"Comedian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... German princess describes her thus:—"The czarina was small and clumsily made, very much tanned, and without grace or air of distinction. You had only to see her to know that she was lowborn. From her usual costume you would have taken her for a German comedian. Her dress had been bought at a secondhand shop; it was very old-fashioned, and covered with silver and dirt. She had a dozen orders, and as many portraits of saints or relics, fastened all down her dress, in such a way that when she walked you would have thought by the jingling that a mule ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... Jewess for the sake of her Jewish actor, and desired to be buried by the Jewish rite when she was dying of the savage kick that killed her and her child—the only act of violence Nero seems to have ever regretted. However that may be, it is sure that she loved the comedian, and that for a time he had unbounded influence in Rome. And so great did their power grow that Claudius Rutilius, a Roman magistrate and poet, a contemporary of Chrysostom, and not a Christian, expressed ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... reason and wisdom, the word which comprehends most of the truth of the matter. And it is delivered in that generous and loyal spirit which nobody would have appreciated more than the free-hearted Diderot himself. The drift of Goethe's contention is, in fact, the thesis of Diderot's Paradox on the Comedian. But the state of painting in France—and Goethe admits it—may have called for a line of criticism which was an exaggeration of what Diderot, if he had been in Goethe's neutral position, would have ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... fashion of the time, might have been seen sauntering idly along one of the principal streets of Cincinnati. To the few who could claim acquaintance with him he was known as an actor, playing at the time referred to a short engagement as light comedian in a theatre of that city. He does not seem to have attained to any noticeable degree of eminence in his profession, but he had established for himself a reputation among jolly fellows in a social way. He could tell a story, sing a song, and dance a hornpipe, after a style ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... revenge, and, for that purpose, secret meetings were called. The Melbourne boys decided to leave their affairs in the hands of Happy Harry, a local comedian. He was given liberty to spend anything up to twenty pounds on a scheme of revenge. In the case of the Kangaroos it was decided by ballot that Bill would plan out something to stagger the Melbourne crowd. Meantime, armed neutrality ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... first, as Wood informs us, was written by Richard Leigh, educated at Queen's College, Oxford, where he entered in 1665, and was probably resident when this piece was there published. He was afterwards a player in the Duke's Company, but must be carefully distinguished from the celebrated comedian of the same name. It seems likely that he wrote also the second tract, which is a continuation of the first. Both are in a frothy, flippant style of raillery, of which the reader will find a specimen in the note.[21] The Cambridge Vindication seems to have been written by a different hand, though ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Pepys, he "eat cakes and other fine things." Another, not so pleasant, memory is associated with the Pope's Head. Two actors figured in the episode, James Quin and William Bowen, between whom, especially on the side of the latter, strong professional jealousy existed. Bowen, a low comedian of "some talent and more conceit," taunted Quin with being tame in a certain role, and Quin retorted in kind, declaring that Bowen's impersonation of a character in "The Libertine" was much inferior to that of another actor. Bowen ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... (1684-1738), the famous Drury Lane comedian, was so illiterate that he could not have written the Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wit's Vade-Mecum that appeared the year after his death. It was often reprinted and probably contained more or less of Miller's ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of all things natural, and his revengeful, theatric music is in the guise of a woman. The art nears its end; its spiritual suicide is at hand. Stannum lifted his gaze. Surely he recognized that little dominating figure directing the orchestra. Was it the tragic-comedian Richard Wagner? Were those his ardent, mocking eyes fading in the mist? A fat cowled monk marches stealthily after Wagner. He shades his eyes from the fierce rays of the noonday sun; more grateful to him are moon-rays and the reflected light of lonely pools. He is the Arch-Hypocrite of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... men who have the right to judge are not as other judgments. According to Mr. Yeats "the finest comedian of his kind on the English-speaking stage" is not Mr. George Alexander, but Mr. William Fay! And who, outside Dublin, has ever heard of Mr. J.M. Synge, author of "The Playboy of the Western World?" For myself, I have ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... managed to go on. They weren't afraid, ever, in yon days, to speak their minds in the gallery—they'd soon let ye know if they'd had enough of ye and yer turn. I was discouraged by that week in old Glasgow. I was sure they'd had enough of me, and that the career of Harry Lauder as a comedian was about to ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... finished for her. "I used to. I've got over that. Now all I ask is to get a laugh when I kick the comedian's hat off ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... Jordan—which moves through the chambers of the memory across almost any old and storied stage. The thought is endless in its suggestion, and fascinating in its charm. How often in the chimney-corner of life shall we—whose privilege it has been to rejoice in the works of this great comedian, and whose happiness it is to cluster around him to-night in love and admiration—conjure up and muse upon his stately figure as we have seen it in the group of Sir Peter and Sir Robert, of Jaques and Wolsey, and Elmore! The ruddy ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... him Wallace?" mused Herman, like a comedian. "Hush! And then came the hand-shaking, and then the minister came home with us because father asked him to, and stayed ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... man! In vain you may know him to the core—know him a liar, a comedian—he manages always to get the better of you with his stories. My account, mine!—mine! I was so affected by the thought that my legs seemed to give way beneath me as I ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... actor, born in London; ran away from home and joined the stage, rose to the front rank both as comedian and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... among nobles and princes, came strength to hold a position in society that is best illustrated by the following anecdote. Raphael Smith, the engraver, had employed him for years on works from which he engraved, and by which he made large sums of money. He called one day with Bannister the comedian to look at a picture which was upon the easel. Smith was satisfied with the artist's progress, and said, "I shall now proceed on my morning ride." "Stay a moment," said Morland, laying down his brush, "and I will go with you." "Morland," answered the other, in an emphatic tone, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of Shakespeare's Richard III. for the first time. As long as Kemp lived, he conferred a like service on many of Shakespeare's comic characters; and he had recently proved his worth as a Shakespearean comedian by his original rendering of the part of Peter, the Nurse's graceless attendant, in Romeo and Juliet. Thus stoutly backed, Shakespeare appeared for the first time in the royal presence-chamber of Greenwich Palace on the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... quiet the agitation of the spectators, and at the same time prevent a reaction of misery when the excitement was over. Tragedies deep and dire were the chief favourites. Comedy brought with it too great a contrast to the inner despair: when such were attempted, it was not unfrequent for a comedian, in the midst of the laughter occasioned by his disporportioned buffoonery, to find a word or thought in his part that jarred with his own sense of wretchedness, and burst from mimic merriment into sobs and tears, while the spectators, seized with irresistible sympathy, wept, and the pantomimic ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... for breath (very naturally, the victor having placed his foot upon his breast) the saint somewhat awkwardly expressed sorrow for his deed and sighed for a doctor. There was a burst of laughter and applause as Ralph the bowyer, the comedian of the company, came limping in, got up in the character of an old quack who had physicked half the spectators. He bled and bandaged and salved and dosed the fallen warrior, keeping up a running fire of remarks the while, until the wounded man arose ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the comedian who is compelled to take himself seriously and make the most of it, or a tart plum that concludes in a ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... elsewhere, but in the Law Courts Playhouse CHARLES DARLING has been lately at his very best. Dropping in there last week, during the performance of a new farce, entitled Romney's Rum 'Un, I was again fascinated by the inexhaustible wit and allusive badinage of this great little comedian, beside whose ready gagging GEORGE GRAVES himself is inarticulate. Had not GEORGE ROBEY invented for application to himself the descriptive phrase, "The Prime Minister of Mirth," it should be at once affixed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... if my conjectures are correct she is strangely astute. At heart she is, perhaps, quite simply a crazy romantic or a comedian. It amuses her to manufacture little adventures, to throw tantalizing obstacles in the way of the realization of a vulgar desire. And Chantelouve? He is probably aware of his wife's goings on, which perhaps facilitate his career. Otherwise, how could she arrange to come here at nine ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Of course the mere chopping up of unrhythmic prose into capitalized lines without glow, without emotion, is not poetry, any more than the blank verse of the second-rate nineteenth-century "poetic drama," which old Joe Crowell, comedian, described as "good, honest prose set up hind-side foremost." We may eliminate that from the discussion once and for all. But the genuine new poets, who know what they are about, and doubtless why they are about it, I regard ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... but the times I like the best Are not the splendid parties with the women gaily dressed, And the music tuned for dancing and the laughter of the throng, With a paid comedian's antics or a hired musician's song, But the quiet times of friendship, with the chuckles and the grin, And the circle at the fireside when a few good ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... So he made a big row; became socialist, agitator, exile. He dragged into his music and the discussion of it, art, politics, literature, philosophy, and religion. It is a well-known fact that this humbugging comedian had written the Ring of the Nibelungs before he absorbed the Schopenhauerian doctrines, and then altered the entire scheme so as to ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... High Life above Stairs, by Garrick. He made King the comedian a present of this farce, and it was acted for the first time on his benefit-a little earlier in the month. Murphy's Garrick, pp. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... impression which the "Divine Comedy" has made upon me, and which in the "Paradise" becomes to my mind a "divine comedy" in the literal sense of the word, in which I do not care to take part, either as a comedian or as a spectator. The misleading problem in these questions is always How to introduce into this terrible world, with an empty nothing beyond it, a God Who converts the enormous sufferings of existence ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... too much fatigued with liquor to annoy him. When awake and sober, her temper was little better, and her tormenting tongue seemed to have been hung in the middle, so that it might run at both ends. It is related of Foote, the comedian, that when once suffering from the tongue of a shrew, he replied—"I have heard of Tartars, and Brimstones, madam; and by Jove you are the cream of the one, and the flour of the other." And next to the Grecian lady above mentioned, the Tartar who bearded Foote, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... the Mississippi steamboats, an enchanting game, called Poker, is played with a delirium of excitement, whose intensity can only be imagined by realizing that famous bout at "catch him who can," which took place at the horticultural fete immortalized by Mr Samuel Foote, comedian, at which was present the great Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, the festivities continuing till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... flatly that he would do well to practise and practise a great deal. Trampy posed as a victim of jealousy, spoke of showing them—all of them, if once he put his back to it!—a new turn, a discovery that would show what he was made of! Meanwhile he had a new idea, as a sketch comedian, with a make-up of his own invention, the face painted white on one side and red on the other, with wrinkles cunningly drawn—a laughing Johnny and a crying Johnny, two men in one. He pestered Lily with his plans, made her cut out dresses for him, came back from the old-clothes ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... of St. Clare The Red Lily Mother of Pearl The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard The Garden of Epicurus Thais The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche Joan of Arc. Two volumes. $8 net per set. Postage extra. The Comedian's Tragedy The Amethyst Ring M. Bergeret in Paris The Lettered Life Pierre Noziere The White Stone Penguin Island The Opinions of Jerome Coignard Jocasta and the Famished Cat The Aspirations of Jean Servien The Elm Tree on the Mall My Friend's ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... salon. Moliere himself disclaims all intention of attacking the true precieuse; but the world is not given to fine discrimination, and the true suffers from the blow aimed at the false. This brilliant comedian, whose manners were not of the choicest, was more at home in the lax and epicurean world of Ninon and Mme. de la Sabliere—a world which naturally did not find the decorum of the precieuses at all to its taste; the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... doubt that this Pantaloon had come from the Italian theatre, after what we have already said? Does not this confirm the conjecture, that there existed an intercourse between the Italian theatre and our own? Further, Tarleton, the comedian, celebrated for his "Extemporal wit," was the writer or inventor of one of these "Platts." Stow records of one of our actors that "he had a quick, delicate, refined Extemporal wit." And Howes, the continuator of Stow's Chronicles of another, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... costume that would seem to have been worn by the dwarfs attached to the court of Spain. In addition to the little company of dwarfs there were buffoons at the court, and of these Velazquez painted Pablillos, who is known as "the comedian," and Don Juan of Austria, whose portrait is a triumph of harmony in colour, the pink of mantle and stockings contrasting admirably with black doublet ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... Their Children Epitaphs for Two Players I. Edwin Booth II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress Two Old Crows The Drunkard's Funeral The Raft The Ghosts of the Buffaloes The Broncho that Would Not Be Broken The Prairie Battlements The Flower of Mending Alone in the Wind, on ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... which seem trash to other amateurs. For example, to a student of Moliere, it is a happy chance to come across "La Carte du Royaume des Pretieuses"—(The map of the kingdom of the "Precieuses")—written the year before the comedian brought out his famous play "Les Precieuses Ridicules." This geographical tract appeared in the very "Recueil des Pieces Choisies," whose authors Magdelon, in the play, was expecting to entertain, when Mascarille made his appearance. There is a faculty ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... parts of his talk were more easily retained. In mere banter, good-humored give-and-take, that froth and bubble of conversational intercourse, he was delightful. His hostess, the wife of a well-known comedian, apologized to him for having to move him out of the large guest-chamber into another one, smaller and higher up,—this because of an unexpected accession of visitors. He replied that it did not incommode him; and as for being up another flight of stairs, 'it was a ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... my speech upon another; for besides that it is excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to learn it."—"Whence come you, sir?" said Olivia. "I can say little more than I have studied," replied Viola; "and that question is out of my part."—"Are you a comedian?" said Olivia. "No," replied Viola; "and yet I am not that which I play;" meaning that she, being a woman, feigned herself to be a man. And again she asked Olivia if she were the lady of the house. Olivia said she was; and then Viola, having more curiosity to see her rival's ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... force there?" queried the comedian; "for if there be you can hand me my divvy right now. Tie the Gem up to the first rock we come to and put me ashore. No Newport ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... orchestra. theatrical costume, theatrical properties. movie studio, back lot, on location. part, role, character, dramatis personae [Lat.]; repertoire. actor, thespian, player; method actor; stage player, strolling player; stager, performer; 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^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hunted about and made inquiries of friends who were supposed to know, and finally submitted to the company a certain screaming farce, entitled, After You! with—so the description informed him—two funny old gentlemen, one low comedian, two funny old ladies, and one maid-of- all-work, besides a few walking gentlemen and others. It sounded promising, and a perusal of the piece showed that it was very amusing. I cannot describe it, but the complications were magnificent; the two old gentlemen, one very irascible the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... celebration of Founder's Day he took the part of Fluellen in a scene from Henry V, and sustained a very different role, that of Karl der Sieberite, in a scene from Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans. Reviewing the performances, The Alleynian said of the former: "In this piece Jones was the comedian. He was clumsy and not quite at home on the boards, but ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... 'Avare,' after the miser has blown out a candle twice and finally pocketed it, the custom is for his servant to sneak behind him and to light the candle once again as it sticks out of his coat. Regnier, the cultivated and brilliant comedian (whose pupil M. Coquelin was in his 'prentice-days), published a text of Moliere's most powerful play, which he called 'Le Tartuffe des Comediens' because he had recorded in it all this traditional business. M. Coquelin has told me that he hopes to be able some ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... opinion. Such an individual could not but enlist the feelings of Mr. Cooper. I hardly know whether I have ever seen Mr. Cooper manifest as much enthusiasm with any other person when occasion was felicitous, the subject of interest, and the comedian in his happy vein. Dunlap, were he speaking, might tell you of his [Cooper's] gratuities to the unfortunate playwright and the dramatic performer." In 1832 William Dunlap's "History of the American Theatre" ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... grotesquely inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious reflective characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are his own appetites and instincts and humors. Richard III, too, is delightful as the whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain who smothers babies and offs with people's heads, we are revolted at the imposture and repudiate the changeling. Faulconbridge, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... needn't be afraid of telling me what you think. There's only one person in the world who doesn't realise that Mrs. Cream can't act and never will be able to act ... and that's poor old Cream himself. He's as good a comedian as there is in the world—that little man: the essence of Cockney wit; and he does not know how good he is. He thinks that she is much better than he can ever hope to be, and she thinks so, too; but if it were not for him, MacDermott, she wouldn't get thirty shillings a ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... get my 'Narcissis' performed at the Italian theatre, I had, by the bad performance in French of the actors, become disgusted with it, and should rather have had my piece received at the French theatre than by them. I mentioned this to La None, the comedian, with whom I had become acquainted, and who, as everybody knows, was a man of merit and an author. He was pleased with the piece, and promised to get it performed without suffering the name of the author to be known; and in the meantime procured ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... are begun; I think, not decisively liked or condemned yet: their success is certainly not rapid, though Pertici is excessively admired. Garrick says he is the best comedian he ever saw: but the women are execrable, not a pleasing note amongst them. Lord Middlesex has stood a trial with Monticelli for arrears of salary, in Westminster-hall, and even let his own handwriting be proved against him! You may imagine he was cast. Hume Campbell, lord Marchmont's brother, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... upon those immeasurably beneath him. For him, a Prussian nobleman, to be spoken to in this way by one of a lower sphere was bad enough, but when that one was of the very lowest of spheres, an American, it was acute pain. He looked upon Edestone as a low comedian rather than as a gentleman in the hands of a chivalrous enemy, which the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Vou was a comedian. The season had ended, crowned with success—perhaps out of proportion to the gold pieces he had amassed—he wished to return to his country otherwise than as a corpse, for Chinamen always like to get buried at home and there are special steamers who carry ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... and hearty man of middle age, rather heavy-set, fresh-faced and clean-shaven, and with very bright blue eyes—evidently a man with a good digestion and a comfortable conscience. Had I met him on Broadway, I should have taken him for a ripe and finished comedian. There was about him an air which somehow reminded me of Joseph Jefferson—perhaps it was his bright blue eyes. It may have been this very appearance of bluff sincerity and honest downrightness which accounted for ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Before Farrar had a stage arranged to suit him and his camera ready, a dozen members of the company drifted in with a casual manner of having arrived accidentally. Fleming Lennox, leading man, appeared with Cliff Manderson, chief comedian for the Lunar border company. Baldy Cummings, the property man, strolled leisurely in to look over some costumes. But Steve observed ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... time, and owing to the instigation of Essex, that Tarleton, the comedian, laid himself open to banishment from Court for calling out, while Raleigh was playing cards with Elizabeth, 'See how the Knave commands the Queen!' Elizabeth supported her old favourite, but there is no doubt that these attacks made their ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... mar the illusion by stepping out of the frame. Dowton was the first actor who, like Manfred's ancestor in the Castle of Otranto, took the liberty of abandoning the canon. "Don't tell me of frames and pictures," ejaculated the testy comedian; "if I can't be heard by the audience in the frame, I'll walk out of it!" The proscenium has since been new-modelled, and the actors thereby brought nearer ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... with that tact—that measure, that distinctness of tone, of intention, and reach—which made del Signor Giulio Mazarini the first comedian in the world. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of a popular comedian, and said, "Oh, she's all right; if they were all like her there'd be very ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... the mere prospect of separation, he forthwith was driven to ask her for her hand, and was accepted—on probation, thus departing in leading strings. Hawkes, melancholy as of old, drifted into a comic part in a "variety show," acquiring new laurels as a dry comedian of the old school. But he continued to live alone in the world, mournfully ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the spirit of the liberal comedian, smiled many times remembering these things. Then she sighed, for she realized that her ability to see these whimsicalities meant that she and her mother were, after all, creatures of diverse ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Comedian? Vio. No my profound heart: and yet (by the verie phangs of malice, I sweare) I am not that I play. Are you the Ladie of the house? Ol. If I do not ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... indulged in subdued laughter. "They are always like comic operas. I find myself looking around every moment for the merry villagers so happy and so gay (at fifteen dollars the week), the eternal innkeeper and the perennial soubrette his daughter, the low comedian and the self-conscious tenor. Heigho! and not a soul in Bleiberg knows me, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... humorist, the novelist, or the playwright. If the fictionist of whatever sort had succeeded in identifying himself with the scientist, he must leave the enjoyment of divine honors to the pianist, the farce-comedian, the portrait-painter, the emotional actor, and the architect, who still deigned ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... must have believed in the absolute value of conventional signs. As to the grossness of the trap into which he fell, the explanation must be that two sentiments of such absorbing magnitude cannot exist simultaneously in one heart. The danger of that other and unconscious comedian robbed him of his vision, of his perspicacity, of his judgment. Indeed, it did at first rob him of his self-possession. But he regained that through the necessity—as it appeared to him imperiously—to do something at ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... further explanation, added that she adored him more than ever. If she were to be believed, the comedian was now definitely classed amongst "the leading celebrities of the age." And it was not such or such a personage that he represented, but the very genius of France, the People. He had "the humanitarian spirit; he understood the priesthood of Art." Frederick, in order ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the poor comedian was afterward fortunate enough to obtain an interest in a theatrical enterprise, from which he realized a fortune of one hundred thousand francs in less than ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... sublime to the ridiculous, it is not even a step from the absurd to the ludicrous and amusing. The professional wit or joker is never so richly amusing as the man who is utterly unconscious that he is in the least funny, while heroically in earnest. The professed comedian never furnishes so much amusement as the would-be heroic tragedian, who, like the Count Joannes, furnishes uproarious ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... but it has the eye of a hawk for affectation. It is called "a boy." And Gerard was but a boy still in some things; swift to see, and to loath, affectation. So Denys sat casting sheep's eyes, and Gerard daggers, at one comedian. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... appears to have retired from the stage. Dame Mary Slingsby, widow, from St. Mary's parish, was buried in old St. Pancras graveyard, 1 March, 1694. Careless historians and critics even now continually confuse Mrs. Mary Lee, Lady Slingsby, with Mrs. Elizabeth Leigh, the wife of the celebrated comedian, Antony Leigh. The two actresses must be carefully distinguished. Geneste curiously enough gives a very incomplete list of Lady Slingsby's roles, a selection only, as he allows; he makes several bad mistakes as to dates, and entirely ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... much truth and fidelity, those unacquainted with the province or its inhabitants see merely the abstract idea, the beau ideal of a Yorkshireman. But to those who are intimate with both, the action and manner of the comedian almost necessarily recall the idea of some individual native (altogether unknown probably to the performer) to whom his exterior and manners bear a casual resemblance. We are therefore on the whole inclined ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... wreath of laurel. He was pleased with his idea of crowning the dead poet with this; and attempted, notwithstanding Philip's disapproving silence, to fix it on the bald head; but the wreath fitted grotesquely. It looked like the brim of a hat worn by a low comedian in a music-hall. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... ever examine a goat's expression of face? For utter asininity a donkey cannot approach him. Nothing can, except, perhaps, an Irish farce-comedian. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... and was proceeding with John Kemble in the Stranger, when he was interrupted by the King, who, in the most affable manner, observed that his general imitations were excellent, and such as no one who had ever seen the characters could fail to recognise; but he thought the comedian's portrait of John Kemble somewhat too boisterous.—"He is an old friend, and I might add, tutor of mine," observed his Majesty: "when I was Prince of Wales he often favoured me with his company. I will give ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... another mean trick played on a comedian a short time ago. In one of the plays he comes into a room as a tramp, and asks for something to drink. There is nothing to drink, and he asks if he may drink the kerosene in the lamp, which is on the table ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... him he ought to come along, but His Highness said he wasn't going to land looking like a tramp comedian." ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... In June 1663 he made an attempt to upset Clarendon's management of the House of Commons, but his intrigue was exposed to the parliament by Charles, and Bristol was obliged to attend the House to exonerate himself, when he confessed that he had "taken the liberty of enlarging," and his "comedian-like speech" excited general amusement. Exasperated by these failures, in a violent scene with the king early in July, he broke out into fierce and disrespectful reproaches, ending with a threat that unless Charles granted his requests ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... all these matters well in train,—Salzburgers under way, Crown-Prince betrothed according to his Majesty's and the Kaiser's (not to her Majesty's, and high-flying little George of England my Brother the Comedian's) mind and will,—begins to think seriously of another enterprise, half business, half pleasure, which has been hovering in his mind for some time. "Visit to my Daughter at Baireuth," he calls it publicly; but it means intrinsically Excursion into Bohmen, to have a word with the Kaiser, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... blesses—even those who are quite well—hopped into bed with their clothes on, pulled the covers up to their chins and with a wet compress on their heads, looked as ill as possible. It was comical to see; one can be a soldier and comedian at the same time—and even the dear Sisters enjoyed it. But I was paralyzed with fear. They had not thought of another side of the question to which the very impudence of ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... and he turned to his son and said: "O God, I am dying! speak to them Charles," and the audience in sympathy cried, "Take him off! take him off!" and he was carried away to die. Poor Edmund Kean! When Schiller, the famous comedian, was tormented with toothache, some one offered to draw the tooth. "No," said he, "but on the 10th of June, when the house closes, you may draw the tooth, for then I shall have nothing to eat with it." The impersonation of character is often the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... when he opened the door did nothing to soothe him. The floor was a sea of clothes. There were coats on the chairs, trousers on the bed, shirts on the bookshelf. And in the middle of his welter stood Archie, with a man who, to Mr. Brewster's heated eye, looked like a tramp comedian out of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the audience. He had learned it afterwards from the demeanour and the speech far from apathetic of the manager and leader of the troupe. They were a company of six, Les Merveilleux, five jugglers, plate spinners, eccentric musicians, ventriloquists, and one low comedian. Lackaday was the low comedian, his business to repeat in burlesque most of the performance of his fellow artists. It was his first engagement, outside the Cirque Rocambeau, his first day with the troupe. Everything had gone badly. His enormous lean ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And you were always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you hadn't been so smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... comedian," added Colonel Meadows, his eyes sparkling with the humor of the situation. "Never ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... of sufficient interest wholly to distract his mind, and during the performance of a very tragic comedian, Soames found his thoughts wandering far from the stage. His seat was at the extreme end of the back row, and, quite unintentionally, he began to listen to the conversation of two men, who, standing just inside the entrance ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... of this session, lord Mohun was indicted and tried by the peers in Westminster-hall, as an accomplice in the murder of one Montford a celebrated comedian, the marquis of Carmarthen acting as lord-steward upon this occasion. The judges having been consulted, the peers proceeded to give their judgments seriatim, and Mohun was acquitted by a great majority. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... rhyme, which can turn man's utterance to the speech of gods; rhyme, the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre, became in Robert Browning's hands a grotesque, misshapen thing, which at times made him masquerade in poetry as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often with his tongue in his cheek. There are moments when he wounds us by monstrous music. Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the strings of his lute, he breaks them, and they snap in discord, and no Athenian tettix, making melody from tremulous wings, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... own hand, Mrs Fyne," I said. "I presume she meant to get away. That girl is no comedian—if I ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Johnson's character is one which has never, oddly enough, been put upon the stage. There was in his nature one of the unconscious and even agreeable contradictions loved by the true comedian. . . . I mean a strenuous and sincere belief in convention, combined with a huge natural inaptitude ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... Though he travelled into several countries, he always lived in the same poverty, mortification, and recollection. In a certain town, commiserating the spiritual blindness of an idolater, who was also a comedian, he sold himself to him for twenty pieces of money. His only sustenance in this servitude was bread and water. He acquitted himself at the same time of every duty belonging to his condition with the utmost diligence and fidelity, joining with his labor assiduous prayer and meditation. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... from the depths of his subjective moral consciousness,' whereas the Figaro of a Southern European is the thing itself—like Charles Mathews playing the part of Charles Mathews, or like the Greek comedian's imitation of a pig's voice, by pinching a veritable pork-let, which he bore concealed within ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the skilful comedian. "Baldy he bought 'em. And on the road to her cabin there at the Taylors' he got thinkin' they might be too big, and he got studyin' what to do. And he fixed up to tell her about his not bein' sure of the size, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... the room except Duchemin, his figure was remarkably thin, yet not ill-proportioned. Neither was Mr. Monk ill at ease or ungraceful in his actions. Clothed in that extravagantly correct costume—correct, at least, for a drawing-room, if never for motoring—he had all the appearance of a comedian fresh from the hands of his dresser. One naturally expected of him mere grotesqueries—and found simply the courteous demeanour of a gentleman of the world. So much for externals. But what more? Nature herself had cast Mr. Monk in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... was a low comedian dear to the gallery at Drury Lane as 'Pinkey,' very popular also as a Booth Manager at Bartholomew Fair. Though a sour critic described him as 'the Flower of Bartholomew Fair and the Idol of the Rabble; a Fellow that overdoes everything, and spoils many a Part with his own Stuff,' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... am aware that the traditional hero is always armed, and that Hotchkiss as the low comedian should have had a revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hotchkiss carried the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong for me; I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... moment when a man consents to play the part which du Tillet had allotted to Roguin, he develops the talents of a comedian; he has the eye of a lynx and the penetration of a seer; he magnetizes his dupe. The notary had seen Birotteau some time before Birotteau had caught sight of him; when the perfumer did see him, Roguin held out his ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... picture painted in three of his characters, died in 1681, leaving four comedies and an alteration of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. He was a handsome man: first dancing-master, then quarter-master, then an admired comedian. Henley would hardly have used a blank in referring to a well-known writer who died thirty years before. There was another John Lacy advertising in the Post Boy, Aug. 3, 1714, The Steeleids, or the Trial of Wits, a Poem in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the words o f her song with grimaces and appropriate action. Tavernake sat down with a barely-smothered groan. He was beginning to realize the tragedy upon which he had stumbled. A comic singer followed, who in a dress suit several sizes too large for him gave an imitation of a popular Irish comedian. Then the curtain went up and the professor was seen, standing in front of the curtain and bowing solemnly to a somewhat unresponsive audience. A minute later Beatrice came quietly in and sat by his side. There was nothing new about ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Caldwell was an Englishman, and by profession a comedian. It was he who first brought a theatrical company to the West. He had built the first theatres in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans, and first created a taste for theatricals in the great West. Possessing fine natural abilities, and wonderful enterprise, he pushed his ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... had come across scores of such men, dapper little fellows, wizened of face yet curiously youthful in manner; but they, each and all, were labeled "low comedian." Certainly, a rare intelligence gleamed from this man's eyes, but that is an attribute not often lacking in humorists who command high salaries because of their facility in laughter-making. This man, too, had the wide, thin-lipped, mobile mouth of the ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... as the Comedian says, So many Men, so many Minds, and every Man has his own Way; yet no Body can make me believe, there is more Variety in Mens Dispositions, than there is in their Palates: So that you can scarce find two that love the same Things. I have seen a great ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... he really wants to be a shipbuilder," Roger said. "He likes Tom Arthurs, and he wants to be what Arthurs is. That's all. If Arthurs were a comedian, Ninian would want to be ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... lovely as she is said to be?" said Manutoli, as they drove out beyond the crumbling and ivy-grown brick wall, which had helped to repel the attack of Odoacer the Goth; but which had, some thirteen hundred years ago, failed to keep out the mischief brought into the city by the comedian Empress Theodora, whose beauty had promoted her from the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and palinode), by Nathaniel Field (first one of the little eyasses who competed with regular actors, and then himself an actor and playwright); Green's "Tu Quoque" or The City Gallant, attributed to the actor Cook, and deriving its odd first title from a well-known comedian of the time, and the catchword which he had to utter in the play itself; The Hog hath Lost his Pearl, a play on the name of a usurer whose daughter is married against his will, by Taylor; The Heir and The Old Couple, by Thomas ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... a facetious comedian and song-writer, favoured by Charles II. Known for his collection of sonnets, Pills to Purge ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... afternoon, as if condescending to do it a favour. When I remembered how I had meant to linger here week after week, I felt that I was paying a big price for my share of the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, making a knock-about comedian of myself, rushing through halls of history followed by a procession of tourists, as a comet tears past the best worth seeing stars, obediently followed by its tail. Still, I had Brigit and Monny as bright spots in the tail; ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... seriousness with which men treat them, and they can seldom resist the buffoon who makes them laugh. Their sense of humour is crude. Diana of Ephesus is always prepared to fling prudence to the winds for the red-nosed comedian who sits on his hat. I realised that Captain Butler had charm. If I had not known the tragic story of the shipwreck I should have thought he had never had a care in ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... times than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each incarnation, and fused it into his constitution. In the course of his evolutionary promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel, a royalist, a democrat, a practicer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a bear came from the thicket, not the growl of an ordinary black bear, comedian of the forest, but the angry rumble of some great ursine beast of which the black bear was only a dwarf cousin. Then he moved swiftly to another ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... asked for a bun? People asked for buns every day—people in railway refreshment rooms, in aerated bread shops. Where was the joke? A month later I found myself by chance occupying the seat just behind him at the pantomime. The low comedian was bathing a baby, and tears of merriment were rolling down his cheeks. To me the whole business seemed painful and revolting. We were being asked to find delight in the spectacle of a father—scouring down an infant of tender years ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... tradition, in itself probable, is that he wrote poetry when a very young man). Thirty-two epigrams in the Anthology are ascribed, some doubtfully, to one Plato or another; a few of obviously late date to a somewhat mythical PLATO JUNIOR ({o Neoteros}), and one to PLATO THE COMEDIAN (fl. 428-389), the contemporary and rival of Aristophanes. In a note to i. 5 in this selection something is said as to the authenticity of the epigrams ascribed to the great Plato [omitted in this text—JB.] He was included in the /Garland/ of Meleager, who speaks, ll. 47-8, of "the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... born in London, April 18, 1817. His grandfather was a well-known comedian. His education was received in a very desultory manner. He was at school for a time in Jersey, and also in Brittany, where he acquired a thorough command of French. Later he attended a famous school in Greenwich, kept by a Dr. Burney. After leaving school ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... truly an incomparable comedian, for his last observation was made in a tone of remarkable candor, just tinged with sufficient irony to show that he felt he had nothing to ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... to say that he did not enjoy a humorous, an ironic, a witty, or an epigrammatic story or saying. He enjoyed such things immensely and would laugh heartily at them. But he had no use for a "droll," as I must fully admit I have. I can thoroughly enjoy the long-toed comedian, and feel quite sure that if time and opportunity could combine to let me see once a week a film figuring Charlie Chaplin I should be transported with delight. Good clowning, or even bad clowning, or what people call the appalling, or melancholy, or ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... theme, had he been the originator of it. Certainly we should, as the case stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irving given it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our master comedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annul that primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we must admit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first projector of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... and the place doesn't become inconveniently hot. The sweet singer with the poetic name of HERBERT CAMPBELL is very funny; which indeed he would be, even if he never opened his mouth. Such a low comedian's "mug!