"Playhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little boy named Gary. He was building a playhouse with them. And as soon as he had carried in the wood and swept the walks, he would call, "Grandma, everything's done! May I play ...
— Rags - (The Story Of A Dog) • Karen Niemann
... 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 ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... by a rich western friend the chums established a photo playhouse in the great metropolis, where ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... 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 ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... with the two who had so recently left the house. In fancy she saw the brilliantly lighted streets, the throng of pleasure seekers and pretty women in gay attire. She heard the sound of wheels, the persistent "honk-honk" of motor cars, and, in the playhouse, the crash of cymbals and drums. Somewhere in the happy crowd were Allison and Isabel, while she ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... 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 ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... 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, let every man like or dislike ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... long-since rejected tragedy. Osorio's time had at any rate come. The would-be fratricide changed his name to Ordonio, and ceased to stand sponsor to the play, which was rechristened Remorse, and accepted at last, upon Byron's recommendation, by the committee of Drury Lane Theatre, the playhouse at whose doors it had knocked vainly fifteen years before it was performed there for the first time on the 23d of January 1813. The prologue and epilogue, without which in those times no gentleman's drama was accounted complete, was written, the former by Charles Lamb, the latter by the author ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... "The 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 ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... bah'rl iv nails, a 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' ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... scientifically, though so consummately elegant his execution: and his musical memory was so tenacious that he could whistle through the melodies of whole overtures; and these, he said, he could obtain having once heard from the orchestra of a playhouse, or a holiday band, in both of which he took extreme delight." Bewick's contempt for luxury was remarkable. He generally slept, even in the depth of winter, with the windows of his chamber open, though in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... of the first Quarto of Bussy D'Ambois Chapman issued a sequel, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, which, as we learn from the title-page, had been "often presented at the private Playhouse in the White-Fryers." But in the interval he had written two other plays based on recent French history, Byrons Conspiracie and The Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, and in certain aspects The Revenge ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... visit him. She herself tells that the last time she ever saw him he said to her, "before a room full of people, 'It's you that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie,' 'Me, Master Lou,' I said, 'I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.' 'Ay, woman,' said he, 'but it was the good dramatic way ye had of ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... rabid Churchmen, of any school of thought, ever again take exception to the irreligious character of playhouse entertainments. Let them read the advertisement of the Lyceum Theatre in The Times for March 13:—"During Holy Week this theatre will be closed, re-opening on Saturday, March 28, with The Bells, which will also be played ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... just exactly where she is or I'd go bring her back, of course," she sez; "but I know 'at she's somewhere hereabouts, 'cause the day before my birthday—why, it was only day before yesterday, wasn't it? It seems years ago. Well, day before yesterday I found a big pan o' cakes in my playhouse, an' no one ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... Woodstock-street, near Hanover Square, and then in Castle-street, near Cavendish Square. His tragedy, which was brought on the stage twelve years after by Garrick, having been at this time rejected by the manager of the playhouse, he was forced to relinquish his hopes of becoming a dramatic writer, and engaged himself to write for the Gentleman's Magazine. The debates in Parliament were not then allowed to be given to the public with ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... 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 row in the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... 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. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... anger, and he turned back toward the theater. But he had been among the last to leave, and already the lights of the playhouse were being turned out. The boy in charge of the check room would ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... it seemed Nicknack would do, for he was hungrily eating the leaves of the branches from which Jan and Ted had made their playhouse. ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... en time. Seems like de Lord had just open up en fix de way for us to have everything we want. Oh, honey, we chillun never been harness up in no little bit of place to play like dese chillun bout here dese days. We had all de big fields en de pretty woods to wander round en bout en make us playhouse in. Seems like de Lord had made de little streams just right for we chillun to play in en all kind of de prettiest flowers to come up right down side de paths us little feet had made dere, but dat wasn' nothin. Dere was flowers scatter bout everywhe' you look ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... men and women who had gone out to welcome the poetry of Shakespeare and the wit of Congreve were now rather readers than play-goers, and were most ready to enjoy an appeal to their feelings when that appeal reached them in book form. In the playhouse they came to expect bustle and pantomime rather than literature. This decline in theatrical habits prepared a domestic audience for the novelists, and accounts for that feverish and apparently excessive anxiety with which the earliest great novels ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... respectable private house—and