"Buffoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and in a considerable number of individuals at the same time. We did not know that the theory of evolution was one that had been quietly but steadily gaining ground during the last hundred years. Buffon we knew by name, but he sounded too like "buffoon" for any good to come from him. We had heard also of Lamarck, and held him to be a kind of French Lord Monboddo; but we knew nothing of his doctrine save through the caricatures promulgated by his opponents, or the misrepresentations of those who had another kind of interest ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... a hopeless case, As you may see, And in your place Away I'd flee; But don't blame me— I'm sorry to be Of your pleasure a diminutioner. They'll vow their pact Extremely soon, In point of fact This afternoon. Her honeymoon With that buffoon At seven ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... observed our Blessed Father, "as regards the three first sayings, but, in regard to the fourth, to my mind, the very highest degree of humility consists in loving and cherishing contempt, and in being glad to be despised. David so acted, when he showed himself pleased to be despised as a buffoon by his own wife Michol. St. Paul, too, gloried in having been scourged, stoned, and looked upon as a fool, the off-scouring and very refuse of the world. The Apostles came forth rejoicing from the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... of proper mammas, who teach their children to behave "pretty"—thinking good and quiet synonymous. Somehow, the little fellows, unfortunately, take the Lark for Mr. Spohf, who has hitherto done the funny in a refined style, scarcely to be imagined—an elegant, amiable, fun,—a mixture of the buffoon and gentleman, the sublime and the ridiculous, quite marvellous to behold,—making our little friend (who you are aware was moulded in one of Nature's odd freaks) appear, to tender imaginations, almost supernatural. The mistake and ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... according to their rank. Whatever may offend propriety, whatever may produce an unwholesome excitement, is excluded; for the hilarity of the audience, there is an occasional introduction on the stage of a parasite or a buffoon. The representation is usually opened by an apologue and always concluded with ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... arts magic on great beasts and often meeting ludicrous failures therein; envious of the powers of others, and constantly striving to outdo them in what they do best; in short, little more than a malicious buffoon delighting in practical jokes, and abusing his superhuman powers for selfish and ignoble ends. But this is a low, modern, and corrupt version of the character of Michabo, bearing no more resemblance to his real and ancient one than the language and acts of our Saviour and ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... which the latter is obliged to receive with equanimity, much to the amusement of the spectators. This byplay is also a reminiscence of the habits of the early comediens italiens, who indulged to excess in lazzi, which originally meant, not witticisms, but tricks more or less buffoon in their nature, such as circus clowns still indulge in. We know that Marivaux objected to any liberty being taken with the roles by the actors. It may well be questioned whether the above-mentioned gesture would have met ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... suffered all the humiliations, threw away all the advantages, of his situation. He neglected the studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down to the bottom of his class for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room, was severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was caned by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story of the college to some gay youths ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon.... Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, but they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... only to die in infancy. We need no further proof of the urgent need for conscientious inquiry, call it by what name you please. The science of common sense is all-sufficient. The seemingly intelligent individual who can only find material for ribaldry in this connection is a more serious buffoon than he imagines. It is apparent that our methods are wrong. Any constructive effort to correct them is commendable. When it is stated that 20 per cent. of the American women are unable to bear children, and that 25 per cent. of all the others are unwilling to assume the burden ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... I am lying! For in order to please women, one must exhibit the thoughtlessness of a buffoon or all the wild passion of tragedy! They only laugh at us when we simply tell them that we love them! For my part, I consider those hyperbolical phrases which tickle their fancy a profanation of true love, so that it is no longer possible to ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... Congressional service became an auditor, and was known as "the Watch Dog of the Treasury." Tom Corwin, of the same State, with a portly figure, swarthy complexion, and wonderful facial expression, and an inexhaustible flow of wit, who was not a buffoon, but a gentleman whose humor was natural, racy, and chaste. Gulian C. Verplanck and Thomas J. Oakley, two members of the New York bar, who represented that city, were statesmen rather than politicians. John Chambers, of Kentucky, a gigantic economist, was ever ready to reform small expenditures ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... discordant and inartistic change between the earlier part of Pickwick and the later; they have pointed out, not without good sense, that the character of Mr. Pickwick changes from that of a silly buffoon to that of a solid merchant. But the case, if these critics had noticed it, is much stronger in the minor characters of the great company. Mr. Winkle, who has been an idiot (even, perhaps, as Mr. Pickwick says, "an impostor"), suddenly ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. This admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. Shakspeare never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural for Hamlet—a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality and disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had assisted his uncle in his usurpation—should express himself satirically, yet this must ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... what constitutes "light" literature; he never thinks that Shakspere is decidedly "light," and I rather fancy that he would regard Aristophanes as heavy. If one were to suggest, on his proposing to place the Irving Shakspere on the shelves of a free library, that the poet is often foolish, often a buffoon of a low type, often a mere quibbler, and often ribald, he might perhaps have a fit, or he might inquire if the speaker were mad—assuredly he would do something impressive; but he would not scruple to deliver an oration of the severest type if some sweet and innocent ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... excellent managers of that excellent institution, that a more worthy, modest, sober, and loyal man does not exist in his majesty's dominions than this distinguished poet, whom some of his waggish friends have taken up the absurd fancy of exhibiting in print as a sort of boozing buffoon; and who is now, instead of revelling in the license of tavern-suppers and party politics, bearing up, as he may, against severe and unmerited misfortunes, in as dreary a solitude as ever nursed the melancholy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... art anything, but what thou shouldst be; prithee, Major, leave off being an old Buffoon, that is, a Lover turn'd ridiculous by Age, consider thy self a mere rouling Tun of Nantz,—a walking Chimney, ever smoaking with nasty Mundungus, and then thou hast a Countenance like an old ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... men. From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is spellbound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body: those have power over the soul. Hecate in Middleton has a Son, a low buffoon: the hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul Anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... of Domremy, In thine innocence secure, Heed not what men say of thee, The buffoon and his jest impure! Nor care if thy name, young martyr, Be the star of thy country's story:— Mid the white-robed host of the heavens ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... of his wife, and it turned out to be the last; but from that moment the older man had something of dignity in the eyes of this younger man, who had merely judged of him by his little foibles and eccentricities, and would have been ready to dismiss him contemptuously as a buffoon. There was something, then, behind that powerful face, with its deep-cut lines, its heavy eyebrows and piercing and sometimes sad eyes, besides a mere liking for tricks of childish diplomacy. Lavender began to have some respect for Sheila's father, and made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... too, was a great success, but I could not bear Hamlet. And the grave-digger in Italian was a mere buffoon. The whole scene was farcical to me because of the Italian, 'Questo cranio, Signore—'And Enrico, dainty fellow, took the skull in a corner of his black cloak. As an Italian, he would not willingly touch it. It was unclean. But he looked a fool, hulking ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is spellbound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These witches can hurt the body; those have power over the soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon: the hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... soul. Of all injured vanities, that of the reproved buffoon is the most savage; and when grave issues are involved, these petty stabs become unbearable. But Gondremark was a man of iron; he showed nothing; he did not even, like the common trickster, retreat because he had presumed, but ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not be turned back by such difficulties. He plunged ahead of his men, struck tip songs and cheers to keep them in spirit, played the buffoon, went wherever danger was greatest, and by an almost unmatched display of bravery, tact, and firmness, won the redoubled admiration of his suffering followers and held them together. Murmurs arose among the creoles, but the Americans showed ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... only yesterday, while I had letters of the 8th from London. Doth the post dabble into our letters? Whatever agreement you make with Murray, if satisfactory to you, must be so to me. There need be no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian himself (Shakspeare, to wit)—'that, like a Spartan, I would sell my life as dearly as possible'—it never was my intention to turn it to personal, pecuniary ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... your more immediate protection, as being dedicated to you, and by that tide adopted for yours, rather than to be fathered as my own. And it is a chance if there be wanting some quarrelsome persons that will shew their teeth, and pretend these fooleries are either too buffoon-like for a grave divine, or too satyrical for a meek christian, and so will exclaim against me as if I were vamping up some old farce, or acted anew the Lucian again with a peevish snarling at all things. But those ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... popular name among the Dutch for a buffoon; a corruption of pickle-h[:a]rin ("a hairy sprite"), answering ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Buffoon's tables, and those of Parcieux and others, all of which were based on the aggregate of all classes and conditions. Those who made the estimate, however, forgot the dangers of infancy, indulged in general calculations, ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... necessary to be anything but compliant. Lie, cheat, make every word a snare, and every act a forgery; but never contradict. Agree with people, and they make a couch for you in their hearts. You know the story of Dante and the buffoon. Both were entertained at the court of the vain pedant, who called himself Prince Scaliger,—the former poorly, the latter sumptuously. 'How comes it,' said the buffoon to the poet, 'that I am so rich and you so poor?' 'I shall be as rich as you,' was the stinging and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... persuasion. But once or twice before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the Englishman in the bush learns to expect from the indigenous buffoon. ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... had curried favour with Nero. Polyclitus was sent to inquire into Suetonius Paulinus' administration of Britain after the revolt of Boadicea in A.D. 61. Vatinius was a deformed cobbler from Beneventum who became a sort of court buffoon, and acquired great wealth and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... buffoon, was born about the year 1460, and educated at what he calls "Alma parens, O Cantabrigensis." Tutor to Prince Henry, afterward Henry VIII., he could boast, "The honour of England I lernyd to spelle." That he was highly ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... play, that the SPRUCH-SPRECHER often condescended to follow up the jester's witticisms with an explanation, to render them more obvious to the capacity of the audience, so that his wisdom became a sort of commentary on the buffoon's folly. And sometimes, in requital, the HOFF-NARR, with a pithy jest, wound up the conclusion of the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... be confessed that there is in them even occasional coarseness; but that the devil for instance should always be represented as a baffled fool, and made to play the buffoon sometimes after a disgusting fashion, was to them only the treatment he deserved: it was their notion of "poetic justice;" while most of them were too childish to be shocked at the discord thus introduced, and many, we may well hope, too childlike ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... substituted as an ultimate reminiscence in the place of an admiring regret; all this, too, to be effected by one so long hated, one whom I was the only being forbidden the comparative happiness of despising? I could not brook it; the insult, the insulter, were too revolting. As the unhappy buffoon approached me, thrusting his distorted face towards mine, I seized and pushed him aside, with a brief curse and a violent hand. The sharp point of the umbrella slipped; my action gave it impetus and weight; it penetrated his eye, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... permitted to be armed. In advocacy of all these things and many more, then unheard of but now common, I was in advance of the age; and in some degree my private notions conduced to very wholesome public changes." Again: "When Rabelais is diffuse, or a buffoon, or worse, it may be to throw disputers off the scent as to his real mark of satire or philosophy. Perhaps, like Liguori, AEsop has written a book for the sake of a sentence, and veils his true intent ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and sometimes divided and dispersed by his strokes, they, the rabble, will trample on him, like the Lilliputians on Gulliver, incapable of estimating his stature, and eternity and history will speedily bury him, not like a despot, in Egyptian porphyry, but like a buffoon. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... never forgets itself, and with an inexhaustible succession of circumstance, fantasy, and incident. Nor is it always solemn and high-pitched. Its gravity is relieved from time to time with the ridiculous figure or character, the ludicrous incident, the jests and antics of the buffoon. It has been said that Spenser never smiles. He not only smiles, with amusement or sly irony; he wrote what he must have laughed at as he wrote, and meant us to laugh at. He did not describe with a grave face ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... himself absolved by this severe castigation. Qu'est-ce qu'il me chante? Has the letter undergone transformation in the Christian climate of Reinfeld, or did it leave the hand of this once shallow buffoon in its present form? He asserts, moreover, that he lives in a never dreamed of happiness with his present wife, whose acquaintance he made a week before the engagement, and whom he married six weeks after ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... 135. I have softened some of the most improbable circumstances of this wretched biographer. From his ill-worded narration, it should seem that the prince's buffoon having accidentally entered the tent, and awakened the slumbering monarch, the fear of punishment urged him to persuade the disaffected soldiers to commit ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... corners of his cravat he would say, "Well, Madame, is there anything new to-day? Citizen, what say they of Bonaparte? Your shop appears to be well supplied. You surely have a great deal of custom. What do people say of that buffoon; Bonaparte?" He was made quite happy one day when we were obliged to retire hastily from a shop to avoid the attacks drawn upon us by the irreverent tone in which Bonaparte ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... library after dinner, and Lawrence Cardiff was smoking. He took the slender stem of his pipe from his lips and pressed down the tobacco in the bowl with a, caressing thumb, looking appreciatively, as he did it, at the mocking buffoon's face that was ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... long. During these the Mahdi threw his arms and legs about like a buffoon or raised his eyes in rapture, repeating "Lo! It is he!" "Lo! It is he!" and the sun began to decline towards the west, when he rose and left for his home. The children now could be convinced with what reverence ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... picture of Caesar; and if he had read Horace "Ad Pisones," he would have made a better Achilles. He complains that he makes the good and the bad perish promiscuously; and that in "Coriolanus"—a play which Dennis "improved" for the new stage—he represents Menenius as a buffoon and introduces the rabble in a most undignified fashion.[14] Gildon, again, says that Shakspere must have read Sidney's "Defence of Posey" and therefore, ought to have known the rules and that his neglect of them was owing to laziness. "Money seems ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... he never lost his interest in England; he was never tired of reading English books, of being polite to English travellers, and of doing his best, in the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of that deplorable English buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. But it is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of Voltaire's nature inevitably carried him further and ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... with his wife, turned his head gently aside as if asleep; but when one of his slaves came up to the table and stole some wine, his eyes were wide open enough, and he said, 'Villain, don't you know that I am asleep only for Maecenas?'[107] But this is not perhaps so strange, considering Galba was a buffoon. But at Argos Nicostratus and Phayllus were great political rivals: so when King Philip visited that city, Phayllus thought if he prostituted his wife, who was very handsome, to the King, he would get from him some important office or place. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the Wreath of the Gods," because with his fate that of all the rest was bound up. His death, ominously foretold from eldest antiquity, would be the signal for the ruin of the universe. Asa Loki was the Momus Satan or Devil Buffoon of the Scandinavian mythology, the half amusing, half horrible embodiment of wit, treachery, and evil; now residing with the gods in heaven, now accompanying Thor on his frequent adventures, now visiting and plotting with his own kith and kin in frosty Jotunheim, beyond the earth ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his example, to imitate him in his daring personalities, or to adopt his merciless satyrical style. They followed his steps, only in his feeble, pitiful paths, and contented themselves with writing contemptible buffoon caricature parodies of the writings of the greatest men. The new comedy never could have raised its head, had the middle comedy continued to be supported by a succession of such wits as Aristophanes, with new supplies of envenomed personal satire. Fortunately, however, the stage was ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... having then the diversion of the spectator, in the way of laughing, for its object, should preserve a moderately buffoon simplicity, and the dancer, aided by a natural genius, but especially by throwing as much nature as possible into his execution, may promise himself to amuse and please the spectator; even though he should ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... nature assigned to play an absurd and sorry part in the tragicomedy of life in which all must act the roles assigned by the great author-manager until death puts us out of the cast. In that scene I myself was the buffoon ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... railing rhymer, a singular mixture of a true and original poet with a buffoon; coarse as Rabelais, whimsical, obscure, but always vivacious. He was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, but his profane and scurrilous wit seems rather out of keeping with his clerical character. His Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng is a study of very low life, reminding one slightly ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... parts so long that these came to be natural to them as soon as they passed the Volga. We are all so in a minor degree. In each house, to each of our friends, we are unconsciously different in some particular. One man holds us in awe, and we unconsciously instil that feeling. Another considers us a buffoon, and, lo! ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... there was never any so well recompensed: and why? Because Taste (GOUT, inclination) sets no limits to its recompenses. The King of Prussia overloads men of talent with his benefits for precisely the reasons which induce a little German Prince to overload with benefits a buffoon or a dwarf." [—OEuvres de Voltaire,—xxvii. 220 n.] Could there be a phenomenon more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... said they might give the shirt to Sancho; and shutting himself in with him in a room where there was a sumptuous bed, he undressed and put on the shirt; and then, finding himself alone with Sancho, he said to him, "Tell me, thou new-fledged buffoon and old booby, dost thou think it right to offend and insult a duenna so deserving of reverence and respect as that one just now? Was that a time to bethink thee of thy Dapple, or are these noble personages likely to let the beasts fare badly when ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Roman Catholic worship was violently interrupted. [106] At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was said, by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and indecent pageant, in which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock host was carried in procession. The garrison was called out to disperse the mob. The mob, then and ever since one of the fiercest in the kingdom, resisted. Blows were exchanged, and serious hurts inflicted. [107] The agitation was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... immediately, for whose return the bulk of the members stayed in the Great Chamber. I was informed that this was one trick among others concerted to ruin me, and, telling the Duc d'Orleans of it, he said that if the old buffoon, the Keeper of the Seals, was concerned in such a complication of folly and knavery, he deserved to be hanged by the side of Mazarin. But the sequel showed that I was not out ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Which of the six is the real man?—that's the question that torments me. One of them is a hero, another a buffoon, another a humbug, another perhaps a bit of a blackguard. (He pauses and looks furtively at Louka, as he adds with deep bitterness) And one, at least, is a coward—jealous, like all cowards. (He goes to ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... he had a lot of children, he called them all out of the house to check them over. To the joyful surprise of the visitors, there among them was little Eva—supposed to be eaten, and she even retained her right hand. Thus another newspaper libel upon the poor old black bear—the buffoon of the forest—was shown to be devoid of truth; yet that story was published in the Toronto papers, and, no doubt, was copied ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... have Samson made a buffoon for drunkards. The feasts of heathenism were wild orgies, very unlike the pure joy of the sacrificial meals in Jehovah's worship. Dagon's temple was filled with a drunken crowd, whose mirth would be made more boisterous by ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... history and but yesterday Sir Henry Irving stood alone—the unique representative in England of the great tragic art.... In conveying irony, the English actor is in his element; in comic parts, he is simply grotesque. The buffoon may occasionally be found upon the English stage—the brilliant comedian never. In tragic parts he easily assumes an exaggerated gravity and solemnity; in sentimental roles he is ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... mime, mimer^; artists; comedian, tragedian; tragedienne, Roscius; star, movie star, star of stage and screen, superstar, idol, sex symbol; supporting actor, supporting cast; ham, hamfatter [Slang]; masker^. pantomimist, clown harlequin, buffo^, buffoon, farceur, grimacer, pantaloon, columbine; punchinello^; pulcinello^, pulcinella^; extra, bit- player, walk-on role, cameo appearance; mute, figurante^, general utility; super, supernumerary. company; first tragedian, prima donna [Sp.], protagonist; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... letter from my heart; he was a man of thought on the most important subjects. But, indeed, had I lived in the Middle Ages (I am heartily glad that I did not) I should have been an eremite myself—if I had not been a professed buffoon, that is. These were the only philosophical lives yet open: laughter or prayer; sneers, we might say, and tears. Until the sun of the Positive arose, the wise man had to make his choice between ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into a midnight fray His brave companion, and then run away, Leaving him to be murder'd in the street, Then put it off with some buffoon conceit; Him, thus dishonour'd, for a wit you own, And court him as top fiddler of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... contrasted by birth, fortune, education, opinion, interest? How hold sway over a body of spectators, who were at the same time judges? To succeed in the task he was bound to be master of all styles of diction—at one and the same time a dainty poet and a diverting buffoon. It is just this universality of genius, this combination of the most eminent and various qualities, that has won Aristophanes a place apart among satirists; and if it be true to say that well-written ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... gracioso or buffoon, according to Lord Holland, held an intermediate character between a spectator and a character in the play; interrupting with his remarks, at one time, the performance, of which he forms an essential, but very defective part in another. His part was, I presume, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... better 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 ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... indecent as a Puritan. He is as full of gross words and sensual facts as a sermon of the seventeenth century. Up to this point of his life indeed hardly anyone would have dreamed of calling him a Puritan; he was called sometimes an anarchist, sometimes a buffoon, sometimes (by the more discerning stupid people) a prig. His attitude towards current problems was felt to be arresting and even indecent; I do not think that anyone thought of connecting it with the old Calvinistic morality. But Shaw, who knew better than the Shavians, was at this moment ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "Oh, you Neka" (buffoon), she groaned, "didn't you swear to separate from Nalini, and have you not taken all your meals with him ever since? Is that the action of ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... at first objected; but Schickaneder, like himself, was a Freemason; he had been his companion in dissipation, and exercised a great influence over him. Mozart at last consented. A compact was made, and Schickaneder set to work on the libretto. As he was a popular buffoon, he invented the part of Papageno, the bird-catcher, for himself, and arranged that it should be dressed in a costume of feathers. It is a trivial part, but Schickaneder intended to tickle the fancy of the public, and succeeded. The first act was finished, when ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... it, let others look to it. This I am sure, there was never any pleasant which folly gave not the relish to. Insomuch that if they find no occasion of laughter, they send for "one that may make it," or hire some buffoon flatterer, whose ridiculous discourse may put by the gravity of the company. For to what purpose were it to clog our stomachs with dainties, junkets, and the like stuff, unless our eyes and ears, nay whole mind, were likewise ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... his potions, and playing his tricks, as well as the sacrificer with his axe—unless the ambition of the bloated performer should prefer to combine the offices, and be at once the butcher and the buffoon." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... stateliness by which the same language is equally characterized. Tacitus has been sometimes represented as a very Diogenes, for carping and sarcasm—a very Aristophanes, to blacken character with ridicule and reproach. But he is as far removed from the cynic or the buffoon, as from the panegyrist or the flatterer. He is not the indiscriminate admirer that Plutarch was. Nor is he such a universal hater as Sallust. It is the fault of the times that he is obliged to deal so much in censure. If there ever were perfect monsters on earth, such were several ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... building, and which was governed by laws framed by himself. Aristippus and Epicurus were in the highest esteem here as the most polite, benevolent, and convivial of men. Even AEsop the Phrygian was here, whom they made use of by way of buffoon. Diogenes of Sinope had so wonderfully changed his manners in this place, that he married Lais the harlot, danced and sang, got drunk, and played a thousand freaks. Not one Stoic did I see amongst them; they, it seems, were not yet got up to the top of the high hill ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour; From morning to night he's so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good humour! He's so quaint and so terse, both in prose and in verse; Yet though people forgive his transgression, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... tolerate his presence for a moment. You know how I live, and that my sole attendant is a female. I allow no male servants within this house. Even when his Royal Highness honours me with his presence he is unattended. I desire that I am immediately released from the presence of this buffoon." ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... were reprinted in a rambling production issued from "Curll's chaste press" in 1740, and entitled the Tryal of Colley Cibber, Comedian, &c. At the end of this there is a short address to "the Self-dubb'd Captain Hercules Vinegar, alias Buffoon," to the effect that "the malevolent Flings exhibited by him and his Man Ralph," have been faithfully reproduced. Then comes the following curious and not ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Hamdi Effendi an apology; for it is well that, in the midst of this buffoon tragedy I find myself playing, I should observe occasionally the decencies of conduct. But, on the other hand, was he not amply repaid for moral injury by the pure joy he must have felt while torturing me with his banter? ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... talking. Then there is superabundant proof of the relish with which men enjoyed, in the Middle Ages, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping as a fly caught in a spider's web. The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit his clever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of them were preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them; clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... suitor,—and had also recognised a certain honesty in the man's purpose, which had not been the less honest because it was so absurd. Actuated by the consciousness of this, he had swallowed his anger, and had told the whole truth. Nevertheless things had been said which were horrible to him. This buffoon of a man had called his Isabel a—pert poppet! How was he to get over the remembrance of such an offence? And then the wretch had declared that he was—enamoured! There was sacrilege in the term when applied by ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... I wish to say! Ay, what did I wish to say! What is the use of my saying anything? What am I but a buffoon and a ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... been a buffoon, and his dress still bore many tokens of his former profession. His big head swayed upon his thin neck; his droll, though emaciated features constantly changed their expression, and even when he was not coughing, his mouth was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as a satire upon the first critics that rose up among the assembled people to question the divine right of kings to do wrong. We may be sure the real Thersites, from whom the poet drew his picture, was a very different and a far more serious power in debate than the misshapen buffoon of the Iliad. But the king who had been thwarted and exposed by him in the day would, over his cups in the evening, enjoy the poet's travesty, and long for the good old times when he could put down all impertinent criticism by the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... few paces, Dom Claude placed his back against a pillar, and gazed intently at Gringoire. The gaze was not the one which Gringoire feared, ashamed as he was of having been caught by a grave and learned person in the costume of a buffoon. There was nothing mocking or ironical in the priest's glance, it was serious, tranquil, piercing. The archdeacon was the first ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... they were lawyers, observed that he had but two in his whole empire, and he believed he would hang one of them as soon as he got home. A still more striking though less ghastly freak of fancy was that perpetrated by the Empress Anne of Courland, who, on the occasion of the marriage of her favorite buffoon, Galitzin, caused a palace of ice to be built, with a bed of the same material, in which she compelled the happy pair to pass their wedding night. The Empress Catharine II., a Pomeranian by birth, but thoroughly Russian in her morals, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... soldiers, not with glory, like the first Napoleon, but with wine; he will never be other than the pygmy tyrant of a great people. Grandeur, even in infamy, is utterly inconsistent with the calibre of the man. As dictator, he is a buffoon; let him make himself emperor, he will be grotesque. That will finish him. His destiny is to make mankind shrug their shoulders. Will he be less severely punished for that reason? Not at all. Contempt does not, in his case, mitigate anger; he will be hideous, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... peoples. Why do we laugh when a man on the stage searches everywhere for his hat, which is all the time on his head? Why do we laugh when a pompous gentleman slips on a piece of orange-peel and falls to the ground, or when one buffoon unexpectedly hits another on the head, and, before he has time to recover, with equal unexpectedness hooks his legs with a stick and brings him heavily to the ground? Why did we laugh at the adventures of Mr. Penley in "Charley's Aunt"? In all of these "ludicrous" affairs ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... not in my nature to derive consolation from such scenes; from theatres, whose buffoon laughter and discordant mirth awakened distempered sympathy, or where fictitious tears and wailings mocked the heart-felt grief within; from festival or crowded meeting, where hilarity sprung from the worst feelings of our nature, or such enthralment of the better ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... stood and gaped at her. Underground politician that he was, he knew that Mirabelle had utterly destroyed the half of his ambition. She had made him a laughing-stock, a buffoon, a political joke. To think that his name was connected with a crusade against short-skirts and dancing—Ugh! Not even the average run of church-goers would swallow it. "Mayor!" he thought bitterly. "President of Council! I couldn't get elected ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... not expect me to grimace and buffoon. You must take me seriatim or not at all. I can't stand on my head to sketch. I can't do it. I nearly did do it, though, for when I had my sketching-book in my hand on board, the spanker-boom, or some such thing, came over suddenly and hit me such a whack on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... be such a buffoon, can't he?" said the stout lady in the corner to her companion, as she yawned again. She had scarcely tried to lower her voice. Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door neighbor, who again threw her ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... itself over and over like a tumbler, tittering, at the same time, like a human being. Swanhilda for a while kept herself quiet; but as the luminous antic ceased not practising his harlequinade, she peevishly exclaimed—'What buffoon is carrying on his fooleries here? I desire to be left in peace.' The light vanished instantly, and Swanhilda already had congratulated herself upon gaining her point, when suddenly a loud shrilly sound was heard—the floor of the apartment gave way, and from the gap there arose a table ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... had good nature, smartness, and animal spirits; hence arose a vivacity and fluency that were often amusing, and passed for very clever. Reserve she had none; would talk about strangers, or friends, herself, her mother, her God, and the last buffoon-singer, in a breath. At a hint from Rosa, she told her who the lady in the pink dress was, and the lady in the violet velvet, and so on; for each lady was defined by her dress, and, more or less, quizzed by this show-woman, not exactly out of malice, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... companion's response, "but there is no better way of seeing the New World—that is, if you do not disdain the company of strolling players. You gain in knowledge what you lose in time. If you are a philosopher, you can study human nature through the buffoon and the mummer. If you are a naturalist, here are grand forests to contemplate. If you are not a recluse, here is free, though ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Puritanic as Oliver Cromwell himself. For some reason he had come to the conclusion that the less the settlers knew of pleasure the better, and therefore he laid down the law that all strolling popular entertainers should be forbidden to enter the holy city. No public buffoon ever cracked his jokes at Herrnhut. No tight-rope dancer poised on giddy height. No barrel-dancer rolled his empty barrel. No tout for lotteries swindled the simple. No juggler mystified the children. No cheap-jack cheated the innocent maidens. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... in his service the Hula, who, like the buffoon or jester of the French kings, must amuse his majesty by mimicry or dancing. The Kahu alii, or Kaukaualii, as they are now styled, are attendants or followers of the high chiefs by right of birth. They accompany their masters everywhere, almost in the same manner ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, The brown eyes radiant with vivacity - There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace Of passion and impudence and energy. Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, And ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... good people punch your head for it. No, my boy, to steal is abominable! That's an old trick, we'll have to give it up! But, you see, hunger isn't a kind old aunty, and you have to do something! I began to go about the town as a buffoon, to get money, a kopek at a time, to make a fool of myself, to tell funny stories, and play all sorts of tricks. Often you shiver from early morn till night in the town streets; you hide somewhere behind the corner away from people, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... hated Tigellius, the flattering musical buffoon so well described by Horace, thus lashes his country in a letter to Fabius Gallus: ‘Id ego in lucris pono non ferre hominem pestilentiorem putriâ suâ.’ Again, writing to his brother: ‘Remember,’ says he, ‘though in perfect health, you are in Sardinia.’ ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... play the part of a clown or buffoon, acting in a very silly and stupid manner, while the others looked on laughing and pointing their fingers at ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... unwearied diligence supplied every defect; was an insatiable and universal reader; meant for the Church, took to poetry and philosophy, became an author, putting forth the strangest books with the strangest titles; considered for a time a strange, crack-brained mixture of enthusiast and buffoon; was recognised at last as a man of infinite humour, sensibility, force, and penetration; his writings procured him friends and fame, and at length a wife and a settled pension; settled in Baireuth, where he lived ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that has supposed him to be other than poetical, because his form was often fanciful and abrupt, is really different from the misunderstanding which attaches to most other poets. The opponents of Victor Hugo called him a mere windbag; the opponents of Shakespeare called him a buffoon. But the admirers of Hugo and Shakespeare at least knew better. Now the admirers and opponents of Browning alike make him out to be a pedant rather than a poet. The only difference between the Browningite and the anti-Browningite, is that the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... had joined Voltaire with Dennis and Rymer. 'Dennis and Rymer think Shakespeare's Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire, perhaps, thinks decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident.... His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... being bold enough to utter a truth which she fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely covered my case—which she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which he is held by all the dames of honor in attendance upon your Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medicis—and moreover," he added, with somewhat of sarcasm, "with her fair daughter, Marguerite de Valois—you will do well to address yourself to the king's buffoon, Maitre Chicot, whom I see not far off. Few there are, methinks, who could in such short space have won so much favor, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... How could he hold the attention of such audiences without condescending to flatter their prejudices, or without occasionally acting the part of the sophist and the buffoon? Much may be said, in accounting for this phenomenon, about his widely extended reputation, his imposing presence, the vulgar curiosity to see a man whom even the smallest country newspaper thought of sufficient importance to defame, his ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Garden and took their acting copies. These volumes, then, that catch my firelight hold the very plays that the crowds of 1774 looked upon. Herein is the Romeo, word for word, that Lydia Languish sniffled over. Herein is Shylock, not yet with pathos on him, but a buffoon still, to draw the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... hunchback in question was the favourite buffoon of the Sultan, who could not bear him out of his sight: so when he got drunk and did not make his appearance that night or next day, the Sultan asked the courtiers about him and they replied, 'O our lord, the chief of the police has come upon ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... intervention of a beadle's hand as heavy and a sceptral cudgel as knotty as ever the son of Laertes applied to the shoulders of the first of the type or the tribe of Thersites. For this brutal and brutish buffoon—I am speaking of Shakespeare's Thersites—has no touch of humour in all his currish composition: Shakespeare had none as nature has none to spare for such dirty dogs as those of his kind or generation. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Foote threatened to take him off upon the stage, the most Christian of lexicographers caused it to be intimated to him that if he did the author of Rasselas would thrash him in the public street, and the buffoon desisted. 'Did not Foote,' asked Boswell, 'think of exhibiting you, sir?' and our great moralist replied, 'Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have broken his bones.' When he denounced Macpherson for his Ossian frauds, and the irate Celt said something about personal chastisement, Johnson ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... meadows, and damp hollows beside the road; but moisture it must have to fill its nectary and to soften the ground for the easier transit of its creeping rootstock. Imaginative eyes see what appears to them the gaping (ringens) face of a little ape or buffoon (mimulus) in this common flower whose drolleries, such as they are, call forth the only applause desired - the buzz of insects that ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... my law, and until these clouds have rolled from the blue heaven of your life I will be as silent as the watching moon. And, by the way," he added rather nervously, "perhaps you will be silent also—about our talk, I mean, as we do not want that buffoon, Foy, thrusting his ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... he executed accordingly, exclaiming as he departed—"Oh, city and court! you by whom the expectations of the bold pretender are fulfilled, while the hopes of the modest labourer are destroyed; you who abundantly sustain the shameless Buffoon, while the worthy sage is left to die of hunger; I bid you farewell." That said, he proceeded to Flanders, where he finished in arms the life which he might have rendered immortal by letters, and died in the company of his friend the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... for amusement of others were regulated in movement and gesture to suit the taste of patrons: for the refined, decency and moderation; for the wicked, a soupcon of the other kind of excellence. In the latter case the buffoon, an invariable adjunct, committed a thousand extravagances, and was a dear, delightful, naughty ancient Egyptian buffoon. These dances were performed by both men and women; sometimes together, more frequently in separate parties. The men seem to have confined themselves ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... of sorry thought went rushing through me as I sat with an empty jug in my hand in a room that was sounding like a market-place. With a start I wakened up to find the landlord making a buffoon's attempt at a dance in the middle of the floor to the tune of the Jew-trump, a transparent trick to restore the good-humour of his roysterers, and the black man who had fetched the spae-wife was standing at my side surveying me closely out of the corners of his eyes. I stood to my feet ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... made merry over the ivory, apes, and peacocks of existence. He seems less French than he is in his self-mockery, yet he is a true son of his time and of his country. This young Hamlet, who doubted the constancy of his mother the moon, was a very buffoon; I am the new buffoon of dusty eternities, might have been his declaration; a buffoon making subtle somersaults in the metaphysical blue. He was a metaphysician complicated by a poet. Von Hartmann it was who extorted his homage. "All is relative," was his war-cry on schools ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... on the wane, and that I could not hope to maintain it against the attractions of a French waiting-maid, a monkey, a parrot, a poodle, and a little Dwarfish boy-attendant that was half fiddler and half buffoon. So my consequence faded and faded, and I was sneered at and flouted as a young Savage and a young Irish by the English lacqueys about the House, and I sank from my Lady's keeping-room to the antechamber, and thence to the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... loyal sentiment and esprit de corps. It is interesting to observe the different views the artists have severally taken of it, for most of them in turn have attempted his portrayal. Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; Sir John Tenniel showed him as a vivified puppet, all that was earnest, responsible, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... stirred his wrath. The satire upon individuals may be all very well in its place, but a man, he said, has no business to set up as the 'regenerator of society' because he is its most 'distinguished buffoon.' He was not picking his words, and 'buffoon' is certainly an injudicious phrase; but the sentiment which it expressed was so characteristic and deeply rooted that I must dwell a little upon its ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... annually manufactured and consumed throughout the provinces almost exceed belief. The societies had regular constitutions. Their presiding officers were called kings, princes, captains, archdeacons, or rejoiced in similar high-sounding names. Each chamber had its treasurer, its buffoon, and its standard-bearer for public processions. Each had its peculiar title or blazon, as the Lily, the Marigold, or the Violet, with an appropriate motto. By the year 1493, the associations had become so important, that Philip the Fair summoned them all to a general assembly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cross-legged, to learn by rote a song, either "pallada persepolin deinan" or "teleporon ti boama" raising to a higher pitch the harmony which our fathers transmitted to us. But if any of them were to play the buffoon, or to turn any quavers, like these difficult turns the present artists make after the manner of Phrynis, he used to be thrashed, being beaten with many blows, as banishing the Muses. And it behooved the boys, while sitting in the school of the Gymnastic-master, to cover the thigh, so that they might ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... who is tolerant of the whims of a hired buffoon,—and, this time seating himself in his ebony chair, was about to commence dictating his Second Canto when Theos, yielding to his desire to speak aloud the idea that had just flashed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... performance. Such a monstrous Pandarus would have been blackballed at the Pimp. Thersites—Shakspeare's Thersites—for Homer's was another Thersites quite—finely called by Coleridge, "the Caliban of demagogic life"—loses all individuality, and is but a brutal buffoon grossly caricatured. The scene between Ulysses and Achilles, with its wondrous wisdomful speech, is omitted! of itself, worth all the poetry written between ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... for whom the entertainment was prepared, and, at the conclusion of the piece, Grimaldi waited upon the Mussulman for the usual present. If the Turk had concealed the expression of his anger at the accident, it was not however extinct, for on the appearance of the buffoon, he directed him to be seized by his attendants, and transported in his theatrical costume, to his residence, where, after undergoing a severe bastinado, the hapless actor was thrust into the street, with only his pedal honour for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... opinions, always in the wrong, Was every thing by starts, and nothing long, But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... politely—"McTurk"—the Irishman scowled—"and, of course, the unspeakable Beetle, our friend Gigadibs." Abanazar, the Emperor, and Aladdin had more or less of characters, and King passed them over. "Come forth, my inky buffoon, from behind yonder instrument of music! You supply, I presume, the doggerel for this entertainment. Esteem yourself to be, as ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... may derive any idea of his personal appearance and manner, suggest a very singular individuality. There was evidently something peculiar about his face; he was undoubtedly witty and worldly-wise, a braggart, a sycophant, and somewhat of a buffoon. He was imbued with an exaggerated idea of his own importance, and possessed of most unblushing assurance. In 1591 he signed his address "To the Reader," prefixed to his Second Fruites, "Resolute John Florio," a prefix which he persisted thereafter ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... signed under her own name, making an appointment for that night; but at the same time Galliard, claiming a former promise, drags his friend off to visit Euphemia. The intrigue is complicated by the ridiculous amours of two foolish travellers, Sir Signal Buffoon and Mr. Tickletext, a puritan divine, his tutor. These, unknown to each other, make assignations with the two bona robas by means of Petro, who dupes them thoroughly by his clever tricks, and pockets their money. Whilst Galliard and Sir Harry are serenading the ladies, Octavio, Julio ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... to your death. I wished your death. For Honoria would then be freed of you. I would condole with her. She is readily comforted, impatient of sorrow, incapable of it, I dare say. She would have married me. . . . Why must I tell you this? Oh, I am Fate's buffoon! For I have won, I have won! and there is that in me which will not accept the stake ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... mission. This chair of mine Meanwhile to Sophocles here commit, (For I count him next in our craft divine,) Till I come once more by thy side to sit. But as for that rascally scoundrel there, That low buffoon, that worker of ill, O let him not sit in my vacant chair, Not ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... "Who is that buffoon that travesties the travesty? Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... attack to which they will assuredly be found unequal. It is not altogether owing to their wisdom that this has not already taken place. For twenty years they were chained to the car of a profligate buffoon, who dragged them through every species of ignominy to the verge of rebellion; and their hall is even yet disgraced with the statue of a worthless negro-monger, in the act of insulting their sovereign with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... become somewhat melancholy of late and says that he is studying the phenomena of "Unconscious Cerebration," which Milburd explains is only a name for thinking of nothing without knowing it. Boodels, in consequence, thinks Milburd a mere buffoon.] ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... undeniably poetical element in the American character. Shallow-minded people fancy Puritanism to be prosaic, because the laces and ruffles of the Cavaliers are a more picturesque costume at a masked ball than the dress of the Roundheads. The Puritan has become a grim and ugly scarecrow, on whom every buffoon may break his jest. But the genuine old Puritan spirit ceases to be picturesque only because of its sublimity: its poetry is sublimed into religion. The great poet of the Puritans fails, as far as he fails, when he tries to transcend the limits ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Michelangelo's buffoon friends was a Florentine celebrity, Piloto, the goldsmith. We know that he took this man with him when he went to Venice in 1530; but Vasari tells no characteristic stories concerning their friendship. It may be remarked that Il Lasca describes Piloto as a "most entertaining and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... content to borrow force from simpler methods; a good orator will often bring his hammer down, at the end of successive periods, on the same phrase; and the mirthless refrain of a comic song, or the catchword of a buffoon, will raise laughter at last by its brazen importunity. Some modem writers, admiring the easy power of the device, have indulged themselves with too free a use of it; Matthew Arnold particularly, in his prose essays, falls to crying his text ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... very common sort of individual," he said of himself, as he looked in the glass when Mary Lawrie had been already twelve months in the house; "but then a man ought to be common. A man who is uncommon is either a dandy or a buffoon." ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... majority of Spaniards in overthrowing it. A wise and energetic sovereign would perhaps have allowed himself to use this outburst of religious fanaticism for the purpose of substituting some better order for the imprudent arrangements of 1812. Ferdinand, an ignorant, hypocritical buffoon, with no more notion of political justice or generosity than the beasts of the field, could only substitute for the fallen Cortes a government by palace-favourites and confessors. It was in vain, that the representatives of Great Britain urged the King to fulfil ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... at his ease, without ceasing to indulge in his little laugh, whilst continuing his perambulation about the room. "You may be right. God has given me a face which only arouses comical thoughts in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the SPECIAL CASE we ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... only the more moody. He had been to more theatres for relaxation. The whole house was roaring with laughter and applause, and he saw only an ignoble farce that made him sad. It would have damped the spirits of the buffoon on the stage to have seen Pen's dismal face. He hardly knew what was happening; the scene and the drama passed before him like a dream or a fever. Then he thought he would go to the Back Kitchen, his old haunt with Warrington—he was not a bit sleepy yet. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bite off bits of slang? My friend, they are green! Every grape you pick breaks in your jaws, for city grapes are glass bubbles! Having taken from the sparrow only his make-up and grimace, you are just a clumsy understudy, a sort of vice-buffoon! And you serve up stale old cynicisms picked up with crumbs in fashionable club-rooms, poor little bird, and think to astonish us with your budget ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... the climax: that I should show my long beard and white hairs amid that throng of women and lunatics; and clap and yell in unseemly rapture over the vile contortions of an abandoned buffoon. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... beast, seeing that no animal ever yet lost his senses through blighted love, which proves abundantly that animals have no souls. The employment of a lover is that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An employment from which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... larger circle ruthlessly put him in his place as a good fellow and nothing more. The truth was that in the Washington of the 'forties, neither the inner nor the outer Lincoln could by itself find lodgment. Neither the lonely mystical thinker nor the captivating buffoon could do more than ripple its surface. As superficial as Springfield, it lacked Springfield's impulsive generosity. To the long record of its obtuseness it had added another item. The gods had sent it a great man and it had no eyes to see. It was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... convinced of his ugliness; he used to go about in companies, and take every opportunity of inveighing against himself; he made verses and epigrams against himself; he talked about "that dwarf, Poinsinet;" "that buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... soldier of the imperial school, Dumay, whose Breton blood had boiled all the way to Paris, considered a poet to be a poor stick of a fellow, of no consequence whatever,—a buffoon addicted to choruses, living in a garret, dressed in black clothes that were white at every seam, wearing boots that were occasionally without soles, and linen that was unmentionable, and whose fingers knew ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... of love—or, at least, not necessarily so. You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant soldier, or a celebrated traveler—or, for that matter, before a remarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... I suppose you will wander from house to house, like that wretched buffoon Philippus (Xenophon; Convivium.), and beg everybody who has asked a supper-party to be so kind as to feed you and laugh at you; or you will turn sycophant; you will get a bunch of grapes, or a pair of shoes, now and then, by frightening ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... come, in manhood's fiery noon, To steal his laurels from the stage buffoon; His sword of lath the harlequin may wield; Behold the star upon my lifted shield Though the just critic pass my humble name, And sweeter lips have drained the cup of fame, While my gay stanza pleased the banquet's lords, The soul within was tuned to deeper chords! Say, shall my arms, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is bathed in humour. This must never be, though it often has been, forgotten. He is not to be taken literally. He is always a humourist, not unfrequently a writer of burlesque, and occasionally a buffoon. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... why, I daren't.... But we all saw to-day when he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair curled at the barber's, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon. That's evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see, ladies?" he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to their rooms, "though ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and unqualified fool," said the king, laughing, "and if it was not against my conscience, and unworthy of human nature, to engage a man as a perpetual buffoon, I would promote you to the office of court fool. You might, at least, serve as an example to my cavaliers, by teaching them ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... 329: The name of John Fastolfe, Esq. occurs in the muster rolls of Henry on his first expedition to France. But it must be remembered that not Falstaff, but Sir John Oldcastle, was made the buffoon on the stage at first, and continued so for many years, till the offence which it gave led to the substitution of Falstaff. "Stage poets," says Fuller, "have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle; ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... testimony to the solid worth of a Forsyte that she should always thus be a 'little thing'—the little thing was bored. Why shouldn't she amuse herself? Soames was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney—only that buffoon George would have called him the Buccaneer—she maintained that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
