ADRASTE’ (2 syl.), a French gentleman, who inveigles a Greek slave named Isidore from don Pedre.  His plan is this:  He gets introduced as a portrait-painter, and thus imparts to Isidore his love, and obtains her consent to elope with him.  He then sends his slave Zaide (2 syl.) to don Pedre, to crave protection for ill treatment, and Pedre promises to befriend her.  At this moment Adraste appears, and demands that Zaide be given up to him to punish as he thinks proper.  Pedre intercedes; Adraste seems to relent; and Pedre calls for Zaide.  Out comes Isidore instead, with Zaide’s veil.  “There,” says Pedre, “take her and use her well.”  “I will do so,” says the Frenchman, and leads off the Greek slave.—­Moliere, Le Sicilien, ou L’Amour Peintre (1667).

ADRIAN’A, a wealthy Ephesian lady, who marries Antiph’olus, twin-brother of Antipholus of Syracuse.  The abbess Aemilia is her mother-in-law, but she knows it not; and one day when she accuses her husband of infidelity, she says to the abbess, if he is unfaithful it is not from want of remonstrance, “for it is the one subject of our conversation.  In bed I will not let him sleep for speaking of it; at table I will not let him eat for speaking of it; when alone with him I talk of nothing else, and in company I give him frequent hints of it.  In a word, all my talk is how vile and bad it is in him to love another better than he loves his wife” (act v. sc. 1).—­Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors (1593).

ADRIA’NO DE ARMA’DO (Don), a pompous, fantastical Spaniard, a military braggart in a state of peace, as Parolles (3 syl.) was in war.  Boastful but poor; a coiner of words, but very ignorant; solemnly grave, but ridiculously awkward; majestical in gait, but of very low propensities.—­Shakespeare, Love’s Labour Lost (1594).

(Said to be designed for John Florio, surnamed “The Resolute,” a philologist.  Holofernes, the pedantic schoolmaster, in the same play, is also meant in ridicule of the same lexicographer.)

  You may remember, scarce five years are past
  Since in your brigantine you sailed to see
  The Adriatic wedded to our duke.

T. Otway, Venice Preserved, i. 1 (1682).

AD’RIEL, in Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, the earl of Mulgrave, a royalist.

  Sharp-judging Adriel, the Muses’ friend;
  Himself a muse.  In sanhedrim’s debate
  True to his prince, but not a slave to state;
  Whom David’s love with honours did adorn,
  That from his disobedient son were torn.

Part i.

(John Sheffield, earl of Mulgrave (1649-1721) wrote an Essay on
Poetry.)

ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR, French actress, said to have been poisoned by flowers sent to her by a rival.  Died in 1730.

AE’ACUS, king of Oeno’pia, a man of such integrity and piety, that he was made at death one of the three judges of hell.  The other two were Minos and Rhadaman’thus.