yet there are respectable people here, old and young, all listening and seeming to enjoy it. That shows there is insincerity somewhere; either these people hush their sensitive feelings in the playhouse, or they are hypocrites at home, and profess to be much more ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... that had preceded it, and two years later a still finer masterpiece, "La Buona Figluola," written to a text furnished by the poet Goldoni, and founded on the story of Richardson's "Pamela." This opera was produced at every playhouse on the Italian peninsula in the course of a few years. A pleasant mot by the Duke of Brunswick is worth preserving in this connection. Piccini had married a beautiful singer named Vicenza Sibilla, and his home was very happy. One day the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... new fair pair of locks, which vex me, though like a foole I helped her the other night to buy them), and to Mrs. Pierces, and there staying a little I away before to White Hall, and into the new playhouse there, the first time I ever was there, and the first play I have seen since before the great plague. By and by Mr. Pierce comes, bringing my wife and his, and Knipp. By and by the King and Queene, Duke and Duchesse, and all the great ladies of the Court; which, indeed, was a fine sight. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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 ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... 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 course of his life, he cheats himself continually. He prefers ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Before 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 hymns ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... father is at the playhouse: if you please, we will read it now; but I must call on a young lady first—Hey, who's there? Is my footman there? Order my chair to the door. Your ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... hath more discoursing in his head Than Jove when Pallas issu'd from his brain; And still he strives to be delivered Of all his thoughts at once; but all in vain; For, as we see at all the playhouse-doors, When ended is the play, the dance, and song, A thousand townsmen, gentlemen, and whores, Porters, and serving-men, together throng,— So thoughts of drinking, thriving, wenching, war, And borrowing money, ranging in his ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... not in an amiable mood when Stuart led her to the box in the millionaire's playhouse which New York society built to exhibit its gowns, jewellery ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... playhouse was in a big summer park. How a film that was shown gave a clew to an important mystery is ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... the vulgarities of the self-exploiting professional office hunters. Parties are parties. Professional politics and politicians are probably neither worse nor better—barring their pretensions—than other lines of human endeavor. The play actor must be agreeable on the stage of the playhouse; the politician on the highways and the hustings, which constitute his playhouse—all the world a stage—neither to be seriously blamed for the dissimulation which, being an asset, becomes, as it were, a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... 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 of a life-time, the culture of a nation all furnish bits ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... of the world as I have done, than to be fooled of the world, as you scholars are? But be merry, my lads; you have happened upon the most excellent vocation in the world for money. They come north and south to bring it to our playhouse; and for honours, who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kemp? He is not counted a gentleman that knows not Dick Burbage and Will Kemp. There's not a country wench that can dance Sellenger's round,[122] but can talk of Dick ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... about in search of her fate of the dark and silent hours. And then—Valentine and Julian were in the comparative dimness of Shaftesbury Avenue—a huge red cross on a black background started out of the gloom above a playhouse. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of this reached the ears of Aunt Teresa, who fancied that Matilda was a governess. The worthy spinster herself never entered a playhouse, and if any one should whisper to her that one of the Meyer girls was employed in the theatre, it would be easy to say that it was another Meyer and not her kinswoman, Meyer being such a very common name. So poor Meyer really began to believe that now the whole ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... prologue, both 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 ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... husband. After dinner I took leave to go to Westminster, where I was at the Privy Seal Office all day, signing things and taking money, so that I could not do as I had intended, that is to return to them and go to the Red Bull Playhouse, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... herself, so pleased was she with their pleasure. All was joy and gladness, and she named the hour of the first rehearsal and their introduction to Mr Sheridan, who knew as well as another how pretty faces fill the playhouse; and was proceeding, when Maria, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Muharram, a Moslem miracle play; and on our return to Bombay I went to see it. I had to go alone, because Richard had seen it before, and none of the other Europeans apparently cared to see it at all. The crowd was so great I had to get a policeman's help. They let me into the playhouse at last. The whole place was a blaze of lamps and mirrors. A brazier filled with wood was flaring up, and there was a large white tank of water. It was an extraordinary sight. The fanaticism, frenzy, and the shrieks ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... 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 then gave his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... of honest, but mean Parents Born, These Times is only made the rich Man's scorn, Howe'er her Beauty tempting some young Spark He takes her to the Playhouse and the Park, Where he with many Imprecations vows, His Fortune and his Life to her he owes; But finding his Temptations are in vain, Her Company in Wrath he do's refrain; Which at the first may touch her tender Heart, And ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... a great many ideas, first and last. They were generally unique and interesting at least, though it is to be feared that few of them were practical. However, it was Nancy's idea to build Peter a playhouse in the plot of ground at the back of the Charlestown house, and it was she who was the architect and head carpenter. That plan had brought much happiness to Peter and much comfort to the family. It was Nancy's idea ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of this sublime Playhouse thunder (with real bullets in it, which killed some men, and burnt considerable property), the Neisse Commandant (not Roth this time, Roth is now in Brunn),—his "fortnight of siege," October 17th to October 31st, being accomplished or nearly so,—beat chamade; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at the theatre 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 in ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... is how to build shacks for our own use; so we will borrow one from the communal home of the Iroquois. It is not necessary for us to make this one hundred feet long, as the Iroquois Indians did. We can make a diminutive one as a playhouse for our children, a moderate-sized one as a camp for our Boy Scouts, or a good-sized one for ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... de young missus be gone, I go an' kick ovah her playhouse an' upset her toys. When she come back, she be hoppin' mad, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... enjoyed by the Rose and the Hummums. The former was conveniently situated for first-nighters at the King's Playhouse, as Pepys found on a May midday in 1668. Anxious to see the first performance of Sir Charles Sedley's new play, which had been long awaited with great expectation, he got to the theatre at noon, only to find the doors not yet open. Gaining admission ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... to 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 ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... an actor by profession, and jack of all trades through necessity. He could play any part from Macbeth to the hind leg of an elephant, equally well or bad, as the case might be. What he did not know about a theatre was not worth knowing; what he could not do about a playhouse was not worth doing—provided you took his word for it. From this it might be inferred he was a useful man, but he was not. He had a queer way of doing things he ought not to do, and of leaving undone things he should have done. Good nature, however, was ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... identify the people who wanted to leave the theatre between the acts. I explained that as our performances did not last from early afternoon until nearly midnight it was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre until the play was over. At a Japanese playhouse, however, a portion of the audience may be disposed to go home at some stage of the proceedings and return later. The careful manager of a small theatre identifies these patrons by impressing a small stamp on the palms ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... to deceive by whitening the sepulchre? Is it yourselves? The devil has blinded you already. Is it God? Who shall hide anything from Him? I tell you that he who makes the pursuit of virtue a luxury, and takes refuge from sin, not before the altar, but in the playhouse, is casting out devils by Beelzebub, the prince ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... it? I was talking about the whiskey punch," said Miller, as we all roared with laughter. "I couldn't bring Hurst, you know, if he wouldn't come. He left the playhouse even before we did, with some ladies—and we came away before it was over—so I sent up to tell him we were going to start in ten minutes, and had a place for him; and the Boots came down and said they had just had supper in, and the gentleman could not possibly come just yet. Well, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... high 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 ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... man be an assiduous frequenter of the playhouse, for the drama will also open the world's heart to him, and that by a plainer and less elusive speech. Seated in the theatre among his kind, he knows a deeper pleasure than other men; for while to these the changing scene brings remembrance or anticipation ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... so open and black a theatre, that it wanted (that which is the only grace and setting-out of a tragedy) a full and understanding auditory; and that since that time I have noted, most of the people that come to that playhouse resemble those ignorant asses (who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books), I present it to the general ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... I now have the honour to be By 'Man'ging' a 'Playhouse' a double M.P., In this my address I think fit to complain Of certain encroachments on great Drury Lane," ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... occasional; the embarrassment of the man's talk incessant. He was plainly a practised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, the elegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, told us that. We, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we could see the actors were upon some material business and performing well, but the plot of the drama remained undiscoverable. Names of places, the name of Captain Hart, occasional disconnected words, tantalised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 produce plays, for which he receives the magnificent ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... saw, she was once more sitting with affectionate reverence at his feet. When he left her in a great low house that fronted on the majestic Hudson, June clung to him with tears and of her own accord kissed him for the first time since she had torn her little playhouse to pieces at the foot of the beech down in the mountains far away. And Hale went back with peace in his heart, but to trouble in ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... use of the term dramatic in this connection, let us, in the outset, be understood to have no reference whatever to the theatre and stage-effect, or to the sundry devices whereby the playhouse is made at once popular and intolerable. Nor shall we anticipate any charge of irreverence; since we claim the opportunity and indulge only the license of the painter, who, in the treatment of Scriptural themes, seeks both ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... mentioned 