"Burlesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it into a small square, laid it on the wet beaten grass, and sat thereon, arching his knees till only the soles of his boots touched the ground. To Alec's eye his long, thin figure looked so odd, bent into this repeated angle, that he almost suspected burlesque, but none was intended. The youth clasped his hands round his knees, the better to keep himself upright, and seated thus a few yards from the body, he shared the watch for some time as mute as was all else in that ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... however, to belong to a later date; and the quaint stanza, afterwards employed in a modified form with such effect by Fergusson and Burns, is that used by Alexander Scot in The Justing at the Drum, and in other burlesque pieces of the early or middle period of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... are, no doubt, secret friends, needing a little more courage to face the pro-slavery feeling and sentiment which are all about them. Some one who read these resolutions suggested the idea of their being a burlesque. I repudiated the idea at once. They will commend themselves to you, dear Aunty, I am ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... of young women, fond to excess of music, which have no other origin than the prayer of the Hebrews in the third act, with its superb change of key.'" Thus by a stroke of genius, a scene which first impressed the audience as a piece of theatrical burlesque, was raised to sublimity by the solemn music written ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... without power, is supposed to select the assignees. Thus it happens that the judge almost always appoints as assignees those creditors whom it suits the bankrupt to have,—another abuse which makes the catastrophe of bankruptcy one of the most burlesque dramas to which justice ever lent her name. The honorable bankrupt overtaken by misfortune is then master of the situation, and proceeds to legalize the theft he premeditated. As a rule, the petty trades of Paris are guiltless in this respect. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... novices and had become men of the world with plenty of skill in social intercourse. I saw him very seldom, as I avoided literary and artistic society like the plague, and refused the few invitations I received to go into society with burlesque ferocity, so as to keep out of it without offending people past their willingness to indulge me as ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... shirt and that of his coat came so high that his head seemed enveloped like a bunch of flowers in a horn of paper. Add to these queer accessories, which were combined in utter want of harmony, the burlesque contradictions in color of yellow trousers, scarlet waistcoat, cinnamon coat, and a correct idea will be gained of the supreme good taste which all dandies blindly obeyed in the first years of the Consulate. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... subject was one neither of courtesy nor of France; it belonged to an age far behind the eleventh century, or even the tenth, or indeed any century within the range of French history; and it was as little fitted for Christian's way of treatment as for any avowed burlesque. The original Tristan—critics say—was not French, and neither Tristan nor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their veins. In their form as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; they came from Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the northern ocean, or farther still. Behind the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... to have given vent to her real feelings at that time, she would have burst into a fit of laughter, it was too ludicrous. At the same time, the very burlesque reassured her still more. She went into the cabin with a heavy weight removed ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... than that which was now afforded by these two races, the phlegmatic, plodding German and the vibrant Irish, a contrast in American life as a whole which was soon represented in miniature on the vaudeville stage by popular burlesque representations of both types. The one was the opposite of the other in temperament, in habits, in personal ambitions. The German sought the land, was content to be let alone, had no desire to command ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... poor painted thing which has risen from the contents of small tubes smeared over a bit of canvas! My funny little dear delight! Will you always amuse me, I wonder? I hope you will. Nobody else can. Why, the gorse there will grumble next and think I love my poor, daubed burlesque of its gold better than the thing itself. If I find pleasure in the picture, how much the more must I love the soul of it? You see, I'm ambitious. You are quite the hardest thing I ever found to paint, and so I go on trying and trying. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... belonging to the Central Provinces. Mr. Crooke remarks: "The Bhand is sometimes employed in the courts of Rajas and native gentlemen of rank, where he amuses the company at entertainments with buffoonery and a burlesque of European and native manners, much of which is of a very coarse nature. The Bhand is quite separate from and of a lower professional rank than the Bahrupia. The bulk of the caste are Muhammadans, but they have exogamous sections, some of which, as ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... life! what a life! All my work! I seem to have done it all. So you're the red-haired boy that hit me in the waistcoat. What have I done? God, what have I done? I thought I would have a joke, and I have created a passion. I tried to compose a burlesque, and it seems to be turning halfway through into an epic. What is to be done with such a world? In the Lord's name, wasn't the joke broad and bold enough? I abandoned my subtle humour to amuse you, and I seem to have brought tears to your eyes. What's to ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... expected his actors to indulge in grotesqueries, well or ill timed, no matter, provided they brought guffaws. It is probable, therefore, that in many other cases, where the tone and "stage business" are not as obvious, where an actor's high seriousness might elicit catcalls, and burlesque certainly would elicit chuckles, Plautus wished his players to ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... up to the Jury in the action taken by Jones (author of burlesques) v. Roberts (player of the same) was excellent common sense, a quality much needed in the case. Mr. JONES,—not our ENERY HAUTHOR, whose contempt for Burlesque generally is as well known as he can make it,—wrote to Mr. ARTHUR ROBERTS, formerly of the Music Halls and now of the legitimate Stage, styling him "Governor," and professed that he would "fit him to a T." Poeta nascitur non "fit."—and the born burlesque-versifier was true to what ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... ideas of progress, are, of course, mainly such persons as believe in 'the march of intellect,' and think meanly of each successive stage as soon as it is left behind. The spokesman of this party is Mark Twain, who wrote a burlesque of the Holy Grail, and who in his Life on the Mississippi makes Scott responsible for the vanities and superstitions of the Southern States ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... of the early Romans made little progress beyond personal satire, burlesque extravagance and licentious jesting, but upon this was ingrafted the new Greek comedy, and hence arose that phase of the drama, of which the representatives were Plautus, Statius, and Terence. The Roman comedy was calculated to produce a moral result, although the morality it inculcated was extremely ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... fears, and had to have a good deal of medical attention at this time. Sex questions perplexed him, for he became quite passionate and at the same time had much moral repugnance to illicit relations. His sexual curiosity was intense, and he read all manner of books on the subject, went to the burlesque shows on the sly and almost became obsessed on ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... which is, that the Bishop had said inadvertently, he was at Bath, and had not a Bible in his family. It is worth remarking, that all the arguments used by Powell about his power over Punch, 'lighting his pipe with one of his legs,' &c., are a good burlesque of those used by the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... the poor simple knight (in his dream), and offered his services to polish the corslet up a bit against that great occasion. He pointed toward his forge, and the knight marched to it, in three wide steps that savored strongly of theatrical burlesque. But the moment he saw the specimens of Henry's work lying about, he drew back, and wheeled upon the man of the day with huge disdain. "What," said he, "do you forge toys! Learn that a gentleman can only forge those ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and fix the attention are wanting in this style, neither grandeur of imagination nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations, vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor variety of representation. But, amidst so many ingenious tricks, apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone is perfect. If; as an author, he develops a paradox it is with almost ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... black-featured, his gnarled hands clenched into ugly knots, came abruptly forward. "I thought this was a serious thing; I didn't know you were going to turn it into a burlesque!" ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... that she was wrong, and yet We spoke in accents low, For life with perils is beset, And friends oft quickly go. But she was right; he'd gone in debt To "back" a burlesque show. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... no club to go to at that time, so he went and read the papers, and drank coffee at a cigar divan until it was late enough to dine, and after dinner tried to drown his care by going to see one of those anomalous productions—a 'three-act burlesque'—at a neighbouring theatre, which he sat through with a growing gloom, in spite of the pretty faces and graceful dances which have now, with some rare exceptions, made plot and humour so unnecessary. Each leading member of the clever company danced his or her special pas seul as if for a ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Two Noble Kinsmen" there is a "distinct imitation of the circumstances of Ophelia's madness and death in Hamlet." In "The Woman Hater," assigned conjecturally to 1605 or 1606 by Professor Thorndike, there are "several burlesque imitations of Hamlet." ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... obvious that you cannot trust a man who, unless he is intending a burlesque, can bring himself to write like that. Crabbe not only brings himself to it, but rejoices and luxuriates in the style. The tale from which that last luckless distich is taken, "The Elder Brother," is full of pathos and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... who had tossed the caber was sparring with the dramatic critic, Hazard and Hall boxed in fantastic burlesque, then, gloves in hand, looked for the next appropriately matched couple. The choice of Bideaux ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... one of these productions is in literature what the "Yankee Notions" and the "Nick-Nax" caricatures of John Bull are in art, and seeing that the other is not in the least a parody of the Emersonian poetry it is supposed to burlesque, and is otherwise nothing at all, we cannot help crying out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the hotel was scarcely the correct place in which to receive this august young man. There he stood, with his head half-way through the bureau window, negligently leaning against the woodwork, just as though he were a stockbroker or the manager of a New York burlesque company. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... shall adopt you. Only don't be cross, little goosey. Let us go into the garden." Young Musgrave made such a burlesque of his remorse that Bessie, wounded but skin-deep, was fain to laugh too and be friends again. And thereupon they went forth together into the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... especially appointed to enforce the prescribed attendance upon the church and prayer-meetings. I saw him in the exercise of his functions, armed with a bamboo-cane, driving his herd to the spiritual pasture. He seemed himself to be conscious of the burlesque attaching to his office,—at least he behaved very absurdly in it, and many a stroke fell rather in jest than in earnest. The drollery of the driver did not, however, enliven the dejected countenances of ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... class-room, not too soon. One of the young scamps had taken his chair, and was delivering a burlesque lecture, near enough to the head-master's style to excite irreverent laughter. They listened for his step upon the stair, however, and when he entered the room they might have been taken for a synod discussing a ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Throughfare: An Amusing Burlesque of Charles Dickens's Christmas Story. By Bellamy ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... account of wit, with this short explanation, comprehends most of the species of wit, as metaphors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottoes, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion: as there are many other pieces of wit, how remote soever they may appear at first sight from the foregoing description, which upon examination will be found to ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Blenheim, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach—and a poem equally laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704) that 'poetry unless it pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize that his own verse ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... before such a word as fortitude that Mrs. Eddy's book takes on its most discouraging aspect. Her foolish logic, her ignorance of the human body, the liberties which she takes with the Bible, and her burlesque exegesis, could easily be overlooked if there were any nobility of feeling to be found in "Science and Health"; any great-hearted pity for suffering, any humility or self-forgetfulness before the mysteries of life. Mrs. Eddy professes to believe that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... All such cases were dull. No really dramatic moments. The book-keeping of The Orb and all the rest of them was certainly a burlesque revelation but the public did not care for revelations of that kind. Dull dog that de Barral—he grumbled. He could not or would not take the trouble to characterize for me the appearance of that man now officially a criminal ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... pure and undisturbed between the contrasts it thus simultaneously calls up; the obvious danger being that, where matters of taste are concerned, the habit of forming such incongruous juxtapositions—as that, for example, between the burlesque and sublime—should at last vitiate the mind's relish for the nobler and higher quality; and that, on the yet more important subject of morals, a facility in finding reasons for every side of a question ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... poet, born in Tuscany, who excelled in the burlesque, to whom the Italian as a literary language owes much; remodelled Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato" in a style surpassing that of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... great numbers of our readers. One of the best evidences of the naturalness and ease of our author's writings, is to be found in the ready appreciation of them by all classes of readers. Whether the vein be a serious one, or the theme turn upon the humorous or the burlesque, it is not too much, we think, to say that the writer takes always with him the heart or the fancy of the reader. Without however pausing to characterize productions which bid fair to become very ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... The burlesque was irresistible, and none the less so that the child was so direfully in earnest. To his infant imagination no worse disaster than had befallen Clayton's cat could be devised. This animal, adored by him, had been bagged and exiled, perhaps drowned for aught I know, for stealing cheese from the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... California—that nobody, not even the ingenious theorists themselves, believed their story, and that no one took the slightest pains to verify or disprove it. Happily, Uncle Billy never knew it, and moved all unconsciously in this atmosphere of burlesque suspicion. And then a singular change took place in the attitude of the camp towards him and the disrupted partnership. Hitherto, for no reason whatever, all had agreed to put the blame upon Billy—possibly because he was present to receive it. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Janet's persuasion is backed by the opening of Lady Janet's purse. In one word—Settlements! But for the profanity of the woman's language, and the really lamentable credulity of the poor old lady, the whole thing would make a fit subject for a burlesque. ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... lengths his tyranny would have gone it is difficult to say, had not an event happened that brought his power to a premature collapse. This was the curate's sudden and somewhat unexpected marriage with a very beautiful burlesque actress who had lately been performing in a neighbouring town. He gave up the Church on his engagement, in consequence of his fiancee's objection to becoming a minister's wife. She said she could never 'tumble to' the ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... known in the neighbourhood as a maker of rhymes. The first of my poetic offspring that saw the light was a burlesque lamentation on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, both of them dramatis personae in my "Holy Fair". I had a notion myself that the piece had some merit; but, to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend, who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion: Now my sere Fancy "falls into the yellow Leaf,"[232] and Imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk Turns what was once romantic to burlesque. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... parody, not only of the general spirit, but of numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and, even if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse that order in the development of national taste, which the history of every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Emily smile in these moments, it would have been this speech of her aunt, delivered in a voice very little below a scream, and with a vehemence of gesticulation and of countenance, that turned the whole into burlesque. Emily saw, that her misfortunes did not admit of real consolation, and, contemning the commonplace terms of superficial comfort, she was silent; while Madame Montoni, jealous of her own consequence, mistook this for the silence of indifference, or of contempt, and reproached ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... liking for such songs. Nor does it seem on the surface to connect him with Troy, as do the other two songs of Demodocus. (3) It gives an unworthy view of the Gods, degrading them far below Homer's general level, reducing them to ordinary burlesque figures which violate all decency, not to speak of morality. (4) Philologists have picked out certain words and expressions peculiar to this passage, which, not being employed by Homer elsewhere, tend to indicate ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... handle of the dining-room door, and realises that his scent is not so good as he had thought it. He bids his hostess and the COMTESSE good-bye in a burlesque whisper and tiptoes off to safer places. JOHN having gone out with him, MAGGIE can no longer avoid the COMTESSE's reproachful eye. That much injured lady advances upon her with ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... paragraph-writing man, and that he will remain to his dying day. When he is jocular he is strong, when he is serious he is like Samson in a wig; any ordinary person is a match for him: a song, an ironical letter, a burlesque ode, an attack in the newspaper upon Nicoll's eye, a smart speech of twenty minutes, full of gross misrepresentations and clever turns, excellent language, a spirited manner, lucky quotation, success in provoking dull men, some half information picked up in Pall Mall in the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... she caught her partner making a burlesque face of suffering over her shoulder, and, turning her head quickly, saw for whose benefit he had constructed it. Eugene Bantry, flying expertly by with Mamie, was bestowing upon Mr. Flitcroft a condescendingly ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... immortalized Mr. Whiston, for in the issue of 29th January, 1853, there is a burlesque account with designs of "A stained glass window for Rochester Cathedral." The design is divided into compartments; each containing a representation in the mediaeval fashion of a "Fytte" in "Ye Gestes of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Alicia?" he asked, negligently; and his easy burlesque of her name was like the familiarity of the rest of him. He was one of those full-bodied, grossly handsome men who are powerful and active, but never submit themselves to the rigour of becoming athletes, though they shoot and fish from expensive camps. ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... slipped into a corner behind a very broad table and under the shaded lamps examined some engravings. Mrs. Sheldam talked in hesitating French to the Marquis de Potachre, an old fellow of venerable and burlesque appearance. His fierce little white mustaches were curled ceilingward, but his voice was as timid as honey. He flourished his wizened ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... scheme to ridicule a third, and either take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,—into a work of art,—by metre and music, is the Aristophanes ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at which the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque idea of perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in themselves, Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette, and lighted his stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting till the frost on his windows had melted ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... Busaco; Dictionary of Quotations; Lord Londonderry's Peninsular Campaigns; the Art of Shaving, with directions for the management of the Razor; Todd's Johnson's Dictionary; Peacham's Complete Gentleman; Harris' Hermes; Roget on the Teeth; Memoirs of Pitt; Jokeby, a Burlesque on Rokeby; English Proverbs; Paley's Moral Philosophy; Chesterfield's Letters; Buchan's Domestic Medicine; Debrett's Peerage; Colonel Thornton's Sporting Tour; Court Kalendar; the Oracle, or Three Hundred Questions explained and answered; Gordon's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... who runs in the furrow beside the terrified horses and belabors them, thus serving the old husbandman as ploughboy. This spectre, which Holbein has introduced allegorically in the succession of philosophical and religious subjects, at once lugubrious and burlesque, entitled the Dance of Death, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... familiar with it as a story, and the mishaps of the gentle, noble-minded, kind-hearted old Don, as well as the delusions, simplicity, and selfishness of the devoted squire, will never lose their power to amuse. It may be extravagant, but it is not a burlesque. The strong character painting, the ideas, situations, and language, clothed in such simplicity that at times it becomes almost solemn, give it a grandeur that no other book, considered as a romance, possesses. The old ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Chevalier; "however, I may acquaint you with my first exploits without offending my modesty; besides, my squire's style borders too much upon the burlesque for an ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... scurry of pattering feet had both ceased. The sounds of the night were now more soothing, more harmoniously blended. The earliest arrivals of the theatre crowd were besieging the sidewalk ticket office of the burlesque house opposite. Simonoff launched into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the death of King Charles made such an impression on the Earl of Dorset that he was invited to town, and introduced by that universal patron to the other wits. In 1687 he joined with Prior in "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse," a burlesque of Dryden's "Hind and Panther." He signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, and sat in the Convention. He about the same time married the Countess Dowager of Manchester, and intended to have taken Orders; but, afterwards ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... his lips and knit his brows with a burlesque, melodramatic air, and strode up and down, with ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... leg over the other with the toe of the carpet slipper touching the walk, in the manner of a burlesque actor, took the cigarette out of his mouth with a little flourish, and replied ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... PRYN, and VICARS. This Vicars was a man of as great interest and authority in the late Reformation as Pryn or Withers, and as able a poet. He translated Virgil's AEneids into as horrible Travesty, in earnest, as the French Scaroon did in burlesque, and was only outdone in his way by the politic ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... illustrated the place by his text, as if the houses were so many pictures to which he had appended a story, Clive, the wag, who was always indulging his vein for caricature, was proposing that that they should take the same place, names, people, and make a burlesque story: "What would be a better figure," says he, "than Pliny's mother, whom the historian describes as exceedingly corpulent, and walking away from the catastrophe with slaves holding cushions behind her, to shield her plump person from the cinders! ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and a diplomat, and I had heard so much, of this horrid society I did not feel positive it was certain that its alleged blood rites were fictitious. Of one thing I am sure—that the dreadful picture is no joke, and was not meant for a burlesque, though it might possibly be expected to perform the office of a scarecrow. It cannot be doubted that there are oath-bound secret societies that are regarded by the Spaniards as fanatical, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the lower classes, who were nearly all Catholics, joined the burlesque patrols in complaining loudly of the dragoons, some saying that their horses had trampled on their children, and others that they ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Though his brief excursion into the theater must later have seemed to him a minor episode in his life, Payne's enemies were aware of the fact that he was a playwright and have written their knowledge into the record of his treasonable activities. For example, the author of a burlesque life of Payne, which contains, so far as I know, the only connected account of his activities, makes this useful remark: "Then [after his return from Ireland in 1672] he composes a Tragedy of a certain Emperour ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... forth he would be drawn like a shy, unwilling periwinkle from its shell, once more to play his abased and bashful role of free entertainer to guffawing mixed audiences. For all others in the great city there were havens and homes. But for a poor, lorn, unguided vagrant, enmeshed in the burlesque garnitures of a three-year-old male child, what haven was there? By night the part had been hard enough—as the unresponsive heavens above might have testified. By the stark unmerciful sunlight; by the rude, revealing glow of the impending day how much ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... game popular in the 17th and 18th centuries—the rhymed words at the end of a line being given for others to fill up. Thus Horace Walpole being given, "brook, why, crook, I," returned the burlesque verse— "I sits with my toes in a Brook, And if any one axes me Why? I gies 'em a rap with my Crook, 'Tis constancy ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... and my hands trembled. In what burlesque comedy is there a jealous lover, so stupid as to inquire what has become of a cup? Why seek to discover whether Smith and Madame Pierson had drunk from the same cup? What a ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... sanctimonious hypocrisy of the Puritans as the Cavaliers insisted on seeing them in the person of the absurd Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralph (partly suggested by Cervantes' Don Quixote and Sancho). These sorry figures are made to pass very unheroically through a series of burlesque adventures. The chief power of the production lies in its fire of witty epigrams, many of which have ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Miss Swan saying, "Must you go, Mr. Berry? So soon!" and saw her giving the student her hand, with a bow of burlesque desolation. ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... a merry ride. The story of Kathleen as they had written it was discussed pro and con.; the usual protests were launched at Carter for having in his chapter lowered the theme to the level of burlesque; praise was accorded to the Goblin for the dexterity with which he had rescued the plot. Blair's chapter had been full of American slang which had to be explained to the others. "Joe," the Rhodes Scholar hero, had shown a vein of fine gold under Blair's hands: he bade fair ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... twice with his adversary, and put a ball into his body which he carried all his life. By this time, too, the precocious and ungovernable boy had become, as he flattered himself, a complete atheist. One of his favorite amusements at Princeton was to burlesque the precise and perhaps ungraceful Presbyterians of the place. The library of his Virginian home, it appears, was furnished with a great supply of what the French mildly call the literature of incredulity,—Helvetius, Voltaire, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... one of the favorite subjects of puppet-shows, popular melodramas, exhibitions of ombres chinoises, and pantomimes. The more the awful event, with its moral lessons, receded into the background of time, the more it lost its serious and impressive character, until it became a mere burlesque, and Hanswurst and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... has not survived. Beaurain and his brother Nicholas, a doctor of the Sorbonne, assisted him in this perpetration, and Claude made the pen-and-ink sketches with which it was illustrated. In the few years that had elapsed since the writing of this burlesque Perrault had acquired more sense and taste, and his new poems—in particular the "Portrait d'Iris" and the "Dialogue entre l'Amour et l'Amitie"—were found charming by his contemporaries. They were issued anonymously, and Quinault, himself a poet of ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... practice the latest popular theories of life. American undergraduates are the most conservative folk in the world; if any strange theory in morals or politics becomes noised abroad, the American student opposes to it the one time-honoured weapon of the conservative from Aristophanes down,—burlesque. Mock processions and absurd travesties of "the latest thing" in politics are a feature of every academic year at an American university. Indeed, an American student leading a radical political mob is simply unthinkable. It ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... in the bracing air of the hill town. In Walpole, she met delightful people, who were all attracted to the versatile, amusing young woman, and she was in great demand when there was any entertainment on foot. One evening she gave a burlesque lecture on "Woman, and Her Position, by Oronthy Bluggage," which created such a gale of merriment that she was asked to repeat it for money, which she did; and so there was added to her store of accomplishments another, from which she was to reap ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... I do not think his habits of drinking were excited by the stimulants of society.[G] Little, I believe, is known of his life, even to the actors and playwrights, with whom he chiefly associated, from the time when his burlesque of "Hamlet Travestie" (printed in 1810) commenced his career of celebrity, if not of fame, to his death, (in the year 1862, I believe,) being then probably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... you have heard of the death of Amos Cottle. I paid a solemn visit of condolence to his brother, accompanied by George Dyer, of burlesque memory. I went, trembling, to see poor Cottle so immediately upon the event. He was in black, and his younger brother was also in black. Everything wore an aspect suitable to the respect due to the freshly dead. For some time after our entrance, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... can write short stories all of which potray negro characters but no burlesque can also write poems, have a gift for cartooning but have never learned the technicalities of comic drawing, these things will never profit me anything here in Natchez. Would like to know if you could use one or two of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... understanding of some kind evidently was come to, for during the season they met secretly at the house of one of Lincoln's friends, Mr. Simeon Francis. It was while these meetings were going on that a burlesque encounter occurred between Lincoln and James Shields, for which Miss Todd was partly responsible, and which no doubt gave just the touch of comedy necessary to relieve their tragedy and restore them to a healthier view of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... returned to his seat, Kirtley gave the legs a kick "just for luck." He could not help laughing. The burlesque! The Germans were certainly a curious people. This was like some fantastic tale of Hoffmann with its marionettes and other childish stuff ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... of this ceremony the writer has witnessed more of burlesque than on this occasion. Sometimes the performers have worn immense false mustaches, exaggerated imitations of spectacles and of other belongings of their white neighbors. Sometimes the dance has assumed a character which will not be described in this place ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... alarming frailty. His legs were lost in gum boots, also loose and cavernous, and his entire costume looked relaxed and flapping, so that he gave the impression of being able to shake himself out of his raiment, and to rise like a burlesque Aphrodite. His face was overgrown with a grizzled tangle that looked as though it had been trimmed with button-hole scissors, while above the brush heap grandly soared a shiny, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Duke ends the burlesque by upsetting the chair. The Captain and Patch-Eye, chuckling at their jest, sit to a game of cards. The Duke returns to the chest. Once in a while he lays down the ship and seems to be thinking. The broken crystal of the fortune-teller lies on the floor. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... name was a by-word for cynicism, who had never, until he had met Stafford Orme, gone an inch out of his self-contained way to please or benefit a fellow-man, was the slave of the young fellow's imperious will, and though he made burlesque complaint of his bondage, did not in his heart rebel ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... burlesque show, brought here to win away the half dollars of the sailors on the ships here. We'd stand very little chance of getting leave to go to that kind ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... FAR. A burlesque quotation from Freiligrath's poem "Der Loewenritt," from which also the reference later on to ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... peculiarities. I presume none of them analyzed the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the pathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery, and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the melancholy mirth of this light-hearted race's burlesque of itself. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was "The Critic," the scene a burlesque rehearsal of an old-time melodrama. Our opportunities were great, and Heaven knows we missed none of them. New York audiences are quick, and in less than three minutes they knew the actors had taken the bit between their teeth and were off on a mad race of fun. Everything seemed ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... royal road to the gallows,—a satire on the short cut established between the House of Correction and the Condemned Cell. A second and a lighter object in the novel of "Paul Clifford" (and hence the introduction of a semi-burlesque or travesty in the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing essentially different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that the slang of the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... significant. It is safe to say that if a Sir Launcelot had appeared in fiction one or two generations earlier, had the fact been recognised (which is not indubitable) that he bore the name of the most celebrated knight of later Arthurian romance, he would have been nothing but a burlesque figure. But in 1760, literary taste was changing. Romanticism in literature had begun to come to the front again, as Smollett had already shown by his romantic leanings in Count Fathom. With it there came interest in the Middle Ages and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... in the crowded house. The ruffling of the face of the sea before a storm. The Sisters Sigsbee, Coon Delineators and Unrivalled Burlesque Artists, have finished their dance, smiled, blown kisses, skipped off, skipped on again, smiled, blown more kisses, and disappeared. A long chord from the orchestra. A chord that is almost a wail. A wail of regret for that which is past. Two liveried menials appear. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... burlesque upon monarchy. It puts it in the most ridiculous light, by presenting it as an office which any child or idiot may fill. It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but to be a king requires ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... his almost constant use of the double rhyme. That the ottava rima is out of place in consistently pathetic poetry, may be seen from its obvious misuse in Keats's Pot of Basil. Many writers, from Tennant and Frere to Moultrie, have employed it in burlesque or more society verse; but Byron alone has employed it triumphantly, for he has made it the vehicle of thoughts grave as well as gay, of "black spirits and white, red spirits and grey," of sparkling fancy, bitter sarcasm, and tender memories. He has swept into the pages of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... expose to the public gaze the snowy, well shaped breast and arms which no one had yet gazed upon except her husband and maids. Of course Katenka sided with her mother and, in general, there became established between Avdotia and ourselves, from the day of her arrival, the most extraordinary and burlesque order of relations. As soon as she stepped from the carriage, Woloda assumed an air of great seriousness and ceremony, and, advancing towards her with much bowing and scraping, said in the tone of one who is presenting ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... system, in full operation. Men live there, year in year out, to cut timber for a nominal wage, which is all consumed in supplies. The longer they remain in this desirable service the deeper they will fall in debt - a burlesque injustice in a new country, where labour should be precious, and one of those typical instances which explains the prevailing discontent and the success ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Virgil's, but by applying them to another sense they are made a relation of a wedding-night, and the act of consummation fulsomely described in the very words of the most modest amongst all poets. Of the same manner are our songs which are turned into burlesque, and the serious words of the author perverted into a ridiculous meaning. Thus in Timon's "silli" the words are generally those of Homer and the tragic poets, but he applies them satirically to some customs ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... burlesque thoughtfulness. "There was a girl here to-day," she said, solemnly, "who must have been a reformed pessimist, then, for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... awaited him. In the burlesque of "The Yellow Dwarf," he showed a mastery of the grotesque which approached the terrible. Years before, in Macbeth, he had personated a red-headed, fire-eating, whiskey-drinking Scotchman,—and in Shylock, a servile, fawning, obsequious, yet, when emergency ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Then Miss EDITH CHESTER combines prettiness with fun, and the duet between her and clever Miss LAURA LINDEN is enthusiastically encored—and deservedly so, for it is seldom that two young actresses will "go in" for a real genuine bit of nonsensical burlesque, and win. In fact it is all good, "and if our friends in front" will accept my tip, they will not find a more "summery" form of entertainment than at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... in a sullen and indifferent manner. They took off their aprons, went to the hydrant and washed their hands, then put on their coats and went home in silence and shamefacedness, amid the angry remonstrances of the master-builder. A little farther on Farnham saw what seemed like a burlesque of the last performance. Several men were at work in a hole in the street; the tops of their heads were just visible above the surface. A half-grown, ruffianly boy, with a boot-black's box slung over his shoulder, came up and shouted, "You —— —— rats, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... song-writer, was believed to be an illegitimate s. of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. He wrote innumerable burlesques, farces, songs, etc., often with his own music, including Chrononhotonthologos (1734), a burlesque on the mouthing plays of the day, and The Dragon of Wantley (1744?). His poem, Namby Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Phillips (q.v.), added a word to the language, and his Sally in our Alley is one of our best-known songs. God Save the King ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious innuendo into their burlesque looks, with a sort of comedy which shall be but tragedy seen from the other side. He brought his sketch to our house to-day, and I was present when my father questioned him and commended his work. But ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... white devil, which had the appearance of a human figure in white wax, looking miserably thin and as if starved with cold, taking snuff, rubbing his hands, treading the ground as if tender-footed, and evidently meant to burlesque and ridicule a white man, while his sable majesty frequently appealed to Clapperton whether it was not well performed. After this the king's women sang in chorus, and were accompanied by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... just now? Perhaps I did not hear you aright," inquired Alden, elevating his eyebrows, for there was something that struck him as unreal, ludicrous and bordering upon the burlesque in the ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... interrupt the stillness of country life; and they were, in former days, particularly observant of the religious and social rites of Christmas. It is inspiring to read even the dry details which some antiquarians have given of the quaint humours, the burlesque pageants, the complete abandonment to mirth and good-fellowship, with which this festival was celebrated. It seemed to throw open every door, and unlock every heart. It brought the peasant and the peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm generous flow ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... crowded with a mass of cheap pleasure seekers; the burlesque theatres and motion picture places were besieged with throngs; from the open fronts of auction houses the strident voices of the auctioneers rose in feeling appeals that every one grasp the opportunities offered. "Store show" keepers stood upon high, narrow platforms ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... these lines—giving an admirable burlesque imitation of herself, and her own gestures, and her own singing in the part she ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... cease to be tragic, and become burlesque,—I mean phrases like "curling torrent flames" and "vomiting to heaven," and representing Boreas as a piper, and so on. Such expressions, and such images, produce an effect of confusion and obscurity, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... Lord Bolingbroke, so was the parody by Wilkes to Lord Sandwich; thus it began, "Awake my Sandwich!" instead of "Awake my St. John!" Thus also, in ridicule of Warburton's well-known commentary, some burlesque notes were appended in the name of the Right Reverend the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various |
