"Proscenium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instinct. Addie's presentation of herself to the small and select audience was eminently dramatic, without being theatrical. She filled the stage. It was as if the lights had suddenly gone down in the auditorium and up in the proscenium, as if a hush fell, as if every ear opened wide to catch a first accent. And Addie's first accents were soft and liquid—and accompanied by a smile which was calculated to soften the seven hearts which had begun to beat a little quicker at her coming. With the smile and the ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... spectator. There is Policinel—the eternal Punch—with his audience, a short distance from the Cathedral. All over Europe, the most enlightened portion of the world, is this little Motley to be seen frolicking with flashes of satire; the motto for his proscenium should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... noble faces, waving feathers, sparkling jewels, sculptured shoulders, uniforms, robes of costly stuffs and every conceivable bright colour. Light poured from the huge lustre in the centre of the roof, ran along the crimson velvet cushions of the boxes, and flashed upon the gilded frame of the proscenium—satyrs and acanthus scrolls carved in the manner of a century ago. Pit and orchestra scarcely contained the crowd of men who stood in lively conversation, their backs turned to the stage, their lorgnettes ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... minutes late—naturally. All the people in the place stare at us and whisper about us, partly because we have a conspicuous place—the proscenium loge to the right of the stage, partly because we are in full toilet—an almost unprecedented circumstance in that homely theater—partly, I suppose, because Adelaide is ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... delight in allowing themselves to be tyrannized over by a feeble being, and Gaudissart had found his tyrant in Jenny. He was bringing her home at eleven o'clock from the Gymnase, whither he had taken her, in full dress, to a proscenium box on the ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... curtain parted in the center and drew in graceful folds to the edges of the proscenium. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... there are people who like such novels, or pictures, or music, your case is none the better, for ordinary people don't get trapped into being bored by them, and such works can live without general support, whilst drama has to appeal to the bulk of us, and you cannot stick over the proscenium-arch some phrase such ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... foot of the abrupt hills, over which towered the sun-touched snows of Taygetus, we saw, close on our right, almost the only relic of the lost ages—the theater. Riding across the field of wheat, which extended all over the scene of the Spartan gymnastic exhibitions, we stood on the proscenium and contemplated these silent ruins, and the broad, beautiful landscape. It is one of the finest views in Greece—not so crowded with striking points, not so splendid in associations as that of Athens, but larger, grander, richer in coloring. Besides the theater, the only remains are some ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... to the church on the hill. One of the most remarkable things here is the Olympic Theatre, which was begun by Palladio and finished by his son. It is a small Grecian theatre, exactly as he supposes those ancient theatres to have been, with the same proscenium, scenes, decorations, and seats for the audience. There appeared to me to be some material variations from the theatre at Pompeii. In the latter the seats go down to the level of the orchestra, which they do not here, and at Pompeii there is no depth ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... circle—if not the lady of fashion, in case the student realized one of his fantastic dreams of aimless ambition. The quiet learner felt an immense flame usurp the place of his blood; he seemed gifted with the powers of the athletic Duke of Munich, Christopher the Leaper, whose statue adorned the proscenium, and like him, clearing the orchestra with a bound of twelve feet, he would have grasped the girl wasting her graces of voice and person on these boors, and carried her off to ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... here. The sky shines in through the gashes in the roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew smear the faded colours, and make spectral maps upon the panels; lean rags are dangling down where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium; the stage has rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy depth beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... again, falling, falling, gripping with aching hands, and behold! a clap of sound, a burst of light, and he was in a brightly lit hall with a roaring multitude of people beneath his feet. The people! His people! A proscenium, a stage rushed up towards him, and his cable swept down to a circular aperture to the right of this. He felt he was travelling slower, and suddenly very much slower. He distinguished shouts of "Saved! The Master. He is safe!" The stage rushed up towards ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... deprivation of the Czechs of a national stage stirred the people to the depths, and it was not long before men and women were busy collecting the money to build and sustain a Czech theatre at Prague. The funds were raised, and the place was built, and the Bohemian people inscribed over the proscenium the challenging words: "Narod Sobe"—The ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... exactly what I wanted. He spoke to one of the authorities, who was politeness itself and, showing us through a door and up three steps, introduced us behind the curtain. Our heads were high above the opening of the proscenium, which was about the size and shape of the opening of the fireplace in a fairly large room. We were in a grove of puppets hanging up against the walls like turkeys in a poulterer's shop at Christmas—scores and scores of them. There were six or ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... accompanable concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my troth, of such a mingling much might come. Young ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... were the clumps of cypress trees which framed a vista of endless wooden garden and formed their drop scene. They were sitting immediately beneath the wooden framework made of two upright beams and one horizontal, which formed the primitive proscenium, and from which little coloured lights had hung during the performance. The King and Queen and their lords and ladies who had looked on at the living puppet show had all left the amphitheatre; they had put on their masks and their dominoes, and were now dancing ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Slow, solemn music, muffled drums, and deep-toned bells, were heard at a distance;—on a sudden the sounds ceased, and all was still—again they were renewed, and then intermitted with short pauses; during which several persons passed backwards and forwards, in the proscenium or foreground of the tent, at if engaged ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of the Moon-box, and so on to her Drapery; but, at all events, she was Alight, and ran about the Scene, screaming piteously. The poor little cowardly wretches her Companions all ran away in sheer terror; and as for the two Musqueteers of the Guard who stood sentry at each side of the Proscenium, one dastard Losel fell on his Marrow-bones and began bawling for his Saints, whilst the other, a more active Craven, drops his musket and bayonet with a clang, and clambers into the Orchestra, hitting ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Higher up, the boxes present the same scene of confusion: actresses and courtesans, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics solemn of manner and frowning, lying back in their chairs with the impassive gloom of judges beyond the reach of corruption. The proscenium boxes are ablaze with light and splendor, occupied by celebrities of the world of finance, decolletee, bare-armed women, gleaming with jewels like the Queen of Sheba when she visited the King of the Jews. But one of those great boxes on the left is entirely ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... size and shape and physical appointments of the theatre he is writing for. Plays must be built in one way to fit the theatre of Dionysus, in another way to fit the Globe upon the Bankside, in still another way to fit the modern electric-lighted stage behind a picture-frame proscenium. The dramatist in constructing his story is hedged in by a multitude of physical restrictions, of which he must make a special study in order to force them to contribute to the presentation of his truth instead of detracting from it. In this regard, again, the ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... when he rolled about, an unknown student, on the Parisian wave, and had lifted his thoughts toward some pale patrician girl, toward some pretty creature he had caught a glimpse of, leaning back in a dark-blue coupe, or framed in by the red velvet hangings of a proscenium box, had he more perfectly incarnated the ideal of his desire than in so charming a creature. Dreams of power, visions of love of his twentieth year, had now become tangible to him and at forty he stretched out his feverish ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... always fond of the diversion of the theater. The party was to include General and Mrs. Grant. But the general's plans required him to go that evening to Philadelphia, and so Major Rathbone and Miss Harris were substituted. This party occupied the upper proscenium box on the ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham |