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 ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... goose-quill winged with two feathers"; and also hints that the play failed in representation through its being acted in winter in "an open and black theatre," and because it wanted "a full and understanding auditory." "Since that time," he sagely adds, "I have noted most of the people that come to the playhouse resemble those ignorant asses who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books." And then comes the ever-recurring wail of the playwright, Elizabethan as well as Georgian, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... really cultivating affection, of its superiority to books, and on the pleasure and profit of self-denial. I do not mean to accuse Clem of downright hypocrisy. I have known many persons come up from the country and go into raptures over a playhouse sun and moon who have never bestowed a glance or a thought on the real sun and moon to be seen from their own doors; and we are all aware it by no means follows because we are moved to our very depths by the spectacle of unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance in a novel, that therefore ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... were wildest and the flowers 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 morning before ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... portion of the crowd that did not relieve its feelings by either talking or shouting, there was observable the indefinable something that says, 'Now the real fun's going to begin.' You see the same sort of manifestation in the playhouse when the favourite comedian makes his entrance. He may have come on quite soberly only to say, 'Tea is ready,' but the grin on the face of the public is as ready as the tea. The people sit forward on the edge of their seats, and the whole ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... barn had been rigged up as a rustic playhouse, the stage covering one end, elevated about three feet from the threshing floor. Curtains with daub pictures were strung across the stage, separated in the center and shifted backward and forward, as the varying scenes of the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... see a whole playhouse in tears. But the audience at a theatre, though a public assembly, are not a public body. They are not Incorporated into a framework of exclusive, narrow-minded interests of their own. Each individual looks out of his own insignificance ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... It was a bitter deception, there was no fire. They turned back; and, when they met Uncle and Aunt, also entirely out of breath with the chase, Aunt declared that this was only another case of Chicago's base deceptions. It could joke with dead people and jest with fires and make a playhouse exhibition costing many millions of dollars, and fool old people and the young ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... him, for he did not tell it till a great while afterwards; but, however, it's likely enough, as the thing turned out, that he was not far out of the way, for towards the middle of dinner, as he says, they were talking of stage-plays, having a playhouse, and being great play-actors at Mount Juliet's Town; and Miss Isabella turns short to my ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... 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. One of the strangest events, however, happened ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... simple, great soul that he got thus to be part of herself." Of his works nothing can or need be said here; enough to add, as Carlyle further says, "His works are so many windows through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him.... 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 his thought as he could translate into the stone that was given, with ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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 ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... many-coloured as a rainbow. And she is remembered, after the lapse of centuries, not only as the Queen-Regent of Misrule, the benevolent tyrant of cly-filers and heavers, of hacks and blades, but as the incomparable Roaring Girl, free of the playhouse, who perchance presided with Ben Jonson over ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... hard to write of Richmond Hill—a hill no longer, but a shabby playhouse, which was not even successful. The art-loving impresarios spent the little money they had very speedily and there was no more Richmond ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... India Francis from Norfolk Island A playhouse opened Her Majesty's birthday kept Stills destroyed Ceres storeship arrives and Experiment from India Ship Otter from America Natives Harvest got in Deaths A hut demolished by the military A Transport arrives with prisoners from Ireland A criminal ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... 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 in a fortnight of thy ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... so universal, that they absorb all 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
... eschew the mere meaningless blague that no one could better employ with the creatures of Versailles, who liked their olives well oiled, or the Jeannetons and Mimis of the Italian comedy and the playhouse. Under his genial and shining influence Olivia soon forgot the ignominy of these recent days, and it was something gained in that direction that already she looked ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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 and fools in all ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. Here I cannot forbear relating a story which Sir William Davenant told Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe; Rowe told it Mr. Pope, and Mr. Pope told it to Dr. Newton, the late editor of Milton, and from a gentleman, who heard ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... ill, and they, who ne'er durst write, Turn critics, out of mere revenge and spite: A playhouse gives them fame; and up there starts, From a mean fifth-rate wit, a man of parts. (So common faces on the stage appear; We take them in, and they turn beauties here.) Our author fears those critics as his fate; And those he ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the distinguishing characters of men and women under the names of Musical Instruments, the Distress of the News-writers, the Inventory of the Playhouse, and the Description of the Thermometer,[49] which I cannot but look upon as the greatest ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... is some error here. The city had no jurisdiction over Whitefriars, or Blackfriars either; but there was a playhouse in Blackfriars at the time, and it was suppressed in 1584, though not by the city authorities. Possibly ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... published, in quarto, undated, 'A Catalogue of the Original Paintings, Busts, and Carved Figures, &c. &c., now Exhibiting by the Society of Sign-painters, at the Large Room, the upper end of Bow Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite the Playhouse.'" ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of politics. There are no less than five operas every week, three of which are burlettas; a very bad company, except the Niccolina, who beats all the actors and actresses I ever saw for vivacity and variety. We had a good set four years ago, which did not take at all; but these being at the playhouse, and at play prices, the people, instead of resenting it, as was expected, are transported with them, call them their own operas, and I will not swear that they do not take them for English operas. They huzzaed the King twice the other night, for bespeaking one on the night ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in her younger days, a friend of Burke, 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
... romping over from a near-by playhouse, a little tepee made of cast off "shutters" the janitor had put outside after wrenching them from hinges, and the girls had promptly availed themselves of the material for ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... largest playhouse of New York and of the New World! Imagine it filled with people from foot-lights to the last row in the topmost gallery—orchestra, dress circle, and balconies—a huge uprising, semicircular bowl, lined with human beings. Imagine it thus, and then strip the stage; take ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... fits of the mother have troubled the kingdom; and for all Sir W.E. [William Earle] looks like a man-midwife, not yet delivered of so much as a cushion? But actors must have properties; and since the stages were voted down the only playhouse ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... date of composition must rest upon conjecture. It was, we are informed on the title-page, performed before their majesties (at Whitehall, the prologue adds), and also publicly at Salisbury Court, the playhouse in the Strand, opened in 1629. Consequently the 'praeludium,' the scene of which is laid in the new theatre, must belong to the last months of the author's life[325]. The question of the date is interesting principally on account of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... it, McTavish. It pleased her to come here with me; she'd make up a lunch of her own cooking and I would catch trout in the stream by the dogwoods yonder and fry the fish for her. Sometimes I'd barbecue a venison steak and—well, 'twas our playhouse, McTavish, and I who am no longer young—I who never played until I met her—I— I'm a bit foolish, I fear, but I found rest and comfort here, McTavish, even before I met her, and I'm thinking I'll have to come ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... to live. Both of you will love it when you are there for a few days. I don't mean to come to a hotel. I mean to take a little apartment, a furnished apartment at first, to see how you like it—two rooms and kitchenette, like a playhouse." ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... have Miss Lilian awhile," besought Claire. "I want her to inspect my playhouse, while you and mother put away the dishes ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... noisy throng of coaches, chairs, people afoot, lackeys, chair-men, boys, and such, in front of the playhouse when we arrived, and though we scanned all faces on whom the light fell, we had our wonted disappointment regarding that of Captain Falconer. We made our way to the pit, and passed the time till the bell and the chorus "Hats ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Metropolitan Opera Company opened a two weeks' engagement the previous Monday night, was one of the oldest theaters in San Francisco. It was located on Mission street between Third and Fourth streets and for a number of years was the leading playhouse of the city. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the other that Kent grinned as he thought of squeezing between. There were blankets. Within reach of his arm was a tiny stove, and close to the stove a supply of kindling and dry wood. The whole thing made him think of a child's playhouse. Yet there was still room for a wide, comfortable, cane-bottomed chair, a stool, and a smooth-planed board fastened under a window, so that it answered the purpose of a table. This table was ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... riding-cloak, handsomely laced, would become you wonderfully 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
... Playhouse, where Radisson, the American fur-trader, was in the royal box. Never was such a combination of French, English, and Indian savage as Sir John Kirke's son-in-law....He was not wont to dress so when he was last ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... plateno. Platitude plateco. Platter pladego. Plaudit aplauxdego. Plausible versxajna, aprobebla. Play (a game) ludi. Play (piano, etc.) ludi. Play about ludeti, petoli. Play (joke) sxerci. Play (theatrical) teatrajxo. Player ludanto. Playful petola. Playhouse (theatre) teatro. Plaything ludilo. Playtime ludtempo. Plead procesi, proparoladi. Pleasant placxa. Pleasant (manner) dolcxega. Please placxi. Please, if you se vi bonvolas, se placxos al vi. Pleasure, to give placxi. Pleasure, with plezure. Plebeian ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... in the corner 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— ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... younger man began to laugh, with conciliatory 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 ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse;[161] independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... stage of the Greek theatre was much broader, and at the same time shallower, than in a modern playhouse. ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... to have its "playhouse" for children. If fitted with screens to keep out mosquitoes, the younger members of the family, especially the girls, will literally "live in it" for six months of the year. I would suggest fitting it with canvas curtains to shut out wind and rain. I would also advise making ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... entered 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 ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... staging; theater, playhouse, arena, boards; degree, step, point; drama. Associated Words: histrionic, histrionism, histrionicism, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 of vagrants in buckram, and limmers in silk, parading away ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... who had seen no company and listened to no wits, the entertainment bestowed upon her was as wonderful as a night at the playhouse would have been. To watch the vivid changing face; to hearken to jesting stories of men and women who seemed like the heroes and heroines of her romances; to hear love itself—the love she trembled and palpitated ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... painful as not to be for a moment relievable by the exertions of reverie, but is instantly followed by furious or melancholy insanity; and suicide, or revenge, have frequently been the consequence. As was lately exemplified in Mr. Hackman, who shot Miss Ray in the lobby of the playhouse. So the poet describes the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... 'em, but land! they can't tell me nothing'! They often say, 'For massy sakes, Lucindy Bascom, how d' you know that?' 'Why,' says I to them, 'I don't ask no questions, 'n' folks don't tell me no lies; I just set in my winder, 'n' put two 'n' two together,—that's all I do.' I ain't never ben in a playhouse, but I don't suppose the play-actors git down off the platform on t' the main floor to explain to the folks what they've ben doin', do they? I expect, if folks can't understand their draymas when the're actin' of 'em out, they have ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... sword-hilts and maintaining as sour a face as that Puritan moping in a corner, pent up by a group of young swaggerers, who are disputing over a card at gleek. Vain men, not caring whether it was Paul's, the Tennis Court, or the playhouse, published their clothes, and talked as loud as they could, in order to appear at ease, and laughed over the Water Poet's last epigram or the last pamphlet of Marprelate. The soldiers bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and the Low Countries—how they helped ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... if by my suit you'll not be won, You know what your unkindness oft has done,— I'll e'en forsake the playhouse, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... venata he uses the more exquisite terms of coerulea and coerealis. Baronius (A.D. 501, No. 4, 5, 6) is satisfied that the blues were orthodox; but Tillemont is angry at the supposition, and will not allow any martyrs in a playhouse, (Hist. des ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... little better than barns, while those of the present day may vie with palaces in extent, splendour, and decoration; and nothing can more strongly exhibit the contrast between the present age and that of Queen Elizabeth, than the difference in the expense of a London theatre. The Rose playhouse, which was erected about the year 1592, cost only 103l. 2s. 7d.,—a sum which would scarcely pay half the expenses of a modern patent theatre for a single night. Only let the reader think of the rush roof of the Globe, and the gilt-work ceilings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... in my particular application, I cannot tell. In my opinion he seems such a one as will keep an entertainment to its primitive institution, and not suffer it to be changed, sometimes into a mooting hall, sometimes a school of rhetoric, now and then a dicing room, a playhouse, or a stage. For do not you observe some making fine orations and putting cases at a supper, others declaiming or reading some of their own compositions, and others proposing prizes to dancers and mimics? Alcibiades and Theodorus turned Polition's banquet into a temple of initiation, representing ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the home of her white folks she played with her mistress' children. In her own words "My mistress give us a task to do and when we got it done, we went to our playhouse in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense. Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down— Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... 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
... 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 talk ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... Spectator, No. 22 (Steele), Monday, 26 March, 1711. 'Your most humble servant, William Serene' writes to Mr. Spectator bewailing the fact that nobody on the stage rises according to merit. Although grown old in the playhouse service, and having often appeared on the boards, he has never had a line given him to speak. None the less 'I have acted', he asserts, 'several Parts of Household-stuff with great Applause for many years: I am one of the Men in the Hangings in the Emperour of the Moon.' [The allusion ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... if he'd waited for us, the sun came out from behind the mountain; the mists lifted and rolled away as if they had been gray curtains. Everything showed clear out like a playhouse, the same Jim and I used to see in Melbourne. From where we stood you could see everything, the green valley flats with the big old trees in clumps, some of 'em just the same as they'd been planted. The two little river-like silver threads winding ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... or two to let you know how deeply I appreciate the honor which the children who are the actors and frequenters of this cozy playhouse have conferred upon me. They have asked me to be their ambassador to invite the hearts and brains of New York to come down here and see the work they are doing. I consider it a grand distinction to be chosen as their intermediary. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... John Cennick, like Joseph Hart, was led to Christ after a reckless boyhood and youth, by the work of the Divine Spirit in his soul, independent of any direct outward influence. Sickened of his cards, novels, and playhouse pleasures, he had begun a sort of mechanical reform, when one day, walking in the streets of London, he suddenly seemed to hear the text spoken "I am thy salvation!" His consecration began ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... think too dear. When you to cultivate the plant are loth, 'Tis a shrewd sign 'twas never of your growth; And wit in northern climates will not blow, Except, like orange-trees, 'tis housed from snow. There needs no care to put a playhouse down, 'Tis the most desart place of all the town: We and our neighbours, to speak proudly, are, Like monarchs, ruined with expensive war; While, like wise English, unconcerned you sit, And see us play the tragedy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... 