"Shakespearean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say. "Such training as only he could give. Years of it, that's plain. And then to send her to me. A Shakespearean actress for me! To ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Booth," I muttered in the imagined teeth of the tragedian, throwing an involuntary glance over my shoulder, "you 'll not catch me assisting at any more of your Shakespearean revivals. I would rather eat a pair of Welsh rarebits or a segment of mince-pie at midnight than sit through the finest tragedy ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... those who had them set far over back—wide-awake men, who wanted a clear prospect; while careless men, who did not know, or care, how their hats sat, had them shaking about in all directions. The various hats, in fact, were quite a Shakespearean study. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the play of Richard III. indicated in its main extent a different hand, and it is now generally admitted to have been the work of Fletcher. With the keenest insight he noticed that the magician Prospero was an impersonation of Shakespeare himself; and George Brandes, the most thoroughgoing of Shakespearean scholars, afterwards came to ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... The conclusion is perhaps Shakespearean rather than English, and in a fashion escapes from any national labelling. But the note of silence which Shakespeare suddenly brings in upon the turmoil, and with which he is so fond of completing what he has done, ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... Anglo-Saxon, the version of the famous story of Apollonius of Tyre, which was to be afterwards declined by Chaucer, but attempted by his friend and contemporary Gower, and to be enshrined in the most certain of the Shakespearean "doubtfuls," Pericles. It most honestly gives itself out as a translation (no doubt from the Latin though there was an early Greek original) and it deals briefly with the subject. But as an example of narrative style it is very far indeed from being ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... future (which prophecy was fulfilled), does not interest Mr. De La Mare; maybe he feels that it has been done so well that he prefers to let it alone. His remarkable thirteen poems dealing with Shakespearean characters—where he attempts with considerable success to pluck out the heart of the mystery—are all descriptive. Perhaps the most original and beautiful ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... these literary testimonies that I consider the most striking evidence of the influence of Italian professional technique on English professional actors. It is a remarkable discovery made by the highly esteemed Shakespearean archaeologist, Edmund Malone, about a century ago, in Dulwich College, that mine of ancient English dramatic research, founded by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Rosalie each needed new hats—besides such minor matters as gloves and shoes and petticoats—and Mae was to have a fitting for her new tailor suit. These duties performed, the afternoon was to be given over to relaxation; at least to such relaxation as a Shakespearean tragedy affords. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... on Shakespeare must owe much to his predecessors. Where I was conscious of a particular obligation, I have acknowledged it; but most of my reading of Shakespearean criticism was done many years ago, and I can only hope that I have not often reproduced as my own what ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of greater gains, better food, and stricter medical attention. However, he kept most of these thoughts ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... nations, with the exception of the ancient Greeks, whose heirs they declared themselves to be—(like every other nation in Europe). Every now and then they felt they ought to include Shakespeare. That was the touchstone. There were two schools of Shakespearean interpreters: the one played King Lear, with a commonplace realism, like a comedy of Emile Augier: the other turned Hamlet into an opera, with bravura airs and vocal exercises a la Victor Hugo. It ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Theatrical Art in Ancient and Modern Times. Authorised Translation by Louise von Cossel. Vol. III, "The Shakespearean Period in ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... pointed out, however, in his "Apology for the Believers in the Shakespearean Papers," the King's Chamberlain, or, as he was styled in all formal proceedings of the time, Camerarius Hospitii, had the government and superintendence of the king's hunting and revels, of the comedians, musicians, and other royal servants; and was, by virtue of the original ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... dramatic form, Beddoes will survive to students, not to readers, of English poetry, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ebenezer Jones and Charles Wells. Charles Wells was certainly more of a dramatist, a writer of more sustained and Shakespearean blank verse; Ebenezer Jones had certainly a more personal passion to express in his rough and tumultuous way; but Beddoes, not less certainly, had more of actual poetical genius than either. And in the end only one thing ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... miracle-plays may be found in Marriott's Collection of English Miracle-Plays, 1838; in Hone's Ancient Mysteries; in T. Sharpe's Dissertaion on the Pageants.. . anciently performed at Coventry, Coventry, 1828; in the publications of the Shakespearean and other societies. See especially The Harrowing of Hell, a miracle-play, edited from the original now in the British Museum, by T. O. Halliwell, London, 1840. One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth. Says Hase (as above, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... proclaim his boyish jaunt. The 'Well I never, sir,' even of a rural parishioner did in some sort minister to his vanity. An audience was a necessity to him. He regretted that his cloth forbade him to indulge in private theatricals, but he encouraged Shakespearean readings and often 'dressed up to please the children.' Sometimes of an evening he would perform upon the piano, indulging in a series of broken chords which he called improvisation, and upon these occasions he felt ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... opposite this bewitcher of all sexes. There was Reginald Bug, a young Englishman, who loved her passionately for a few years; then the renowned Pierre Dentifrice from the Comedie Francaise; then Angelo Carlini, and Basto Caballero (founder of the Shakespearean Theatre in Barcelona); then Dimitri Chuggski, a very temperamental, highly strung Russian (it is in Volume VIII. of Edgar Sheepmeadow's "Beds and their Inmates" that he relates the story of Chuggski's desertion of Gretchen; he contends that he left her because she always slept with ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Presbyterian church in Edinburgh, and that, at a later period, he was twice arrested for debt. Mr. Ingpen holds that they also prove that Shelley "appeared on the boards of the Windsor Theatre as an actor in Shakespearean drama." But we have only William Whitton, the solicitor's words for this, and it is clear that he had been at no pains to investigate the matter. "It was mentioned to me yesterday," he wrote to Shelley's father in November, 1815, "that ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... superlatively funny and unusual in the matter of staging. The Pathe comedy, "Cleopatsy," featuring the famous clown Toto, was a striking example of how a slap-stick comedy today is unhesitatingly given as elaborate and sumptuous a scenic investiture as was accorded a few years ago to screen-versions of Shakespearean or other "classic" plays. The laughs in this Pathe production were produced, principally, by the introduction of business and situations that simply could not have happened in the time of Cleopatra, Antony and Caesar. Thus we saw traffic ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... an incredible amount of ignorance—so that Cromwell was supposed to be historical; and with a passionate delight in form there co-existed a strangely imperfect understanding of material—so that Hernani was supposed to be Shakespearean. To this ignorance and to this imperfect understanding Hugo owed a certain part of his authority; the other and greater he got from his unrivalled mastery of style, from his extraordinary skill as an artist in words. To the opposing faction his innovations were horrible: ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... of despair at the last moment is very finely depicted, and there are not a few passages in the play which, for beauty of expression and thought, are truly Shakespearean. Some of you possibly know the magnificent lines addressed to Helen of Troy, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... stature but with a twinkling and roving eye. He was one of the leading spirits of the OUDS, known in full as the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and his ability to portray females of the lower classes had been the delight of more than one Shakespearean rendering. No one who saw him as Juliet's nurse in a certain private theatrical performance in the hall of New College can ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... Lucian's story of Zenothemis and Menecrates (in "Toxaris, vel De Amicitia"). The third scene of the third act, where Lassenbergh in the hearing of the enchanter chides Lucilia for following him, is obviously imitated from "Midsummer Night's Dream," and in single lines of other scenes we catch Shakespearean echoes. But the writer's power is shown at its highest in the scene (iii. 6) where Lucilia's faltering recollection strives to pierce the veil of her spell-bound senses, gains the light for an instant, and then ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... remains, with its noble public library in its midst, and with Harvard University on its outskirts, a great centre of culture. I shall always remember a luncheon party at Harvard, where I was the guest of an eminent Shakespearean critic, and had for my fellow guests a very learned Dante scholar (one of the most delightful talkers imaginable), a famous psychologist, a political economist, and a lecturer on English literature. The talk fell upon the depopulation of ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... about this time appeared a German translation of Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" that became very popular. Poets wrote plays in the style of Terence, or copied English models; and even in the present day the Germans recall with pride the fact that the Shakespearean plays were appreciated by them during and after the Elizabethan age much more than they were by the ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... You Like It,'" he observed. "These Shakespearean heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular rare day in June? Or is it that you think you would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe and wriggle ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... ("The Prohibition to Love"), written in 1834, is eminently symptomatic of the first stage. It is a coarser rendering of that bluntest of all Shakespearean plays, Measure for Measure; its sole subject is the pursuit of sensual pleasure, in which all indulge, and the ridiculing of those who appear to yearn for something higher. To detail the contents of the text—it cannot be called a poem—would ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... that Aeschylean Tragedy is more nearly allied to sculpture; Shakespearean Tragedy ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of my last Shakespearean revival at the Princess's Theatre, I have been actuated by a desire to present some of the finest poetry of our great dramatic master, interwoven with a subject illustrating a most memorable era in English history. No play appears to be better adapted for this two-fold ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... Sneed had been cast as farm hands to fill in the background of the play. When the former Shakespearean player learned that he was to wear overalls and carry a hoe ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... there are too many glass windows about," was the excuse of one editor, softening the return of a manuscript. But Berlioz did not fully know himself or appreciate the tendencies fermenting within him until in 1830 he became the victim of a grand Shakespearean passion. The great English dramatist wrought most powerfully on Victor Hugo and Hector Berlioz, and had much to do with their artistic development. Berlioz gives a very interesting account of his Shakespearean enthusiasm, which also involved one of the catastrophes of his own personal ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Mahometan Paradise along with the souls of men, the ass that carried Balaam is one, the dog of the Seven Sleepers the other. This is no small distinction. From what has been written about this beast might be compiled a library of great splendor and magnitude, rivalling that of the Shakespearean cult, and that which clusters about the Bible. It may be said, generally, that all literature is ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... case which is sufficiently near to the point in question, to make clear what I mean: the supremacy of Antony and Cleopatra in the Shakespearean aesthetic is yet jealously disputed, and it seems silly to the academic to put it up against a work like Hamlet. But it is the comparatively more obvious achievement of Hamlet, its surface intellectuality, which made it the favourite of actors and critics. It is much more difficult to realize ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... true power, which is surely that of an arch-delineator of 'human nature' and of the devious ways of men. As we read him we feel that we have our finger on the pulse of the cruel politics of the world. He has the Shakespearean gift which makes us recognise that his pirates and his statesmen, with their violence and their murders and their perversions of justice, are swayed by the same interests and are pulling the same strings and playing on the same passions which are at work in quieter methods around ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... (Tigris) and Furat (Euphrates) see vols. viii. 150- ix. 17. The topothesia is worse than Shakespearean. In Weber's Edit. of the "New Arabian Nights" (Adventures of Simoustapha, etc.), the rivers ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... you don't camp in a Shakespearean dressing room for a year, tete-a-teting with some of the wisest actors ever, without learning a little. Sure I'm a mental case, a poor little A & A existing on your sweet charity, and don't think I ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... whether I ought not to have rejected the cultural remarks on several of the plants, which I had added with a special reference to the horticultural character of "The Garden" newspaper. But I decided to retain them, on finding that they interested some readers, by whom the literary and Shakespearean notices ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... invitations are issued two or three weeks before the date set for the dance, and as for the debut dance, the word ball does not appear on it. Instead the words "Costumes of the Twelfth Century" or "Shakespearean Costumes" or whatever may be decided upon are printed in the lower left-hand corner of ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... What Shakespearean characters does Geoffrey of Monmouth introduce? How is Layamon's Brut related to Geoffrey's chronicle? Point out a likeness between the Brut and the work of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... easily persuaded to attack them. One of the chief differences between the two kinds of virtue, I fancy, is that while true virtue regards the mob-spirit as an enemy, simular virtue (if we may adopt the Shakespearean phrase) looks to the mob as its cousin and its ally. To be virtuous in the latter sense is obviously as easy as hunting rats or cats. Virtue of this kind is simply the eternal huntsman in man's breast with eyes aglint for a victim. It is Mr Murdstone's virtue—the persecutor's virtue. It is the virtue ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... wreaths hung half a yard beyond the roof; in some places folded back with consummate art. The grey-black wall under the snow wreaths looked like an old Persian fabric. It seemed ready to appear in a Shakespearean drama. The background of mountains and hills gleamed in ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the greatest man of his time, the greatest friend of freedom, and the deadliest foe of superstition. He wrote the best French plays—but they were not wonderful. He wrote verses polished and perfect in their way. He filled the air with painted moths—but not with Shakespearean eagles. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... what is of the new. With the commercial we have of course no traffic; the classic is a place for those still learning what has already been said, a place for orientisation, for finding out where one stands. In this category are the Shakespearean performances at the theatre. In any case the classic is necessarily subordinate to the new literature, the literature of pioneering and discovery, the literature of ourselves. It is the school which prepares for the stepping forth ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... in India. In India, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was a development of drama of a high character. The one called the Clay-waggon (a child's toy) is described as of very great literary merit,—realistic, graphic, and Shakespearean in its artistic representation of life.[2078] Every drama which has that character must be in and of the mores. In the Clay-waggon the story is that of a Brahmin of the noblest character, who marries a courtesan, she having great love for him. The courtesan gives to the Brahmin's ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... The chalk-mark is on my door; for Mrs. B. has no less than three consecutive husbands in heaven—so potently has her woman-soul proved its capacity for leading people upward and on. Methinks I perceive a new and sinister meaning in the Shakespearean love-song:— ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... experienced writer possessing a large fund of information may treat general subjects successfully, but for the beginner safety lies only in selecting definite subjects and in keeping within the limits prescribed. The "Women of Shakespeare" might be an interesting subject for a book by a Shakespearean scholar, but it is scarcely suitable for a high ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... flax raised on our farm and made our own tallow candles. Mary, from what a thrifty and hard-working lot of ancestors you are descended! You inherit from your mother your love of work and from your father your love of books. Your father's uncle was a noted Shakespearean scholar." ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... dear departed Mary Brooks would say," declared Katherine, "is: Blessings brighten as diplomas come on apace. Between trying not to miss any fun and doing my best to distinguish myself in the scholarly pursuits that my soul loves, I am well nigh distraught. Don't mind my Shakespearean English, please. I'm on the senior play committee, and I recite ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... to hurry if we want to get to the Lapin Agile before closing...and I've got to have a drink," said Heineman, still talking in his stagey Shakespearean voice. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... in the third row of seats looked bored. He wasn't having a good time. He cared nothing for the Shakespearean drama. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... so happy as her sister expected. Her sum of spectacular bliss stood in Shakespearean plays which she had seen, and in "Monsieur Beaucaire," which she had not. A wild beast show with its inevitable accompaniment of dust and chokiness and noise would give her no pleasure at all, and the slight interest which ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... In Shakespearean drama, where each man is himself, with his own character and his own fortune to make, there is small scope for any obvious Divine interposition in the scene. The story of human actions and characters, the more fully it is developed, leaves ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... octagon "Globe" theatre of Shakespeare's day; a Shakespeare library and portrait gallery are forming; and in due time these buildings, of stately dimensions and built solidly of brick, will constitute a Shakespearean centre which will attract to itself many mementoes now scattered about in various parts ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern education means handing down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority. Instead of their Christlike charity, their Shakespearean laughter and their high Homeric reverence for the dead, the poor have imposed on them mere pedantic copies of the prejudices of the remote rich. They must think a bathroom a necessity because to the lucky ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the best play to read as a sample of it Eastward Ho! in which Marston put off his affectation of sardonical melancholy and joined with Jonson and Dekker to produce what is the masterpiece of the non-Shakespearean ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... while I was thus under the full spell of the Shakespearean necromancy that a significant event occurred. My Father took me up to London for the first time since my infancy. Our visit was one of a few days only, and its purpose was that we might take part in some enormous Evangelical conference. We stayed in a dark hotel off the Strand, where I found ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... present writer has tried to point out, a very "extensive assortment" of the various attractions of the novel had from time to time made its appearance. But this again had been done "dispersedly," as the Shakespearean stage-direction has it. The story is sometimes well told, but the telling is constantly interrupted; the great art of novel-conversation is, as yet, almost unborn; the descriptions, though sometimes very striking, as in the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Elizabethan critics thought little of Shakespeare because he failed to follow in the footsteps of the great Greeks, so some modern critics care naught for the best work of the dramatists of our own time, because this is not cast in the Shakespearean mold. The Elizabethan critics could not know the difference between the theater of Dionysius in Athens and the bare cockpit of the Globe in London; and there are their kin to-day who cannot perceive the difference ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews |
