"Melodramatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of those who had seen the other great Italian actor. It was hard to dethrone the majestic and princely Moor, the stately general of Salvini's conception, to give place to the frank, free-hearted soldier, intoxicated with the gladness of successful wooing, that Rossi brings before us. Certain melodramatic points, also, in the earlier acts, such as the "Ha!" wherewith Rossi with upraised arms starts from Desdemona when Brabantio ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... wretched class that would furnish studies for it, but to society at large, and so indirectly to the class in question, by providing a subject of this kind which could be studied and talked about. Dumas fils' "Dame aux Camelias" is a great melodramatic story; but it is so exceptional in its incidents and episodical in its character, that its heroine is quite worthless as a specimen for examination and analysis; and it is, beside, so very French as to be almost valueless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... to happen. The chief adventure is abduction, the subject of it being Mary Carstairs, whose father was separated from her mother, and, being a lonely old man with a longing for a daughter's affection, took this melodramatic course to secure it. In furtherance of his end he secured the services of Maginnis, genial swashbuckler, and Varney, young, susceptible and heroic, and despatched them on his yacht to apprehend one whom they vaguely supposed to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... least one very peculiar reason, which will be noticed presently, for supposing that this phantom was really intended to represent the late Rev. Mother Frances Helen, and that its inaccuracy was owing to the stupid, and rather melodramatic misconception in the mind which originally imagined it and transferred it ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... she could not. On the contrary she was seized with a strong impulse to say to him entreatingly: 'Leave me,' as though she were a person on the stage. She thought of other phrases, such as 'Please go away,' and 'Do you mind leaving me for a while?' but her tongue, somehow insisting on the melodramatic, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... natural desires of a child whom he has promised to another. Where Maria is idyllic, poetic, flowing smoothing along the current of a realism tempered by sentimentalism, Innocencia (by no means devoid of poetry) is romantic, melodramatic, rushing along turbulently to the outcome in a death as violent as Maria's is peaceful. There is in each book a similar importance of the background. In Innocencia the "point of honor" is quite as strong and vindictive as in ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... George IV., would have been something pretty and poetic in that of the young maiden-Queen, but she doubtless felt that as every Englishman was disposed to be her champion, the old form would be the idlest, melodramatic bravado. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... human love to be sham; the most interesting natural incidents, contemptible inventions; the plainest statistical information, a deliberate act of theft; the sublimest conceptions of human character, a fudge; the details of human history for three hundred years, a melodramatic, incredible fiction; and what cannot now be found anywhere else recorded, a dream; accidental coincidence he speaks of as detected dishonesty; imaginary resemblance, as guilty adaptation; a style suitable to the subject, as plagiarism; occasional inspiration he calls a ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... the Dutch school; Philip de Champagne's portraits, Wouverman's white horses, Cuyp's meadows and kine, Steen's rural fetes, Claude's sunsets, Pannini's architecture and Sneyder's animals; David's melodramatic pieces, Isabey's miniatures, Oudny's dogs, Robert's "Harvest Home," all hint a chapter, not only in the history of art, but in the philosophy of life and the secrets of the beautiful—enshrined there for the world's enjoyment, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... fall. It cost no such struggle to return to the world as it had taken to leave it, for the poet had overgrown the philosopher, and the open mystery of the common day was already exercising an appeal beyond that of any melodramatic 'arcana.' Of course the period left its mark upon him, but it is most conspicuous ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... picturesque meetings at midnight in the gloom of lonely forests; no confabulations in black cellars with bands of hireling desperadoes waiting to carry out its decrees; no disguises, no masks, no dark lanterns—nothing half so exciting and melodramatic. On the contrary, it is amazingly plain and straightforward, with plenty of hard work, but always open and aboveboard. That is the rule for the diplomatic ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... this to blast mine eyes?" ejaculated Charlie, as he pointed to the glove with a melodramatic start, for, like most accomplished amateur actors, he was fond of introducing private theatricals into his ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... boy," said Gordon. "I don't mean to blaspheme; but Job is not in it with me just now. You cannot imagine what I had to contend with before this melodramatic villain appeared on the stage. Sometimes I think this is the finish," Gordon's mouth contracted. He looked savage. James continued to stare at him. Gordon laid his hand on James's shoulder. "Thank the Lord for one thing," he said almost tenderly, ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... continued my lady, "that the young person has been to see me. We had quite a melodramatic interview. I do not wish to vex you, Lance, but she would make a capital fifth-rate actress for a tragedy ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... Grotius, and put him ahead of Pitt, as the youthful prodigy of the world. What had he left unaccomplished when he was eighteen? And what story had ever been written by Dumas, or any other, to compare with his in melodramatic interest? I didn't know enough details of the brilliant being's history to argue (although I have always the most intense yearning to argue with Cousin Robert), but I made a note to read them up, in case I should ever be called upon to write a ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... would have appeared in the melodramatic guise of a spangled tunic, sugar-loaf hat, with party-coloured ribbons, purple or green breeches, and motley hose; but in the witness-box he was in clerical uniform, a long coat and white cravat with corresponding ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... their shadows into the recesses and shed its flicker on their faces. Gougeon sat picking at the candle-grease in his apathetic way. Hache cheerfully threw himself on a long box. The Admiral stood wrapped in his cloak, melodramatic ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... necessity of replying by a diversion without the door. Two male voices were heard declaiming in a sort of mock-melodramatic duet, "Are you at home, are you at home? May we enter, ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... ground. Their brains are gangrenous with memories of cancelled malice. They suspect hero-worship; it smacks to them of sentiment. They examine, but never praise. Being incapable of sacrifice, they find something meretriciously melodramatic about men and nations who are capable. Had they lived nineteen hundred years ago, they would have haunted ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... fixed as the universe, he entered the village fair, and was a little disappointed at his first glimpse of the village-green. Certainly his expectations had not been very exalted; but there had run through them a hope of something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village-belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school; or, failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humour here and there. But there did not ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second nature. It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and the club box condemned as bad form. But he had become suddenly unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Luyden, of all that had so long enclosed him in the warm shelter of habit. He walked ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... effeminate society. It was like the burst of admiration with which the picture of the human heart was at the same time hailed in France, drawn by the magic hand of Rousseau; or, in the next age, the fierce passions of the melodramatic corsairs of Byron were received in the artificial circles of London society. Nature was something new; they had never heard her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... countervails its own loss of immediate intensity: the least touch of color shows strongly against that subdued background. A very slight catastrophe among those orderly scenes of peaceful life has more effect than the noisier incidents and contrived convulsions of more melodramatic novels. Thus, in 'Mansfield Park' the result of private theatricals, including many rehearsals of stage love-making, among a group of young people who show no very strong principles or firmness of character, appears in a couple of elopements which break ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of both sexes, though this is not the rule, as we will readily agree, thinking over the great portrait painters of character. To state a single illustrative case: Hall Caine must be allowed to have framed some mighty men, tragic, or melodramatic sometimes, somber always, but men of bulk and character. Pete, in "The Manxman," is a creation sufficient to make the artist conceiving him immortal; and Red Jason is no less real, manly, mighty, self-mastering, self-surrendering. Caine's men are giants; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... tamely. But there are so many bright passages in the book and so many sympathetic sketches of characters that I cannot help wishing the FRASERS (HUGH and MRS.) had either written a longer story depending completely on the interplay of temperament, or else built more carefully on their melodramatic substructure. For though Captain Mayhune, the villain of the piece, is the proprietor of a gaming-hell and terrorises Lady Trague with a piece of blotting-paper on which may be read a portion of her letter to a young man whom she indiscreetly though innocently adores, nothing very serious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... tell how he looks in a tangible form, And give the length of his horns and claws, The spread of his wings, the width of his jaws, And detail the other proportions grim, Which belong to a powerful demon like him. Go and look at the melodramatic stage, When a "spectacle" piece is all the rage; And there, in the midst of some "property" storm, While the sheet-iron thunder is rattling its best, And the rosin lightning, and all the rest Of the elements are, for some tragedy-reason, Making the "awfullest gale of the season—" See, at the ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... touch of the melodramatic in my pose and voice, for Maud smiled. Her appreciation of the ridiculous was keen, and in all things she unerringly saw and felt, where it existed, the touch of sham, the overshading, the overtone. It was this ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... was the Deus ex machina who was to come down upon the Barchester stage and bring about deliverance from these terrible evils. But how can melodramatic denouements be properly brought about, how can vice and Mr. Slope be punished, and virtue and the archdeacon be rewarded, while the avenging god is laid up with the gout? In the mean time evil may be triumphant, and poor innocence, transfixed to the earth by an arrow from ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... slowly that she might not lose control of herself, "if you were not so serious about this, I should be tempted to laugh at your little melodramatic farce. It is the most ridiculous thing in all the world for you to imagine that Uncle Josiah would play double with us! He is too good-hearted for even one evil suggestion to ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... undisturbed settlement, three hundred thousand square miles of forest, fertile land, and fisheries, including the whole fair Columbia Valley. Our active "policy of the Pacific" dated from that hour. With swift and clinching succession came the melodramatic Mexican War, and February, 1848, saw another vast territory south of Oregon and west of the Rocky Mountains added by treaty to the United States. Thus in about eighteen months there had been pieced into the national domain for quick development and exploitation a region as large as ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Maurier, the quiet incisiveness of his satire, and his inimitable skill at the portrayal of social types are delightfully manifested in this series of one hundred plates, ending up with the melodramatic death-bed scene of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown by the subjoined ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... shilling's worth of highly coloured sensationalism. Those readers who want a good melodramatic story smartly told, Mr Golsworthy's latest effort will suit down to ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... melodramatic nonsense," she rebuked him sharply. Then pity and tenderness prevailed. "If it's really as bad as that, mon cher, why on earth didn't you take yesterday's chance, and ask Elsie to be your wife? I believe she would ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... "Melodramatic, isn't it?" laughed Mrs. Carnarvon. "So he's off. How furious Martha Fortescue and Ellen will be. But they'll go in pursuit, and they'll get him. A man is never so susceptible as when he's broken-hearted. Well, I must go. Good-night, dear. Don't mope and whine. Take your punishment ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... examine in this manner every statement made by Iago. But it is not necessary to do so in public, and I proceed to the question what impression he made on his friends and acquaintances. In the main there is here no room for doubt. Nothing could be less like Iago than the melodramatic villain so often substituted for him on the stage, a person whom everyone in the theatre knows for a scoundrel at the first glance. Iago, we gather, was a Venetian[108] soldier, eight-and-twenty years of age, who had seen a good deal of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... talk as well as my old shoe. Haven't I listened to it for hours? For goodness' sake, quit it. It doesn't wash. Let us come to the point at once without all this idiotic brag and gassing. You wrote me a letter shouting danger and ruin. What did it mean? Anything real, or merely a melodramatic blowing off of steam? Tell me. Let us have it out and have finished with it. What ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... sufferings have overheated his fancy, and, borne upon cool and roseate breezes, he sees a vision of his wife, Leonore, come to comfort and rescue him. His exaltation reaches a frenzy which leaves him sunk in exhaustion on his couch. Rocco and Leonore come to dig his grave. Melodramatic music accompanies their preparation, and their conversation while at work forms a duet. Sustained trombone tones spread a portentous atmosphere, and a contra-bassoon adds weight and solemnity to the motif which ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... an excursion was made into the realm of the melodrama. Glover, as he was called, was intensely Byronic, after the fashion of the times, and he prepared a succession of thrilling scenes from Byron's sensational poem, "The Corsair," for presentation by his fellow players. This melodramatic production was staged with all the pasteboard pomp and secondhand circumstance the little workshop theater could afford and was given with all the fire the high-toned author could impart to his company. The ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... stage—if ever a long-winded orator was effectively snuffed out—I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and think—shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the midnight visits to my Sylvia? My sense of humour forbids it. For a while now I shall take the hint and stay in the background of this story. I shall tell ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... voice was ugly, as were all his movements; his sharp actor's face, with the long rather dirty black hair, the hooked nose, the long dirty fingers which moved in and out as though they worked of themselves—all these things were false and unmoving. But behind his harsh voice, gross accent and melodramatic tone there was some power, the power of a man ambitious, ruthless, scornful, self-confident. He did not care a snap of his fingers for his congregation, he laughed at their beliefs, he made use of ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the science of Vauban, or the terrors of his name. The boasted barrier of the Netherlands was passed in a few weeks; hardly any of its far-famed fortresses made any resistance. The passage of the Rhine was achieved under the eyes of the monarch with little loss, and melodramatic effect. One half of Holland was soon overrun, and the presence of the French army at the gates of Amsterdam seemed to presage immediate destruction to the United Provinces; and but for the firmness of their leaders, and a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... our mistresses'," Crevel repeated in a melodramatic tone, and leaving his position ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... my room!" and Dexter Sprague's right forefinger trembled violently as it pointed toward the door in a melodramatic gesture. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... for those States,' but it should be remembered that such accusation requires clear proof. With this single exception, we commend the pamphlet in question as a document well worth perusal and investigation. The subject, as it stands, appears trashy and melodramatic; but be it remembered the Southern mind is prone to trash and romance, and quacks and adventurers would be more likely to be found actively working to aid treason founded on folly than would ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... becoming quite tragic in my remarks," went on Sylvie, resuming her usual gaiety, "Melodramatic, as they say! If I go on in this manner I shall qualify to be the next 'leading lady' to Miraudin! Quelle honneur! Good-bye Angela;—I will not tell you where I am going lest Fontenelle should ask you,—and then you would ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... but by the still small voice, which treats with him as a dependent entitled to know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... could not be cheap in dealings with her. And as the eternal sex barrier was not present in Beatrice's behalf she realized that her jargon so impulsively planned would never be said. Nor could she dismiss Mary patronizingly and say the halfway melodramatic things she had said to Steve. It occurred to her as Mary began to talk that Mary had been brave enough to love, not merely be loved, the truth of this causing her to ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... away—not at all like a melodramatic hero of a slide-by-night, but like a matter-of-fact young man going to see some one about business of no great importance. He abstractedly brushed his left sleeve or his waistcoat, now and then, as though ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... rush off right first entrance, where he would pass his weapon to 'Eva' and 'Uncle Tom,' and this bisexual individual would discharge it in the wings at the imaginary pursuer, while 'Harris' would put on a wire beard, slouch hat, black melodramatic cape, and, rushing behind the flat, enter ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... not bear to remain seated beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: 'I wouldn't trust that fellow Jolyon a yard. Once outcast, always outcast!' The chap had a natural sympathy with—with—laxity (he had shied at the word sin, because it was too melodramatic for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... together so broken a chain. He could not resist the unique opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational frame-work. The dramatic instinct was strong in him; he felt like a playwright who has constructed a strong melodramatic plot, and has the Drury Lane stage suddenly offered him to present it on. It would be folly to deny himself the luxury, though the presence of Mr. Gladstone and the nature of the ceremony should perhaps have ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a mighty liar, but I did not know that; I believed everything he said. He was a romantic, sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed me with awe. I vividly remember the first time he took me into his confidence. He was planing a board, and every now and then he would pause and heave a deep sigh; and occasionally mutter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... because the black overseer on that plantation was one of the initiated, and because the farm was accessible by water, thus enabling them to elude the patrol. There they prepared cartridges and pikes, and had primitive banquets, which assumed a melodramatic character under the inspiriting guidance of Jack. If a fowl was privately roasted, that mystic individual muttered incantations over it, and then they all grasped at it, exclaiming, "Thus we pull Buckra to pieces!" He gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... ready to help me, and told me there were two companies in the town, one of large puppets, about as high as my umbrella, the others, to which he went every evening, being rather smaller. Accordingly, at about a quarter to eight, he called for me, wrapped in his melodramatic cloak, and hurried me through the wet and windy streets to the teatrino. He kept me on his right hand because he was the host and I the guest, and if, owing to obstructions, he found me accidentally on his left he was round in a moment and I was in ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... pseudo-princess, sitting behind the counter in magnificent toilette, receiving the bows and the money of the customers as they passed before her, whilst M. Jerome—exactly in appearance as before, except that prosperity had begun to round him—was leaning against a pillar in rather a melodramatic attitude, a white napkin gracefully depending from his hand. They started on seeing me, and were a little confused, but soon laughed over their adventure; called Penelope to take her turn at the counter—the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... to say about the long, unholy deception that had been put upon her. She was going to say good-bye now and be free. Molly's money would now be her own, she could take it away and share it with the deserted, misjudged mother. Nothing in all this was melodramatic; it would have been but natural if the facts had been as she supposed, only Molly made the little mistake of treating as facts her carefully built-up fancies, her long, childish story ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... has been a personal one. He was so frantic, as he is wont to be, that, to calm him, I told him about Paul,—which, under the circumstances, to him I felt myself at liberty to do. In return, he was melodramatic; hinting darkly at I know not what, I ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... to corner, please,' he observed, knocking the ash off his cigar. 'I keep expecting you to speak; there's a rick in my neck from watching you. Besides, there's something artificial, melodramatic in your striding.' ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... to Mr. Anstruther is the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1837, p. 283. In the review of Doveton the writer says, "There is in it a good deal to amuse, and something to instruct, but the whole narrative of Mr. Anstruther is too melodramatic," &c. However, as he declines the compliment, perhaps some of our readers will be able to find the right ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... Finland never knew of the 'fresh fere' who dried the bright blue eyes so soon. He would not have carried his pike so cheerily either, if his eyes had been good enough to see across the German Ocean. Well, perhaps the story isn't true; very few melodramatic legends are." ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... romantic plot and melodramatic tableaux, and was incorporated in the history of Chisley—in fact, it was the history ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... voluntarily descended. But I wished to spare him; I let him see the uselessness of his mission. He looked at me in silence—the look of hate that can come only from a creature weak as well as wicked. I think it was all his keen sense of humor could do to save him from a melodramatic outbreak. He slipped into his habitual pose, rose and withdrew without another word. All this fright and groveling and treachery for plunder, the loss of which would not impair his fortune—plunder ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... and other theatrical celebrities range from Elizabeth, from the melodramatic costumes and faces of the contemporaries of Shakespeare, to the conventional costumes, the rotund expression, of the age of the Georges, masking a power of imaginative impersonation probably unknown in Shakespeare's day. Edward Burbage, like Shakespeare's own portrait, is, we venture to think, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... Sergeant Hamlin," she retorted scornfully. "Don't be melodramatic, please; it gets on the nerves. If you must know, I was merely giving our ranch foreman a few final instructions, as he leaves to-morrow. ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... of her cousin, snatched her away from poor Mrs. Malone, who was looking very old and sad, and insisted on inspecting his cabin and as much as was possible of the ship. When the bell rang and the moment of parting arrived, she burst into wild unrestrained sobs, and clung, in the best melodramatic style, to her unresisting kinsman, who was compelled to accept her kisses and tears. In fact, as her brother rudely stated, "she made a shameless show of herself, slobbering over Douglas before all the passengers, and he was sorry for the poor chap, who was covered with ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the ablest of the five "studies," at least in its opening, is the school-story of "The Stolen Treasure," which, with a high-flown name, and a most melodramatic and commonplace ending, shows yet great power in the delineation and grouping of characters. The young school-girls are as real as those of Charlotte Bronte; and although the typical maidenly desperado is present,—lying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... understand that I do not vouch for the strict correctness of Lenz's somewhat melodramatic narrative; and having given this warning I shall, to keep myself free from all responsibility, simply translate the rest of what ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... This was a melodramatic laugh of the most sarcastic description, prefatory to the letting off of a very ponderous joke. "Currying! Indian curry! That's what he was brought up on. Curry and rice instead of pap. Look at the ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... through his works will reveal few figures wholly bad, too wicked to receive some touch of pity. Csar of La de San Quintn and Monegro of Alma y vida are probably the closest to stage villains, and this precisely because they are a part of the melodramatic elements of those plays, not of the ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... minute looking at the other curiously, with something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one of the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... whom Dickens evidently prided himself, I must confess, never laid hold of me. He is a melodramatic young man. The worst I could have wished him would have been that he should marry Rose Dartle and live with his mother. It would have served him right for being so attractive. Old Peggotty and Ham are, of course, impossible. One must accept them also as types. These Brothers Cheeryble, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... has been engaged in a melodramatic role created by himself. He is painfully undecided whether the hisses of the orchestra attest his success as a villian; whether the whistling up in the gallery demands an encore, or heralds an offering of cabbages and ripe poultry fruit. I myself did not ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... absurd to-day; you are hurting me. This melodramatic pose approaches the ludicrous, and I have really no patience with your folly. A little period of calm reflection may prove beneficial, and I will leave you to it. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... and expressive breath, and, with melodramatic movements of the shoulders, he sighed. "I have not seen you since. Oh, I had terrible scenes with the father. They had a house up the river. I followed them, and put up at the Angler's Hotel. She told her father that I must be allowed to come to the house, and ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... accuracy, but not Italian life or character. Irving could draw the early Dutch in America, or the mediaeval Moors in Spain, or the Englishman in England or Italy: the modern Italian on his own soil he did not know except in his melodramatic exterior. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming for another woman to be paid eighteen ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... and have the patience to collect such information as may be necessary to work the subjects out, you may fairly rely upon gaining entrance sooner or later to the columns of these papers, however elementary your technique. Here is also a busy market for short melodramatic stories—stories for which "action" and a certain ingenuity of plot are the only essentials. Do not imagine that the editors of this sort of periodical are easily pleased. Although they care nothing for the graces of style, they know precisely what ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... had from the beginning anything upon which to base suspicion. Given the premises of an abnormal girl with a passion for himself which humiliated him, an abnormal woman like Miss Farrel with a similar passion, albeit under better control, the melodramatic phases of the candy, and sudden death, and traces of arsenical poison, ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... popular, married—a man to discharge all the normal functions of life well. But his most entertaining gift which he displayed truly sumptuously on this occasion is a wonderful gift of burlesque and stereotyped rhetoric. With melodramatic gestures he drew attention to the torrents of the President's blood pouring "from the wound of the tiny god." Amid sympathetic demonstration he protested against the pathos of the toast, "the conquered on the field of battle toasting the conquerors." As the only married ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... literature, but their hard polished technique is as competent as that of Melville Davisson Post, and I suppose that these two men have carried Poe's technique as far as it can be carried with talent. The stories are frankly melodramatic, and wring the last drop of emotion and sentiment out of each situation presented. I think the volume will prove valuable to students of short story construction, and there is no story which does not arrest the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... whether he would have been equal to Calverley's famous examination-paper, and he had a special liking for the 'Uncommercial Traveller.' But when Dickens deserted his proper function Fitzjames was roused to indignation. The 'little Nell' sentimentalism and the long gallery of melodramatic deathbeds disgusted him, while the assaults upon the governing classes generally stirred his wrath. The satire upon individuals may be all very well in its place, but a man, he said, has no business to set up as the 'regenerator of society' because he is its most 'distinguished ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... "Oh! Grand, melodramatic words already!" said he, placing his palette upon the table. "Amedee, my dear boy, I do not recognize you, and if you have any explanation that you wish to ask of your old friend, it is not thus that you should do it. You have received, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... new-fangled expression?—had vanished. His "orchestral" playing was one of those pretty fables invented by hypnotized pupils like Amy Fay, Aus der Ohe, and other enthusiastic but not very critical persons. I remember well that Liszt, who was first and foremost a melodramatic actor, had a habit of striding to the instrument, sitting down in a magnificent manner and uplifting his big fists as if to annihilate the ivories. He was a master hypnotist, and like John L. Sullivan he ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Nursey's sketches as in the Rubenses and Claudes here: and if that is evident, and serves to cherish and rekindle one's own sympathy with the world about one, the great end is accomplished. I do not know very much of Salvator: is he not rather a melodramatic painter? No doubt, very fine in his way. But Claude and the two Poussins are the great ideal painters of Landscape. Nature looks more stedfast in them than in other painters: all is wrought up into a quietude and harmony that seem eternal. This is also one of the mysterious charms in ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... success doubtless may be attributable to the nature of the subject; for it is not easy to conceive of any movement, and especially a religious one, in which the melodramatic, mingled here and there with both the tragic and comic, forms so large a natural element. There was a new country, a rude society, daring adventures, great perils, marvellous escapes, terrible hardships, the stern, harsh realities of pioneer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... had always disgusted John. A book wherein the hero overcame the villain by desperate means and won the girl by a single stroke of manly dauntlessness was to him like so much trash. Melodramatic plays he despised. Griffith's pictures were the only ones in which he could ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... and are not absent from Sophocles' own earlier work there is not a trace. The odes are relevant, the Chorus is indispensable; in short, Sophocles has shown Euripides that he can beat him even on his own terms. Melodramatic the play may be, but it wins for its author our affection by the sheer beauty of a boyish nature as noble as Deianeira's; the return of Neoptolemus upon his own baseness is one of the many compliments Sophocles has paid to ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the false romanticism of painting comes from this sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it, to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... successfully, what Mr. Anthony Weller calls 'an Egyptian Mummy of his self.' the amount of balderdash and rubbish which he evacuated (dia stomatos) about mounting the deadly breach, falling back into the arms of his comrades and going off generally in a blaze of melodramatic fireworks, really made me so unhappy that I lost my night's rest. So soon as the speech was over the company was invited into the house to 'pour a libation to the holy cause'—in the vernacular, to take a drink ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Certain shepherds came also and drove the girls away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young ladies, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had left their manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting which the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... am reminded of the awful fact that I have no means of igniting our cigarettes. When I mention this unfortunate circumstance to my companion, he smiles triumphantly, and after placing his ear to the door in melodramatic fashion, proceeds to raise a particular brick in the floor of our apartment under which at least half a ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... that, of course, was precisely why it had been necessary to stuff him with a romance that any diplomatist would have laughed at. Thus the natural confusion of ignorance was increased by a deliberately propagated confusion of nursery bogey stories and melodramatic nonsense, which at last overreached itself and made it impossible to stop the war before we had not only achieved the triumph of vanquishing the German army and thereby overthrowing its militarist monarchy, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... home, a little amused by her melodramatic conduct, but much comforted by the fact that Charles, though ignorant of his part, was with her in this conspiracy. She was met by reproaches ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... cap like a raised pie, in his hand; Melanie buried in a cap with deep frills and accompanied by a dog like a paper-weight—all in bronze. Finally the same Person, once more alone, standing on tip-toe, her eyes raised to heaven with a melodramatic expression. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... inclined to be melodramatic. The gas which Bright has in that cylinder is simply one which would produce a little temporary unconsciousness. We might have used it—we may still use it—but if you others are able to persuade Mr. Orden to restore the packet, our task with him is at an end. We are not his gaolers—or ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... What did he want among such people? Why should he care about them? Why should he want to govern them? And if he did want to govern them, why did he not stay there and govern? The thing was in any case mere bravado, and melodramatic enterprise. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... at visiting scenes in Europe famous in antiquity—famous as the spot in which recent victories had been achieved—famous even for the very freebooters, who once held unlawful sway in the neighbourhood. "Why, there never has flourished hereabouts, for instance, even one thoroughly melodramatic thief." Massa Aaron let me go on, until he had nearly finished his breakfast. At length he fired a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... civilization includes well-grounded ambitions of art. Mentality, feeling, spirit, all reveal themselves in the canvases. Crudity is apparent, but it comes more from an untutored hand than from failure to grasp the significance of the subject. Many pictures are flamboyant, some are melodramatic, nearly all are big subjects handled with great boldness; what they lack in finish they make up in sincerity. Felix R. Hidalgo's contributions (10-20) won him a ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... been divided. In the former, at the foot of the Cross is grouped the first of those characteristic scenes of the fainting Virgin which was, probably from its dramatic element, so favourite a subject with Signorelli. Sincerely and naturally felt, it in no way trenches on the melodramatic, as one or two of the later groups tend to do, and the solitary figure of Christ, raised high above the sorrowing women, is for once, among his Crucifixions, of dignity and real pathos. The solemnity of the mood given, is enhanced by the fine idea ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... into the kitchen and was met by the same refusal to be melodramatic which I had encountered in Ev'leen Ann. I was most anxious to know what version of my extraordinary morning I was to give out to the world, but hung silent, positively abashed by the cool casualness of the other woman as she ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Full of this suspiciously melodramatic story I caught sight of a mysterious document fastened by nails to the house opposite the inn. It was covered with coloured signs which, whatever they were, certainly did not form letters or make sense in any way. I examined the document closely. One sign looked like ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... and shown to be abnormal beyond any possibility of dispute. Mostly the samples selected were men of exceptional artistic and literary power. The book was pretentious and inconsistent—the late Lord Tennyson was quoted, I remember, as a typically "sane" poet in spite of the scope afforded by his melodramatic personal appearance and his morbid passion for seclusion—but it did at least serve to show that if we cannot call a man stupid we may almost invariably call him mad with some show of reason. The public read the book for the sake of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... or Sir George Staunton, he certainly verges on the melodramatic. Perhaps we know too much about the real George Robertson, who was no heir to a title in disguise, but merely a "stabler in Bristol" accused "at the instance of Duncan Forbes, Esq. of Culloden, his Majesty's advocate, for the crimes of Stouthrieff, Housebreaking, and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Chicago was tame enough although the circumstances of it were rather melodramatic. She did not make any thrilling escape such as jumping from the moving car onto a passing train the way they do in the movies, or shrieking that she was being abducted and, as a result, being rescued by a handsome young man who became infatuated with ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naia. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel or scenario ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... health which is the secret of perpetual youth. You have not yet realised decay, not to speak of death. The immortality of the soul is a question wide of you, who have as yet practically no doubt of the immortality of the body. But I—well, it would be melodramatic to say that I face death every day. The metaphor applies but to desperate callings and romantic complaints. To some Death comes like a footpad, suddenly, and presents his pistol—and the smoke that curls upward from his empty ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... old governor refused my boyish petition, laughed at me—sneered at me. I took the wrong road then. I swear to you, Dick, I never had thought of evil till that cursed day which made me reckless and indifferent to everything. And this is the end—a wasted life, a felon's doom! Quite melodramatic, isn't it, Richard? Well, we'll play out the last act with spirit. "Enter first robber," and so ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... her hard little mirthless laugh, and stretched out her withered hand with a melodramatic gesture. "But I was never a fool, my dear," was her retort, "and there are few women of whom it can be said with truth that they were never at any time, from the beginning to the end of their career, a fool. Nobody is a fool always, but there are very few people ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... in contemplation of this person's familiar contour, I was irresistibly moved to step over the intervening benches, lay my hand on his shoulder, put my mouth close to his ear, and address him in a sepulchral, melodramatic whisper: "Hollingsworth! where have ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... oddly relieved when the eyes of Pierre moved away from him and returned to the figure of Carlos Diaz. The Mexican was a perfect model for a painting of a melodramatic villain. He had waxed and twirled the end of his black mustache so that it thrust out a little spur on either side of his long face. His habitual expression was a scowl; his habitual position was with a cigarette in the fingers ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... between Mr. TERRY and Miss LECLERCQ, also rendered with considerable power. Little Miss NORREY'S shrill squeak, or scream, or whatever it is, at the end of the First Act, imperils the situation, and might be toned down with advantage, as also might her spasmodic melodramatic acting later in the piece. Mrs. TREE'S is a pretty part, but not a strong one. To sum up, apart from the two situations I have cited, I should say, that what will linger in the memory of man when it runneth not to the contrary, is not the false sentiment, but the real water ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... man breaks into a neighbour's garden by night to steal, he may have been ignorant of the fact that shooting traps were laid there for thieves, but that does not make him worthy of the pity which we may offer to him who suffers by ignorance only. The melodramatic idea that a straightforward girl with honest intent is abducted by strangers and held by physical force in places of degradation can simply be dismissed from a discussion of the general situation. The chances that any decent man or woman will be killed by a burglar are a hundred times larger ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... has been spilt over the motive of this wildly melodramatic play. Seward expressed an opinion that there was nothing in the action of the brother and sister deserving such severe retribution. To him Mason retorted, with somewhat childish seriousness, that, the characters being supposed pagan, the speech of the princess must be held a sacrilegious ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Mme de Langeais, "you tell this old story that everybody knows if they have been to London, and look at my neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to me to have an axe ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... now. In the language of the duke who went around with a motto about him, "I am here!" and I fancy I am about as happy a peasant of the vale as ever garnished a melodrama, although I have not as yet danced on my village green, as the melodramatic peasant usually does on his. It was the case when Rosina ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of modern experience with psychology, with economics, depressions, journalism, we focus on this and similar stories, and we find them thoroughly unreliable. We cannot believe this one. It is too melodramatic, too moralistic perhaps to suit our modern taste. The underlying causes for the conduct, life and end of Apicius have not been told. Of course, we have to accept the facts as reported. If only a Petronius had written that story! What a story it might have been! But there is only one Petronius in ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... enjoyed yourself yesterday?—or to ask for a respite till to-morrow, to give you time to pass decently through a process of purification? May I ask where you are going to find it and what it is going to consist of? Oh, don't look so melodramatic! If you can put up with what you got from Riis's girl yesterday and her mother to-day, surely you can put up with a little angry talk or a little chaff from your father. I have had to put up with the whole affair—the betrothal and the breaking it off as well! And then ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... suggestion of the opening of Candide, and continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage. There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order of dream; he has at any rate the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... at last with less warning than any earthquake on the doomed community around,—and who, when that time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child, without a throb of compunction, a word of exultation, or an act of superfluous outrage? Mrs. Stowe's "Dred" seems dim and melodramatic beside the actual Nat Turner. De Quincey's "Avenger" is his only parallel in imaginative literature: similar wrongs, similar retribution. Mr. Gray, his self-appointed confessor, rises into a sort of bewildered enthusiasm, with the prisoner before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... conductor and the camp-marshal and the gunmen—but he could not possibly sit down on all his friends! They would talk about nothing else for weeks! The story would be all over Western City in a day—this amazing, melodramatic, ten-twenty-thirty story of a miner's buddy in the private car of ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... be your confessor. Have you never thought and acted like this hero of mine? Haven't you been just as melodramatic and ridiculous? It is nothing to be ashamed of. For my part, I should confess to it with the same equanimity as I should to the mumps or the measles. It comes with, and is part and parcel of, all that ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... with melodramatic intensity. "Never! This is my ideal of perfection,—of divinity in woman. I will bear it home with me, set it above my fireside, and adore it day ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... occasionally for miscellaneous concerts. The "Floral Hall" adjoins this theatre on the Covent Garden side. "Drury Lane Theatre," the fourth on the same site, was built in 1812; its glories live in the past, for the legitimate drama now alternates there with entertainments of a more spectacular and melodramatic character, and the Christmas pantomimes, that purely indigenous English institution. The "Haymarket Theatre," exactly opposite "Her Majesty's," was built in 1821; under Mr. Buckstone's management, comedy and farce were chiefly performed. The "Adelphi Theatre," in the Strand, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... exclaimed Coleman, as soon as we had a little recovered from our surprise at Lawless's elopement with the fire-engine; "it was a good idea, and he worked it out most artistically; the air with which he waved his hat to cheer them forward was quite melodramatic. I've seen the thing not half so well done by several of the greatest generals who ever lived—gallant commanders, whom their men would have followed through any amount of the reddest possible fire during the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... depended upon his private exertions. I respected this style of mule; and, had I possessed a juicy cabbage, would have pressed it upon him with thanks for his excellent example. The histrionic mule was a melodramatic quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat and apparently dying a la Forrest; a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so on, till the street was well blocked up, the drivers ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... nothing melodramatic in his speech or attitude. He was not posing. He spoke of his necessity in the matter-of-fact way in which he had accepted it. It was necessary to earn the sheer essentials of life, in order to get a footing—to get sufficient capital to open up his office again. He would not have borrowed if ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... continued, "when I look back on the times in my life that I should have died, when it was fitting and proper to die, when I felt that dying would be such a trump card to play, if only I could manage it, I must say that I am glad now that it was beyond my power to arrange things according to the melodramatic rules. As it is, I am alive now. I shake my fist at all the ghosts of my departed tragedies and say, 'I am worth two of you. I am alive. I have all the chances of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... theory. "I don't find myself convinced by it, because it doesn't really explain some of the oddest facts. But I have lived long enough in the United States to know that such a stroke of revenge, done in a secret, melodramatic way, is not an unlikely thing. It is quite a characteristic feature of certain sections of the labor movement there. Americans have a taste and a talent for that sort of business. Do you know ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... The matter is one of some importance because the attack is insidious and dangerous. The deadliest weapon in the hands of the critic is the allegation of boredom. You can say that a piece is vulgar, indelicate, inartistic, indecent, full of "chestnuts," old-fashioned, "melodramatic," ill-constructed or unoriginal, without doing fatal injury, but if you allege that you and everybody else suffered from boredom your attack may be fatal. This is the reason why the charge is so often made by people with ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... is decidedly better. It's more melodramatic, and I don't like that, but it will be more appreciable, as a real sin, to most of the audience; we steal and cheat so much, and we kill comparatively so little in the North. Well, I was going to say that I shall have this whole act to consist entirely of the passage between the two men. I shall ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... absurd and melodramatic charges of robbing the firm," Milburgh went on, "the books are now in the hands of an eminent firm of chartered accountants, who can give the lie to any such statement ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... certainly had a gypsy charm, and seemed to carry oceans of Sahara and caravans of camels about with her. When she was in one of her furies, it was an echo of the whole Greek drama. This, you must recollect, was ten years ago, and even then she was spoiled by being coarse and melodramatic, but now she is a horror. She suggests nothing but the penitentiary. When she saw that there were three of us, she flew into a whirlwind of passion, and screamed French that I was glad to find I could not wholly understand. Her dialect ...
— Esther • Henry Adams |
