"Comedian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replied, respectfully applying the spade handle to his hair, which was combed down to his eyebrows. "Your ladyship does me proud to take refuge from the onclemency of the yallovrments beneath my 'umble rooftree." His accent was barbarous; and he, like a low comedian, seemed to relish its vulgarity. As he spoke he came in among them for shelter, and propped his spade against the wall of the chalet, kicking the soil from his hobnailed blucher boots, which ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... an Englishman, and by profession a comedian. It was he who first brought a theatrical company to the West. He had built the first theatres in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans, and first created a taste for theatricals in the great West. Possessing fine ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... discovered, for the woman was not at all reticent, that she had been a low comedian and a dancer at Drury Lane Theatre, and like most comedians, high tragedy was her passion, and had been ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... and at the same time preening with vanity; a Sir Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless, dashing cavalry officer or proud Prussian squire, and at the same time a wary and astute insurance agent for the empire; a preacher of duty and honor, and belief in God, and at the same time a political comedian deceiving his rivals abroad, and hoodwinking his subjects ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of enthusiasm caused in Berlin by the announcement that Mr. G. B. SHAW had decided to be known in future as Mr. BERNHARDI SHAW have given place to bitter disappointment on the peremptory denial of the rumour by the famous comedian himself. As a matter of fact he is hesitating between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... the apathy of the audience. He had learned it afterwards from the demeanour and the speech far from apathetic of the manager and leader of the troupe. They were a company of six, Les Merveilleux, five jugglers, plate spinners, eccentric musicians, ventriloquists, and one low comedian. Lackaday was the low comedian, his business to repeat in burlesque most of the performance of his fellow artists. It was his first engagement, outside the Cirque Rocambeau, his first day with the troupe. Everything had gone badly. His enormous lean length put the show out of scale. The troupe, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... water-carrier was an equal participant, lost Sophie her place. We next have word of her imitating Nell Gwynn, both in selling oranges to playgoers and in becoming an actress—not, however, at Old Drury, but at the other patent theatre, Covent Garden. Save that as a comedian she never took London by storm, and that she lacked Nell's unfailing good humour, Sophie in her career matches Nell in more than superficial particulars. Between selling oranges and appearing on the stage Sophie seems to have touched bottom for a time in poverty. But her charms as an actress ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... rhymes—rhymes of the comedian who had a lot o' news with many curious facts about the square on the hypotenuse, or the cassiowary who ate the missionary on the plains of Timbuctoo, with Bible, prayer-book, hymn-book too—they are for the facetious, and ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... begun; I think, not decisively liked or condemned yet: their success is certainly not rapid, though Pertici is excessively admired. Garrick says he is the best comedian he ever saw: but the women are execrable, not a pleasing note amongst them. Lord Middlesex has stood a trial with Monticelli for arrears of salary, in Westminster-hall, and even let his own handwriting be proved against him! You may imagine he ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... good-natured manner her own enthusiasm and her husband's relative indifference in presence of the masterpieces of antique art. She illustrated these recollections with scenes of mimicry in which she displayed the skill of a fairy, the imagination of an artist, and sometimes the broad humor of a low comedian. In a turn of the hand, with a flower, a bit of silk, a sheet of paper, she composed a Neapolitan, Roman, or Sicilian head-dress. She performed scenes from ballets or operas, pushing back the train of her dress with a tragic sweep of her foot, and accentuating strongly ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... his puppy career he seemed to realize it and to abandon himself to a philosophy of irresponsible pleasure. But Ritchy's eye had taken on a saddened cast since the blight had fallen on his master. He no longer frisked and devised, out of his comedian's soul, mirth-provoking antics. It was as though he understood and his ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... national vanity was touched when the nations of the world rocked and roared with laughter over the comically primitive barbarisms of the funny man from the "Wild and Woolly West." Mark Twain was lightly accepted as an international comedian magically evoking the laughter of a world. It would be a mis-statement to affirm that the works of Mark Twain were reckoned as falling within the charmed circle of "Literature." They were not reckoned in ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Then he saw that I didn't mean any harm and he looked down. He said nothing. I got behind by having the pull on certain ropes in that opera-house, and I asked a comedian with a face like a walrus which was ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to see that feller blowed to ribbons an' remnants. But them others—say, I've seen men sittin' comfortable in an armchair seat at a roof-garden vaudeville that couldn't raise as hearty a laugh at the prize antics of the thousand dollar star comedian, as them fellers riz on ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... on Mr. Greenwood's showing, Plautus could not serve Davies, or should not serve him, in his search for a Roman parallel to "good Will." But Mr. Greenwood also writes, "if he" (Shakespeare) "was to be likened to a Latin comedian, surely Plautus is the writer with whom he should have been compared." {0k} Yet Plautus was the very man who cannot be used as a parallel to Shakespeare. Of course no Roman nor any other comic dramatist closely resembles the AUTHOR of As You ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... under a lucky star; and he had hardly been in London two months when accident very perceptibly brightened it. The chief comedian in the company fell ill; and though Mike had had so little experience, his chief had so much confidence in his native gift, that he cast him for the vacant part. Mike more than justified the confidence, and not only pleased him, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the theatre, was an ex-comedian, a wideawake, genial fellow, who had got rid of his illusions and nourished no exaggerated hopes. He loved peace, books and women. Nanteuil had every reason to speak well of Pradel, and she referred to him without any feeling of ill will, and ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious reflective characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are his own appetites and instincts and humors. Richard III, too, is delightful as the whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain who smothers babies and offs with people's heads, we are revolted at the imposture ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Ton, or High Life above Stairs, by Garrick. He made King the comedian a present of this farce, and it was acted for the first time on his benefit-a little earlier in the month. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... mouth like yours to grin with, and your too delicious squint, And the ears that Nature's given you with such a lack of stint,— No matter what an author may provide you with to speak, You're a ready-made Comedian—with your fifty quid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... as the Comedian says, So many Men, so many Minds, and every Man has his own Way; yet no Body can make me believe, there is more Variety in Mens Dispositions, than there is in their Palates: So that you can scarce find two ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Hosier-Lane-End, you shall see a Black that dances the Cheshire Rounds to the admiration of all spectators." Michael Root and John Sleepe, two clever caterers of "Bartlemy," also advertise "a little boy that dances the Cheshire Round to perfection." There is a portrait of Dogget the celebrated comedian (said to be the only one extant, but query if it is not Penkethman?), representing him dancing the Cheshire Round, with the motto "Ne sutor ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... Prussian nobleman, to be spoken to in this way by one of a lower sphere was bad enough, but when that one was of the very lowest of spheres, an American, it was acute pain. He looked upon Edestone as a low comedian rather than as a gentleman in the hands of a chivalrous enemy, which the officer considered himself ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... hooded moon Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet, Of Love in ancient plenilune, Glory and stars beneath his feet— A sage that is but kith and kin With the comedian Capuchin? ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... Formes Figaro was 'developed from the depths of his subjective moral consciousness,' whereas the Figaro of a Southern European is the thing itself—like Charles Mathews playing the part of Charles Mathews, or like the Greek comedian's imitation of a pig's voice, by pinching a veritable pork-let, which he bore concealed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Shakespeare's Richard III. for the first time. As long as Kemp lived, he conferred a like service on many of Shakespeare's comic characters; and he had recently proved his worth as a Shakespearean comedian by his original rendering of the part of Peter, the Nurse's graceless attendant, in Romeo and Juliet. Thus stoutly backed, Shakespeare appeared for the first time in the royal presence-chamber of Greenwich Palace on the evening ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... regime, imagines that it believes in itself, and extorts from the world the same homage. If it believed in its own being, would it seek to hide it under the semblance of an alien being and look for its salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is merely the comedian of a world order whose real ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... gentleman continued to make humorous observations of this nature, at which everybody laughed, excepting always the melancholy pianist—a short, sharp, mechanical laugh, devoid of the least suggestion of amusement. The restless-eyed gentleman, it appeared, was the leading low comedian of ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... speak, of that all important base, with Heaven only knew what means of the information concerning matters to the south'ard, and in immediate touch with any marauders who might tap gently at the back door on a dark night; here was something to sober even a bankrupt ex-light-comedian. ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... was called; it was a "musical comedy"; and evidently exactly what the public wanted, for the house was crowded to the doors. The leading comedian was said by the papers to be receiving a salary of a thousand dollars a week. He held the center of the stage, clad in the costume of a lieutenant of marines, and winked and grinned, and performed antics, and sang songs of no doubtful ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Mississippi steamboats, an enchanting game, called Poker, is played with a delirium of excitement, whose intensity can only be imagined by realizing that famous bout at "catch him who can," which took place at the horticultural fete immortalized by Mr Samuel Foote, comedian, at which was present the great Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, the festivities continuing till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... men, who performed in the Globe, upon the Bankside; and his plays are replete with evidences of the influence upon him of the actors whom he had in charge. It is patent, for example, that the same comedian must have created Launce in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Launcelot Gobbo in the Merchant of Venice; the low comic hit of one production was bodily repeated in the next. It is almost as obvious that the parts of Mercutio ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... Vestris, the last of the family, and the first wife of the English comedian Charles Mathews, was the ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... "Pav." Ingress and egress is not difficult, and the place doesn't become inconveniently hot. The sweet singer with the poetic name of HERBERT CAMPBELL is very funny; which indeed he would be, even if he never opened his mouth. Such a low comedian's "mug!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... Stranger, when he was interrupted by the King, who, in the most affable manner, observed that his general imitations were excellent, and such as no one who had ever seen the characters could fail to recognise; but he thought the comedian's portrait of John Kemble somewhat too boisterous.—"He is an old friend, and I might add, tutor of mine," observed his Majesty: "when I was Prince of Wales he often favoured me with his company. I will give you an imitation of John Kemble," said the good-humoured ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the German comedian, and was a first-rate actor in his line. His jollity proved an offset to the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... nevertheless owes, as do all French fiction writers since 1830—Stendhal alone excepted—his literary existence to Balzac; Balzac, from whom all blessings, all evils, flow in the domain of the novel; Balzac, realist, idealist, symbolist, naturalist, humourist, tragedian, comedian, aristocrat, bourgeois, poet, and cleric; Balzac, truly the Shakespeare of France. The Human Comedy attracted the synthetic brain of Zola as he often tells us (see L'Oeuvre, where Sandoz, the novelist, Zola himself, explains to Claude his scheme of a prose epic). But ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... illness and Lady Harrington's snuffing gabble were the topics rather than Giardini's fiddling. Mr. Storer took me to Foote's dressing-room at the Haymarket, where we found the Duke of Cumberland lounging. I was presented, and thought his Royal Highness had far less dignity than the monkey-comedian we had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... matter by one who, to the knowledge required, adds taste and discernment. That a liking or preference is sometimes mistaken for the aptitude and gifts necessary for the successful carrying out of certain work, is too well known to be even questioned. It is the constantly recurring case of the low comedian who wishes to play Hamlet. A young tenor whose great vocal and physical advantages made him an ideal Duke in Rigoletto, a fascinating Almaviva in Il Barbiere, found but little enjoyment in life because his director refused to allow him to try Otello and Tannhaeuser, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... new dejection of hers, Mrs. Merillia was now seated in a stage box at the "Gaiety," with an elderly General of Life Guards, a Mistress of the Robes, and the grandfather of the Central American Ambassador at the Court of St. James, and all four of them were smiling at a neat little low comedian, who was singing, without any voice and with the utmost precision, a pathetic romance entitled, "De Coon Wot Got ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... ago, in Paris, there was a very good comedian who prided himself on being perfectly 'classic.' To be classic in France is to be elegantly conventional. No actress can be really kissed according to classic rules; the lips must be faintly smacked about three feet from her shoulder. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his countenance that each time the artist looked up from his easel he saw a new man. "You have everybody's face but your own," said Gainsborough to Garrick, and dismissing the man he completed the picture from memory. This portrait and also pictures of General Honeywood, the Comedian Quin, Lady Grosvenor, the Duke of Argyle, besides several landscapes, were sent up to the Academy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Johnson that error seemed to dog his footsteps; that he had "deduced" a famous pussyfoot admiral as a comedian addicted to drink; a lord, with a ten century lineage, as a man selling something or other; a Cabinet Minister as a company promoter in the worst sense of the term; nothing ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... should be his mate. Thank God he had kept himself free for her. But ere he could pour out his soul, the bouncing San Franciscan actress appeared suddenly at his elbow, risking a last desperate assault, discharging a pathetic tale of a comedian with a cold. Rozenoffski repelled the attack savagely, but before he could exhaust the enemy's volubility his red-haired companion had given him a friendly nod and smile, and retreated ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... a Jordan—which moves through the chambers of the memory across almost any old and storied stage. The thought is endless in its suggestion, and fascinating in its charm. How often in the chimney-corner of life shall we—whose privilege it has been to rejoice in the works of this great comedian, and whose happiness it is to cluster around him to-night in love and admiration—conjure up and muse upon his stately figure as we have seen it in the group of Sir Peter and Sir Robert, of Jaques and Wolsey, and Elmore! The ruddy countenance, the twinkling gray eyes, the silver hair, the kind ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... probably mean a divorce, the social ruin of Orange, and the successful debut of Madame as a comedian of the first rank," ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... The room was very small and he had but a tiny stage; still he showed a collection of curiosities, among which were a two-headed calf and a fat woman. Later on he added a singer and a serio-comic comedian and insisted that they eliminate from their acts everything that might offend the most fastidious. The result was that he moved to larger quarters and ten months later to still ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... moment when a man consents to play the part which du Tillet had allotted to Roguin, he develops the talents of a comedian; he has the eye of a lynx and the penetration of a seer; he magnetizes his dupe. The notary had seen Birotteau some time before Birotteau had caught sight of him; when the perfumer did see him, Roguin held out his ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... at the invisible event.' But the times are fast improving; and if the process of sanctity begun under the happy auspices of the present licenser go on to its completion, it will be as necessary for a comedian to give an account of his faith as of his conduct. Fawcett must study the five points; and Dicky Suett, if he were alive, would have had to rub up his catechism. Already the effects of it begin to appear. A celebrated performer has thought fit to oblige the world with a confession of his faith,—or, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... St. Albans, Nell Gwynne's son, also had a house in Paradise Row. The Duke of Ormond lived in Ormond House, two or three doors from the east corner. In 1805 the comedian Suett died in this row. Further down towards the river are enormous new red-brick mansions. Tite Street runs right through from Tedworth Square to the Embankment, being cut almost in half by Queen's ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... with the fashion of the time, might have been seen sauntering idly along one of the principal streets of Cincinnati. To the few who could claim acquaintance with him he was known as an actor, playing at the time referred to a short engagement as light comedian in a theatre of that city. He does not seem to have attained to any noticeable degree of eminence in his profession, but he had established for himself a reputation among jolly fellows in a social way. He could tell a story, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Their Children Epitaphs for Two Players I. Edwin Booth II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress Two Old Crows The Drunkard's Funeral The Raft The Ghosts of the Buffaloes The Broncho that Would Not Be Broken The Prairie Battlements The Flower of Mending Alone ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Saturday night now lying before me, we all in the greatest good humor glorified each other: Talfourd proposing the Clock, Macready Mrs. Dickens, Dickens the publishers, and myself the artists; Macready giving Talfourd, Talfourd Macready, Dickens myself, and myself the comedian Mr. Harley, whose humorous songs had been the not least considerable element in the mirth ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... make nothing of a husband who was a skillful farmer or a lucky fisherman; other talents are required to touch the hearts of nobles, and hers remained indifferent, insensible to the sighs of Kawelo. Nobles then, as to-day, regarded pleasure above all things; and a good comedian was worth more to them than an ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... Aristotle's) that both self-praise and self-blame spring from the same root of vanity and foolishness. "As for boasting, it is," he said, "so ridiculous a weakness that it is hissed down by even the vulgar crowd. Its one fitting place is in the mouth of a swaggering comedian. In like manner words of contempt spoken of ourselves by ourselves, unless they are absolutely heartfelt and come from a mind thoroughly convinced of the fact of its own misery, are truly the very acme of pride, and a flower of the most subtle vanity; for ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... wants to be a shipbuilder," Roger said. "He likes Tom Arthurs, and he wants to be what Arthurs is. That's all. If Arthurs were a comedian, Ninian would want ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... best to make your book a howling success." And as he spoke he laid his hand familiarly on the little actress's shoulder, an action which did not altogether please Cecil, and made him realise that in the attractive young comedian he had found a strong rival ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... Liston, the famous comedian, was at this time a member of the Durham company, and though he began his career there by reciting Collins's "Ode to the Passions," attired in a pea-green coat, buckskins, top-boots, and powder, with a scroll in his hand, and followed up this ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the work of the present, such work as Miss Lowell's, for instance. Of course the mere chopping up of unrhythmic prose into capitalized lines without glow, without emotion, is not poetry, any more than the blank verse of the second-rate nineteenth-century "poetic drama," which old Joe Crowell, comedian, described as "good, honest prose set up hind-side foremost." We may eliminate that from the discussion once and for all. But the genuine new poets, who know what they are about, and doubtless why they are about it, I regard with all deference, hailing especially ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... if my conjectures are correct she is strangely astute. At heart she is, perhaps, quite simply a crazy romantic or a comedian. It amuses her to manufacture little adventures, to throw tantalizing obstacles in the way of the realization of a vulgar desire. And Chantelouve? He is probably aware of his wife's goings on, which perhaps facilitate his career. Otherwise, how could she arrange ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Felton was forewarned, and that against the least chance. From that moment she watched all his actions, all his words, from the simplest glance of his eyes to his gestures—even to a breath that could be interpreted as a sigh. In short, she studied everything, as a skillful comedian does to whom a new part has been assigned in a line to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 5th, here came, among other diversions of sports we had this Christmas, Juan Arana, the famous comedian, who here acted about two hours to the admiration of all that beheld him, considering that he was near upon eighty years of age. About this time the Duke of Alva sent my husband a fat buck; I never eat any better in England. ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... all the blesses—even those who are quite well—hopped into bed with their clothes on, pulled the covers up to their chins and with a wet compress on their heads, looked as ill as possible. It was comical to see; one can be a soldier and comedian at the same time—and even the dear Sisters enjoyed it. But I was paralyzed with fear. They had not thought of another side of the question to which the very impudence of their ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... parts in the entertainment. Jack made a good "bones" for the minstrels, and he coaxed his chum to don a burnt-cork face for that one evening, and show what he could do as a comedian of parts. ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... villain—a rather heavy-jawed, middle-aged fellow, of foreign appearance, with coarse, gruff voice; three representatives of the gentler sex; a child of eight, exact species unknown, wrapped up like a mummy; and four males. Beyond doubt the most notable member of the troupe was the comedian "star," Mr. T. Macready Lane, whose well-known cognomen must even now awaken happy histrionic memories throughout the western circuit. The long night's ride from their previous stand, involving as it ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... an English comedian who lived from 1684 to 1738. The year after his death there appeared a little book called Joe Miller's Jests. These stories and jokes, however, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... its way without a violent polemic, without extraneous advertising aids. So he made a big row; became socialist, agitator, exile. He dragged into his music and the discussion of it, art, politics, literature, philosophy, and religion. It is a well-known fact that this humbugging comedian had written the Ring of the Nibelungs before he absorbed the Schopenhauerian doctrines, and then altered the entire scheme so as to imbue—forsooth!—his ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... about and made inquiries of friends who were supposed to know, and finally submitted to the company a certain screaming farce, entitled, After You! with—so the description informed him—two funny old gentlemen, one low comedian, two funny old ladies, and one maid-of- all-work, besides a few walking gentlemen and others. It sounded promising, and a perusal of the piece showed that it was very amusing. I cannot describe it, but the complications were magnificent; the two old gentlemen, one very irascible the other very ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... hospitality is a great and noble thing; but it is more accessible to the wealthy tallow chandler than to a writer or an artist of genius. In England, with the exception of Dickens and Bulwer, the literary man is less considered than the comedian was in France a century ago. In France, it is admirable to witness the fusion of the aristocracies of family, money, and intelligence. Artists and poets are invited to all the fetes of high society. As soon as a writer has raised himself somewhat above the vulgar, he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... on the place in which it is delivered, but that the first thing that has to be considered is, 'What form of entertainment is the theatre going to provide?' If it is a mime, you will laugh; if a rope-walker, you will tremble lest he fall; if a comedian, you will applaud him, while, if it be a philosopher, you will ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... sacrifice to the taste of his day. Towards the end of the year 1636, the Cid was played for the first time at Paris. There was a burst of enthusiasm forthwith. "I wish you were here," wrote the celebrated comedian Mondory to Balzac, on the 18th of January, 1637, "to enjoy amongst other pleasures that of the beautiful comedies that are being played, and especially a Cid who has charmed all Paris. So beautiful is he that he has smitten with love all the most virtuous ladies, whose passion ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... throne, or the tramp by the wayside, saying "come" to the sick, "tarry not" to the well, is sure of the old, and revels like a reaper in the harvest of the young. It breaks the plans and disorganizes the relations of life; and then, like a coarse comedian or a heartless satirist, compels those who survive to turn away from the memory of their dead, reorganize their lives and live on as though those who once lived with them and formed an intimate part of their daily ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And you were always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you hadn't been so smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... this campaign of murder is typified by making Von Tirpitz, its inventor, an addle-headed seahorse, the nursery comedian of the sea. Stupid and ridiculous bewilderment stares from his foolish eyes. Another submarine has failed to find a safe victim in a trading ship, but has been hoisted with its own sea petard. The impotence ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... (whether good, bad or indifferent) are so excellently blended as to make the most finished picture of a poetical coxcomb: 'Tis such a master-piece of true humour as will ever last, while our English tongue is understood, or the stage affords a good comedian to play it. How shall I now avoid the imputation of vanity, when I relate, that this piece, on being revived (when I[2] first appeared in the part of Bayes) at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden in the year 1739, was, in that one season (continued to 1740) played upwards of forty nights, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... of America, 1797-1811. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1887. One volume. Bernard was famous in his time as a comedian and one of the earliest American managers of theatrical companies. He visited Virginia in 1799 and made many excursions to the homes of the wealthy planters. He thus had an opportunity to see the inner life of the ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... with rage. Her face is convulsed. Her eyes are burning coals. She has never been so nearly a great actress, this meretricious little dancer and comedian, as in this moment when she forgets ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... slavishly to the plot, nor does he wish us to; and, in fact, we have turned the part made so famous by Mr. IRVING'S father into something a shade more droll, to suit Mr. LESLIE HENSON, than whom, I take the liberty of thinking,"—here the young officer saluted—"no funnier comedian now walks the boards. We are also changing the title from The Bells to The Belles, as being more in keeping with Gaiety traditions. But I must ask you to excuse me; I fancy Sir DAVID BEATTY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... the higher type of funny story is the one that depends for its amusing quality not on the final point, or not solely on it, but on the wording and the narration all through. This is the way in which a story is told by a comedian or a person who is a raconteur in the real sense. When Sir Harry Lauder narrates an incident, the telling of it is funny from beginning to end. When some lesser person tries to repeat it afterwards, there is nothing left but the final ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... existence were those in which she was too much fatigued with liquor to annoy him. When awake and sober, her temper was little better, and her tormenting tongue seemed to have been hung in the middle, so that it might run at both ends. It is related of Foote, the comedian, that when once suffering from the tongue of a shrew, he replied—"I have heard of Tartars, and Brimstones, madam; and by Jove you are the cream of the one, and the flour of the other." And next to the Grecian lady above mentioned, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... less; we thought Mr. Blake a much finer comedian, much more of a gentleman and a scholar—"mellow" Mr. Blake, whom with the brave and emphatic Mrs. Blake (how they must have made their points!) I connect partly with the Burton scene and partly with that, of slightly subsequent creation, which, after flourishing awhile slightly further up ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... been in 1848 that the famous comedian, William Farren, having realized a handsome fortune as an actor, essayed to lose a considerable portion of his wealth by becoming a manager. He succeeded in the last-named enterprise quite as completely as he had done in the other: I mean, that he lost a large sum of money ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... that the departure of Sir Harry Lauder first brought home to England what this invasion might mean. The great comedian, in his manifesto in the Times, had not minced his words. Plainly and crisply he had stated that he was leaving the country because the music-hall stage was given over to alien gowks. He was sorry for England. He liked England. But now, all he could say was, "God bless you." England shuddered, ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... Madgin was first low comedian at one of the transpontine theatres. The height of his ambition was to have the offer of an engagement from one of the West-end managers. Only give him the opportunity, and he felt sure that he could work his way with a cultivated audience. When a lad of sixteen he had run away from home with ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... Penkethman was a low comedian dear to the gallery at Drury Lane as 'Pinkey,' very popular also as a Booth Manager at Bartholomew Fair. Though a sour critic described him as 'the Flower of Bartholomew Fair and the Idol of the Rabble; a Fellow that overdoes everything, and spoils many a Part with his own Stuff,' the Spectator ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... said, "when we, come back from Osborne, which won't be long." "Everyone is so distressed at your not being well," she added; and she was, "Ever yours very aff'ly V.R.I." When the royal letter was given him, the strange old comedian, stretched on his bed of death, poised it in his hand, appeared to consider deeply, and then whispered to those about him, "This ought to be read to ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... one of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise to God for their victory over the French on the fourteenth of June, and the French, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... met my old friend Mathews, the comedian, with his son, now grown up a clever, rather forward lad, who makes songs in the style of James Smith or Colman, and sings them ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Nevertheless we may give this warning,—that the orator ought to use ridicule in such a way as neither to indulge in it too often, that it may not seem like buffoonery; nor in a covertly obscure manner, that it may not seem like the wit of a comedian; nor in a petulant manner, lest it should seem spiteful; nor should he ridicule calamity, lest that should seem inhuman; nor crime, lest laughter should usurp the place which hatred ought to occupy; nor should he employ this weapon when unsuitable to his own ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... comedy, with Miss Farren and the late Mr. Henderson. My first appearance in Palmira (in "Mahomet") was with the Zaphna of Mr. J. Bannister, the preceding year; and though the extraordinary comic powers of this excellent actor and amiable man have established his reputation as a comedian, his first essay in tragedy was considered as a night of the most distinguished promise. The Duchess of Devonshire still honoured me with her patronage and friendship, and I also possessed the esteem of ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... will—that troubles me not; I will amuse myself with their slanders and accusations of heresy; as for their applause—well, that is a cheap merchandise, which I must share with every expert magician and every popular comedian. The applause of my own conscience, and of my friends—thy applause, my Jordan—is alone of value for me. Then," said he, earnestly, almost solemnly, "above all things, I covet fame. My name shall not pass away like a soft tone or a sweet melody. I will write it in golden ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... talent, we had some really first class performances, after being allowed to hire a piano from the nearest town. One day a new lot of orderlies arrived and took up their quarters in a barrack separated from our part of the camp by some wire. Among their number was a private called Cheeseman, a born comedian, who used to get up sing-songs and sketches; the star turn, however, was a selection from his orchestra, which he used to conduct with a broomstick from an inverted bucket. The instruments were two mandolines, one banjo, one mandola, a tin whistle, an accordion, a ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... civil engineer; H. C. Courtney, the barrister; H. Rushton and Joseph Barnett, of one of the banks; Ben Griffin, mine host of the Boomerang; Godfrey Brown, of Janion, Green & Rhodes; W. J. Callingham, of McCutcheon & Callingham, drapers (the latter, by the bye, was a most clever low comedian); Plummer, the auctioneer; and last, though not least, Alex. Phillips, of soda water fame. These names will all be familiar to old pioneers. As female talent was scarce, or they were loth to take part in theatricals, the ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... your readers inform me who Newburgh Hamilton was? He wrote two pieces in my library, viz. (1.) Petticoat Plotter, a farce in two acts; acted at Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, 1720, 12mo. This has been mutilated by Henry Ward, a York comedian, and actually printed by him as his own production, in the collection of plays and poems going under his name, published in 1745, 8vo., a copy of which I purchased at Nassau's sale, many years since. (2.) The Doating Lovers, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... a comedian; and when later I learned how I had lain strapped to my bed, and, so near to me, Bristol had hung helpless as a butchered carcass in the office of the Congo Fibre Company, whilst, in our absence from the stage, the drama of the slipper marched feverish to its final curtain, I accorded Fate her ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... out her hand. The poor girl—she was not much more—looked so miserable, and had just looked so absurd! It must have been such a humiliation to know that one had called on one's rival got up like a comedian—a singer of comic songs at ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... forgive him; we who still remember those glimpses behind the scenes—our first and never-to- be-forgotten! How real everything seemed, even the grease-paint, the wigs, and the clothes. And the walking gentleman and the leading old man and low comedian! What splendid fellows they were and how we sympathized with them in their enforced exiles from a beloved land. How they suffered from scheming brothers who had robbed them of their titles and estates, or flint-hearted fathers who had turned them out of doors because ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Abbe Liszt! Strange and unnatural fusion of traits the most noble and the most mean! One can scarcely say which was the stronger in you, the grand seigneur or the base comedian. For in your work they are equally, inextricably commingled. In your art it is the actor who thrones it in the palace hall, the great lord of music who struts and capers on the boards of the itinerant theater. Nowhere, in all music, is grandeur nigher to the dust, and nowhere ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... English version of "Madame Butterfly" warbles mellifluously: "Highball or straight?" And when we reach musical comedy and vaudeville, all thought of drama, technically speaking, is abandoned in watching the capers of the "merry-merry" or the outrageous "Dutch" comedian wielding his deadly newspaper. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... night of "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" with Alfred Lunt—in which Barry Baxter made an enormous hit, he is now a brilliant light comedian. I think one or two of his sworn acquaintances in England will be quite cross ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... reported of Scaramouch, the first famous Italian Comedian, that being at Paris and in great Want, he bethought himself of constantly plying near the Door of a noted Perfumer in that City, and when any one came out who had been buying Snuff, never failed to desire a ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... now, cousin Gazonal," said Bixiou, after indorsing the notes, "to see another comedian, who will play you ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... Moore's credit that he sings its feelings and its thoughts so as always to get the human and durable element in them visible and audible through the "trappings of convention." Again, he has that all-saving touch of humour which enables him, sentimentalist as he is, to be an admirable comedian as well. Yet again, he has at least something of the two qualities which one must demand of a poet who is a poet, and not a mere maker of rhymes. His note of feeling, if not full or deep, is true and real. His faculty of expression is not only ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... And it is delivered in that generous and loyal spirit which nobody would have appreciated more than the free-hearted Diderot himself. The drift of Goethe's contention is, in fact, the thesis of Diderot's Paradox on the Comedian. But the state of painting in France—and Goethe admits it—may have called for a line of criticism which was an exaggeration of what Diderot, if he had been in Goethe's neutral position, would have found ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... in the Champion do not appear to have received any direct response from Cibber. But they were reprinted in a rambling production issued from "Curll's chaste press" in 1740, and entitled the Tryal of Colley Cibber, Comedian, &c. At the end of this there is a short address to "the Self-dubb'd Captain Hercules Vinegar, alias Buffoon," to the effect that "the malevolent Flings exhibited by him and his Man Ralph," have been faithfully ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... surveyed us through monocles and talked of the buses of the Strand and Regent Street. There was a French artist, a Baron Somebody-or-other, who afterwards wrote a book called 'New York as I Have Seen It.' He had married an American girl, the daughter of a comedian at whose clever whimsicalities my passengers used to laugh uproariously. I had carried him often—that actor, and knew him as one of the most genial and companionable of men. One day the Frenchman, accompanied by his father-in-law, stopped me at a ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... squeeze in and squat down. After exchanging salutations the chief gravely stroked his beard, and gave vent to a few polite expressions of welcome. To these Sheikh Abdul Qadir vouchsafed no reply beyond a grunt. The chief glanced at Shah Sowar, and that excellent comedian, assuming the ashamed look of one disgraced by his master's rudeness, at once made a long-winded and complimentary reply in the most fluent and high-flown Persian. Then, before the effect should be lost, he ordered in tea, and commenced ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... profession. He dances on a tub and rides a tricycle at a circus. Nothing of this sort has been attempted with the ostrich, but much might be done. He would make a first-rate bicyclist, and could get through much of the business of the "eccentric comedian." A couple of them would go to make a capital knockabout act. High kicks of the very highest, floor-strides of the very longest—and there would be a world of opportunities in the neck. No end of possibilities ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Elliston, of whom he inquired if he had seen the King, as His Majesty had not been at the palace since his three o'clock dinner, it being then nearly five. Elliston being unable to give his lordship any information, Lord Townsend sought His Majesty in another direction, and the comedian made his way to the theatre, in order to superintend the necessary arrangements for the reception of his Royal patrons. Upon reaching the theatre, Elliston went at once to the King's box, and seeing a man ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... all these matters well in train,—Salzburgers under way, Crown-Prince betrothed according to his Majesty's and the Kaiser's (not to her Majesty's, and high-flying little George of England my Brother the Comedian's) mind and will,—begins to think seriously of another enterprise, half business, half pleasure, which has been hovering in his mind for some time. "Visit to my Daughter at Baireuth," he calls it publicly; but it means intrinsically ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... for all the world as if Mr. Schultz had entered at that moment and struck him a terrific blow on top of the head. A more dazed Irishman than he never threw an ancient egg or a defunct cat at an alleged Celtic comedian with green whiskers. He was absolutely staggered—but not for long. The Irish come ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... was nothing; but the poor comedian was afterward fortunate enough to obtain an interest in a theatrical enterprise, from which he realized a fortune of one hundred thousand francs in ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... love with the heroine, and in league with three ill-looking fellows sitting at a separate table. There too is the old-established farmer, who has about him a considerable sum of money—a fact he mentions for the information of his pot-companions, on purpose to be robbed of it. The low comedian as usual disports himself upon a three-legged stool, dressed in the never-to-be-worn-out short non-continuations, skirtless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... before he signed a new one. The owners were staggered at the prices they had to pay him, at that, but they recovered and were still blowing warm when they authorized him to engage Devereux, Stewart, Astor and McGill (McGill was the chief comedian, the Cosmetic King) for all of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... farther on—after our capture of a position I shall shortly have occasion to describe—we made the acquaintance of a French "born comedian," who was a tower of strength at our entertainments, and who in various other ways was a cause of constant amusement. He had been left behind by his regiment, and we found him hanging around the place. It had been his home, and it seemed that the magnet of life-long associations held him to it. ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... with grimaces and appropriate action. Tavernake sat down with a barely-smothered groan. He was beginning to realize the tragedy upon which he had stumbled. A comic singer followed, who in a dress suit several sizes too large for him gave an imitation of a popular Irish comedian. Then the curtain went up and the professor was seen, standing in front of the curtain and bowing solemnly to a somewhat unresponsive audience. A minute later Beatrice came quietly in and sat by his side. There was nothing new about the show. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... might be sure he would, and informing himself in a growling soliloquy that his heart is consumed with envy and hate because he is not captain. The captain, one Issachar, comes in, a superbly handsome young fellow, named Mario, to my thinking the first comedian in Spain, dressed in a flashy suit of leopard hides, and announces the arrival of a stranger. Enters Demas, who says he hates the world and would fain drink its foul blood. He is made politely welcome. No! he will be captain or nothing. Issachar laughs scornfully and says he is in the way of that ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... itself. He was here, there, everywhere—in Waukesha, Wisconsin; San Francisco; New York; New Orleans. "My, my! This is certainly interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser! Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show—or hit the high places? Would you? ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... intruding bishop of Paris G R Chaumette, procureur of la commune de Paris G R The wife of Camile Desmoulins, the journalist G R The wife of Montmoro, the first goddess of reason G R The wife of Hebert, national agent G R Grammont, comedian and adjutant in the army G R Lacroix, commissary of the executive power G R Chevalier de St. Huruge, a flaming revolutionist I L Count D'Aubusson, cordon rouge I R Van Eupen, a Brabanter G L De Sarron, De Gourgues, De Champlatreux and D'Ormessen, ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... morning in the Allee des Cavaliers. He would have been much better off had he stayed in his bed and taken cod-liver oil. Maurice called out to the boy to uncork the Chateau-Leoville. Amedee, having spoken of his drama to the comedian Gorju, called Jocquelet, that person, speaking in his bugle-like voice that came through his bugle-shaped nose, set himself up at once as a man of experience, giving his advice, and quoting, with admiration, Talma's famous speech to a dramatic poet: "Above all, no fine verses!" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mechanism at work in the "bobby-sox craze." Teen-agers don't know why they squeal and swoon when their current fetish sways and croons. Yet everybody else is squealing, so they squeal too. Maybe that great comedian, Jimmy Durante, has the answer: "Everybody wants to get into the act." I am convinced that a certain percentage of UFO reports come from people who see flying saucers because others report ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... purely hygienic grounds. Such a life was an emphatic protest against the indulgence of the city, the free and careless intercourse which often reversed the position of master and slave and formed part of the stock-in-trade of the comedian. Yet, even when the bond between the man of fashion and his artful Servants had merely a life of pleasure and of mischief as its end, we Are at least lifted by such relations into a human sphere, and it is exceedingly questionable whether the warped humanity of the city did mark so low a ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... as rather histrionic; and the reader will have observed that the Burgoyne of the Devil's Disciple is a man who plays his part in life, and makes all its points, in the manner of a born high comedian. If he had been killed at Saratoga, with all his comedies unwritten, and his plan for turning As You Like It into a Beggar's Opera unconceived, I should still have painted the same picture of him on the strength of his reply to the articles ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... has shown great knowledge of the subject, and exemplary liberality. Of COOKE and KEMBLE he speaks thus in one place; "The countenance of Kemble is the most noble and refined; but the muscles are not so much at command as those of Cooke, who is also a first rate comedian; but Kemble almost wholly rejects the comic muse. Both are excellent in the gradual changes of the countenance; in which the inward emotions of the soul are depicted and interwoven as they flow from the mind. In this excellence ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... back into his library and sat again in his chair and meditated: This experiment of Fanny's now; he wondered how it would turn out, especially if Fanny really wanted to adopt the girl, Frank Madden's daughter. That impudent social comedian had been so offensive to Mr. Waddington in his life-time that there was something alluring in the idea of keeping his daughter now that he was dead, seeing the exquisite little thing dependent on him for everything, for food and frocks and pocket-money. ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... the consequence of the landing must have been much the same as on me. He too capered and sang and his dialect renderings reached a new low, such as even a burlesqueshow comedian would have spurned. "Tis the old sod itself," he kept repeating, "Erin go bragh. Up ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore |
