"Playwright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acquaintanceship, many whom he could find far from Slumber-land. His steps led to the apartment of a certain theatrical manager, whom he found engaged in a lively tournament of the chips, jousting with two leading men, one playwright, a composer and a merchant prince. The latter, of course, was winning. The host, contributing both chips and bottled cheer, was far from optimistic until the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... classical work, as understood and developed, whether well or ill, by the Italians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but with characteristic disregard of law, he thought to combine classical severity with the fancifulness natural in a northerner and a playwright. Thus, while the general scheme of the south front, for instance, is distinctly severe, the massive towers at its ends are surmounted by fantastic masses of open stone-work, most quaintly finished off with arrangements of cannon-balls and coronets. Throughout he repeatedly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... the scenes, he shortened the monologues, he suppressed or reduced the chorus—in a word, the drama in his hands ceased to be oratorical or lyrical, and became at length dramatic. The advance was great; and it was achieved by a hack playwright scrambling for his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... He sang a song in his gasping way, and they laughed still more. Fenn's brother became incoherent with delight. The verdict of Eckleton was hardly likely to affect London theatre-goers, but it was very pleasant notwithstanding. Like every playwright with his first piece, he had been haunted by the idea that his dialogue "would not act", that, however humorous it might be to a reader, it would fall flat when spoken. There was no doubt now as to ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... death in 1912 was a great blow to Portuguese as well as to Spanish literature, would certainly have changed his view if he had lived. In his brilliant study of Gil Vicente, a 'sovereign genius,' 'the most national playwright before Lope de Vega[26],' 'the greatest figure of our primitive theatre[27],' he remarked that if Vicente had been a goldsmith and one of such skill he must infallibly have left some trace of it in his dramatic works ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... strengthening of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics. Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an offence. A playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as he does not misrepresent the manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite pessimists who thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic acid. Especially this is so in matters of hygiene; notably such ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... pantheon of Santa Croce. Shakespeare was a child of his age; it had long been preparing for him; its expression culminated in him. It was essentially a dramatic age. He used the accumulated materials of centuries. He was playwright as well as poet. His variety and multiform genius cannot otherwise be accounted for. He called in the coinage of many generations, and reissued it purified and unalloyed, stamped in his own mint. There was a Hamlet probably, there were certainly Romeos and Juliets, on the stage ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... role, Idenka Fassbender, of Munich. (She is not to be compared with the epileptic Mazarin for a moment. She is not Elektra vocally or histrionically.) The artiste of the evening was Anna von Mildenburg (Vienna), the wife of Herman Bahr, novelist and playwright, best known to America as the author of The Concert, one of David Belasco's productions. The Mildenburg is a giantess, with a voice like an organ. She is also an uneven singer, being hugely temperamental. The night in question she was keyed up to the occasion, and for the first ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... masterly a playwright, and had so wonderful a power of giving life to unpromising subjects, that to a large extent he was able to surmount this difficulty. But illustrations of it are easily to be found in his tragedies, and it is not always surmounted. In almost all of them we are conscious ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... "not only acted every day, but also obliged himself to write a sheet every day for several years; but many of his plays being composed loosely in taverns, occasions them to be so mean." Besides his labors as a playwright, he worked as translator, versifier, and general maker of books. Late in life he conceived the design of writing the lives of all the poets of the world, including his contemporaries. Had this project been carried ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... sole, object was to amuse the groundlings. If he often took himself and his art with hardly more seriousness than does the writer of the vaudeville skit or musical comedy of to-day, if he often wished primarily to gain the immediate laugh, then much of Langen's long list of the playwright's dramatic delinquencies is somewhat beside its ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... Minnie, the eldest, was happily married to Lieutenant Roper of the U. S. Navy; her early death was a grief hard to bear. The second child, a boy, died in infancy. The surviving children are: Herbert G. Croly, a man of letters in New York City; Vida Croly Sidney, the wife of the English playwright, Frederick Sidney, lives in London; and Alice Gary Mathot, the wife of a New York lawyer, William F. Mathot, resides in Brooklyn Hills, ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... who go out of their way to do a thing already done—"to kill a dead horse," but here apparently is twisted by Aristophanes into an allusion to the leathern 'godemiche' mentioned a little above; if the worst comes to the worst, we must use artificial means. Pherecrates was a comic playwright, a ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... impressions, Munden did not affect me much in some of his earlier performances; for then he depended on the play. Afterwards, when he took the matter into his own hands, and created personages who owed little or nothing to the playwright, then he became an inventor. He rose with the occasion. Sic ivit ad astra. In the drama of "Modern Antiques," especially, space was allowed him for his movements. The words were nothing. The prosperity of the piece depended exclusively on the genius ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... servant of God. No tyranny could extort this service. No wealth could pay for this golden secret. Sometimes a character appears but once in the course of a great drama. The man or woman, comes on the stage to deliver one message, and then disappears. But that one brief word has its place in the playwright's scheme, and its effect on the action of the piece. This child was sent to Syria to utter one speech, to speak one name, and because she spoke her little speech, kindly and clearly, things went better with ever so ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... Prince Serge Wolkonsky, was certainly the most versatile man I have ever known: a playwright, an actor, an essayist, an orator, a lecturer, and admirable in each of these capacities. At a dinner given me, just before my departure from St. Petersburg, by the Russians who had taken part in the Chicago Exposition, I was somewhat troubled by the fact that the speeches ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... in Sorochintzy, government of Poltava, in 1809. His father was a Little Russian, or Ukrainian, landowner, who exhibited considerable talent as a playwright and actor. Gogol was educated at home until the age of ten, then went to Niezhin, where he entered the gymnasium in 1821. Here he edited a students' manuscript magazine called the Star, and later founded a students' ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... pass the exhaustless Shakspere without some further word of inadequate comment. Apparently no one in his day guessed that among the jostling throng of soldiers, statesmen, and philosophers this obscure playwright was the intellectual king. But Time has more than redressed the wrong, for now he is not only reverenced as a sovereign but sometimes worshiped as an oracle. The prime secret of his power, compared with the men before him and about him, is his return to reality. It is the actual world, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... The play-writer's or playwright's work, then, supposing that he possesses the requisite knowledge of life as it is lived to go on with, is to select or evolve from that knowledge the basic idea, plot or theme, which, skillfully displayed, will attract; and then to invent, plan, devise, and construct the trap ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... Ladies' Battle," was produced in 1851; but it was not until November, 1852, with the appearance of "Masks and Faces"—the story which he afterwards adapted into prose under the title of "Peg Woffington"—that Reade became famous as a playwright. From 1852 until his death, which occurred on April 11, 1884, Reade's life is mainly a catalogue of novels and dramas. Like many of Charles Reade's works, "Hard Cash, a Matter-of-Fact Romance," is a novel with a purpose, and was written with the object of exposing abuses connected ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... where he began at the very bottom of the ladder as an usher in the gallery, balcony and main floor. Finally he became chief usher—then sold tickets for the gallery—took tickets at the main door. The late Aaron Hoffman, famous playwright, was opera glass boy at that time with him, and the well-known star, Taylor Holmes, was one of his ushers! Eventually he became Assistant Superintendent of ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... opened within, the mysterious sounds doubled in volume. Then the outer door opened, and the Baron's old servant hurried me in. "Come in, sir," she said, "come in; the Baron is longing for you to come!" I found Baron Taylor in his bath, and beside him a playwright reading a tragedy. The fellow had insisted on entering, had caught the examiner of plays in his bath, and was inflicting on him a play of over two thousand lines! Undaunted by the Baron's rage, and unmoved by my arrival, he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... whether or not Chesterton is a playwright. His one play was a fine one about a fine subject, but I do not think it had the qualities that would be popular in an ordinary theatre in London. There is a certain suggestion of a problem about it which is a little ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... understand. As the play proceeded, his brows grew darker and darker. And the husband, who ought to have been the guardian of his wife's honor? Well, the husband in this rather poor play was a creation that is common in modern English drama. He represented one idea at least that the English playwright has certainly not borrowed from the French stage. Moral worth is best indicated by a sullen demeanor. The man who has a pleasant manner is dangerous and a profligate; the virtuous man—the true-hearted Englishman—conducts ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... playful vanity he gave vent to a torrent of self-appreciation. He then named all the "other notables present"—a poet, a cartoonist, a budding playwright, a distinguished Russian revolutionist, an editor, and another newspaper man—maligning and deriding some of them and grudgingly praising the others. Much of what he said was lost upon me, for, although he knew that I was a rank outsider, he used ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... if at a touch of a fairy's wand or of a playwright's pen. That is what mystifies his biographers. Of course untraceable influences must have been at work a long time, and there must have been occasional outcropping not mentioned in the chronicles. Here is ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... days after the playwright left, Hedger heard an ominous murmur of voices through the bolted double doors: the lady-like intonation of the nurse—doubtless exhibiting her treasures—and another voice, also a woman's, but very different; ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... successively the Department of State (1852); the Algerian Department (1858), and later on became editorial secretary of the Corps Legislatif (1860). When his patron, the Duc de Morny, died in 1865, Halevy resigned, giving up a lucrative position for the uncertain profession of a playwright: At this period he devoted himself exclusively ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... European kingdoms. But overnight, so to sneak these limitations became no more than mere geometrical expressions. "Pennamite," "Erie," and "Toledo" wars between the States, suggesting a world of bitterness and recrimination, are remembered today, if at all, only by the cartoonist and the playwright. The ancient false pride in mock values, so cherished in Europe, has quite departed from the provincial areas of the United States, and Americans can fly in a day, unwittingly, through many States. Problems ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... real character of the man. He tried many things, and he produced much; but the root of him was that he was a humorous thinker. He did not write first-rate plays, or first-rate novels, rich as he was in the elements of playwright and novelist. He was not an artist. But he had a rare and original eye and soul,—and in a peculiar way he could pour out himself. In short, to be an Essayist was the bent of his nature and genius. English literature is rich in such men,—in men whose works ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and conquering, write the charter of their country. Its great power is contested by none; rather, all recognise it, and many and violent are the disputes as to its right use and purpose. I propose to consider two of the disputants—the propagandist playwright and the art-for-art's-sake artist, since they raise issues that are our concern. It is curious that two so violently opposed should be so nearly alike in error: they are both afraid of life. The propagandist is all for one side; the artist afraid of every side. The one lacks imagination; the ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... consummate artist like yourself I need hardly suggest that The Nights still offers many a virgin mine to the Playwright; and I inscribe this volume to you, not only in admiration of your genius but in the hope that you will find means of exploiting the hidden wealth which awaits only your ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the trite remarks from the men, the reading from the works of England's most famous poet and playwright was not an ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... that finally became established hymns of praise. Meanwhile from accompanying rude imitations of the hero's acts, performed now by one and now by several, grew dramatic representations, which, little by little elaborated, fell under the regulation of a chief actor, who prefigured the playwright. And out of these germs, all pertaining to worship, came eventually the various professions of poets, actors, dramatists, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... poet, one of the leading lights in that new sect which prides itself upon the cultivation of abstract beauty, and occasionally touches the verge of concrete ugliness. There were a newspaper man—the editor of a fashionable journal—and a middle-aged man of letters, playwright, critic, humourist, a man whose society was in demand everywhere, and who said sharp things with the most supreme good-nature. The only ladies whose society Mr. Smithson had deemed worthy the occasion were a fashionable actress, with her younger sister, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... instructions of Lord George, who had sympathies for the Jews, and eventually became one himself. Middleton, 1607 (James I.), speaks ill of it in his play of the Phoenix, for prisons at that time were places of cruelty and extortion, and schools of villainy. The great playwright makes his "first officer" say, "We have been scholars, I can tell you—we could not have been knaves so soon else; for as in that notable city called London, stand two most famous universities, Poultry and Wood St., where some are of twenty years standing, and have ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and first attempt in literature, Cromwell, was a complete failure, this did not deter him from longing to become a successful playwright. After having established himself as a novelist, he turned again to this field of literature. Having written several plays, he was acquainted, naturally, with the leading actresses of his day; among these was Madame Dorval, whom he liked. He purposed giving ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... This novelist turned playwright wishes to make you see that "the Earth's forgotten it's a Star." In plainer words he wants to present you with a cure for "wumbledness." People who look at the black side of things, who think chiefly of themselves—these are the wumbled. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... pathos, and one good character of an Irishman, but the contrast between the elegance of the French theatre and the grossierete of the English struck us much. But this is the judgment of a disappointed playwright! ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... learned his business on the stage; the lecturer had gone through his apprenticeship in the pulpit. Each had his bread to earn, and he must work, and work hard, in the way open before him. For twenty years the playwright wrote dramas, and retired before middle age with a good estate to his native town. For forty years Emerson lectured and published lectures, and established himself at length in competence in the village where his ancestors had lived and died before him. He never became rich, as Shakespeare ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and ended in ancestral worship. Thus Attica had a temple to Theseus, the Ionian hero; the shrine of AEsculapius at Epidau'rus was famous throughout the classic world; and the exploits of Hercules were commemorated by the Dorians at the tomb of a Ne'mean king. When the bard and the playwright clothed these tales in verse, all Greece hearkened; and when the painter or the sculptor took these subjects for his skill, all Greece applauded. Thus was strengthened the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... arrested for debt. He himself as a young man had been whipped at the command of the landowner and thrown into jail. The small town which had been the witness of these humiliations should be witness of the restoration of his honor. Where he had been spoken of as the actor and playwright of doubtful fame, there would he be seen again as the honored possessor of house and land. There and elsewhere should the people, who had counted him among the proletariat, learn to know him as a gentleman, that is as a member of the lesser nobility.... In the year 1596 his father, ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... colleges, and one with friends far higher in the world than herself. Though she thought so little of him, and quite expected to be bored, she settled herself in a soft armchair to listen. The unsuccessful playwright read to her a scene or two from his still unfinished drama. She heard him patiently, noting the cultivated accent of his voice, which proved to her that he was at least a gentleman. When he ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... whether she would not have been more successful in some other epoch when some other literary form than the novel had happened to be in fashion. In France the novel tempted Victor Hugo, who was essentially a lyric poet, and the elder Dumas, who was essentially a playwright. There are not lacking signs of late that the drama is likely in the immediate future to assert a sharper rivalry with prose-fiction; and novelists like Sir James Barrie and the late Paul Hervieu have relinquished the easier narrative for the more difficult ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... beginning to write plays, he has left a lively account of the casual meeting which led to his becoming attached to a company of players and to be for a time their playwright in ordinary. It was at a moment when his purse was empty; for as he quaintly puts it in one of his stories: "so long went the pot to the water, that at last it came broken home; and so long put he his hand into his purse that at last the emptie bottome returned him a writt ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... 9), who fell in Spain B.C. 212, leads to the conclusion that he must have been well established as an author by that date, though none of his plays can be proved to have been written so early. If we suppose that his career as a playwright commenced at thirty, and that his acquaintance with the Scipios lasted ten years, the year of his birth must have been about B.C. 254. This view is supported (1) by the notice in Cic. Brut. 73, that Plautus had produced many plays by B.C. 197; ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... loses all confidence in the impossibility; he believes that here indeed lies the road to ruin; he feels inexpressibly relieved when the young man thanks Heaven for his terrible dream of the future, and sits down to Conic Sections, his head between his hands. You notice this latter touch. The playwright knows his audience. He knows they think that an influx of Conic Sections strains the cerebral centres, and that study is always carried on with the head compressed between the hands. Thus the sermon reaches ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... in disgrace with Henslowe and his former associates, Jonson offered his services as a playwright to Henslowe's rivals, the Lord Chamberlain's company, in which Shakespeare was a prominent shareholder. A tradition of long standing, though not susceptible of proof in a court of law, narrates that Jonson had submitted the manuscript of "Every Man in His Humour" to the Chamberlain's ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... keep alive their sense of participation in the great Russian revolution and relieve their feelings in regard to it. There is something still more appealing in the yearning efforts the immigrants sometimes make to formulate their situation in America. I recall a play written by an Italian playwright of our neighborhood, which depicted the insolent break between Americanized sons and old country parents, so touchingly that it moved to tears all the older Italians in the audience. Did the tears of each express ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... drama are entitled to be forbearingly judged, however. Their comfort was little studied, and it is not surprising, under the circumstances, that they should have favoured a brisk and vivacious class of representations. The tedious playwright did not merely oppress their minds; he made them remember how ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... have also been the incursions of Jules Claretie into the theatrical domain, though he is a better novelist than playwright. He was appointed director of the Comedie Francaise in 1885. His best known dramas and comedies are: 'La Famille de Gueux, in collaboration with Della Gattina (Ambigu, 1869); Raymond Lindey (Menus Plaisirs, 1869, forbidden for some time by French censorship); Les Muscadins (Theatre Historique, 1874); ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... mystery stories. The Breaking Point is, from one standpoint, a first class mystery story; and then there is that enormously successful mystery play, written by Mrs. Rinehart in conjunction with Avery Hopwood, The Bat. Nor was this her first success as a playwright for she collaborated with Mr. Hopwood in writing the farce Seven Days. Shall I add that Mrs. Rinehart has lived part of her life in haunted houses? I am under the impression that more than one of her residences has been found to ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... will be found to lie more deep than appears at first sight. It was, indeed, a sufficiently obvious connection, to make the gay Lorenzo an officer of the conquering army, and attached to the person of Torrismond. This expedient could hardly have escaped the invention of the most vulgar playwright, that ever dovetailed tragedy and comedy together. The felicity of Dryden's plot, therefore, does not consist in the ingenuity of his original conception, but in the minutely artificial strokes, by which the reader is perpetually reminded of the dependence of the one ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... regard to this subject, there have been not a few scoffers and dissenters, even among people of distinction. Douglas Jerrold, the playwright, was one of these, for he declared that he disliked dining amidst the strains of a military band, because he could taste the brass in his soup. Charles Lamb, in his chapter on "Ears," remarked, that while a carpenter's hammer, on a warm summer day, caused him to "fret into ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... dramas the whole stirring life of the English people. The plays themselves, with the testimony of contemporaries and his business success, are strong evidence against the tradition that his life in London was wild and dissolute, like that of the typical actor and playwright of his time. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... twinkle or genial by-play in which Stevenson excelled. But he has more of dramatic power, pure and simple, than Stevenson had—his novels—the best of them—would far more easily yield themselves to the ordinary purposes of the ordinary playwright. Along with conscientiousness, perception, penetration, with the dramatist must go a certain indescribable common- sense commonplaceness—if I may name it so—protection against vagary and that over-refined egotism and self-confession which is inimical to the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... fact that in these plays, which contain nothing salacious or indecent, there is scarcely a character of any rank who scruples to tell lies; and the truth is not to be found in works intended to school the public to virtue. The ingenious old playwright's memoirs are full of gossip concerning that poor old Venice, which is now no more; and the worthy autobiographer, Casanova, also gives much information about things that had best not ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... were letters from Carlo Angiolini, who was afterwards to bring the manuscript of the Memoirs to Brockhaus; from Balbi, the monk with whom Casanova escaped from the Piombi; from the Marquis Albergati, playwright, actor, and eccentric, of whom there is some account in the Memoirs; from the Marquis Mosca, 'a distinguished man of letters whom I was anxious to see,' Casanova tells us in the same volume in which he describes his visit ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... through an enormous amount of work. Dramatic critic and art critic for the Times, he was also editor of Punch and a busy playwright. Everyone who wanted an address written or a play altered came to him, and his house was a kind of Mecca for pilgrims from America and from all parts of the world. Yet he all the time occupied a position in a Government office—the Home Office, I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... so alarmingly outspoken when she sings our praises to strangers. She gave him to understand that I am a full-fledged author and playwright, the peer of any poet laureate who ever held a pen; that Lloyd is a combination of princess and angel and halo-crowned saint, and Joyce a model big sister and an all-round genius. How she managed in the short time they were alone to tell him as much ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... E M A S T E R R O A D will be a greater play than "Salvation Nell." Dramatic rights secured by America's leading playwright and producer. Sure ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... subject expands before us, and we must stay our hand. We merely offer these hints as our modest contribution to the attempts to decide from phrases used in Shakespeare's works what were his avocations before he became a playwright, and return to Lord Campbell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... chosen from Shelley's 'Scenes,' and from Mr. MacCarthy's translation of 'The Secret in Words.' 'The Secret in Words' is light comedy of intricate plot. Fabio is an example of the attendant gracioso, half servant, half confidant, who appears often in the Spanish drama. The Spanish playwright did not confine himself to one form of verse; and Mr. MacCarthy, in his adequate translation, has followed the various forms of Calderon, only not attempting the assonant vowel, so hard to escape in Spanish, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... that the reproaches which have been levelled for so long a period at the British theatre—the most important of these reproaches being that it possessed no drama at all—perhaps I say we may grant in a spirit of charity that these reproaches ought not to be wholly laid at the door of the native playwright. If it be true that he has been in the habit of producing plays invariably conventional in sentiment, trite in comedy, wrought on traditional lines, inculcating no philosophy, making no intellectual appeal whatever, may it not be that the attitude of the frequenters of the theatre has made ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Licenser so that his comedy Man of the World was not presented until 1781, twenty years after a portion of it first appeared at Covent Garden.[3] Nor were censorship and a bad start his only problems as a playwright. He also, and apparently with good reason,[4] was fearful of piracy and was thus reluctant to have his plays printed. His eighteenth-century biographer Kirkman mentions Macklin's threats to "put the law against ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... not the first time Bunce had appeared as a playwright. There had been seen, on June 10, 1850, at the New York Bowery Theatre, a tragedy entitled "Marco Bozzaris; or, The Grecian Hero," and in the cast were J. Wallack, Jr., and his wife, together with John Gilbert. It was not based on ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... Daudet, the eminent French novelist and playwright, died suddenly yesterday evening while at dinner The cause of death was syncope due to failure of ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... arrangement of action, which should be at once pleasing, interesting, and probable, require sedulous study, deep reflection, and long and repeated correction and revision. But these were not to be expected from a playwright, by whom three dramas were to be produced in one season; and in their place were substituted adventures surprises, rencounters, mistakes, disguises, and escapes, all easily accomplished by the intervention of sliding panels, closets, veils, masks, large cloaks, and dark lanthorns. If the dramatist ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out. A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend themselves too ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... play justified all that Marion and Wimpole had claimed for it, and was a great personal triumph for the new playwright. The audience was the typical first-night audience of the class which Charles Wimpole always commanded. It was brilliant, intelligent, and smart, and it came prepared ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... good-nature. His escapades diverted the court to such an extent, that he frequently took the liberty of affording it entertainment at the expense of its reputation. The "beau Sidney," a man "of sweet and caressing temper," handsome appearance, and amorous disposition; Sir George Etherege, a wit and a playwright; and Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, a poet and man of sprightly speech, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... critics, notably the Cambridge editors and the Rev. F. G. Fleay, in his "Shakespearian Manual," starting from this view, have gone so far as to say that "Macbeth," as we have it, is not all Shakespeare's, but in part the work of Thomas Middleton, a second or third-rate playwright contemporary with Shakespeare, who wrote a play, called "The Witch," which is plainly an imitation of the supernatural scenes in this tragedy. The Cambridge editors believe that Middleton was permitted to supply certain scenes at the time of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... "confession" in a work of less resounding notoriety, but equally interesting as a revelation of himself. In his Autobiography he has related the origin of the piece. In the spring of 1774 there fell into his hands the recently published Memoires[166] of the French playwright Beaumarchais, which told a story that reawakened painful memories of his own past. Beaumarchais had two sisters in Madrid, one married to an architect; the other, named Marie, betrothed to Clavigo, a publicist of rising fame. On Clavigo's promotion ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... us to the last step in the evolution of a perfect hypocrite out of a simple formalist. The perfect and finished hypocrite is not your commonplace and vulgar scoundrel of the playwright and the penny-novelist type; the finest hypocrite is a character their art cannot touch. 'The worst of hypocrites,' Rutherford goes on to say, 'is he who whitens himself till he deceives himself. It is strange that a man hath such power over himself. But a man's heart may deceive ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... were doing. If he offers nothing but the bare dialogue, he is writing a kind of play; just as a dramatist, amplifying his play with "stage-directions" and putting it forth to be read in a book, has really written a kind of novel. But the difference between the story-teller and the playwright is not my affair; and a new contrast, within the limits of the art of fiction, is apparent when we speak of the novel by itself—a contrast of two methods, to one of which it is reasonable to give the ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... alone; and something as Mr. Hardy, in The Return of the Native, paints Egdon Heath—"Haggard Egdon"—in its shifting moods before he introduces a single human being upon the scene of their coming tragedy, it is quite possible for the modern playwright, with an artist to aid him, to show the audience the scene of his drama, to let its suggestive beauty, its emotional possibilities, charm or fire their fancies before the speech and action begin. So also, as ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... gave him the use of his library. The first results of this favour were adaptations of two plays from Rojas and Lope de Vega, which appeared some time during the first two or three years of the eighteenth century. Le Sage's reputation as a playwright and as a novelist rests, oddly enough, in each case on one work. As the author of "Tuscaret," produced in 1709, he contributed to the stage one of the best comedies in the French language; as author of "The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana" he stands ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... attracted its daily audience, but rather as a dress rehearsal, its main purpose being to train the players for the court presentations at one of her Majesty's palaces. The secret spur to both players and playwright was the hope of being among the chosen for the festivities at Richmond, Whitehall, or Greenwich, as the Queen might fancy to ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... feelings of Mr. Cooper. I hardly know whether I have ever seen Mr. Cooper manifest as much enthusiasm with any other person when occasion was felicitous, the subject of interest, and the comedian in his happy vein. Dunlap, were he speaking, might tell you of his [Cooper's] gratuities to the unfortunate playwright and the dramatic performer." In 1832 William Dunlap's "History of the American Theatre" was "Dedicated to James Fenimore Cooper Esq., by ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... playwright, whose dramas are mere plagiarisms from "the refuse of obscure volumes." He pretends to be rather pleased with criticism, but is sorely irritated thereby. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), noted for his vanity and irritability, was the model of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... most likewise of its interest. Such diversion as the spectators derived was such as Hippolyta seems to have found in listening to Wall, Lion, Moonshine and Co.; but, like Theseus, Lord Shrewsbury was very courteous, and complimented both playwright and actors, relieved and thankful, no doubt, that Queen Zenobia was so unlike ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which have yielded up their secrets to Mr. Wills, it is interesting to note in his poems, here the picturesque vision of the painter, here the psychology of the novelist, and here the playwright's sense of dramatic situation. Yet these things, which are the elements of his work of art though we arbitrarily separate them in criticism, are in the work itself blended and made one by the true imaginative and informing power. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... utterly meretricious French dramatists, who receive nothing but a chilly ridicule from people of genuine discrimination in Paris. Whatever American dramatists have to learn, they will not learn it in Paris; and I was charmed once to hear a popular New York playwright, one who sincerely and frankly wrote for money alone, assert boldly that the notoriously successful French plays were bad, and clumsily bad. It was a proof of taste. As a rule, one finds the popular playwright taking off his hat to contemporaries who at best ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... men who voted with Grattan, are perhaps as mournful in the end as the four mud walls that are so often left in Wicklow as the only remnants of a farmhouse. The desolation of this life is often of a peculiarly local kind, and if a playwright chose to go through the Irish country houses he would find material, it is likely, for many gloomy plays that would turn on the dying away of these old families, and on the lives of the one or two ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... attention from year to year. Punch's interest in theatricals is hardly surprising when it is remembered how closely identified with the drama have been many members of the Staff. Douglas Jerrold was a successful playwright before ever Punch was heard of, and as the author of "Black-Eyed Susan" and "Time Works Wonders" he made his name popular with many who had hardly heard of his connection with "the great comic." It has been computed that the Punch writers, from first to last, have contributed ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... act was beginning to get hold of him with that force which, after all, only a French playwright is master of, he looked up and saw the two sisters coming round the corner of the house from the great kitchen garden, which stretched its grass paths and tangled flower-masses down the further slope of the hill. The transition was sharp ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at the theatre, as you may well believe, that poets live and die most like the blithesome grasshoppers. The poor players, marvellous compounds of tin, feathers, and tiffany, fret but a brief hour; but the playwright, less considered alive, is sooner defunct. I have not Dodsley's Plays by me, but, if my memory does not deceive me, not one of them keeps the stage; nor did dear Charles Lamb make many in love with that huge heap in the British Museum. Alas! all these good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... The playwright gave Mainhall a curious look out of his deep-set faded eyes and made a wry face. "And have I done anything so fool as that, ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... written broad comedy like Synge's Shadow of the Glen and Lady Gregory's Irish Comedies; his Pot of Broth is a most clever retelling of an old, comical tale. But it is by his mystical and poetical plays that he would be judged as playwright and poet—particularly Deirdre, which should be compared with Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows; The Unicorn of the Stars, written in collaboration with Lady Gregory; Cathleen Ni Hoolihan, a dramatization of the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Veronese; it is a romantic conception; the personages are all in gala dress; the struggle between Iago and the Moor is melodramatic; the whole picture aglow with a superb richness of colour. It is Shakespeare's finest play, his supreme achievement as a playwright. It is impossible to read "Othello" without admiring the art of it. The beginning is so easy: the introduction of the chief characters so measured and impressive that when the action really begins, it develops and increases in speed as by its own weight to the inevitable ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... progress of the main narrative—i.e., the travel—and give the author an opportunity to use up some spare material which he does not know what to do with. Such are "The Man of the Hill," in Tom Jones; "The History of Melopoyn the Playwright" in Roderick Random; the "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality," occupying fifty-three thousand words, in Peregrine Pickle; "The Philosophic Vagabond," in the Vicar of Wakefield; and "Wandering Willie's Tale," in Redgauntlet. The reason why the eighteenth-century novelist did ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Hunt. And then: "Say, you're some stage-manager! Or rather same playwright! Playwrights that know tell me it's one of their most difficult tricks—to get all their leading characters on the stage at the same time. And here you've got it all fixed to bring on Miss Sherwood, Dick, Maggie, yourself, and the all-important me—for don't ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Australia is not a matter for surprise. No one, indeed, would seriously think of attempting to do so. Gordon was a mounted policeman, a horse-breaker, a steeplechase-rider—anything but a professional man of letters; Marcus Clarke was a journalist and playwright, and wrote only two novels in fourteen years; Rolf Boldrewood's books were written in spare hours before and after his daily duties as a country magistrate; Henry Kingsley returned to England before publishing anything; Kendall held a Government ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... porter is trained to carry loads; the singer works his larynx; and the pianist hardens his wrist. A banker is practised in business matters; he studies and plans them, and pulls the wires of various interests, just as a playwright trains his intelligence in combining situations, studying his actors, giving ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... among the first Forsytes of the land; neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate, or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic figure, who commits suicide ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... poet; for it was a dramatic masterpiece that Hebbel analyzed in Kleist's Prince of Hamburg, and in this analysis he formulated views that remained the canons of all his subsequent activity as a playwright. The study of Kleist gave him for the drama the same sort of illumination that Uhland had given him for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... to the sympathy and excitement of the time may have been something of a disturbing force in the composition of the work—a loadstone rock indeed, of tempting attraction to the patriot as well as to the playwright, but possibly capable of proving in some measure a rock of offence to the poet whose ship was piloted towards it. His perfect triumph in the field of patriotic drama, coincident with the perfect maturity of his comic genius and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... take their name from the erratic poet and playwright. In one of them he lived and died, just above the rooms tenanted by the learned Blackstone, who, at that time engaged in penning the fourth volume of his "Commentaries," was often grievously annoyed by the dancing- and drinking-parties, the games of blind-man's-buff, and the noisy singing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... wordy and tiresome pages we generally find some one phrase, some epithet, some turn of a sentence whose freshness or strength or daring reveals a genius, so in this scene we find a few lines whose energy reminds us that we are not after all in the hands of some obscure playwright, whose works ought long ago to have been eaten by moths or burnt by fire. Those lines are a warning against the temptation so familiar in every age since Paris was a guest in the halls of Menelaus, to take that fatal resolve, All for love and the world well lost. "To do wrong," says Dorval, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... two years only, and there were those familiar with the late Lord Rokesle's [Footnote: Born 1685, and accidentally killed by Sir Piers Sabiston in 1738; an accurate account of this notorious duellist, profligate, charlatan, and playwright is given in Ireson's Letters.] peculiarities who considered that in this, at least, the crazed lady was fortunate. Among these gossips it was also esteemed a matter deserving comment that in the shipwrecks not infrequent about ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Scotland lags a little, yet the energy and enthusiasm of Mr Alfred Wareing and the citizens of Glasgow have enabled them to create an institution not unlikely to serve as the home of a real Scots drama. They offer to the native playwright an opportunity of showing that a national drama—not a drama merely echoing the drama of other lands—lies inherent in the race. Who knows that they may not induce that wayward man of genius, J.M. Barrie, to become the parent of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... London with money and friends, but work became such a vice with him that he lost both, except just enough to keep him alive—to go on working. Every now and then he was 'discovered' by a playwright, a critic, or a literary man, but as he never returned a compliment in his life 'discovery' never led very far.... A few people knew that there was a strange man, called Rodd, who wrote masterpieces, but ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... the heroic and romantic characteristics in Davenport's method of acting. It may be that he attempted Boker's play because of his interest in the development of American drama. He had assisted Mrs. Mowatt in her career as playwright, and, during his full life, his name was identified with Boker's "Calaynos," George H. Miles's tragedy, "De Soto, the Hero of the Mississippi," and Conrad's "Jack Cade." But the concensus of opinion is that Boker's "Francesca da Rimini," as given by ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... originality. The late Lord Beaconsfield made one of his characters in "Lothair" declare that "critics are those who have failed in literature and art." Whether this is true as to the art critics, or that the dramatic critic is generally a disappointed playwright, it must in truth be said that drawing-masters are nearly always those who have failed in art. I can remember one gentleman who was the especial terror of my youth. I can see him now going his rounds along the chilly corridor, where, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... GEORGE LINNAEUS (1821-1881), British miscellaneous writer, was born at Birmingham on the 2nd of March 1821. After a brief experience in a variety of trades, he became at the age of seventeen a contributor to various newspapers, and subsequently a playwright, being the author of two plays, a couple of burlesques and several lyrics. Between 1848 and 1864 he edited in succession a variety of newspapers, including the Birmingham Mercury and the Dublin Daily Express, and published several ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... powers and render him wholly a puppet for the final act. These little Earth histrionics are arranged no doubt for the weary gods, who hardly brook a mere mortal rising triumphantly above the malignant moods of the master playwright. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Becksteine wrote it," said Bones. "That man, Ham, is one of the most brilliant geniuses in this or any other world. Aren't you? Speak up, old playwright. ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... and more prominent as a literary man, and was closely associated with Raleigh, Lyly, Hooker, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, and Edmund Spenser. He was also one of the first to patronize a rising young actor and playwright by the name ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... can be no doubt at all that if Balzac had lived, he might have turned out a successful playwright. When he began his career as a dramatic writer he was like a musician taking up an unfamiliar instrument, an organist who was trying the violin, or a painter working in an unknown medium. His last written play was his best. Fortunately, the plot did not deal with any ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... count unless he can find at least a small group of patrons who will admire and buy it. The most competent architect can do nothing for himself or for other people unless he attracts clients who will build his paper houses. The playwright needs even a larger following. If his plays are to be produced, he must manage to amuse and to interest thousands of people. And the politician most of all depends upon a numerous and faithful body of admirers. Of what avail would his independence and competence ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... earlier faith, or smile in scorn at the fanciful loves and cherished dreams of infancy? Such were our feelings, nor could it well be otherwise; for Tieck was, and is, a poet of the highest grade—not a playwright and systematic jest-hunter; and would as soon have put forth his hand in impious challenge against the Ark, as have stooped to become a buffooning pander to the idle follies of the million. It remained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... was the most prolific, probably the most popular, and proportionally the most wealthy, playwright of French literary history. He was born on Christmas Eve, 1791, and died on the 20th of February, 1861. He lost both parents in early years, and for a time pretended to study law in Paris; but before he was twenty his dramatic vocation ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... is a great difference among writers as to the sense of need for a complete preliminary framework on which to build. But beyond doubt many feeble, many abortive, results come of having too little preparatory framework, too slender a scenario, to use a playwright's word which authors and editors ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... mother assures me that he has already written a play worthy to stand beside Hamlet—but, though she is a charming lady, I'm hardly convinced by her opinion. The fact remains, however, that he is going to New York to become a playwright, and that he has two idols in the market place which, I fancy, you may be predestined to see demolished. He is simply off his head to meet Roger Adams, the editor of The—something or other I never heard of—and—remember your budding days and be charitable—a lady who writes poems and ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... dictionary will provide, a long list of famous names associated with our counties; to remind you that we have produced two poet-laureates—John Skelton, of Diss, the author of Colyn Cloute, and Thomas Shadwell, of Broomhill, the playwright—the latter perhaps not entirely a subject for pride; two very rough and ready political philosophers, Thomas Paine, born at Thetford, and William Godwin, born at Wisbeach; a very popular novelist in Bulwer Lytton, and a very popular theologian in Dr. Samuel Clarke; as also the famous brother and ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... against the most sacred institutions, when people are not at their best, but are restless, rebellious and impatient of restraint; for nations like individuals can go mad. Then it is that the wide-awake novelist and playwright see their opportunity, and the temporary success of the sex-play or the breezy romance is the reflection of the thoughts—none of the best—that are for the moment flitting through men's feverish minds. But we ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... know whether you are grown a little tired of that word hero, but I am sure the heroes are. That is the subject of one of our unfinished plays; M'Connachie is the one who writes the plays. If any one of you here proposes to be a playwright you can take this for your own and finish it. The scene is a school, schoolmasters present, but if you like you could make it a university, professors present. They are discussing an illuminated scroll about a student fallen in the war, which they have kindly presented to his parents; ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... I don't wish to discourage any of you," deprecated Emma with the droll little smile for which she was noted. "But to give Emma Dean and her wonderful ability as a playwright a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... that I had hit upon that rare phenomenon—an entirely new idea to the stage. There are many examples of the "play within a play," but up to that time there had never been a play which showed the WRITING of a play: the processes which go on in the mind of a playwright, and how he uses his personal experiences in ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... case of a young newspaper man and author, who came to me for the loan of five dollars. I had never seen him before, but I knew his brother, a brilliant playwright, ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... difficult to imagine the soul stirred to the same high passion by the botanist, the astronomer, the geologist, the electrician, or even the entomologist as in former times by the poet, the humorist, the novelist, or the playwright. If the fictionist of whatever sort had succeeded in identifying himself with the scientist, he must leave the enjoyment of divine honors to the pianist, the farce-comedian, the portrait-painter, the emotional actor, and the architect, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Grub-street writer; writer for the press, gentleman of the press, representative of the press; adjective jerker[obs3], diaskeaust[obs3], ghost, hack writer, ink slinger; publicist; reporter, penny a liner; editor, subeditor[obs3]; playwright &c. 599; poet &c. 597. bookseller, publisher; bibliopole[obs3], bibliopolist[obs3]; librarian; bookstore, bookshop, bookseller's shop. knowledge of books, bibliography; book learning &c. (knowledge) 490. Phr. "among the giant fossils of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the great restriction is this, that a dramatic author must deal with his actors, and with his actors alone. Certain moments of suspense, certain significant dispositions of personages, a certain logical growth of emotion,—these are the only means at the disposal of the playwright. It is true that, with the assistance of the scene-painter, the costumier and the conductor of the orchestra, he may add to this something of pageant, something of sound and fury; but these are, for the dramatic writer, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... essential to a poet as an audience to a playwright; Keats realized this truth when he printed Endymion. He knew it was full of faults and that he could not revise it. But he also knew that its publication would set him free, and make it possible for him immediately to write something better. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... reaches The playwright's mouthing shams, And the long-winded speeches Grow brisk as epigrams. My heart, in sudden clover, With smiles adorns my face, For, when the Act is over, I need not keep my place. I'll chase my fears, like foxes, When next the curtain falls— I'll then be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... we may consider Dryden's prosperity, although not his powers, to have culminated. He had a handsome income, a run of unparalleled popularity as a playwright; he was Poet-Laureate, a favourite at court, and on terms of intimacy with many of the nobility, and many of the eminent men of letters. The public would have at that time bid high for his very snuff-papers, and were thankful for ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... No playwright is more joyously observant than Mr. Jones; and none observes more accurately, in the milieu that he has chosen. Other playwrights may create more salient and memorable figures. But none of them creates figures so lifelike as ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... English playwright who wrote a number of important tragedies in verse, but who died destitute at the age of 33. The Coopers were familiar with his work; James Fenimore Cooper used quotations from Otway's "The Orphan" for three chapter heading epigraphs in his 1850 novel, ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... articles and interviews with her managers which fed the almost universal adulation of her dark and changeful face, her savage and sovereign beauty. There was insolence in her tread, and mad allurement in the rounded beauty of her powerful white arm—and at his weakest the young playwright admitted that all else concerning ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... a row with that sunflower of hers," was Mr. Quivey's comment, when he overheard Mrs. Mason's report to me, made in an undertone. Truth to tell, Mr. Quivey, from associating so much with theatrical people in the capacity of playwright, had come to be rather stagy in his style at times. "By the way, he was not on escort duty this morning. I saw her proceeding along Powell street alone, and anxiously peering up and down all the cross streets, evidently on the lookout, but he failed ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... anonymous writer we learn something of Parisian life in the reign of Francis I. One day a certain Monsieur Cruche, a popular poet and playwright, was performing moralities and novelties on a platform in the Place Maubert, and among them a farce "funny enough to make half a score men die of laughter, in which the said Cruche, holding a lantern, feigned to perceive the doings of a hen and a salamander."[107] ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... paid for," said the playwright. "They were not broken purposely. In her anger, because we remonstrated with her for ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... you a big silo and a tractor plow when I get all the money? You are the greatest farmer in the world and you only need a little machinery to prove it." Again the young playwright rose to her knees and with letter and sugar in her embrace she entreated to be allowed to spend the money that was to be hers from "The Renunciation of Rosalind," which she did not know was being cast in New York ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wishes to have this regarded as the correct version, and has himself prepared the "copy" of same. Because of the easy accessibility of Dion Boucicault's "The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana," it was thought best to omit this Irish-American playwright, whose jovial prolixity enriched the American stage of the '60's and '70's. His "London Assurance" is included in the present Editor's collection of "Representative British ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: - Introduction and Bibliography • Montrose J. Moses
... went then to the Exchange, which was then in Lumber-street, about his affairs"—seems to show that it was originally written quite early in the century, and it is just possible that T. H. stands for the voluminous playwright and pamphleteer Thomas Heywood. The Exchange was removed to its present site in 1568, and therefore our tract could not have been written before that date, but must have appeared when the memory of the old meeting-place ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... and little enough even slander found to throw against him. Nobody in their lifetime doubted the equal strength and sincerity of the relationship between the two friends. Steele was no follower of Addison's. Throughout life he went his own way, leading rather than following; first as a playwright; first in conception and execution of the scheme of the 'Tatler', 'Spectator', and 'Guardian'; following his own sense of duty against Addison's sense of expediency in passing from the 'Guardian' to the 'Englishman', and so to energetic movement ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... suffrage. The convention was held at Concord, December 10, 11, with addresses by Mrs. Katherine Houghton Hepburn, president of the Connecticut association; Witter Bynner of Cornish, the poet and playwright, and Senator Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado. Miss Kimball subscribed $600, the largest individual contribution yet received. Mrs. Jenks gave a report of the meeting of the International Suffrage Alliance at Budapest, which she attended. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the fashion. No woman, whatever her age or position or her opinion about the crinoline fashion, could avoid wearing one. No effort to introduce a fashion of "rational dress" for women has ever yet succeeded. An artist, novelist, poet, or playwright of a school which is out of fashion fails and is lost. An opponent of the notions which are current can get no hearing. The fashion, therefore, operates a selection in which success and merit are often divorced ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... divination in detecting it. Never before had he pieced together so broken a chain. He could not resist the unique opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational frame-work. The dramatic instinct was strong in him; he felt like a playwright who has constructed a strong melodramatic plot, and has the Drury Lane stage suddenly offered him to present it on. It would be folly to deny himself the luxury, though the presence of Mr. Gladstone and the nature of the ceremony should perhaps have given ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... faint reflection of a brilliant page, read in early youth, still lingered on the retina of M. Rostand's memory. If such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity of the conception or the playwright's presentment of it. ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... some good writing in it, and good situations; the latter I owe to suggestions of my mother's, who is endowed with what seems to me really a science by itself, i.e. the knowledge of producing dramatic effect; more important to a playwright than even true delineation of character or beautiful poetry, in spite of what Alfieri says: "Un attore che dira bene, delle cose belle si fara ascoltare per forza." But the "ben dire cose belle" will not ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... sinister figure of Paul Astier taken over from the "Immortal." Apparently, with all his desire to write for the stage, Daudet must have been inadequately endowed with the dramaturgic faculty, that special gift of playmaking which many a poet lacks and many a novelist, but which the humblest playwright must needs have and which all the great dramatists have possessed abundantly in addition to their ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... that to read the best dramatic poetry is more educating than to see it acted. I do not think this theory is very widely held, for it is in conflict with the dramatic instinct, which everybody possesses in a greater or less degree. You never met a playwright who could conceive himself willing—even if endowed with the highest literary gifts—to prefer a reading to a playgoing public. He thinks his work deserving of all the rewards of print and publisher, but he will be much more elated if ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... about a man whom many people still consider a great novelist and a great playwright. God knows I don't want to disparage him. But to me what he has written matters so little; it has no interest for me except as his vehicle, the vehicle in which he arrived; which brought him to his destination quicker perhaps than ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair |