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, as the numerous and gay assembly ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... box-office before even the doors were opened, so that they could get first choice of the unreserved seats which sold at twenty-five cents. Then there would ensue the long, tedious wait in the dimly lighted cavern of the playhouse, smelling with a curious fascination of stale cigars and staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... buy their clothes in Paris and are only satisfied with the latest fashion. They drink French liquor in French style and demand the best Parisian comedy and opera in their theaters. The Colon theater is finer than anything in New York, and rivals any playhouse in Europe. It seats thirty-seven hundred and fifty people and I am told that a man cannot get in unless he is dressed ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... man of fashion were, to wear velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt-handled sword, and a Spanish dagger: to play at cards or dice in the room of the groom-porter, and to smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard, or at the playhouse. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... possible in order to cut the nina off from the water, knowing that it would not make its exit from the cave by the upper opening. When he reached the bottom, a wonderful scene unfolded. He could easily imagine that he had unconsciously stumbled into the playhouse of Neptune's rollicking subjects. The water formed a great pool surrounded by an amphitheatre of towering crags of most fantastic shapes, which reached far up toward the sky, there being no roof to its vast extent. The waves beat in from ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... G. Ervine I know through two plays, "Mixed Marriage," produced at the Abbey Theatre on March 30, 1911, and "The Magnanimous Lover," produced in the same playhouse on October 17, 1912. Like his fellow from County Down, the master dramatist of the Ulster Literary Theatre, Mr. Mayne, Mr. Ervine excels in characterization. You remember his people, even after one reading of the plays, so clearly are they distinguished, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... ground it fine in the coffee-mill and salted and served it close beside the candle. "It's good white corn," she said, laughing. "Many a time when I was a child I used to eat this in my playhouse and thought it delicious. Didn't you? What! not ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... two paced up and down in front of the playhouse Lavinia told the actor the whole story. Spiller smiled indulgently at the love portion of the narrative, but was impressed by the test Lavinia had gone through at Pope's Villa and by Gay's ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... form this play is dedicated to the reading public only, and no performance, representation, production, recitation, or public reading, or radio broadcasting may be given except by special arrangement with Walter H. Baker Company, 41 Winter Street, Boston, Mass., or Playhouse Plays, 14 East 38th Street, New ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... tiny girl, playing by herself in a wide, grassy yard. The older children had gone to school, but she, too young for that, was busying herself with putting in order a playhouse in an arbor—arranging it as nearly as possible as it had been the day before, when she and two or three little mates had enjoyed such a merry time there. To and fro trudged the tireless feet, patiently the small hands worked, and at last all was ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... with him, the whole he could muster having been expended in paying his passage. I had fifteen pistoles; so he borrowed occasionally of me to subsist, while he was looking out for business. He first endeavored to get into the playhouse, believing himself qualify'd for an actor; but Wilkes, to whom he apply'd, advis'd him candidly not to think of that employment, as it was impossible he should succeed in it. Then he propos'd to Roberts, a publisher in Paternoster Row, to write for him a weekly paper like the Spectator, ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... room, where I sat, and where I received all the company that came to pay their compliments to me. I 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 ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... truant, have you? Straying into alien precincts, roving in search of something newer and gaudier than anything you have here? Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet for a cultured nostril!" Of course Austin made all this nonsense up himself, but he felt so happy that it amused him to attribute the words to the dear flower-friends who were all around him, and to whom he could ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... the means of securing access, would have walked in every night to the city to attend the playhouse; and it quite astonished him, he used to say, that I, who really knew something of the drama, and had four shillings a day, did not nightly at least devote one of the four to purchase perfect happiness and a seat ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye (without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a playhouse, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are apt not only to sink the play-writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but even to identify in our minds in a perverse manner, the actor with the character ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... 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
... year 1574 a royal permit to Lord Leicester's actors allowed them "to give plays anywhere throughout our realm of England," and this must be regarded as the beginning of the regular drama. Two years later the first playhouse, known as "The Theater," was built for these actors by James Burbage in Finsbury Fields, just north of London. It was in this theater that Shakespeare probably found employment when he first came to the city. The success of this venture was immediate, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the gaudy playhouse, I dream my dreams of the great books I want to write, the orations I want to deliver, the lessons I want to teach, and I wonder how long my time of probation will be. Strange that I should never make any allowance for the dangerous nature of my calling. This ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my own coach, which do make my heart rejoice, and praise God and pray Him to bless it to me and continue it. So she and I to the King's playhouse, and there saw The Usurper; a pretty good play, in all but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly. The play done, we to Whitehall; where my wife staid while I up to the Duchesse's and Queene's side, to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... accounts for I have seen but little of their diversions. I did not even look upon the horse races, although they were to be seen from the windows in the back room of the State House: nor have I attended a single play, although the theatre has been open twice a week the chief part of the Winter, and the playhouse adjoins the house where ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... and 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 Betsy ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... order is from one William Kempe, who would seem to be the business manager of the Globe Theatre, or the person having in charge the unskilled labor connected with the playhouse. ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... did not but I did drink four pints. And to the town, to the King's Head; and hear that my Lord Buckhurst and Nelly are lodged at the next house, and Sir Charles Sedley with them; and keep a merry house." Lord Buckhurst had just persuaded Nell Gwynne to leave the King's playhouse for a hundred pounds a year and his company: she was to act no more, which saddened Pepys. However, she was back at the playhouse next month, jeered at by the graceful Buckhurst and as poor as ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... and 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
... girl made a playhouse in one corner of the cabin and stood up sticks for Indian children to whom she told over what had been taught her. They blundered just as she had done, but she had a curious patience with them that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... house of the Eskimo is probably the unhealthiest of buildings made by any savage to live in, but it makes an excellent playhouse in winter, and represents at the same time a most ingenious employment of the arch system in building. The Eskimos build their snow houses without the aid of any scaffolding or interior false work, and while there is a keystone at the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... differences are not all that stand between the young man and a faithful church. You've heard him suggest that the church which should be the house of God, and which Scripture calls the house of prayer, be turned into a playhouse for the community. I cannot imagine any man with a passion to save souls holding to an idea that he can accomplish this by desecrating the place of Divine Worship by turning it into a gymnasium. The only explanation possible is that Mr. McGowan has not been reared under the influences ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... was very seedy. Fireblood replied that he was greatly unhappy in not having it then in his power, adding many hearty oaths that he had not a farthing of money in his pocket, which was, indeed, strictly true; for he had only a bank-note, which he had that evening purloined from a gentleman in the playhouse passage. He then asked for his wife, to whom, to speak truly, the visit was intended, her confinement being the misfortune of which he had just heard; for, as for that of Mr. Wild himself, he had known it from the first minute, without ever intending to trouble him with his company. Being informed ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... representation, mise en scene[French], stagery[obs3], jeu de theatre[French]; acting; gesture &c. 550; impersonation &c. 554; stage business, gag, buffoonery. light comedy, genteel comedy, low comedy. theater; playhouse, opera house; house; music hall; amphitheater, circus, hippodrome, theater in the round; puppet show, fantoccini[obs3]; marionettes, Punch and Judy. auditory, auditorium, front of the house, stalls, boxes, pit, gallery, parquet; greenroom, coulisses[Fr]. flat; drop, drop scene; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... days), I dare assure you that the actors I have seen before the war—Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, and some others—were almost as far beyond Hart and his company as those were beyond these now in being." In truth, age brings with it to the playhouse recollections, regrets, and palled appetite; middle life is too much prone to criticism, too little inclined to enthusiasm, for the securing of unmixed satisfaction; but youth is endowed with the faculty of admiring exceedingly, with hopefulness, and a keen sense of enjoyment, and, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... is 'Luria'? A poem and not a drama? I mean, a poem not in the dramatic form? Well! I have wondered at you sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works into the great mill of the 'rank, popular' playhouse, to be ground to pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one, would as soon have 'my soul among lions.' 'There is a fascination in it,' says Miss Mitford, and I am sure there must be, to account for it. Publics in the mass are bad enough; but to distil the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... memorandum written down in those happy hours when I was inspired with a proud enthusiasm. But on looking over it how different seem all the things treated of! My former views look like the gloomy boarding of a playhouse when the lights have been removed. My heart sought a philosophy, and imagination substituted her dreams. I took the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 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 ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... this,—or, I'm sorry to say,"—and here the emphasis was very strong on the word sorry,—"so cold as Longroyston." And the tone in which Longroyston was uttered would almost have drawn tears from a critical audience in the pit of a playhouse. The Duchess was a woman of about forty, very handsome, but with no meaning in her beauty, carrying a good fixed colour in her face, which did not look like paint, but which probably had received some little assistance from art. She was a well-built, sizeable woman, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope |
