"Farcical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... STEPHENSON ("B.C." makes him quite a classic—date uncertain, so his plot may have been done in collaboration, with PLAUTUS or TERENCE) has reproduced from the French a neatly-constructed One-Act piece, in which are all the possibilities of a Three-Act Criterion or Palais Royal Farcical Comedy. So rapid is the action, all over in about forty-five minutes, and so much to the point of the plot is the dialogue, that an inattentive auditor would soon lose the thread of the argument, never to pick it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... well, I am a farcical character myself, after all. Don't touch a hair of that duck's head, HEDVIG. Come to my arms and all ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... died in 1518. I think he has more wit than Maillard, and occasionally displays a brilliant imagination; with the same singular mixture of grave declamation and farcical absurdities. He is called in the title-page the golden-tongued. It runs thus, Predicatoris qui lingua aurea, sua tempestate nuncupatus est, Sermones quadragesimales, ab ipso olim Turonis ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... word and a malignant word, which I should abhor to use unless where, as in this case, I seek to rouse the vigilance of the inattentive by the apparent intemperance of the language. Pope, in too many instances, for the sake of some momentary and farcical effect, deliberately assumes the license of a liar. Not only he adopts the language of moral indignation where we know that it could not possibly have existed, seeing that the story to which this pretended indignation is attached was to Pope's knowledge a pure fabrication, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... duel had so many farcical features, and Miss Todd had unwittingly been so much to blame for it, that one can easily see that it might have had considerable influence on the relations of the two young people. However that may be, something had made Mr. Lincoln ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... Tarkington's studies of boy life (especially Penrod), and of adolescence (especially Seventeen and Clarence). Judged by your own experience and observation, are they presented with true knowledge and humor, or are they a farcical skimming of surface eccentricities? Compare them with Mark Twain's books about boys and with ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... the Wicklow Mines,[G] which were worked some fifty years back, but which, for want of capital or perseverance, only furnished a few Cronobane halfpence, and materials for a musical farce to one of the most delightful farcical Irish writers of his time;[H] ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... recites to Pump, the innkeeper, the gallant innkeeper who, against all opposition, keeps the flag flying and the flagon full. If the book is a little overdrawn it is, no doubt, because the subject is slightly farcical; the arguments of the Oriental are well put, and, if the discussion of the merits of vegetarianism are a little wearisome, the poetry ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... It was a farcical ending to a very arduous thirty-six-hour campaign, and Ross, feeling like a man who, having rolled a huge stone to the top of a hill, has been ordered to drop it, said, "I insist on the maximum penalty of the law, Justice Higley, especially for this ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... The farcical failure of Dr. Jameson was the outcome of those endeavours. The unspeakable cowardice of his Johannesburg confederates was the chief feature of that puny attempt. Laurels, like those gained by Lord Peterborough, Warren Hastings, ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... case, Tony is a doomed man," commented Myra, with a mocking laugh. "But perhaps the fact that I do not love you will induce you to spare his life," she added hastily. "Don't you find it rather difficult to be melodramatic and to talk farcical nonsense before breakfast, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the irony of the argument, and their laugh did much to do away with the constraint, the tension of their mood. More gayly she mentioned certain farcical incidents. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... dread of love's allurements the Sabbath would have become quite dull and wearisome, had not the conductresses cleverly made the most of its comic side, enlivening it with farcical interludes. Thus, the opening scene in which Satan, like the Priapus of olden times, bestowed his coarse endearments on the Witch, was followed by another game, a kind of chilly purification, which the sorceress underwent with much grimacing, and a great show of unpleasant ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... "we will say request. As I tell you, your presence in this community is distasteful to me, and your farcical marriage stands directly opposed to my plans. But I would not violate the law and commit a misdemeanor to drive you off. You have reasons for believing that ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... two-faced, anyway. I'll say that for you," was the apparently magnanimous concession made by one comedian to another in a recent farcical play. The other was beginning to express his gratification when the speaker continued: "If you were, you wouldn't have come out with that one." Again, you observe, there is no answer to this kind of attack. Hence, I suppose, its popularity. And yet perhaps to take refuge in a smug sententiousness, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... CRAMINATION. A farcical word, signifying the same as cramming; the termination tion being suffixed for the sake ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... home on the Schuylkill. In the centre of a large lawn stood a double mansion of stone, and a little to each side were seen outhouses for servants and kitchen use. The open space toward the water was extensive enough to admit of the farcical tilting of the afternoon. A great variety of evergreen trees and shrubs gave the house a more shaded look than the season would otherwise have afforded. Among these were countless lanterns illuminating the grounds, and from the windows on all sides a blaze of light was visible. Back of the house ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Vice-Queen of the Adriatic: it was prolonged to double by the thick and clinging mist-fog. The sea-city was enjoying her usual lethargy of repose after the excitement of the 'geographical Carnival,' as we called the farcical Congress of last September. She is essentially a summering place. Her winter is miserable, neither city nor houses being built for any but the finest of fine weather; her 'society'-season lasts only four months from St. Stephen's Day; her traveller-seasons are spring and autumn. We ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... that President Krueger and his friends realise the gravity of the situation. Even now the State Secretary is doing things which would be almost farcical if the times ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... I don't doubt the Bible is all right in making the laws it does. After the first heat of my anger was over, I saw the whole thing in its proper bearings. Those laws about priests were only intended for the days when we had a Temple, and in any case they cannot apply to a merely farcical divorce like yours. It is these old fools,—I beg your pardon,—it is these fanatical Rabbis who insist on giving them a rigidity God never meant them to have, just as they still make a fuss about kosher meat. In America ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... If you try to be nice, try to placate them, you'll simply get into hotter water. They don't understand such things. They think they are uncovering a vast conspiracy. Cinderella Cotillion Coterie! Gad, of all the farcical happenings I have come across even ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... saluting. The arms of men were never still. It was like the St. Vitus disease. Tommies and Jocks saluted every subaltern with an automatic gesture of convulsive energy. Every subaltern acknowledged these movements and in turn saluted a multitude of majors, colonels, and generals. The thing became farcical, a monstrous absurdity of human relationship, yet pleasing to the vanity of men lifted up above the lowest caste. It seemed to me an intensification of the snob instinct in the soul of man. Only the Australians stood out against it, and went by all officers except their own with a careless ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... The arrest of ORRIN and Durfee as the murderers by a Mormon officer; a farcical hearing by a coroner's jury, with a verdict of assassins unknown; distrusted participants in the crime themselves the object of the Mormon spies and would-be assassins; the robbery of a neighbor who dared to condemn the crime; a vain appeal by Mrs. Parrish to Brigham Young, who told her ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... oration made him reach out another clutching hand to the vanished reporter. "But it's farcical, father, to be always interviewed by a paper ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Italy and Greece. This twofold character of the poet it is that is revealed in his best poems, "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan." He used both works as receptacles for the most incongruous ideas. "If things are farcical," he once said to Trelawney, "they will do for 'Don Juan'; if heroical, you shall have another canto of 'Childe Harold.'" This means of disposing of his poetic ideas accounts for the great volume of Byron's verse as well as for its inequality. That "Don Juan" ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... comedy, or, more properly speaking, musical farce, is becoming more and more popular in both Europe and America it is also becoming proportionately more farcical; although in many theaters it is staged as often as the more serious drama, in some having exclusive dominion; and although theater managers find that these plays draw bigger crowds and fill their houses better than any ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... by allegorical representations. When popular interest in these dramas began to lag, current topics were introduced into the dialogue, and characters from real life appeared on the stage for the first time. Early in the sixteenth century John Heywood invented a farcical composition called The Interlude to relieve the tiresome monotony of existing plays. But it was in 1540 that the first comedy appeared, and it is not too much to say that this play marks the beginning of modern English drama. Nicholas Udall, head master of Eton College, being accustomed to write ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... squatter; and to shoot at him seemed equally ridiculous. Either alternative, upon reflection, appeared the very essence of absurdity: and, having ample time to reflect, while awaiting the signal, I could not help thinking how farcical was ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... a private meeting to attend to-night. Should he attend it or not? His situation had become farcical. Was it not his plain duty to withdraw at once from the political contest, that a serious candidate might as soon as possible take his place? Where could he discern even the glimmer of a hope in this sudden darkness? His heart ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... was becoming rather a farcical dissertation upon the relations that should obtain between states, irrespective of size, when it was broken off by a cry from Tambi, who, with another lantern hanging overside at the end of his arm ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... hypocrisies that hedge round that honourable institution, but just forgot that serious argument cannot easily be conveyed through the medium of fantastically impossible and uninteresting people in an extravagantly farcical situation. The play was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... maintenance of order, the judges, prosecuting attorneys, sheriff and drawers of jurors, and every other of court of law are in the hands of a despotic cabal who excessively tax, and whose courts convict all those who oppose them, and exonerate by trial the most farcical, the vilest criminal, rob and murder in broad day light, often at the bidding of their protectors. Such a status for a people claiming to be civilized seems difficult to conceive, yet the above was not an hypothesis of condition, but the actual one that existed in California and San Francisco, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... very young, Durkin remembered. He had toyed with art for two winters in Paris, so scene by scene he had been able to translate the little drama that had appeared so farcical and Frenchy to ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... protest. All the same, however, when people won't make restoration, things must be taken from them. What worries me is that Bergaz should have sold himself just now. The