"Masque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been, by way of making some compensation to the memory of Milton, for the share he had in the attack of Lauder, that Johnson wrote the prologue, spoken by Garrick, at Drury lane theatre, 1750, on the performance of the Masque of Comus, for the benefit of Milton's granddaughter." Dr. Towers is not free from prejudice; but, as Shakespeare has it, "he begets a temperance, to give it smoothness." He is, therefore, entitled to a dispassionate ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... sallied out of the door to watch, and others blamed the master for not seizing and detaining these emissaries of Satan. Alice was closely questioned as to the communication she had received; but she replied, evasively perhaps, that it was only one of the usual stale conceits appropriate to the masque. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... presence of a sovereign spirit, the History of the World will, to students now as to students of old, vindicate its rank as a classic. But its true grandeur is in the scope of the conception, which exhibits a masque of the Lords of Earth, 'great conquerors, and other troublers of the world,' rioting in their wantonness and savagery, as if Heaven cared not or dared not interpose, yet made to pay in the end to the last farthing of righteous vengeance. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... late else: For, since the Masque, he sent three of his Captains (Ambitious as himself) to view again The glory ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... brings a masque ball for the young folk, a supper, fireworks, and at midnight a clinking of glasses, when healths are drunk in ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... the family. Mr. Younge complimented them on their beauty; they smiled with more grace than seemed to belong to their station. Our ladies at this instant came up; the young peasants made a curtsey, which instantly betrayed their secret to Mrs. Younge and Mademoiselle St. Sillery. "Where is the masque?" said the latter. "In the Chateau de Thiery," replied one of them, "about a fourth part of a league through this gateway; perhaps, if you are going only to the next post, you will join us. Papa and Mamma will be honored by your ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... success. When the public murmured at the unkind treatment of Thomson, one of the Ministerial writers remarked that "he had taken a Liberty which was not agreeable to Britannia in any Season." He was soon after employed, in conjunction with Mr. Mallet, to write the masque of Alfred, which was acted before the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... that he who read so much should have done nothing else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus, which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the lord president of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the earl of Bridgewater's sons and daughter. The fiction is derived from ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... conceal himself in. This lady was Madam the Countess of——who had, as you know, my lord, one only daughter, Mademoiselle Hermione, the heiress of her family. The Prince knew this young lady had a tenderness for him ever since they were both very young, which first took beginning in a masque at Court, where she then acted Mercury, and danced so exceedingly finely, that she gave our young hero new desire, if not absolute love, and charmed him at least into wishes. She was not then old enough to perceive she conquered, as well as to make a conquest: and she was capable of ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... the cells adjoining the historic dungeon of the Masque de Fer are more cheerfully occupied. Soldiers are placed there for slight breaches of discipline, their confinement varying from twelve hours to a few days. We heard two or three occupants gaily whiling away the time by singing patriotic songs, under the circumstances ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the Twelve Goddesses, presented in a Masque the 8th of January at Hampton-Court, by the Queen's most excellent Majesty and her Ladies. London 1604, 8vo. and 1623, 4to. It is dedicated to the Lady Lucy, countess of Bedford. His design under the shapes, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far superior to The Faithful Shepherdess, as The Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... moved towards the charmer, which vibrated three or four feet beneath the surface; he saw not the treacherous line, the hook beneath the fur; his heavily under-jawed mouth (whence he obtained the name of masque-longue, misspelled continually in a variety of ways by his Canadian captors), his tremendous teeth, closed voraciously on the temptation. Arthur's arm received a sudden violent jerk from the whole force of a lively twenty-five pound maskelonge; a struggle ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... received, that the intrigues of his enemies had prevailed at Rome, and that the interposition of the popular magistrates (the tribunes) was set aside, Csar sent forward the troops, who were then at his head-quarters, but in as private a manner as possible. He himself, by way of masque, (per dissimulationem,) attended a public spectacle, gave an audience to an architect who wished to lay before him a plan for a school of gladiators which Csar designed to build, and finally presented himself at a banquet, which was very numerously attended. From this, about sunset, he ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... on the stage Harris found time to compose a tragi-comedy, The Mistakes, or, The False Report (1691), produced in December 1690; The City Bride, produced in 1696; and a comedy and a masque, Love's a Lottery, and a Woman the Prize. With a New Masque, call'd Love and Riches Reconcil'd (1699), produced about March 1698/9. The Mistakes is clearly apprentice work, for Harris acknowledges in a preface the considerable ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... united. The chief-justice, Coke, and the illustrious Bacon, bowed in the general crowd before their ascendancy. It has been maintained that Ben Jonson, in his rough independence, refused to write a masque for the occasion of these wicked nuptials; but this has been denied; and it is said, that the reason why his works contain no avowed reference to the occasion, is because they were not published until Somerset's fall. The event took place in 1613: three years afterwards, the same ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... women who played, sang, danced, and tumbled in the hall for the amusement of the great people in the long winter evenings. Not including the wandering mummers, the Theatre was preceded by the Religious Drama, the Pageant, and the Masque. ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... thou of this quaint masque which turns, Like morning from the shadow of the night, The night to day, and London to a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... her hair braided and hanging down and the other piled up high and decorated with feathers from the duster. Or she can dress as "Folly" with pointed black velvet bodice, white blouse, red and yellow striped skirts, pointed cap and wear a small black masque covering the upper part of the face, and carry a stick wound with red and yellow ribbon with tiny bells fastened by ribbons. If you care to take the trouble and the expense (though it need not be very great), you ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... ever failed of success, not even, for example, the strange jumble of Chevalier de Mouhy, a kind of literary braggart, who was in the pay of Voltaire, and whose work was published anonymously in 1746 by Pierre de Hondt of The Hague. It is divided into six short parts, and bears the title, 'Le Masque de Fer, ou les Aventures admirables du Prre et du Fils'. An absurd romance by Regnault Warin, and one at least equally absurd by Madame Guenard, met with a like favourable reception. In writing for the theatre, an author must choose one view of a dramatic situation to the exclusion of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... story of Dr Goldsmith. Graham, who wrote Telemachus, a Masque, was sitting one night with him and Dr Johnson, and was half drunk. He rattled away to Dr Johnson: 'You are a clever fellow, to be sure; but you cannot write an essay like Addison, or verses like the Rape of the Lock.' At last he said, [Footnote: I ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... seen nothing so imaginative, so restful, so expressive, on the English stage as these simple and elaborately woven designs, in patterns of light and drapery and movement, which in "The Masque of Love" had a new quality of charm, a completeness of invention, for which I would have given all d'Annunzio's golden cups and Mr. Tree's boats on ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... fighting men".[177] Yet, in the narrative which follows the Amazon is proved to be the stronger monster of the two. Traces of the mother monster survive in English folklore, especially in the traditions about the mythical "Long Meg of Westminster", referred to by Ben Jonson in his masque ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... tells us "the excessive gallantry of the ladies was infinite, those jewels especially on Lady Castlemaine esteemed at forty thousand pounds and more, far outshining ye queene." Between each act of the tradgedy a masque and antique dance was performed. When Moll Davis appeared, her majesty, turning pale from sickness of heart, and trembling from indignation at the glaring insult thrust upon her, arose and left the apartment boisterous with revelry, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the Scotch, nor is it yet a favourite food amongst them. King Jamie carried this prejudice to England, and is known to have abhorred pork almost as much as he did tobacco. Ben Jonson has recorded this peculiarity, where the gipsy in a masque, examining the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... most beautiful, book from an artistic point of view is undoubtedly Mr. Walter Crane's Flora's Feast. It is an imaginative Masque of Flowers, and as lovely in colour as it is exquisite in design. It shows us the whole pomp and pageant of the year, the Snowdrops like white-crested knights, the little naked Crocus kneeling to catch the sunlight in his golden chalice, the Daffodils blowing ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... York with Montaigne, and taking note of his shrewd, satirical comment. I can hardly imagine him expressing any feeling of surprise, much less any sentiment of admiration; but I am confident that under a masque of ironical self-complacency the old Gascon would find it difficult to repress his astonishment, and still more difficult to adjust his mind to evident and impressive changes. I have ventured at times to imagine myself in the company of another more remote and finely organised spirit of ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... finger, and, turning to her harp, sung, to a lively air, the following verses of one of the fashionable songs of the period, which had found its way, marked as it was with the quaint hyperbolical taste of King Charles's time, from some court masque to the wilds ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... fair garments with gauds and ornaments of silver upon them, at ye sight of which their kindred did raise cries of joy, and did further make great ado with clapping of ye hands. And when ye little maidens had duly presented their dances before ye company, then did ye elder damosels give a goodly masque, being decked forth in brave trappings, and speaking cunningly in ye tongue of ye fair lande of France, wherein all who heard them might well understand. And ye kindred and alle they that were gathered together for to look upon them did in kindness and with ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... an occasion for a fancy dress party en masque. Invitations may be written on a large sheet of paper and folded or rolled into a small parcel and tied up in wrapping paper ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... the tribes was always celebrated by a grand corroboree, a species of bestial bal masque. On such occasions they presented a most grotesque and demon-like appearance, their heads, faces, and bodies, liberally greased were besmeared alternately with clay and red ochre; large tufts of bushy twigs were entwined ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... these is to know a very different Brann from the author of "The Bradley-Martin Bal Masque" or "Garters and Amen Groans." The Brann who wrote "Life and Death," by that work alone, wins to undying fame as surely as does Grey by his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." I have combed my memory in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the homely and English "Merry Wives of Windsor," has, for its rule, prose. Even here the two true lovers hold their few short colloquies in blank verse. And when the concluding fairy masque is toward, blank verse rages. Page and Ford catch it. The merry wife, Mrs Page, turns poetess to describe and project the superstitions to be used. In the fairy-scene Sir John himself, Shakspeare's most dogged observer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... seems to have been troubled by no shyness in asking questions of the General. She writes: "Is it true, General, I asked, that you once went to a bal masque at the opera with the Queen of France—Marie Antoinette—leaning on your arm, the King knowing nothing of the matter till her return? I am afraid so, said he. She was so indiscreet, and I can conscientiously add—so innocent. However, the Comte d'Artois was also of the party, and we were ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... said Lindesay, "that the affrays occasioned by your misgovernment, may sometimes have startled you in the midst of a masque or galliard; or it may be that such may have interrupted the idolatry of the mass, or the jesuitical counsels of some French ambassador. But the longest and severest journey which your Grace has taken in my memory, was from Hawick to Hermitage Castle; and whether ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... composition brought out by this occasion was the "Masque of Anarchy," a magnificent poem of ninety-one verses. "Anarchy" he describes as riding "on a white horse,"[E] in alliance with theology and statecraft, and whose ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... IV. "He made disguises for the King's sons, writ in ballad-royal daintily well, and was regarded and rewarded." Jonson calls him the moral Skogan; and introduces him with Skelton, the poet laureate of Henry VIII., into his Masque, entitled "The Fortunate Isles," where he keeps them in character, and makes them rhyme in ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... up to his room to be alone with his thoughts, that he feared might show themselves plainly in his face if he met either the lady or her father, and there for the first time had a memory of Cecile—some odd irrelevance of a memory—in which she figured in a masque in a Paris garden. Good God! that he should have failed to see it before; this Cecile had been an actress, as, he told himself, were most of her sex he had hitherto encountered, and 'twas doubtful if he once ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... disappointment. I suppose I must be careful not to give away the mystery, such as it is. Price Rugler was anxious to discover why his attractive wife assumed a worried look when money was mentioned and fainted on being told that she was not to wear the family ruby at a particular masque. All this happened (you may not be astonished to hear) in San Francisco, amongst that luxurious, idle, over-moneyed society whose manners Mrs. ATHERTON knows and describes so well. Price had already ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... manly superiority to illusion, and greeted these awful apparitions familiarly, as Dick and Harry and Joe. As for me, I was too big to run, too rapt to resist the magic and surprise. Whence came these outlanders, breaking in on us with song and ordered masque and a terrible clashing of wooden swords? And after these, what strange visitants might we not look for any quiet night, when the chestnuts popped in the ashes, and the old ghost stories drew the awe-stricken circle close? Old Merlin, perhaps, "all furred in black sheep-skins, and a ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... of any reality in the universe beyond and behind this masque of life and things was still vibrating through his deepest being, it was as though a hand gently drew aside a curtain, and there grew clear before him, slowly effacing from his eyes the whole grandiose spectacle of buildings, sky, and river, that scene of the past which had worked so potently ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as it progresses, assumes the air of a big family party of good bohemians. The French do not bring their misery with them to the table. To dine is to enjoy oneself to the utmost; in fact the French people cover their disappointment, sadness, annoyances, great or petty troubles, under a masque of "blague," and have such an innate dislike of sympathy or ridicule that they avoid it ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... masque. It may be an owl's head with mother-of-pearl eyes, or a wooden pelican's beak, or a wolf's head. It may be a wooden animal's face, which can be pulled apart by a string, and reveal under it an effigy of a human face, the first ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... come; that they would keep together the whole masquerade, provided he did not think it a confinement, to prevent her being persecuted with the impertinencies of some people there, who she found thought a masque a kind of sanction for ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... duke took Helene home, promising to come and see her as usual in the evening; a promise which Helene would have estimated all the more highly if she had known that his highness had a bal masque ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a mistake. It was not I you saw at the masque; it was Dick. He played a cruel trick; he insulted you and wronged me by that deceit, and I find it ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... forget a meal on account of it. His world is a happy land of song, in which ladies all golden in the sunlight succeed one another as in a pageant of beauties. Lesbia, Laura, and Corinna with her lute equally inhabit it. They are all characters in a masque of love, forms and figures in a revel. Their maker is an Epicurean and an enemy to ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... command of my elbows. But what have you been doing all the mornings? Could you not write then?—No, then I was masqued too; I have done nothing but slip out of my domino into bed, and out of bed into my domino. The end of the Carnival is frantic, bacchanalian; all the morn one makes parties in masque to the shops and coffee-houses, and all the evening to the operas and balls. Then I have danced, good gods! how have I danced! The Italians are fond to a degree of our country dances: Cold and raw they only know by the tune; Blowzybella ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... catholique en ont garde de profonds vestiges. Mais ces vestiges ne sont pas des dogmes, ce sont des reves. Une fois ce grand rideau de drap d'or, bariole de soie, d'indienne et de calicot, par lequel le catholicisme nous masque la vue du monde, une fois, dis-je ce rideau dechire, on voit l'univers en sa splendeur infinie, la nature en sa haute et pleine majeste. Le protestant le plus libre garde souvent quelque chose de triste, un fond d'austerite intellectuelle ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Of this nature are fairies, pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of magic; for it is still an imitation, though of other men's fancies: and thus are Shakespeare's "Tempest," his "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Ben Jonson's "Masque of Witches" to be defended. For immaterial substances, we are authorised by Scripture in their description: and herein the text accommodates itself to vulgar apprehension, in giving angels the likeness of beautiful young men. Thus, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... in love and purity and conscious rectitude, amid the snares and pitfalls of her persecutors, to die at last the victim of a brother's fevered avarice and a desperado's egotistical ambition. The apparatus of infernal cruelty, the dead man's hand, the semblances of murdered sons and husband, the masque of madmen, the dirge and doleful emblems of the tomb with which she is environed in her prison by the torturers who seek to goad her into lunacy, are insufficient to disturb the tranquillity and tenderness of her nature. When the rope is being fastened to her throat, she does not spend her breath ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... hour: he goes the round at the heels of a veiled but beautiful lady, and lays her in the materials of as liberal and sumptuous a carouse as is recorded in history. Happy lady, and O thrice-fortunate porter! enviable even to the term of time! It is a voluptuous farce, a masque and anti-masque of wantonness and stratagem, of wine-cups and jewels and fine raiment, of gaudy nights and amorous days, of careless husbands and adventurous wives, of innocent fathers and rebel daughters and lovers happy or befooled. And high over all, his heart contracted with the spleen ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... contre la couronne de France, contre les biens des veuves et des orphelins, contre le sang des tristes et des innocens! Tu fais profession de prescher de saintete, toy qui ne connois Dieu que de parole; qui ne tiens la religion chretienne que comme un masque pour te deguiser; qui fais ordinaire trafic, banque et marchandise d'evesches et de benefices: qui ne vois rien de saint que tu ne souilles, rien de chaste que tu ne violes, rien de bon que tu ne gates!... Tu ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... remainder, imitation or original, one cannot but feel that the book, like all the literature to which it belongs, has more of the marks of death than of life in it. Its very elegances are "rose-coloured curtains for the doctors"—the masque of a moribund art. Some of them may have been borrowed by, rather than from, younger and hopefuller craftsmanship, but the general effect is the same. We are here face to face with those phenomena of "decadence," which, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... severely by Spittler, the German, who, again, is himself miserably superficial in his analysis of English history. Hence the feeble credulity which Dr. Johnson showed with respect to the forgery of De Foe (under the masque of Captain Carleton) upon the Catalonian campaign of Lord Peterborough. But it is singular that a literature, so unrivalled as ours in its compass and variety, should not have produced any, even the shallowest, manual of itself. And thus it happens, for example, that writers so laborious ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... hand which fills the canvas of The Merchant of Venice with so many well-delineated figures. Once arrived at this conclusion, we need not let ourselves again be led away into vagueness or critical polemics by an attempt to find any aristocratic wedding which this masque-like play seems designed to celebrate; such theorising, however interesting in other ways, does not concern and will ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... phoenix; lay you an old courtier on the coals, like a sausage or a bloat-herring, and, after they have broiled him enough, blow a soul into him, with a pair of bellows! See! they begin to muster again, and draw their forces out against me! The genius of the place defend me!" — Ben Jonson's Masque "Mercury ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... English pastoral poet, born at Tavistock; author of "Britannia's Pastorals" and "The Shepherd's Pipe," a collection of eclogues and "The Inner Temple and Masque," on the story of Ulysses and Circe, with some opening exquisitely beautiful verses, "Steer hither, steer," among them; was an imitator of Spenser, and a parallel has been instituted between him ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... cochers ordinaires a yeux nus ou avec les lunettes ordinaires de myopes ou de presbytes. Nos sportsmen declarent que ces lunettes de motoristes favorisent l'anonymat. Ces lunettes sont de veritables masques. On fait sous ce masque ce qu'on n'oserait pas faire a visage decouvert. En France il est defendu de se masquer en dehors du temps de carnaval ... si le masque tombe, la vitesse des motors deviendra fatalement normale."—M. N. de Noduwez ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... protestant. "Ah, not for this, And not for this, through rose and thorn was I Drawn to surrender and the bridal-kiss. Annunciations lit with jewelled wings Of sudden angels mid the lilies tall, Proud prothalamia chaunting enraptured things,— O sumptuous fables, why so prodigal Of masque and music, of dreams like foam-white swans On lakes of hyacinthus? Must Love seek Great allies, Beauty sound her arriere-bans That all her splendours betray us to this bleak Simplicity whereto blind satyrs run?"— The irony seems old, old as ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... of the attendant spirit was taken by Lawes (see Introduction), who, in his prologue or opening speech, explains who he is and on what errand he has been sent, hints at the plot of the whole masque, and at the same time compliments the Earl in whose honour the masque is being given (lines 30-36). In the ancient classical drama the prologue was sometimes an outline of the plot, sometimes an address to the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... fortnight, when Rowden, feeling it incumbent upon him to return some of Gethryn's hospitality, issued very proper cards — indeed they were very swell cards for the Latin Quarter — for a "dinner," to be followed by a "quiet evening" at the Bal Masque at ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... I, and yet, by Love's decree, To me the world's a masque of shadows too, And I a shadow also—since to me The only real thing in ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... entertainment was given, in the Louvre, to the notabilities of Paris; and after supper there was a masque of the most lavish magnificence. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday there was a continuation of pageants and entertainments. During these festivities the king had shown marked courtesy to the Admiral and the Huguenot lords, and it seemed as if ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... interesting and richly coloured masque or pantomimic play which is here printed in book form for the first time, was invented sometime in 1894 or possibly a little earlier. It was written, not for publication, but as a personal gift to the author's ...
— For Love of the King - a Burmese Masque • Oscar Wilde
... throng" that I have kept in petto Now to produce in a "divine sestetto"!! "While Poesy," with these delightful doxies, "Sustains her part" in all the "upper" boxes! "Thus lifted gloriously, you'll sweep along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; 40 "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play" (For this last line George had a holiday). "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the Manager, and so say I. "But hold," you say, "this self-complacent boast;" Is this the Poem which the public lost? "True—true—that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... which, it is said, no satisfactory explanation has ever yet been forthcoming, happened during the wedding banquet of Alexander III. at Jedburgh Castle, a weird and gruesome episode which Edgar Poe expanded into his "Masque of the Red Death." The story goes that in the midst of the festivities, a mysterious figure glided amongst the astonished guests—tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave, the mask which concealed ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... features, deportment, and rank, from the Lady of that enchanting masque, the continuation of the passage may be happily applied to Jeanie Deans upon this ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as she was, the girl moved to her bridal through costly pageants which would have fitted the bridal of a queen. The marriage was celebrated in the king's presence. Ben Jonson devised the wedding song. Bacon spent two thousand pounds in a wedding masque. The London Companies offered sumptuous gifts. James himself forced the Lord Mayor to entertain the bride with a banquet in Merchant Taylors' House, and the gorgeous wedding-train wound in triumph from ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... London set themselves to study the pages of Chaucer and Froissart. At the same time, though the Court was to be that of Edward III and his Queen, no limit was put to the periods and nationalities to be selected by the guests. The ball was to be a masque, and perhaps it would have lost a little of its motley charm had it been confined entirely to one age in history, and to one country of the world. A comical petition had to be presented, that the masquers might remain covered before the Queen, lest the doffing of hats should cause the displacement ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... of spectacular interludes one finds much that resembles not only opera, but also the English masque and sometimes even the French pastoral. Yet close examination will convince any student of operatic history that almost every form of theatrical performance, from the choral dance to the most elaborate festival show, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... room like a shower from heaven," as one wrote who was present at that splendid entertainment, and the feux d'artifice on the river—cost his lordship a year's income, but stamped him at once a fine gentleman. Had he been a trifle handsomer, and somewhat softer of speech, that masque and banquet might have placed Richard Revel, Baron Fareham, in the front rank of royal favourites; but the Revels were always a black-visaged race, with more force than comeliness in their countenances, and more gall ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of King James, Jonson began his long and successful career as a writer of masques. He wrote more masques than all his competitors together, and they are of an extraordinary variety and poetic excellence. Jonson did not invent the masque; for such premeditated devices to set and frame, so to speak, a court ball had been known and practised in varying degrees of elaboration long before his time. But Jonson gave dramatic value to ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... costume?" she said. "Next bal masque I certainly will wear this kind, you may be sure. Of course all of this, and that must be chiffon, and silk, and...." A woman cannot get on without these chats. On the other hand—woman speaks to the man about it with a concealed ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... but in the hope to make a prey[302];— These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show The false friend worse than the infuriate foe. But this is well: Greeks only should free Greece, Not the barbarian, with his masque of peace. How should the Autocrat of bondage be 300 The king of serfs, and set the nations free? Better still serve the haughty Mussulman, Than swell the Cossaque's prowling caravan; Better still toil for masters, than await, The slave of slaves, before ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... stifled at the surcharged atmosphere, I would have tried to leave, but I seemed frozen to the spot. I could think of nothing except Poe's Masque ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... scene 2 of Comus by Milton. Should the entire masque be acted out-of-doors? If presented on an indoors stage what should the setting be? Inside the palace of Comus? How then do the Brothers get in? How do Sabrina and her Nymphs arise? From a pool, a fountain? Might the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Blackbird clear, At measur'd intervals, with mellow tone, Choiring [1]the hours of prime? and call thine ear To the gay viol dinning in the dale, With tabor loud, and bag-pipe's rustic drone To merry Shearer's dance;—or jest retail From festal board, from choral roofs the song; And speak of Masque, or Pageant, to beguile The caustic memory of a cruel wrong?— Thy lips acknowledge this a generous wile, And bid me still the effort kind prolong; But ah! they wear ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, of a kind quite new in English, giving to the landscape an expression in harmony with two contrasted moods. Comus, which belongs to the same period, was the perfection of the Elisabethan court masque, and was presented at Ludlow Castle in 1634, on the occasion of the installation of the Earl of Bridgewater as Lord President of Wales. Under the guise of a skillful addition to the Homeric allegory of Circe, with her cup of enchantment, it was a Puritan song ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the picture of King Charles on horseback, which had interested me at Warwick. It had, however, a peculiar and romantic charm from its position at the end of that long, dim corridor, vis-a-vis with the masque of Cromwell, which did not accompany it here, where it was but one among a set ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Barbican, by a strange chance, were assembled, within a few yards of each other, at the very time when Comus was first published by Milton himself, and acknowledged among his other poems, at least five of the persons chiefly concerned in the masque on its first production—the Earl in whose honour it had been composed; the Lady Alice, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, two of the chief actors: the musician Lawes, who had directed all, composed the music, and sustained the parts ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... to go with the Canton Club, or the opposition benches, then it was the whig and liberal hounds who howled and moaned, explaining everything by the indiscretion, infatuation, treason, of Lord Viscount Masque, and appealing to the initiated world of idiots around them, whether any party could ever succeed, hampered by such men, and influenced ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Nor do his octave stanzas in praise of rural life form an exception to this statement; for these are imitated from Poliziano, so far as they attempt pictures of the country, and their chief poetical feature is the masque of vices belonging to human nature in the city. His stock-in-trade consists of a few Platonic notions and a few Petrarchan antitheses. In the very large number of compositions which are devoted to love, this one idea predominates: that physical beauty is a direct beam sent from the eternal source ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... on vellum; and a Koran upon cotton paper superbly executed. In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, there are several exceedingly interesting literary curiosities; amongst others, some manuscripts in the handwriting of Milton, consisting of the original copy of the "Masque of Comus," several plans of "Paradise Lost," and the poems of "Lycidas," "Arcades," and others; and also Sir Isaac Newton's copy of his "Principia," with his manuscript notes, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... some of their own needy connections. In this exchange of good offices, the two parties were for some time able to maintain a fair appearance of reciprocal good-will. This on the comte's side, if not particularly warm, was probably sincere; but in Goethe the father it was a masque for inveterate dislike. A natural ground of this existed in the original relations between them. Under whatever disguise or pretext, the Frenchman was in fact a military intruder. He occupied the best suite of rooms in the house, used the furniture as his own; and, though upon private motives ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... is threatening. Another epicene creature flies by her. Love shoots his bolt in midair. Is it from Paphos or Mitylene! What the fable! Music plucked down from the vibrating skies and made visible to the senses. A mere masque laden with the sweet, prim allegories of the day it is not. Vasari, blunt soul, saw but its surfaces. Politian, the poet, got closer to the core. Centuries later our perceptions, sharpened by the stations of pain and experience traversed, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... hope was gone. On the night of December 23d the King slept, a prisoner surrounded with hostile guards, in the noble castle which in the days of his youth had rung with Jonson's lyrics and ribaldry; and the "Gipsy of the Masque" had prophesied that his "name in peace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... chastity' it made its exit. Granville afterwards revived it as Once a Lover and Always a Lover. Heroick Love, a tragedy (1698), had great success. The Jew of Venice (1701), is a piteously weak adaption of The Merchant of Venice. A short masque, Peleus and Thetis accompanies the play. The British Enchanters, an opera (1706), is a pleasing piece, and was very well received. At the accession of Queen Anne, Granville entered the political arena and attained considerable offices of state. Suspected of being an active Jacobite he ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the production of scenic effect, but they were their own actors. It was not long before their 'moralities' were seasoned with political sentiments and allusions to public affairs. For instance, when Wolsey was in the fulness of his power, Sergeant Roo ventured to satirize the Cardinal in a masque with which Gray's Inn entertained Henry VIII. and his courtiers. Hall records that, "This plaie was so set furth with riche and costlie apparel; with strange diuises of maskes and morrishes, that it was ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... take off his hat, the halberts flew sharply round him, his subjects were soundly beaten, and he was dragged off to the Compter. There, with soiled finery, the new year's king was kept two days in durance, the attorney-general at last fetching the fallen monarch away in his own coach. At a court masque soon afterwards the king made the two rival potentates join hands; but the King of Misrule had, nevertheless, to refund all the five shillings' he had exacted, and repair all the Fleet Street doors his too handy gunner had destroyed. The very next year the quarrelsome ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... deux ans! Rome remplacait Sparte, Deja Napoleon percait sous Bonaparte, Et du premier consul deja, par maint endroit, Le front de l'empereur brisait le masque etroit." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque Content, though blind, had I no ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of taste and the intense concentration on self, which were shown most disagreeably in Elle et Lui, appear on a different side in another book which is not a novel at all—not even a novel as far as masque and domino are concerned,—though indirectly it touches another of George Sand's curious personal experiences—that with Chopin. Un Hiver a Majorque is perhaps the most ill-tempered book of travel, except Smollett's too famous production, ever written ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the rich sparkle of a past like stained glass called to life: the Confraternity of St. Medard presenting their masque of Hercules; the claret colored walls adorned with gold cinquefoils of Demetrios' court; his pavilion with porticoes of Andalusian copper; Theodoret's capital, Megaris, ruddy with bonfires; the free port ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... summer. The truth is, that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is progressive. As in the transformation scene of some great Masque, so here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether the new scene ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... orchestra. His innovations were all in the service of these orchestral aspirations, and hence it is that his rhapsodies, for example, are much more effective in their orchestral garb than in their original pianoforte version. The same is true of many of Rubinstein's pianoforte works—the Bal Masque, for instance, which always has such an electric effect on Mr. Theodore Thomas's audiences. Not so with Chopin. Liszt remarks, somewhere, that Chopin might have easily written for orchestra, because his compositions can be so readily arranged for it. I venture to differ from ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... but he chose literature as a profession, travelled and made distinguished friendships in Italy, Switzerland and France, and when little past his majority was before the public as a poet, author of the Ode to the Nativity, of a Masque, and of many songs and elegies. In later years he entered political life under the stress of his Puritan sympathies, and served under Cromwell and his successor as Latin Secretary of State through the time of the Commonwealth. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Elizabeth's time many important additions were made to it. The young Philip Sidney lived here, his father being the lord president; the stone bridge, replacing the drawbridge, and the great portal were built at that time. In 1634, Milton's "Masque of Comus" was represented here while Earl Bridgewater was lord president, one of the scenes being the castle and town of Ludlow: this representation was part of the festivities attending the earl's installation on Michaelmas Night. It was in Ludlow Castle that Butler wrote part of Hudibras. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... en stupefaction, lorsqu'on apercut le domino jaune attable pour la cinquieme fois, et que les mets eurent recommence a disparaitre dans son estomac insatiable. On se demandait: "Quel est donc ce masque a l'appetit si prodigieux?" Et les vieux courtisans se disaient entre eux: "Les plus grands mangeurs que nous ayons[1] entendu vanter n'approchaient pas de celui-ci." Informations prises, il se trouva que les gardes francaises preposees a la garde du chateau avaient ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... the farces. They could see the famous Norwich puppet-play. But he—what pleasure did he ever have? A tawdry pageant by a lot of clumsy country bumpkins at Whitsuntide or Pentecost, or a silly school-boy masque at Christmas, with the master scolding like a heathen Turk. It was ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Settle's rise to his unmerited elevation in the public opinion, became as anxious to lower his presumption as he had formerly been to diminish the reputation of Dryden. With this view, that tyrannical person of honour availed himself of his credit to recommend Crowne to write the masque of "Calisto," which was acted by the lords and ladies of the court of Charles in 1675. Nothing could be more galling towards Dryden, a part of whose duty as poet-laureate was to compose the pieces designed for such occasions. Crowne, though he was ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... cosmic masque or pageant of the planets are the Sun, the Moon and the Earth with her four Elements; for stage there is the limitless background of Time and Space, and the audience may be conceived as being represented by Immanent ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... seek'st a helmet, be thy task To win and wear it more to thy renown. A noble prize were good Orlando's casque; Rinaldo's such, or yet a fairer crown; Almontes', or Mambrino's iron masque: Make one of these, by force of arms, thine own. And this good helm will fitly be bestowed Where (such thy promise) it has long ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... verge of poverty. At length, in 1603, the great Queen Elizabeth died, and James of Scotland came to the English throne. All the way as he journeyed he was greeted with rejoicing. There were everywhere plays and feasts given in his honor, and soon after he arrived in London a Masque written by Jonson was played before him. The new king was fond of such entertainments. He smiled upon Master Ben Jonson, and life became ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... choeur jetta les personages: D'un masque plus honnete habilla les visages: Sur les ais d'un theatre en public exhausse Fit paroitre l'acteur ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... suddenly find myself out of my depths in the Ocean of Renunciation. Poet! Don't give me time for that. Do something. Do anything. Have you got anything ready to hand? Any play toward? Any poem? Any masque? Any—— ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore |
