"Comedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... less than an attempt to corrupt the source of that justice, under law, which flows from trial by jury. Miss Anthony's case has passed from its gayest to its gravest character. United States Courts are not stages for the enactment of comedy or farce, and the promptness and decision of their judges in sentencing to prison culprits convicted before them shows that they are no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for a Cuckold, in which William Rowley and perhaps Thomas Heywood collaborated with Webster. F. L. Lucas, Webster's most recent and most scholarly editor, remarks that A Cure for a Cuckold is one of the better specimens of Post-Elizabethan romantic comedy. In particular, the character of the bride, Annabel (Arabella in Harris's adaptation), has a universal appeal. The City Bride, a very close copy of its original, retains its virtues, and has some additional ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... Rumple, 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 they laugh accordingly." ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... her bedroom, and burst into tears. It was such a tragi-comedy ending to her literary ambition. She would rather the girls had been more indignant than that they had laughed ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... occurrences, bound together by causal laws, not, like instances of a word, by similarities. For although a person changes gradually, and presents similar appearances on two nearly contemporaneous occasions, it is not these similarities that constitute the person, as appears from the "Comedy of Errors" ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... quickly over. It pleased him, it was feasible, and there was comedy in it. Lieutenant Fevrier laughed again, his spirits were rising, and the world was not after all ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... piece to Mazarin, in gratitude, he said, for an act of generosity with which his Eminence had surprised him. At the same time he borrowed from the Spanish drama the canvas of the Menteur, the first really French comedy which appeared on the boards, and which Moliere showed that he could appreciate at its proper value. After this attempt, due perhaps to the desire felt by Corneille to triumph over his rivals in the style ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Orlando Innamorato, Boiardo wrote a variety of prose works, a comedy in verse on the subject of Timon, lyrics of great elegance, with a vein of natural feeling running through them, and Latin poetry of a like sort, not, indeed, as classical in its style as that of Politian and the other subsequent revivers of the ancient manner, but perhaps not the less ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... sail from shore to shore are like giant theaters. Every trip is an impromptu drama where comedy, farce, and often startling tragedy offer large speaking parts. The revelation of human nature in the original package is funny and pathetic. Amusement is always on tap and life stories are just hanging out of the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... critics," though his avowed model had ignored them. Accordingly, in his more deliberate prose criticism we find, amid his veneration of Shakespeare, his regard for the rules of the classical drama. The faults of Shakespeare, we read, were not so much his own as those of his time, for "tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age," and there was as yet no definite knowledge of how a play ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... educated in the public schools of Jacksonville, at Atlanta University and at Columbia University. He taught school in his native town for several years. Later he came to New York with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and began writing for the musical comedy stage. He served seven years as U. S. Consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua. Author of The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, Fifty Years and Other Poems, and the English libretto to Goyescas, the Spanish grand opera, produced at the ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... Alcibiades so much that he soon wrote a comedy called "The Clouds," in which he made fun of him. Of course, he did not call the people in the play by their real names; but the hero was a good-for-nothing young man, who, advised by his teacher, bought fast horses, ran his ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... have sworn that the piece of comedy which had just been performed had been his. I knew for certain now that it was his jest, this crude and savage joke that was on the margin of tragedy, and might have gone over the border. But what would he care, this infamous man ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... simple names, as men address one another. When she did this to Mackinnon, who was much older than herself, we had been all amused by it, and other ladies of our party had taken to call him "Mackinnon" when Mrs. Talboys was not by; but we had felt the comedy to be less safe with O'Brien, especially when on one occasion we heard him address her as Arabella. She did not seem to be in any way struck by his doing so, and we supposed therefore that it had become frequent between them. What reply ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Novels more Delight. And with reverence be it spoken, and the Parallel kept at due distance, there is something of equality in the Proportion which they bear in reference to one another, with that betwen Comedy and Tragedy; but the Drama is the long extracted from Romance and History: 'tis the Midwife to Industry, and brings forth alive the Conceptions of the Brain. Minerva walks upon the Stage before us, and we are more assured of the real presence of ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... 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. He ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... the writer had lamented over the decline and fall of intellect among his countrymen. The writer declared that no one would pay to see a play that made a greater demand upon the mind than is made in a musical comedy, and that even this slight demand was proving to be more than many people could bear: the picture palace was destroying even ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... other end of the chamber. "Well," the King said, inviting me by a sign to sit down beside him, "is it a comedy or a tragedy, my friend? Or, tell me, what was it he meant when he said that ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... soldiers that my Wilfrid has for singers," she said; and it afforded Adela exquisite pleasure to hear her tell how that she had originally heard of the 'eccentric young Englishman,' General Pierson's nephew, as a Lustspiel—a comedy; and of his feats on horseback, and his duels, and his—"he was very wicked over here, you know;" Lena laughed. She assumed the privileges of her four-and-twenty years and her rank. Her marriage was to take place in the Spring. She announced it with the simplicity of an independent woman of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fashion; east, in a word, of Fifth Avenue—a great 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
... excessive as it was, the space she enjoyed cost her next to nothing and that small as were her revenues they left her, for Venice, an appreciable margin. I had descended on her one day and taught her to calculate, and my almost extravagant comedy on the subject of the garden had presented me irresistibly in the light of a victim. Like all persons who achieve the miracle of changing their point of view when they are old she had been intensely converted; she had seized my hint with ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... intention, and her illogic of loyalty, gave her point of view a humorous quality. Her circle, confident in her good-nature, was forever leading her on, by this device or that, to exhibit what John Stallard, the novelist, called her "comedy of charity." O'Ryan, that great, glowing failure whose name will outlive the fame of the successful in San Francisco, used to play ingenious jokes upon it. O'Ryan was possibly the only man of any time who could draw the sting of ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... or a deserter, transformed into a district magistrate, collector, or military commander of a populous province, without other counsellor than his own crude understanding, or any other guide than his passions. Such a metamorphosis would excite laughter in a comedy or farce; but, realized in the theatre of human life, it must give rise to sensations of a very different nature. Who is there that does not feel horror-struck, and tremble for the innocent, when he sees a being of this kind ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... take it otherwise! "Be it so, then," said I, half aloud; "and now for my part of the game;" and with this I took from my pocket the light-blue scarf she had given me the morning we parted, and throwing it over my shoulder, prepared to perform my part in what I had fully persuaded myself to be a comedy. The time, however, passed on, and she came not; a thousand high-flown Portuguese phrases had time to be conned over again and again by me, and I had abundant leisure to enact my coming part; but still the curtain did not rise. As the day was wearing, I resolved at last to write ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... saddest poem in the world a Comedy, because it was written in a middle style; though some, by a strange confusion of ideas, think the reason must have been because it "ended happily!" that is, because, beginning with hell (to some), it terminated with "heaven" (to others). As well might they have said, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... different 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... sense of humor; and if you joke with him he'll think youre insulting him on purpose. Mind: it's not that he doesnt see a joke: he does; and it hurts him. A comedy scene makes him sore all over: he goes away black and blue, and pitches into the play ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... gazing on the mistress he adores, a disconsolate exile from his home, the courtship of a student and a rustic beauty, or perhaps the grieved and melancholy figure of one whose sweetheart has proved faithless. Such actors in the comedy of life are defined with fervent intensity of touch against the leafy vistas of the scene. The lyrical cry emerges clear and sharp in all that concerns ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... for the drama, get whole tragedies or comedies "by heart." Every day in the year, and in every street of Bangkok, and all along the river, booths and floating salas may be seen, in which tragedy, comedy, and satirical burlesques, are enacted for the entertainment of great audiences, who are thrilled, delighted, or amused. In compositions strictly dramatic the characters, as with us, speak and act for themselves; but in the epic the poet recites ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... great state, and made us great promises of kind entertainment in his country. The 1st of August, the queen sent for us to court, to be present at a great feast given in honour of the king of Pahan; after which a comedy was acted by women, after the Javan manner, being in very antic dresses, which was very pleasant to behold. On the 9th the king of Pahan departed on his return to his own country, having been made a laughing-stock by the Pataneers: But his wife, the sister of the queen of Patane, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... are recorded in this Magazine, under such headings as "The Merry Gossips," "The Kissing Chronicle," and "The Undertaker's Harvest-Home," or "The Squallers—a tragi-comedy," "All for Love," and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... won "le prix de solfege" at the Marseille Conservatoire, and her talent having come to the ears of Mr. Plunkett, the director of the Palais Royal, he engaged her for the Palais Royal in Paris, where she created the part of La Chaste Suzanne, by Paul Ferrier. Giving up comic opera for comedy, Jane Hading went to the Gymnase, where she created the part of Claire de Beaulieu in "Le Maitre de Forges." London had the opportunity of seeing her in that and "Prince Zilah," by Jules Claretie, later on, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... are a book, Whose pages hold many stories Writ by many people. Tragedy, comedy, pathos, Love and valor, duly Punctuated by life's Rests and stops, Whose interest shall appeal To human hearts as long as Their green cover ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... working, he's at work too. No matter what side I turn, I find him on the defensive. He foiled you, papa, in your effort to obtain a clue concerning Gustave's identity; and he made