"Playhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her bread and drank her water with a downcast air. She was not thinking about the scolding and her punishment. She was troubled because Miss Farlow had forbidden her to go off the 'Home' grounds again. Must she give up her dear secret playhouse? She and Honey-Sweet had had such a good time! And they were planning to spend all their Saturday afternoons there. Finally she asked Emma what would be done if she disobeyed Miss Farlow and went outside ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... Golden Age of the English Pulpit," the period when sermons were extremely popular, and discharged, with the playhouse, some of the functions of the modern newspaper. At this time Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, who was eminent in the capacities of prelate, preacher, and writer, was generally regarded as the very "stella praedicantium." Of his published sermons the Library now possesses "XCVI Sermons," 3rd ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... injuries of yesterday. Everything seemed to me a savory foretaste of Spain. I discovered an unconscionable amount of local color. I discovered it at St. Jean de Luz, the last French town, in a great brown church, filled with galleries and boxes, like a playhouse—the altar and chair, indeed, looked very much like a proscenium; at Bohebia, on the Bidassoa, the small yellow stream which divides France from Spain, and which at this point offers to view the celebrated Isle of Pheasants, a little bushy strip of earth adorned with a decayed commemorative monument, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... prisidintial platform, an' a bur-rdcage out iv what remains iv th' cow-I was detarmined to probe into th' wondhers iv science, an' I started fair f'r th' machinery hall. Where did I bring up, says ye? In th' fr-ront seat iv a playhouse with me eye glued on a lady iv th' sultan's coort, near Brooklyn bridge, thryin' to twisht ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... at least, and possibly in other towns, a playhouse was built long before such a thing was known in the vicinity of London. We shall probably be right, however, in judging the major portion of the country by its metropolis and assuming that, until 1572 or thereabouts, actors and audiences ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... being left at Sadie's house. Once, when Max's lodge had a benefit performance and he had had some tickets for sale, we made up a party of five: the two couples and myself. On that occasion I met Jake Mindels at the playhouse. He was now studying medicine at the University Medical College, and it was a considerable time since I had last seen him. To tell the truth, I had avoided meeting him. I hated to stand confessed before him as a traitor to my dreams of a college education, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... his postchaise to London, to Clare, and drank tea with him. To Drury Lane playhouse, but could not get in, so we went to the Robin Hood Society, and stayed till after 10. The question was, whether the increase of unmarried people was owing to the men's greater bashfulness, or women's greater ...
— Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760-1800 • William Bray
... theatre is an institution from hell and an invention of devils. D'Alembert paid a compliment to his patriarch and master at Ferney, as well as shot a bolt at his ecclesiastical foes in Paris, by urging the people of Geneva to shake off irrational prejudices and straightway to set up a playhouse. Rousseau had long been brooding over certain private grievances of his own against Diderot; the dreary story has been told by me before, and happily need not be repeated.[146] He took the occasion of D'Alembert's mischievous suggestion to his native Geneva, not merely to denounce the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... is a new song, Lemuel, that everybody here is singing. It is written by a young American named John Howard Payne who is in London now acting in a great playhouse. Everybody is wild over this song. I'll sing it for ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... is true, sir, really; for when we have a great deal of company, I have often observed that they never talk about anything but eating or dressing, or men and women that are paid to make faces at the playhouse or a great room called Ranelagh, where everybody ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... youths that thunder at a Playhouse, and fight for bitten Apples, that no Audience but the tribulation of Tower Hill, or the Limbes of Limehouse, their deare Brothers are able to endure. I haue some of 'em in Limbo Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three dayes; besides the running Banquet of two Beadles, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... with a large white fruz, that she may look sparkishly in the forefront of the King's box at an old play.' In Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living[1] we have one from Julian, 'late Secretary to the Muses,' to Will. Pierre of Lincoln's Inn Fields Playhouse, wherein, recalling how in his lampoons whilst he lived characters about town were shown in no very enviable light, he particularizes that 'the antiquated Coquet was told of her age and ugliness, tho' her vanity plac'd her in the first ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... forever; wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will be recognised as true!" Such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is in part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakespeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse: his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us all. No man works save under conditions. The sculptor, cannot set his own free Thought before us; but ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... we did not care to venture among the justling of the Crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his Entertainment, and we guarded him to his Lodgings in the same manner that we brought him to the Playhouse; being highly pleased, for my own part, not only with the Performance of the excellent Piece which had been Presented, but with the Satisfaction which it had given to the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... which was reckoned particularly dangerous; upon