"Comedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "You're the one that's supplyin' the comedy here. Now Heiney is serious. He'd do the trick in a minute if he had the nerve. He's got things on his mind, Heiney has. And what's the odds if they ain't so? Compared to what you've been fussin' about, they're——Here, Heiney, you tell the gentleman that tale of yours. Begin where you was a cook ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... comedy grew wearisome. The avantageur was sent off to bed, and Frommelt had to play a cancan, to which Gropphusen and Landsberg danced. Gropphusen was supple and agile, and, with his pale, handsome, rather worn face, looked a perfect Montmartre ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... note, but all I found was a postal order for four and sixpence. The whole incident struck me as so whimsical that I laughed until I was tired. You'll find there's so much tragedy in a doctor's life, my boy, that he would not be able to stand it if it were not for the strain of comedy which comes every now ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fictions that may be compared with them we may mention "The Voyage of St. Brendan," "The Vision of Albericus," and "St. Patrick's Purgatory," imaginary descriptions, like Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy," of the supposed abode of the dead. The narrative of Marbodius is one of the latest works dealing with this theme, but it is not ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... in love with the great actor one night in Romeo—that he had been induced by her father to come to the house and break the charm by feigning intoxication: some versions had it that he came disguised as a physician. A popular German comedy was written upon it, and still later Mr. Robertson dramatized it for the English stage, and produced a play in which we have lately had an opportunity of witnessing the fine acting of Mr. Sothern. Garrick was certainly fortunate among actors: he not only achieved high professional fame, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... where his colleagues were, he threw himself into a chair, and pointing to his livid face and mangled neck, demanded justice for the trap into which he had just been led. It was then that my grandfather, revelling in his rascally wit, went through a comedy scene of sublime audacity. He gravely reproached the notary with accusing him unjustly, and always addressing him kindly and with studied politeness, called the others to bear witness to his conduct, begging them to make allowances if his precarious position had forced him to give them such ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... sole of the thin leather of the upper still more minutely. As she gave no sign of ending the comedy, he said: ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... burst out laughing now that the threatened gravity of the situation resolved itself into a comedy of error. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... contributed by him to periodicals that he wished to acknowledge as his writing. The statement may be regarded as a challenge to his editors to produce something worthy; and I certainly consider that the "Gipsy" is superior to some of his fragments, and may be paired, as a comedy, with "The Monk ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... on the first night of the performance of the well-known Comedy of "Heads or Tails?" by the "Thespian Perambulators." Time, 7:50 P.M. A "brilliant and fashionable assemblage" is gradually filling the house. In the Stalls are many distinguished Amateurs of both Sexes, including Lady SURBITON, who has brought her husband and Mrs. GAGMORE (Lady SURBITON'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... remove every ground of mistake for the future, but that sometimes, to remind them of adventures past, comical blunders would happen, and the one Antipholus and the one Dromio be mistaken for the other, making altogether a pleasant and diverting Comedy of Errors. ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... clever, and at the same time so comical, that Desmond had much ado not to spoil his joke by a premature explosion of laughter. The burly seaman swarmed up the rope like a monkey, clasping it with his legs as he took each upward grip. But the comedy of his actions was provided by his hook. Having only one arm—an arm, it is true, with the biceps of a giant—he could not clutch the rope in the ordinary way. But at each successive spring he dug his hook into the side of the vessel, and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Cheshire, with some tale of having newly arrived from the Indies, bought an estate, and is now a flourishing country gentleman of good repute, and a Justice of the Peace into the bargain. Zounds, man! to see him on the bench, condemning some poor devil for stealing a dozen eggs, is as good as a comedy in ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... world was full of joy. "Heavens, how I can lie," she whispered softly, "and now we shall both have to lie. We both know about him; he thinks I don't know; and he doesn't know about me! It is a comedy. Oh, Victor, Victor, Victor!" ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... a Trage-Comedy, acted before the King, by the students of Christs-Church in Oxon; by that renowned wit, W. Strode the Songs were set by Mr. ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... man. "I really beg your pardon, Princess, but I thought we were talking of the comedy we were going to ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... course, used to this with singers in musical comedy, who make a point of turning the lyrics assigned to them into unintelligible patter. Perhaps in the present case we lost little by that, though there was one song (of which I actually heard the words) that seemed to me to contain the elements of a sound and consoling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... proceeded to make gave not a particle of hope to the expectant lover. Juana was amusing herself by cutting up his missive. But virtue and innocence sometimes imitate the clever proceedings inspired by jealousy to the Bartholos of comedy. Juana, without pens, ink, or paper, was replying by snip of scissors. Presently she refastened the note to the string; the officer drew it up, opened it, and read by the light of his lamp one word, carefully cut ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... letters, Restif de la Bretonne, whose unedifying novels the Parisians of 2440 would assuredly have rejected from their libraries, published in 1790 a heroic comedy representing how marriages would be arranged in "the year 2000," by which epoch he conceived that all social equalities would have disappeared in a fraternal society and twenty nations be allied to France under the wise supremacy of "our well-beloved monarch Louis Francois XXII." ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... never really flourishing at Rome, p. 23. Comedy, represented by Mime and Atellan farce, p. 24. Legitimate comedy nearly extinct, p. 25. Tragedy replaced by salticae fabulae, p. 26; or musical recitations, p. 28. Pomponius Secundus, p. 29. Curiatius Maternus, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of course is to know what to do with local and temporary customs, allusions, proverbs, &c., which enter, I need not say, far more largely into satire or comedy than into any other form of writing. Here it is that the imitator has the advantage of the translator: a certain parallelism between his own time and the time of the author he imitates is postulated in the fact of his imitating at all, and if he is a dexterous writer, like Pope or Johnson, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... for his appearance the house was crowded to suffocation. The playbills had given out that "an amateur of fashion" would for that night only perform in the character of Romeo; besides, it was generally whispered that the rehearsals gave indication of comedy rather than tragedy, and that his readings were ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... play, (a comedy,) "The Wild Gallant," was brought on the stage in February 1662-3, and with indifferent success, though he has told us that it was more than once the divertisement of Charles II. by his own command, and a favourite with "the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... of Bandello's thirty-fifth story is the same as that of Horace Walpole's comedy The Mysterious Mother, and of the Queen of Navarre's thirtieth tale. The earlier portion will be found also in Masuccio's twenty-third tale: but the second part, relating to the marriage, occurs only in Bandello's work ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Dick Searles. In college he had written a play or two that demonstrated his talent, and after a rigid apprenticeship as scene-shifter and assistant producer he had made a killing with "Let George Do It," a farce that earned enough to put him at ease and make possible an upward step into straight comedy. Even as we talked a capacity house was laughing at his skit, "Who Killed Cock Robin?" just around the corner from his lodgings. So his story was not the invention of a rejected playwright to cover the non-appearance of a play ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... satirical piece of the reign is also its most remarkable literary production. The "Mariage de Figaro," of Beaumarchais, has acquired importance apart from its merits as a comedy, both from its political history and from its good fortune in being set to immortal music. The plot is poor and intricate, but the dialogue is uniformly sparkling, and two of the characters will live as typical. In Cherubin we have the dissolute ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the courage of the body, nor, when passionate action had brought him naught, a certain reserve force of philosophy. He now did the best thing he could have done,—burst into a roar of laughter. "Zooks!" he cried. "It's as good a comedy as ever I saw! How's the play to end, captain? Are we to go off laughing, or is the end to be bloody after all? For instance, is there murder to be done?" He looked at me boldly, one hand on his hip, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... theatre and frequently acted as an amateur in private houses. She was excellent in high comedy and recited poetry effectively. Mrs. Damer was one of the most interesting of Englishwomen at a period of unusual excitement ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... death? What could such advantages accomplish taken as actual moving causes of a human race, innumerable because constantly renewed, which unceasingly moves, strives, struggles, grieves, writhes, and performs the whole tragi-comedy of the history of the world, nay, what says more than all, perseveres in such a mock-existence as long as each one possibly can? Clearly this is all inexplicable if we seek the moving causes outside the figures and conceive the human ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... familiar names of the old-country creatures. The koala poses as a small bear; the cuscus answers to the racoons of America. The pouched badgers explain themselves at once by their very name, like the Plyants, the Pinchwifes, the Brainsicks, and the Carelesses of the Restoration comedy. The 'native rabbit' of Swan River is a rabbit-like bandicoot; the pouched ant-eater similarly takes the place of the true ant-eaters of other continents. By way of carnivores, the Tasmanian devil is a fierce and savage marsupial ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... dramatizing her soul in her writing, her dress, her face,—kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red letters, October 2, 1860, largely and clearly written. I am sure the woman's hand trembled a little when she took ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... way into the other room. Beaton knew she wanted to talk with him about something else; but he waited patiently to let her play her comedy out. She spread the cover on the table, and he advised her, as he saw she wished, against putting anything in the corners; just run a line of her stitch around ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was his chief occupation after marriage? (Taming of the Shrew.) 12. What caused their first quarrel? (Much Ado about Nothing.) 13. What did their courtship prove to be? (Love's Labor Lost.) 14. What did their married life resemble? (A Comedy of Errors.) 15. What did they give each other? (Measure for Measure.) 16. What Roman ruler brought about reconciliation? (Julius Caesar.) 17. What did their friends say? ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... a single village, owned territory upon the left bank of the Rhine; and for the dispossessed lay princes new territories had now to be formed by the destruction of other ecclesiastical States in the interior of Germany. Affairs returned to the state in which they had stood in 1798, and the comedy of Rastadt was renewed at the point where it had been broken off: the only difference was that the French statesmen who controlled the partition of ecclesiastical Germany now remained in Paris, instead ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... for plays was not to be ranked; but perhaps it was because they were habituated to the finer performances of the London stage, which she knew, on Isabella's authority, rendered everything else of the kind "quite horrid." She was not deceived in her own expectation of pleasure; the comedy so well suspended her care that no one, observing her during the first four acts, would have supposed she had any wretchedness about her. On the beginning of the fifth, however, the sudden view of Mr. Henry Tilney and his father, joining a party in the opposite box, recalled ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... in the new comedy, which went off as famously. By the way, she put in a spiteful piece of wit, I verily believe of her own head; and methought she stared me full in the face. The words were "As silent as an author in company." Her hair and herself ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of those editions is to be found the title of "The Vision," which I have adopted, as more conformable to the genius of our language than that of "The Divine Comedy." Dante himself, I believe, termed it simply "The Comedy;" in the first place, because the style was of the middle kind: and in the next, because the story (if story it may be called) ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the altar here)—Ver. 727. It was usual to have altars on the stage; when Comedy was performed, one on the left hand in honor of Apollo, and on the representation of Tragedy, one on the right in honor of Bacchus. It has been suggested that Terence here alludes to the former of these. As, however, at Athens almost every house ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... a dance, and the next afternoon he called, and they talked it over in the drawing-room, with the tea-tray between them, and agreed to end it. On the stage he would have risen and said, 'Well, the comedy is over, the tragedy begins, or the curtain falls;' and she would have gone to the piano and played Chopin sadly while he made his exit. Instead of which he got up to go without saying anything, and as he rose he upset a cup and ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... those ladies connected with the stage who, after their performance, had not the time or the inclination to make the conventional toilet demanded by the larger restaurants. Letty Shaw, being one of the principal ornaments of the musical comedy stage, was well known to every one in the room. There was scarcely a person there who within the last fortnight had not found an opportunity of congratulating her upon her engagement to Captain the Honourable Brian Sotherst. Sotherst was rich, and one of the most popular young men about town. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War. To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways. For this reason, and this alone, I venture to write again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... inches away. The wasp came out, brought it to the opening as before, and went within a second time; again the game was removed, again the wasp came out and brought it back and entered her nest as before. This little comedy was repeated over and over; each time the wasp felt compelled to enter her hole before dragging in the grasshopper. She was like a machine that would work that way and no other. Step must follow step ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... at last seen a comedy perfectly well acted—the first representation of a new piece, Les Folliculaires: it was received with thunders of applause, admirably acted in every character to the life. It was in ridicule of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... defense." Braddock was ready to advance in April, if only he had "horses and carriages"; which by Franklin's exertions were supplied. The bits of dialogue and comment in which this grizzled nincompoop was an interlocutor, or of which he was the theme, are as amusing as a page from a comedy of Shakespeare. Braddock has been called brave; but the term is inappropriate; he could fly into a rage when his brutal or tyrannical instincts were questioned or thwarted, and become insensible, for a time, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... tremendous, fly Fair Comedy's theatric brood, Light satire, wit, and harmless joy, And leave us dungeons, chains and blood. Swift they disperse, and with them go, Mild Otway, sentimental Rowe; Congreve averts the indignant eye, And Shakespeare mourns to view the ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Action and Utterance of the Stage, Bar, and Pulpit, are distinctly considered; with the judgment of the late ingenious Monsieur de St. Evremond, upon the Italian and French Music and Operas, in a Letter to the Duke of Buckingham. To which is added, The Amorous Widow, or the Wanton Wife, a Comedy, written by Mr. Betterton, now first printed from the Original Copy. London, Printed for Robert Gosling, at the Miter, near the Inner Temple Gate in Fleet Street, 1710. 8vo." Gildon was intimately acquainted with Betterton, and he gives an interesting account of a visit paid to ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... sudden sense of the comedy which was intermingled with the tragic of the situation. Diana and Bettina each harped incessantly on one string, "Anthony, Anthony, Anthony," and she must play listener to ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... preponderates over the artist now. His face, though still quite young, has grown yellow, his hair is thinner than it used to be, and he neither sings nor draws any longer. But he secretly occupies himself with literature. He has written a little comedy in the style of a "proverb;" and—as every one who writes now constantly brings on the stage some real person or some actual fact—he has introduced a coquette into it, and he reads it confidentially to a few ladies who ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... made his appearance with a part of our little supper, while this lover's comedy was being enacted and, taking in the very disorderly spectacle which we presented, lying there and wallowing as we were, "Are you drunk," he demanded, "or are you runaway slaves, or both? Who turned up that bed there? What's the meaning of all ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... genius of the middle ages and can claim national rights in the history of France. The Romance of the Rose in the erotic and allegorical style, the Romances of Renart in the satirical, and the Farce of Patelin, a happy attempt in the line of comedy, though but little known nowadays to the public, are still and will remain subjects of literary study. The Song of Roland alone is an admirable sample of epic poesy in France, and the only monument of poetical genius in the middle ages which can have a claim to national appreciation ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... can wisely bear with the faults of their own time, nor think all that is good is gone by, the representation of the present comedy will give high entertainment; particularly in those scenes in which Vapid is concerned.—Reynolds could hardly mistake drawing a faithful portrait of this character, for it ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... moral fitness, and from the duties of society, ascends to the doctrine of God and hopes of 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... for his part looked with very little respect. Rapp, in fact, was among the number of those who, notwithstanding his attachment to the Emperor, preserved independence of character, and he knew he had no reason to dissemble with me. "Fancy to yourself," said he, "the amusing comedy that was played." After the Emperor and the Pope had well embraced they went into the same carriage; and, in order that they might be upon a footing of equality, they were to enter at the same time by opposite doors. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... blue-gray waters from glaciers that lie glistening between the white peaks far away. Here are the great ranges on which feed herds of cattle and horses. Here are the homes of the ranchmen, in whose wild, free, lonely existence there mingles much of the tragedy and comedy, the humor and pathos, that go to make up the romance of life. Among them are to be found the most enterprising, the most daring, of the peoples of the old lands. The broken, the outcast, the disappointed, these too have found their way to the ranches among the Foothills. A country ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... hopes so, because he wants to indulge for the moment in extolling one of his own products; he wishes, in short, to urge upon all his readers the merits of "Mr. Punch's History of the Great War." Everything is here, in very noteworthy synthesis; the tragedy and the comedy inextricably mingled, as they must ever be, but as by more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share of this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate had such dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose, of a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... had always before applauded him. He burst into tears. He had been watching his dying wife, and had left her dead, as be came upon the stage. This was his apology for imperfection in his part. Poor Hood had also to unite comedy with tragedy,—not for a night, or a day, or a week, but for months and years. He had to give the comedy to the public, and keep the tragedy to himself; nor could he, if comedy failed him, plead with the public the tragedy of his circumstances. That was ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Mademoiselle came down, they had eyes neither for the flowers nor the room. They had heard that the Captain was out beating the village and the woods for the fugitive, and where I had looked for a comedy I found a tragedy. Madame's face was so red with weeping that all her beauty was gone. She started and shook at the slightest sound, and, unable to find any words to answer my greeting, could only sink into a chair ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... itself. Life had met him so, half-way, and had turned round so to walk with him, placing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him to choose the pace. Those who knew him a little said, "How he does dress!"—those who knew him better said, "How does he?" The one stray gleam of comedy just now in his daughter's eyes was the funny feeling he momentarily made her have of being herself "looked up" by him in sordid lodgings. For a minute after he came in it was as if the place were her own and he the visitor with susceptibilities. He gave you funny ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... companies that we learned the great lesson of usefulness; we played everything—tragedy, comedy, farce, and burlesque. There was no question of parts "suiting" us; we had to take what ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... mentioning (for the purpose of handy reference) that he appears to have been christened Josef and that the capital from which he writes (or alleges that he writes) is associable with a high standard of musical comedy. His communication is very much underlined, very profuse of the mark of exclamation in quite unnecessary places (until, indeed, the sign begins to assume an absolutely satirical value), and very ornate with little amputated hands, all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... thing to strike us—paradoxical as it may sound to say so—about the Athenian 'Old Comedy' is its modernness. Of its very nature, satiric drama comes later than Epic and Lyric poetry, Tragedy or History; Aristophanes follows Homer and Simonides, Sophocles and Thucydides. Of its essence, it is free from many of the conventions and restraining ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Saint Thomas. Still at the present day his order, the Dominican, furnishes at Rome those who are consulted on matters of dogma; or rather, in order to abridge and transcribe scholastic formula into perceptible images, read the "Divine Comedy "by Dante.[5332] It is probable that this description, as far as imagination goes, is still to-day the most exact as well as most highly-colored presentation of the human and divine world as the Catholic ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... his blood, and after a short retirement, we find him, in 1771, investing a part of his wife's fortune in a share in the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, where he made his first appearance with great success in his favourite part of Major O'Flaherty, one of the characters in Cumberland's comedy, The West Indian. He remained one of the pillars of this theatre until 1782, when Ryder, the patentee, became a bankrupt. Owenson was then engaged by Richard Daly to perform at the Smock Alley Theatre, and also to ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Philadelphia. The first play by an American writer, acted by professionals in a public theater, was Royal Tyler's Contrast, performed in New York in 1786. The former of these was very high tragedy, and the latter very low comedy; and neither of them is otherwise remarkable than as being the first of a long line of indifferent dramas. There is, in fact, no American dramatic literature worth speaking of; not a single American play of even ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the drawer, is a black satin sash. It brings to my mind an entirely different kind of memory. It is one thing that I have left from the dress I wore at my grandfather's funeral. I remember all the tragedy of the occasion, lightened by one spot of comedy, my ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... and endeavoured to talk as though she were quite unconcerned. She tried not to look at his face, upon which it seemed to her that death was already fixing the last mask of life's comedy. It was the more terrible, because he was so quiet and so sure of life that morning, so convinced that he was better, so almost certain that he ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... write him in such a way? Why, hang it! she might have known that, before our honeymoon was over, that confounded old Irish scoundrel of a father of hers would have been after us, insisting on doing the heavy father of the comedy, and giving us his blessing in the strongest of brogues. And, what's more, he'd have been borrowing money of me, the beggar! Borrowing money! of me —me—without a penny myself and head over heels in ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... was no doubt interfered with—(the Spirit of Comedy would have found a certain high satisfaction in the dilemma)—by the fact that Meynell's persistence in the course he had entered upon must be, in her eyes, and sub specie religionis, a persistence in heresy and unbelief. What decided it ultimately, however, was ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... appearing silent and unknown among the monks. To the Prior's question what he wanted, he gazed upon the brotherhood, and only answered, 'Peace!' Afterwards, in private conversation, he communicated his name and spoke about his poem. A portion of the 'Divine Comedy' composed in the Italian tongue aroused Ilario's wonder, and led him to inquire why his guest had not followed the usual course of learned poets by committing his thoughts to Latin. Dante replied that he had first intended to write in that language, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... time forth the stage seems to have filled an important part in the activities of society. We find that Washington attended such performances at the early South Street Theatre, and was especially pleased with a comedy called The Young Quaker; or the Fair Philadelphian by O'Keefe, a sketch that was followed by a pantomimic ballet, a musical piece called The Children in the Wood, a recitation of Goldsmith's Epilogue in the character of Harlequin, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... indefinitely the dumb-show of suffocation and hilarity. So he and Mme. Verdurin (who, at the other side of the room, where the painter was telling her a story, was shutting her eyes preparatory to flinging her face into her hands) resembled two masks in a theatre, each representing Comedy, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and bright, full of those charming glances out of the eyes which were grey at one moment, golden brown at another,—sent now and again a tenderly apologetic look Eileen's way, trying to draw the sulking beauty into the conversation. There was nothing for Shawn to be gloomy about in this little comedy. Terry ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... dropping open, his whole face frozen like a face caught in a snapshot unawares to a sudden glare of immense and ludicrous astonishment. Then he began to give at the knees like a man who has been smitten with pie in a custard-comedy and Oliver recovered from his surprise at both of them sufficiently to step in and catch him as ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... in this growing estrangement came about by accident,—one of those chance occurrences that affect our lives more than years of ordered effort,—and it came in an inverted form of a situation old to comedy. Cressida had been on the road for several weeks; singing in Minneapolis, Cleveland, St. Paul, then up into Canada and back to Boston. From Boston she was to go directly to Chicago, coming down on the five o'clock train and taking ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... lived and could have written only in the days when Athenian institutions began to decay. It is personal discomfort and the trials and harassments of life that drive men to the ever serene, pure regions of humor for balm and healing. Fun and comedy men have at all times understood—the history of Samson contains the germs of a mock-heroic poem—while it was impossible for humor, genuine humor, to find appreciation ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... (in which oratory shows, and especially approves her eminence), he chiefly excels. What figure of a body was Lysippus ever able to form with his graver, or Apelles to paint with his pencil, as the comedy to life expresseth so many and various affections of the mind? There shall the spectator see some insulting with joy, others fretting with melancholy, raging with anger, mad with love, boiling with avarice, undone with riot, tortured with expectation, consumed with fear; no perturbation ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Elizabeth, with a smile, "for I have saved you. Ah, I should never have believed that the playing of comedy was so easy, but I tell you I have played one in a masterly manner. Fear was my teacher; it taught me to appear so innocent, to implore so affectingly, that Anna herself was touched. Ah, and I wept whole streams of tears, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... interlocutors clearly before us, without the least approach to theatrical artifice. Not so the others I have mentioned; they all read cleverly and agreeably, but with the decided trickery of stage recitation. To them he usually gave the book when it was a comedy, or, indeed, any other drama than Shakespeare's or Joanna Baillie's. Dryden's Fables, Johnson's two Satires, and certain detached scenes of Beaumont and Fletcher, especially that in The Lover's Progress, where the ghost of the musical innkeeper makes his appearance, were ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... our review of the chief figures among contemporary Irish poets that the jolly, jigging Irishman of stage history is quite conspicuous by his absence. He still gives his song and dance, and those who prefer musical-comedy to orchestral compositions can find him in the numerous anthologies of Anglo-Irish verse; but the tone of modern Irish poetry is spiritual rather ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... at the Englishes was nearly filled with guests when Paul Clitheroe arrived upon the scene. These guests were not sitting against the wall talking at each other; the room looked as if it were set for a scene in a modern society comedy. In the bay window, a bower of verdure, an extremely slender and diminutive lady was discoursing eloquently with the superabundant gesticulation of the successful society amateur; she was dilating upon the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... between Clemens and Howells; the latter finally wrote, complaining of the lack of news. He was in the midst of campaign activities, he said, writing a life of Hayes, and gaily added: "You know I wrote the life of Lincoln, which elected him." He further reported a comedy he had completed, and gave Clemens a general stirring up as to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plays and sonnets for Beatrice, and who, like Niccolo da Correggio, was one of Isabella's favourite correspondents, and sent her eclogues and strambotti to sing to the lute. When Beatrice died he had just finished a comedy dedicated to this princess, which he afterwards sent to Isabella, begging her to accept it both for his sake and that of the lamented Madonna Duchessa sorella, who had taken pleasure in reading ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... comedy written by Moliere. He was very ill, nearly dying, at the time he wrote it. It was first acted at the Palais Royal Theatre, on February ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... than Minerva-like form hovered above him, interpreting the Christian universe; and as he wrote what she dictated, the verses of his poem were musical even to the Muses. Dante, Beatrice, and the "Divine Comedy," with a Gothic church as a make-weight, were balanced in Muses' minds in comparison with the "Iliad" and the age of Pericles; and again they put on the rapt look of mystery, but a smile also, and their admiration and applause were more and more. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... service to you?" continued Sanine, who had noticed Tanaroff's excessive politeness, and was surprised at the assurance with which he played his part in this absurd comedy. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... truthfulness shown by even the most enlightened pagans" have either forgotten the days when they read stories of adventure, or else have not, in reading this scene, realised properly the strain of hairbreadth peril that lies behind the comedy of it. A single slip in Iphigenia's tissue of desperate improvisations would mean death, and not to herself alone. One feels rather sorry for Thoas, certainly, and he is a very fine fellow in his way; but a person who insists on slaughtering strangers ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... retirement against the wall, where the accident of alphabet causes him to rest in the soothing society of one Carina, a harmless gentleman, whose book on the Bagni di Lucca is on his left, and a Frenchman of the name of Charlemagne, whose soporific comedy written at the beginning of the century and called Le Testament de l'Oncle, ou Les Lunettes Cassees, is next to him on his right. Two works of his still remain, however, among the elect, though differing in glory—his Frederick the Great, fascinating for obvious reasons to the patriotic German ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in my opinion about dramatic composition, and particularly in regard to comedy, with a gentleman for whose character and talents I have a very high respect, I thought myself obliged, on account of that difference, to a new and more exact examination of the grounds upon which I had formed my opinions. I thought it would be impossible ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... connected with the American Theatre. Authorities have taken little or no trouble to unearth his association with the plays and players of his time—the mid-period of the nineteenth century. Yet they all agree that, as illustration of "parlour comedy," his "Love in '76" is a satisfactory example of sprightliness and fresh inventiveness. For this reason, the small comedietta is included in the present collection. It challenges comparison with Royall Tyler's "The Contrast" for manner, and its volatile spirit involved in the acting the good ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... insipid and immoral songs of the Provencal bards gave place to the immortal productions of the great creators of the European languages. Dante led the way in Italy, and gave to the world the "Divine Comedy"—a masterpiece of human genius, which raised him to the rank of Homer and Virgil. Petrarch followed in his steps, and, if not as profound or original as Dante, yet is unequalled as an "enthusiastic songster of ideal love." He also gave a great impulse ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... and accompany the ambassador to Venice. Saint-Vallier departed in haste, after giving his wife a cold kiss which he would fain have made deadly. Louis XI. then crossed over to the Malemaison, eager to begin the unravelling of the melancholy comedy, lasting now for eight years, in the house of his silversmith; flattering himself that, in his quality of king, he had enough penetration to discover the secret of the robberies. Cornelius did not see the arrival of the escort of his ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... poster announcing the production at the "Eureka Opera House" of the "Thrilling Comedy-Drama, The Golden Gods." Pearson looked at it, made a face, ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Ticke, returned from the Criterion Restaurant, where he had been supping with the leading lady of the Sparkle Company, at the leading, lady's expense. She could afford it better than he could, she told him, and that was extremely true, for Mr. Ticke had his capacities for light comedy still largely to prove, while Mademoiselle Phyllis Fane had almost disestablished herself upon the stage, so long and so prosperously had she pirouetted there. Mr. Golightly Ticke's case excited a degree of the large compassion which Mademoiselle Phyllis had for incipient ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... he asked. "A comedy in which the actors have no written parts, but improvise their speeches and actions as best they can. That is the reason why history is so dull and so full ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... furiously, gave Royson many a wrathful glance, but bottled up the tumultuous thoughts which troubled him. On board the steamer, however, curiosity conquered prudence. After surveying Dick's unusual proportions from several points of view, he came up and spoke in what he intended to be a light comedy tone. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... without correcting his cousin. "I've been reading about him. Seems to have been a poor hack writer 'who threw away his life in handfuls.' He wrote the finest poem, the best novel, the most charming comedy of his day. He knew how to give, but he didn't know how to take. So he died alone in a garret. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... once diverted the conversation, all turning in the direction the old nurse pointed, where a little comedy was ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... correctness, which, as he told him, the English poets had hitherto neglected, and which, therefore, was left to him as a basis of fame; and being delighted with rural poems, recommended to him to write a pastoral comedy, like those which are read so eagerly in Italy; a design which Pope probably did not approve, as he did not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... A giggle from the fags' table showed that the comedy of the situation was not lost ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... was no play here, for the comedy of running away to avoid a wetting with the hot water, and rushing back to look down, turned into tragedy. Short-legged Billy Widgeon, in his eagerness to be first, tried to take long strides like leaps, and bounded with a hop, skip, and a jump right into the wet basin, when the men set up a wild ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... mediocre, and they are even worse; but on the ground that verse-making is a rather good exercise for breaking one's self to elegant inversions, and learning a greater ease in prose.[99] At the age of one and twenty he composed a comedy, long afterwards damned as Narcisse. Such prelusions, however, were of small importance compared with the fact of his being surrounded by a moral atmosphere in which his whole mind was steeped. It is not in the study of Voltaire ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... scene might have been comic enough—notwithstanding the sacred character of the place—but neither my companion nor I were in any humour for comedy. Matters were still too serious; and although the idea of this skeleton barricade was a good one, we were not yet assured of safety. It might only give us a temporary respite; for we feared that our ferocious assailants would attack the mummies with their teeth, and soon ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... may be taken as a true portrait of James Hogg, we must admit that, for quaintness of humour, the poet of Ettrick Forest had few rivals. Sir Walter Scott said that Hogg's thousand little touches of absurdity afforded him more entertainment than the best comedy that ever set the pit in a roar. Among the written productions of the shepherd-poet, is an account of his own experiences in sheep-tending, called "The Shepherd's Calender." This work contains a vast amount of useful information ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... discharged its duties, was far inferior to her abilities; it did not give them nearly full scope. Those friends were young, and they were alive, keenly alive, to the fact that there is a steady demand for angels in that sphere of British and German industry curiously known as musical comedy. They could not conceive that, since she had to work for a living, Pollyooly's natural grace and the agility she had acquired in her earlier childhood, at the village of Muttle Deeping, and still retained, could be put to more agreeable and profitable use than that ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... workmanship, but are graceful and picturesque. The associations are interesting, beginning with Francis I. and ending with Rousseau, who spent there the autumn of 1746, as the guest of Madame Dupin, and wrote a comedy for its little theatre. The present proprietor, the Marquis de ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... with many such instances of awful poverty. He had brushed elbows with Need himself. That morning he had given, out of his scanty resources, her railway fare to a tearful and despairing girl who played the low-comedy part. But he had not yet come across any position quite so untenable as that of Wilmer. Forty odd years old, a wife, five children, all his life given honestly to his calling—and threepence ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... square brick building smoke-grimed, cobwebbed, and having the look of a cold-storage plant or a car barn fallen into disuse; dusty, neglected, almost eerie. Yet within it lurks Romance, and her sombre sister Tragedy, and their antic brother Comedy, the cut-up. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... wild scolding match, a contest of lung and tongue. Meanwhile I rested on a canoe midway betwixt them, in the hope of averting a renewal of hostilities. By and by an old Sacred Man, a Chief, called Sapa, with some touch of savage comedy in his breast, volunteered an episode which restored good humor to the scene. Leaping up, he came dancing and singing towards me, and there, to the amusement of all, reenacted the quarrel, and mimicked rather cleverly my attempt ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... material for a book, all mixt of interest varying from very light comedy to unplumbed gloom, in the life of two boys at college—any two; and some day the chronicles of the Delafield Duo may be written; ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... drama. The comic character in the miracle plays had been the Devil, and he was retained in some of the moralities side by side with the abstract vice, who became the clown or fool of Shaksperian comedy. The "formal Vice, Iniquity," as Shakspere calls him, had it for his business to belabor the roaring ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... between the two rooms I met a girl of striking appearance, who was followed by two others. I knew her face well, having seen it often in photograph shops; it was the face of Marie Deschamps, the popular divette of the Diana Theatre, the leading lady of Sullivan's long-lived musical comedy, "My Queen." I needed no second glance to convince me that Miss Deschamps was a very important personage indeed, and, further, that a large proportion of her salary of seventy-five pounds a week was expended in the suits and trappings of triumph. If her dress did not prove that she was on the topmost ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... not the sparrows; but although they stationed themselves close to me, the little robbers we were jointly trying to outwit managed to get some pieces of bread by flying up and catching them before they touched the sward. This little comedy over, I visited the water-fowl, ducks of many kinds, sheldrakes, geese from many lands, swans black, and swans white. To see birds in prison during the spring mood of which I have spoken is not only no satisfaction but a positive pain; here—albeit without ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... were conducted to the theatre; where we were entertained with a dramatic heuva, or play, in which were both dancing and comedy. The performers were five men, and one woman, who was no less a person than the king's sister. The music consisted of three drums only; it lasted about an hour and a half, or two hours; and, upon the whole, was well conducted. It was not possible for us to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... playing the insignificant part of the old family servant of a New York banker, in the most successful comedy of that season, he came to know Bridges better than ever before. Poor Yorick had little more to do in the play than to come on and turn up some light, arrange some papers on a desk, go off, and afterward return and lower the light. Bridges was doing ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... forgotten? The others?" The words said themselves for him. The human comedy had begun, or the comedy begun long ago was resumed smoothly in its third act, King unconsciously answering to his cue. After that it was neither Gloria nor himself who played the part of stage-director; that time-honoured responsibility was back in the hands of the oldest of ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... first foretaste of the time when another woman should dispossess her of her son's love, and she liked this touch in the childish comedy ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... think, my lord, of all these wonderful events?" said the tyrant, after a long silence, to de Sigognac, beside whom he was riding. "It all ends up like a regular tragi-comedy. Who would ever have dreamed, in the midst of the melee, of the sudden entrance upon the scene of the grand old princely father, preceded by torches, and coming to put a little wholesome restraint on the too atrociously outrageous pranks of his dissolute young son? ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... A comedy had been substituted, called El lindo Diego, the part of which we saw was well performed. A disagreeable feature, however, was in the position of the prompter, who was placed in the centre of the footlights, and kept up a continuous recitation of the play in ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... governor received the compliments due to the day in his new house, of which he had lately taken possession as the government-house of the colony, where his excellency afterwards entertained the officers at dinner, and in the evening some of the convicts were permitted to perform Farquhar's comedy of the Recruiting Officer, in a hut fitted up for the occasion. They professed no higher aim than 'humbly to excite a smile,' and their efforts to please were not ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Secondly—can you imagine it—I am writing a play which I shall probably not finish before the end of November. I am writing it not without pleasure, though I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage. It's a comedy, there are three women's parts, six men's, four acts, landscapes (view over a lake); a great deal of conversation about literature, little action, tons of love. [Footnote: "The Seagull."] I read of Ozerova's failure and was sorry, for nothing is more painful than failing.... ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... some morning into a real woman and find herself—isn't that the phrase? I hope the reverse now; that she and her husband will philander along to the close of the chapter. But I prefer your word,—to the close of the "comedy," say. It implies something artificial. Mallinson and Clarice give me that impression,—as of Watteau figures mincing a gavotte, and made more unreal by the juxtaposition of a man. Let's hope they will never perceive the flimsiness of their ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... "A perfect comedy, I am sure. I must say, however, that I'd feel sorry for the girl I loved if she didn't ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... sense called common, is affected by some particular physical object. (2) I say particular, for the imagination is only affected by particular objects. (3) If we read, for instance, a single romantic comedy, we shall remember it very well, so long as we do not read many others of the same kind, for it will reign alone in the memory (4) If, however, we read several others of the same kind, we shall think of ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... and so may you if you happen to be in the mood. At other times the fun bubbles with pure spontaneity, as in the courtship of 'Tnowhead's Bell, which is, I make bold to believe, as good a bit of Scotch rural comedy as we have had for many a day. The comedy is broad, and touches the edge of farce at times, but it is always kept on the hither-side by its droll appreciation of character, and an air of complete gravity in the narrator, who, for any indication ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... known the luxury of taking them off in a retired place and seeing his feet swell up and obscure the firmament. Once when I was a callow, bashful cub, I took a plain, unsentimental country girl to a comedy one night. I had known her a day; she seemed divine; I wore my new boots. At the end of the first half-hour she said, "Why do you fidget so with your feet?" I said, "Did I?" Then I put my attention there and kept still. At the end of another half-hour she said, "Why do you say, 'Yes, oh yes!' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dandy are the Irish,'" said Nora with a grin, quoting from a popular song she had heard in a recent musical comedy. "But stop teasing me, and let Mrs. Gray go on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... the decisive trial, I ask you, is this a place for him to spend his time? He should be in a gallery at practice; he should be sleeping long hours and taking moderate exercise on foot; he should be on a rigorous diet, without white wines or brandy. Does the dog imagine we are all playing comedy? The thing is deadly ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wing of her mother, and looked about her there. Captain and Mrs. Duncan belonged to the Anglo-French society, which had sprung into existence since the downfall of Napoleon I, and was in some degree the outcome of the part played by Great Britain in the comedy of the Bourbon and Orleanist collapse. Captain Duncan had retired from the army, changing his career from one of a chartered to an unchartered uselessness, and he herded with tarnished aristocracy and half-pay failures in the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... done with the comedy, called the "Beggar's Opera,"[3] for this season, it may be no unpleasant speculation, to reflect a little upon this dramatic piece, so singular in the subject, and the manner, so much an original, and which hath frequently given so very agreeable ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... who wants to be married." Heretofore a terrible obstacle, the life of the legitimate spouse, had prolonged a shameful situation. Now that the obstacle no longer existed, she wanted to put an end to the comedy, because of Andre, who might any day be forced to despise his mother, because of the world which they had been deceiving for ten years, so that she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... without love. But when he took his leave that night he approached her with such an evident intention of kissing her as could not be mistaken by the most inexperienced of maidens. Poor Ellen indulged in no girlish resistance, no pretty little comedy of alarm and surprise, but surrendered her pale lips to the hateful salute with the resignation of a martyr. It was better that she should suffer this than that her father should go to gaol. That thought was never absent from ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the recent "tramp" there had been something puzzlingly familiar. The children gathered in knots, staring and quiet, and more than half-afraid. Unconsciously they felt that here was tragedy where but a moment since had been their merry comedy. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... said Vitalis, as I placed my hat on my head, "and we'll get to work, because to-morrow is market day and we must give a performance. You must play in a comedy with ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... great Branches of Ridicule in Writing are Comedy and Burlesque. The first ridicules Persons by drawing them in their proper Characters, the other by drawing them quite unlike themselves. Burlesque is therefore of two kinds; the first represents mean Persons in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not been crowned with absolute success. The awkward corner caused by the enforced resignation of President Grevy had indeed been turned, because the Constitution of the Third Republic provides for the election of the President by the Assembly. But it is one thing to play a successful comedy in the Assembly with the help of what in America is called 'the cohesive power of the public plunder,' and quite another thing to get a satisfactory Chamber of Deputies re-elected by the people of France after four years of irritating and exasperating misrule. Much was expected from the dazzling ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy in form, but serious in interpretation. The counter was piled high with men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant angle on his nose, ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... enemy, though I do not know why. I suppose you have heard of the comedy which he ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Leaping Fish" was what is known as a "water picture," and "Doug," as a comedy detective, was compelled to make a human submarine of himself, not to mention several duels in the dark with Japanese ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... that is my brother, always does take himself and his poetry so seriously; but the worst of it is that everyone who hears him recite his own things fancies it is the latest idea in comedy, and ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... at it. (The Viscount Castlewood's passports) were refused to him, 'twas said; his lordship being sued by a goldsmith for Vaisselle plate, and a pearl necklace supplied to Mademoiselle Meruel of the French Comedy. 'Tis a pity such news should get abroad (and travel to England) about our young nobility here. Mademoiselle Meruel has been sent to the Fort l'Evesque; they say she has ordered not only plate, but furniture, and a chariot and horses (under ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... well; there is cogency in a good supper; a good supper in these degenerate days bespeaks a good man; but much more is wanted to make up an Athenian. Athenians, indeed! where is your theatre? who among you has written a comedy? where is your Attic salt? which of you can tell who was Jupiter's great- grandfather? or what metres will successively remain, if you take off the three first syllables, one by one, from a pure antispastic acatalectic tetrameter? Now, sir, there are three questions for you: theatrical, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... him, or altogether like it in him; but in "The Man on Horseback" Mr. White is at every moment honest. He is honest, if not so impressively honest, in the other stories, "A Victory for the People," "A Triumph's Evidence," "The Mercy of Death," and "A Most Lamentable Comedy;" and where he fails of perfect justice to his material, I think it is because of his unconscious political bias, rather than anything wilfuller. In the story last named this betrays itself in his treatment of a type of man who could not be faithful to any ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Aristophanes' satiric rage, When ancient comedy amus'd the age, Or Eupolis's or Cratinus' wit, And others that all-licens'd poem writ; None, worthy to be shown, escap'd the scene, No public knave, or thief of lofty mien; The loose adult'rer was drawn forth to sight; The secret murd'rer trembling lurk'd the night; Vice play'd itself, and ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... dear," pursued Alice. "But for you she would not be a member of the Tug-of-war. What would have been a delightful society, a pleasure to the best girls at Middleton School, will be nothing whatever but a ridiculous farce, a scene of high comedy, something contemptible, now that Kitty Malone has joined it. But for you she would never have been asked to join. Why did you do ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... these times. This world of ours has become very sophisticated. It has suffered itself to be exploited till there is no external wonder left. Retroactively the demand for mystery, which is the very soul of interest, must find new expression. Thus we turn inward for fresh thrills to the human comedy, and outward to the realm ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... should be pointed out, are much fuller in my large edition. The three-part essay on "The Old Actors" (London Magazine, February, April, and October, 1822), from which Lamb prepared the three essays; "On Some of the Old Actors," "The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and "The Acting of Munden," is printed in the Appendix as it first appeared. The absence of the "Confessions of a Drunkard" from this volume is due to the fact that Lamb did not include it in the first edition of The Last Essays of Elia. It was inserted later, in place ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... dramatizing himself, nor thought of himself at all, it did not occur to him that drama requires setting, that tragedy required black velvet rather than tooth-brushes, and that a small boy with an aching tooth was a comedy ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fellow in tight hair-cut and still tighter breeches, and a woman in big hoops gets out of the stage with many bandboxes and a birdcage. The way Abbey breathed into the scene the breath of life was wonderful—just a touch of comedy, without caricature! "If it is in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, give it to Abbey," said the Managing Editor, with a growl—for Managing Editors, being beasts, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... in scraps of camp Spanish. Jose lost his temper admirably; for me, I shuffled along as an old man dazed with the scene; and when we came to the water's edge felt secure enough to attempt a trifle of comedy business as Jose hoisted my old limbs on to the horse's back behind the panniers. It fetched a shout of laughter. And then, having slipped off boots and stockings deliberately, Jose took hold of the bridle again and waded into the stream. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch |
