"Comedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all this false comedy," he thought with irritation. "It goes without saying that I've now become the by-word of the entire university. The devil nudged me! And even during the day yesterday it wasn't too late, when she was saying that she was ready to go back. All I had to do was to give her for a cabby ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... comedy is this, sir?" said the queen, severely. "Is this unlucky necklace destined ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... scraps of camp Spanish. Jose lost his temper admirably; for me, I shuffled along as an old man dazed with the scene; and when we came to the water's edge felt secure enough to attempt a trifle of comedy business as Jose hoisted my old limbs on to the horse's back behind the panniers. It fetched a shout of laughter. And then, having slipped off boots and stockings deliberately, Jose took hold of the bridle again and waded into the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a sense of values—you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a little misfit in life makes us laugh, a great one is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... offers nothing which is capable of becoming incorporated with the existing intelligence of the age. He furnishes no acceptable basis for the caution of maturity or the generous vision of youth. Charles Lamb's recipe for witnessing with any quietude of conscience the artificial comedy of the last century was, to regard the whole as a passing pageant, and to accept with cheerful unconcern its issues for life and death. Some such state of mind must be commended to the student of this Philosophy. Let him be indifferent to that great act of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... you? Haeckel and he wrote the great musical comedy of the century. And Matisse did ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... lives of Prodigal Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow the clown ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... my heart grew a little tenderer, and my eyes were moistened by the recall, what need to be ashamed of the emotion? And if in the night I dreamed that I was a boy again, and that a fair-haired child played with me in the changing glow of dreamland in the best and purest scenes of the human comedy, was it a delusion to be dispelled, a memory to be put aside? Did ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... untouched. Finally, if any use or benefit to this department of the republic of letters should accrue from my labours, it will, perhaps, be allowed that I have not lived idly, and as the old man in the comedy says: ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... inch or two of this narrative, and let kind oblivion cover it as cool dusk masks the ravages of burning noon. Anyway, this was part of a hunting outfit, including Fred Stone, bound for the North Rim. To this day I can't see any comedy in Mr. Stone's acting. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... expresses that dash under cities and through mountain tunnels, and you must instill this spirit into your speech if you would move a popular audience. From a front seat listen to a first-class company present a modern Broadway drama—not a comedy, but a gripping, thrilling drama. Do not become absorbed in the story; reserve all your attention for the technique and the force of the acting. There is a kick and a crash as well as an infinitely subtle intensity in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... that I was in continual fear of losing. Why not? Wherefore should any rational person shrink from contempt, if it happen to form the tenure by which he holds his repose in life? The cases which are cited from comedy of such a yearning after contempt, stand upon a footing altogether different: there the contempt is wooed as a serviceable ally and tool of religious hypocrisy. But to me, at that era of life, it formed the main guaranty of an unmolested repose; and security there was not, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... disease were not evidence of divine displeasure, but that they were due to natural causes. When therefore this new belief became established, temple-sleep degenerated into a superstitious rite. As early as the fifth century B. C., the celebrated poet, Aristophanes, in his comedy, "Plutus," severely criticized this ceremony, as practised in his time. And, although the more enlightened among the Greeks came to regard it with disfavor, the custom was never entirely ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Misanie,' the new play by the author of 'Lucretia'? A witty feuilletoniste says of it that, besides all the unities of Aristotle, it comprises, from beginning to end, unity of situation. Not bad, is it? Madame Ancelot has just succeeded with a comedy, called 'Une Annee a Paris.' By the way, shall you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... rather fast—to awake all sorts of evil passions in other people's minds if we are better-looking or better dressed, or more admired; and have them aroused in our own if we are not? Does a ball amuse? Does a dinner-party? Does even a comedy, after the first quarter of an hour? I can answer for myself in the negative, at ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... children, came near and bowed themselves."—Gen., xxxiii, 7. "The First or Second will, either of them, by themselves coalesce with the Third, but not with each other."—Harris's Hermes, p. 74. "The whole must centre in the query, whether Tragedy or Comedy are hurtful and dangerous representations?"—Formey's Belles-Lettres, p. 215. "Grief as well as joy are infectious: the emotions they raise in the spectator resemble them perfectly."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 157. "But in all other words the Qu are both ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... him sideways out of his almond-shaped eyes. Domini heard the name "Irena," and guessed that Batouch was asking the Kabyle to send for her and make her dance. She could not help being amused for a moment by the comedy of intrigue, complacently malignant on both sides, that was being played by the two cousins, but the moment passed and left her engrossed, absorbed, and not merely by the novelty of the surroundings, by the strangeness of the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... here before to-morrow; but my brother will come directly." In fact, the brother did come soon afterwards, and greeted us with a still warmer welcome. "Before leaving the gardens," he said, "I heard of your arrival, and have come in a full gallop the whole way." In order to put an end to this comedy of errors, I declared at once that he was mistaken; nobody in Aleppo could possibly know of our coming, and we were, perhaps, transgressing on his hospitality. But no: he would not be convinced. He was a dragoman ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... peril I was in, I could not resist laughing at my ludicrous situation. I felt as one does when looking at a good comedy. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... 1838-39 Emerson delivered his usual winter course of Lectures. He names them in a letter to Carlyle as follows: "Ten Lectures: I. The Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV. Love; V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX. Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed no more on Human Life." Two or three of these titles only are prefixed to his published Lectures or Essays; Love, in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... other memorable place in Shrewsbury, and that is the Raven Inn, where Farquhar wrote his comedy of "The Recruiting Officer" in 1701. The window of the room in which he wrote is said to look into the inn yard, and I went through the arched entrance to see if I could distinguish it. The hostlers were currying horses ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "He gives a birthday fete in his garden: to whom, I wonder? I will name no one. To Phormio, perhaps, or Gnatho, or Ballion? Oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not to be borne!" These were the vile knaves of the Roman comedy—the Nyms. Pistols, and Bobadils. "Your Consulship no doubt will be salutary; but mine did only evil! You talk of my verses," he says—Antony having twitted him with the "cedant arma togae." "I will only say that you do not understand them or ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... dispositions of the two men, singular, as though a lamb and a flayed bear were to form an alliance. In 1715 our poet returned to England, and obtained a seat at the Board of Trade. Early in the year he brought out, anonymously, on the stage his comedy of the "Drummer," which was coldly received. And towards the close of it, he commenced a very clever periodical called the Freeholder. We only met with this series a few years ago, but can assure our readers that some of the most delectable bits ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... another danger spot of the realm, to which picture there come in, details of the winning of the African natives to the Queen, a comedy of witchcraft and widows, and ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... tremblingly, returned the frank, firm pressure. While she was speaking, he looked into her face and saw that she had already assumed the invisible but impenetrable mask in which the society woman plays her part in the tragic comedy of Vanity Fair. It was the same face and yet not the same, the same voice and yet a different one, and the sight and sound acted upon him like a powerful tonic. This was not the Enid he had loved, after all, at least, so it seemed to him. He had forgotten, ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... one, in our day. Their view of their profession is similar to Mrs. Delamere's, when Max Moncrief wrote that sparkling comedy for her. 'My dear,' she said to him, 'why did you trouble yourself to put all that wit and sense into it? We didn't want that. I shall wear all my diamonds, and I have ordered ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... by his stage name of Moliere, stands without a rival at the head of French comedy. Born at Paris in January, 1622, where his father held a position in the royal household, he was educated at the Jesuit College de Clermont, and for some time studied law, which he soon abandoned for the stage. His life was spent in Paris and in the provinces, acting, directing performances, ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... Blankbury, on the first night of the performance of the well-known Comedy of "Heads or Tails?" by the "Thespian Perambulators." Time, 7:50 P.M. A "brilliant and fashionable assemblage" is gradually filling the house. In the Stalls are many distinguished Amateurs of both Sexes, including Lady SURBITON, who has brought her husband ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... In 1798, she published, though anonymously at first, "A Series of Plays: in which it is attempted to delineate the stronger Passions of the Mind, each Passion being the subject of a Tragedy and a Comedy." In a lengthened preliminary dissertation, she discoursed regarding the drama in all its relations, maintaining the ascendency of simple nature over every species of adornment and decoration. "Let one simple trait of the human heart, one expression ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... inaugurated this millennium. Except for individual instances the tragic intensities of life were over now and done with; there was no more need for heroes and martyrs; for the generality of humanity the phase of genial comedy had begun. There might be improvements and refinements ahead, but social, political and economic arrangement were now in their main outlines settled for good and all; nothing better was possible and it was the agreeable ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... enter into it. But another reason of their Success proceeds from the little Knowledge most People have of Pastoral; all Poets having gone in exactly the same Track, without one endeavouring to raise the Poem to any greater Perfection than they found it in; whereas Epick Poetry, Tragedy, and Comedy, arriv'd by slow degrees to the Perfection they now bear; and this Writer still went beyond the last ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... smiling, and tearing the paper in small pieces; "it is true, she is a diavolezza, but one of the most amiable and charming sort, and perhaps ere long I shall, notwithstanding her deviltry, consider her an angel, and believe her charming comedy to be entirely true and sincere. But this is no time for thinking of such things. The grave affairs of life require our exclusive attention. Kockeritz, then, has been convinced, and even Kalkreuth has been shaken in his stupid belief in the French! Well, may we ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... to squirm when you think a girl is going to pin you down. You let me get about as serious as a musical comedy with you and then you ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... in the blue sky far overhead, grew with astonishing swiftness, as a great bald eagle, descending with the utmost velocity, and then abruptly checking its flight, alighted on the bough of a tree over Henry's head, where it sat, its eyes upon the comedy passing in the berry patch. At any other time the eagle would have regarded the youth as his natural enemy, but now there was no hostility between them. They were ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... impudence in me to say much of a comedy, which has had but indifferent success in the action. I made the town my judges, and the greater part condemned it: after which, I do not think it my concernment to defend it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for his decried poem. Though Corneille is more resolute in his preface before ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... scenery of our patent theatres, and compare it with the vulgar daubs even of John Kemble's time. Some of the scenes by Stanfield, Roberts, Grieve, and Pugh, are "perfect pictures." Yet the language of the stage is at a stand, and insipid comedy, dull tragedy, and stupid farce are more abundant than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... her desertion of the roles in which she won great renown. "Our advice, given in the friendliest spirit, is this: go back to the twilight of the past, to the costume play. Get out of the garish light of to-day. The present is suited only for a kind of crass comedy or Bowery melodrama. Only the past, the foreign, affords setting for the large play of human passion which Helen Merival's great ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... instead of fruitlessly railing against him. Literature then becomes full of purpose; becomes aggressive, attacks now the throne, now the church, now the law, now the institution, now the person. Tragedy is followed by comedy, sentiment by satire; schylus is followed by Aristophanes, Horace is followed by Juvenal and Martial; Racine is followed by Voltaire, and Byron by Dickens. This ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... cases that have come within the experience of this great detective. But they give a fair portrayal of Muller's peculiar method of working, his looking on himself as merely an humble member of the Department, and the comedy of his acting under "official orders" when the Department is in ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... Spirit, who amid his endless improvisations is imagining himself living for the moment in this particular solar and social system. Death in such a universal monologue would be but a change of scene or of metre, while in the scramble of a real comedy it would be a change of actors. In either case every voice would be silenced sooner or later, and death would end each particular life, in spite of ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... novels have, we might now have a school of American dramatists of which we should be as proud as of our school of American novelists. In dramatic composition, the equivalent of the Short-story is the one-act play, be it drama or comedy or comedietta or farce. As the novelists have learned their trade by the writing of Short-stories, so the dramatists might learn their trade, far more difficult as it is and more complicated, by the writing of one-act plays. But, while ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... bed, he observed that she indeed wore a thin silk mask, of the kind which do such uncommon service in the elder comedy; such as women of rank still wore in travelling, but certainly never in the situation of this poor lady. It would seem she had sustained importunity on the subject, for when she saw the Doctor, she put ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... The Fillum Universe that tells all about you. I'd like to try actin' before the cam'ra myself. But I cal'late I ain't got much 'screen charm,'" the waitress added seriously. "I'm too fat. And I wouldn't do none of them comedy pictures where the fat woman always gets the worst of it. But you ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... a very interesting comedy," he murmured, rubbing his hands, "a very interesting comedy, and apparently played ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... Vauquier's method of testing the medium, had suggested another way, Mlle. Celie could not object, and there she would be neatly and securely packed up beyond the power of offering any resistance, before she could have a suspicion that things were wrong. It would be an easy little comedy to play. And if that were true—why, there were my sofa ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... that if in the progress of our comedy she appear to act with an utter lack of reason or even common-sense—as every woman worth the winning must do once or twice in a lifetime—that I be permitted to record the fact, to set it down in all its ugliness, nay, even to exaggerate it ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... by Senor Asensio y Toledo is one dated 1592, and curiously characteristic of Cervantes. It is an agreement with one Rodrigo Osorio, a manager, who was to accept six comedies at fifty ducats (about 6l.) apiece, not to be paid in any case unless it appeared on representation that the said comedy was one of the best that had ever been represented in Spain. The test does not seem to have been ever applied; perhaps it was sufficiently apparent to Rodrigo Osorio that the comedies were not among the best that had ever been ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... intolerable comedy! Before his daughter and his friends they had to talk to each other, and he, looking away, so that their eyes might not meet, scolded her gently, for not following the advice of the doctors. At ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... will soon be published by J. S. REDFIELD: Men of the Times in 1852, comprising biographical sketches of all the celebrated men of the present day; Characters in the Gospels, by Rev. E. H. Chapin; Tales and Traditions of Hungary, by Theresa Pulzky; The Comedy of Love, and the History of the Eighteenth Century, by Arsene Houssaye; Aytoun's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers; The Cavaliers of England, and The Knights of the Olden Time, or the Chivalry of England, France and Spain, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... within the smell of sawdust ever quite outgrew all taste for "the profession," and Anne, even when promoted to good society, never missed seeing a performance when her wandering friends came by. If I told you under what name Gerty became a star in the low-comedy line, after her marriage, you would all recognize it; and if you had seen her in "Queen Pippin" or the "Shooting-Star" pantomime, you would wish to see her again. Her first child was named after Madam Delia, and proved to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... comedy are we to have?' said he. 'As I give you my bed, what have you to complain of? You need not pay any attention to me. I ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... now almost done with the comedy, called the "Beggar's Opera,"[3] for this season, it may be no unpleasant speculation, to reflect a little upon this dramatic piece, so singular in the subject, and the manner, so much an original, and which hath frequently given so very agreeable ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Rumple, that is my brother, always does take himself and his poetry so seriously; but the worst of it is that everyone who hears him recite his own things fancies it is the latest idea in comedy, ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... eyes. She had a distinct advantage over him. She knew that he was the Prince of Graustark; she had known it for many days. Perhaps if she had known all the things that were in his cunning brain, she would not have ventured so far into the comedy she was constructing. She would have hesitated—aye, she might have changed her methods completely. But she was in the mood to do and say daring things. She considered her position absolutely secure, and so she could afford to enjoy ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The thought made him steal a longer look. How could such a face have been merged in the Murrett mob? Its fugitive slanting lines, that lent themselves to all manner of tender tilts and foreshortenings, had the freakish grace of some young head of the Italian comedy. The hair stood up from her forehead in a boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched her auburn eyes flecked with black, and the little brown spot on her cheek, between the ear that was meant to have a rose behind it and the chin that should have rested on ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... "Ah, what a fine comedy this world would be, if only one had not to play a part in it; if one existed, for instance, in some point of space, in that interval of the celestial orbs where the gods of Epicurus slumber, far, far away, whence one could see this ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... power wherewith the imagination or the sense called common, is affected by some particular physical object. (2) I say particular, for the imagination is only affected by particular objects. (3) If we read, for instance, a single romantic comedy, we shall remember it very well, so long as we do not read many others of the same kind, for it will reign alone in the memory (4) If, however, we read several others of the same kind, we shall think ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... these are his off hours, his moments of vacation. He appears on the stage as a sectary, and plays his part with resolute energy. This part again is that of a man not pursuing truth, but so occupied with maintaining his own conception of truth that he has no time to test it. It is a comedy of great humor, because Sylvanus, as a sectary, stands against all comers to protect a spring of deep and clear water, and is so engrossed in guarding the sacred wave from the least pollution that he does not find time to remark that it is not a spring ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... contentedly through the green of overhead branches, their peace was broken by a guffaw of derisive laughter. They looked up, to find at their backs a semi-circle of scoffing humanity. Lescott's impulse was to laugh, for only the comedy of the situation at the moment struck him. A stage director, setting a comedy scene with that most ancient of jests, the gawking of boobs at some new sight, could hardly have improved on this tableau. At the front stood Tamarack Spicer, the returned wanderer. His lean wrist was stretched out ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... by those ugly minie-balls during the war. Why that brigade should have been allowed to march into that ambuscade, from which we had so narrowly escaped, I could not understand. It was one of the early faux pas of that unfortunate comedy, rather tragedy of errors,—battle. ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... That astronomy had humble beginnings in Greece as elsewhere is highly probable. The late Mr. Andrew Lang wrote in this connection: "The very oddest example of the survival of the notion that the stars are men and women is found in the Pax of Aristophanes. Trygaeus in that comedy has just made an expedition to heaven. A slave meets him, and asks him: 'Is not the story true, then, that we become stars when we die?' The answer is, 'Certainly'; and Trygaeus points out the star into which Ion of Chios has just been metamorphosed." Mr. Lang added: "Aristophanes is making ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... unruffled features would lead the Western observer to suppose that he was a very simple person with no sort of interest in affairs. I had occasion to know him, however, for a statesman, after the Moorish fashion—a keen if resigned observer of the tragic-comedy of his country's politics, and a pious man withal, who had visited Mecca in the month that is called Shawall, and had cast stones on the hill of Arafat, as the custom is among True Believers. Some years had passed ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... religious and moral interludes, the dramatic colouring, however crude, is real and sincere. The humours of a broad folk-comedy break through the scriptural web continually in the guild plays like those in which Noah the shipbuilder, or the proverbial three shepherds, appear in the pageant. Noah's unwilling wife in the Chester Deluge, and ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... Adams felt as ignorant as the best-informed statesman, and though the sense was familiar, for once he could see that the ignorance was assumed. After nearly fifty years of experience, he could not understand how the comedy could be so well acted. Even as late as November, diplomats were gravely asking every passer-by for his opinion, and avowed none of their own except what was directly authorized at St. Petersburg. He could make nothing of it. He found himself in face of his new problem — ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... sir; I won't to see the new play in which did owed to play and actress which has not appeared on any theatre. How you think her? She has very much grace in the deeds great deal of exactness on the declamation, a constitution very agreable, and a delightful voice. What you say of the comedy? Have her succeded? It was a drama; it was whistted to the third scene of the last act. Because that? It whant the vehicle, and the intrigue it was bad conducted. So that they won't waited even the upshot? ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... one hand placed in the pants pocket, the other resting on the knee, body bent forward, eyes fixed on the keys of the melodeon, countenance expressing astonishment. The gentleman best adapted for this part is one who has a natural talent for performing in comedy. Light should be thrown on the scene from the lower end of the side of the stage, and of medium brightness. Music of a ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... what we merely read. Our eyes as well as our minds are addressed at the same time. The spectator, agreeably deceived by an imitation so nearly approaching life, mistakes the picture for the original, and thinks the object real. This gave birth to dramatic poetry, which includes tragedy and comedy. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and Burton, Placide, or the elder Wallack walked there with a kind of professional self-complacency. Thackeray, who had a quick and trained eye for the characteristic in cities, delighted in Broadway, for its cheerful variety, its perpetual "comedy of life"; the significance whereof is only more apparent to the sympathetic observer, because now and then through the eager throng glides the funeral car to the sound of muffled drums, the "Black Maria" with its convict load, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... stud it might play out this comedy of errors by hunting down Rakhal, and all my troubles would be over. For a while, at least, until Evarin found out what had happened. I didn't deceive myself that I could carry the impersonation through ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... But the king, fearing in them an organized movement against all authority, sacred or secular, soon withdrew his support; Berquin was burned at the stake in the Place de Greve, and the Sorbonne even ventured to pursue, with open prosecution and denunciation, and with hidden satire in a comedy represented at the College de Navarre, the king's sister for having caused her brother to adopt a book of prayers translated into French and for having caused to be printed a work of her own in verse: Le Miroir ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... [Greek: prosopa] from the fact that they are placed over the face and conceal the countenance from the spectator: [Greek: para tou pros tous opas tithesthai]. But since, as we have said, it was by the masks they put on that actors played the different characters represented in a tragedy or comedy—Hecuba or Medea or Simon or Chremes,—so also all other men who could be recognized by their several characteristics were designated by the Latins with the term persona and by the Greeks with [Greek: prosopa]. But the ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... dim eyes were left behind, feeding day by day, hour by hour, on terror and dread, unsupported by the changing scenes, the wild excitement, and the joyous vicissitudes of the soldier's life, it was a cruel comedy acted every day between 1861 and 1865. They laughed who were not gay, and they seemed indifferent who were fainting with despair. The courage of battle is mere brutish insensibility compared with the abnegation of the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... he said after a moment's thought, "there is no doubt that I have witnessed a very clever comedy. An effective one, I grant, because it has ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... applied to a man in this. And these, I believe, are all. Now, the first of these assumptions I answer, by asking, "Does it follow?" Of all Shakspeare's plays which had then appeared, only three had been published before 1598, and not one comedy. Meres, in all probability, had no list to refer to, nor was he making one: he simply adduced, in evidence of his assertion of Shakspeare's excellence, both in tragedy and comedy, such plays of both kinds as he could ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... them love laughter. Sexual dalliance is either too serious a matter to be mocked by satyr-laughter; or it is too sad and deplorable to be laughed at at all. In a few hundred years, surely, the human race will recognize its absolute right to make mock at the grotesque elements in the sex comedy, and such laughter will clear the air of ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... sort—not humour that for its rare and exquisite quality can be placed beside the masterpieces in that kind of Lamb, or Sterne, or Goldsmith, or Washington Irving. Granted freely; not humour of that special character. But very good humour nevertheless, the thoroughly popular humour of broad comedy and obvious farce—the humour that finds its account where absurd characters are placed in ridiculous situations, that delights in the oddities of the whimsical and eccentric, that irradiates stupidity and makes ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... fine comedy did not doubt but the object would make an impression on the King's heart; but it was quite otherwise. No sooner had he cast his eyes on the beauty than he whirled round with indignation; and seeing my Brother behind him, he pushed him roughly out of the room, and immediately quitted ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy tone. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... knaves who had recently enlightened their victim in such a matter-of-fact manner. He admitted that the comedy overbalanced the tragedy, in view of the fact that the job had resolved itself into petty sneak-thievery. Taking into consideration the trick money they had found, there was considerable farce in the affair. However, Vaniman, looking ahead to the threatening ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... fall and winter of '76 that Bret Harte came to Hartford and collaborated with Mark Twain on the play "Ah Sin," a comedy-drama, or melodrama, written for Charles T. Parsloe, the great impersonator of Chinese character. Harte had written a successful play which unfortunately he had sold outright for no great sum, and was eager for another venture. Harte had ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... remained in the House of Peers while his speech was taken into consideration,—a common practice with him; for the debates amused his sated mind, and were sometimes, he used to say, as good as a comedy.—MACAULAY: Review of the Life and Writings ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... not permit its formation. In literature a type is made a high type either by intensity, if it be simple, or by richness of nature, if it be complex. Miserliness, braggadocio, hypocrisy, in their extremes, are the characters of comedy; a rich nature, such as Hamlet, showing variety of faculty and depth of experience, is the hero of more profound drama. This truth, the necessity of high development in the type, underlay the old canon ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... Leigh Hunt's Feast of the Poets and in Edward Fitz-Gerald's Chivalry at a Discount. Other writers of satire in the earlier decades of the present century were Peacock, who in his novels (Crotchet Castle, &c.) evolved an original type of satire based upon the Athenian New Comedy. Miss Austen in her English novels and Miss Edgeworth in her Irish tales employed satire to impeach certain crying social abuses, as also did Dickens in Oliver Twist and others of his books. Douglas Jerrold's comedies and sketches are full of titbits of gay and ...
— English Satires • Various
... city in the world, had served only as a little bosquet of evergreens in a village garden might have done, as the background and scene for it. But it had no end; the time of the action was accomplished, the curtain had fallen, and the lights had been put out, but the comedy had come to no conclusion. Comedy-tragedy; it does not matter much which words you use. The scenes had all died away in incompleteness, and there had been no end. To many a gentle life such as that of Chatty might be, this is all that ever happens beyond the level of the ordinary and common. It ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity of birth and feeling.[2] His dialect on all occasions is that of a gentleman, and a man of education. We must not confound him with the eternal low steward of comedy. He is master of the household to a great Princess, a dignity probably conferred upon him for other respects than age or length of service.[3] Olivia, at the first indication of his supposed madness, declares that she "would not have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... diplomat, who also has a talent for pouring oil on troubled waters, were in charge of the financial part of the enterprise, and theirs was the task of seeing that none of the chapter funds were used, so that no possible criticism could arise. A pretty young actress offered to give a premiere of a comedy which she was about to take on the road, for the benefit of the street, and every one was delighted until they saw a rehearsal. It was one of those estranged-husband-one-cocktail-too-many farces, full of innuendo and profanity. J—— and his partner ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... subsequent readers with a notable example of the novel of mingled character and incident, entertaining alike for its lively episodes and its broadly genial delineation of types of the time. And so he soon had the town laughing with him at his broad comedy. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... perpetually assumed his public character with the private coterie which he loved to rule. On the whole, he was unlike any of the leading men of modern days, and rather reminded one of the fine gentlemen of our old brilliant comedy, the Dorimants, the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... methods had not been crowned with absolute success. The awkward corner caused by the enforced resignation of President Grevy had indeed been turned, because the Constitution of the Third Republic provides for the election of the President by the Assembly. But it is one thing to play a successful comedy in the Assembly with the help of what in America is called 'the cohesive power of the public plunder,' and quite another thing to get a satisfactory Chamber of Deputies re-elected by the people of France after four years of irritating and exasperating misrule. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... court was entertained with a comedy, acted by his Royal Highnesses servants, who attend here for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... so remote in Time, but very many Gentlemen may remember these Authors & some familiar in their conversation deliver them upon every pleasant occasion so fluent, to talke a Comedy. He must be a bold man that dares undertake to write their Lives. What I have to say is, we have the precious Remaines, and as the wisest contemporaries acknowledge they Lived a Miracle, I am very confident this volume cannot die ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... endurance. Immediately, I was ashamed of my lapse into anthropomorphism. I told myself that my pity ought to be kept for the real men who had been frequenters of the building, who now were waifs. I reviewed the gaping, glassless windows through which they had been wont to watch the human comedy. There they had stood, puffing their smoke and cracking their jests, and tearing women's reputations ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... next fortnight tragedy held grim sway in the little weather-gray house among the firs—a tragedy tempered with grim comedy for Cecily, who, amid all her agony, could not help being amused at Lucy Ellen's ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... curtsied, and took her arm-chair also. The satin bills of their majesties and the princesses were then duly displayed—and the dingy green curtain drew up. The performances were invariably either a comedy and farce, or more frequently three farces, with a plentiful interlarding of comic songs. Quick, Suett, and Mrs. Mattocks were the reigning favourites; and, about 1800, Elliston and Fawcett became occasional stars. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... when the tragi-comedy I have given you an account of was over, the Queen my mother turned round to the Chevalier de Seurre, whom she recommended to my brother to sleep in his bedchamber, and in whose conversation she sometimes took delight because he was a man of some humour, but rather ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 1736-1796), whose mother was an actress, just as in Shakespeare's time the parts for women were always taken by young men or boys. When once this is settled, it only remains to enrol him as tragedian, comedian, low-comedy actor, walking gentleman or lady, and similar ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... there's been nothing left but this confounded old turkey gobbler we've been hearing about. He swore last week that somebody had stolen the silver teapot. Abominable old liar! He must have sold it." The Major threw out his arms with a wrathful gesture. "All this comedy, if you please, for my benefit. Here I've been there every week, and never suspected, thanks to the infernal stratagems of that black fiend of an Uncle Noah. ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... drawing a breath of relief as the last of the trains vanished in the doorway, "perhaps you would now have the kindness to tell me what this comedy means." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... so utterly surprised and terrified in the outer world that this infantile parody was curiously welcome, since nothing keeps the mind in balance on the tight-rope of sanity like the counterweight that comedy furnishes to tragedy, farce to frenzy, and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... so to speak, in England, where we read that Charles II and the Duke of Yorke attended the first performance of Tarugo's Wiles, or the Coffee House, a comedy, in 1667, which Samuel Pepys described as "the most ridiculous and insipid play I ever saw in my life." The author was Thomas St. Serf. The piece opens in a lively manner, with a request on the part of its fashionable hero for a change of clothes. Accordingly, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... "I begin to see the humor in this comedy. Which are we—allies of the Greeks or of the Masai? Are we to help the Greeks get away with Brown's cattle, or help the Masai steal 'em from the Greeks? Are ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... deceived, he also used deception himself to further his projects, as can be shown by the tale of this diplomatic-military comedy, in ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... grew bloodshot, partly with rubbing them, partly with tears. He rubbed them with the sleeve of his rough coat, and the tears were very real, though few in number. Cotsdean's despair was indeed tragical enough, but its outside had in it a dash of comedy, which, though he was in no mirthful mood, caught the quick eye of Mr. May. He was himself very painfully affected, to tell the truth, but yet it cost him an effort ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... manner had helped to generate that impression. It seemed to her more than probable that with a little instruction as to technical stage business she could gain fame and fortune almost at once as an actress of tragedy or melodrama. Comedy she despised as unworthy of her. But the stage appealed to her only on the ground of income. The life of an actress lacked the ethical character which she liked to associate with whatever she did. To be sure, a great actress was an inspiring influence. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... and we had an excellent Flemish dinner. The proprietress was a very lively creature. She chattered in French and broken English like a magpie, and flew here and there as lively as if she were on the stage. The Canon said the whole affair was like a scene from a French comedy. ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... by Venetians and consisting of breeches and stockings in one. The second sense is preserved, substantially, in our term pantaloons. The first sense led to the use of the word (in the mouths of the Venetians' enemies) for "buffoon" and then (in early Italian comedy) for "a lean and foolish old man." It is this stock figure of the stage that Shakespeare evokes. In line 22 hose means the covering for a man's body from his waist to his nether-stock. (Compare the present meaning: a covering for ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... played an amusing game. He held the reins of power so firmly that he could safely enact a transparent farce. He refused the sceptre. The grandees and the people begged him to accept it, and he took refuge from their solicitations in a monastery. This comedy, which even Caesar had not long played, Boris kept up for over a month. Yet from his cell he ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... been much less useful to the theater, for I should have lived in an everlasting wrangle with authors, actors, and managers on behalf of the mythological bodies supposed to preside over tragedy and comedy, and I should have killed myself (or perhaps been killed), and that quickly, with ineffectual protests against half the performances before the lamps, which are enough to make the angels weep and laugh—in ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Spring Gardens. Some of Reynolds's contributions: Lady Elizabeth Keppel as Bridesmaid, Countess Waldegrave and Child, and Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy. ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... be very witty and comedy, but I have nothing to saynothing at allto people dat will not believe deir own eye-sights. It is vary true dat I ave not any of de things of de art, and it makes de more wonder what I has done dis day. But I would ask of you, mine honoured and goot and generous ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... is the clew to this comedy of errors? No mere waywardness or perversity of character, but some powerful bias and a first-cousinship in principle must account for one of the strangest anomalies in modern history. Perhaps the following ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... case a licence has since been granted. The other two are still unlicensed. I have suffered both in pocket and reputation by the action of the Lord Chamberlain. In other countries I have not come into conflict with the censorship except in Austria, where the production of a comedy of mine was postponed for a year because it alluded to the part taken by Austria in the Servo- Bulgarian war. This comedy was not one of the plays suppressed in England by the Lord Chamberlain. One of the plays so suppressed was prosecuted in America ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... through the new vistas of life that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow who was naturally truthful was rapidly becoming a liar through the practice of exaggerating his profits and expenditures. There was an abundance of side-splitting comedy in the things I saw about me, but there was no dearth of pathos, either. One day, as I entered a certain high-class restaurant on Broadway, I saw at one of the tables a man who looked strikingly familiar to me, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Ballard's own lips the story of Jerry Benham's first appearance in Broadway I was forcibly reminded of the opening cantos of the Divine Comedy where Dante follows the shade of Virgil into the abyss of hell. I had not let Jerry know of my presence in New York, for I believed that he would have wanted me with him and did not care to be placed in a position to refuse him. Indeed I can give no reason for ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... THEATER.—The theatre has always been a vital influence in man's aesthetic and emotional life. Drama, opera, comedy, and burlesque are variant forms, but they are alike in that they influence the audience. In the last decade the moving picture has greatly increased the power and influence of the theatre. The low price of the moving picture brings the theatre to millions ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... of humor delighted in any detail of an event which suggested comedy. His genial awkwardness amused himself quite as much as it amused the world. At his third public reception he wore a pair of white kid gloves that were too small. An old friend approached. The President shook hands so heartily that his glove burst with a popping sound. Holding up his ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... you win, but never when you need the cash. But it is Monte Carlo, if you say so. Two or three days there will cure you of your beautiful dream. After all," with a second thought, "it's a good cause, and it might be just your luck to win. The masquerading lady! I'll stake my word that there is comedy within comedy, and rare good comedy at that. Monte Carlo ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... up so as not to miss the comedy which was about to set its scenes upon the grim visage of the Count. As his eyes met ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... gift of penetrating to the heart of life. No one with the love of the grotesque which is the American portion of the human tastes or passions, can fail of his joy in the play of the obvious traits and motives of her Hebrew comedy, but he will fail of something precious if he does not sound the depths of true and beautiful ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he is angry he will listen to nobody, and is capable of facing a whole army. We must prevent this duel somehow. And you are actually preparing to go to the theatre when things have come to such a pass? You are actually going to see a comedy!" ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... remorse of conscience, his uneasiness at the behaviour of the prince, and lastly, the clearing up of the misunderstanding between father and son, which make up several most affecting scenes. All this, however, would still be inadequate to fill the stage, if the serious events were not interrupted by a comedy which runs through both parts of the play, which is enriched from time to time with new figures, and which first comes to its catastrophe at the conclusion of the whole, namely, when Henry V., immediately after ascending the throne, banishes to a proper distance the companions of his youthful ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Trent with ponderous gravity. Martin's style was making clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all vivacity of ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... used to this with singers in musical comedy, who make a point of turning the lyrics assigned to them into unintelligible patter. Perhaps in the present case we lost little by that, though there was one song (of which I actually heard the words) that seemed to me to contain the elements of a sound and consoling philosophy. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... reticent by fits and starts, now whining and now laughing—who has been to seek out Romeo, and brought back news of him. In As You Like It, Rosalind's bright humor ripples and laughs like a silver brook through the glades of Ardennes, and trickles gently even into the epilogue: in this lively comedy—so much lighter and easier than the heavy tragedy we are discussing too—love and despair never come to overlay and destroy the arch humor. If there be any defect in the performance of the banished princess, it must ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... a complete stock-in-trade for any court or town Adonis; a perfect vocabulary of fashion, detailing the rise and progress of all the fashionable arts since the peace—the gazette appointments and disappointments—and elopements and faux pas, sufficient for all the comedy-writers of the present century—the respective claims of Spanish Refugees and Spitalfields Weavers—charitable concerts and opera benefits—and all the lumber and light artillery of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... fool of me," said Giles grimly. "I told him everything, and you played that nice little comedy in ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... enormously successful, and the poet was hailed as a great dramatic genius. But these comedies are interesting to-day chiefly from the fact that Ariosto was one of the very first of the writers of modern comedy, and was the leader of that movement in Italy and France which prepared the way ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... their comedy so far as to converse a while in Hindustanee; and then says the Hindu, with the same smile, but sighing as if he were tired of the repetition, "The Sahib would be glad to know how ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... versions of the story is a novelle by Giovanni Brevio, published as part of his "Rime" in 1545. Piron's comedy of "Les Fils Ingrats," also known as "L'Ecole des Peres," appeared in 1728. "The story," adds Dunlop, "is also told in the 'Pieuses Recreations d'Angelin Gazee,' and is told in the 'Colloquia Mensalia' of Luther, among other examples to deter fathers from dividing their property during life among ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... claimed that the comedy of life could be made more interesting if everyone would preserve the unities. To keep the proportion of things and give place to others without losing one's own position was the secret of success in the mundane drama. We must know the whole play in order ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... at the theatre was a modern comedy which did not greatly interest him, indeed, he was more concerned in keeping his attention from that newly-discovered temple within than in unravelling the mysteries of the rather thread-bare plot of the play. Being, however, quite unaccustomed to dealing with this dual condition of mind it is to ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... introduction showed him a child of Mystery, moved by Voices and inspired by a Fetish. His face was full of good humour, and his whole figure rippled with sleek animal vivacity. For the moment, life was a comedy and a masquerade teeming with whims, ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... even be painted,—they can only be believed. But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands, in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. That which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, adds so much to the life of the imitation, in plays which appeal to the higher faculties, positively destroys the illusion which it is introduced to aid. A parlour or a drawing-room,—a library opening into a garden,—a garden ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... not devoid of romance and imagination. He condemns the old fashion (still, alas! in vogue in many schools) of committing to memory an enormous amount of matter quite unworthy of being retained in the mind. He urges the need of a "Latin novel"—a Latin comedy; one that would set alight the imagination of ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... parishes a man can reach his different missions only by canoe or dog-train, that the missions are forty miles apart, that the canoe must run rapids and the dog-train dare blizzards—an effeminate type of man is more of a tragedy than a comedy. I think of one mission where the circuit is four hundred miles and the distance to railroad, doctor, post-office, fifty-five miles. This little curate had had a hard time, though his mission was an easy one. When his turn came to report, his face ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... dramatic writers, who are supposed to draw a faithful picture of it. So we go to the theatre, and usually derive keen pleasure therefrom. But is pleasure all that we expect to find? What we should look for above everything in a comedy or a drama is a representation, exact as possible, of the manners and characters of the dramatis persona of the play; and perhaps the conditions under which the play was written do not allow such representation. The exact and studied portrayal of a character demands from the author long preparation, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... proposed by Lady Penelope, was next considered. It was proposed to act what the Italians call a Comedy of Character; that is, not an exact drama, in which the actors deliver what is set down for them by the author; but one, in which the plot having been previously fixed upon, and a few striking scenes adjusted, the actors are expected to supply ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to me they would be a greater penance than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which, in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy; three or four of the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the play good or bad—except on Moliere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night: I cannot at all commend ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... has forbidden me to see you again, and I will not play this comedy of coming secretly to your house. You must either lose me ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant |
