Meaning of tear a cat | Babel Free

Definitions

To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage.

idiomatic, obsolete

Examples

“Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play⟳ / Ercles rarely, or a part to tear⟳ a cat in, to make⟳ all split⟳.”

“Sirha is this you would rend and teare the Cat / Upon a Stage⟳, and now march⟳ like⟳ drown'd rat?”

“Till, in his periwig combustion / Will. Shakespeare sounds like⟳ Irish fustian, / In which Macready tears a cat, / And Shiel, the patriot, writes so pat;”

“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."”

CEFR level