me appear a fool in arranging that little comedy at the Hotel de Mariembourg. His diligence has been wonderful. He has hitherto been in advance of us everywhere, and this fact explains the failures that have attended all my efforts. Here we arrive before ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... cried, "that I shall bestow the last, the most precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of their sex, but not all have the man's soul which satisfies all the requirements of our nature, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... very night the elves and the fairies will dance in the quiet valley; that Little Sorrowful will tinkle her maimed feet upon the singing violets, and that the little folk will illustrate in their revels, through which a tone of sadness steals, the comedy and pathos of our lives? Perhaps no one shall see, perhaps no one else ever did see, these fairy people dance their pretty dances; but we who have heard old Robert Volkmann's waltz know full well that he at least saw that strange sight and ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... you off now among our country folk out here near Parnes. We still have the human comedy, played out under sun and stars. Love and deceit, troubles and rewards are as ageless as the heavens. Gentlemen, this distinguished company has consented to give us to-night a presentation of The Arbitrants equal to the famous one of ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... find in the story, so far as it has proceeded, the promise of an interest as unhackneyed as it will be intense. There is room for the play of all the passions and interests that make up the great tragi-comedy of life, while all the scenery and accessories will be those which familiarity has made dear to us. We are a little afraid of Colonel Burr, to be sure, it is so hard to make a historical personage fulfill the conditions demanded by the novel of every-day life. He is almost sure either to ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... rifles and prime them seemed to take an age. Next I was staring through the loophole along a barrel, and beyond it were three black forms in line on a long beam. I think we fired—Polly Ann and I—at the same time. One fell. We saw a comedy of the beam dropping heavily on the foot of another, and he limping off with a guttural howl of rage and pain. I fired a pistol at him, but missed him, and then I was ramming a powder charge down the long barrel of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Danish vaudeville, in which his aim was to recreate the national drama. His vaudeville was a lighter musical-dramatic genre, a situation-play with loosely-sketched characters and the addition of music to concentrate the mood. In it he sought a union with the national comedy, and like Holberg to treat subjects from his own age and land. From 1830 to 1836 Heiberg was professor of logic, esthetics, and Danish literature in the Military School. From 1839 on, censor of the Royal Theater, of which he was director from 1849 to 1856, without great success ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... paid he gave her a list of vaudeville and musical comedy houses where girls were wanted. "You can't fail to suit one of them," said he. "If not, come back here and get ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... or musical comedy has given us some excellent art, especially at the end of the 19th century, when Sylvia Gray, Kate Vaughan, Letty Lind, Topsy Sinden, and others of like metier gave ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... italic type, I remember a good saying of old Michel de Montaigne in one of his essays,—not the exact words, but the soul of his remarks. He says that we cannot judge whether a man has been truly fortunate in life until we have seen him act with tranquillity and contentment in the last scene of his comedy, which is undoubtedly the most difficult. For himself, he adds, his chief study and desire is that he may well behave himself at his last gasp, that is quietly and constantly. It is a good saying; for life has no finer lesson to teach us than how ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... see that he would not have been asked to the house at all, if it had not been for his school-fellow's talk, about what a clever individual he was—able to do everything. Now, next to Sir Valentine May, no character in the comedy is so important for the display of Dorothy Budd's (Clarissa's) performance as Ensign Bellefleur; and the more clearly Crawley saw this, the more fervently did he wish that he was out of it. It was too late now, however, and as he got ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... excellent degree; it is not without reason, therefore, that the philosopher, in the twenty-second chapter of his Poeticks, mentions him by no other appellation than that of the Poet. He was the father of the drama as well as the epic; not of tragedy only, but of comedy also; for his Margites, which is deplorably lost, bore, says Aristotle, the same analogy to comedy as his Odyssey and Iliad to tragedy. To him, therefore, we owe Aristophanes as well as Euripides, Sophocles, and my poor Aeschylus. But if you please we will confine ourselves (at least for the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... "What a comedy, after all, it appeared. I remember the last words of the chaplain before leaving the prison, cold and precise in their officialism: 'Mind you never come back here again, young man.' And now, as though in response ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... "'Can the comedy,' I sez, 'and you go tell the widow that Father Dempsey, the head chaplain of the U.S. Navy, has consented to perform this afternoon. Now, get it straight, and for Gawd's sake don't go and laugh or I'll put you ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... but longer visits in the country to me would refresh you. I miss your lighter touches. London is a school, but, you know it, not a school for comedy nor for philosophy; that is gathered on my hills, with London distantly in view, and then occasional ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... began with some pictures of great allied leaders which excited a mild interest and drew some perfunctory applause. Then came the tragic comedy of John Bull's experiences as an immigrant, when just as the interest began to deepen, the machine blew up, and the pictures ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... of comedy and farce met the eye at every turn. Costumes the most remarkable, men the most varied and peculiar, and things the most incomprehensible and unexpected, presented themselves in endless succession. Here a canvas restaurant stood, or, rather leaned against a log-store. There a tent spread its folds ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... On the stage Nicolas Filleul anticipated the regular Italian drama in a dramatized eclogue entitled Les Ombres in 1566. Later Nicolas de Montreux, better known under the name of Ollenix du Mont-Sacre, a writer of a religious cast, and author of a romantic comedy on the story of Potiphar's wife, composed three pastoral plays, Athlette, Diane, and Arimene, which appeared in 1585, 1592, and 1597 respectively. They are conventional pastorals on the Italian model, futile in plot and commonplace ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... this stage set for our drama, comedy, tragedy—whatever it may prove—of which we don't yet know the plot, although we are the heroines; and now that I'm writing in a Rotterdam hotel the curtain may be said to have rung ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... midsummer, which had weighed down the people with a sense of the gravest solicitude, was followed by what might well be termed its comedy. During the early spring the President had accepted an invitation from the citizens of Chicago to attend the ceremony of laying a corner-stone for a monument to be erected to the memory of Stephen A. Douglas. The date fixed for the President's ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Cebes, in which the Divine Comedy of Dante was sketched in Plato's time, the description whereof has been preserved for us, and which many painters of the middle age have reproduced by this description, is a monument at once philosophical and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to think what he should find, but at least it was, from her tone, a menace of some sort. There stood Eugene Martin, in his fur coat, his florid extravagance of scarf and pin, on his face the ironic smile adapted to his preconceived comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his butt, the fool of a husband, to see. But as Raven appeared, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... The comedy and tragedy of the experiment have been the theme of many a magazine article, and years have come and gone; yet hundreds of people cross the pastures to the lonely spot each year, and wander through the house, and listen to the ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... here at this time by chance; that I have tried to soften your heart toward Dalahaide, and that I come with you, not as your ally against her, but to offer her and her cause what help I can. Of course, I shall fail in that effort, and you will win; but the little comedy will have brought me the girl's gratitude, which is worth all the world at this ticklish stage of the game. Will you aid me to play the part on ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... distinguished members of the profession in France, M. Bocage and Mdme. Dorval, expressed similar opinions. For their father's name-day in 1824, Frederick and his sister Emilia wrote conjointly a one-act comedy in verse, entitled THE MISTAKE; OR, THE PRETENDED ROGUE, which was acted by a juvenile company. According to Karasowski, the play showed that the authors had a not inconsiderable command of language, but in other ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... audience started up, panic- stricken. Hitherto, the last act had been regarded as a badly-played comedy; now tragedy was ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... to read the comedy; after fifteen or twenty minutes Mrs. Vervain opened her eyes and said, "But before you commence, Florida, I wish you'd play a little, to get me quieted down. I feel so very flighty. I suppose it's this sirocco. And I believe I'll lie down in ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... Gunning's hand to conduct her to the coach; 'twas as pretty a comedy as ever George Anne Bellamy played. He laughed inwardly leading her to the door, and on the stairs discoursed charmingly on the last masquerade at Vauxhall. Without the hall ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... humiliating interviews with Mr. Monk concerning the wrong delivery of cheese and bacon. I was aware of the means by which news of the outer world got to Clayton. It came in a popular halfpenny paper, and that outer world must therefore have seemed to Clayton to be all aeroplanes, musical-comedy girls, dog shows, and Mr. Lloyd George. The grocer's boy got his tongue free at last, and talked. He was halt and obscure, but I thought I saw a mind beating against the elms and stones of the village, and repelled by the concrete, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy, with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable reading. If my book gives to any reader a fraction of the pleasure I have derived from its writing, I shall be more than rewarded for a labour which has ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... show that he took but a small part in the making of a few of these, and of the whole thirty-seven little more than a dozen were published during his life. It is supposed that his first play was the comedy "Love's Labour's Lost," in which he would appear to have gone to his own brain for the plot. Here we find a certain broad outlook upon contemporary life, with many a passing reference to matters of topical interest, while vivid recollections ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... turned towards me. He'd folded his arms high and tight, and his face in the moonlight was—well, it was very different from his careless tone of voice. He was like—like an actor acting tragedy and talking comedy. Mitchell went on, speaking quickly—his ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... he displayed in after years, when (on the supposition in question) he must have become much more familiar with it. Shakespeare's earliest work that has reached us is, doubtless, to be found in "King Henry the Sixth," "The Comedy of Errors," and "Love's Labor's Lost." In the very earliest form of Part II. of the first-named play, ("The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two Houses of York and Lancaster," to which Shakespeare was doubtless a contributor, the part of Cade being among his contributions,) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... not able to secure all the Acts of "A Comedy of Errors" owing to the editions having been exhausted, and as numerous friends have expressed a desire to secure it entire, the author has concluded to publish it, supplemented ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... express the feeling of a people who have been saved by martial and religious enthusiasm, and brought through all the perils of history. It is the production of some Meistersinger, who introduced it into a History of Henry the Fowler, (fought the Huns, 919-935,) that was written by him in the form of a comedy, and divided into acts. He brings in a minstrel who sings the song before battle. The last verse, with adapted metre and music, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... or a by-gone fashion of poetry, to analyze accurately the forces impelling a whole mighty age—these things, requiring a deep and steady concentration of mind, are among his most solid achievements. In a paragraph he distils for us the essence of what is picturesque and worth dwelling on in the comedy of the Restoration. In a page he triumphantly establishes the boundary-line between the poetry of art and nature—Pope and Shakespeare—which to the present day remains as a clear guide, while at the same time Campbell and Byron and Bowles are filling the periodicals with protracted ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... that he was satisfied. To the world and to his servants Danglars assumed the character of the good-natured man and the indulgent father. This was one of his parts in the popular comedy he was performing,—a make-up he had adopted and which suited him about as well as the masks worn on the classic stage by paternal actors, who seen from one side, were the image of geniality, and from the other showed lips drawn down in chronic ill-temper. Let us hasten ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with them against Collier, there might have been some justification in resting content as he and Congreve did with the scoring of a few debater's points. But the public, even "the town", was less interested in mere sally and rejoinder than it was in the serious question of the relation of comedy to morality, and hence Collier was allowed to win ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... theatre to-night—that is to say, if my husband has been able to get seats. It's the first night of a new comedy. I meant to ask you to come with us, only it was an uncertainty. If the box is not forthcoming, you must come when we do go. Only, of course, it will not be ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... sit at their humble feasts to recount to each other, amid appreciative laughter, the tricks and devices and pitiful petty schemes for the gaining of daily bread that make up for them the game and comedy of life. Tell me not that Ishmael does not enjoy the wilderness. The Lord made him for it, and he would not be ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... illustration and critical discussion, which proved that it was not only the people who interested themselves in the new poet, but a more highly trained and difficult audience as well. We have before us two goodly octavos in which the little rustical comedy is enshrined in hundreds of pages of notes; and where the argument as to its localities, identifying every spot, occupies chapter after chapter of earnest discussion, proving exactly where every cottage ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... light of Park Row, and not know Betty Raleigh? She killed 'em dead in London in romantic comedy and now she's come ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and activities. Business was good, factories were busy, and the theatres were crowded nightly, especially Keith's, where the latest military photo-play by Thomas Dixon and Charles T. Dazey—with Mary Pickford as the heroine and Charley Chaplin as the comedy relief—was enjoyed immensely by ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... is based on the 'Menaechmi' of Plautus. It does not follow that the author of the 'Comedy of Errors' could read the 'Menaechmi' or the 'Amphitryon,' though Shakespeare had probably Latin enough for the purpose. The 'Comedy of Errors' was acted in December 1594. A translation of the Latin play bears date 1595, but this may be an example of the common practice ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... neighbours would divert you. Opposite lives a Christian dyer who must be a seventh brother of the admirable barber. The same impertinence, loquacity, and love of meddling in everybody's business. I long to see him thrashed, though he is a constant comedy. My delightful servant, Omar Abou-el-Hallaweh (the father of sweets)—his family are pastrycooks—is the type of all the amiable jeune premiers of the stories. I am privately of opinion that he is Bedr-ed-Deen ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... gaining recognition from the chairman, I said that the manner in which the "California" voted seemed to cause some of those present considerable amusement and that, individually, I didn't see anything in it that was funny; that it was more of a tragedy than a comedy, and that it was a solemn and serious matter for the company of which I was the representative to go on record for the second time, publicly, as pledging itself to pay so tremendous an amount of money out of the pockets ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... Short Leave," to mark the regularity with which the respective heroes and heroines fall into each others' arms at the end of every dozen pages or so. As a matter of fact, the incident that is to my mind the best of the bunch is an exception to this rule of osculation—a happily imagined little comedy of a young wife who thought to avoid the visit of a tiresome sister-in-law by betaking herself for the night to the branches of a spreading beech. Whether in actual life this is a probable course of conduct need not exercise your mind; at least not enough to ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... Rockingham government in 1783, Burgoyne withdrew more and more into private life, his last public service being his participation in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. In his latter years he was principally occupied in literary and dramatic work. His comedy, The Heiress, which appeared in 1786, ran through ten editions within a year, and was translated into several foreign tongues. He died suddenly on the 4th of June 1792. General Burgoyne, whose wife died in June 1776 during his absence in Canada, had several natural ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... dressing and undressing, sham meals, sham lessons, and all the domestic romance of doll-life, in which, according to my poor abilities, I should have been most happy to have taken a part. But, on the unwarrantable assumption that "boys could not play at dolls," the only part assigned me in the puppet comedy was to take the dolls' dirty clothes to and from an imaginary wash in a miniature wheelbarrow. I did for some time assume the character of dolls' medical man with considerable success; but having vaccinated the kid arm of one of my patients ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... issuing special orders that no clergyman should presume to espouse a servant girl, without the consent of the master or mistress. [82] During several generations accordingly the relation between divines and handmaidens was a theme for endless jest; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy of the seventeenth century, a single instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse above the rank of cook. [83] Even so late as the time of George the Second, the keenest of all observers of life and manners, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... long. Even in his terrible state of health in 1849, and in spite of his disappointment at the non-appearance of "Le Faiseur," he was in buoyant spirits, and informed his sister in one of his letters, that he was sending a comedy, "Le Roi des Mendiants," to Laurent-Jan, as soon as he could manage to transport it to St. Petersburg. There, the French Ambassador would be entrusted with the charge of despatching it to Paris, as manuscripts were not allowed to travel ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... white hat and wonderful waistcoat, tosses his lines to a 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
... tried to look both amiable and intelligent. In the presence of Mr. Majendie's robust reality it was indeed as if they had all been dreaming. Her instinct told her that the spirit of pure comedy was destruction to the dreams she dreamed. She tried to be genial to her guest's accomplishment; but she felt that if Mr. Majendie's talents were let loose in her drawing-room, it would cease to be the place of intellectual culture. On the ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... old wandering minstrels sung of the Fatherland, alas, too long delayed by miserable human selfishness! German bull-headedness insisted on insularity, on individualism, on particularism, on standing each petty monarch in his corner, with farce-comedy courtiers bowing and scraping while the rights of the peasant were forgotten. Assuredly, the day had come for this folly to cease. Then in Heaven's name, why not a United ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... best!" cried Alice, gaily dancing about the studio, after she had finished in a little comedy scene, one day. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... Buildings, two months ago, Nell felt as if she should never get used to the crowded place and its multitudinous discomforts; but time had rendered life, even amid such surroundings, tolerable; and there were moments in which some phase of the human comedy always being played around her brought the smile ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... contrary, words exact and truthful in themselves seem always too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it unduly. I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M. Kangourou rises up before me, the matrimonial agent, to whom I am indebted for ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... reprobation of it. Steele especially, in the Tatler and Guardian, exposed its impiety and absurdity, and endeavoured both by argument and by ridicule to bring his countrymen to a right way of thinking.[66] His comedy of The Conscious Lovers contains an admirable exposure of the abuse of the word honour, which led men into an error so lamentable. Swift, writing upon the subject, remarked that he could see no harm in rogues ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the kind of joke that would appeal to him. Philip still remembered the laughter that had greeted his fruitless journey, and the uncouth push that had toppled him on to the bed. And whatever it might mean, Miss Abbott's presence spoilt the comedy: she would do ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... theme, Shakespeare might be expected to paint a magnificent picture. But Prince Henry is anything but a great portrait; he is at first hardly more than a prig, and later a feeble and colourless replica of Hotspur. It is very curious that even in the comedy scenes with Falstaff Shakespeare has never taken the trouble to realize the Prince: he often lends him his own word-wit, and now and then his own high intelligence, but he never for a moment discovers ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... assuredly witnessed a new thing on that unpromising day, something quite different from anything witnessed in my wide rambles; and, though a little thing, it had been a most entertaining comedy in bird life with a very proper ending. It was clear that the sick blackbird had bitterly resented the treatment he had received; that, brooding on it out in the cold, his anger had made him strong, and that he came back determined to fight, with his plan of action matured. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... allowed to occupy the stage at the same time, and this is another point in common with the early Greek drama. The plots or stories of the Chinese plays are simple and effective, and Voltaire is known to have taken the plot of a Chinese drama, as Moliere took a comedy of Plautus, and applied it in writing a drama for the modern French stage. "The Sorrows of Han" belongs to the famous collection entitled "The Hundred Plays of the Yuen Dynasty." It is divided into acts and is made up of alternate prose and verse. The movement of the drama is good, and the denouement ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Brohan won the first prize in comedy. She competed with a selection from Misanthrope, and Mlle. Jouassin gave the other part of the dialogue. Mlle. Jouassin's technique was the better, but Madeleine Brohan was so wonderful in beauty and voice that she carried off the prize. The award made a great uproar. To-day, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... these close quarters I found utterly impossible: all were ill save the stout tragedian; comedy, farce, and opera, ballet and band, the manager, his subjects and his properties, were alike disorganized and overwhelmed. I resolved therefore on keeping the deck as I best could, by the help of a stout dread-nought, a pocket-full ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... lordship, slowly, "that a court is the best of dramatic schools. It is so real, too; there is much of tragedy and a great deal of comedy too—unconscious, a lot of it. I have always been rather keenly interested in the study of the people who came before me, particularly in criminal cases. It seems to me that there is still a wide field ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... or technicalities. The judges are patient, hard working, understanding, and efficient. The trouble is with the laws they are called upon to administer: Laws which are as absurd, as farcical, and as impracticable as the plot of the lightest musical comedy. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... with fright, did not move from his place, and it was with some difficulty that "the Bard" and "Gibs" brought him back to a normal condition and induced him to assist in preparing the fowl which had played the part of Joe Locke's head, in the little comedy, for the belated feast—which was merrily partaken of, but without the guest ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... been said that life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel. Humanly speaking, it is one of the greatest merits of Hamsun's work that he shows otherwise. His attitude towards life is throughout one of feeling, yet he makes of life no tragedy, but ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... was over, Beatrice came to the front and sang. She was a very unusual figure in such a place, in a plain black evening gown, with black gloves and no jewelry, but they encored her heartily, and she sang a song from the musical comedy in which Tavernake had first seen her. A sudden wave of reminiscence stirred within him. His thoughts seemed to go back to the night when he had waited for her outside the theatre and they had had supper at Imano's, to the day when he had left the boarding-house ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... realised that she was dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. His life would be lonely ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... from London, and Harry was forbidden, under the pain of a whipping, to look into them. I am afraid he deserved the penalty pretty often, and got it sometimes. Father Holt applied it twice or thrice, when he caught the young scapegrace with a delightful wicked comedy of Mr. Shadwell's or Mr. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... comedies, little characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the lives of the birds, if our eyes are sharp enough to see them. Some clever observer saw this little comedy played among some English sparrows, and wrote an account of it in his newspaper. It is too good not to be true: A male bird brought to his box a large, fine goose-feather, which is a great find for a sparrow and much coveted. After he had deposited his prize and chattered ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... to convey, within the limits of a few pages, all that Sir Alexander tells us of what he sees and hears, as the tragi-comedy of life passes before his Bow Street windows. For Fielding possessed in the highest degree the art of hearing, to use his own analysis, not with the ear only (an organ shared by man with "other Animals") ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... many respects, the United States and Canada have so much in common and are so nearly of the same age and size that, in any musical comedy of Nations, the two might easily pass for a ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... Earl of Bradford's coachmen built a small house on a piece of ground, called in old works, Strawberry-Hill-Shot; lodgings were here let, and Colley Cibber became one of the occupants of the place, and here wrote his Comedy called 'Refusal; or the Ladies' Philosophy.' The spot was so greatly admired that Talbot, Bishop of Durham, lived eight years in it, and the Marquis of Carnarvon succeeded him as a tenant: next came Mrs. Chenevix, a famous toy-woman. She was probably a French woman, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... will be nice and proper and in strict order, and every man will say precisely what he's been ordered to say—and there you are! The Inspector will issue his report that he's carefully examined everything and found all correct, and the comedy will conclude with the farce of votes of thanks all round! That's the ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Roses Elaine Goodale Sympathy Althea Gyles The Look Sara Teasdale "When My Beloved Sleeping Lies" Irene Rutherford McLeod Love and Life Julie Mathilde Lippman Love's Prisoner Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer Rosies Agnes I. Hanrahan At the Comedy Arthur Stringer "Sometime It may Be" Arthur Colton "I heard a Soldier" Herbert Trench The Last Memory Arthur Symonds "Down by the Salley Gardens" William Butler Yates Ashes of Life Edna St. Vincent Millay A Farewell ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... very dull though very various. You may smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian comedy, as good an amusement as either of the former. This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is generally a magician, and in consequence of his diabolical art performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons of the drama, who are ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... country at a somewhat later period of the eighteenth century has drawn a picture of the ornate ceremony, which, on the Indian side at least, transformed barter into a solemn function, and provided the exiled traders with a comedy of manners. He describes how, salutes having been fired on both sides, the Indians are elaborately welcomed within the fort, where, after long silence and much tobacco-smoking, the subject of the visit is distantly broached, and the chief receives propitiatory gifts of brightly coloured ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages of the drama undergo ever so completely a comedy of errors among themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for the Ephesian; otherwise he is one of the dupes, and the part of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of Pope, of Johnson's Tabletalk, and of Walter Scott, have become a portion of the vernacular tongue, the household words, of which perhaps we little guess the origin, and the very idioms of our familiar conversation. The man in the comedy spoke prose without knowing it; and we Catholics, without consciousness and without offence, are ever repeating the half sentences of dissolute playwrights and heretical partizans and preachers. So ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... "A perfect comedy, I am sure. I must say, however, that I'd feel sorry for the girl I loved if she didn't happen to ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... ought to make a continuous story of it, with the same plot and characters all through. We did that once at the Grange, and it was awfully good—just like a regular Comedy! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... pretend that you and my uncle have not been getting up this little comedy of a quarrel, merely to show Kitty and me what fools we look when we are fighting! Why! It was better than any play ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... face have been merged in the Murrett mob? Its fugitive slanting lines, that lent themselves to all manner of tender tilts and foreshortenings, had the freakish grace of some young head of the Italian comedy. The hair stood up from her forehead in a boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched her auburn eyes flecked with black, and the little brown spot on her cheek, between the ear that was meant to have a rose behind it and the chin that should have rested on a ruff. When she ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... 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 is said—he ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... players from the different theatres of Paris are paid to perform three times in the week; and each guest, according to the period of his arrival, is asked, in his turn, to command either a comedy or a tragedy, a farce or a ballet. Twice in the week concerts are executed by the first performers of the opera-bouffe; and twice in the week invitations to tea-parties are sent to some of the neighbours, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... 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, but in a ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... himself; they, too, waited on the alert behind their loopholes. But along the rest of their front their men kept on coming out from their trenches unarmed, and making merry and friendly gestures. I became uneasy, and wondered how this unexpected comedy might end. Ought I to have those men fired upon who were not quite opposite to us, and whose opponents seemed rather inclined to ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... more to my work. But between me and the fading light came the face of the miniature, and would not be banished. Wherever I turned it looked out at me from the shadows. I am not naturally fanciful, and the work I was engaged upon—the writing of a farcical comedy—was not of the kind to excite the dreamy side of a man's nature. I grew angry with myself, and made a further effort to fix my mind upon the paper in front of me. But my thoughts refused to return from their wanderings. Once, glancing back over my shoulder, I could have sworn I saw ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... talent; he was an excellent mimic, and could alter his voice almost as he pleased. It was a custom of his to act a scene as between other people, and he performed it remarkably well. Whenever he said that anything he was going to narrate was "as good as a comedy," it was generally understood by those who were acquainted with him, that he was to be asked so to do. Cecilia Ossulton therefore immediately said, "Pray ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... This comedy, annually repeated, was annually played on the same lines. Only each year the period intervening between the surrender of the tickets and the announcement of the lottery brought an increasing agony. Each ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... instead, intact; that her words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red letters, October 2, 1860, largely and clearly written. I am sure the woman's hand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but there is no sign of it here; for it ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... for the theatre. I propose that arrangements be made with the Comedy Company of Tondo for seven representations, seven consecutive evenings, at 200 pesos an evening. Seven representations, at 200 pesos each, makes 1,400 pesos. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... he saw his wife, two windows further, lean out and catch sight of him. He had to smile, to conceal his perturbation; and nothing could be more hateful to him than this comedy which a child's whims ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... present who bore quite the attitude which Mrs. Sommers did to her surroundings. She gathered in the whole—stage and players and people in one wide impression, and absorbed it and enjoyed it. She laughed at the comedy and wept—she and the gaudy woman next to her wept over the tragedy. And they talked a little together over it. And the gaudy woman wiped her eyes and sniffled on a tiny square of filmy, perfumed lace and passed little Mrs. Sommers her ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... think I could have got on with him. I am very adaptable, as you know. But it was not to be. He got out of his depth one morning, and unfortunately there was no one within distance but myself who could swim. I knew what the result would be. You remember Labiche's comedy, Les Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon? Of course, every man hates having had his life saved, after it is over; and you can imagine how he must hate having it saved by a woman. But what was I to do? In ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... the busy woodpecker ceased his drumming, cocking his head inquisitively at the intruders; then shyly drew away, mounting spirally the trunk of the tree to the hole, chiseled by his strong beak for a nest. As Barnes gazed around upon the pleasing prospect, he straightway became the duke in the comedy of the forest. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham |
