FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Actor' Quotes from Famous Books

... walk, and soon reached the store, where they found the group of idlers, that always frequent shops in the country, busily engaged in discussing the affair in which Thomas had been the principal actor. As the boys entered, the hero of the Pinchbrook Battle was saluted with a volley of applause, and his conduct fully approved and commended, for a copperhead in that day was an abomination ...

— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... the trouble has been discovered and as a part of his re-education, the patient is instructed while under only light hypnosis to 'form a picture' in his mind. He is asked to imagine a movie screen and to see himself 'just like an actor' on this screen playing a part. He is told that the picture looks 'very real'—'3-D' in fact—and that he can see himself acting and looking the way he really wants to look and act. Various scenes are suggested ...

— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... Beryllus, a loquacious Sicilian, who, as an actor, had seen better days ere pirates robbed him of his liberty, had heard many new things, and his hearers listened eagerly; for ships coming from the north, which touched at Pelusium, had confirmed and completed the evil tidings that had ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... rhetorical in one way, more natural in another. A good example, in which the new rhetoric is not oppressive, is the account of the sea fight at the end of Act III. Even when Harris followed his original most closely, we seem to hear the actor, speaking in a new tongue, in a more relaxed and colloquial rhythm. The reader will find it both amusing and instructive to compare the two versions of Act II, scene ii. The new cadences do more than merely prove that Harris had no ear for ...

— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris

... and musketry as threw them into disorder. Gen. Lee sent all his disposable troops to the rescue, but the Federal fire was so terrible as to disconsert the coolest veterans. Whole ranks of the Confederate troops were hurled to the ground. Says an actor in the conflict: 'The thunder of cannon, the cracking of musketry from thousands of combatants, mingled with the screams of the wounded and dying, were terrific to the ear ...

— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... oftenest to degenerate into mere slovenliness and vulgarity. It is in vain, too, to expect that the meanness of those parts may be redeemed by the excellence of others. A poet, who aims at all at sublimity or pathos, is like an actor in a high tragic character, and must sustain his dignity throughout, or become altogether ridiculous. We are apt enough to laugh at the mock-majesty of those whom we know to be but common mortals in private; and cannot permit Hamlet ...

— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... residing in him, and renders this very exercise possible. (2) Though the Apologists believed in the divine origin of the revelation given to the prophets, on which all knowledge of truth is based, they could nevertheless not be induced by this idea to represent God himself as a direct actor. For that revelation presupposes a speaker and a spoken word; but it would be an impossible thought to make the fulness of all essence and the first cause of all things speak. The Deity cannot be a speaking ...

— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... of Lauderdale, who was the chief actor in these scenes of violence and iniquity, was completely approved and justified at court; but in consequence probably of the state of politics in England at a time when the Whigs were strongest in the House of Commons, some of these grievances were in part ...

— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... reader acquainted circumstantially with three memorable cases of murder, which long ago the voice of amateurs has crowned with laurel, but especially with the two earliest of the three, viz., the immortal Williams' murders of 1812. The act and the actor are each separately in the highest degree interesting; and, as forty-two years have elapsed since 1812, it cannot be supposed that either is known circumstantially to the men ...

— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... Meantime the principal actor in this little Russian episode, as the Baron von Rabenstein, captivates the hearts of our English ladies at the ball-room, and empties the pockets of our English gentlemen at the rouge et noir table in the fashionable German watering-place of Lugundtrugbad. ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... were not,' said May Dacre. 'What are tableaux, or acted charades, or romances, to masques, which were the splendid and various amusement of our ancestors. Last Christmas we performed "Comus" here with great effect; but then we had Arundel, and he is an admirable actor.' ...

— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... one ingenious police reporter that the bookkeeper was really the guilty man. He even raked up some story of the man at his lodgings which intimated that Chesterton had some art as an actor. Parts of disguises were found abandoned at his empty rooms. This suggestion was made: That Chesterton was a forger and had disguised himself as Mr. Morrell so as to cash the checks without question. Then ...

— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... nature and destiny of man was thus not a compact and consistent system, but a group of intuitions nourished from widely different regions of soul and sense, and undergoing, like the face of a great actor, striking changes of expression without material change of feature under the changing incidence of stress and glow. The ultimate gist of his teaching was presented through the medium of conceptions proper to another school of thought, which, ...

— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... advantage in trying to describe what happened to myself in my passage through life. From the earliest days that I can recollect, I felt myself as a twofold being—as a subject and an object, as a spectator and as an actor. I suppose we all talk to ourselves, and say to our better and worse selves, O thou fool! or, Well done, my boy! Well this inward conversation began with me at a very early time, and left the impression that I was the coachman, but at the same time the horse too which ...

— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... to be tried, that they may see the same: AT LEAST time and place aforesaid, the said Arthur Davies was murdered or bereaved of his life, and they, and each of them, or one or other of them, are guilty, actor or art and part of the said murder, aggravated as above set furth; all which, or part thereof, being found proven by the verdict of an Assize, before the Lords Justice General, Justice Clerk, and Commissioners ...

— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott

... the material from which was builded an actor. Lewis Paine, who brutally hacked at Secretary Seward while Booth was assassinating the President. He was one of the characters produced for the closing ...

— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... behind the scenes, Orville said, "Barton, you did yourself proud! Keep it up when you appear again in the fourth act, and you may consider yourself an actor." ...

— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger

... Jonadab, "he was a kind of mildewed article, but as a play actor—well, there may be some that can beat him, but I never ...

— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the actor who complains that his manager forbids him to wear his armlet on the stage. The sympathies of the audience might be entirely deranged by the discovery that the elderly villain was an attested patriot ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various

... de Maillebois was not so reverent to the Imperial Majesty as he should have been. Angry belike at the Adventure now forced on him, and harassed with many things; seeing in the Imperial Majesty little but an unfortunate Play-actor Majesty, who lives in furnished lodgings paid for by France, and gives France and Maillebois an infinite deal of trouble to little purpose. Certain it is, he addressed the Imperial Majesty in the most free-and-easy ...

— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... story in connection with this Richmond visit illustrates the romantic phase of Irving's character. Cooper, who was playing at the theatre, needed small-clothes for one of his parts; Irving lent him a pair,—knee-breeches being still worn,—and the actor carried them off to Baltimore. From that city he wrote that he had found in the pocket an emblem of love, a mysterious locket of hair in the shape of a heart. The history of it is curious: when Irving ...

— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... start of so many others as eager as yourself, at least keeps you in a more unbearable suspense before the curtain rises, if it does not enhance the delight with which you follow the performance and see the actor "bend up each corporal agent" to realise a masterpiece of a few hours' duration. With a player so variable as Salvini, who trusts to the feelings of the moment for so much detail, and who, night after night, does the same thing differently but always well, it can never be ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... public speakers. Much of the time that is spent in teaching boys to walk upon stilts, might be more advantageously employed in teaching them to walk well without them. It is all very well whilst the pupil is under the protection of his preceptor. The actor on the stage is admired whilst he is elevated by the cothurnus; but young men are not to exhibit their oratorical talents always with the advantages of stage effect and decorations. We should imagine, that much of the diffidence felt by young ...

— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... nestles confidingly amid the most savage and sublime forms of nature, he had experienced whatever impulses the creative faculty can receive from mountain and cloud and the voices of winds and waters, but he had known man only as an actor in fireside histories and tragedies, for which the hamlet supplied an ample stage. In France he first felt the authentic beat of a nation's heart; he was a spectator at one of those dramas where the terrible footfall of the Eumenides is heard nearer ...

— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... fair Nature, by divine command Her magic pencil in his glowing hand, A Shakspeare rose; then, to expand his fame Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came. Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew, The Actor's genius bade them breathe anew; Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, Immortal Garrick called them back to day: And till Eternity with power sublime Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, Shakspeare and Garrick ...

— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... curses. The fugitive's life was saved by a company of the trainbands; and he was carried before the Lord Mayor. The Mayor was a simple man who had passed his whole life in obscurity, and was bewildered by finding himself an important actor in a mighty revolution. The events of the last twenty-four hours, and the perilous state of the city which was under his charge, had disordered his mind and his body. When the great man, at whose frown, a few days before, the whole kingdom had trembled, was, dragged into the justice ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... excellence to be attained by an employer. And toward this quarry Duncan was now hastening at the full speed of his big Packard-sixty, with the trusted Thompson at the wheel; and toward it, as the chief actor, Richard Morton had started away from Cedarcrest with a broken heart, and with a brain crazed by the calamities that had rushed so swiftly ...

— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman

... me more like what I supposed mothers to be than any other I had known—"my child, 'it is impossible that scandals should not come: but woe unto them through whom they come!' It seems to me probable that one sin may be written in many books: that the actor, and the inciter, and the abettor—ay, and those who might have prevented, and did not—may all have their share. Thy coming hither, and thy religious life, having received no vocation of God, was not thy fault, poor, ...

— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... experienced a grim satisfaction in the boy's complaints. What did these wordy friends of Job know of sorrow and despair? As though they were conditions that could be explained away! He turned almost to the end of the story, and there he paused. A new actor had entered the sorrowful drama. Out of the whirlwind there came a Voice—the voice of the Infinite—and before its thunder the souls of Job and ...

— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... how Waka circumvented Malio and restored her grandchild to the husband designed for her. The whole thing sounds like a dramatic innovation with farcical import, which appeared in the tale without motivation for the reason that it had none in its inception. The oral narrator is rather an actor than a composer; he may have introduced this episode as a surprise, and its success as farce perpetuated it ...

— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... actor in a pantomime, and rehearsed the scene every day for a week, he could not have arrived more precisely, than when he made his appearance at the very moment Mr. Hunter was about to declare ...

— Down the Slope • James Otis

... quaint animal-like movements of the draped figure. He wears a huge grotesque scarlet mask on his head, and at times makes this monster appear to stretch out and draw in its neck by an unseen change in position of the mask from the head to the gradually extended and draped hand of the actor. The beat of a drum and the whistle of a bamboo flute formed the accompaniment to ...

— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... consultations not in public, but in private, and withdrawn from the knowledge of the many; where when this one point was agreed on, that the accused must be rescued whether by just or unjust means, every proposition that was most desperate was most approved; nor was an actor wanted for any deed however daring. Accordingly on the day of trial, when the people stood in the forum in anxious expectation, they at first began to feel surprised that the tribune did not come down; then when the delay ...

— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... rehearsals, and at last after an arduous struggle, I made my debut at the benefit of one of the stock actors. My name was adroitly whispered about, one or two mysterious paragraphs were published at the expense of the actor, and so—curiosity gave me an ...

— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... sought. He found himself thinking almost enviously of the men with whom he had associated,—Philipson, with whom he had been at college, with three plays running at different theatres, interested, even fascinated by his work, chaffing gaily with his principal actor as to the rendering of some of his lines. Then there was Fardell, also a schoolfellow, now a police magistrate, full of dry and pleasant humour, called by his intimates "The Beak "; Amberson, poseur and dilettante thirty years ago, but always ...

— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... showed plainly in almost every face. When Cutler spoke it was with obvious effort. Everybody realized that Blakely, despite severe personal losses, had been the directing head in checking the progress of the flames. Truman had borne admirable part, but Blakely was at once leader and actor. He deserved well of his commander. He was still far from strong. He was weak and weary. His hands and face were scorched and in places blistered, yet, turning his back on the ruins of his treasures, he desired to go at once to join his comrades in the presence of the enemy. He had missed ...

— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... the period of the Truce, and their tragic catastrophe, had weakened her purpose and partially paralysed her arm. When the noble Commonwealth went forward to the renewed and general conflict which succeeded the concentrated one in which it had been the chief actor, the effect of those misspent ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... PRODUCE CHILDREN'S PLAYS The author is a recognized authority on the production of plays and pageants in the public schools, and combines enthusiastic sympathy with sound, practical instructions. She tells both how to inspire and care for the young actor, how to make costumes, properties, scenery, where to find designs for them, what music to use, etc., etc. She prefaces it all with an interesting historical sketch of the plays-for-children movement, includes ...

— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... There was also much in Seymour himself as well as in his words to attract the attention of the convention.[995] Added years gave him a more stately, almost a picturesque bearing, while a strikingly intelligent face changed its expression with the ease and swiftness of an actor's. This was never more apparent than now, when he turned, abruptly, from the alleged sins of Republicans to the alleged virtues of Democrats. Relaxing its severity, his countenance wore a triumphant smile as he declared in a higher and more resonant key, that "if this Administration ...

— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... child's agony of disappointment when it finds that it has been laughed at instead of being admired. Amyas would have spoken, but he was afraid: however, the evil brought its own cure. The pageant went on, as its actor thought, most successfully for three days or so; but at last the dupe, unable to contain herself longer, appealed to Amyas,—"Ayacanora quite English girl now; is she not?"—heard a titter behind her, looked round, saw a dozen ...

— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... to lose faith in human nature. Whom now could she believe? Could she venture to put confidence in this confession of Miss Fortescue? Was that her real name, and was this her real story, or was it all some new piece of acting, contrived by this all-accomplished actor for the sake of dragging her down to deeper abysses of woe? She felt herself to be surrounded by remorseless enemies, all of whom were plotting against her, and in whose hearts there was no possibility of pity or ...

— The Living Link • James De Mille

... friend, the Rector of the parish, who has always been keen on theatricals—he would have made a better actor than parson—is having the church seated with plush-covered tip-seats like a theatre, and proposes to have a performance every Sunday Evening, and as often in the week as funds, and interest in the affair, will warrant. Good Heavens! What has the world ...

— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... solicitors' clerks, which was frequently honoured by visits from former associates who had taken to the stage; these happy beings would condescend to recite at times, to give help in getting up a dramatic entertainment, and soon, in this way, Scawthorne came to know an old actor named Drake, who supported himself by instructing novices, male and female, in his own profession; one of Mr. Drake's old pupils was Miss Grace Danver, in whom, as soon as he met her, Scawthorne recognised the Grace Rudd of earlier days. And it was not long after this that he brought to ...

— The Nether World • George Gissing

... down my throat. I drink his health in a dose of the cheerful beverage known as jalap, and thresh the sheets with my hot hands. I address large assemblages, who have somehow got into my room, and I charge Dr. Williamson with the murder of Luce, and Mr. Irwin, the actor, with the murder of Shakspeare. I have a lucid spell now and then, in one of which James Townsend, the landlord, enters. He whispers, but I hear what he says far too distinctly: "This man can have anything and everything he wants; ...

— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... behind the outward calm of the dark eyes and dimpling curves, a certain excited interest and delight. The current of thought thus revealed contrasted with the calm which she instinctively turned to him, as the words which an actor speaks aside contrast with ...

— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... an interfering and unprovoked intrusion, had defrauded the other of the child's inalienable right to the center of the stage at least once a year. And when one remembers how crowded was the Madigan stage with jealous performers, any actor at all desirous of an opportunity must ...

— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... vocation for the stage, she did her best to make a living for herself and her child by becoming a professional actress. She was not much of an actress, however, and, being unable to make any mark in London, she passed for a time into the provinces, and at last married an actor and ...

— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the Resurrection I am always reminded of the "happy endings" that editors and actor managers are accustomed to impose upon ...

— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... that every reader can supply from his own exciting souvenirs, is absurd and ridiculous on the part of the brain. It is a conclusive proof that the brain is out of condition, idle as a nigger, capricious as an actor-manager, and eaten to the core with loose habits. Therefore the brain must be put into training. It is the most important part of the human machine by which the soul expresses and develops itself, and it must learn good habits. And primarily it must be taught obedience. Obedience can ...

— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett

... spreading out his fishing-nets and lines. "It is my belief," he said, "that the pretty fellow yonder is some starveling play-actor without a brass farthing to ...

— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... that he was either drunk or asleep,' he answered. 'Lieutenant Sears describes him as a stupid boor. I am not satisfied that he is not a clever actor. What was his position in this house? What was his real duty here? Suppose it was not to guard this woman, but to watch her. Let us imagine that it was not the woman he served, but a master, and see where that leads us. For this house has a ...

— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... knocked in, one end of his collar was unfastened and stuck up into his face, his watch-chain dangled from his pocket, and a yellow satin slipper was tied to a button-hole of his vest; his nose was vermilion, one eye was black and blue. After a short dialogue with the girl, a third actor appeared. He was dressed like a little boy, the girl's younger brother. He wore an immense turned-down collar, and was continually doing hand-springs and wonderful back somersaults. The "act" devolved upon these three people; the lodger making love to the girl in the short blue ...

— McTeague • Frank Norris

... number of voices as the curtain slid up, to give place to "Bustling Bodkins," the tramp juggler. The actor came out in his usual ragged make-up, and proceeded to do things with a pile of empty cigar boxes—really a clever trick. Dunk watched him with curious gravity for a while and then started to climb over the footlights ...

— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... "Don't cross me here!" And then, shaking his fist at the hills, "To think," cries he, "that I must leave my bones in this miserable wilderness! Would God I had died upon the scaffold like a gentleman!" This he said ranting like an actor; and then sat biting his fingers and staring on the ground, a ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... are the first thing to be affected by alcohol. And the way he shot that tread-snail. I've seen men who could shoot well on liquor, but not quick-draw stuff. That calls for perfect co-ordination. And the way he went into his tipsy act at the Times—veteran actor slipping into ...

— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... Dog. The conference over, Angelique speedily dismissed De Pean. She was in no mood for flirtation with him. Her mind was taken up with the possibility of danger to Le Gardeur in this plot, which she saw clearly was the work of others, and not of himself, although he was expected to be a chief actor in it. ...

— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Puritans. According to Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, at the trial of one of these martyrs to superstition, George Burroughs, he was accused by eight of the confessing witches "as being the head actor at some of their hellish rendezvouzes, and one who had the promise of being a king in Satan's kingdom, now going to be erected. One of them falling into a kind of trance affirmed that G.B. had carried her ...

— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... in judgment on the performance after its conclusion—on which occasion wine flowed as copiously for those who had acquitted themselves well, as stripes fell to the lot of the bungler—but all the urban magistrates were legally entitled to inflict bodily chastisement and imprisonment on any actor at any time and at any place. The necessary effect of this was that dancing, music, and poetry, at least so far as they appeared on the public stage, fell into the hands of the lowest classes of the Roman burgesses, ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... carefully between the ablative of means and the ablative of the personal agent. Both are often translated into English by the preposition by. (Cf. Sec. 100. b.) Means is a /thing; the agent or actor is a /person. The ablative of means has no preposition. The ablative of the personal agent ...

— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... is the question of cast. The author builds his hero in such a manner that he requires an actor who can sing, dance, be funny, and carry a love interest. When the time comes to cast the piece, he finds that the only possible man in sight wants fifteen hundred a week and, anyway, is signed up for the next five years with the rival syndicate. He is then faced with the alternative ...

— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... uplifted hands or contorted features; but their real business seems to be to make the picture. The drama is thrust upon us, and we cannot ignore it; yet we feel that it is no discovery for the artist, but something that he has learnt like a second-rate actor—that he has, in fact, a "bag of tricks" in common with all the Italian painters of his time, and that he is only pretending to be surprised by his subject. Now every age has its artistic platitudes; but these platitudes of dramatic expression are peculiarly wearisome ...

— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... recognizes that her first interest is the work and the life of the home, she must also be interested in the affairs of the day. The home is the heart and kernel of the affairs of the world. It is a mistake to try to get rid of the work of the home; the right way is to enjoy it; just as a doctor, an actor, a writer, a manufacturer or a merchant enjoys his or her work. The affairs both of the home and the world belong to the woman home-maker. We should take pattern by English and French women, for the English ...

— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... forward his slow horse with the whip, until a sharp cut made the beast swerve, and the chaise toppled over the bank, throwing out the driver and the young lady who was with him. The traveler—it was John Bernard, an actor and a man of culture and accomplishments, spurred forward to the rescue. As he did so he saw another horseman put his horse from a trot to a gallop, and together they reached the scene of action, extricated ...

— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... The great painter of portraits, Gilbert Stuart, tells us of Washington that he never saw in any man such large eye-sockets, or such a breadth of nose and forehead between the eyes, and that he read there the evidences of the strongest passions possible to human nature. John Bernard the actor, a good observer, too, saw in Washington's face, in 1797, the signs of an habitual conflict and mastery of passions, witnessed by the compressed mouth and deeply indented brow. The problem had been ...

— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... followed his remarks; for the comic actor was himself far from aiding public morals by ...

— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... can you do with a Scotchman who's mad clear to the marrow? Especially a rough actor like McNutt. I'd already done a mile from the village when along comes 'Chita in her roadster. You know, old man Alvarado's only daughter. Some senorita, 'Chita is. You should have seen those black eyes of her's flash when she ...

— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemera. It is always ancient virtue. We worship ...

— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to lunch, and the children simply did for me what I could not have done for myself. Frank ran his father on funny stories. Then it all came out. Mr. Furniss is an excellent actor—had he not been a caricaturist he must have been a comedian. His powers of imitation are unlimited. He will give you an Irish jarvey one moment and Henry Irving the next, and the children led him on. But it all at once dawned upon Mr. Furniss that it was interfering with ...

— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... dark corners of the room, and to look under the bed. When at last the spectral head appears at the foot-board, Facanapa vanishes with a miserable cry under the bed-clothes, and the scene closes. Intrinsically the scene is not much, but this great actor throws into it a life, a spirit, a drollery ...

— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... At last the chief actor entered, a powerful black bull with sharp horns and fiercely glistening eyes. He had been in a room with holes in the ceiling through which he had been poked with pointed sticks. He was, therefore, tolerably ill-humored before he entered ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... part was given to Elliston, who liked it, and only wanted a prologue, which I have since done and sent; and I had a note the day before yesterday from the manager, Wroughton (bless his fat face, he is not a bad actor in some things), to say that I should be summoned to the rehearsal after the next, which next was to be yesterday. I had no idea it was so forward. I have had no trouble, attended no reading or rehearsal, made no interest; what a contrast ...

— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... done,—the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell; A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A ...

— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... hope, Had she continu'd widow, to have gain'd An infinite mass of treasure by her death: And that was the main cause,—her marriage, That drew a stream of gall quite through my heart. For thee, as we observe in tragedies That a good actor many times is curs'd For playing a villain's part, I hate thee for 't, And, for my sake, say, thou ...

— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... "Sam's a bad actor when he's drinking," one of Pierce's informants told him. "Letty keeps him pretty straight, but once in a while he gets away. When ...

— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... warrant. Behind him paced the Black Colonel, and as he came nearer to myself and the ladies, I saw them turn as if to ask me whether this was in the programme. So far, the Black Colonel had not let his eyes catch ours. He gave himself to the crowd, as a well-graced actor gives himself to the house when it applauds him. He had the music on his side, too, for, at the platform, the piper stepped aside into a corner, still blowing hard, and this brought the Black Colonel full to the front, immediately beside us. Thereupon he slowly bent in salutation to Marget and ...

— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... height. Rainham at first felt quite disconcerted by the proximity of the ludicrous figure in bathing dress who was leaning over the footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to the audience which alone would have marked the nationality of the robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the extremely hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine (Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of the rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first was disconcerted, and then he began to feel ...

— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... to the first performance, and saw to my surprise that the chief actor was a Venetian, and a fellow-student of mine, twenty years before, at St. Cyprian's College. His name was Bassi, and like myself he had given up the priesthood. Fortune had made an actor of him, and he looked wretched enough, while I, the adventurer, ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... shows that there is much which we can accomplish without speech. Aside from its value to the drama, pantomime has a large significance for acting. The necessity of making one's self intelligible without words forces the actor to weigh and consider every movement, ...

— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... believe that they alone are patriotic. This illusion, to be just, is not fostered chiefly by the press, which wants to sell its work to all classes; but it has strong hold of the Government office. The Government does not know the people, except as an actor knows the audience; and therefore does not trust the people. It is pathetic to hear officials talking timidly of the people—will they endure hardships and sacrifices, will they carry through? Yet most of the successes we have won in the War have to be credited not so much to the ...

— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... the eastern counties, Robertus le chien and Willelmus le curre, who were living about the end of the twelfth century, are now completely disguised as Ken and Kerr. Modern French has both Lechien and the Norman Lequien. [Footnote: Lekain, the name of a famous French actor, has the same origin.] We owe a few other surnames to the friend of man. Kennett, from a Norman dim. ...

— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... that of a fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile Vulcan arrived in a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had slipped away three days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling on Vulcan, the god of the cuckolds. Vulcan's part was played by Fontan, a comic actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role of the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith, fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all the rest of it. A woman's voice ...

— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... graceful and comical. One of them, oddly enough, had a window in the middle of its stomach out of which a baby kangaroo put its long-eared head and stared at them, then popped it in again and shut the window. The secretary-bird proved himself a grand actor; he marched round his cage, bowed two or three times to Fan, then performed the maddest dance imaginable, leaping and pounding the floor with his iron feet, just to show how he broke a serpent's back in ...

— Fan • Henry Harford

... he applauded the sound judgment, and deplored the hard manner of Davenport; he viewed calmly what he regarded to be an overestimation of Edwin Booth—one of the first criticisms of an avowedly negative character I have seen aimed directly at this actor. In other words, Bunce fought hard against the encroachment of the new times upon the acting of his early theatre days. The epitome of his old-time attitude is to be found in Appleton's Journal for April 3, 1869. His better mood was to be met with in his discussion ...

— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... like that of the sufferer, the only difference being that one is physical, the other mental? And this is all that mere sympathy has any power to effect; it has led us to its extreme point,—our flesh creeps, and we turn away with almost bodily sickness. But let another actor be added to the drama in the presiding Inquisitor, the cool methodizer of this process of torture; in an instant the scene is changed, and, strange to say, our feelings become less painful,—nay, we feel a momentary interest,—from an instant ...

— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... life of Francisco Pizarro not much is known with certainty. He was born about the year 1471; but even that date is a matter of conjecture, so little care was had of the coming into the world of the actor who was to play so stirring a part in it. The family from which he inherited his name must have been one of some note in its day. His kinsman and great rival in fame, Cortes, was a Pizarro ...

— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... and ordered the servant to lead Captain Molyneux to Miss Pomeroy. Guy was thus forced to be an actor where his highest desire was to be passive. There was no alternative. In that moment all his future was involved. He saw it; he knew it; but he did not shrink. Honor bound him to this marriage, hateful as it was. The other actor in the scene detested it as much ...

— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... for his collection of autograph letters. It was the picture of a well-known actress. He then recalled an advertisement announcing that this particular brand of cigarettes contained, in each package, a lithographed portrait of some famous actor or actress, and that if the purchaser would collect these he would, in the end, have a valuable album of the greatest actors and actresses of the day. Edward turned the picture over, only to find a blank reverse side. "All very well," he thought, "but ...

— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... be an accident," predicted the grouchy actor. "I think you may count me out of this play, Mr. Pertell. I have had ...

— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... guise the actor belongs to himself. He has put on a mask, beneath it his real face still exists; he has thrown himself into a foreign individuality, which in some sense forms a shelter to the integrity of his own ...

— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... even more at a loss concerning her contemporary, John Brooks, of whom I have no other record than the following letter, which appears in the autobiography of the famous author-actor-manager, Thomas Dibdin, of the Theaters Royal, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Haymarket and others. This one communication, however, absolves of any obligation to dig up proofs of John Brooks' versatility: ...

— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... quite naturally set on such insincere distortions of values as are necessary to a constant succession of "big parts" for themselves. Sincerity does not necessarily exclude heroic characters, but it does exclude those mock heroics which actor-managers have been known to prefer—not to real heroics, perhaps, but to simple and sound studies ...

— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... ways in which all economic threads are interwoven with one another. Thus Paley remarks in his work on the Principles of Morals and Politics, that a tobacco manufacturer even may contribute indirectly to the cultivation of grain; an actor, to industry etc. ...

— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... the faltering Delegation at Tours, and to stir the blood of France by his invective. There was a touch of the melodramatic not only in his apparition but in his speeches. Frenchmen, however, follow a leader all the better if he is a good stage-manager and a clever actor. The new leader was both; but he ...

— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... it alone) except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. Such persons are like the figures which are introduced in tragedies, for as they have the shape, and dress, and personal appearance of an actor, but are not actors, so also physicians are many in title but ...

— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... professional jealousy existed. Bowen, a low comedian of "some talent and more conceit," taunted Quin with being tame in a certain role, and Quin retorted in kind, declaring that Bowen's impersonation of a character in "The Libertine" was much inferior to that of another actor. Bowen seems to have had an ill-balanced mind; he was so affected by Jeremy Collier's "Short View" that he left the stage and opened a cane shop in Holborn, thinking "a shopkeeper's life was the readiest way to heaven." ...

— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... company to be present. At last, when he no longer could hold out, the soldier only surrendered after stipulating for the life of himself and his entire band. Notwithstanding his promise, Strozzi, when once his astonishment at the appearance of the single actor who had played so many parts had given place to anger at the deceit practised upon him, was in favor of hanging the Huguenot for his audacity. But Biron would only consent to have him sent to the galleys, a punishment which he escaped ...

— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... time, and there are signs that audiences took advantage of the plays to express their approval or dislike of a statesman. In a letter to Atticus, written in the summer of 59,[501] the first year of the triumvirate, Cicero describes with enthusiasm how at the Ludi Apollinares the actor Diphilus made an allusion to Pompey in the words (from an unknown tragedy then being acted), "Nostra miseria tu es—Magnus," and was forced to repeat them many times. When ...

— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... son of General Joseph Palmer, a prominent actor in the Revolutionary drama in Massachusetts, and Mary, the sister of Judge Richard Cranch, who resided in that part of Braintree called Germantown. Before the war he dealt in West India goods and hardware, at the town dock. Of his share in the ...

— Tea Leaves • Various

... can rarely resist a scene: and such this was considered, and laughed at accordingly, ere next morning. It is, nevertheless, difficult to refuse sympathy to the chief actor. Buonaparte was sincerely attached to Maria Louisa, though he treated her rather with a parental tenderness than like a lover; and his affection for his son was the warmest passion in his heart, unless, indeed, we ...

— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... look; calm and serenity of mind is legible upon the brow in eloquent traits. False gravity, on the contrary, places its dignity in the lines of its visage; it is close, mysterious, and guards its features with the care of an actor; all the muscles of its face are tormented, all natural and true expression disappears, and the entire man ...

— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... ladies sing; and the chap in brown Tilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale, He rattles the keys ... Some actor-bloke from town ... 'God send you home'; and then 'A long, long trail; I hear you calling me'; and 'Dixieland'.... Sing slowly ... now the chorus ... one by one We hear them, drink them; till the concert's done. Silent, I ...

— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... there,' exclaimed Sergius eagerly, 'that I found my man—a Rhodian, with the forehead, neck, and sinews of a bull. He could have hugged a bull to death almost. Having him, I felt safe, for who could you obtain to stand up against him? But in an evil hour, not over a month ago, this play actor here—this Bassus—by a stupid trick gained him from me. What, then, have I been able to do for myself since? I have sought far and near to replace him, but without success; and had made up my mind, if you would not postpone the trial, to pay up the forfeit for not appearing, and think no more ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is right. Mr. STODDART is an exceptionally able actor, but of late he has grown intolerably coarse and vulgar while on the stage. His profanity has disgraced himself and the theatre, and his gratuitous insult to an estimable lady, who had the misfortune ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... Another actor had appeared upon the scene. At the spot where the game had entered the water stood the black hound, sniffing the air for some taint of the ...

— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... well known that it is part of an actor's duty to make a careful study of gesture; and the same thing is true, to a somewhat smaller degree, of a public speaker. This study must consist chiefly in watching others and imitating their movements, for there are no abstract rules fairly applicable ...

— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... down heavily on the threshold. The lady retreated to the hat-stand, and rested her hand mechanically on the handle of a blue cotton umbrella. Mr. O'Rourke partly turned his head and smiled upon her with conscious superiority. At this juncture a third actor appeared on the scene, evidently a friend of Mr. O'Rourke, for he addressed that gentleman as "a spalpeen," and told him ...

— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... of footsteps or the summons of a voice. "Where do you suppose the second little blob of protoplasm with legs came from?" Dr. Andrews asked. "And the third? If that ape who found he could stand erect had walked lonesomely off into the sunset like a second-rate actor on a late, late show, where do ...

— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... naturalness with which he slipped past objects, looked through people, and was unheeded by those whom he most wanted to influence. The remarkable unity of idea sustained by Mr. Belasco as manager, and by Mr. Warfield as actor, was largely instrumental in making the play a triumph. The playwright did not attempt to create supernatural mood; he did not resort to natural tricks such as Maeterlinck used in "L'Intruse," or as Mansfield employed ...

— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... invention; rightly rendered, he said, the whole theatre would be moved by it. It should be received with a moment of absolute silence, a sixty-seconds' silence; then, with one consent, the audience would rise en masse and cheer the actor—myself—and the poet—himself. Admiring the thought, feeling the force of it, I promised him that he might depend ...

— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... his hand a little book that John was required to take and eat. In advancing and taking the book, John himself becomes an actor in the symbolic scene, the same as was the book and the angel from whose hand he took it. Therefore we must now consider John a symbol of something in this vision. Some of the commentators have supposed that this ...

— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... Roosevelt still kept silent, but he told his intimates that he would not run. He did not wish to be President again, especially at the cost of an internecine struggle. I believe that he was sincere; so is the consummate actor or the prima donna, whom the world applauds, sincere in bidding farewell to the stage forever. Nevertheless, which of them is conscious of the strength of the passion, which long habit, and supremacy, and the intoxication of success have evoked, dwells in them? Given the moment and the lure, they ...

— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... loved the spotlight like an actor. The flamboyant oratory at which he excelled had won for him the interstate contest. He was editor-in-chief of the "Verdenian," manager of the varsity football team, and ...

— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... theirs, where the invalid actor lay, and where lately there had been minstrelsy and apparently dancing for his solace, there was now comparative silence. Two women's voices talked together, and now and then a guitar was touched by a wandering hand. Isabel had just put up her handkerchief to conceal her first ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... their hands imploringly to heaven. "Not love me!" they both exclaimed together, with a tone of heartfelt surprise and wounded sensibility, that would have gone far to have made the fortune of a sentimental actor. ...

— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... the full glow of the fire, while the roar of the wind and the flaring of the red light filled the room with sound and colour. The slim, pale woman looked very weak and small to be the leading actor in this tragic drama of the hills, and the big, stupidly staring man opposite seemed very insignificant as ...

— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... fictitious grief? Or is it that from truth such anguish flows, Ye court the lying drama for relief? Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief: Or if one tolerable page appears In folly's volume, 'tis the actor's leaf, Who dries his own by drawing others' tears, And, raising present mirth, makes glad ...

— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... drama there came upon the stage a new actor, at first little heeded, but quickly becoming the dominating figure—the Tzucheng Yuan, or National Assembly. This body, consisting of 100 nobles and men of wealth or scholarship appointed by the Throne, and 100 selected members ...

— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... came tiptoeing forward. Even in this abrupt breaking in out of the storm there was something apologetic and deprecating about the man. As he came up, still sheltering his eyes, as though from the surprise of Kitty's loveliness, and not the fire, he had the bearing of a modest actor called before the ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... actually did. Those hidden secrets of any human mind which we call motives must ever remain to other minds largely a matter of opinion, but a very fair indication of them can be found when once the actual conduct of the actor has been determined. ...

— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Tecumseh was visiting the neighboring tribes and quietly strengthening his own and the prophet's influence over them. The events of the early part of the year 1810 were such as to leave but little doubt of the hostile intentions of the brothers. The prophet was apparently the most prominent actor, while Tecumseh was in reality the mainspring of all the movements, backed, it is supposed, by the insidious influence of British agents, who supplied the Indians gratis with powder and ball, in anticipation, perhaps, of ...

— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... mused, no hint came out of the future as to the time when, in very truth, he would be close to death, and that same dog an actor in the drama, one to be deeply esteemed, not contemned. But that time was not yet. In fact, the immediate future was not destined to remove his prejudice against the ...

— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... the poetical spirit. Nor is it wonderful that, in the poems themselves, we find considerably more about the performer than about the author. In the cases where they were identical, the author would evidently be merged in the actor; in cases where they were not, the actor would take care of himself. Accordingly, though we know if possible even less of the names of the jongleurs than of those of the trouveres, we know a good deal about their methods. Very rarely does an author like ...

— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur Hector Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the alehouse door in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor, and something the look of a horse-jockey. He had evidently prospered without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening passed off some fancy ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... actors who wore a mask like your face. You needn't make a trouble of it; every inquiry shall at once be set on foot, and Marianna shall be brought back to you as soon as she is found. But as for yourself, Signor Pasquale, your behaviour here and your murderous attempt upon the life of that actor compel me ...

— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... clouds for a bird's-eye view of the high pinnacle of human greatness commensurate with the 'local habitation and the name' of such a genius, is at once 'cabined, cribbed, confined,' by the authentic recorded whatabouts, whenabouts, and whereabouts of William Shakspeare, actor, owner, purchaser, and chattels and messuage devisor whilom of the Globe Theatre, Surrey-side; item of the Blackfriars, Fleet Street; and ultimately of Stratford-on-Avon, 'gent,' husband of Anne Hathaway, to whom he devises his second-best ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... once or twice that the real girl had stirred in the dream. For the most part she had remained in the shadow of Katie's fancyings. She was as an actor on the stage, inarticulate save as regards her part. Katie had grown so absorbed in that part that there were times of forgetting there was a real girl behind it. Often she believed in her friend ...

— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... among other things, should exclude her from equality. When she began she was, perhaps, the only person in town who had an unerring instinct for social differences; but, like a kindly, experienced actor of a minor role in theatricals, she had silently given so many professional tips to the amateur principals in the play, and had acted her own part with such unflagging consistency and good-will, that she had ...

— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... and benevolent curiosity were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have equalled. It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he ...

— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... struggling and underpaid journeyman author, wandering from one cheap lodging to another, he burdened himself with the care and maintenance of a distant relative, an orphaned second-cousin, named Thomas Cooper. Cooper came to him at the age of twelve and remained with him till he became an actor at seventeen. Godwin had read Rousseau's Emile, not seldom with dissent, and all through his life was deeply interested in the problems of education. They furnished him with the themes of some of the best essays in his Enquirer and his ...

— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... three pieces are the most perfect manual in all literature for the study of great affairs, whether for the purpose of knowledge or action. "They are an example," as I have said before now, "an example without fault of all the qualities which the critic, whether a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should strive by night and by day to possess. If their subject were as remote as the quarrel between the Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between Rome and the Allies, instead of a conflict to which the world owes the opportunity of one of the most important ...

— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... task, requires courage. The discourse was an able essay. An agent will assay the ore, and forward a receipt. Contemn a mean act; but do not always condemn the actor. They were to seize the fort, and cease firing. They affect great grief; but do not effect their purpose. Do you dissent from my opinion? The hill was difficult of descent. A decent regard for others' ills is human. ...

— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... bursting with sorrow; add to all these inevitable ills, the constant labour of practice and rehearsal, the caprice of the public, the tyranny of managers, the rarity of excellence, the misery of defeat, and the uncertainty of health and capability, and then might one ask, Who would be an actor, who could be any ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... banquet. He does not, however, instruct me to say what I do say heartily—that Mr. Toole fitly represents in any assemblage, his own particular department of the drama; more fitly represents his department than I do mine. I know of no actor who stands higher in the esteem, who exists more durably in the affection of those who know him, than does John ...

— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... the undaunted Frenchman was soon upon his legs and the pony's back again, and then commenced a combat in which all the performers joined. The horses were whipped by the attendants, and kicked, plunged, and reared on their part. The proprietor expostulated with his lady co-actor, whom he threatened and coaxed in turn, but who evidently had a strong desire to discontinue the act; and it was amusing to watch the varying expression of his countenance, as, with frowning brow, and clenched hands, and such a grimace as a Frenchman ...

— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... is right. But Laurence De Foe can read beyond those sea-blue eyes of yours; he it is who knows that behind them lies the gallant soul of a gallant gentleman. End your days in a gutter or on the gibbet—what matters it where the actor sleeps when the drama is done?—but to-night you have done great honour to the Prince of Failures by ...

— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... to at the close of the last chapter is the same as that which those who rarely go to a theatre have to get over before they can appreciate an actor. They go to "Macbeth" or "Othello," expecting to find players speaking and acting on the stage much as they would in actual life; and not finding this, are apt to think the acting coarse and unnatural. They forget that the physical ...

— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... had got a friend of mine, who was a stranger to him, to keep an eye on him. Unnoticed by him, this friend followed him step by step, and in due time he spoke to him. The role, like that of Sbrigani in Pourceaugnac, required an intelligent actor, and it was played to perfection. Without making the child fearful and timid by inspiring excessive terror, he made him realise so thoroughly the folly of his exploit that in half an hour's time he brought him home to me, ashamed and humble, and afraid ...

— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... concluding scene of the foregoing drama, Mr. Douglass was an actor, I an observer. After the decision giving them their liberty, the anti-slavery society, who had been vigilant in its endeavors to have them liberated ever since their advent on American shores, held a ...

— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... at all acquainted with the social history of the eighteenth century in France, need be told that Mademoiselle Gautier had a long list of lovers,—for the most part, persons of quality, marshals, counts, and so forth. The only man, however, who really attached her to him, was an actor at the Theatre Francois, a famous player in his day, named Quinault Dufresne. Mademoiselle Gautier seems to have loved him with all the ardour of her naturally passionate disposition. At first, he returned her affection; but, as soon as she ventured to test ...

— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins

... And fierce Amphimedon, in Lybia born, Rush in the fight to mingle; both fall prone, The slippery earth wide spread with smoking blood. The sword attacks them rising; in his throat Phorbas receives it, and the other's side. But Erythis, of Actor born, whd rear'd An axe tremendous, not the waving sword Of Perseus meets: a cup of massive bulk, With both his hands high-heaving, fierce he hurls Full on his foe: he vomits gory floods; Falls back, and strikes with dying head the earth. Then Polydaemon falls, ...

— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... of his characters, he threw everything like competition behind him; though there were a few, as there ever will be among the superlatively intellectual, who affected to see excellencies in Fennel, and others, to which this great actor could not aspire. The public decided against these select few, and, as is invariably the case when the appeal is made to human feelings, the public decided right. Puffery will force into notice and sustain a false judgment, in such matters, for a brief ...

— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... lodging, so we betook ourselves to the blacksmith's forge across the platform. If the platform be taken as a stage, and the out-curving margin of the dump to represent the line of the foot-lights, then our house would be the first wing on the actor's left, and this blacksmith's forge, although no match for it in size, the foremost on the right. It was a low, brown cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung by the foliage and peeling boughs ...

— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cigars and ever having his glass refilled. It was clear to him that on this night Silverbridge could not be made to understand anything about it. And the deed in which he himself was to be the chief actor was to be done very early in the following morning. At last he slunk away ...

— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... of civilized man than this fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulness (See Rousseau, "De l'Inegalite parmi les Hommes", note 7.): the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... don't be too sure that you're going to down that clever little lady just yet," were the words which suddenly startled every one in the room, and the next instant the door swung wide open to admit a new actor in the drama. ...

— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... the breast of this Roman, we are not informed; but the reply was full of salutary counsel and instruction. Had Pilate regarded it as he ought, it would have prevented him from having been a principal actor in the vilest enormity ever committed on ...

— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... if he doubted the abilities of this instructed actor. To be a performer, he thought as arduous as to be a poet; and if poeta nascitur, non fit—consequently an ...

— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... provoking, because, let me do what I would, some one was sure to exclaim, "Con, my boy, don't try that; it is certainly not your line." "What a capital agent for a new assurance company you'd be!" "What a success you'd have had on the stage! You'd have played Sir Lucius better than any living actor. Why don't you go on the boards? Why not start a penny newspaper? Why not give readings?" I wonder why they didn't tell me to turn organist or ...

— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... An actor visited a beauty doctor to see if he could have something done for his nose. The beauty doctor studied the organ, and suggested a complicated straightening and remoulding process—cost, ...

— Best Short Stories • Various

... that the fine arts of the musician, the painter, the actor, and the orator, so far as they are expressive; although the knowledge of them requires in us a delicate taste, a nice judgment, and much study and practice; yet they are nothing else but the language of nature, ...

— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... sigh at the folly of mankind, his wife asked, "How about the others? That woman with the hair? and that man with the velvet coat? Jessie says Jock told her that he was a mere play- actor!" ...

— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... while you are an actor in the piece, I am but a spectator, and lookers-on, you know, ...

— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... adapting himself to the tastes of his hearers. He was not long in finding out that Alice liked to hear about Philip, and Harry launched out into the career of his friend in the West, with a prodigality of invention that would have astonished the chief actor. He was the most generous fellow in the world, and picturesque conversation was the one thing in which he never was bankrupt. With Mr. Bolton he was the serious man of business, enjoying the confidence of many of the monied men in New York, whom Mr. Bolton knew, and engaged with them in railway ...

— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... over, Angelique speedily dismissed De Pean. She was in no mood for flirtation with him. Her mind was taken up with the possibility of danger to Le Gardeur in this plot, which she saw clearly was the work of others, and not of himself, although he was expected to be a chief actor in it. ...

— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... as he gave out are not trustworthy. He came from a good Maryland family, but apparently from one of those offshoots that are not true to type. His father left the study of law to become a strolling actor, and presently married an English actress. It was while the father and mother were playing their parts in Boston that ...

— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... day in sorrow. That which is unreal must in time become unsatisfactory, and those who would compel us to live over again the sorrows of Calvary, may drive us to football, or that which is worse! Let men once think that the church has turned actor, and they will say, "No, we will go to the theatre, for there the acting is ...

— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... same way that admiration which all feel for acts of self-denial done for the good of others, and tending even towards the destruction of the actor, could hardly be accounted for on Darwinian principles alone; for self-immolators must but rarely leave direct descendants, while the community they benefit must by their destruction tend, so far, to {193} morally deteriorate. But devotion ...

— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... seemed rather more so; but his talk was embarrassed, pre-occupied, spasmodic. He spoke by fits and starts, and seemed to hold back something. Dolly taxed him with it at last. Walter tried to put it off upon her approaching departure. But he was an honest young man, and so bad an actor that Dolly, with her keen feminine intuitions, at once detected him. "It's more than that," she said, all regret, leaning forward with a quick-gathering moisture in her eye, for she really loved him. "It's more than that, Walter. You've heard something somewhere ...

— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... received at first. "Even my friends," writes Gray, in a letter to Hurd, Aug. 25, 1757, "tell me they do not succeed, and write me moving topics of consolation on that head. In short, I have heard of nobody but an Actor [Garrick] and a Doctor of Divinity [Warburton] that profess their esteem for them. Oh yes, a Lady of quality (a friend of Mason's) who is a great reader. She knew there was a compliment to Dryden, but ...

— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... vanquished. As Athenodorus was fined by the Athenians for being absent from their Dionysian festival, in which he ought to have taken part, he begged Alexander to write them a letter to excuse him. Alexander refused to do this, but paid his fine himself. And when Lykon, of Skarphia, an excellent actor who had pleased Alexander well, inserted a verse into the comedy which he was acting, in which he begged to be given ten talents, Alexander laughed and ...

— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... could not bring to Frieda—my walks, my dreams, my adventures of all sorts. And yet when I told her about them, I found that she partook of everything. For she had her talent for vicarious enjoyment, by means of which she entered as an actor into my adventures, was present as a witness at the frolic of my younger life. Or if I narrated things that were beyond her, on account of her narrower experience, she listened with an eager longing to understand that was better than some people's easy comprehension. ...

— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... suppose, because I ran away to act, that I wasn't an honest woman?" She stretched out her left hand; and there was a thin gold ring on her third finger. "He isn't much of an actor, poor dear. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he has been hissed off two-and-thirty stages in Great Britain alone. Indeed, he's the very worst actor I ever saw, although I don't tell him. But as ...

— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... have fortunately the evidence of the ass himself. In Germany, two witches who kept an inn made an ass of a young actor,—not always a very prodigious transformation it will be thought by those familiar with the stage. In his new shape he drew customers by his amusing tricks,—voluptates mille viatoribus exhibebat. But one day making his escape (having overheard the secret from his mistresses), ...

— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... thought I'd like to be an actor," said Mr. Gayley, carelessly; "but there's not much chance to ...

— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other tack. I observe in the official class mostly an insane jealousy of the smallest kind, as compared to which the artist's is of a grave, modest character—the actor's, even; a desire to extend his little authority, and to relish it like a glass of wine, that is impayable. Sometimes, when I see one of these little kings strutting over one of his victories—wholly illegal, perhaps, and certain to be reversed ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and I agree as to the price, annexing the following conditions to our agreement:—Mr. Kemble shall have his engagement as an actor for any rational time he pleases. Mr. Kemble shall be manager, with a clear salary of 500 guineas per annum, and * * per cent. on the clear profits. Mr. Sheridan engages to procure from Messrs. Hammersleys a loan to Mr. Kemble of ten thousand pounds, ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... dirty; dust, oil, and grime plentifully distributed,—but dirt is picturesque, even if objectionable. Character is expressed in dirt; the bright and shining school-boy face is devoid of interest, an artificial product, quite unnatural; the smutty street urchin is an actor on life's stage, every daub, spot, and line an essential ...

— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... approoued, to see one shippe turne toward so many enemies, to endure the charge and boording of so many huge Armadas, and to resist and repell the assaults and entries of so many souldiers. All which and more is confirmed by a Spanish Captaine of the same Armada, and a present actor in the fight, who being seuered from the rest in a storme, was by the Lion of London a small ship taken, and is now ...

— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... the crisis of the delirium. In the midst of it, the chief actor made his appearance, waving his wand, like Prospero, to work new wonders. Dressed in a long robe of lilac-coloured silk, richly embroidered with gold flowers, bearing in his hand a white magnetic rod; ...

— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... He had learnt the arts of municipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsome fellow!—with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphne had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father, of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on the other hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of storm and tempest; ...

— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with what difference actors were treated among the ancients. At Athens, they were held in such esteem, as to be sometimes appointed to discharge embassies and other negotiations; whereas, at Rome, if a citizen became an actor, he thereby forfeited his freedom. Among the moderns, actors are best treated in England; the French having much the same opinion of them that the Romans had; for though an actor of talent, in Paris, is more regarded than here, he nevertheless ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various

... asked questions. In that way they learned that there was a yegg who had been suspected of having been connected with several other jobs, though they never could just put the kibosh on him, and his name is Casper Blue, and one time he used to be an actor, and then became a pretty well-known flier, but in an accident he broke his arm, and had to give up his business. He was always a crooked sort of feller, and after that just boozed around, joined in with hobo gangs, and they believe ...

— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... nothing that does run in the same channel can please always. 'Tis like the murmuring of a stream, which, not varying in the fall, causes at first attention, at last drowsiness. Variety of cadence is the best rule, the greatest help to the actor ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... the Passion Play, I sought out some of the principal actors, and found them kindly and interesting. To the Christus I gave a commission for a carved picture-frame, and this he afterward executed beautifully. With the Judas, who was by far the best actor in the whole performance, I became still better acquainted. Visiting his workshop, after ordering of him two carved statuettes I said to him: "You certainly ought to have a double salary, as the ...

— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... sentence fairly dilated the eyes of the young hunter, for he felt that a great event was about to occur, in which he would be the principal actor. But ...

— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... manners are naturally attractive. There are, in fact, men who have something of the monkey in them by nature, and to whom the assumption of the most engaging forms of sentiment is so easy that the actor is not detected; and Lousteau's natural gifts had been fully developed on the stage on which ...

— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... never met an actor," replied our governess; "and yet it was not in London, but at the village near which I lived when I was at home with my dear father, whose house and grounds were not far off, and whose pew in the church had belonged to his ...

— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune the ...

— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... mine,' added Sidonia, 'and I have been able, perhaps, to assist him, for I knew him long before Lord Monmouth did, in a very different position from that which he now fills, though not one for which I have less respect. He was a fine comic actor in the courtly parts, and the most celebrated manager in Europe; always a fearful speculator, but he is an honest fellow, and has a ...

— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form," and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy" Stevens, who had fetched her from B——, had this task. "Rosy," who was only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart" with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared the girls' tastes ...

— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... the visit I made to Drury Lane Playhouse with my Lords Carlisle and Grantham and Comyn. The great actor received me graciously in such a company, you may be sure. He appeared much smaller off the boards than on, and his actions and speech were quick and nervous. Gast, his hairdresser, was making him up for the ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... ought to arrest the rogues speedily. The whirlwinds sweep the plain. Linked to thy side, through every chance I go. But had he seen an actor in our days enacting Shakespeare. What awful sounds assail my ears? We caught a glimpse of her. Old age has on their temples shed her silver frost. Our eagle shall rise mid the whirlwinds of war, And dart through the dun cloud of battle his eye. ...

— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... frugal. Like the Greek, the Roman had his games. He enjoyed chariot-races, but used slaves or freedmen as drivers. He also went to the theater, although he thought it unworthy of a Roman to be an actor. Such an occupation was ...

— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... cried. "I am more than angry that such a thing could have happened, and the principal actor in it have been one who bears the same name as myself. It is cruel—scandalous—disgraceful; and above all, to have exposed you to such an indignity—in custody like a common thief! But there, you shall ...

— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... attained in life. Even our Becky had her weaknesses, and as one often sees how men pride themselves upon excellences which others are slow to perceive: how, for instance, Comus firmly believes that he is the greatest tragic actor in England; how Brown, the famous novelist, longs to be considered, not a man of genius, but a man of fashion; while Robinson, the great lawyer, does not in the least care about his reputation in Westminster Hall, but believes himself incomparable across country and at a five-barred gate—so ...

— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... her. It is hard to say whether she returns his love, for she doesn't manifest the slightest sign of it. Wouldn't it be splendid if they did decide to go through life together? He is so clever, and a great actor too. Mabel's lawyer has won the most difficult case he ever fought for. He has persuaded Mabel to wear his ring. Their engagement is to be announced next week. I suppose you will hear from Mabel ...

— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... intellect, great spirituality, and moreover was a great actor, which latter fact need not be stated to his discredit—he used his personality to press home the truth he wished ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... Herrera, formed a body politic. This, no doubt, was the secret of their union. Old men in whom the activities of life have been uprooted and transplanted to the sphere of interest, often feel the need of a pleasing instrument, a young and impassioned actor, to carry out their schemes. Richelieu, too late, found a handsome pale face with a young moustache to cast in the way of women whom he wanted to amuse. Misunderstood by giddy-pated younger men, he was compelled ...

— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... of our general, Cortes, and the merits of those brave conquerors by whom this great and holy enterprise was achieved. This is not a history of ancient nations, made up of vain reveries, and idle hearsays, but contains a true relation of events of which I was an actor and an eye-witness. Gomara received and wrote such accounts of these events as tended to enhance the fame and merit of Cortes exclusively, neglecting to make mention of our valiant captains and brave ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... caprice of the congregation, for Americans are naturally capricious and fond of change: whether it be concerning a singer, or an actor, or a clergyman, it is the same thing. This American author observes, "There are few clergymen that can support their early popularity for a considerable time; and as soon as it declines, they must begin to think of providing ...

— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... man, "I almost shocked you to death, but I had a purpose in it. I couldn't believe that of you and knew I'd be able to read your face. You know, I believe you! It's all some infernal mistake or plot. You're not a clever enough actor to feign such distress and innocence. Go out and get some air and come back to-morrow morning. I'll stand for you in the ...

— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... scene like that might impress itself somehow upon the hidden heart of nature. I do not pretend to know how, but the repetition had struck me at the time as, in its terrible strangeness and incomprehensibility, almost mechanical,—as if the unseen actor could not exceed or vary, but was bound to re-enact the whole. One thing that struck me, however, greatly, was the likeness between the old minister and my boy in the manner of regarding these strange phenomena. Dr. Moncrieff ...

— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... No person in the play should be made to do or say anything out of character. By the laws of decorum, for instance, old men should be querulous and young boys given to sudden anger. The chorus, also, must be an actor and carry along the action of the play instead of interrupting the play to sing. Horace further warns his pupils to restrict the number of acts to the conventional five, and the number of characters to the conventional three. As an episode presented ...

— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... illuminated with vintages, crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious popularity and insufferable condescension. He reminded me at once of a royal duke, of an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman who should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman. A moment after he was gliding noiselessly on the ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... kinds of good fellowship followed. Every man and woman was at perfect ease and ready to give of the best they had. Even Adam Vedder delighted all, and especially his happy-looking bride, by his clever condensation of Sunna's favourite story of "The Banded Men." No finished actor could have made it, in its own way, a finer model of dramatic narrative, especially in its quaint reversal of the parts usually played by father and son, into those of the prodigal father and the money-loving, prudent son. Then a little whisper went round the table and it sprang from Sunna, ...

— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... performers, whom he used to rule with a high hand, and who would gladly retaliate.' BOSWELL. 'I think he should play once a year for the benefit of decayed actors, as it has been said he means to do.' JOHNSON. 'Alas, Sir! he will soon be a decayed actor himself.' ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... of women were taken by boys. No women appeared on the stage until the reign of Charles II. The Play began with the Prologue, spoken by an actor dressed in a long black velvet coat bowing very humbly to the audience. After the Play was over the clowns began to tumble and to sing. In short, a farce succeeded a tragedy. The time of performance was one o'clock, and the ...

— The History of London • Walter Besant

... sent to sleep and awakened a party of unruly boys at his father's school. Another story is his fooling of a Jew merchant. He had high spirits, perhaps too high, for his slender physique. He was a facile mimic, and Liszt, Balzac, Bocage, Sand and others believed that he would have made an actor of ability. With his sister Emilia he wrote a little comedy. Altogether he was a clever, if not a brilliant lad. His letters show that he was not the latter, for while they are lively they do not reveal much literary ability. But their writer saw with open eyes, eyes ...

— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... The actor Kemp's dance to Norwich, from the frontispiece of "Kemps nine daies wonder performed in a from London to Norwich, containing the pleasure, paines and kind entertainment of William Kemp betweene London and that city ... written ...

— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... of Saint Andrew's followed the rule of St. Equitius, because its first abbots were drawn out of his province, Valeria. On another side, Dom Ma-billon (t. 1. Actor. Sanct. & t. 2, Analect. and Annal. Bened. l, 6,) maintains that it followed the rule of St. Benedict, which St. Gregory often commends and prefers to all other rules. His colleagues, in their life of St. Gregory, ...

— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... of age. He looked thirty. A serious faced, cadaverous individual, whom, given three guesses you would have judged to be a Scotch free kirk minister in mufti; an actor in the melodramatic line; a food crank. These being the three most ...

— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... indefinite number of years to come—she would of course marry a—well, not a President of the United States, perhaps—but an admiral possibly, or a millionaire, or the owner of a fleet of steamships, or something like that. The idea that she should even think of marrying a play-actor was unbelievable. The captain had never attended the performance of an opera; what was more, he never expected to attend one. He had been given to understand that a "parcel of play-actin' men and women hollered and screamed to music for a couple of hours." Olive, his wife, had attended an opera ...

— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... had said in writing to the Doctor, she went with Miss Skeat and sat in the front box of the theatre, which the great actor had placed at her disposal. The play was Othello. Mr. Barker had ascertained that she was going, and had accordingly procured himself a seat in the front of the orchestra. He endeavoured to catch a look from Margaret all through the first part of the performance, but she was ...

— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... girl's eyes, and, in fact, in the eyes of all who had heard his story, even Phil, the stranger had taken on an added importance, the importance of the chief actor in a ...

— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... owed a superficial smartness merely to being tightly strapped. This man had a not quite agreeable face; inasmuch as it was smoothly shaven, and exhibited a peculiar mobility, it might have denoted him an actor; but the actor is wont to twinkle a good-natured mood which did not appear upon this visage. The contour was good, and spoke intelligence; the eyes must once have been charming. It was a face which had lost by the advance of years; which had hardened where ...

— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... Shakespeare already had the running to himself. Jonson appears first in the employment of Philip Henslowe, the exploiter of several troupes of players, manager, and father-in-law of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn. From entries in "Henslowe's Diary," a species of theatrical account book which has been handed down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with the Admiral's men; for he borrowed 4 pounds of Henslowe, July 28, 1597, paying ...

— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... have shot him, I preferred to be killed rather than to kill. But before I could do anything, or even consider what to do, another actor appeared on the stage. I saw Griffin Leeds look behind him once, as though he feared an interruption, and doubtless he heard the step of the third person. Until the stranger was close upon the octoroon, I had not seen him. In the soft sand that formed ...

— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... grow weary of the flat insipid discourse. Even in the lowest class of life, there is now a relish for rich and splendid ornament. Their taste requires the gay, the florid, and the brilliant. The unpolished style of antiquity would now succeed as ill at the bar, as the modern actor who should attempt to copy the deportment of Roscius [d], or Ambivius Turpio. Even the young men who are preparing for the career of eloquence, and, for that purpose, attend the forum and the tribunals of justice, have ...

— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... published a new edition of Sat. 7, he added these lines (vitae i. a, b, 'ut ea quoque quae prima fecerat inferciret novis scriptis').[105] Now it has been inferred from Spart. vit. Hadr. 23 sqq. that at this time an actor had great influence over Hadrian, and the lines were taken as referring to him. The emperor in a rage banished Juvenal to Egypt per honorem militiae, writing maliciously on his commission 'Et te Philomela promovit' (vita iv.). The ...

— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... was accordingly scribbled and dispatched; Rachael's heart was singing because Warren had not denied Elinor's comment upon the success of the play. The leading man, a popular and prominent actor, was disturbingly good, and there was the part of an Irish maid, a comedy part, so well filled by some hitherto unknown young actress that it might really influence the run of the play; but still, there was a consoling indication ...

— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... argued that, as his play was the only one deserving to be called a tragi-comedy and was at the same time a pastoral, the reference was palpable. He proceeded therefore to compose a counterblast which he named Il Verato (1588) after a well-known comic actor of the time, who, it may be remarked, had had the management of Argenti's Sfortunato in 1567. In this pamphlet Guarini traversed the professor's propositions with a good deal of scholastic ergotism: 'As in compounds the hot accords with the cold, its mortal enemy, ...

— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... hear— for the eyes aren't of much use just now—I've set down the grub an' a flask o' water beside ye. Don't strike a light unless you want to have your neck stretched. Daylight won't be long o' lettin' ye see what's goin' on. You won't weary, for it'll be as good as a play, yourself bein' chief actor an' audience ...

— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... should the dramatist concern himself about his audience? That may be all very well for the mere journeymen of the theatre, the hacks who write to an actor-manager's order—not for the true artist! He has a soul above all such petty considerations. Art, to him, is simply self-expression. He writes to please himself, and has no thought of currying favour with an audience, ...

— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... this is for a girl of twenty-one,' whispered Kendal to Mrs. Stuart, who was comfortably settled in the farther corner of the box, her small dainty figure set off by the crimson curtains behind it. 'One would think that an actor's life must stir the very depths of a man or woman's individuality, that it must call every power into action, and strike sparks ...

— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to store away in his mind a number of bureaucratic types which proved useful later. He quite suddenly started for America with money given to him by his mother for another purpose, but when he got as far as Lubeck he turned back. He then wanted to become an actor, but his voice proved not strong enough. Later he wrote a poem which was unkindly received. As the copies remained unsold, he gathered them all up at the various shops and burned them in ...

— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... Andy unsaddled and came over to beg a belated supper from the cook; nor yet while he squatted on his heels beside the cook-tent and ate hungrily. He seemed somewhat absorbed in his thoughts, and they decided mentally that Andy was a sure-enough good actor, and that if they were not dead next to him and his particular weakness, they would swallow his yarn whole—whatever it was. A blood-red glow was in the sky to the west, and it lighted Andy's face queerly, like a vivid blush on ...

— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... Society at the price of five pounds for each; but he offered to give double the price, if he might keep three or four of them for a few days, in order to select one. When asked how he could possibly learn so soon, whether a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, he answered that it all depended on their power of attention. If when he was talking and explaining anything to a monkey, its attention was easily distracted, as by a fly on the wall or other trifling ...

— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... was ornate and disturbing, for one could not imagine what depth of horrible void such an elaborate front could be worthy to hide. He was not masked—there was too much life in him, and a mask is only a lifeless thing; but he presented himself essentially as an actor, as a human being aggressively disguised. His smallest acts were prepared and unexpected, his speeches grave, his sentences ominous like hints and complicated like arabesques. He was treated with a solemn respect accorded in the irreverent West only to the monarchs of ...

— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... and night my condition seemed the same; I experienced only a dull sensation of utter misery which seemed in spirit and flesh alike, an inability to think clearly, or for more than a few moments consecutively, about anything. Scenes in which I had been principal actor came and went, as in a dream when the will slumbers: now with devilish ingenuity and persistence I was working on Managa's mind; now standing motionless in the forest listening for that sweet, mysterious melody; now staring aghast at old Cla-cla's wide-open glassy eyes and white hair dabbled ...

— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... sack dangling more heavily on his hip as he progressed through the train, the fat bad actor skimmed the Pullman cream on his way forward to the plated jewelry ...

— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... other than silver. The commodious court room was, despite the outer inclemency of road and weather, packed with men and women who stood up and yelled a welcome that for the moment dazed the impostor; but he recovered his nerve and mischievousness instantly, and no actor ever fell into his part more completely than did he. The Judge was ponderous, but Jimmy went him one better. The Judge "threw a chest" when he had an audience, but Jimmy swelled until his buttons strained. The Judge walked like the late Henry ...

— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... from the boards—inspired the next three essays, "Stage Illusions," "To the Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." The first is an example of subtle criticism showing how it is that we get enjoyment out of unlovely attributes on the stage, thanks to the "exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us," that things are not altogether what they seem to be. In the two essays on Elliston we have at once an eloquent tribute to a stage-magnate of his day and ...

— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... he is magnificently disdainful and impertinent. He turns from time to time in the direction of the diplomatic tribune, and looks without a smile at the poor ambassadors, whom he cajoles from morning to night. You admire the actor who bullies his public. But when at an evening party he engages in close conversation with a handsome woman, the play of his countenance shows the direction of his thoughts, and those of the imaginative observer ...

— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... Paris, when the papers came over crammed with ribaldry, or with Garrick's insufferable nonsense about Shakspeare. As that man's writings will be preserved by his name, who will believe that he was a tolerable actor? Cibber wrote as bad odes, but then Cibber wrote The Careless Husband and his own Life, which both deserve immortality. Garrick's prologues and epilogues are as bad as his ...

— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... portraits, Gilbert Stuart, tells us of Washington that he never saw in any man such large eye-sockets, or such a breadth of nose and forehead between the eyes, and that he read there the evidences of the strongest passions possible to human nature. John Bernard the actor, a good observer, too, saw in Washington's face, in 1797, the signs of an habitual conflict and mastery of passions, witnessed by the compressed mouth and deeply indented brow. The problem had been solved then; but in 1748, passion and will alike ...

— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... bray. For where's the voice so strong as to o'ercome A Roman theatre's discordant hum? You'd think you heard the Gargan forest roar Or Tuscan billows break upon the shore, So loud the tumult waxes, when they see The show, the pomp, the foreign finery. Soon as the actor, thus bedizened, stands In public view, clap go ten thousand hands. "What said he?" Nought. "Then what's the attraction? "Why, That woollen mantle ...

— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... an actor in few more entertaining comedies than the cozening of Ser Ramiro, and a witness of nothing that afforded me at once so much relief and relish as his abrupt departure. I sank back on the cushions of my litter, ...

— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... this charming freedom from restraint. The cousin, above all, the angler, with his white waistcoat, his blue tie, his full beard, and his almond eyes, especially displeased me. He rolled his r's like an actor at a country theatre. He broke his bread into little bits and nibbled them as he talked. I divined that the pleasure of showing off a large ring he wore had something to do with this fancy for playing with his bread. Once or twice I caught a glance of melancholy turned toward the mistress of ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... memorable cases of murder, which long ago the voice of amateurs has crowned with laurel, but especially with the two earliest of the three, viz., the immortal Williams' murders of 1812. The act and the actor are each separately in the highest degree interesting; and, as forty-two years have elapsed since 1812, it cannot be supposed that either is known circumstantially to the men of the ...

— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... caricatures of the beauty they have sought, so only artists can handle the feature story. The difficulty lies chiefly in the temptation to overemphasize. In striving to make the story humorous, one goes too far, oversteps the limits of dignity, and like the ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville actor, produces an effect of disgust. Or in attempting to be pathetic, to excite a sympathetic tear, one is liable to induce mere derisive laughter. And a single misplaced word or a discordant phrase, like a mouse in a Sunday-school ...

— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... speechless for a moment, recovering himself. Wisdom is conceived in silence, and he knew this. Vagabond or gentleman, he was a clever actor. ...

— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... just like your tone. If you were on the stage, Brother Hiram, I think you'd get the hook. 'Hook Hooker!' the audience might yell. Don't you think I'm funny at times, Gentle Wild Cat? It's just my pleasant little way of informing you that I consider you a poor actor. 'You got—you burned' was pretty fair, Hi-ram, but not quite good enough. So we're going to search you and make sure you didn't get the sheepskin out of ...

— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... earlier efforts in behalf of the Aborigines of our country, shows that the next actor upon the stage, undaunted by any lack of success on their part, measurably followed in the footsteps of learned and ...

— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... nieces, and Lord Waldegrave, Lord Huntingdon, and Mr. Morrison the groom, and the evening was pleasant; but I had a much more agreeable supper last night at Mrs. Clive's, with Miss West, my niece Cholmondeley, and Murphy, the writing actor, who is very good company, and two or three more. Mrs. Cholmondeley is very lively; you know how entertaining the Clive is, and Miss ...

— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... is, it is somewhat difficult to say, but what is wanting is wanting in his great scene with his daughter. If the dramatist had given him such another final chance as I have already suggested, the character might have been dramatically perfected in Mr. TREE'S hands. As it is, both by author and actor it is left "to ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various

... a pretty fine tongue in your head—but of the best," said Ingot with a burst of applause. "You'd make a good actor, a holy good actor. You got a way with you. Coquelin, Salvini, Bernhardt! Voila, you're just as good! Bagosh, I'd like to see ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... As an Actor, when managers have appeared indifferent, or critics unkind, and my hopes have sunk within me, I have turned to your cheering plaudits, and found in them support for the present and encouragement ...

— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... of the most devoted of your subjects. This hope, springing up in my breast, gave me new strength and a fresh joy in the often dull round of my daily task, for in matters of the stage your Majesty, being, as we often say among ourselves, the greatest actor of us all and having from the earliest years imbibed the love of the footlights and the limelight, is an incomparable judge of the true histrionic art, and a word of praise from you is worth columns and columns in the newspapers. It is to us as when a cobbler's boots are praised ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... must infallibly be reckoned. What mere professional man or merchant would have the heart to render his person thus conspicuous? And the hypothesis that might have disposed of him as a model was excluded by the freshness of his clothes. A poet, painter, sculptor, possibly an actor or musician—anyhow, something to which the generic name of artist, soiled with all ignoble use, could more or less flatteringly be applied—I made sure he was; an ornament of our own English-speaking race, moreover, proclaimed such by the light of intelligence that played upon his features as ...

— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... sullen wickedness which characterizes Jewish politicians. Therefore, upon this Hanan and his family must rest the responsibility of all the acts which followed. It was Hanan (or the party he represented) who killed Jesus. Hanan was the principal actor in the terrible drama, and far more than Kaiapha, far more than Pilate, ought to bear the weight ...

— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... founded in Queen Anne's time, first of its name, took a gridiron for badge, and had cheery Dick Estcourt the actor for its providore. It met at a tavern in the Old Jewry that had old repute for broiled steaks and 'the true British quintessence of malt ...

— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... and a half still due him," I said. "Who ever gave that guy a license to splash ink all over a production and hold actors, authors and managers up to ridicule? Did you ever hear of an actor or an author or a manager getting out a three-sheet which held a ...

— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... with little or no faculty of origination. On the one hand is the artist—poet, musician, or painter—on the other, the artistic person to whom the artist appeals. Between the two, in some arts, stands the artistic interpreter—the actor who embodies the aery conceptions of the poet, the violinist or pianist who makes audible the inspirations of the musician. But in so far as this artistic interpreter rises to greatness in his field, in so far he will be found soaring above the middle ground, away ...

— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... shouldst have resided all thy days in those remote parts of this island which great men seldom visit, yet, if thou hast any penetration, thou must have had some occasions to admire both the solemnity of countenance in the actor and the gravity in the spectator, while some of those farces are carried on which are acted almost daily in every village in the kingdom. He must have a very despicable opinion of mankind indeed who can conceive them to be imposed on as often as they appear to be so. ...

— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... Mutlar was never referred to. The conversation was almost entirely monopolised by the young fellow Fosselton, who not only looked rather like Mr. Irving, but seemed to imagine that he WAS the celebrated actor. I must say he gave some capital imitations of him. As he showed no signs of moving at supper time, I said: "If you like to stay, Mr. Fosselton, for our usual crust—pray do." He replied: "Oh! thanks; but please call me Burwin-Fosselton. ...

— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... given his Friar over the way, or something even as good as Mr. DALLAS had to sing, years ago, in REECE's Gaiety Burlesque. However, perhaps it was not intended for a singing part, and perhaps the actor who plays it is not a professional singer. We're not all of us born with silver notes in ...

— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various

... of the times will supply the particulars which I omit, being willing to confine myself to my own accounts and observations. I was now no more an actor, but a melancholy observator of the misfortunes of the times. I had given my parole not to take up arms against the Parliament, and I saw nothing to invite me to engage on their side. I saw a world of confusion in all their counsels, and I always expected that in a chain of distractions, ...

— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... is not exhausted. Here is Weston's Amazon Queen, of 1667, written in pompous rhymed heroics; here is The Fortune Hunters, a comedy of 1689, the only play of that brave fellow, James Carlile, who, being brought up an actor, preferred "to be rather than to personate a hero," and died in gallant fight for William of Orange, at the battle of Aughrim; here is Mr. Anthony, a comedy written by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery, and printed in 1690, a piece never republished among ...

— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... music and the dance, and all the pomp of procession and charm of ceremony, in divine worship; but when it came to displaying the object of their adoration in personal form to the popular eye, and making him an actor on the stage, however dignified that stage might be, the ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... ignorant as not to have the slightest conception of what was meant by the stage, and he explained to me that he had been an actor and a poet, before the Lord had opened his eyes to better things. I knew nothing about actors, but poets were already the objects of my veneration. My friend was the first poet I had ever seen. He was no less a ...

— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... will put him in the pillory for his success. Let him follow up his triumph with our hisses. Let him collect a crowd and create a solitude. Thus it is that the wealthy, termed the higher classes, have invented for the actor that form ...

— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... the dominant idea of the book, and the elements required to develop this idea. I also establish certain logical connections between one series of facts and another. The next dossier contains a study of the character of each actor in my work. For the principal ones I go even further. I enquire into the character of both father and mother, their life, the influence of their mutual relations on the temperament of the child. The way the latter ...

— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... was equally affable with artists. He talked daily with the painters in the Louvre; and having paid a visit to the great actor Le Kain, whom he had seen the night before in the character of a Roman emperor, he found him ...

— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... of great vivacity and theatrical effect. This time it is himself the author has chosen to satirize. The unconscious tyranny of a man who has a mission, a life-work, is delightfully illustrated in the person of the geographer, Professor Tygesen, to whom Bjoern Bjoernson, the actor, when he played the part at the Christiania Theatre, had the boldness to give his father's mask. Professor Tygesen is engaged upon a great geographical opus, and gradually takes possession of the whole house with his maps, globes, and books, driving his wife from the parlor ...

— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... tones; yet this great poet and critic thought that this imitation of nature would cost too much, if purchased at the expense of disagreeable sensations, or, as he expresses it, of "splitting the ear." The poet and actor, as well as the painter of genius who is well acquainted with all the variety and sources of pleasure in the mind and imagination, has little regard or attention to common nature, or creeping after common sense. By overleaping those narrow bounds, he more effectually seizes the ...

— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... eight. His whole future life and work are believed to have been determined by this ideal attachment. But an equally noteworthy fact of his literary career is that his works were produced in the midst of party strifes wherein the poet himself was a prominent actor. In the bitter feuds of the Guelfs and Ghibellines he bore the sufferings of failure, persecution, and exile. But above all these trials rose his heroic spirit and the sublime voice of his poems, which became a quickening prophecy, ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various