Captain Parolles is a deceitful character who brags about his triumphs in war but actually turns out to be a coward.

This character, exemplified through Il Capitano in Commedia dell’arte, The Captain, whose title likely doesn’t belong to him, was unsympathetic and annoying. The alazon plays the role of an imposter, someone who has an inflated sense of worth and is often boastful to an extreme degree.It worketh in my head like new wine, so as I must hoop my sconce with iron lest my head break, and so I bewray my brains; but I pray thee, first discover me in all parts, that I may be like a lover, and then will I sigh and die. His usual function is to impede the love of the hero and heroine, and his power to do so stems from his greater social position and his increased control of cash.

In one particularly humorous moment in Act III, Tophas declares his love for Dipsas, a hideous sorcerous. He falls from whatever remaining good reputation he has by the end of the play and is forced to beg for help. Like Pyrgopolinices in the Miles Gloriosus, Thraso is attended by a flatterer or parasite who follows him round and attends to his wishes. All terms defined are created by a team of talented literary experts, to provide an in-depth look into literary terms and poetry, like no other. In the play Miles Gloriosus ("Boastful Soldier") by Plautus, the term applies to the main character Pyrgopolynices.The most popular types of alazon are the miles gloriosus and the learned crank or obsessed philosopher. Other examples are "fashion's own knight", the Spaniard Armardo, in Love's Labour's Lost, the worthless Captain Parolles in All's Well That Ends Well, and Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. In the PC game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, there is a non-playable character named Miles Gloriosus, willing to brag about his accomplishments as soldier. Heavily borrowing from Plautus, the Stephen Sondheim- Burt Shevelove- Larry Gelbart musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum features a warrior named Miles Gloriosus. Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets.