaginatively Titled Punt & Dennis Show, which ran for two series.

Schiltberger's Reisebuch contains not only a record of his own experiences and a sketch of various chapters of contemporary Eastern history, but also an account of countries and their manners and customs, especially of those countries which he had himself visited.

The name is contemporary: the cabinet-making firm of Gillow included one, with a sketch, in their in-house Cost Books, 1797.

* A controversial sketch that parodied contemporary airline adverts by explicitly stating the air-hostesses were sexually available.

Famous in his own time for his perceived ugliness, Abraham Lincoln was described by a contemporary: " to say that he is ugly is nothing ; to add that his figure is grotesque, is to convey no adequate impression.

Despite the historical significance of Lincoln's speech, modern scholars disagree as to its exact wording, and contemporary transcriptions published in newspaper accounts of the event and even handwritten copies by Lincoln himself differ in their wording, punctuation, and structure.

Near contemporary illustration of the battle of Lincoln ( 1141 ) | battle of Lincoln ; Stephen ( fourth from the right ) is listening to Baldwin of Clare orating a battle speech ( left ).

During the administration of George W. Bush, first lady Laura Bush refurbished the Lincoln Bedroom in a style contemporary to the Lincoln era ; the Green Room, Cabinet Room, and theater were also refurbished.

Through the early 1980s, the Lincoln was a movie theater showing first-run films and now hosts live theatrical performances and concerts while also showcasing classic, as well as contemporary, movies year-round.

Hugh of Lincoln, a contemporary and later canonized, is said to have asked forgiveness of God for not having rebuked Walter as often as he probably should have.

Guba and Lincoln ( 2005 ) identify five main paradigms of contemporary qualitative research: positivism, postpositivism, critical theories, constructivism, and participatory / cooperative paradigms.

Fields, Ed Bearss, and Stephen B. Oates ; and actors reading contemporary quotes from historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Mary Chesnut, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Walt Whitman, Stonewall Jackson, and Frederick Douglass.

A chrome edge running from front to rear highlighted the top of the bodywork in very similar fashion to that on the contemporary Lincoln Continental.

Woodworth was a contemporary, and friend, of Abraham Lincoln.

Generally, he stood for an extreme Left Nationalism ( land reform, extension of the franchise for illiterates and NCOs ) and for tight controls over foreign investment, something that earned him the hatred of the American ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, who went so far as to compare Brizola's propaganda techniques with those of Joseph Goebbels-a mood partaken by most of contemporary American midia In late 1963, after a conservative plan of economic adjustment ( Plano Trienal ) devised by the Ministry of Planning Celso Furtado had failed, Brizola involved himself in a bid for power by means of an attempt to topple Goulart's economically conservative Minister of Finance Carvalho Pinto in order to take the post himself, an attempt that failed — the post was given to a nonentity — but made much to radicalize Brazilian political life at the time.

The contemporary Lincoln Town Car derives its name from this historical body style despite the fact that it does not carry a town car body by the historical definition.

Although most famous abroad for his touring productions of European classics, Ninagawa has also directed works based on contemporary writing from Japan, including the Modern Noh plays of Yukio Mishima ( which toured to New York's Lincoln Center in early summer 2005 ) and several other plays by Japanese dramatists, including Shūji Terayama and Kunio Shimizu.

Lincoln Brewster ( born July 30, 1971, in Fairbanks, Alaska ) is a contemporary Christian musician and pastor.

In August 2006, he directed a staged performance of Mozart's unfinished opera Zaide as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York ; the pre-concert discussions were about contemporary slavery and the prospect of abolishing it, as well as Mozart's egalitarianism and opposition to slavery.

Over the next four hundred years the Castle was successively developed according to contemporary architectural ideas.

Ian Mortimer, focusing more on contemporary documents from 1327 itself, argues that Roger de Mortimer engineered a fake " escape " for Edward from Berkeley Castle ; after this Edward was kept in Ireland, believing he was really evading Mortimer, before finally finding himself free, but politically unwelcome, after the fall of Isabella and Mortimer.

Although spelling of the family name has sometimes been modernized to " Woodville ", it was spelled " Wydeville " in contemporary publications by Caxton and as " Widvile " on Queen Elizabeth's tomb at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

Low budget films such as the comedy / drama Muriel's Wedding, starring Toni Collette, the gently satirical suburban comedy The Castle directed by Rob Sitch ( which cast Eric Bana in his first prominent film role ), and Baz Luhrmann's flamboyant Strictly Ballroom each attained commercial and critical success, and explored quirky characters inhabiting contemporary Australian suburbia-marking something of a departure from the Outback and historical sagas which obtained success in the 1970s and 1980s.

Detail of a contemporary drawing of Edinburgh Castle under siege in 1573, showing the batteries constructed around it

Stuyvesant began to build Fort Casimir ( contemporary New Castle ).

His son, William Burlington maintains an apartment in the castle and recently converted the derelict west range ( 2006 ) into a contemporary art gallery, known as Lismore Castle Arts.

firstsite is a contemporary art organisation, currently housed in the Minories, near the Castle.

The roughly 50 years old Matthias ( contemporary sculpture from Buda Castle )

The Hunyadis were first recorded in a royal charter of 1409 in which Sigismund of Luxembourg, then King of Hungary, granted Vojk the Hunyad Castle ( in contemporary, in present-day ) and its estates for his distinction in the wars against the Ottomans.

Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present also made the case for Merrie England ; the conclusion of Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock contrasts the mediaevalism of Mr. Chainmail to the contemporary social unrest.

The documentation of the village in 1027 is contemporary with Count Radbot's construction of Habsburg Castle.

There was a wooden fortress overlooking the harbour, of this nothing remains except contemporary records and the area designated Castle Hill off Portland Street / Montepellier Terrace.

The contemporary antiquary John Leland described the Malvern Hills and Hanley Castle.

In contemporary documents from the early Revolutionary period, the area is generally referred to as " The Three Lower Counties on the Delaware River " ( Lower Counties on Delaware ) or by the names of the three counties, all of which retained linguistic and cultural connections to those of Maryland ; New Castle, which related well to North East England's Newcastle as the defunct Durham County, Maryland ( both Newcastle and Durham were relatively close to the Calvert regional identity as that of Northern England -- and as landlords in County Longford, of the Irish Midlands, their barony shared some characteristics with the earlier English Catholic plantation by Mary I of England and Philip II of Spain in Queen's and King's counties ), while Kent was contiguous with neighboring Kent County, Maryland and Sussex generally held a similar origin to Sussex County, Virginia, being the furthest removed from Penn's colony.

Castle Fraser is contemporary with other nearby castles: Craigievar Castle, Crathes Castle and Midmar Castle which are also believed to have been designed by the Bell family of master masons.

Some of the carved badges and shields on the external walls of these state apartments still remain intact, as in the hall ; these were a popular contemporary feature of 15th-century great castles, and would have created a similar effect to those at Warkworth and Raby Castle.

There is an extensive permanent exhibition of Olbram Zoubek's ( a famous Czech contemporary sculptor and designer ) sculptures and art in Litomyšl Castle Vault Gallery.

The two later worked as partners on parterre gardens at Hampton Court, Chelsea Hospital, Longleat, Chatsworth, Melbourne Hall, Wimpole Hall and Castle Howard, drawing inspiration from engravings of contemporary garden designs in France and the Netherlands.

In other plays, Mee explores twentieth-century American history and culture through the points-of-view of contemporary visual artists in: bobrauschenbergamerica ( Robert Rauschenberg ), Hotel Cassiopeia ( Joseph Cornell ), soot and spit ( the musical ) ( James Castle ), and Under Construction ( Jason Rhoades and Norman Rockwell ).

The tower is built over the thick-walled artillery positions in the basement, which defend the south and east approaches, and have similarities with the contemporary " blockhouse " at Dunbar Castle, further along the coast.