which Johnson directly swam into it. He told me himself that one night he was attacked in the street by four men, to whom he would not yield, but kept them all at bay, till the watch came up, and carried both him and them to the round-house[880]. In the playhouse at Lichfield, as Mr. Garrick informed me, Johnson having for a moment quitted a chair which was placed for him between the side-scenes, a gentleman took possession of it, and when Johnson on his return civilly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... you can look over the ground more carefully. You'll sleep in the old playhouse—the log cabin—down by the creek. They'll show you. It's connected with this house by 'phone. I'll talk to you again to-morrow; you'd better go down and get ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... childe both burned to death with a sudden lightning, no fire appearing outwardly upon him, and yet lay burning for the space of almost three days till he was quite consumed to ashes." This year the Globe playhouse, on the Bankside, was burned, and the year following the new playhouse, the Fortune, in Golding Lane, "was by negligence of a candle, clean burned down to the ground." In this year also, 1614, the town of Stratford-on-Avon was burned. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and fence in my own lodgings. Lord Albemarle [the British ambassador] is come from Fontainebleau. I have very good reason to be pleased with the reception I met with. The best amusement for strangers in Paris is the Opera, and the next is the playhouse. The theatre is a school to acquire the French language, for which reason I frequent it more ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... friend! Kind friend! Instruct another man the way To win thy mistress! Thou'lt not break my heart? Take my advice, thou shalt not be in love A month! Frequent the playhouse!—walk the Park! I'll think of fifty ladies that I know, Yet can't remember now—enchanting ones! And then there's Lancashire!—and I have friends In Berkshire and in Wiltshire, that have swarms Of daughters! Then my shooting-lodge and stud! I'll cure thee ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... Lord Leicester, Lord Warwick, Lord Pembroke, Lord Howard, the Earl of Essex, and others all had their company of actors—not all at the same time. The principal Houses were those at Southwark, and especially at Bank Side, where there were three, including the famous Globe: the Blackfriars Playhouse: the Fortune in Golden Lane, and the Curtain at Shoreditch. If you will look at the map you will observe that not one of these theatres is within the City—that at Blackfriars was in the former precinct of the Dominicans and outside the City. No theatre was allowed in the City. Thus early ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... the conditions, customs, and social peculiarities of the provincial actors and audiences. For that reason, it would be well for the general reader beforehand to obtain a bird's-eye view of the history of the American theatre—a view which will comprise some consideration of the first playhouse in this country, of the conditions which confronted Hallam, Henry, and Douglass, the first actors to be at the head of what, in Williamsburg, Virginia, was known as the Virginia Comedians, and in New York and Philadelphia, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists - 1765-1819 • Various
... bid, Bob; but really if I did remain overnight I 'd much prefer putting in the hours talking over old times. With all due respect to your sister, old boy, I confess I have n't very much heart for the stage. I 've grown away from it; have n't even looked into a playhouse for years." ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... sister, Nancy, her as takes in washin' six days in de week, an' teaches de infant class in Sunday school on de seventh day. Yuh see we done got a cabin in de rear where Nancy she washes. So we fits up one end fo' Brutus' playhouse, same as de white chillun dey hab playhouses in de yard. He sets dar most ob de day a havin' de time o' his life playin' sojer with de buttons, and settin' out his Noah's Ark animals. I allers knowed dat boy was different ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;—on which point there were much to be said. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... poet of the polite part of the nation. His dramatic pieces, which pleased some time in acting, were despised by all persons of taste, and might be compared to many plays which I have seen in France, that drew crowds to the playhouse, at the same time that they were intolerable to read; and of which it might be said, that the whole city of Paris exploded them, and yet all flocked to see them represented on the stage. Methinks Mr. de Muralt should have mentioned an excellent comic writer (living when he was in ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... grew thickest was a little cottage, built to fit Rosanna. Grown people had to stoop to get in and their heads almost scraped the ceilings. The furniture all fitted Rosanna too, even to the tiny piano. This was Rosanna's playhouse. She kept her dolls here, and there was a desk with all sorts of writing paper that a maid sorted and put in order every ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... Aunt Betsy generously offered "to pay the fiddler," as she termed it, "provided 'Tilda would never let it get to Silverton that Betsy Barlow was seen inside a playhouse!" To Mrs. Tubbs it seemed impossible that Aunt Betsy could be in earnest, but when she was, she put no impediments in her way; and so, conspicuous among the crowd of transient visitors who that night entered the Academy of Music was Aunt ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... have often thought, and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it would be well for us all to profit by experience—"burned bairns should dread the fire," as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of the playhouse, for instance—which I shall afterwards have occasion to commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful life—I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after night, to pay my shilling for a veesy ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... us the name or purpose of each building as it appeared, and the novel exhibition closed with the presentation of a large and splendid playhouse. ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... meal was over, the boys lounged about the hut, and Dan Sullivan brought a lot of things from his sister's playhouse with which to furnish it more suitably. Archie Dunn brought a lot of hay from the loft in his mother's barn, and when a piece of old carpet was spread upon it it made an acceptable couch. A piece of old carpet was laid ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... largely driven the verb to enjoy from the social page. It is not too extreme, I think, to say the home and playhouse have changed places. Many conservative people that I know turn to the theatre as the only safe means of relaxation and enjoyment within their reach, the stress and penalty of criticism in entertaining modern company ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... written and spoken by Macklin, gives an excellent picture of the playhouse humours, and of the wild pit, of those exuberant days; and contains moreover the following sound advice, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... shook his head. "Go about your play, child," he said, turning toward Anne, and the little girl walked slowly away toward a bunch of scrubby pine trees near which she had established a playhouse. She had built a cupboard of smooth chips, and here were gathered the shells she had brought from the beach, a wooden doll which her father had made her, and the pieces of a ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... the middle of the century it had become very general. In one of the papers of the 'Tatler,' we find there were some who neither stood nor knelt, but remained lazily sitting throughout the service like 'an audience at a playhouse.'[1121] Sitting while the Psalms were being sung was, notwithstanding many remonstrances, the rule rather than the exception during the earlier part of the century. The Puritan commission of 1641 had spoken of standing at ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... good-nature, as he glanced appreciatively back at the sweetmeat stateliness of the Casino front. But into the older man's mind crept the impression that they were merely passing, in going from crowded theatre to open garden and street, from one playhouse to another. It all seemed to him, indeed, nothing more than a transition of theatricalities. For that outer play-world which lay along Monaco's three short miles of marble stairway and villa and hillside garden appeared to him, in his mood of settled dejection, ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... not expect me, Niece, to be at your beck and call during the day, as I have my business to attend to; but of an evening I shall, of course, feel it my duty to accompany you to the playhouse. It will not do for you to be going about with only the ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... Castle."—Pepys, in his Diary, 14th September, 1667, says, "To the King's playhouse, to see The Northerne Castle, which I think I never did see before." Is anything known of this play and its authorship? or was it The Northern Lass, by Richard Brome, first published in 1632? Perhaps Pepys has quoted the second title ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... transfixed until you know what's behind it." Bernard Sobel, Daily Mirror. "Double Door is a thriller of a new kind, beautifully written, superbly played, clean as a whistle, and arousing in its spectators a tenseness of interest I have rarely seen equaled in a playhouse." E. Jordan, America. Leading part acted by Mary Morris in America and by Sybil Thorndike in London. A play that will challenge the best acting talent of Little Theatres ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... can bring down the highest flying scientific fact and tame it so that any of us can live with it and sometimes even love it. He can make a fairy tale out of coal-tar dyes and a laboratory into a joyful playhouse while it continues functioning gloriously as a laboratory. But to readers of "Creative Chemistry" it is wasting time to ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... or low standing or kneeling places; all were on a level before Him. It is our modern Protestantism which has brought in lazy lolling in cushioned pews; and the gallery, which makes a church as like a playhouse as possible!" ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... fashion, besides one royal place, called his Majesty's Bear-garden, have been in constant possession of all hops, fairs, revels, &c. Two places have been agreed to be divided between them, namely, the church and the playhouse, where they segregate themselves from each other in a remarkable manner; for, as the people of fashion exalt themselves at church over the heads of the people of no fashion, so in the playhouse they abase themselves in the same degree under their feet. This distinction ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... was adhered to, though Hannele's visions have a richness and sweetness, the verses of the angels a winsomeness and majesty which transcend any possible dream of the poor peasant child, The external encouragement which the attempt met was great, for with it Hauptmann conquered the Royal Playhouse in Berlin. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... minor rulers of Germany. The drawing-rooms, streets, and theaters of Erfurt were filled with the splendors of their gorgeous apparel and that of their bedizened attendants. On October fourth the "Oedipe" of Voltaire was given at the playhouse before the assembled courts. At the words, "A great man's friendship is a boon from the gods," Alexander rose, and, grasping Napoleon's hand, stood for a moment in an attitude that typified a renewed alliance. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... well?—and a grey hat with a blue feather—and a pretty nag to ride on—and all the soldiers to present arms as you pass, and say, "There goes the Captain's lady"? What do you think of a side-box at Lincoln's Inn playhouse, or of standing up to a minuet with my ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... famous folk, but which were now dropping down to the boarding-house scale through various unhomelike occupations to final dishonor and despair. Down nearer the water, and not far from the castle that was once a playhouse and is now the depot of emigration, stood certain express wagons, and about these lounged a few hard-looking men. Beyond laughed and danced the fresh blue water of the bay, dotted with ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... evidently founded on an old black-letter dialogue preserved in the Roxburgh collection, called A Mad Kinde of Wooing; or, a Dialogue between Will the Simple and Nan the Subtill, with their loving argument. To the tune of the New Dance at the Red Bull Playhouse. Printed by the ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... happy: they loved each other, and so loved life and everything and everybody, and God's great green out-o'-doors was their playhouse. Margaret's income was quite sufficient for their needs, and mad ambition passed them by. Gainsborough drew pictures and painted and sketched, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... I don't think much of your idea of a playhouse—those tin cans. But it's better than having ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the lights went up amid murmurs of pleasure and expectancy, I glanced across the rows of heads with awakened interest. "Who Killed Cock Robin?" had been praised with such unanimity that if Alice were in any playhouse that night I was as likely to see her in the "As You ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... kennel of Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons. At the pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the Death's-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an Institution. I walked up Bow-street, disposed to be angry with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and robes of kings are made. I noticed that some shops which had once been in the dramatic line, and had ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... later than Euphues. But they all bear the character of the courtier about them; and both in this characteristic and in the absence of any details in the gossipping literature of the time to connect him with the Bohemian society of the playhouse, the distinction which separates Lyly from the group of "university wits" is noteworthy. He lost as well as gained by the separation. All his plays were acted "by the children of Paul's before her Majesty," and not by the usual ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Brother of Jerry." And because of the last named, the youth of many lands are enrolling in the famous Jack London Club. This was inspired by Dr. Francis H. Bowley, President of the Massachusetts S.P.C.A. The Club expects no dues. Membership is automatic through the mere promise to leave any playhouse during an animal performance. The protest thereby registered is bound, in good time, to do away with the abuses that attend animal training for show purposes. "Michael Brother of Jerry" was written out of Jack London's heart of love and head of understanding of animals, aided ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the entertainments are indeed terminated. The audience move from their seats towards the portals of the playhouse. The lights are being extinguished; the boxes are about to be covered over with brown-holland draperies; the prompter has closed his book and is ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... a blither three never sat out a tragedy, or laughed over wine and oysters in the midst of a garden with its flowers and fountains afterwards. 'T was a long day since the poor little woman had known such merrymaking; and as for me, this playhouse, this mimicry of life, was a new sphere. We went again and again,—sometimes the painting-mistress, too; then she and the governess fell behind, and Angus and I walked at our will. Other times we wandered through the gay streets, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have always considered those combinations which are formed in the playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty. He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public. He that hisses in malice or in sport is an oppressor and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... well as he and his party did, who hissed. If he were not half distracted, for not being lord chief baron, methinks he should be lawyer enough to advise my lord chief justice better. To clap and hiss are the privileges of a free-born subject in a playhouse: they buy them with their money, and their hands and mouths are their own property. It belongs to the Master of the Revels to see that no treason or immorality be in the play; but when it is acted, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... and kissing the aforesaid letter,[20] and being, at last, in a state of good spirits, from the last-mentioned considerations, he agreed to carry an appointment, which he had before made, into execution. This was, to attend Mrs. Miller, and her younger daughter, into the gallery at the playhouse, and to admit Mr. Partridge as one of the company. For as Jones had really that taste for humor which many affect, he expected to enjoy much entertainment in the criticisms of Partridge, from whom he expected the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three times a week; but 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the house; they crowd the gallery, and together should aloud the applause, greeting that which caricatures religion, sneers at virtue, or hints at indecency." Not only the actors and the onlookers of the average theater are vile, but all of the immediate associations of the playhouse must correspond with it. If not in the same building with the theater, in adjoining ones, at least, are found the wine-parlor and the brothel. It is generally conceded that no theater can be prosperous if it is wholly separated from ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... with the agricultural exhibit in the pavilion, the commission maintained a small theater fitted up with opera chairs, stage, electric fans, and all accessories of the modern playhouse. In the theater a free stereopticon and moving-picture exhibition was given, illustrating the resources and industries of the State. Another attractive feature of the agricultural exhibit was the mounted steer "Challenger," which won the first prize of the world ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... who make up the classes are not so far removed from their "playhouse" days that a survey of the dishes, stoves, and tables will not give them an eager desire to begin using them. This desire should be gratified, but as the use always necessitates the cleaning as well, it may be advisable at first ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... this," called a big Plush Bear, tossing toward the Wax Doll a quilt he took from a bed in a playhouse that stood next to him on the work table. "This will keep you warm. I guess some of the men who work for Santa Claus must have gone off and ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... in a big circle playing kindergarten games. The children were dressed in neat pretty frocks such as any beloved children would wear, with bright hair ribbons and neckties, and each with an individuality of its own. The room was sunny and bright, with a great playhouse at one end, with real windows and furniture in it and all sorts of toboggan slides and swings and kiddy cars and everything to delight the soul of a child. On a wide space between two windows painted on the plaster ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... didn't Stephen Collins, and Kelly, and Maxfield, the three managers, come upon deck, and drink success to the Leander's crew, out of a bucket of grog we had up for the purpose, and the ould mare of Portsmouth sent his compliments to us, begging us not to break our own necks or set fire to the playhouse? Another glass, Jem, to the crew of the Leander: don't you remember the ducking ould Mother Macguire, the bum-boat woman, received, for bringing paw-paw articles on board, when we came in to refit?" "May I never want 'bacca, if I shall ever forget that ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... years! For then, Though surely no mean progress had been made In meditations holy and sublime, 445 Yet something of a girlish child-like gloss Of novelty survived for scenes like these; Enjoyment haply handed down from times When at a country-playhouse, some rude barn Tricked out for that proud use, if I perchance 450 Caught, on a summer evening through a chink In the old wall, an unexpected glimpse Of daylight, the bare thought of where I was Gladdened me more than if I had ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... just turned of nineteen, when happening to pass by the playhouse one evening, he took it into his head to go in, and see the last act of a very celebrated tragedy acted that night.—But it was not the poet's or the player's art which so much engaged his attention, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, and Garrick. At this time she wrote a number of poems and aspired to become a dramatist. Her Percy (1777), with a prologue and epilogue by Garrick, had a long run at Covent Garden. Somewhat later she came to believe that the playhouse was a grave public evil, and refused to attend the revival of her own play with Mrs. Siddons in the leading part. After 1789 she and her sisters devoted themselves to starting schools for poor children, teaching them religion and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... done a thing but make an exact copy of my playhouse under the biggest maiden's-blush in our orchard. He used the immense beech for one corner, where I had the apple tree. His Magic Carpet was woolly-dog moss, and all the magic about it, was that on the damp woods floor, in the deep shade, the moss ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... to shift its centre, and he appears to be only bent upon restoring the fortunes of his family, and attaining a solid municipal position. He buys the biggest house in his native place; from the proceeds of his writings, his professional income as an actor, and from his share in the playhouse of which he is part owner, he purchases lands and houses, he engages in lawsuits, he concerns himself with grants of arms. Still the flood of stupendous literature flows out; he seems to be under a contract to ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... estate whereunto man fell"—perhaps Mrs. Jarvis would ask her to go for a walk with her down the lane, or even a drive in her carriage—"consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin"—of course she would talk only of books, and not let her see the playhouse she and Mary had made in the lane. That was very childish. She would tell how she had read "The Vicar of Wakefield" and "Old Mortality"—of course father had read them to her, but it was all the same thing—and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of position would not form a playhouse acquaintanceship with an amusing and interesting actor seems to me to show misunderstanding of human nature. The players were, when unprotected by men of rank, "vagabonds." The citizens of London, mainly Puritans, hated them mortally, but the young gallants were not Puritans. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... complain that it wants the very first requisite of a dramatic work—power to affect the passions. This criticism shows, to the full extent, how men were impassioned, at that time, by their political sentiments. They brought their passions with them to the playhouse, fired on the subject of the play; and all the poet had to do ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg, who had commanded a brilliant ball as commencement of a series of festivities. There was to be a grand hunt in the Red Wood, and finally court theatricals in his Highness's own playhouse. The beautiful castle gardens were illuminated with a myriad coloured lamps in the trees; the rose-garden had become an enchanted bower, with little lanterns twinkling in each rose-bush, and the fountain ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to get into the playhouse, believing himself qualified for an actor; but Wilkes, to whom he applied, advised him candidly not to think of that employment, as it was impossible he should succeed in it. Then he proposed to Roberts, a publisher in Pater Noster Row, to write for him a weekly paper like ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... he plead. "Don't worry, pet. Papa isn't far away. He's coming soon and I've got such a beautiful playhouse for you and Ned and Kate up there on the hill. We won't go up just now, for we all want to be here to give papa his breakfast when he comes in. And my! how hungry I am, Nellie! Won't you give old Pike some coffee now, and ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... Within it there arose, beneath and between old forest trees, the college, an admirable church—Bruton Church—the capitol, the Governor's house or "palace," and many very tolerable dwelling-houses of frame and brick. There were also taverns, a marketplace, a bowling-green, an arsenal, and presently a playhouse. The capitol at Williamsburg was a commodious one, able to house most of the machinery of state. Here were the Council Chamber, "where the Governor and Council sit in very great state, in imitation of the King and Council, or the Lord Chancellor and House ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the following year straightway forbade all plays within the precincts of the town. If so, it proved a failure. James Burbage resolutely hired a liberty outside the city, and here, in 1576, on the premises of an ancient Roman Catholic priory, he built the first English playhouse, which he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... inroads even upon the incessant | |auction-bridge playing, and he or she who neither | |dances nor plays auction has a dull time of it. | |Washington society is rather methodical in its | |dancing. Monday nights are given up to the | |subscription dances at the Playhouse, and another | |set at the Willard. Tuesday night the army dances | |are given at the Playhouse. On Wednesdays are the | |regular Chevy Chase Club dinner dances, and on | |Thursdays are those at the Navy Club. On Friday ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... meeting place should be at the chaperon's. The vestibule of the theater is awkward, except for parties of four. A stage is the best vehicle to convey your guests to the playhouse. At the theater the host sees that his guests are provided with playbills. He gives the tickets to the usher, and precedes the party down the aisle. He indicates the order of sitting. A man should go in first, followed by the woman with ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... will drink no wine till Christmas, but is delighted to find that hippocras, being a mixture of two wines, is not necessarily included in his vow. He vows he will not go to the play until Christmas, but then he borrows money from another man and goes with the borrowed money; or goes to a new playhouse which was not open when the vow was made. He buys books which no decent man would own to having bought, but then he excuses himself on the plea that he has only read them and has not put them in his library. Thus, along the whole ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... this playhouse, of which the parquet occupied the ground floor of the Pavillon de Marsan, underwent a strange metamorphosis when it became the legislative hall for the National Convention. All the names and emblems ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... days the Four Corners was used chiefly in the autumn months, and as a playhouse for the feeble pastor. Mark Ellwell built a summer home ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Radisson and I escorted Lady Kirke and her daughter to the play, riding in one of those ponderous coaches, with four belaced footmen clinging behind and postillions before. At the entrance to the playhouse was a great concourse of crowding people, masked ladies, courtiers with pages carrying torches for the return after dark, merchants with linkmen, work folk with lanterns, noblemen elbowing tradesmen from the wall, tradesmen elbowing mechanics; ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... alone. Segrais has distinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity of judging, into three classes (he might have said the same of writers, too, if he had pleased). In the lowest form he places those whom he calls les petits esprits—such things as are our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse, who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit; prefer a quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant expression. These are mob-readers. If Virgil and Martial steed for Parliament-men, we know already who would carry it. But though they ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... against the sorely harassed object of the gangsman's quest, rendering it, amongst other things, extremely unsafe for him to indulge in those unconventional outbursts which, under happier conditions, so uniformly marked his jovial moods. At the playhouse, for example, he could not heave empty bottles or similar tokens of appreciation upon the stage without grave risk of incurring the fate that overtook Steven David, Samuel Jenkins and Thomas Williams, three sailors of Falmouth town who, merely because they adopted so unusual ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play and here have I caught sight of him ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... the sign says. Look, girls! Look, Walter!" and Nan excitedly pointed out the sheet hung above the arched entrance of the playhouse. "'A Rural Beauty'!" she cried. "That's the very picture those two girls took part ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... plain to understand ends of playhouse verse, my lord," said the Colonel suddenly. "Has your Grace no ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... from England. The printer tells his hawkers that he has got "an excellent new song just brought from London." I have somewhat of a tendency that way myself; and upon hearing a coxcomb from thence displaying himself with great volubility upon the park, the playhouse, the opera, the gaming ordinaries, it was apt to beget in me a kind of veneration for his parts and accomplishments. 'Tis not many years, since I remember a person who by his style and literature seems to have been corrector of a hedge-press in some blind alley about Little Britain, proceed gradually ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... at the gate, gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher-boy who galloped his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes and common, whistled wild melodies (caught up in abominable playhouse galleries), and joked with a hundred cook-maids, on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servants' entrance. The rooks in the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the peacocks walked demurely ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is the most original and lively of all. The serio-comic advice to the gallant how he "should behave himself in a playhouse"[305] is a perfect picture of what was daily taking place, be the play Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Dekker's "Patient Grissil."[306] Of course the gallant must sit on the stage and "on the very rushes," which in the theatre, and also in palaces and houses, continued as ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... made anew, with happiness, effectiveness, health! She realized that a satisfactory understanding of it would come slowly; but walking here in the winter sunshine along the village street, she had that sensation of strangeness which the child has on coming from the lighted playhouse into the street.... The set vision that tormented her within—that, too, might it ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... of Mrs. Verbruggen and her first husband, handsome Will Mountford, will be found in "Echoes of the Playhouse."] ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... splashed till the novelty began to wear off a little, then adopted Mrs. Halford's suggestion about going back to their gooseberry playhouse. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... said Midget; "let's just keep this for a playhouse. But maybe it isn't right; maybe we ought to do ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... how old we get! Your mother was younger than I, you know, and I remember that SHE seemed to me mighty young to have a baby! And now here's her baby's baby! Your mother was like an exquisite child, Rosey-posy, showing off little Bess. They lived in a little playhouse of a cottage, with blue curtains, and blue china, and a snubnosed little maid in blue! I passed it on my way to school,—I had been teaching for seven years or so, then,—and your mother would call out from the garden ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... compositions are darkly tinctured by the incomprehensible visions of Jacob Behmen; and his discourse on the absolute unlawfulness of stage entertainments is sometimes quoted for a ridiculous intemperance of sentiment and language.—"The actors and spectators must all be damned: the playhouse is the porch of Hell, the place of the Devil's abode, where he holds his filthy court of evil spirits: a play is the Devil's triumph, a sacrifice performed to his glory, as much as in the heathen temples of Bacchus or Venus, &c., &c." But these sallies ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... kinds of bark. I hab to keep de head comb and grease with lard. De lil' white chillun play with me but not de udder nigger chilluns much. Us pull de long, leaf grass and plait it and us make rag doll and playhouse and grapevine swing. Dere's plenty grapes, scudlong, sour blue grape and sweet, white grape. Dey make jelly and wine outta dem. Dey squeeze de grapes and put de juice ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... happy day as it was, but it was over at last, and after they had eaten their supper, where Kirsty served it to them in their playhouse, Scotty went to the house to bid the old woman good-bye, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... yet, stately and tall, With a top that once shone like the sun. It whispers of muster-field, playhouse, and ball, Of gallantries, courtship, and fun. It is hardly the stick for the dude of to-day, He would swear it was deucedly plain, But the halos of memory crown its decay— My grandfather's ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... no question that Shakespeare held at first a subordinate rank in the theatre. Dowdal, writing in 1693, tells us "he was received into the playhouse as a servitor"; which probably means that he started as an apprentice to some actor of standing,—a thing not unusual at the time. It will readily be believed that he could not be in such a place long without recommending himself to a higher one. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... fortune, now raised to the highest splendour, and dispensing hospitalities more than regal in magnificence;—these are the spectacles which make the masquerade a tiresome mockery; and it is exactly because we get the veritable article for nothing that we neither seek playhouse nor ballroom, but go out into the streets and highways for our drama, and take our Kembles and Macreadys as we find them at taverns, at railway-stations, on the grassy slopes of Malvern, or the breezy cliffs of Brighton. Once admit that the wild-flower plucked at random has more true delicacy ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the Turk's-Head houses in Cannon Street in 1672. Mary Long was the widow of William Long, and her initials, together with those of her husband, appear on a token issued from the Rose tavern in Bridge Street, Covent Garden. Mary Long's token from the "Rose coffee house by the playhouse" in Covent Garden is shown among the group of coffee-house keepers' ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... now if by my suit you'll not be won, You know what your unkindness oft has done,— I'll e'en forsake the playhouse, and turn Nun." ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... work, bullying them into being linked with a work and a method they despise, and who is trying to atone for it all—this vast terrible schooling, ten hours a fay, forty years, two hundred thousand men's lives—by piecing together professors and scholars, putting up a little playhouse of learning, before the world, to give a few fresh young boys and girls four years with paper books?—a man the very thought of whom has ruined more men and devastated more faiths and created more cowards and brutes ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... did not think they had a plenitude of power in this matter, they would not have damned all the canons of 1640." What doth he mean? A grave divine could not answer all his playhouse and Alsatia[13] cant, &c. He hath read Hudibras, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... unfolded. Each motive, as the stiff psychologist of the nineteenth century, with his plaster-of-Paris categories and pigeon holes and classifications, labelled the teeming creatures of the mind, becomes anon a strutting actor upon a multitudinous stage, and an audience in a crowded playhouse. Scenes are enacted the febrile fancy of a Poe or a de Maupassant never could have conjured. The complex, the neurosis, the compulsion, the obsession, the slip of speech, the trick of manner, the devotion ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... time nearly arrived at the playhouse, Miss Price, after a moment's reflection, said, that since fortune favoured them, a fair opportunity was now offered to signalize their courage, which was to go and sell oranges in the very playhouse, in the sight of the duchess and the whole court. The proposal being worthy of the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... last time that it was put to a sound practical test it did not fail. While Irving was a boy, Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre gave, in well-considered conditions, the simple method a trial. Phelps's playhouse was situated in the unfashionable neighbourhood of Islington. But the prophets of evil, who were no greater strangers to Phelps's generation than they are to our own, were ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Precious Ones, they were wildly happy. They had never had a real playhouse before, big enough to live in, and this was quite in accordance with their ideals. They were "visiting" and "keeping store" and "cooking," and quarreling, and having a perfectly beautiful time with their two disreputable dolls, utterly ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... ladies, that they might have their recreation, between the two first towers, on the outside, were placed the tiltyard, the barriers or lists for tournaments, the hippodrome or riding-court, the theatre or public playhouse, and natatory or place to swim in, with most admirable baths in three stages, situated above one another, well furnished with all necessary accommodation, and store of myrtle-water. By the river-side was the fair garden ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to you, or of you, Mistress Bessie?" replied the Squire, playfully. "And what is all your useless, chattering life but pleasuring? The playhouse is but a perilous place for giddy-brained lasses like you; but for once, harkee, for once, we'll venture on taking you, if you'll promise to keep your silly head safe under the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... her danger from Singleton, in order to dissuade her from going at all, unless she allowed me to attend her; but I was answered, with her usual saucy smartness, that if there were no cause of fear of being met with at the playhouse, when there were but two playhouses, surely there was less at church, when there were so many churches. The chairmen were ordered to carry her to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... and dismissing him at last unpunished; and adds, that it was even said, that after the exhibition the gangs of robbers were evidently multiplied. The Doctor doubts the assertion, giving as his reason that highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, and that it was not possible for any one to imagine that he might rob with safety, because he saw Macheath reprieved upon the stage. But if Johnson had wished to be convinced, he might very easily have discovered that highwaymen and housebreakers did frequent ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... for a girl's playhouse, on Public Square—this playhouse may be given as first prize to the girl of school age writing the best essay on "Why ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... uninterrupted opportunity for her talents. She turned the playhouse into a theatre, and organized a supporting company. Sometimes Miss Watts assisted with the scenario, sometimes Isabelle was sole author ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... was dressed, you may be sure, to all the advantage possible, and had all the jewels on that I was mistress of. My Lord ——, to whom I had made the invitation, sent me a set of fine music from the playhouse, and the ladies danced, and we began to be very merry, when about eleven o'clock I had notice given me that there were some gentlemen coming in masquerade. I seemed a little surprised, and began to apprehend some disturbance, when my Lord —— perceiving it, spoke to me to ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the coach to pass a week in Boston. His mother had not forgotten to warn him of possible dangers and snares; it was then that he made her a promise which, at first from principle and later from sentiment, he always most sacredly kept—that he would not enter a playhouse. As he told the story, it was easy for a listener to comprehend how many good wishes flew after the adventurer, and how much wild beating of the heart he himself experienced as the coach rolled away; how bewildering the city ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... now lost his regard for every thing but the playhouse; he invites, three times a week, one or other to drink claret, and talk of the drama. His first care in the morning is to read the play-bills; and, if he remembers any lines of the tragedy which is to be represented, walks about the shop, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... price of admission was raised to two shillings. I cannot approve of this. The company may be more select; but a number of the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and innocent entertainment. An attempt to abolish the one-shilling gallery at the playhouse has been very properly ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... my little brother's grave and watered the sorrel that grew on it—I thought it was sorrow, and so tended it; and I had walked around the house and said good-bye to every window, and to the robin's nest, and to my playhouse in the shed. I had put a clean ribbon on the cat's neck, and kissed my doll, and given presents to my little sisters. Now, shivering beneath my new grey jacket in the chill of the May morning air, I stood ready to part with my mother. She was a little flurried with having just ironed my pinafores ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... as a college friend of Smith's, Dr. Maclaine of the Hague, played a minor part. But an amateur representation of an unexceptionable play under the eye of the professors was one thing, the erection of a public playhouse, catering like other public playhouses for the too licentious taste of the period, was another, and the project of Mr. Bogle and his friends in 1762 excited equal alarm in the populace of the city, in the Town Council, and in the University. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae |
