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More "Comedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment Skinski bounded on the stage, bowed right and left, and in five words he made it appear that I was only a comedy curtain raiser. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... bravos a momentary note of comedy intruded upon the intended tragedy, as is often the way when humanity foregathers on sinister business. Cocardasse plucked Passepoil by the sleeve and drew him a little away from their fellow-ruffians. "We cannot fight against the Little Parisian," he whispered ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Englishes was nearly filled with guests when Paul Clitheroe arrived upon the scene. These guests were not sitting against the wall talking at each other; the room looked as if it were set for a scene in a modern society comedy. In the bay window, a bower of verdure, an extremely slender and diminutive lady was discoursing eloquently with the superabundant gesticulation of the successful society amateur; she was dilating upon the latest production of a minor poet whose bubble reputation was at that moment resplendent ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in some sort like a 'prentice boy who, going to the play in the expectation of being delighted with a cut-and-thrust tragedy, is almost moved to tears of disappointment at the exhibition of a genteel comedy. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... us, I believe, were ever able to persuade Mr. Gladstone to do justice to Disraeli's novels,—the spirit of whim in them, the ironic solemnity, the historical paradoxes, the fantastic glitter of dubious gems, the grace of high comedy, all in union with a social vision that often pierced deep below the surface. In the comparative stiffness of Mr. Gladstone's reply on this occasion, I seem to hear the same ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Sensibility On devouring one's own God Anarchism New paths Longing for change Baroja, you will never amount to anything (A Refrain) The patriotism of desire My home lands Cruelty and stupidity The anterior image The tragi-comedy of sex The veils of the sexual life A little talk The ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... able theologian, philosophical in thought, but deeply spiritual in insight. His work on The Science of Thought shows the depth and vigor of his thinking; but his volumes on The Gospel of Paul, Religions before Christianity, Poetry, Comedy, and Duty, suggest the breadth of his inquiries and the richness of his philosophical investigations. In his position as the dean of the Harvard Divinity School he accomplished his best work, and ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... now reached the last infernal circle of the divine comedy of marriage; we are at the depths of the inferno. There is something, I do not know what, terrible in the situation in which a married woman finds herself when an illegitimate love has ruined her for the duties of a wife and mother. As has been so well and strongly expressed ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... more careful this time. During the revising process "The Woman-Haters" has more than doubled in length and, let us hope, in accuracy. Even now it is, of course, not a novel, but merely a summer farce-comedy, a "yarn." And this, by the way, is all ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and we will continue our conversation later—the denouement of this comedy has already taken place, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... impudence in me to say much of a comedy, which has had but indifferent success in the action. I made the town my judges, and the greater part condemned it: after which, I do not think it my concernment to defend it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... manner of Lilly. 'Henry VI.,' certainly collaborative, is a chronicle history of the earlier kind. Greene and Peele were the chief makers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almost masterly 'Edward II.' 'Titus Andronicus' ... is a tragedy of blood much in the manner of Kyd. 'The Comedy of Errors' adapts for popular presentation a familiar kind ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... The Tragi-Comedy of Court Intrigue, which had ever found its principal theatre in Spain since the accession of the House of Austria to the throne, was represented with singular complication of incident and brilliancy of performance during the ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... point. I am going to fulfill your wishes in perhaps a little different way from what you desire. To lie, to act a degrading comedy, to bribe women of the streets for evidence—the ugliness of it all disgusts me. I am a bad man, but this despicable thing I am utterly unable to do. My solution is after all the simplest. You must marry to be happy. I am the obstacle, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... This little comedy, enacted in fact and here faithfully reported, is not without its pathos. These people are "studying art." They really want to understand, and if possible, to enjoy. They have visited galleries and seen many pictures, and they will visit ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... types still to be represented; and when Irish melodrama, with its secret plots, murders, wicked land-agents, jovial muscular-christian priests, comic male peasants, and pretty and virtuous female ditto, shall have taken a rest for a while, Irish Comedy may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... that she had regained her normal spirits. Her capabilities as an actress, which had won for her leading parts in many amateur plays, had never been taxed so hardly. But then she had invariably been cast for comedy. Now she felt she was playing tragedy. For night and day she never forgot. Always there was one thought ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... alter his voice almost as he pleased. It was a custom of his to act a scene as between other people, and he performed it remarkably well. Whenever he said that anything he was going to narrate was 'as good as a comedy,' it was generally understood by those who were acquainted with him that he was to be asked so to do. Cecilia Ossulton therefore immediately said, ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... cuscus answers to the racoons of America. The pouched badgers explain themselves at once by their very name, like the Plyants, the Pinchwifes, the Brainsicks, and the Carelesses of the Restoration comedy. The 'native rabbit' of Swan River is a rabbit-like bandicoot; the pouched ant-eater similarly takes the place of the true ant-eaters of other continents. By way of carnivores, the Tasmanian devil is a fierce and savage marsupial ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... sideways out of his almond-shaped eyes. Domini heard the name "Irena," and guessed that Batouch was asking the Kabyle to send for her and make her dance. She could not help being amused for a moment by the comedy of intrigue, complacently malignant on both sides, that was being played by the two cousins, but the moment passed and left her engrossed, absorbed, and not merely by the novelty of the surroundings, by the strangeness of the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... notice also, in his illustrations on the First Epistle of the Second Book, that as the poetry of the Romans and that of the Grecians had the same beginning at feasts and thanksgiving (as it has been observed), and the old comedy of the Greeks (which was invective) and the satire of the Romans (which was of the same nature) were begun on the very same occasion, so the fortune of both in process of time was just the same—the old comedy of the Grecians was forbidden for its too much licence in exposing ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... appears on the stage as a sectary, and plays his part with resolute energy. This part again is that of a man not pursuing truth, but so occupied with maintaining his own conception of truth that he has no time to test it. It is a comedy of great humor, because Sylvanus, as a sectary, stands against all comers to protect a spring of deep and clear water, and is so engrossed in guarding the sacred wave from the least pollution that he does not find time to remark that it ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... gives a birthday fete in his garden: to whom, I wonder? I will name no one. To Phormio, perhaps, or Gnatho, or Ballion? Oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not to be borne!" These were the vile knaves of the Roman comedy—the Nyms. Pistols, and Bobadils. "Your Consulship no doubt will be salutary; but mine did only evil! You talk of my verses," he says—Antony having twitted him with the "cedant arma togae." "I will only say that you do not understand them or any ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and he would grope his way home through the traffic at high noon in profound, pathetic belief that darkness and slumber wrapped the streets; on which occasions the dialogue between him and the barber's parrot might be counted on to touch high comedy. I knew this, and knew also that in the next stage he would recover his eyesight, and at the same time turn dangerously quarrelsome. If Mr. Goodfellow and I could start him home quietly, he would have reason ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... you can enjoy The Magic Flute as a more than usually absurd musical comedy with easy, old-fashioned tunes. You can enjoy it anyway, if you are not solemn about it, as you can enjoy Hamlet for a bloody melodrama. But, like Hamlet, it has depths and depths of meaning beyond ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... instance, who and what were the Garths, mother and daughter? He looked in on a well-known dramatic agent, and raised the point. Reference to a ledger showed that Eileen Garth, age eighteen, tall, good-looking, no previous experience, had been a candidate for musical comedy, London engagement alone accepted; the almost certain sequel being that she had kept her name six months on the books without an offer to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Wedgwood was tragically in love—the word was used advisedly. One can play comedy; two are required for melodrama; but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... reader has divined, Rosa was preparing the comedy of a cool reception; but looking up, she saw his pale cheek tinted with a lover's beautiful joy at the bare sight of her, and his soft eye so divine with love, that she had not the heart to chill him. She gave him her hand kindly, and smiled brightly on him instead of remonstrating. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of life this same poetry, which thinks that love, the promoter of debauchery and vanity, should have a place in the council of the Gods! I am speaking of comedy, which could not subsist at all without our approving of these debaucheries. But what said that chief of the ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the Insubrian Gauls, and was probably taken as a prisoner to Rome (c. 200), during the great Gallic war. Originally a slave, he assumed the name of Caecilius from his patron, probably one of the Metelli. He supported himself by adapting Greek plays for the Roman stage from the new comedy writers, especially Menander. If the statement in the life of Terence by Suetonius is correct and the reading sound, Caecilius's judgment was so esteemed that he was ordered to hear Terence's Andria (exhibited 166 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... delicious," laughed Mrs Clyde—a cold sneering laugh, which made me shiver as if cold water were running down my back—"quite a comedy, I do declare, Mr Lorton. I did not think you were so good an actor. Love! Ha, ha, ha!" and she gave forth a merry peal—to my intense enjoyment, you may ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in her writing, her dress, her face,—kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red letters, October 2, 1860, largely and clearly written. I am sure the woman's hand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but there is no sign of it here; for it was a new, desperate adventure to her, and she ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... this growing estrangement came about by accident,—one of those chance occurrences that affect our lives more than years of ordered effort,—and it came in an inverted form of a situation old to comedy. Cressida had been on the road for several weeks; singing in Minneapolis, Cleveland, St. Paul, then up into Canada and back to Boston. From Boston she was to go directly to Chicago, coming down on the five o'clock train ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... best!" cried Alice, gaily dancing about the studio, after she had finished in a little comedy scene, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... answer. In the face of his perplexity he could not repress a grim chuckle as he rolled up his blankets. What a report he would have for the Department—if he lived to make it! On paper there would be a good deal of comedy about it—this burrowing oneself up like a hibernating woodchuck, and then being invited out to breakfast by a man with a club and a pack of brutes with fangs that had gleamed at him like ivory stilettos. He had guessed at the club, and a moment later as he thrust ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... had been made in the hope of attracting other Protestant gentry to the Jacobite cause—offered to submit to General Carpenter under certain conditions. Carpenter's reply was a demand for unconditional surrender, and the hopeless little tragi-comedy was played out. The last scene took place on Tower Hill three months later, when the gallant young Earl, then only twenty-six years old, laid down the life which, after all, had been spent in the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loves Labors Lost, his Love Labours Wonne, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Greek poetry and Scotch is very marked in this point. There is not one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... another proof of the success of the steps he has taken, and for which he hopes we shall give him credit—as to serve us, he adds, he betrays his friend in the most shameful manner, and acts a part in an odious comedy. M. de Bressac trusts that, in return for these good offices, we will deliver up to him those papers, which place him in our absolute dependence, as they might ruin for ever a woman he loves with an adulterous passion. He says that we ought to have pity ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Andromaque, his first chef-d'oeuvre, which placed him at once in the very front rank by the side of Corneille. From that time forth, until 1677, almost each year was marked by a new triumph. In 1668, he produced his one comedy, Les Plaideurs, a highly successful satire on the Law Courts, in the vein of the "Wasps" of Aristophanes. In 1669, he resumed his tragedies on historical subjects with Britannicus, largely drawn from Tacitus, followed by Brnice (1670), Bajazet (1672), ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... like those children, and in all this, his life had been much more miserable and poorer than theirs, and their goals were not his, nor their worries; after all, that entire world of the Kamaswami-people had only been a game to him, a dance he would watch, a comedy. Only Kamala had been dear, had been valuable to him—but was she still thus? Did he still need her, or she him? Did they not play a game without an ending? Was it necessary to live for this? No, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... eyes drooping before the gaze of my terrible and applauding audiences, how I mentally formed cursing words against the day when my misfortunes led me to apply at the Theatre Folie-Rouge for work! I had expected an audition and a role of comedy in the Revue; for, perhaps lacking any experience of the stage, I am a Neapolitan by birth, though a resident of the Continent at large since the age of fifteen. All Neapolitans can act; all are actors; comedians of the greatest, as every traveller is cognizant. ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... actor. In after years two distinguished members of the profession in France, M. Bocage and Mdme. Dorval, expressed similar opinions. For their father's name-day in 1824, Frederick and his sister Emilia wrote conjointly a one-act comedy in verse, entitled THE MISTAKE; OR, THE PRETENDED ROGUE, which was acted by a juvenile company. According to Karasowski, the play showed that the authors had a not inconsiderable command of language, but in other respects could not be called a very brilliant achievement. Seeing that fine comedies ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... enfranchisement of the black loyalists, as the only way to prevent Congress from being replenished with plotting and disloyal men. Fair play to them is thus fair play to all of us; and, like Tony Lumpkin, in Goldsmith's comedy, if we are indifferent as to disappointing those who depend upon us, we may at least be trusted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... now nearly at his wits' end how to continue the comedy, and beginning to flinch in his dismay at having gone so far, raised his hand slowly and closed his fingers upon the pen, while with a sigh of satisfaction Henry placed his index finger, upon which a large gem was glittering, upon the blank spot beneath ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the consent of the master or mistress. [82] During several generations accordingly the relation between divines and handmaidens was a theme for endless jest; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy of the seventeenth century, a single instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse above the rank of cook. [83] Even so late as the time of George the Second, the keenest of all observers of life and manners, himself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with hesitation that Fonsegue himself had ventured to suggest Dauvergne. But by degrees his selection appeared to him a real "find." "Wait a bit! I recollect now that in his young days Dauvergne wrote a comedy, a one act comedy in verse, and had it performed at Dijon. And Dijon's a literary town, you know, so that piece of his sets a little perfume of 'Belles-Lettres' around him. And then, too, he left Dijon twenty years ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... about Aristophanes. If you will indeed send me some notes of the passages that interest you in the "Birds," it will not only be very pleasant to me, but quite seriously useful, for the "Birds" have always been to me so mysterious in that comedy, that I have never got the good of it which I know is to be had. The careful study of it put off from day to day, was likely enough to fall into the great region of my despair, unless you had chanced thus ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... French literature in much the same relation as Shakespeare stands to English literature. Moliere's plays are constantly acted in French theatres with a scenic austerity which is unknown to the humblest of our theatres. A French audience would regard it as sacrilege to convert a comedy of Moliere into a spectacle. The French people are commonly credited with a love of ornament and display to which the English people are assumed to be strangers, but their treatment of Moliere is convincing proof ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... soul perceives it, is horribly and most tragically humorous. Man is the laughing animal; and the "perilous stuff" which tickles his aesthetic sense with a revelation of outrageous comedy has its roots in the profoundest abyss. This humorous aspect of the system of things is just as primordial and intrinsic as what we call the "beautiful." The human soul is able to pour the whole stream of its complex vision through this fantastic casement. It knows how to ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... we won't be here," he pointed out. "If it doesn't go through all right, we'll arrange a little comedy. Have you bound and gagged—before ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Dr. Price was a rhetorician whom any cause would have gladly enlisted as its champion. The Revolution Society, founded to commemorate the capture of the Bastille, corresponded with the leaders of the Revolution, and promised its alliance in a revolutionary compact. And, to add a touch of comedy to these more serious demonstrations, the young Duke of Bedford and other leaders of fashion discarded hair-powder, and wore their hair cut short in what was understood to be the Republican mode ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... us from enjoying their colouring and eloquence) might have avoided the more facile triumphs of the stage. However, Elektra needs no apology, and the joyous Rosenkavalier is a distinct addition to the repertory of high-class musical comedy. Strauss is an experimenter and no doubt a man for whom the visible box-office exists, to parody a saying of Gautier's. But we must judge him by his own highest standard, the standard of Elektra, Don Quixote, and Till Eulenspiegel, not to mention the beautiful songs. Ariadne on ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... find you have put on a mask to deceive me! Have you not succeeded in inspiring me with esteem for you by your proud and dignified behaviour, and the elevated sentiments you professed? And do you think I can be happy to find that all this was but a comedy? Could a gentleman have treated me so? But you have deceived yourself, Jonker van Zonshoven. I gave my heart to a young man without fortune, whose upright and noble character I admired, and in whom I had more confidence than in myself; ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... had not stopped to think what he should find, but at least it was, from her tone, a menace of some sort. There stood Eugene Martin, in his fur coat, his florid extravagance of scarf and pin, on his face the ironic smile adapted to his preconceived comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his butt, the fool of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... to tragedy, William J. Florence was to comedy. Indeed, he may be said to have gone farther than either Booth or Forrest, for he founded a school and gave to the stage the chivalrous, light-hearted and lucky Irishman, who has since become so familiar to the drama, however rare he may be ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... "Rolling my tub," replied he, "that whilst everybody is busy around me, I may not be the only idle person in the kingdom." In like manner, I, my dear Philo, being very loath in this noisy age to make no noise at all, or to act the part of a mute in the comedy, think it highly proper that I should roll my tub also; not that I mean to write history myself, or be a narrator of facts; you need not fear me, I am not so rash, knowing the danger too well if I roll it ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows, and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books. How that unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... curiosity, and the inexorable quality of the truth would not let him stand still. The poetic genius within him, as Blake called it, struggled on from one dogma concerning his nature to another. Behaviour malignant or beneficent, horrible in its tragedy and pitiable in its comedy, flowed inevitably on. Witchcraft trials and the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition belong among the more mentionable consequences of some of man's theories about his ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... name of Dumas was expected to make all current coin. For Dumas, unluckily, was as prodigal of his name as of his gold, and no reputation could bear the drafts he made on his celebrity. His son says, in the preface to Le Fils Naturel: "Tragedy, dramas, history, romance, comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the mould of your brain, and you peopled the world of fiction with new creations. The newspaper, the book, the theatre, burst asunder, too narrow for your ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... precision. She never came again, and announced indifferently, to all who cared to hear, that when she "wanted to see a passel o' monkeys, she'd go to the circus, an' done with it." There, too, one night when Comedy burlesqued her own rapt self, was Dana Marden; but he came alone. Mary had a cold, we heard, and "thought she'd better stay in." Dana sat through the foolish play, unmoved. His brow loomed heavy, like Tragedy's own mask, and it grew ever blacker while the scene went on. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... nothing about love. Once or twice he ventured to tell her of some pretty girl that he met, of some adventure with a laird's daughter; nay, insinuated laughingly that he had not escaped from it quite heart-whole. Caroline answered his letter in the same tone; told him, with excellent comedy, of the leading facts of life in Littlebath; recommended him by all means to go back after the laird's daughter; described the joy of her heart at unexpectedly meeting Mr. M'Gabbery in the pump-room, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... every new excuse," said H—— at my side, "as Boileau took off his hat at every plagiarism in his friend's comedy—on the score of old acquaintance. If one word of all this is true, it may be the breaking down of his post-chaise, and even that he probably broke down for the sake of the excuse. Sheridan could not walk from the door to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Chinese law forbidding women to act on the stage. Certain parts of the play were open to objections on account of immodesty, but when no ladies are present I presume a Chinese audience is not fastidious. The comedy was followed by something serious, of which I was unable to learn the name. I supposed it represented the superiority of the deities over the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... dreary hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls—her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good Heaven! what an actress this woman is. What an arch trickster—what an all-accomplished deceiver. But she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's roof. I have diplomatized long enough. She has refused to accept an indirect warning. To-night I ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... He was baffled and angry. Had Jen played the leading part in the mysterious and grim comedy of last night, or was he only a work coolie, a deck-steward, harmless, innocuous, babbling happily in his limited knowledge of a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... with the answer when it comes, and I will telegraph to Wendover morning and night, dear child," he said. "I knew you would feel for me." And with this, the sad little comedy between them ended, for Halcyone ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... actor of low comedy, and long famous on the London stage, to which he was introduced by Charles Kemble; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... historic reproduction, and for the fund presented for humour by ecclesiastical peculiarities, it seems impossible to overlook the covert satire intended on church beliefs.(305) The intermixture of a comic element would not alone prove this. The miracle plays of the middle ages admitted comedy without intending irreverence;(306) and a gentle humour pervades many of the Autos of Calderon, which were acted on solemn festivals.(307) But there exists in the manner in which the supernatural element is managed ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Devine worked his way towards London, and at length he appeared in a West-end theatre. His reminiscences of the stars are impressive, but we need not deal with them; it is enough to say that he was successful—and in light comedy no less. About this time he began to have his photograph taken very frequently, and the portraits made me feel sad. This dull, sodden man was once a handsome fellow, alert, well poised, brave and cheerful. The profile ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... crossed back, leaving but one corps north of the river. Such was now the very peculiar situation of the two armies. General Lee was moving steadily in the direction of Warrenton to cut off his adversary from Manassas, and that adversary was moving back into Culpepper to hunt up Lee there. The comedy of errors was soon terminated, but not so soon as it otherwise would have been but for a ruse de guerre played by Generals Rosser and Young. General Rosser had been left by Stuart near Brandy, with about two hundred horsemen and one ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... have not made a serious reply since I gave up practice at the Scottish Bar. At my age," added Sir Patrick, cunningly drifting into generalities, "nothing is serious—except Indigestion. I say, with the philosopher, 'Life is a comedy to those who think, and tragedy to those who feel.'" He took his sister-in-law's hand, and kissed it. "Dear Lady Lundie, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... endeavoured, both by argument and by ridicule, to bring his countrymen to a right way of thinking. [See "Spectator," Nos. 84. 97, and 99; and "Tatler," Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, and 39; and "Guardian," No. 20.] His comedy of "The Conscious Lovers" contains an admirable exposure of the abuse of the word honour, which led men into an error so lamentable. Swift, writing upon the subject, remarked that he could see no harm in rogues and fools shooting each other. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... strong, and they find their greatest delight in seeing the purpose of each part in a complex mechanism. With others, this work does not afford much pleasure. These are children who, later, can take delight in the flimsy plot of a musical comedy. Such pupils should be encouraged to do their best to discover some points of beauty or skill in the arrangement of the selection. In different lessons there is a difference in construction. In some, the logical connection and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... from outside; but an irreparable evil brought about by myself, a renunciation for life of my liberty, my peace of mind, the very thought of it is maddening—I expiate my privilege indeed. My privilege is to be spectator of my life drama, to be fully conscious of the tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in the secret of the tragi-comic itself, that is to say, to be unable to take my illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theater on the stage, or to be like a man looking from ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Charles Sedley's comedy of "Bellamira" was performed, the roof of the theatre fell down, by which, however, few people were hurt except the author. This occasioned Sir Fleetwood Shepherd to say, "There was so much fire in his play, that it blew up the poet, house and all." "No," replied the ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... of petty irritation ever wrote anything like the passage where that expression occurs. Criticism is not your forte, Collins. The writer I'm speaking of sees a landscape photographed in those two words. Pardon me for saying that your talent seems to run more in the line of low-comedy acting. I don't like referring to it again, but d—n it all, my interest in you personally makes me feel very strongly over your interview with ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... for his part, was amazed at her being so little disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways, refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was pledged, married with twenty words. They had no more to say about it since they were agreed, and they now sat, both ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... young enough to be delighted at the idea of such a pretty little comedy, and you trip away to the study, and archly keep dear WILLIAM in conversation until the Captain is ready to make his appearance. At last, a little impatiently, you give the cue by mentioning that there is a clock-winder ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... Jennie had come with the real actors, and were to appear in the picture. The story related incidents at a Sunday-school picnic, and most of the comedy had already been ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... captain was reluctant. To take part in such a sinister comedy; to make a poor wretch tipsy in order to deliver him to the authorities for punishment, wounded the captain's self-respect. Juve overcame his ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... this false comedy," he thought with irritation. "It goes without saying that I've now become the by-word of the entire university. The devil nudged me! And even during the day yesterday it wasn't too late, when she was saying that she was ready ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... conference was held in the cabin, and the various parts of the comedy rehearsed. Also the three ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the busy woodpecker ceased his drumming, cocking his head inquisitively at the intruders; then shyly drew away, mounting spirally the trunk of the tree to the hole, chiseled by his strong beak for a nest. As Barnes gazed around upon the pleasing prospect, he straightway became the duke in the comedy of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... handkerchief into bits. It is a piece of inspired acting to make the discriminating weep, but my friend the audience always giggled irresistibly, as if the sound of rending lace, when a woman's agony was the most intense, were a bit of exquisite comedy. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... rival. In 1689 he resumed his work under the persuasion of Mme. de Maintenon, and produced "Esther" and "Athalie," the latter ranking among his finest productions, although it did not receive public recognition until some time after his death in 1699. Besides his tragedies, Racine wrote one comedy, "Les Plaideurs," four hymns of great beauty, and a ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... great epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "But it's a comedy face," he commented. "It's hard to associate intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... appeals. Sitting down at length within earshot, they had it out in a wild scolding match, a contest of lung and tongue. Meanwhile I rested on a canoe midway betwixt them, in the hope of averting a renewal of hostilities. By and by an old Sacred Man, a Chief, called Sapa, with some touch of savage comedy in his breast, volunteered an episode which restored good humor to the scene. Leaping up, he came dancing and singing towards me, and there, to the amusement of all, reenacted the quarrel, and mimicked rather cleverly my attempt ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... painted, but they demand an interesting story, a fine sentiment, a great thought: so since our national glory is understood to be the happy home, the happy home must be triumphant everywhere, even in satiric comedy. The best expression of this fallacy is in Thackeray. Concluding a most eloquent, and a somewhat patronising examination of Congreve, 'Ah!' he exclaims, 'it's a weary feast, that banquet of wit where ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Aristophanes' satiric rage, When ancient comedy amus'd the age, Or Eupolis's or Cratinus' wit, And others that all-licens'd poem writ; None, worthy to be shown, escap'd the scene, No public knave, or thief of lofty mien; The loose adult'rer was drawn forth to sight; The ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and friends, even as far as Simpkinsville and Washington, had their little jokes over Mis' Trimble's giving her splendor-despising husband a swinging ice-pitcher, but they never knew of the two early trips of the twin pitcher, nor of the midnight comedy in the Trimble home. ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... herself, was all eagerness to learn of her pupil's progress. The lesson began at once. Already, she found, the miracle had begun to work. The old man sat down to the organ with a flourish that, if it had not been full of pathos, would have been a little comedy act. After a brief preliminary search the old fingers found their place and pounded out triumphantly the few ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Forces from us, by its powerful artistic realism, those choky sensations which it should be the aim of the human writer to elicit, whether in comedy ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... sally was supplemented only by a sorry smile, for form's sake, from Tess. What was comedy to them was tragedy to her; and she could hardly bear their mirth. She soon rose from table, and, with an impression that Clare would soon follow her, went along a little wriggling path, now stepping to one side of the irrigating channels, and now to the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... funny. It might have been sublimest farce-comedy, had they not lacked the perspective necessary for its appreciation. But it was enough that they realized that the demagogue had come crashing down—enough that, watching his furtive disappearance that night, they learned how pitiful a coward ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... said Bill, "was to see if I couldn't get Mabel a job in some straight comedy. That would take the curse off the thing a bit. Then I wouldn't have to dwell on the chorus end of the ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the general, "that I have had enough of this comedy, and that since Monsieur Koupriane has not been able to arrest these men, and since, on their side, they don't seem to decide to do their duty, I shall go myself and put them out of ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... Another twenty minutes and the hotel would loom up before them, and the little farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it might be, would be finished. The curtain would fall, and the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... could perform all the parts in a comedy himself, and with the help of Fred Loring, or some other, would improvise a burlesque on almost any well-known play. It was after one of these performances that Whittier (who sat in his quiet corner enjoying ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... an old play, and that is the whole superstition, the origin of which seems somewhat inexplicable. The phrase is thrice used by Shakespeare, and constantly occurs in the old burlesques and comedies; in one instance, in a comedy entitled "Love's Convert" (1651), it is altered to "lead an ape in heaven." Many will remember the fate of "The young Mary Anne" in the famous ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... knoll by the path, while the jack-hares, sitting on their haunches, boxed and scratched, and rolled over each other in a singularly harmless conflict, neither suffering more than the loss of a few tufts of fur. The comedy might, however, have had a tragic ending. Presently one of the combatants—the hare that had come late on the scene—became slightly exhausted, and, ignominiously yielding to his rival's superior dexterity, ran back towards the distant hedge. Almost ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... silence. A giggle from the fags' table showed that the comedy of the situation was not ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... short of a certain point,—the point where wit degenerates into mockery, and liberty into license: nature is never put to shame, and will commonly bear much more. Especially to the American sense did their humorous and comic strokes, their negro-minstrelsy and attempts at Yankee comedy, seem in a minor key. There was not enough irreverence and slang and coarse ribaldry, in the whole evening's entertainment, to have seasoned one line of some of our most popular comic poetry. But the music, and the gymnastic, acrobatic, and other feats, were of a very high order. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... would take it, dressed in a brown sac, such as had been fashionable ten years back, and her daughter, I should think about thirty years old. They told me that they had been to supper, and to the play in the Duke's Playhouse, where Mr. Shirley's tragi-comedy The Young Admiral had been done; and that Mr. Ireland was to come for them here, as presently he did, for it was scarce safe for ladies to be abroad at such an hour in the streets without an escort, so wild were the pranks ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... York business man, his pretty sweetheart, his sentimental stenographer, and his fashionable sister are all mixed up in a misunderstanding that surpasses anything in the way of comedy in years. A story with ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... belonged to the female sex. This animal has been one of the most remarkable characters in literature. Her virtues have been quoted in the stately cathedral, in the courts of justice, in the editorial sanctum, in both tragedy and comedy on the stage, to point a moral and adorn a tale. Some of the fairest of Eve's daughters bear her baptismal name, and she has been immortalized in poetry and prose. Wordsworth sends her with his Peter Bell to enjoy the first flowers of early spring. To express her love of the beautiful "upon ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... writing for interest, this species of autorial clap-trap is very effective, if cleverly done. So we will make no excuse for leaving nuestros amigos at the lawyer's office, and drawing a green curtain, as it were, on the actors of this humble comedy. ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of deceit. Sometimes, after palming off a particularly fantastic and outrageous lie upon me, he was so 'full of laugh' that he had to step aside for a minute, upon one pretext or another, to keep me from suspecting. I staid faithfully by him until his comedy was finished. Then he remarked that he had undertaken to 'learn' me all about a steamboat, and had done it; but that if he had overlooked anything, just ask him and he would supply the lack. 'Anything ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... celebrated comedy of "Figaro," an abridgment of which has been rendered more famous by the music of Mozart, made a large fortune by supplying the American republicans with arms and ammunition, and lost it by speculations in salt and printing. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently tragic situation into one of delicious comedy. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... His Holiness the Pope comes forth in his pontificals, with twelve cardinals in purple canonicals—for the action of my comedy is supposed to take place at the season of mutatio caparum, when their eminences are not dressed in scarlet but in purple—therefore propriety absolutely requires that my cardinals should wear ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... degenerates into mockery, and liberty into license: nature is never put to shame, and will commonly bear much more. Especially to the American sense did their humorous and comic strokes, their negro-minstrelsy and attempts at Yankee comedy, seem in a minor key. There was not enough irreverence and slang and coarse ribaldry, in the whole evening's entertainment, to have seasoned one line of some of our most popular comic poetry. But the music, and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... remarked Will, "I begin to see the humor in this comedy. Which are we—allies of the Greeks or of the Masai? Are we to help the Greeks get away with Brown's cattle, or help the Masai steal 'em from the Greeks? Are your cattle ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... but nevertheless keenly interested in the combat, crouched on a little knoll by the path, while the jack-hares, sitting on their haunches, boxed and scratched, and rolled over each other in a singularly harmless conflict, neither suffering more than the loss of a few tufts of fur. The comedy might, however, have had a tragic ending. Presently one of the combatants—the hare that had come late on the scene—became slightly exhausted, and, ignominiously yielding to his rival's superior dexterity, ran back towards the distant hedge. Almost ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... of Fort Fisher and political upheavals of the Reconstruction period to the awful tragedy of 1898, with the exception of a few tragic scenes, Wilmington had been the theatre of one continuous comedy, performed by gifted players, whose names and faces will ever remain indelibly fixed in the memory. Phillis, "State Mary" Tinny, George Howe, Uncle Abram, Bill Dabney, "Uncle Billy" pass over the stage before me as I write. But of those ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... chair lazily, with a left-backward wheel, so as to command the window, for he liked to see the girls dance, the little rogues!—with his claret and his French rappee at his elbow; and he did not hear General Chattesworth, who was talking of the new comedy called the 'Clandestine Marriage,' and how 'the prologue touches genteelly on the loss of three late geniuses—Hogarth, Quin, and Cibber—and the epilogue is the picture of a polite company;' for ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... know that I should care for it to come out at the Lyceum, but of course if the terms were very—oh, they're beginning at last! I hope this light comedy scene will go well. (Curtain rises: Comic dialogue—nothing whatever to do with the plot—between a Footman and a Matinee Maidservant in short sleeves, a lace tucker, and a diamond necklace; depression of audience. Serious characters enter and tell one another long and irrelevant stories, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... tornado of a man, had been killed by a buffalo. She was afraid that Zora took after her father. Her younger daughter Emmy had also inherited some of the Oldrieve restlessness and had gone on the stage. She was playing now in musical comedy in London. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... not beholden of our eyes, hears melodies too fine for our dulled hearing. What other men behold as bits of coal, his genius transmutes into diamonds. In the darkness he sleeps to see some "Midsummer Night's Dream;" in the day he wakens to behold the tragedy or comedy in his friend's career. While he muses, the fires of inspiration burn within him. When the time comes, the inner forces burst out in book or song or poem, just as the tulip bulb when April comes publishes its heart of fire and gold. The book he writes ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Man in His Humour" was accepted by Shakespeare's company and acted for the first time in 1598, with Shakespeare taking a part. The evidence of this is contained in the list of actors prefixed to the comedy in the folio of Jonson's works, 1616. But it is a mistake to infer, because Shakespeare's name stands first in the list of actors and the elder Kno'well first in the 'dramatis personae', that Shakespeare took that particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was generally ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... of men across a stage, and jumped among the music racks in the orchestra. He caught a glimpse of the early morning sun shining on the tawdry hangings of the boxes and the exaggerated perspective of the scenery. He ran through corridors between two great statues of Comedy and Tragedy, and up a marble stair case to a lobby in which he saw the white faces about him multiplied in long mirrors, and so out to an iron balcony from which he looked down, panting and breathless, upon the Palace Gardens, swarming with soldiers ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the Gospel occasional access to circles for which it is not suited. Abbe Dupanloup, already well known for his success at the Catechism of the Assumption among a public which set more store by elegant phrases than doctrine, was just the man to play an innocent part in the comedy which simple souls would regard as an edifying act of grace. His intimacy with the Duchesse de Dino, and especially with her daughter, whose religious education he had conducted, the favour in which he was held by M. de Quelen (Archbishop of Paris), and the patronage which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... three periods of Vedic literature is the uniformity of style which marks the productions of each. In modern literature we find, at one and the same time, different styles of prose and poetry cultivated by one and the same author. A Goethe writes tragedy, comedy, satire, lyrical poetry, and scientific prose; but we find nothing like this in primitive literature. The individual is there much less prominent, and the poet's character disappears in the general ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... 1781, to his father. Mozart draws the line of demarcation sharply between tragedy and comedy in opera. ["Shakespeare has taught us to accept an infusion of the comic element in plays of a serious cast; but Shakespeare was an innovator, a Romanticist, and, measured by old standards, his dramas are ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I saw everything. Look at me!" she went on, and she gazed into his eyes. He kept his head bent and was silent. "Say something, anyhow—speak. Ah, you can only act comedy ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... despairing old chap says in Byron's comedy, 'I'm doomed—I'm doomed!' and the other fellow says, 'Don't go on like that; it sounds like swearing ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... see a thousand things (not that they are all very charming). But the pleasure of observation does not in the least depend on the beauty of what one observes. You see innumerable little dramas; in fact, almost everything has acts and scenes, like a comedy. Very often it is a comedy with tears. There have been a good many of them, I am afraid, in the case I am speaking of. It is because this history of Sir Ambrose Tester and Lady Vandeleur struck me, when you asked me about the relations of the parties, as having that kind of progression, ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... Lincoln's friends, Mr. Simeon Francis. It was while these meetings were going on that a burlesque encounter occurred between Lincoln and James Shields, for which Miss Todd was partly responsible, and which no doubt gave just the touch of comedy necessary to relieve their tragedy and restore them to a healthier view ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... but I doubt if he had turned his attention to the harbour lights; and it may be news even to him, that in the year 1863 their case was pitiable. Hanging about with the east wind humming in my teeth, and my hands (I make no doubt) in my pockets, I looked for the first time upon that tragi-comedy of the visiting engineer which I have seen so often re-enacted on a more important stage. Eighty years ago, I find my grandfather writing: "It is the most painful thing that can occur to me to have a correspondence of this kind with any of the keepers, and when I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were the Garths, mother and daughter? He looked in on a well-known dramatic agent, and raised the point. Reference to a ledger showed that Eileen Garth, age eighteen, tall, good-looking, no previous experience, had been a candidate for musical comedy, London engagement alone accepted; the almost certain sequel being that she had kept her name six months on the books without an offer to secure her ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... because his death did not belong to the Cambridge order of things, because it raised unpleasant ideas, and made one morbid and neurotic. It had, in fact, nothing in common with cold baths, marmalade, rugby football, and musical comedy. ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... manhood, "Die when thou wilt, old JACK, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring": These, and various expressions such as these, would be absurdities not impositions, Farce not Comedy, if not calculated to conceal some defect supposed unknown to the hearers; and these hearers were, in the present case, his constant companions, and the daily witnesses of his conduct. If before this period he ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Woodvil," Godwin's tragedy of "Antonio" had been produced at Drury-Lane Theatre, and that Elia was present at the performance thereof. But perhaps they do not know (at least, not many of them) that Elia's essay on "The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," as originally published in the "London Magazine," contained a full and circumstantial account of the cold and stately manner in which John Kemble performed the part of Antonio in Godwin's unfortunate play. For some reason or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... now for the first time denied. It may be called the idea of reciprocity; or, in better English, of give and take. The Prussian appears to be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot, I think, conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy—that in the eyes of the other man he is only the other man. And if we carry this clue through the institutions of Prussianized Germany we shall find how curiously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs from ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... treachery to her sire-a small matter) sacrifice her guttural tongue, by enabling him (through the exercise of her arts, charms, intrigues—also a small matter) to obtain the first audience of the Japanese erudites. Delphica, with each of the rivals in turn, is very pretty Comedy. She is aware that M. Falarique is her most redoubtable adversary, by the time that the vast fleet of steamboats (containing newspaper reporters) is beheld from the decks of the Polypheme ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... faces, arms, and bodies, giving every token of joy and gladness for having seen us, and requiring us by signs to touch their children. After this, the men caused the women to withdraw, and all sat down on the ground round about us, as if they meant to represent some comedy or shew. The women came back, each of them carrying a square matt like a carpet, which they spread out on the ground and caused us to sit down on them. When this was done, Agouhanna, the king or lord of the town, was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... moods of alteration, he combined the comic scenes of these two plays into a comedy ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... pleasure of the chase, but for the joy he took in communing with nature. How S. Francis found God in the sun and the air, the water and the stars, we know by his celebrated hymn; and of Dante's acute observation, every canto of the 'Divine Comedy' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... about the eighth of an inch, and the work of the teeth! Pairs were demolished in this way during the progress of the Life of Sheridan. A third called your attention to a note written in a strain of the most playful banter, and announcing the next "tragi-comedy meeting." A fourth repeated a merry impromptu; and a fifth played a very pathetic air, composed and adapted for some beautiful lines of Mrs. Opie's. But to return to Mayfield. Our desire to go over the cottage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... you and my uncle have not been getting up this little comedy of a quarrel, merely to show Kitty and me what fools we look when we are fighting! Why! It was better than ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... me,' she said. 'It was a make of a comedy. This Dearham, calling himself my cousin, beat this music musician for calling himself my gallant. Then goes the musicker to my grandam, bidding the old Duchess rise up again one hour after she had sought her bed. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... this Moorish gentleman's placid and unruffled features would lead the Western observer to suppose that he was a very simple person with no sort of interest in affairs. I had occasion to know him, however, for a statesman, after the Moorish fashion—a keen if resigned observer of the tragic-comedy of his country's politics, and a pious man withal, who had visited Mecca in the month that is called Shawall, and had cast stones on the hill of Arafat, as the custom is among True Believers. Some years ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... time, when everyraw youth believes that he knows everything and was created for the complete arrangement of life—give him, give the rogue freedom! Here, Carrion, live! Come, come, live! Ah! Then such a comedy will follow; feeling that his bridle is off, man will then rush up higher than his ears, and like a feather will fly hither and thither. He'll believe himself to be a miracle worker, and then he'll ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... in the same positive, dogmatic way that he assures us that Peer Gynt is a poem, not a satire; The League of Youth a 'simple comedy and nothing more'; Emperor and Galilean an 'entirely realistic work'; that in Ghosts 'there is not a single opinion, a single utterance which can be laid to the account of the author.... My intention was to produce the impression in the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... china and glass, knicknacks of the Catherine period; on the wall the well-known picture of a flaxen-haired girl with a dove on her breast and eyes turned upwards; on the table a vase of fresh roses. You see how minutely I describe it. In that drawing-room, on that terrace, was rehearsed all the tragi-comedy of my love. The colonel's wife herself was an ill-natured old dame, whose voice was always hoarse with spite—a petty, snappish creature. Of the daughters, one, Vera, did not differ in any respect from the common run of young ladies of the provinces; the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... test of the popular opinion of a man than the character assigned to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars, served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than they deserved: but it is almost certain ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... upon a play than Captain Radicofani," replied Marie de' Medici, reappearing from the interior of her chamber whither she had retreated on the appearance of the intruder. "It is odd that you should have chanced so opportunely upon us as we were rehearsing our little comedy. My lord of Essex, permit me to present Captain Tuzio Radicofani, as brave a soldier as ever wielded sword, and one loyally attached to my uncle's service. What news do you bring from the Grand Duke, Captain? Will ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... horse-coper do as much for a stallion," I commented. "I know there are words that have certain effects. But you shouldn't play pranks like the low-comedy ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... But no! He was not to blame for being saddled with a family. Marriage at eleven could by no stretch of sophism be called a voluntary act. He recalled the long, sordid, sensational matrimonial comedy of which he had been the victim; the keen competition of the parents of daughters for the hand of so renowned an infant prodigy, who could talk theology as crookedly as a graybeard. His own boyish liking for Pessel, the rich rent-farmer's daughter, had been rudely set aside when her sister ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... pages of this story there are several strong characters. Typical New England folk and an especially sturdy one, old Cy Walker, through whose instrumentality Chip comes to happiness and fortune. There is a chain of comedy, tragedy, pathos and love, which makes a ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... of 1838-39 Emerson delivered his usual winter course of Lectures. He names them in a letter to Carlyle as follows: "Ten Lectures: I. The Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV. Love; V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX. Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed no more on Human Life." Two or three of these titles only are prefixed to his published ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... two berets doffed, two picturesque giants bowing low, with a Frenchman's grace—this, on the Trouville sands, was the last act of this little comedy of our landing on the coast ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... palliating the possible lawlessness of her action in the eyes of her companion, she wasted her words. Halfman had not been so happy since his return to England, not even in the briskest days of the siege, as he was now in the staging of this lawless comedy. The old pirate jigged in him at ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said, "try to imagine we have. In this little drawing-room comedy you've only one line to learn, and your ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... a clever character actor, and had created a number of parts that had won favor. He inclined to whimsical comedy roles, rather than to romantic drama, and several of his old men studies are remembered on Broadway to this day. He had acted in Shakespeare, but he had none of that burning desire, with which many actors are credited, to play Hamlet. Mr. DeVere was ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... should not say, with too much pride, Fountain, I will not drink of thee! Nor were it grateful to forget, That from these reservoirs and tanks Even imperial Shakspeare drew His Moor of Venice and the Jew, And Romeo and Juliet, And many a famous comedy." ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the ill-assorted marriages in the world, and there would be fewer single women. If they only chose by sense or fancy, or because they saw some good quality in a girl—if they were not all captivated by the face alone, every Jill would have her Jack, and pair off happily, like the lovers in a comedy. But it is not so. We can not live without illusions; we can not, therefore, subsist without disappointments. They, too, follow each other as the night the day, the shade the sunshine; they are as ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... disappeared; the heads of the most obstinate rebels were laid at the feet of Togrul; and he inflicted a lesson of obedience on the people of Mosul and Bagdad. After the chastisement of the guilty, and the restoration of peace, the royal shepherd accepted the reward of his labors; and a solemn comedy represented the triumph of religious prejudice over Barbarian power. [23] The Turkish sultan embarked on the Tigris, landed at the gate of Racca, and made his public entry on horseback. At the palace-gate he respectfully dismounted, and walked on foot, preceded by his emirs without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... vacation. He appears on the stage as a sectary, and plays his part with resolute energy. This part again is that of a man not pursuing truth, but so occupied with maintaining his own conception of truth that he has no time to test it. It is a comedy of great humor, because Sylvanus, as a sectary, stands against all comers to protect a spring of deep and clear water, and is so engrossed in guarding the sacred wave from the least pollution that he does not find time to ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... had been delivered by the young King with all the monotonous intonations of a studied recital, and was terminated by a sigh of relief as he saw himself near the conclusion of the comedy. It had been arranged that so soon as he ceased speaking the Queen should stoop forward to embrace him; but in the excess of her agitation the outraged mother disregarded the instructions which she ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... for his countrymen, and having heard of Guthrie, he had come down to the coffee-house to inquire about him. Not long after Cheap had sat down, Guthrie arrived, dressed in laced clothes, and talking loud to everybody, and soon fell awrangling with a gentleman about tragedy and comedy and the unities, &c., and laid down the law of the drama in a peremptory manner, supporting his arguments with cursing and swearing. I saw Cheap was astonished, when, going to the bar, he asked who this was, and finding it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... I met May, the girl who effected my reformation. She was a clergyman's daughter who, to support her widowed mother, had accepted a non-speaking part in a musical comedy production entitled "Oh Joy! Oh Pep!" Our acquaintance ripened, and one night I asked her out ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... except a profusion of new peerages, but are likely I think to have much greater shortly. The ministers disagree, and quarrel with as much alacrity as ever; and the world expects a total rupture between Lord Bute and the late King's servants. This comedy has been so often represented, it scarce interests one, especially one who takes no part, and who is determined to have nothing to do with the world, but hearing and seeing the scenes ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy in form, but serious in interpretation. The counter was piled high with men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling, ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... read two or three or more books at a time. One should be an interesting book, whether history, story or comedy, so long as it is well written and along lines that will hold one's interest. One should read one book after another of this sort as a dessert for his dinner, as it were, but along with it he should eat substantial food in the nature ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... May the Queen and the Prince were at Devonshire House, when Lord Lytton's comedy of "Not so Bad as we Seem" was played by Dickens, Foster, Douglas Jerrold, on behalf of the new "Guild of Literature and Art," in which hopes for ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... on the first night of the performance of the well-known Comedy of "Heads or Tails?" by the "Thespian Perambulators." Time, 7:50 P.M. A "brilliant and fashionable assemblage" is gradually filling the house. In the Stalls are many distinguished Amateurs of both ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... good boy; and so say I: but, prithee, what didst thou do with the comedy which I gave thee t'other day, that I thought ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... manuscripts of former poets and of the works of the sages, scattered throughout Greece, and the ways and means of obtaining them or of acquiring exact transcripts of them for the library of the Museum. Hierax was telling Eulaeus of the last Dionysiac festival, and of the representation of the newest comedy in Alexandria, and Eulaeus assumed the appearance—not unsuccessfully—of listening with both ears, interrupting him several times with intelligent questions, bearing directly on what he had said, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Mr. Sabin continued calmly. "The first is that in a friendly way, and of course under the inviolable law of secrecy, you explain to me for what part Lucille is cast in this little comedy; the next that I be allowed to see her at reasonable intervals, and finally that she is known by her rightful ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... commentary into three parts—the notes on the comedies, those on the tragedies, and those on the history plays—is arbitrary and mostly a matter of convenience. Some division was necessary, and it seemed advantageous to present introductions which could use Johnson's reaction to comedy, tragedy, and history plays—and Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and histories—as a point of departure. Were the notes reprinted in the order of appearance of the plays one would find Macbeth, coming after The Winter's Tale (the last of the comedies), ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... this tale without saying a word about the Prince de Cadignan, better known under the name of the Duc de Maufrigneuse, otherwise the spice of the princess's confidences would be lost, and strangers would not understand the Parisian comedy she was about to play for ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... of the mind towards the problems of life. Aristophanes lived and could have written only in the days when Athenian institutions began to decay. It is personal discomfort and the trials and harassments of life that drive men to the ever serene, pure regions of humor for balm and healing. Fun and comedy men have at all times understood—the history of Samson contains the germs of a mock-heroic poem—while it was impossible for humor, genuine humor, to find appreciation in the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... The comedy at the Gymnase was sufficiently amusing to hold her attention, and that was the best she could ask for; but Monte watched it indifferently, resenting the fact that it did hold her attention. Besides, there were too many people all about her here. For two hours and a half it was ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... tickled? They snap snappishly at the titillating straw; they snatch at it with their weird little hands; they parry it skilfully. They hardly can enjoy being tickled, and yet they endure, paying a dear price for the society of their betters. Frogs the frisky, frogs the spotted, were our comedy that day. Whenever the rain ceased, we rushed forth and tickled them, and thus vicariously tickled ourselves into more than patience, into jollity. So ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... something out of the ordinary, a refreshing and unique human comedy that would not only electrify the public but whose chief actors balked all speculation. He could not help owning that Ellen Webster's bequest, heartily as he disapproved of it, lent a welcome bit of color to the grayness of his days. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... seat, glanced at him sideways out of his almond-shaped eyes. Domini heard the name "Irena," and guessed that Batouch was asking the Kabyle to send for her and make her dance. She could not help being amused for a moment by the comedy of intrigue, complacently malignant on both sides, that was being played by the two cousins, but the moment passed and left her engrossed, absorbed, and not merely by the novelty of the surroundings, by the strangeness of the women, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of the farmer must have often really occurred in the Middle Ages when famine was the rule rather than the exception; and the decision to "expose" the children recalls the general practice in ancient Greece and Rome and in Arabia. A touch of comedy, however, is given to this grim beginning of our tale by the house made of cookies and sweetmeats, probably derived from the myth of a Schlarafenland of the Germans and similar imaginations of the Celts (see ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... next act arose, Drouet came back. He was very much enlivened in temper and inclined to whisper, but Hurstwood pretended interest. He fixed his eyes on the stage, although Carrie was not there, a short bit of melodramatic comedy preceding her entrance. He did not see what was going on, however. He was thinking his own ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... marriage ceremony, his handsome face and melodious voice and aristocratic bearing doing full justice to the grandeur of the occasion—it is a contrast in which there is a bitter humor, a farce in which there is something horrible, a comedy that ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... would never move him, except to see the comedy thereof and make his mood the pleasanter! But I had not dreamed him saint enough for the Holy Father to sue to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Irish,'" said Nora with a grin, quoting from a popular song she had heard in a recent musical comedy. "But stop teasing me, and let Mrs. Gray go on with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... coachman said, of "an old incubus who wants to be married." Heretofore a terrible obstacle, the life of the legitimate spouse, had prolonged a shameful situation. Now that the obstacle no longer existed, she wanted to put an end to the comedy, because of Andre, who might any day be forced to despise his mother, because of the world which they had been deceiving for ten years, so that she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... as that of the gay-coloured birds that flocked among the tree-fern or rose in frightened clouds as the waggons crashed by. And they discussed—together with the chances of the runners entered for the second Spring Meeting at Newmarket, and the merits of the problem play, and the newest farcical comedy—the Immortality ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... concerned, this child has as many of them as Talleyrand. He is no less cynical, but he is more honest. He is endowed with a certain indescribable, unexpected joviality; he upsets the composure of the shopkeeper with his wild laughter. He ranges boldly from high comedy ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... public habitually prefers the light comedy and operetta to the theatre performances of high aesthetic intent, it moves instinctively to those printed pages on which a slight appeal to the imagination is made without any claim on serious thought. It is indeed a pleasant tickling of the imagination, this ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... on the 20th January, 1661, with The Love-Tiff and Sganarelle, but as the young wife of Louis XIV., Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV., King of Spain, had only lately arrived, and as a taste for the Spanish drama appeared to spring up anew in France, Molire thought perhaps that a heroic comedy in that style might meet with some success, the more so as a company of Spanish actors had been performing in Paris the plays of Lope de Vega and Calderon, since the 24th of July, 1660. Therefore, he brought ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... the open door (centre) with his back to his audience and his head turned towards it over his left shoulder, by some extraordinary dislocation of his hip-joints, he achieved the immemorial salutation of the Folies Bergeres—the last faint survival of the Old Athenian Comedy. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... tender passion are, to put it very gently, restricted. But of course—well, a novel with such a title is hardly likely to leave anybody of importance unmarried at the final page. Before this is turned, you have some pleasant comedy of London in war-time, and meet a number of agreeably sketched persons, whose conversation may amuse you, or, on the other hand, may cause you to wish them a little less discursive. Madame ALBANESI indeed impressed me as having occasionally turned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... quickly that my bread and grain was for them and not the sparrows; but although they stationed themselves close to me, the little robbers we were jointly trying to outwit managed to get some pieces of bread by flying up and catching them before they touched the sward. This little comedy over, I visited the water-fowl, ducks of many kinds, sheldrakes, geese from many lands, swans black, and swans white. To see birds in prison during the spring mood of which I have spoken is not only no satisfaction ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... next page but one, Boswell describes Thrale as presenting the character of a plain independent English squire, she writes: "No, no! Mr. Thrale's manners presented the character of a gay man of the town: like Millamant, in Congreve's comedy, he abhorred the country and ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the little comedy, realized at once that he had discovered the author of The Breadwinners, and stated to the publisher that he intended to use the incident in his literary letter. But it proved to be one of those heart-rending ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Alley and Alley Change"; Professor Birks, "his brows crowned with myrtle," going in procession to the Temple of Aphrodite; the Duke of Somerset "running into the strong tower" of Deism, and thinking himself "safe" there from further questionings. This method of illustration threw an air of comedy over the theme which it illustrated; and, if the criticism failed to disturb faith in Biblical theology, the critic had only ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... modern Athens, which was much worse for us, I trow, than would have been the most desperate society of our college contemporaries. There was a club of young actors that we used to frequent, where light comedy sketches and scenes from famous plays were given by the members, and in due time several of us were admitted to membership. Of these I was one and learned to do a turn very acceptably. On one occasion I took a small part upon the Boston Museum stage to fill the place made ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... some active wish that the affair should continue. I should speak too strongly if I were to say that he took pleasure in the man's company, but he did, I believe, almost in spite of himself, secretly encourage it. And there was, in spite of the comedy that persistently hovered about his figure and habits, some fine spirit in Andrey Vassilievitch's championship of his hero. How he hated Semyonov! How he lost no single opportunity of trying to bring Nikitin forward in public, of proving ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... engagement with life. Now Lee couldn't reconcile himself to the knowledge that this was no more than an interlude—with music—in his other, married existence. It was as unsubstantial as an evening's performance, in temporary finery, of a high comedy of manners. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... this constructive treatment based upon utilizing the characteristic linguistic powers of the pathological liar, is witnessed to by Stemmermann in her story of Delbruck's G. N. In the history of this case a delightful note of comedy is struck. G. N. was found to be a man of considerable literary ability. He had been observed over the period of 13 years. After he was first studied he twice managed to go 3 years without succumbing ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Foote, in his new comedy of The Nabob, has lashed Master Doctor Miles and our Society very deservedly for the nonsensical discussion they had this winter about Whittington and his Cat. Few of them are fit for any thing better than such researches. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... that artists had nothing to do with morality. She was always on the stage—in the most familiar act and in the presence of strangers she never lost sight of the footlights, and the best acting I ever saw her in was in private and in the representation of some comedy or tragedy of her own interests. She played with a marvelous power one part, and all others were but variations of that or failures—it was not art which dominated her, but the simulation of nature, and that ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... are recorded in this Magazine, under such headings as "The Merry Gossips," "The Kissing Chronicle," and "The Undertaker's Harvest-Home," or "The Squallers—a tragi-comedy," "All for Love," and "Act V. Scene ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... seated quietly at table, and as they entered he rose and came forward with a friendly smile to greet his brother. His sense of humour was being excited; he was something of an actor, and the role he had adopted in the comedy to be played gave him a certain grim satisfaction. He would test for himself the truth of what Monsieur de Garnache had told him concerning his brother's intentions. Marius received his advances very coolly. He took his brother's hand, submitted to his brother's kiss; but neither ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... that the parasite (Ergasilus) is an addition to the original play, which may have belonged to the New Comedy. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... experience had taught one to expect a crass sentimentality. The fairy-tale was well told, with some excellent characterization, and very well played. Indeed, Mr. Frank Craven's rendering of the incompetent clerk was a masterly and unforgettable piece of comedy. I enjoyed "Bought and Paid For," and it is on the faith of such plays, imperfect and timid as they are, that I establish my prophecy of a more glorious hereafter for the ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... want is a compromise between old tragedy and new comedy. Now, if some manager could have a love play, where the heroine goes into a slaughter house to talk love to the butcher, instead of a blacksmith shop or a brewery, it would take. A scene could be set for a slaughter house, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... passed out to the hall, where the pianola was still going, and where the merriment was still in full swing. For a quarter of an hour she was compelled to remain with the insipid young ass Bertie Girdlestone, a man who patronised musical comedy nightly, and afterwards supped regularly at the "Savoy"; then she escaped at last ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... enough of this comedy, and not feeling inclined to waste any more civilities on this innocent daughter of Mother Eve, I asked her ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... the king to provide himself with a good counsel, "By St. Bride"—his favourite oath—said he, "I know well the fellow I would have, yea, and the best in England, too!" Asked who that might be. "Marry, the king himself." The note of comedy struck at the beginning of the trial lasted to the end. The earl's ready wit seems to have dumbfounded his accusers, who were not unnaturally indignant at so unlocked for a result. "All Ireland," they swore, solemnly, "could not govern the Earl of Kildare." "So ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... was with her now as she sat in the window embrasure, hell in her heart and a reflection of it in her eyes, as, fallen almost to the rank of a spectator in that comedy wherein she was accustomed to the leading part, she watched the shifting, chattering, glittering crowd. And as she watched, her line of vision was crossed to her undoing by the slender, wellknit figure of de Vanens, who, dressed from head to foot in black, detached sharply ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... devourer of fiction. But for the others this study of the passing of an epoch, the time of the Old Society, as symbolised by the figure of the Duchess, will be a delight. You might suppose from this (if you were unfamiliar with your author) that we had here a social comedy. Nothing in fact could be further from Mr. WALPOLE'S design. For him, as for his characters, there is almost too haunting a sense of the tragedy of trivial things. No one in the book is happy. The Duchess herself, stern, aloof, terrible, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... faulty in the extreme. They seemed to point out wickedness as a punishment for wickedness. If we desired to afford our readers a laugh, we should permit them to read many of these laws. The simple perusal of them would cause merriment equal to the most laughable comedy. Had it not been for the few white men, who, from time to time, have found their way into the legislature of New Mexico, the whole body would long since have lost themselves in the depth of learning which their untutored minds had undertaken to engraft upon their statute books. The members ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... most noble, of course, are hymns and paeans. In the second place are songs and odes and scolia, which are concerned with the praises of brave men. In the third place the epic, in which there are heroes and other lesser personages. Tragedy together with comedy follows this order; nevertheless comedy will hold the fourth place apart by itself. After these, satires, then exodia, lusus, nuptial songs, elegies, monodia, songs, epigrams.'"[9] Similar rankings of satire frequently recurred in the neo-classical period,[10] as did ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... with Tannhaeuser were extinguished; his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of debt; his domestic existence was unendurable; things were as bad as bad could be. So he sat down and wrote his only comedy. It was not a simple case of "tasks in hours of insight willed can be through hours of gloom fulfilled." The Mastersingers had been sketched, as we know, in 1845; but the new work was a change, in that he created the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... was another side to Villiers' temperament. It was piercing and acute in an altogether different sense—a side of forbidding pleasantry and fierce raillery. No longer was it the paradoxical mystifications of Poe, but a scoffing that had in it the lugubrious and savage comedy which Swift possessed. A series of sketches, les Demoiselles de Bienfilatre, l'Affichage celeste, la Machine a gloire, and le Plus beau diner du monde, betrayed a singularly inventive and keenly bantering mind. The whole order of contemporary ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Captain, "it runs in my head, I've seen you somewhere before! And now I think on't, pray a'n't you the person I saw at the play one night, and who didn't know, all the time, whether it was a tragedy or a comedy, or a ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
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