public prosecutor will use that farcical burglary as a crushing argument when he asks the jury ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... did," returned Mr. Calverley. "You informed me—which was your duty as a friend—of this curmudgeon's boast that he would have me horsewhipped if I dared venture into England. You will readily conceive that any gentleman of self-respect cannot permit such farcical utterances to be delivered without appending a gladiatorial epilogue. Well! what are the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... sound of Commodore Preble's guns a strange, almost farcical, intervention in the Tripolitan War was preparing. The scene shifts to the desert on the east, where William Eaton, consul at Tunis, becomes the center of interest. Since the very beginning of the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... thus: "If the character of Hamlet be entirely omitted, the play must suffer, even though Henry Irving himself be cast for the title-role." Anyone going to the theatre in this spirit would be likely to be less disappointed by performances that were comic or even frankly farcical. Latterly, when he grew slightly deaf, listening to any kind of piece became too much of an effort; nevertheless, he continued to the last the habit of going to ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... a teacher who lacks a sense of humor to teach a bit of English that abounds in humor, by means of the textual notes. The notes are bad enough, in all conscience, but the teacher's lack of humor piles Ossa upon Pelion. The solemnity that pervades such mechanical teaching would be farcical were it not so pathetic. The teacher who cannot indulge in a hearty, honest, ringing laugh with her pupils in situations that are really humorous is certain to be laughed at by her pupils. In her work, as in Lincoln's, a sense of humor will often ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... apartments, whenever any affair of an interesting nature was pending, nothing could make her refrain from joining any company which might be in the house;—nothing;—not even O'Grady himself. At such times, too, she became strangely excited, and invariably executed one piece of farcical absurdity, of which, however, the family contrived to confine the exercise to her own room. It was wearing on her head a tin concern, something like a chimney-cowl, ornamented by a small weathercock, after the fashion of those which ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... antiquity more or less remote. Thus it is easy to conceive the delight of the music-loving people of Naples when they found that the opera which they adored could be enjoyed in combination with a mirthful and even farcical story, interpreted by characters who might have stepped out of one of their own market-places. But, apart from the freedom and variety of the subjects with which it dealt, the development of opera buffa gave rise to an art-form ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... leapt out of my mouth as it seemed of their own volition. I was tired of this farcical bargaining, and determined to put an end to it, once for all. I stood up and faced his blank stare of amazement, without at least ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the exquisite and waxen bloom of our author's sympathetic characters. Far from it. Of the young and oh-so-good-looking millionaire (weary of pleasures and palaces, too weary even to dismiss his preposterous and farcical butler—lacking, in effect, the definite object); of the heroine's young brother, crook in embryo, but reclaimable by influence of hero; and of the peach-like leading lady herself, I can only say that each is worthy of the rest, and all of a creator ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... and assumes the judge? He is the treasurer and secretary of an Union that does not number three hundred persons; yet in that small Union, of which he is dictator, there has been as much rattening, and more shooting, and blowing-up wholesale and retail, with the farcical accompaniment of public repudiation, than in all the other Unions put together. We consider the entrance of this ingenuous personage on the scene a bad omen, and shall watch all future proceedings with ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... seeking to divide the fund among various sects and localities, used arguments often plausible and sometimes forcible. These I dealt with on various occasions, but especially in a speech before the State Senate in 1865, in which was shown the character of the interested opposition, the farcical equipment of the People's College, the failure of the State Agricultural College, the inadequacy of the sectarian colleges, even though they called themselves universities; and I did all in my power to communicate to ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... exasperated, and struck the table, swallowing up Paris with each draught of beer. Fagerolles, very calm, retained his usual smile. He had accompanied them for the sake of amusement, for the singular pleasure which he found in urging his comrades into farcical affairs that were bound to turn out badly. At the very moment when he was lashing their spirit of revolt, he himself formed the firm resolution to work in future for the Prix de Rome. That day had decided him; he thought it idiotic to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... oppose Mr Redmond's election to the chair, but when Mr O'Brien and Mr Davitt (who had returned from the Transvaal) got word of the plot they wired urgent messages to their friends in Parliament that Mr Redmond's selection was the only one that could give the leadership anything better than a farcical character. Result—Mr Redmond was elected by a very considerable majority, and Mr Dillon had further reason for having his knife in his former friend ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... thoughts I take note of a little scene of comedy, or perhaps of a farcical kind, which is going on near me, in which two 'Harrys' of the purest kind were engaged, and whose oddities lightened the tediousness of the passage. One had seen foreign parts, and was therefore regarded with reverence ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... issue from their cave. When they have to rise into the air, little devils of stuffed brown cloth are substituted, or perhaps live chimney-sweeps, who swing suspended and smothered in rags. The accidents which happen are sometimes tragical, sometimes farcical. When the ropes break, then infernal spirits and immortal deities fall together, laming and sometimes killing each other. Add to all this the monsters which render some scenes very pathetic, such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, and large toads, which promenade the theatre ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... I shall go as I am. (Gloomily) After all, I don't know why I should mind one more farcical touch to my situation. A grown man that doesn't know how to ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... Upon the farcical trial that resulted in the predetermined sentence of death, Miss Cavell courageously and freely admitted her assistance in the specified cases of escape. When she was asked why she did it, she declared ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... hand, if we succeed in our efforts to separate from her, the benefit to England will be second only to our own. This might strike us strangely, but 'tis true, not the less true because the English people could hardly understand or appreciate it now. The military defence of Ireland is almost farcical. A free Ireland could make it a reality—could make it strong against invasion. This would secure England from attack on our side. No one is, I take it, so foolish as to suppose, being free, we would enter quarrels not our own. We should remain neutral. Our ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... rocks cover her from the gaze of men. She upbraided herself for her blindness to the most obviously important aspect of the situation. Now that she saw it, her zeal to "pay," by doing penance in public, became tragic and farcical at once. The absurdity of making satisfaction to Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay, to Fanny Burnaby and the Brown girls, by calling in the law, when less suffering—to her father at least—would give them actual cash, was not the least ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... supper Duke Carl amuses his companion with caricature, amid cries of cheerful laughter, of the sleepy courtiers entertaining their martial guests in all their pedantic politeness, like people in some farcical dream. A priest, and certain chosen friends to witness the marriage, were to come ere nightfall to the grange. The lovers heard, as they thought, the sound of distant thunder. The hours passed as they waited, and what came at last was not the priest with his companions. Could they have been ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... that actually saw Jeanne herself was the open space round the rising nave of St. Ouen, then called the Cemetery, where we have already watched the farcical royalty of the Revolte de la Harelle (p. 152). In thus tracing her footsteps, where we may still find them, I shall be showing you what little is left of the Rouen of the English occupation. Few of the towers and spires that ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... "The farcical comedy is over, Blanquette," said he gently, "I'm a Monsieur no longer, do you see? We are going to live just as we did before you went away in the summer, and I am not going to be married. I am going to live with my little Blanquette ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... ever since the struggle with Spain. As a designation for movements aimed at securing rotation in office, and hence control of the treasury, it was appropriate enough! At all events, whether serious or farcical, the commotions often involved an expenditure in life and money far beyond the value of the interests affected. Further, both the prevalent disorder and the centralization of authority impelled the educated ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... rideau [Fr.], interlude, afterpiece^, exode^, farce, divertissement, extravaganza, burletta^, harlequinade^, pantomime, burlesque, opera bouffe [Fr.], ballet, spectacle, masque, drame comedie drame [Fr.]; melodrama, melodrame^; comidie larmoyante [Fr.], sensation drama; tragicomedy, farcical-comedy; monodrame monologue; duologue trilogy^; charade, proverbs; mystery, miracle play; musical, musical comedy. [movies] western, horse opera; flick [Coll.]; spy film, love story, adventure film, documentary, nature film; pornographic film, smoker, skin flick, X-rated ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... verdict and the prisoner was invited to acknowledge the regularity of the proceedings in the farcical trial by signing the record. To this Rizal demurred, but after a vain protest, ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... preference. The charms of the Journey, its grace, wit, and urbanity, are thoroughly congenial to that most graceful of languages, and reproduce themselves readily enough therein; while, on the other hand, the fantastic digressions, the elaborate mystifications, the farcical interludes of the earlier work, appear intolerably awkward and bizzare in their French dress; and, what is much more strange, even the point of the double entendres is sometimes unaccountably lost. Were it not that the genuine humour of Tristram Shandy in a great measure evaporates in ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... been of farcical ease. Not her prospective millions nor her conquering loveliness, either of which might eventually have gained the entree for her, would have sufficed to set her on the throne. Shrewd social critics ascribed her effortless success to what Lord ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... papers devoted to the Commune asserted, on the following day, that two hundred and fifteen battalions were assembled on that day, and that the average strength of each corps was one thousand men. Who could have believed that the Place de l'Hotel de Ville was capable of accommodating so many! This farcical assertion of the two hundred and fifteen battalions has passed ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... serious moods, and caricatured in the comic. The English are always inadequate observers; they seem too full of themselves to have eyes and ears for any alien people; but as far as an Englishman could, Dickens had caught the look of our life in certain aspects. His report of it was clumsy and farcical; but in a large, loose way it was like enough; at least he had caught the note of our self-satisfied, intolerant, and hypocritical provinciality, and this was not altogether lost in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... speak, a court ball had been known and practised in varying degrees of elaboration long before his time. But Jonson gave dramatic value to the masque, especially in his invention of the antimasque, a comedy or farcical element of relief, entrusted to professional players or dancers. He enhanced, as well, the beauty and dignity of those portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies took their parts to create, by their gorgeous ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... content by the two comic figures, Mercutio and the nurse, probably presented by two popular actors—the nurse undoubtedly acted by a man. If we examine the structure of the play very closely, we notice that these two figures and the elements touching them, appear only as farcical interludes, which, with our love of the logical and harmonious, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... realized the futility of launching their candidacy, and their followers either voted for the official candidate or refrained from voting. In this connection I am reminded of the convincing political speeches attributed to one of the foremost men of La Vega during the farcical campaigns preceding the elections of Heureaux. He is quoted as saying: "My friends, this Republic is founded on the free and unrestricted suffrage of its citizens. It is the proud boast of the Dominican that under the constitution he may vote as he pleases. You are ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... and return to the Stick'ems; but as a last word I would say, in all seriousness, that wildly farcical though that celebrated utterance may be, there underlies it an absolutely true valuation of the fundamental bed-rock of war. To emulate the deeds of others and go one better, to put the men in good heart with their tails ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... the next is an old man, and so forth. These plays are of very ancient composition, and their stories cast in remote times. They appeared to me very dull, on the whole, but were relieved by startling mechanical contrivances, and a kind of farcical broad humour, and detached passages of great vigour and power expressed in language highly poetical, but somewhat overcharged with metaphor and trope. In fine, they seemed to me very much what the plays of Shakespeare seemed to a Parisian in the time of Louis XV., ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the comedies of Udall and Still—held its ground. We have it in the morality of the New Custom, printed in 1573, but no doubt written earlier, in the Interlude of The Trial of Treasure, in the farcical comedy of Like Will to Like, a coarse but lively piece, by Ulpian Fulwell (1568). In the very curious tragi-comedy of Cambyses this doggerel appears partly, but is alternated with the less lawless but scarcely more suitable "fourteener" ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... series of incidents which threw the House into convulsions of rancorous scorn and farcical laughter. Earlier in the evening there had been a speech by Mr. Kenyon. Words fail to describe the kind of speech Mr. Kenyon delivers. Sometimes one is doubtful as to the sex of the speaker, for he moans out ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... condemns[35], the scene in which Periplecomenus shouts out to Philocomasium so loudly that the soldier's household could not conceivably help hearing, whereas he is supposed to be conveying secret information.[36] If carried out in a broadly farcical spirit, the scene becomes ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... study of a thing new to him. It was like him, too, to have conceived and risked all upon this last desperate and madcap scheme—this message to a poor, crazed fanatico cruising about with his grotesque uniform and his farcical title. But his companions had been at their wits' end; escape had seemed incredible; and now he was pleased with the success of the plan they ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... have made an excellent short story, but to pursue its farcical developments through three hundred pages requires a considerable amount of perseverance. The scene of Mr. PETER BLUNDER'S book is laid in tropical Jallagar, where the British Resident was keener on cats than on his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... were betrayed. Most of them quietly dispersed towards their homes. That night Mat was seized in his bed, and within a few minutes afterwards was in goal. He felt that the game was up, that all his bright hopes, like those of many another noble Irish heart before him, had ended in farcical nothingness. Disaster followed upon disaster. When he made his appearance in court he saw upon the witness table one of his most trusted friends, who was about to give the evidence that would ensure ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... modern man, who was pre-eminently capable of realising the strangest and most contradictory beauties, who could feel at once the fiery aureole of the ascetic, and the colossal calm of the Hellenic god, should himself, by a farcical bathos, be buried in a black coat, and hidden under a chimney-pot hat. He could not see why the harmless man who desired to be an artist in raiment should be condemned to be, at best, a black and white artist. It is indeed difficult to account for the clinging curse ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... known as "the Murchison letter," did a great deal to impress thoughtless voters that Mr. Cleveland was "un-American." The incident was dramatic and farcical to a degree. The Murchison letter, which interested the entire country for two or three weeks, purported to come from a perplexed Englishman, addressing the British Minister at Washington, Lord Sackville-West. It sought counsel of Her Majesty's representative, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... M. G. Lewis, exhibits not only a faithful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing versification of that singular author, but a very just representation of that mixture of extravagance and jocularity which has impressed most of his writings with the character of a sort of farcical horror."—JEFFREY, Edinburgh Review. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... on record. They relate that during Xavier's sojourn in Bungo he had numerous public debates—one continuing for five days—with Buddhist priests, but even Fernandez not being available as an interpreter, these debates must have been either farcical or imaginary, though brilliant results are claimed for them by the Church historians. That Xavier himself was not satisfied is proved by his determination to transfer his ministrations to China, for he said, "if the Chinese adopt the Christian religion, the Japanese ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... part of these two plays founded on the story of Henry IV is not inferior to the comic and farcical. The characters of Hotspur and Prince Henry are two of the most beautiful and dramatic, both in themselves and from contrast, that ever were drawn. They are the essence of chivalry. We like Hotspur the best upon the whole, perhaps because he was unfortunate.—The ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... energies. There is no passion in Hamlet when there has been no love. And he had always held his uncle in slight esteem—foreboded something from his smiling insincerity. He never mentions him without an expression of contempt, hardly acknowledges him as king; he is a thing—of nothing—a farcical monarch—"a peacock"—and, in this particular act, no dread usurper, but a "cut-purse of the realm." Whether he designed to wait or was prepared to strike, his future was still intact, his energy unimpaired. His mother remained to him, now doubly dear and doubly great, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... late years in Germany very good evidence of the excellent results flowing from thorough methods, and the recent legislation in Massachusetts against the gypsy moth (Ocneria dispar), which at one time threatened to become farcical, has, fortunately, proved more than usually successful; the commission appointed to deal with the subject having worked with energy ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... allowed to look for himself. He was conducted to the great vaulted rooms of the Temple, to the vast ballrooms of the Palais Cond, where herded the condemned and those still awaiting trial; he was allowed to witness there the grim farcical tragedies, with which the captives beguiled the few hours which separated them ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... stayed on, as every one knows, when the Lyceum as a personal enterprise of Henry's was no more—when the farcical Lyceum Syndicate took over the theater. I played a wretched part in "Robespierre," and refused L12,000 to go to America ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... is evident from the opening scene, that Shakespeare, even in dealing with classical subjects, laughed at the classic fear of putting the ludicrous and sublime into juxtaposition. After the low and farcical jests of the saucy cobbler, the eloquence of Marullus 'springs upwards like a ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... famous sons. It is certain that the experience of these weeks at Harper's Ferry gave John A. Andrew the prompting to the extraordinary zeal with which he entered upon the duties of his gubernatorial office less than two years afterward. The whole trial seems farcical; but we must admit that a show of fairness was had, and, considering the ferocity with which the old man was attacked when down in the Engine House, the only wonder is that he was granted a trial at all. Through all the trying hours of that ordeal how like a hero did he deport ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... the human race goes free again. If it fail—and God forbid!—then the whole world will lie in the grip of Flint and Waldron! With our other centers broken up and under espionage, our press forced into impotence—save our underground press—and political action now rendered farcical as ever it was in Mexico, when Diaz ruled, we have ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Jonathan—had long been noted as a droll. A grin was as much a part of his stock apparel as tow breeches or a palm-leaf hat. The negro, too, had from time immemorial been portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity hedged him about with peculiar sacredness. He was chivalrous and baronial in his instincts, surroundings, and characteristics. He was nervous, excitable, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... a smile at all, chevalier; it was the torture which came of snuff getting into its nostrils, and when the beast made that uncanny noise and snapped its jaws together, it was simply the outcome of a sneeze. The thing would be farcical if it were not that tragedy hangs on the thread of it, and that a life, a useful human life, was destroyed by means of it. Yes, it was clever, it was diabolically clever; but you know what Bobby Burns says about the best-laid schemes ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... was their life. For the first time he had the banks in his power; he could afford to laugh; and the whole community was in the same position, though few laughed. All sat down on the banks and asked what the banks were going to do about it. To Adams the situation seemed farcical, but the more he saw of it, the less he understood it. He was quite sure that nobody understood it much better. Blindly some very powerful energy was at work, doing something that nobody wanted done. When Adams went to his bank to draw a hundred dollars ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... was in a fair way to find himself in the same boat as both the local Governor and the Chief of Gendarmery: with the result that the whole trio were reduced to a frame of mind in which they were only too glad to turn to him (Samosvitov) for advice. The ultimate and farcical upshot was that report came crowding upon report, and that such alleged doings were brought to light as the sun had never before beheld. In fact, the documents in question employed anything and everything as material, even to announcing that such ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "I should so like to take myself and my troubles seriously once in a while. No sooner do I try, but something perfectly farcical is sure to happen. If I tell you this, promise me you won't laugh. It's indecent for me to laugh; mamma would never forgive me. The old dear! I'm ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... seemed from the brazen declamation, the monotonous reiterations of the reading-clerk, and from the sharp clank of the speaker's gavel! His ear wearied, his heart sick of the whole life of the farcical legislature, with its flood of corrupt bills, got back serenity and youth and repose in the presence of the snows, the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... others than the actual living wife, sometimes with her consent, sometimes without it. One old gentleman, whose name is not to be mentioned, was sealed thus for eternity to Martha Washington and to Empress Josephine. It sounds farcical and foolish in the extreme; fit only to be counted as a silly joke, unworthy the attention of a sane soul for a minute; but it is terribly sober when it is remembered that there are hundreds of thousands of innocent, honest, and unsuspecting Mormons who really ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... following chapter, dear reader, you will see the end of this farcical adventure. In the mean time, let us ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... also gave him some hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the 'Two Gentlemen,' but passages of high poetic spirit are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, Launce and Speed—the precursors of a long line of whimsical serving-men—overflow with farcical drollery. The 'Two Gentlemen' was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime; it first appeared in the folio of 1623, after having, in all probability, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... but at the time he had a notion that the public would find something humorous and attractive in the spectacle of a popular actress's leg swathed in several layers of stocking. So he made a show of Blanche Bates. The public refused to be amused at the farcical study in comparative anatomy, and when Mr. Belasco's friends began to fault him for having pandered to a low taste, and he felt the smart of failure in addition, he grew heartily ashamed of himself. His affairs, moreover, began ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... placed in the mausoleum of the first Stovik, his ancestor. No royal name was cut, but the place of his burial was deeply graved in the hearts of all present. Had he lived he had been a farcical king, but dead he was as imposing as the grandest monarch ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... that other Spider's web, and out of his thought makes something that shall instruct or thrill us. To protect our 'bone,' we have the police, invented for the express purpose. To protect the book, we have none but farcical means. Place a few bricks one atop the other; join them with mortar; and the law will defend your wall. Build up in writing an edifice of your thoughts; and it will be open to any one, without serious impediment, to abstract stones from it, even to take the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... philosophy of the Mime, Sophron, was so pure that Plato kept a book of his poems under his pillow when on his death-bed. Besides these Moralities, as they were termed, there were, in addition, light pieces of a farcical kind, in the portrayal of which the Mimes were equally as successful ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... bore, in the hope that she may end his career. Once started on the wrong tack, he works out his evidence with convincing logic, and ties up the whole neighbourhood in the toils of his misconception. The book is full of the wittiest dialogue and the most farcical situations. It will be as certain to please all lovers of Irish humour as the immortal "Experiences of an ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the national dance appear, and take the place of the two advocates for a time. These combatants soon re-commence their struggle; and, at length, the judge is called upon to pronounce between them. A farcical kind of consultation ensues between the judge and the ministers around, who are supposed to send messengers even to the king himself by their ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... impossible to read them without discerning in them all the powers which afterwards produced "Evelina" and "Cecilia"; the quickness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and manner; the skill in grouping; the humour, often richly comic, sometimes even farcical. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... of my spirits, and sometimes fear that I cannot go through with the engagements of the winter. But I have never stopped yet in fulfilling what I have undertaken, and hope I shall not be compelled to now. How farcical seems the preparation needed to gain a few moments' life; yet just so the plant works all the year round for ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... upon the college duels as very farcical affairs: true, but considering that the college duel is fought by boys; that the swords are real swords; and that the head and face are exposed, it seems to me that it is a farce which had quite ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... than a man. Next to receiving them she loved to answer them. She was a good and even a brilliant letter writer, but often and often she would tear up what she had written and begin again. There was not much news in Bryngelly; it was difficult to make her letters amusing. Also the farcical nature of the whole proceeding seemed to paralyse her. It was ridiculous, having so much to say, to be able to say nothing. Not that Beatrice wished to indite love-letters—such an idea had never crossed her mind, but rather to write as they had talked. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... was, but at the moment she could think of nothing but the farcical complications arising from the idea of Mrs. Maper's providing Mr. Maper with a male companion secretly to improve his manners. Of course the two companions would fall ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... satellites of the Court despised the wicked fribble who wore the crown of England. Faithless to women, faithless to men, a coward, a liar, a mean and grovelling cheat, George IV. nevertheless clung to a belief in his own virtues; and, if we study the account of his farcical progress through Scotland, we find that he imagined himself to be a useful and genuinely kingly personage. No man, except, perhaps, Philippe Egalite, was ever so contemned and hated; and until his death he imagined himself to be a good man. In all that wild set who disgraced ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... losing his abstracted look, the eyes beneath those ridiculous lenses coming to a sharp bright focus with tiny livening flecks in the gray of the iris; and the way the change lifted his features from mediocrity to the alertness of a terrier. It was absurd, it was farcical ... and it was ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... looking for Toole. I did not really expect to see him, and I had no reason to believe he was in Ramsgate, but I thought if providence were kind to him it might throw him in my way. I wanted to do him a good turn. I had written a three-act farcical comedy at the request of an amateur dramatic club. I had written out all the parts, and I think there were rehearsals. But the play was never produced. In the light of after knowledge I suspect some of those actors must have been of quite professional calibre. You understand, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Milanese extremely. Seated between these two distracted brains, one so noble and the other so common, and making game of each other to the great entertainment of the crowd, there was a moment when the Count found himself wavering between the sublime and its parody, the farcical extremes of human life. Ignoring the chain of incredible events which had brought them to this smoky den, he believed himself to be the plaything of some strange hallucination, and thought of Gambara and ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... an approving, unnatural week, in my farcical character, bridling my resentment and hiding my mortification with pretty phrases; and then I went up to town and drowned my sorrows in the summer sales. I took John with me. I may have been Cecily's mother in theory, but I was John's wife ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... taken some soup, and a couple of eggs, and drank nothing but water; my tongue is discolored; and without medicine and tonics, whatever my farcical doctor may say, my digestion will ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... it all!—I dreamed of a free, happy country, of a free, happy people prospering and blessed when the tyrant was overthrown—I thought I could help on this glorious time; and what happens? I am struck down by the hand of a friend in a miserable squabble; inglorious, farcical!—O Ireland, Ireland! the follies of your own children may be a greater curse to you in the days to come than have been the crimes of the stranger who has ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... the belles lettres, the imagination loves to play upon it. What will it be like? What treasures lie concealed in it? What delights has it in store for us? In our curiosity we are like the boy in Mr. Pinero's farcical comedy: 'It is the 'orrible uncertainty wot we craves after.' No one can tell what may nestle in the recesses of new leaves. Not even in reference to well-known writers can we be positively sure. They may belie their reputation. The illustrious Smith may make a failure; the ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... stood valiantly by him, and his face revealed nothing of the humiliation he must feel in playing out his farcical role of friendship before the eyes of the man to ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... of the season, but one which had beneficial results, was the strike of the Detroit players, entailing the staging of a farcical game in Philadelphia between the Athletics and a team of semi-professionals. This incident grew out of an attack on a New York spectator by Ty Cobb while in uniform and the immediate suspension of the player for ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... London, 1857, p. 5, and passim; and for a passage giving the keynote of the whole, with a most farcical note on coprolites, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... said Crayshaw with farcical meekness of voice and air, "quite the contrary. It was that I've met with a serious accident. I've ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... drugging the public mind of their section for more than thirty years, and until at length they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the Government the day after some assemblage of men have enacted the farcical pretense of taking their State out of the Union who could have been brought to no such thing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... absence of all rational common sense, in the vast numbers of persons deluded by such processes. In this aspect (the total absence of right reason and real religion demonstrated by these ludicrous and blasphemous juggleries in our Christian communities), that which was farcical in the lowest degree became tragical in the highest. I only witnessed this one mesmeric exhibition, on the occasion of this visit paid to us by Mr. Townsend and Alexis, until several years afterwards, in the house of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Kingsley always reflected some of his own happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good fellows, any one of whom might serve as ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... The razor, it turned out, was untempered and dull and was used to imbue boy apprentices with the confidence of the experienced barber. Hence it was in a sheath and, for the reason given above, the servant was not alarmed when the blade was snatched nor did Eumolpus break in upon this farcical death scene. ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Johnsonianly upon lettered topics, puffing unending Virginia cigarettes, gazing with shy humor through thick-paned spectacles—well, on Friday, June 23, 1916, Bob and I decided to collaborate in writing a farcical novel. It is still unwritten, save the first few chapters. I only instance this to show how ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... was Irene at feud with everybody? As for Una Meredith being hateful to anybody, the idea was so farcical that Rilla had much ado to keep from laughing ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... whole period of my stay in England I was mixed up in a farcical comedy which I had to play out from start to finish. I happened to get acquainted with the widow of some departed high Anglo-Indian official. She was good enough to call me by the pet-name Ruby. Some Indian friend of hers had composed a doleful poem in English in memory ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... disappear without leaving the faintest trace of the manner of his presumed death, while in German East there were unscrupulous despots—the disciples of atrocious kultur—only too ready to condemn an Englishman without even the farcical formality of a court-martial. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... of farce comedy, this play of the "Taming of the Shrew." In the hands of a lesser author it would have lost its comedy and degenerated purely into farce, restricting itself to more ignoble aims and to a more indulgent public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic to any great or moving thing. And in the hands of interpreters less than intelligently fine, the play may still descend into the lower class; but this cannot be done without degrading it beyond any likeness ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble |