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... immortality." The very entertaining author whom we have quoted above, we must here, somewhat out of place, observe, has, with Mr Fuseli, mistaken the character of Hogarth's works. He says—"Hogarth has painted comedy!" and what is very strange, he seems to rank him as a comedian with "Pope, Young and Crabbe"—the last, the most tragic in his pathos of any writer. The invention in the Cartoons comes next under Mr Fuseli's observation. "In whatever light we consider their invention, as parts of one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... DE WALDEN is starting a movement with the admirable object of reinvigorating the drama in Wales by forming a travelling troupe of first-rate actors. It is rumoured that an option has already been obtained on a native comedian who is at present a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... smash, all right!" exclaimed Carl Switzer, the comedian of the company. "I pelief ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... ironical incongruity. The garments seemed to have never fitted the wearer, but to have been assumed in ghastly jocularity,—a boot half off the swollen foot, a ripped waistcoat thrown over the shoulder, were like the properties of some low comedian. At first the body appeared to be headless; but as Brice cleared away the debris and lifted it, he saw with horror that the head was twisted under the shoulder, and swung helplessly from the dislocated neck. But that horror gave way to ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... the theatre, was an ex-comedian, a wideawake, genial fellow, who had got rid of his illusions and nourished no exaggerated hopes. He loved peace, books and women. Nanteuil had every reason to speak well of Pradel, and she referred to him without any feeling of ill will, and ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... himself in a growling soliloquy that his heart is consumed with envy and hate because he is not captain. The captain, one Issachar, comes in, a superbly handsome young fellow, named Mario, to my thinking the first comedian in Spain, dressed in a flashy suit of leopard hides, and announces the arrival of a stranger. Enters Demas, who says he hates the world and would fain drink its foul blood. He is made politely welcome. No! he will be captain or nothing. Issachar laughs ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... domestic animals for wild beasts, and his reverend friend as their protector. His slaughter of these purely imaginary enemies is accompanied by a self-approving wit, which only exhales when, as Mephisto says, the Parson and Comedian are happily combined, and inspire each other. But, alas! neither prayers nor laughter can settle the industrial and political difficulties of our day. They may do, and are doing, much to prevent such settlement, which must come ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more object to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian, who should represent him to the life, before one of the police offices. We only consider the number of pleasant lights in which he puts certain foibles (the more pleasant as they are opposed to the received rules and necessary restraints of society) and do not trouble ourselves ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... taking a small chair and sitting on it astride, close to Claude's bed. An easy, fraternal air was maintained by the effect of the pipe still hanging by its curved stem from the corner of his mouth. He began to think highly of himself as a comedian. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... gentlemen of color, were the favorites. Pianos of execrable tone, played by youths with defective complexions, or by machinery, were a close second. Before one place, a crowd blocked the sidewalk; and there Ben stopped. A vaudeville performance was going on within—an invisible dialect comedian doing a German stunt to the accompaniment of wooden clogs and disarranged verbs. A barker in front, coatless, his collar loosened, a black string tie dangling over an unclean shirt front, was temporarily taking a much-needed rest. An electric sign ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... bulk formed a capital screen. In spite of himself, he was impressed. The stage at close quarters always thrilled him. He recognized celebrities. The fat man in the brown suit was Walter Jelliffe, the comedian and star of the company. He stared keenly at him through the spectacles. Others of the famous were scattered about. He saw Alice. She was talking to a man with a face like a hatchet, and smiling, too, as ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... great matinee favorite made his debut on a generous Friday evening singing coon songs of his own composition. A tragedian famous on two continents and an island first attracted attention by an amateur impersonation of a newly landed Scandinavian peasant girl. One Broadway comedian that turns 'em away got a booking on a Friday night by reciting (seriously) the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... outrageously garbed and involved in the mental abstraction of his philosophical race. One hand was occupied with the manipulation of a pipe, as markedly Teutonic as its owner; the other grasped a carpet-bag that would have ensured an opening laugh to any low comedian. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... in other words, Exit and Entrance; but surely this could not be so. If so many things were forbidden, a man in Germany would be privileged only to die—and probably not that, unless he died according to a given formula; and certainly no human being with the possible exception of the comedian who used to work the revolving-door trick in Hanlon's Fantasma, could go out of and come into a place so often without getting dizzy in the head. No —the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... good-looking man, some twelve or fifteen years older than his wife; his real vocation was to be a low comedian; this showed itself on my first introduction to him. He informally ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... appeared in Nos. 20 and 22: "Mr. Cave Underhill, the famous comedian in the reigns of Charles II., King James II., King William and Queen Mary, and her present Majesty Queen Anne; but now not able to perform so often as heretofore in the playhouse, and having had losses to the value of near L2500, is to have the tragedy of 'Hamlet' acted for his ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... A feast of colour to delight the eye. Mr. Albert de Lauributt has surpassed himself.... Delightfully catchy music.... The audience laughed continuously.... Mr. Ponk, the new comedian from America, was a triumphant success.... Ravishing Miss Rosie Romeo was more ravishing than ever... ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... face," wrote Joe Jefferson, "that told their meaning before he spoke, a voice that seemed to come from the heart itself, penetrating—but melodious." He was slender, emaciated, sensitive,—and full of lively response to things. Like all of the Jeffersons, he was a born comedian, and critics concede that W. E. Burton feared his rivalry. Between Burke and his half-brother, there was a profound attraction; they had "barn stormed" together, and through Burke's consideration it was that Joe was first encouraged and furthered in Philadelphia. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... regular night of it. You see, sir, I pointed out to him that this was a matter of the utmost urgency—not merely a question of finding an antidote, but also of distributing it methodically and broadcast. After it's been invented or made or procured, or whatever's got to be done, some comedian in the Quartermaster-General's show will insist on the result being packed up in receptacles warranted rot-proof against everything that the mind of man can conceive till the Day of Judgment—you know the absurd way those sort of people go on, sir—and all that will take ages, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... said the leading comedian, who had seized the nippers and was already hard at work. 'We bestow on him unanimously the order of the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... headlines and advertising columns. His mumbling manner, his expertness in bringing out distinctly a ridiculous or incongruous sentence, and his skill in selecting such sentences at a glance always drew attention and applause; he had the comedian's technique. ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... nothing of a husband who was a skillful farmer or a lucky fisherman; other talents are required to touch the hearts of nobles, and hers remained indifferent, insensible to the sighs of Kawelo. Nobles then, as to-day, regarded pleasure above all things; and a good comedian was worth more to them ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... secrets; exiling his daughter, not because she had lovers, but because she had other lovers than himself; exiling Ovid because of Livia, who in the end poisoned her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of speech, and coarse of manner—a hypocrite and a comedian in one—so guileful and yet so stupid that while a credulous moribund ordered the gods to be thanked that Augustus survived him, the people publicly applied to him an epithet which does not look ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... have been in 1848 that the famous comedian, William Farren, having realized a handsome fortune as an actor, essayed to lose a considerable portion of his wealth by becoming a manager. He succeeded in the last-named enterprise quite as completely as he had done ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... wayside, saying "come" to the sick, "tarry not" to the well, is sure of the old, and revels like a reaper in the harvest of the young. It breaks the plans and disorganizes the relations of life; and then, like a coarse comedian or a heartless satirist, compels those who survive to turn away from the memory of their dead, reorganize their lives and live on as though those who once lived with them and formed an intimate part of their daily experience ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... Forrest Booth, as often and erroneously written. Our actor, born in November, 1833, derived his middle name from Thomas Flyn, the English comedian, his father's contemporary and friend. Edwin was the chosen companion of his father in the latter's tours throughout the United States, and was regarded by the old actor with a strange mixture of repulsion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... class was stumped. His teacher soon began to take a delight in belaboring the class for a minute before turning to Jimmy for the answer. Heaven forgive him, Jimmy enjoyed it. He began to hold back slyly, like a comedian building up the tension before ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... in: 'Are you going to be a damned low vulgar comedian and tale of a trumpet up to the end, you Richmond? Don't think you'll gain anything by standing there as if you were jumping your trunk from a shark. Come, sir, you're in a gentleman's rooms; don't pitch your voice like a young jackanapes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Scaramouch, the first famous Italian Comedian, that being at Paris and in great Want, he bethought himself of constantly plying near the Door of a noted Perfumer in that City, and when any one came out who had been buying Snuff, never failed to desire a Taste of them: when he had by this Means got ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Garden. A hanger-on of the theatres, who frequented the "Globe," has left notes which Mr. Forster has admirably used, and which we now abridge without further apology. Grim old Macklin belonged to the club it is certain; and among the less obscure members was King, the comedian, the celebrated impersonator of Lord Ogleby. Hugh Kelly, another member, was a clever young Irishman, who had chambers near Goldsmith in the Temple. He had been a stay-maker's apprentice, who, turning law writer, and soon landing as a hack for the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... may be reasonably doubted, however, if vanity had not something to do with this—the vanity of appearing as a philosophical writer, and astonishing the friends who had considered him only as a good comedian. The volume was magnificently printed in quarto on fine paper, "for the author," in 1747. It is entitled, "The Character and Conduct of Cicero Considered, from the History of his Life by the Rev. Dr. Middleton; with occasional Essays and Observations upon ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the ex-Savoyard, GEORGE GROSSMITH, now entertaining "on his own hook"), doesn't seem to be a born Savoyard, non nascitur and non fit at present. Good he is, of course, but there's no spontaneity about him. However, for an eccentric comedian merely to do exactly what he is told, and nothing more, yet to do that, little or much, well, is a performance that would meet with Hamlet's approbation, and Mr. GILBERT'S. Mr. FRANK WYATT, as "the new boy" at the Savoy School, doesn't, as yet, seem quite happy; but it cannot be expected that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... to state that exhibitionism alone does not make a Cabinet Minister or a comedian. There are other motives from infancy, an important one being the desire for power. I recall that as a boy I delighted in following a drove of cattle and smiting the poor creatures hard with a cudgel. Freud would ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... Lord Chamberlain's men, who performed in the Globe, upon the Bankside; and his plays are replete with evidences of the influence upon him of the actors whom he had in charge. It is patent, for example, that the same comedian must have created Launce in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Launcelot Gobbo in the Merchant of Venice; the low comic hit of one production was bodily repeated in the next. It is almost as obvious that the parts of Mercutio and Gratiano ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... formerly of New York, became quite celebrated a few years since, as a comedian. He played several times in the old "Richmond Hill" Theatre, and quite successfully in Europe. Mr. Ulett was not well educated, and consequently, labored under considerable inconvenience in reading, frequently making grammatical blunders, as the writer noticed in a private rehearsal, in 1836, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... on the hopeless, impenetrable stupidity in the daylight faces of many of these very men, the solid mask under which Nature has concealed all this wealth of mother-wit. This very comedian is one to whom one might point, as he hoed lazily in a cotton-field, as a being the light of whose brain had utterly gone out; and this scene seems like coming by night upon some conclave of black beetles, and finding them engaged, with green-room and foot-lights, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... countenance that each time the artist looked up from his easel he saw a new man. "You have everybody's face but your own," said Gainsborough to Garrick, and dismissing the man he completed the picture from memory. This portrait and also pictures of General Honeywood, the Comedian Quin, Lady Grosvenor, the Duke of Argyle, besides several landscapes, were sent up to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard |
