"Monologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had gone, Louise came down, and found Maxwell in a dreary muse over his manuscript. He looked up at her with a lack-lustre eye, and said, "Godolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he really wants is a five-act monologue that will keep him on the stage all the time. He thinks that as it is, she will take all ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... after that, Frisbie could get no more than single-syllabled replies to his monologue of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... story of character, in the form of dramatic monologue. There is only one speaker, but we know by his words that another is present and can infer his part in the conversation. This story has the additional values of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... warned her," he murmured, continuing a monologue which had begun before he entered the room. "I told my ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... best, and some which for frozen inanity it would be hard to equal anywhere? How could a thinker of his power of brain cover leagues of letter-paper with windy nonsense and mawkish insincerity? And finally, of what quality was the talk of one whose social life was entirely monologue? To the first of these questions Wordsworth perhaps helps with an analogy, but not very far; for it is certain that Wordsworth's opinion of the importance of his own verses was inflexible, whereas Coleridge, having another medium of expression, was by no means so insistent upon publishing. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... voyage of Maelduin or the vigil in the castle of Busirane. Odysseus in the house of Alcinous is not different from Odysseus of the return to Ithaca. The story is not pure romance, it is a dramatic monologue; and the character of the speaker has more part than the wonders of the story in the silence that falls on the listeners when the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... grew longer. Brion had no intention of making this a monologue. He needed facts to operate, to form an opinion. Looking at the silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... drama belonged essentially to the festivals in honour of the god Dionysus; being originally a chorus sung in his honour, to which were successively superadded: First, an iambic monologue; next, a dialogue with two actors; lastly, a regular plot with three actors, and a chorus itself interwoven into the scene. Its subjects were from the beginning, and always continued to be, persons either ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... heart already upborne on waves of ecstasy and o'er- mastering joy; fulfill its psychic dreams and lift it to thine own supersensible heights"—she breathed in an exaggerated stage whisper and continued her vague, visionary monologue, or extravaganza, until the curtain fell and brought down the house again with ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... hardened to meet opposition and at times he allowed one to see an unpardonable insolence. His charm was acquired and systematised, a mask which he wore only when it pleased him, while the charm of Stevenson belonged to him like the colour of his hair. If Stevenson's talk became monologue we did not know it, because our one object was to show by our attention that he need never leave off. If thought failed him we would not combat what he had said, or start some new theme, but would encourage him with a question; and one felt that it had been always so from childhood ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... Jesus himself, however, being used invariably in the first person, and sung by the baritone voice, as when he says, "If my Deeds have been evil," immediately following the bass recitative. After another monologue by the Narrator, ensues the march to the cross,—an instrumental number which is brilliant in its color effects and somewhat barbaric in tone. Without any break, the sopranos enter with the words, "Forth the Royal Banners go," set to a melody ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... drama, not a monologue," pursued my father. "'Drama' is derived from a Greek verb signifying 'to do.' Every actor in the drama has something to do, which helps on the progress of the whole: that is the object for which the author created him. Do your part, and let ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ARE there, and that's a nuisance,' she said. 'There are my sons-in-law,' she went on, in a sort of monologue. 'Now Laura's got married, there's another. And I really don't know John from James yet. They come up to me and call me mother. I know what they will say—"how are you, mother?" I ought to say, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Andrea's life I need say little. He grew steadily in favour and was always busy; he met Michelangelo and admired him, and Michelangelo warned Raphael in Rome of a little fellow in Florence who would "make him sweat". Browning, in his monologue, makes this remark of Michelangelo's, and the comparison between Andrea and Raphael that follows, the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... in The Princess Casamassima, so frankly panoramic and processional); and in what case could this protection have had more price than in the one before us? No character in a play (any play not a mere monologue) has, for the right expression of the thing, a usurping consciousness; the consciousness of others is exhibited exactly in the same way as that of the "hero"; the prodigious consciousness of ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... was no direct adoption of a form intentionally dramatic, and that the modern sacred drama—the only drama for centuries—was simply an expansion of or excrescence from the services of the Church herself, which in their antiphonal character, and in the alternation of monologue and chorus, were distinctly dramatic in form. This, however, is one of those numerous questions which are only good to be argued, and can never reach a conclusion; nor need it greatly trouble those who believe that all literary forms are more or less natural ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Melville, the renowned author of 'Typee,' etc. He lives in a spacious farmhouse about two miles from Pittsfield, a weary walk through the dust. But it as well repaid. I introduced myself as a Hawaiian-American, and soon found myself in full tide of talk, or rather of monologue. But he would not repeat the experiences of which I had been reading with rapture in his books. In vain I sought to hear of Typee and those paradise islands, but he preferred to pour forth his philosophy and his theories ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... part, he almost wished that he had been permitted to do so, because he thought none but a fool would ever commit suicide, and the fewer fools there were in the world the better, etc., etc. His monologue was suddenly arrested by Henrietta's rushing forward to lift up Sans Souci, who had turned very pale, and dropped from her seat to the floor, where she lay silently quivering and gasping, like some poor wounded and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the kitchen fire. The laird fell into a gentle monologue, in which, to Joan's thinking, he talked even more strangely than Cosmo. Things born in the fire and the smoke, like the song of the three holy children, issued from the furnace clothed in softest moonlight. Joan said to herself it was plain where the boy got his oddity; but what she ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... this Ode as it stands, without attempting to decide whether it is dialogue or monologue. Perhaps the opinion which supposes it to be spoken by Horace in his own person, as if he had actually perished in the shipwreck alluded to in Book III, Ode 4, v. 27, "Me... non exstinxit... Sicula Palinurus unda," deserves more attention than it ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... intellect beside the dear little girls who play polkas for you of evenings and sing sweet ballads, that pour bien juger les grands, il faut les approcher? I thought so that morning, as I heard the animated discussion that succeeded Henrietta's monologue; a discussion into which all sorts of delicate conceits of lace and flowers entered largely, and which savored about as much of the preceding elements as last night's Charlotte Russe ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a remarkable talker. A single speech of his has been known to change an entire vote in Parliament. Unlike Coleridge, he did not indulge in monologue, but showed to finest advantage in debate. His power of memory was wonderful. He often startled an opponent by quoting from a given chapter and page of a book. He repeated long passages from Paradise Lost; and it is said he could have restored it complete, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Part of this monologue—a very small part—was Old Dalton's own, repeated over and over, and so kept in mind ever since the more initiative years a decade ago when he first began to think about his age. Another part of the utterance—more particularly that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of his monologue. The moment of silence that followed brought McGee sharply back to the present. He smiled graciously ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... in victory which speaks in every line of this opening monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin, feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of characterization is his ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... motives, was desirous of the general welfare, and was doing my duty as a friend of the house.... But I venture to think that even had Kirilla Matveitch not cut short my outpourings, I should in any case not have had courage to finish my monologue. At times I set to work with all the solemnity of some sage of antiquity, weighing the qualities of the prince; at times I comforted myself with the hope that it was all of no consequence, that Liza would recover her senses, that her love was not real love ... oh, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... be better in the third person. "St. Simeon Stylites" is a dramatic monologue more upon Browning's model, i.e., a piece of apologetics and self-analysis. But in this province Tennyson is ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to Heywood's soliloquy with patience, but he felt his irritation growing. Much as he had enjoyed the play between Heywood and young Senesin, he had expected to get some information out of the boy before he left. And besides, Heywood's cliched monologue was beginning to pall. ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... could not quite conceal. I thought it proper to state in the outset that I wished simply to know whatever he was free to tell me in regard to his own willingness or unwillingness to accept a renomination. The reply was a monologue of an hour's duration, and one that wholly absorbed me, as it seemed to absorb himself. He remained seated nearly all the time. He was restless, often changing position, and occasionally, in some intense moment, wheeling his body around in his chair and throwing ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... her commander. He was unravelling for me the shining complexity of his "box of tricks," as he called his ship. He was sardonic (there was no doubt he was master of the brute he so lightly villified), and he was blithe, and he illustrated his scientific monologue with stories of his own experiences in the Heligoland Bight. These, to me, were like the bedevilments of those dreams from which we groan to awake, but cannot. The curious doings of this new age, I thought ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... skinner before announcing his displeasure, had missed the first shot. When he dragged himself out from under his deceased horse the scenery was undisturbed save for a small cloud of dust hovering over a distant rise to the north of him. After delivering a short and bitter monologue he struck out for the ranch and arrived in a very hot and wrathful condition. It was contagious, that condition, and before long the entire outfit was in the saddle and pounding north, Pete overjoyed because his wound was so slight as not to bar him from the chase. The shock was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... Mrs. Cadurcis was angered for being left alone, or had fermented herself into fury by the certainty of his catching a fever. If Plantagenet remained at the abbey, she was generally sullen; and, as he himself was naturally silent under any circumstances, his mother would indulge in that charming monologue, so conducive to domestic serenity, termed 'talking at a person,' and was continually insinuating that she supposed he found it very dull to pass his day with her, and that she dared say that somebody could be lively enough ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... sounds, the marquis continued his monologue. "Yes, I will save him. But not with kindly words, with promises, with appeals; he would laugh at me. No, Madame; human nature such as his does not stir to these when they come from the lips of one he does not hold in respect. The shock must be rude, penetrating. I must break ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... of demonstrating her superiority, for she picks her subjects with the care a general selects his battlefield; F., who is a born pedagogue and seeks to instruct whoever listens to him, whose conversation is a lecture and a monologue; R. O., the reticent, says little but that pertinent and relevant, cynical and shrewd; and R. V., who says little and that with timidity and error. So there are specialists in caution and "common sense," self-controlled, never rash, calculating, cool and egotistic, narrow ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... gentle and tactful manner, with Aunt Marion at the helm. But Mr. Scobell was not the man to stand by silently while persons were being tactful. At the end of the second minute he had plunged through his sister's mild monologue like a rhinoceros through a cobweb, and had stated definitely, with an economy of words, the exact part which Betty was to play in ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... five-grain allopathic pill. It was the erratic behavior of this tiny ball, its mysterious comings and goings, that had summoned Mr. Broad's audience and now held its observant interest. This audience, composed of roughly dressed men, listened attentively to the seductive monologue which accompanied the dealer's deft manipulations, and was greatly entertained thereby. "Three tiny tepees in a row and a little black medicine-man inside." The speaker's voice was high-pitched and it carried like a "thirtythirty." "You see him walk in, you open the door, and— you ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... aroused this open-air monologue was a small tin sign in a window. Marine Insurance. Here was a hole as wide as a church-door. What could be simpler than, with a set of inquiries relative to a South Sea tramp registered as The Tigress, to make a tour of all the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... where Miss Maitland still sat, surrounded by her attentive friends. It seemed hardly likely that she could have missed Charlie's distressing incursion into a monologue to which he had not been invited, but the girl seemed so wholly occupied that the painter took heart. His ruffled self-esteem preened itself anew, and he moved circuitously toward the object of his concern in as disinterested a manner as he could assume. At the sight of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed young men, having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... interrupted this monologue, and then a sharp bark. Bluebell looked round to see what was exciting him; she heard a distant tinkle of bells, and listened keenly; laughing voices were apparently approaching. From an impulse that she could not have explained, Bluebell darted into an empty woodshed, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... broke records. He was a short barrel of a man, with small eyes set close together, and he made a figure of fun perched high up in the saddle. But he permitted no difficulties of travel to interfere with his monologue. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal), the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the Beggar's Opera), the best farce (the Critic—it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country." Somebody told S. this the next day, and on hearing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... history to tell him in exchange; she asked only to listen and to comfort. Yet so cleverly he addressed his story that the longest monologue became, by aid of a look or pressure of the hand, a conversation in which she, his guardian angel, bore her part. Did he talk of Avignon, for instance? It was the land of Laura and Petrarch, and she, seated with half-closed eyes beneath the Bayfield elms, saw the pair beside the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... things. First, he should read the Memoirs of David Home, the famous spiritualist medium with whom Browning came in contact. These Memoirs constitute a more thorough and artistic self-revelation than any monologue that Browning ever wrote. The ghosts, the raps, the flying hands, the phantom voices are infinitely the most respectable and infinitely the most credible part of the narrative. But the bragging, the sentimentalism, the moral and intellectual foppery of the composition ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... said Miss Bruce, in telling of it afterward. Be that as it may, it is certain that after urging McLean to take a good rest where he was and to come again and "sun himself" on their piazza, and being unaccountably cordial in his monologue (for the younger officer hardly knew how to express himself under the circumstances), the doctor finally vanished. Jeannie Bruce was so utterly "taken aback" by it all that for some minutes she totally forgot ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... tradition—the slow movement followed by the quick—which, since the day of Rossini, had ruled Italian opera with a rod of iron. In 'Rigoletto,' although the old convention still survives, the composer shows a keen aspiration after a less trammelled method of expressing himself. Rigoletto's great monologue is a piece of declamation pure and simple, and as such struck a note till then unheard in Italy. The whole of the last act is a brilliant example of Verdi's picturesque power, combined with acute power of characterisation. The Duke's gay and lightsome ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... darkness of the car the four women could not distinguish each other's faces. But Rosamund's voice was audible in a monologue, and Miss Ingate trembled for ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Beecher is. He does not speak to people with people, as Mr. Beecher does; rather he speaks before them, in their presence. He soliloquizes. There is almost a minimum of mutual relation between speaker and hearer. Undoubtedly the swift, urgent monologue is quickened, reinforced, by the consciousness of an audience present. That consciousness, of course, penetrates to the mind of the speaker. But it does not dominate the speaker's mind; it does not turn monologue into dialogue; the speech is ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... experiments, like Queen Mary, are not, on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon one hand, Guinevere and the Passing of Arthur, and upon the other the homely, dialectic monologue of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... do not believe there is an actor who can stand beside him in this respect, and I was so much impressed by it, that at the end of the second act I said to myself, "I will not play Hamlet! Mapleson can say what he likes, but I will not play it"; and I said it with the fullest resolution. In the monologue, "To be or not to be," Irving was admirable; in the scene with Ophelia he was deserving of the highest praise; in that of the Players he was moving, and in all this part of the play he appeared to my eyes to be the most perfect interpreter of that eccentric character. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... a doleful face, to say that Mr. Audley, from Figtree Court, was evidently out of spirits. Robert ate his dinner, and drank a pint of Moselle; but he had poor appreciation of the excellence of the viands or the delicate fragrance of the wine. The mental monologue still went on, and the young philosopher of the modern school was arguing the favorite modern question of the nothingness of everything, and the folly of taking too much trouble to walk upon a road that went nowhere, or to compass a work ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... cried, "there won't be anything of that sort. You ain't going to be starred as a comic. You're a Refined Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. 'How I Invaded England,' with lights down and the cinematograph going. We ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the speaker. The Justice was by no means a bad man, as men go—and all of them do not go very straight in the right direction—but he made one mistake which many are making in our own day; he valued peace more highly than truth. His decalogue was a monologue, consisting but of one commandment: Do your duty. What a man's duty was, the Justice did not pause to define. Had he been required to do so, his dissection of that difficult subject would probably have run in three grooves—go to church; give alms; ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... anxious to be new than to be true, and he seeks effects upon the reader rather than forms for his thought. The bizarre stylist misses truth by straining too much to achieve it. Words are only symbols. They never more than roughly represent a picture of thought. A monologue like this, as the heroine goes to shop: Chapel Street...the old hardware shop...scissors, skates glittering, moonlight on the ice...old Dr. Brown's head, like a rink. Rink...a queer word! Pigeons in ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Heart's Desire. Many of its scenes are intensely dramatic, full of passion, striking in situation, and showing a rather rare accomplishment—that of conducting a dialogue which shall be equally brilliant on both sides without resembling a monologue. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... monologue came to an end; every one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... who saved that situation. He instantly went crazy, or the next thing to it, wrinkling up his black-whiskered face into a caricature, yelling a Greek monologue in a refrain consisting of five notes repeated over and over, and dancing around in a wide ring with one leg shorter than the other and his arms ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... who ever came in contact with him failed to recognise his singular charm in private life. His conversation differed from that of some of the more illustrious of his contemporaries. It was not a copious and brilliant stream of words, dazzling, astonishing, or overpowering. It had no tendency to monologue, and it was not remarkable for any striking originalities either of language, metaphor, or thought. Few men steered more clear of paradox, and the charm of his talk lay mainly in his admirable terseness and ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they came to the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... as well as Ludwig, has been listening with some surprise to the singular monologue. "What harm can the sun do us now ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... was little conversation to interrupt the monologue of the river, which seemed to find itself many voices under the bridge. The one unceasing rustle of the main stream was frayed along its margin into a myriad finer noises of murmuring and plashing, as the massed foliage on a bough dwindles at its edges into more delicate traceries of distinct sprays ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... who seemed soliloquizing, and whose voice, sounding calm and thoughtful, like Young's in the famous monologue in "Hamlet," denoted that he heeded not the uncourteous interruption,—"but opinion does not always influence conduct; and although it may be virtuous to murder the watchman, I have not the heart to do it. I trust in my future history I shall not by discerning moralists be too severely censured ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of this monologue, Dick Penryn lit his pipe, took up the book he had been reading, and was soon deep in the pages of Theophile ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... mischief happen to himself or others from the explosion of combustibles." This taste for science Shelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the first conversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted almost wholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to be wrought by science in all realms of thought. His imagination was fascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. When he first discovered that the four elements were not ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... tripping about the stage in an airy, elated way, which was allowable only during the earlier scenes; but when I should have been tragic and desperate, I was still brimming over with new found joy. All through Juliet's grand monologue, where she swallows the poison, ran the refrain—"Jack has come home, I am going to marry Jack." I had an awful fear once that I mixed two names a little, and called on Jackimo when I should have said ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... cook, why not be called so? And going off to her bedroom with her dinner, no one downstairs being good enough to eat with her. I must say it isn't what I'm used to, and me lived with the first families. Quite the first." Mrs. Atkins ceased her weary monologue and gazed on the family with conscious virtue. She was dressed in dull black silk, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... revelation from heaven. But so clearly he was a Cheetah. He was a Hunting Leopard; the only beast that has an up-cast face and dreams and looks at you with absent-minded eyes like a man. She laced their journeys with a fantastic monologue telling in the third person what the Leopard and the Cheetah were thinking and seeing and doing. And so they walked up mountains and over passes and swam in the warm clear water of romantic lakes and loved each other mightily always, in chestnut woods ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... through the rooms, indulging in a flowing monologue which was as independent of an audience as a ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... rapidity. The street which they had now entered, from the far end of the piazza, was narrow. It was encumbered by a string of laden mules, by a stream of foot passengers. Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she addressed him, and her lips were drawn away ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... choke off my wife," he said, smiling, "if she gets started on a monologue about that infant prodigy! She can keep it up most of the hours out of the twenty-four, and go right over it ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... opened by that favourite device of Selma Lagerloef, the monologue, through which she pries into the very soul of her characters, in this case Ingmar, son of Ingmar, of Ingmar Farm. Ingmar's monologue at the plow is a subtle portrayal of an heroic battle between the forces of conscience and desire. Although ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... fact, when he stands before the shut door, a man believes that he is quite alone; and he would have no hesitation in beginning a silent monologue, a dreamy soliloquy, in which he revealed his desires, his intentions, his personal qualities, his faults, his virtues, etc.; for undoubtedly a man on a stoop is exactly like a young girl of fifteen at confession, the evening before her ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... During this monologue Louvois was so absorbed that he was within an ace of driving them all into the water, and would have done so, had they not seized the reins, and cried out that he was going to drown them. At their cries and movement, Louvois ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... she stood, perplexed and disturbed, he spoke as though answering a question. But there was no one there who could have asked it; the room was empty save for that solitary figure. Something in his voice terrified her—in the uncanny monologue which meant nothing to her—in his curiously altered laugh—in his intent listening attitude. It was not the first time she had seen him ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... different side of the subject. If I do, it may be in a magazine—or—but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,—not a long poem, but a monologue of AEschylus as he sate a blind exile on the flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before the eagle cracked his great massy ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and propriety, to the sheer straightforwardness of speech in which his agonizing horror finds vent ever more and more terrible from the first to the last equally beautiful and fearful verse of that tremendous monologue which has no parallel in all the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the first part. The minstrel with the staying qualities was laboring with a monologue. "Spider", after his strenuous day, was sleeping off his exuberance. At the dullest part in the monologist's offering, "Spider" let go all holds. The skating rink was built on piles, over the river's bank. One walking on ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the library, to which the entire afternoon was devoted. The Squire, in his way, was as great an interruption to the arguments of the Curate as was poor Louisa in hers; and Gerald sat patiently to listen to his father's indignant monologue, broken as it was by Frank's more serious attacks. He was prepared for all they could say to him, and listened to it, sometimes with a kind of wondering smile, knowing well how much more strongly, backed by all his prejudices and interests, he had put the same arguments to himself. All this time ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... monologue as though he were determined to be absolutely silent for the future. The prosecutor watched him the whole time and only when he had ceased speaking, observed, as though it were the most ordinary thing, with the most ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the small gossip of the film world, and a judiciously expurgated sketch of his life since he had last seen her. Marie answered him whenever his monologue required answer, but she was unresponsive, uninterested—bored. Joe twisted his mustache, eyed her aslant and took ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... subjectivity. A writer commits this error when he thinks it enough if he himself knows what he means and wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as though the author were holding a monologue; whereas, it ought to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was Edward Eggleston, whose residence was a small brick house just back of the Congressional Library. Eggleston, humorous, ready of speech, was usually surrounded by an attentive circle of delighted listeners and I often drew near to share his monologue. He was a handsome man, tall and shapely with abundant gray hair and a full beard, and was especially learned in American early history. "Edward loves to monologue," his friends smilingly said as if in criticism, but to me his talk ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... little morsel on the ground continued his noisy monologue, protesting in a language which is of an age rather than of a race, against the cruelty and the thoughtlessness and the distressing lack of consideration which his elder ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... Swift, (and how could it be otherwise than odd?) has, perhaps, led us into this rambling monologue on our merits; but we agree with Yorick in thinking gravity an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... low whinney, and Maurice, believing that the horse had given an ear to his monologue, laughed. But he flattered himself. The horse whinneyed because he inhaled the faint odor of his kind. He drew down on the rein and settled into a swinging trot, which to Maurice's surprise was faster and easier ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... persuasive talker, a man of the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing out his monologue entertainingly he gazed repeatedly at Lucy. Calvin lost the sense of most that the other said; he was immersed in the past that had been made the present and then denied to him—it was all before him in the presence ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... prints are the ones we found on the file. And he is the bird who always eats a lot whenever he does a job, specially eggs. How this bird can put away eggs is a wonder; he's a little feller, too." The monologue was cut short by the entrance of the prisoner who was chained to a burly headquarters man, accompanied by ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... I know dogs the more amazin' marvellous they are to me," Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before bedtime. "Take Killeny Boy. He don't do things for me mechanically, just because he's learned to do 'm. There's more to it. He does 'm because he likes me. I can't give you the hang of it, but I ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Book of the Creation, is described by Edersheim as "a monologue on the part of Abraham, in which, by the contemplation of all that is around him, he ultimately arrives at the conclusion of the unity of God"[19]; but since this process is accomplished by an arrangement of the Divine Emanations under the name of the Ten ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... of the play. This is like that of a typical Greek tragedy with one exception. It opens, as is customary with Euripides, with a monologue, which explains the plot and the position of affairs, spoken by one of the characters, Apollo. Otherwise, it is like a regular tragedy, presenting two sorts of action, that of a chorus consisting ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... letter No. 2, so that, although you will not get it for a few days, I may add to it occasionally and despatch it to you when it reaches a decent length, and before it reaches the colossal and iniquitous verbosity of my former screed—a monologue on the ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... but she felt quite sure that not even the iron will of the Iron King could ever coerce her into marriage with any man, least of all with the man whose memory was identified with her heart's tragedy. The old man continued his monologue. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... where fungi were so common that, before a given evening two of them sprang up, only he, a stranger in this very fungiferous place, knew a fungus when he saw something like a fungus—if we disregard its quick liquefaction, for instance. It was only a monologue, however: now we have an all-star cast: and they're not only ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... his reticence, laid it only to the exhaustion of a hideously rainy day, and talked on steadily. What Reed did not know till later was that her steady monologue was designed to cover up her real intention for just a little while, that she might gain time to stiffen to the resolution she had taken. The resolution had been growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, only that very morning, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... which the two principal colours may be employed effectively, I may cite the Bacchic air, "O vin, dissipe la tristesse," and the pensive monologue, "Etre, ou ne pas etre," both from the opera Hamlet, by Ambroise Thomas. The forced, unnatural quality of the first calls for the use of a clear, open, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... thing in the world. In real life one of the three always drops out and becomes a mere audience, or a mere partisan. In real life you and A talk, and B pretends to be taking a share by interjecting interruptions, or one of the three talks a monologue. And the more subtle your sympathy and the greater your restraint from self-assertion, the more incredible triple and ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... following evening[23] or on the evening of June 8 Gil Vicente, dressed as a herdsman, broke into the Queen's chamber in the presence of the Queen, King Manuel, his mother Dona Beatriz, his sister Queen Lianor, who was one of the prince's godmothers, and others, and recited in Spanish a brief monologue of 114 lines. Having expressed rustic wonder at the splendour of the palace and the universal joy at the birth of an heir to the throne he calls in some thirty companions to offer their humble gifts of eggs, milk, curds, cheese and honey. Queen Lianor was so pleased with this 'new thing'—for ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... this monologue, Teddy calmly sat down and began to draw on his trousers, yawning broadly as ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... I rose. He had spoken almost without interruption for an hour and a quarter. I had only said a few words here and there. During this sort of long monologue Madame Adelaide passed as she retired to her apartments. The King said to her: "I will join you directly," and he continued his conversation with me. It was nearly half-past eleven when I ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... monologue was intensified by hysteria. She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen through ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... beauty, and mastery of style, these poems show Browning at the highest level of his poetic achievement. It is in these remarkable poems that he brought to perfection a poetic form which he practically invented, the dramatic monologue, a form in which there is but one speaker but which is essentially dramatic in effect. The dramatic quality arises partly from the implied presence of listeners whose expressions of assent or dissent ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... that heaps sand in a desert, there stirr'd Through his voice an emotion that swept every word Into one angry wail; as, with feverish change, He continued his monologue, fitful and strange. "Woe to him in whose nature, once kindled, the torch Of Passion burns downward to blacken and scorch! But shame, shame and sorrow, O woman, to thee Whose hand sow'd the seed ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... decidedly when he came to this part of his monologue, and put the gold and silver coins back into ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... muttered the old colonel, continuing his monologue, "always to let himself get caught in that way." He was plainly disappointed in the little chubby boy, and could not endure the ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... a long monologue that was meant to bring distraction from the noise of the inferno. "I wish as 'ow we was a bit closer to the devils so that they couldn't shell us. I'd like to get me 'and round ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... themselves in the summer-house, a little wooden room under the down-sloping boughs of a huge cedar, and pursued their conversation—or rather Bascombe pursued his monologue. A lively girl would in all probability have been bored to death by him, but Helen was not a lively girl, and was not bored at all. Ere they went into the house she had heard, amongst a hundred other things of wisdom, his views concerning crime and punishment—with which, good and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... uncarpeted room and near him the family portraits leaned against the wall. The lamp on the table shed a weak light over the boarded floor, muddied by the feet of the van-men. Stephen sat on a footstool beside his father listening to a long and incoherent monologue. He understood little or nothing of it at first but he became slowly aware that his father had enemies and that some fight was going to take place. He felt, too, that he was being enlisted for the fight, that some duty ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... have heard from the improvisatori of his native island. Bourrienne states that Bonaparte's realism required darkness and daggers for the full display of his gifts, and that the climax of his dramatic monologue was not seldom enhanced by the screams of the ladies, a consummation which gratified rather than perturbed the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... a meaning glance on Herr Katschuka, who seemed as if he had heard nothing. He had heard well enough; but what had principally struck him in the monologue of his future father-in-law was that the new millionaire must have made a great breach in the riches of Herr Brazovics, and that this rage was caused by the threatened ruin of the firm. A thought not calculated to increase the officer's joy ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... master not unfrequently lapsed into monologue, and sometimes grew eloquent. Seized occasionally by the might of the thoughts which arose in him,—thoughts which would, to him, have lost all their splendour as well as worth, had he imagined them the offspring of his own faculty, meteors of his own atmosphere ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... drawing-room or at the table, do not furnish the needed conditions. To shine as a talker, one must override others by sheer vociferation and monopoly, treading his way amidst insincere applause and general dislike, over the injured self- love of every one present, to the throne of monologue. Such a condition is equally incompatible with what is best in character, in manners, and in ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... They care for no one. They stormed Convention yesterday and looted the cellar of Good-Manners, who died of fear without a wound; so they drank his wine and are to-day as strong as lions and as careless (saving only their Captain, Monologue, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... dregs of the stream of the late lunchers or diners. He fell into the habit of going a little earlier, and Barter would signal him to the table at which he sat, if by rare chance there happened to be a vacant seat at it. The young rascal's tendency lay towards monologue, and since it was his cue to be open-hearted, and very unsuspicious of being suspected, he talked with much freedom of himself, his pursuits, and his affairs. The question which Barter's nerves were always finding in Philip's eyes was, as a matter of ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... hand around his own left wrist and feeling his pulse). This is where I take hold of him first of all. Do you see, right here! And if he hasn't anything here—please, let me go on playing. (Turning more leaves.) I won't go through the whole monologue. We shouldn't have the time anyway. Now here, scene three, end of the first act. That's where the farm laborer's child, who had grown up with you in the castle, suddenly enters. Now listen—after you have taken ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... secured instantaneous success. Siegfried Sassoon, on its publication, became one of the leading young poets of England. The book begins with the long monologue of a retired huntsman, a piece of remarkable characterisation. It continues with all the best of the 'paradise' poems, including the loveliest in 'Discoveries' and 'Morning Glory.' There are also the 'bridge' poems between his old manner ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... stood aside, and allowed her visitor to serve herself with beans. When Nance's first hunger had been satisfied, she began a rambling monologue, of an accustomed sort ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... to "My good friend, Robert Browning," and opening with the beautiful verses to one who never was Mr Browning's friend, Edward FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of Tennyson's later work. Tiresias, the monologue of the aged seer, blinded by excess of light when he beheld Athene unveiled, and under the curse of Cassandra, is worthy of the author who, in youth, wrote OEnone and Ulysses. Possibly the verses reflect Tennyson's own ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... midst of a joyous monologue. "You seen it, boys? One punch done it. That's what the Lannings are—the one-punch kind. And you seen him get to his gun? Handy! Lord, but it done me good to see him mosey that piece of iron off'n his hip. And ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... wore a gloomy expression. He was annoyed because Bridget had not been introduced to Mrs. Reynolds, and in considerable pain from the increasing rheumatism in his knee joint. In the midst of his old friend's monologue, Knight announced— ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... of Westmoreland House, Miss Carew lived a monotonous but anxious life. For days together she hardly saw Molly, and then perhaps she would be called into the big bed-room for a long talk, or rather, to listen to a long monologue in which Molly gave vent to views and feelings on ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... only dramatic dialogue and movement, but dramatic monologue and episode. For illustration, we might refer to Hagar in the wilderness. Her tragic loneliness and shuddering despair alight upon the page of Scripture with the interest that attends the introduction of the veiled Niobe with her children into the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... manner quite indicated that it was he and not Madame Barenna who was upset. The lady consented, and proceeded to what she took to be a consultation, which in reality was a monologue. During this she imparted a vast deal of information, and received none in return, which is the habit of voluble people, and renders them exceedingly dangerous to ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... During this involuntary monologue we had strolled along the road which Nourrigat had originally indicated as the direction of our friend Pistre. Presently he led us into the church, a humble little village sanctuary. A shell had carried away half the apse, and sadly ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... back in his chair, took his tea-cup as though it were a fresh addition to his responsibilities, and began to talk. He talked apparently without even breathing. He began on the weather, drifted on to art and music, and was just beginning a monologue on The Novel, when William rose and crept from the room like a guilty spirit. He found Mr. Blank under the library table, having heard a noise in the kitchen and fearing a visitor. A cigar and a silver snuffer had fallen from his pocket to the floor. He hastily replaced them. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... and looking apparently into the far past, he seemed to call up the miseries of the past, and to trace out in the future the vague outlines of some great scheme. And as his thoughts began to overflow, so to say, he broke out in a strange, spasmodic monologue,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... his paper, Madame her fancy work, and Edith, attempting to play solitaire, hopelessly fumbled her cards. Madame made a valiant effort to carry on a conversation alone, but at length the monologue wearied her, and she slipped quietly out ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... entitled "April," a brief lyric of marked merit, highly expressive of the season. "Writing Poetry," an essay by Dora M. Hepner, is a clear and tasteful analysis of the poet's art and inspiration. "The Norwegian Recruit," a dialect monologue by Maurice W. Moe, is the leading feature of this issue. This exquisite bit of humor, recited by Mr. Moe at the United's 1913 convention, is a sketch of rare quality. "The Amateur Press," now firmly established as a column of contributed reviews, is this month ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... palm outwards, as if to shield herself from a blow, and then without another word stooped down and tied the satin sandals on Isabel's restless feet. She was muttering prayers during the whole action, for Isabel had been quick to perceive her advantage, and was following it up by a defiant little monologue ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... the workmen implicated in these defacings were denied what unquestionably; they would have considered a treat; but as the fanatic orator continued the monologue, a gentleman in flannels emerged upward from one of the excavations, and ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... earliest works (the "Eurydice" of Rinuccini as composed by both Peri and Caccini) there are passages which sound like rudimentary melodies, but are charged with vital dramatic expression. Note the following phrase from Orpheus's monologue on being left in the infernal regions by Venus, from Peri's opera, performed A.D. 1600, in honor of the marriage of Maria de' Medici to ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... trivial as any of its models, the German clown comedies, and possesses interest only as an index to the taste of the public, which surely received it with delight. Strangely enough the principal scene between Joseph and Selicha, Potiphar's wife, is highly discreet. In a monologue, she gives passionate utterance to her love. Then Joseph appears, and she ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... invalid's knees, Brandes took his cue; and the conversation developed into a monologue on the present condition of foreign missions—skilfully inspired by the respectful attention and the brief ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... was Mr. Gaius Small, and, although he stammered, he loved the sound of his own voice. The demand for a dozen oranges furnished Gaius with subject sufficient for a lengthy monologue—"forty drawls and ten stutters to every ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "And what a big, handsome creature he is too! But I fear I'm not equal to carrying on a lifelong monologue." ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read "The Pickwick Papers" and learnt a monologue from "Faust." ... ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... excuse for this mean-spirited monologue. The boots were not the high-lows at present in vogue, which an unobservant man may be allowed to disregard up to a certain point. They were the unmistakable, uncompromising hessians then prescribed by fashion, a pair of extremely elegant betasseled boots, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... monologue, apostrophe; monology^. V. Soliloquize; say to oneself, talk to oneself; say aside, think aloud, apostrophize. Adj. soliloquizing &c v.. Adv. aside. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... entertainment, for the names of several popular actors appeared on the program. But what made it especially attractive to Joe and his party was the fact that Nick Altman, the famous pitcher of the "White Sox" of Chicago, was on the bill for a monologue. Although, being in the American League, Joe and Jim had never played against him, they knew him well by reputation and respected him for his ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... rambling monologue, while chewing a straw, he discussed humanity in general, and the professions in particular. "I ain't got no use fer lawyers—mighty hard show them fellers has, fer get'n' to heaven. As fer doctors—waal, they'll hev hard sledd'n, too; ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... old languages, becoming more common. By subjectivity I mean when a writer thinks it sufficient for himself to know what he means and wants to say, and it is left to the reader to discover what is meant. Without troubling himself about his reader, he writes as if he were holding a monologue; whereas it should be a dialogue, and, moreover, a dialogue in which he must express himself all the more clearly as the questions of the reader cannot be heard. And it is for this very reason that style should not be subjective but objective, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the monologue was interrupted and he busied himself with the fuse, pouring from a flask taken from his doublet, fresh grains of powder upon the train already laid, that nothing should be lacking to speed ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... the plan of the book offers for any variety or display of character, being mainly occupied with erudite monologue, put sometimes into the mouth of Durtal, sometimes into that of the Abbe Plomb, yet the personalities of these two, as well as those of Geversin, Madame Bavoil, and Madame Mesurat, stand out very vividly, and make us wish for that ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell |
