"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... This farce, for so they considered it, being ended and the stage, so to speak, cleared, the audience having laughed itself hoarse, set itself to watch the proceedings of the newly chosen high-priest of Little Bonsa, who by now had recovered ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... 7th.—The farce continued, and how to manage these haughty capricious blacks puzzled my brains considerably; but I felt that if I did not stand up now, no one would ever be treated better hereafter. I sent Nasib ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... no longer relegated to opprobrium, but put in some repair and made a place of fashionable entertainment; the versatile Englishmen turning their hands and their wits to almost anything in that line, from scene-painting to acting in comedy, farce, or tragedy. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sent some of his principal nobles, who said the king was apprehensive of being shot during the conference. Cortes engaged by the most solemn oaths that no injury should be offered, but all to no purpose. At this time two of these nobles played a most ridiculous farce: They took out from a sack a fowl, some bread, and a quantity of cherries, which they began to eat deliberately, as if to impress us with the belief that they had abundance of provisions. When Cortes found that the proposed conference ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... nor friends, and are as different from the old class of American sailors as the condottiere from the loyal soldier. Let the navigation-laws be enforced first of all, and see that the due proportion of the crews of every ship be native-born. Let the custom-house protections be no longer the farce they are,—where a man who talks of "awlin haft the main tack" is set down as a native of Martha's Vineyard, and his messmate, who couldn't say "peas" without betraying County Cork, is permitted to hail from the interior of Pennsylvania. Let the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... as in story and film and farce and the pleasanter kinds of drama, her father would say, with kindly raillery, "Well, when you two young people get through, you'll find me in the library, where I have a pretty good BUSINESS proposition to lay before ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... up the system; but he only uses one trillionth part of a gram and imagines that the remainder is to be found in the food. Now anybody with a fair understanding can easily figure that if a patient of middle age eventually loses through disease about 200 grams of lime, it is simply a farce to claim that the above dose of 1/100,000,000,000 of a gram (which is the homeopathic dose of Schuessler), will cure or replace the lime ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... one hand to the political activity, on the other, to the thought and knowledge of the world as a whole, but at the centre Greece was 'living Greece no more,' her politics sank to the level of a dreary farce, her philosophy died down to a dull and spiritless scepticism, to an Epicureanism {211} that 'seasoned the wine-cup with the dust of death,' or to a Stoicism not undignified yet still sad and narrow and stern. The hope of the world, alike in politics and in philosophy, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... "Duncan Cameron's warrant for the arrest is perfectly legal. If Your Honor should surrender yourself, you will save Fort Douglas for the Hudson's Bay Company. Besides, the whole arrest will prove a farce. The law in Lower Canada provides no machinery for the trial of cases occurring——" Here Hamilton came to a blank and unexpected stop, for his eyes suddenly alighted on me with a look that forbade recognition, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... young Duke could no longer keep off the constantly-recurring idea that something must be done to entertain himself. He shuddered to think where and what he should have been been, had not these gentlemen so providentially arrived. As for again repeating the farce of last year, he felt that it would no longer raise a smile. Yorkshire he shunned. Doncaster made him tremble. A week with the Duke of Burlington at Marringworth; a fortnight with the Fitz-pompeys at Malthorpe; a month with the Graftons at Cleve; ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... played nearly all of the fourth period at right end. He did very well, there, although Miter Hill was too weak in all departments of the game to afford any of her opponents a fair test. Toward the last the contest degenerated into more or less of a farce, Miter Hill tuckered and played out, and Brimfield, with a line-up of third and fourth substitutes, fumbling and mixing signals and running around like a hen with ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bushes, and having little skirmishes with the Spanish troops that looked more like kind of tired-out feuds than anything else. The war was a joke to us, and of no interest to them. We never could see it any other way than as a howling farce-comedy that the San Augustine Rifles were actually fighting to uphold the Stars and Stripes. And the blamed little senors didn't get enough pay to make them care whether they were patriots or traitors. Now and then somebody would get killed. It seemed like a ...
— Options • O. Henry
... soul rebelled at the farce, and at McVay's irrepressible enjoyment of his own abilities. As Holland met the twinkling joy of those small blue eyes, he wondered if he would not be doing mankind a favour by putting a bullet into McVay before the dawn of another day. Unconscious of this possibility, ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... But the Tragic and Comic Muse of the Romans, who seldom aspired beyond the imitation of Attic genius, [62] had been almost totally silent since the fall of the republic; [63] and their place was unworthily occupied by licentious farce, effeminate music, and splendid pageantry. The pantomimes, [64] who maintained their reputation from the age of Augustus to the sixth century, expressed, without the use of words, the various fables of the gods and heroes of antiquity; and the perfection of their art, which sometimes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... I have some misgivings about Mr. HENRY ARTHUR JONES'S farce—parable, The Pacifists. Assume Market Pewbury's afflictions to have been as stated: an intolerable stalwart cad of a butcher fencing-in the best part of the common, assaulting people's grandmothers, shutting them up in coal-cellars and eating their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... struggling with adversity in the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... misfortune to us all. The Emperor will interfere, for this is going too far. We must hinder this farcical ceremony; his Highness cannot marry two wives! It will be Moempelgard over again! Think how absurd, Graevenitz! Cannot you see that this farce ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Rosaura make believe to be conscience-stricken, and for a long while torment and deceive their angry bridegrooms. But at last they grow tired of teasing, they present the disguised Dolores, and they put their lovers to shame by showing that all was a farce. Of course the gentlemen humbly ask their pardon, and old Onofrio is obliged ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... imagine that your plans are not known in Sydney you are mistaken,' I cried. 'The farce you are playing at Government House is detected, and Mr. Hatteras, directly he finds I am lost, will go to Lord Amberley, and ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... so usual a circumstance in Afghanistan as scarcely to account for the events that ensued. Yet it furnished the excuse for an outbreak. Early on September 3, when assembled for what proved to be the farce of payment at Bala Hissar (the citadel), three regiments mutinied, stoned their officers, and then rushed towards the British Embassy. These regiments took part in the first onset against an unfortified building held by the Mission and a small escort. A steady musketry fire from the defenders long ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... will appear in weeds, with a train to reach across Westminster Hall, with mourning maids-of-honour to support her when she swoons at the dear Duke's name, and in a black veil to conceal her blushing or not blushing. To this farce, novel and curious as it will be, I shall not go. I think cripples have no business in crowds, but at the Pool of Bethesda; and, to be sure, this is no angel that troubles ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... her seriously or expressed the opinion that there were already in the world too many sculptors of distinguished technique and no imagination whatsoever. Her friends told her that she was a "wonder." And there were little incidents of the farce which caused her to bite ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... length the farce is played—away with those slaves whom I have forced through the difficult gates of Joy!" and she clapped her hands. But when they had borne the bodies thence she drew me to her, and ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... deception he had arranged for the public, and he appeared to be half in love with his own cleverness. She even found herself laughing at his mimicry of what this acquaintance and that would say. Her spirits rose; the play that might have been a painful drama seemed turning out an amusing farce. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... is to the farce Better Late than Never (attributed to Miles Peter Andrews, but really, according to Reynolds (Life, vol. ii. pp. 79, 80), by himself, Topham, and Andrews), in which Pallet, an artist, is a prominent character. It was played at Drury Lane ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... afterwards found, that two theatres were more than the town chose to support; therefore that in Moor-street was set for a methodist meeting, where, it was said, though it changed its audience, it kept its primeval use, continuing the theatre of farce. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Missouri went across the border to vote against and perhaps to shoot Free-State men who disputed the right of the South to plant and to maintain slavery there. Under these circumstances the first election for members of the territorial legislature was a farce. Yet Reeder felt obliged to let the new assembly go on with its work of making easy the immigration of masters with their "property"; when he went East a little later he took occasion to protest in a public address ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... of him was a farce. She made him a stately courtesy for the benefit of the three faces glued against the panes, but her words were incongruous. "You wretch," said she, "don't come here. Hide about, dearest, till you see me with Father Francis. I'll raise my hand so when you are to cuddle him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... office. All the sympathies of the Democratic party had been his antipathies, all their hates his loves, and many of their leaders spoke of him publicly with contempt. Indeed, his campaign would have been a farce had not his untimely death made it a tragedy. Ridicule killed him politically, and his political failure was the immediate cause of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... out in a few minutes, and then he—and, terribly worse, she—would be at the mercy of these bestial savages, and this seeming farce would turn into most revolting tragedy. With this sickening conviction coming over him, Lombard cast a despairing look around the horizon to see if there were no help in their bitter extremity. Suddenly he burst forth, to the tune of "The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Orleans mentions that Sarsfield accompanied James. The battle of the Boyne had scarcely been fought when it was made the subject of a drama, the Royal Flight, or the Conquest of Ireland, a Farce, 1690. Nothing more execrable was ever written. But it deserves to be remarked that, in this wretched piece, though the Irish generally are represented as poltroons, an exception is made in favour of Sarsfield. "This fellow," says James, aside, "I will make me valiant, I think, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service prated of Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs—and unmade them—did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden hardening ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Men often more Vicious, more Covetous, more Foolish, &c. than generally they were; and this to set the People a gazing and wondering. With these sort of Characters many of our modern Comedies abound, which makes 'em too much degenerate into Farce, which seldom fail of pleasing the Mob. But our Author had not many of these; for a great part of 'em were very true and natural, and such as may stand the Test of the severest Judges. His two most remarkable Characters, are his Miser, and his Bragadocio; and that the Reader may the ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... pounced upon as the ringleader, and subjected the young Englishman to a short examination, which, however, was the merest farce, for the captain had already determined upon his fate. After a trial lasting, perhaps, five minutes, therefore, Jim was condemned to be shot before mid-day, as were nine more of his unfortunate companions. The remaining thirty Chilians were each sentenced to receive ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... needless to exhaust existing proofs in demonstration of the fact that Mazarin did not enact a farce by instituting proceedings against the conspirators, that he pursued them with sincerity and vigour, and that he was perfectly convinced that a project of assassination had been formed against him, when the existence of that ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... After the farce had been played again, and the children had stood up and sat down, and sung a hymn, and told how many twice five were, and repeated their belief in "One God the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth", the party reviewed the workshops, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... rifle having a double load. The thing was clear as the sun at noonday. Acquitted. The jury said, 'Not guilty'; and the man went quietly home. The administration of justice with a weak judge, or with a strong judge who feels a weak Government behind him, is a farce in Ireland. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... worship to God in spirit and in truth?' I should have known that I could not, and said so. Then I should have turned my attention to secular paths where secular men belong. But there's the rub! Not one of them thought of it, I suppose. What a farce it is! The minister yesterday talked of incense rising to God. It doesn't get beyond their nostrils, I think. You know that man—what's his name?—he's a stock broker, who sits down the right aisle? Well, you know there was a talk once of dismissing the quartette, and retaining ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... beforehand what the committee's decision was to be. I realized that Conroy must have had the whole plan cut and dried; that the meeting at which Moyne presided was simply a farce. However, there was nothing to be gained by ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Birds' this play rather avoids politics than otherwise, its leading motif, over and above the pure fun and farce for their own sake of the burlesque descent into the infernal regions, being a literary one, an onslaught on Euripides the Tragedian and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... countenance, he was never seen to smile. His whole thoughts were concentrated in the mysteries of gravies, and the magic transformation of one animal into another by the art of cookery; in this he excelled to a marvellous degree. The farce of ordering dinner was always absurd. It was something in this style: 'Cook!' (Cook answers) 'Coming, sar!' (enter cook): 'Now, cook, you make a good dinner; do you hear?' Cook: 'Yes, sar; master tell, I make.'—'Well, mulligatawny soup.' 'Yes, sar.'—'Calves' ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the magistrate from his reverie. "Yes, a shameful farce," said he, "and one I would never have authorized, had I not been blinded by a mad longing to arrive at the truth. Such tricks only bring the sacred majesty of justice ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... up and prepared for him in the pilot-house. He only had to release a spring at the right moment, and the thing was done. He developed the picture whilst we were making our little excursion out to sea and back. Well, the whole thing was a farce; but I believe it has effectually secured us from interruption during our researches among the ruins; and if so, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Duke's playhouse, where we saw the new play acted yesterday, "The Feign Innocence, or Sir Martin Marr-all;" a play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as every body says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other, that certainly was ever writ. I never laughed so in all my life. I laughed till my head [ached] all the evening and night with the laughing; and at very good wit therein, not fooling. The house full, and in all ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is the wretched outcome of the hundred years of American education in politics—making of every man not only a sovereign, but a possible candidate for President. What is it all but a roaring farce? If we could forget that this is real government coupled with all the pains and penalties which are the heritage of ignorance, and not mere child's play, then even serious intelligence might smile though commiserating the follies of grown men. Have we finally reached the condition ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... texture. This was however suffered by the acquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion of the old statute of Westminster, which authorized perpetuities, had more sense and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... been a play of love, to which the soul would easily become accustomed if her Beloved did not change His conduct. O poor hearts who complain of the flights of love! You do not know that this is only a farce, an attempt, a specimen of what is to follow. The hours of absence mark the days, the weeks, the months, and the years. You must learn to be generous at your own expense, to suffer your Beloved to come and go at His pleasure. I seem to see these young brides. They are at the height ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... that we were now to thread. The huge system of the trades is, for some reason, quite confounded by this multiplicity of reefs, the wind intermits, squalls are frequent from the west and south-west, hurricanes are known. The currents are, besides, inextricably intermixed; dead reckoning becomes a farce; the charts are not to be trusted; and such is the number and similarity of these islands that, even when you have picked one up, you may be none the wiser. The reputation of the place is consequently infamous; insurance offices exclude it from their field, and it was not without misgiving ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Glorious farce, isn't it? They simply cram us like Christmas turkeys. Efficiency's the war-cry, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... and observes that he did not 'show the letter'—that of Logan to Gowrie (IV). This remark of Spottiswoode, an Archbishop, a converted Presbyterian, a courtier, and an advocate for the King, has been a source of joy to all Ruthven apologists. 'Spottiswoode saw though the farce,' they say; 'there was no letter at all, and, courtier and recreant as he was, Spottiswoode had the honesty to say so in ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... side believed the day to be pregnant with battle. There would be a decent counterfeit of resistance; afterward the little English army would vanish pell-mell, and the Bruce would be master of the island. The farce was prearranged, the actors ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... some persons far less desirable took too much pains to attract notice. A satirist would find rich material in the archives of our embassies and legations abroad. I have found nowhere more elements of true comedy and even broad farce than in some of the correspondence on this subject ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Delany's "Autobiography," Hervey's "Memoirs," Colley Cibber's "Apology," and Spence's "Anecdotes"; in the works and biographies of Pope, Swift, Steele, Addison, and Aaron Hill; in contemporary publications such as "A Key to 'The What D'ye Call It,'" "A Complete Key to the New Farce 'Three Hours After Marriage,'" Joseph Gay's "The Confederates"; and in numerous works dealing with dramatic productions and dramatic literature. A bibliography is printed in the "Cambridge History of English Literature" (Vol. IX., pp. 480-481; 1912); ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... set limits to the absurdity. Had the change been from blind belief to total infidelity, it would (as in a modern instance) have been much easier, though less lasting. Men might, in a time of such excitement, have been persuaded that all religion productive of abuses such as then abounded was a farce, and that common sense called for its abolition. But when the boundaries of belief became a question; when the world was told it ought to reject some doctrines, and retain others which seemed as difficult of comprehension; when one tenet was pronounced ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Lamb saying that she has taken to French as a recreation and has been reading Racine. The second is from Lamb, dated July 6, 1825, thanking Miss Kelly for tickets at Arnold's theatre, the Lyceum, and predicting the success of his farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." How many more new letters are still to come to light, who ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... surrounded by hundreds who examine not for themselves; and are easily deluded, by the fairest promises, to surrender their opinions to another's guidance: these are the supporters of quackery, and the encouragers of those needy plunderers, who would render medicine a farce, that they ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... newly-found fortune. I saw you waver, hesitate. I did not hesitate. And now I am rich, I am famous, you come to me. You offer me that worthless thing,—your love. When I was poor, struggling alone, friendless, did you even write to me? Did you by word or look recognize me? No! The farce is played out. I wonder at your coming to see me ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... said Titherington. "It's all very well you're talking like that, but this is serious. The whole election's becoming a farce. Miss Beresford——" ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... are not on the surface at all, they are fundamental. You are probably not in a position to see the ease as I do. Such a state of things would be ludicrous; we should all be playing parts in a farce. He cannot have made such a proposal to her; she would have shown him ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... a farce, of course, but underneath the fantastic affectation there was a very real sentiment, that of the intolerable tedium of captivity. Raleigh had been living a life of exaggerated activity, never a month at rest, now at sea, now in Devonshire, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and keeps them always in good humour. A Roman catholic longs as impatiently for the festival of St. Suaire, or St. Croix, or St. Veronique, as a schoolboy in England for the representation of punch and the devil; and there is generally as much laughing at one farce as at the other. Even when the descent from the cross is acted, in the holy week, with all the circumstances that ought naturally to inspire the gravest sentiments, if you cast your eyes among the multitude that croud the place, you will ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... was met by the grave pretence that the needs of the state forbade his refusal of them, however reluctant he might be. His mother, Livia Augusta, was the object of a like sycophancy. But the world was not deceived by the solemn farce. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... superior to mere human invention. While we, with careful regard to scenery, place our conventional puppets on the stage and bid them play their old old parts in a manner as ancient, she rings up the curtain and starts a tragedy on a scene that has obviously been set by the carpenter for a farce. She deals out the parts with a fine inconsistency, and the jolly-faced little man is cast to play Romeo, while the poetic youth with lantern jaw and an impaired digestion finds no Juliet ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... smoke-stained building showed the half-torn remnant of a cinematograph picture, a fat gentleman in a bowler hat entering with a lady on either arm a gaily painted restaurant. Over this, in big letters, the word "FARCE." ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... they are mingled with longing and entangled in vexatious things. Pure pleasure would be without ideas. Many a man has found in some moment of his life an unutterable joy which made all the rest of it seem a farce, as if a corpse should play it was living. Mystics habitually look beneath the Life of Reason for the substance and infinity of happiness. In all these revulsions, and many others, there is a certain justification, inasmuch as systematic living is after all an experiment, as is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... couple at this time set up their establishment in Goro[u]beicho[u] of Kyo[u]bashi Ku. Coming and going, often with no definite task in hand, Densuke to all appearance was an out-and-out idler. For the first time released from the trammels of her class, O'Mino could attend the theatres and farce shows of the capital. She delighted in acting this part of a tradesman's wife. Moreover she was very sure of not meeting with Matazaemon, of whom she was in great fear. Bound to the formulae of his class, her father might feel bound to cut ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... to support in luxury a host of rapacious Spaniards, and forbidden any voice in the control of her own affairs, all the treaty concessions which we could make to Spain would only serve to keep up and perpetuate the great farce. Such a treaty as is proposed would be in reality granting to Spain a subsidy of about thirty million dollars per annum! This conclusion was arrived at after consultation with three of the principal United States consuls on the island. Cuba purchases very little from us; she has not a consuming ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... asserts that he has neither directly nor indirectly pensioned Cobbett. I really think the Duke of Wellington not a little indebted to him for forcing the Whigs to declare county meetings a farce. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... impressively, magnificently. He instantaneously formed a plan by which he would snatch victory out of defeat. He would take Gordon's suggestion, and himself drive the geese up to his residence in Hillport, that lofty and aristocratic suburb. It would be an immense, an unparalleled farce; a wonder, a topic for years, the crown of ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... did not. If you will be honest with me, you will admit that. This many a year, we have been playing a common farce. You acted the true Christian head of the family and ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... original and sufficiently varied in character and sentiment to enable the reader to make up a well-rounded program in which high comedy mingles with farce and pathos in a manner suitable for all occasions. Nineteen monologues and nine short poems which are especially adapted to that particular form of entertainment called the pianologue, viz., ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... World was first published in England, with Macklin's farce Love a la Mode, by subscription, in a handsome quarto. Facing the title-page is a portrait of the author, "in his 93.^d Year," engraved by John Conde after Opie, for which the trustees of the fund paid 25 guineas. Preceding the text of the play are the list ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... and Impenitent Thieves, These PEWS and GAUNTS, each man of them with his sheaves Of humour, passion, cruelty, tyranny, life, Fit shadows for the boards; till in the strife Of dream with dream, their Slaver-Saint came true, And their Blind Pirate, their resurgent PEW (A figure of deadly farce in his new birth), Tap-tapped his way from ORCUS back to earth; And so, their Lover and his Lass made one, In their best prose ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... huge, swarthy, purple-faced, a walking wine-barrel; he was a sort of Southern Falstaff, if one can imagine Falstaff anything but English. And, indeed, there was a vital difference, typical of two nations. For while Falstaff would have been shaking with hilarity like a huge jelly, full of the broad farce of the London streets, this Frenchman was rather solemn and dignified than otherwise—as if pleasure were a kind of pagan religion. After some talk which was full of the admirable civility and equality of French civilisation, he suggested without either eagerness or embarrassment that ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... to Eleanor and the whole situation so like a farce to her maturer love-affair, that she laughed merrily. But Polly was too concerned to take offence at ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... comes the farce. [The tragedy is Kant's destructive criticism of the speculative reason.] So far Immanuel Kant has been playing the relentless philosopher; he has laid siege to heaven.' Heine goes on with some violence to describe the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... ashamed to shed a tear at any part of a tragedy, however affecting. "The reason," says the Spectator, "is, that persons think it makes them look ridiculous, by betraying the weakness of their nature. But why may not nature show itself in tragedy, as well as in comedy or farce? We see persons not ashamed to laugh loudly at the humour of a Falstaff,—or the tricks of a harlequin; and why should not the tear be equally allowed to flow for the misfortunes of a Juliet, or the forlornness of an Ophelia?" ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... prescription sent in agony to the tomb! Pah! I have no patience with her! She and her grief and her seclusion and her sympathetic cat, indeed! It all is a tragedy of indiscretion—that shapes itself as a revolting farce!" ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... months they have been face to face with death. Their figures move through the streets. From Bocardo, the town prison, they are led to separate confinement in other parts of the city. Now to St. Mary's Church, now to the Divinity School are they taken to be examined—a miserable farce—by those who seek to curry favour with a bloody queen. At last the end. Was it this morning that the sheriff's officers came to lead Ridley from the mayor's house, where he had passed a peaceful night, and risen to write a letter ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... N. wit, humor, wittiness; sense of humor; attic wit, attic salt; atticism[obs3]; salt, esprit, point, fancy, whim, drollery, pleasantry. farce, buffoonery, fooling, tomfoolery; shenanigan [U.S.], harlequinade &c. 599[obs3]; broad farce, broad humor; fun, espieglerie[Fr]; vis comica[Lat]. jocularity; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; facetiousness; waggery, waggishness; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... but change, for serious plot and verse, This motley garniture of fool and farce; Nor scorn a mode, because 'tis taught at home, Which dues, like vests,[A] our gravity become; Our poet yields you should this play refuse, As tradesmen by the change of fashions lose, With some content, their fripperies of France, In hope it may ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... price. And with the growing conviction of the folly and futility of international strife must disappear the last apology for war. Nations will cease to struggle, not when they have learned that war is a tragedy but when they have discovered that it is a farce. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... will comply with either of the conditions. This is as well and as distinctly shown in the map of Mitchell as in the map of the British commission. It would therefore appear, if, these views be correct, that the framers of the treaty of 1783 went through the solemn farce of binding their respective Governments to a boundary which they well knew did not and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... turns, rapid recoveries of ground. He wheeled about, retracing his steps, as if he might so catch in his face at least the stirred air of some other quick revolution. It was indeed true that his fully dislocalised thought of these manoeuvres recalled to him Pantaloon, at the Christmas farce, buffeted and tricked from behind by ubiquitous Harlequin; but it left intact the influence of the conditions themselves each time he was re- exposed to them, so that in fact this association, had he suffered it to become constant, ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... conditions upon possessors—was nearer to liberty and equality than any nation has been since. If the Senate had been intelligent and just,—if, at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of possessions,—the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the duty of labor, would ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... mouth agape. Pederson was gazing at Beardsley with delight and admiration, seeming to visualize this little man as material for his next tele-column. Mandleco stood transfixed, a monument of agony, twisting a fist into his palm. "Beardsley, stop it! This ridiculous farce has gone far enough! I warned you about ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... head back, and was singing jubilantly at the top of her voice. The appositeness of the song had cheered her up. It seemed somehow to make her forebodings rather ridiculous, to reduce them to absurdity, to turn into farce the gathering tragedy which had ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... for days' labor performed in improving their own homesteads and putting up hay for their cattle. More cows and better farming implements have been issued in recent years, and there is a wholesome effort to make the work of the so-called agency or "district farmers" less of a farce than it has often been ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... professor, after examining him in Cicero Orations and the Greek Testament, gave him a certificate of admission before he was ten years old. "Of course," he adds, "I knew very little, and the whole thing was a form, perhaps a farce. There was no thought of my going to college then, and I did not go till I was fourteen, but I was twice examined at the college (where I went with my father and mother every summer) for advanced standing, and was finally admitted as a junior, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Caudron; behind him, the Fokker; behind the Fokker, the Nieuport, and I, last of all, behind the Nieuport. We exchanged shots merrily. Finally the Fokker let the Caudron go, and the Nieuport stopped chasing the Fokker. I fired my last shots at the Nieuport and went home. The whole farce lasted over an hour. We had worked hard, but without visible success. At least, the Fokker (who turned out to be Althaus) and ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... had no sooner spoken for them than the musicians, who had orders to attend, entered, and answered fully the expectations the princes had been led to entertain of their abilities. After the concerts, an excellent farce was acted, and the entertainment was concluded by ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... jarring sense of amusement struck upon Rallywood. They were playing a farce; Count Simon, with his mortal enmity, was but acting his part. The whole procedure was hollow yet he Rallywood would have to give his life to prove that all this seeming was deadly earnest—that the blustering traitor opposite was ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... you are to have a supper and music. I was there last night, but did not find the joy of it. Vauxhall is a little better; for the garden is pleasanter, and one goes by water. Our operas are almost over; there were but three-and-forty people last night in the pit and boxes. There is a little simple farce at Drury Lane, called "Miss Lucy in Town," in which Mrs. Clive mimics the Muscovita admirably, and Beard, Amorevoli tolerably. But all the run is now after Garrick, a wine-merchant, who is turned player, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... he cried, strangely exasperated: "An end to this farce! Put them away. You don't need gloves ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... For though Mrs. Lobkins was extremely fond of her protege, yet she was possessed, as her customers emphatically remarked, "of the devil's own temper;" and her native coarseness never having been softened by those pictures of gay society which had, in many a novel and comic farce, refined the temperament of the romantic Paul, her manner of venting her maternal reproaches was certainly not a little revolting to a lad of some delicacy of feeling. Indeed, it often occurred ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... zarzuela appears to have been the forerunner and origin of all musical farce and "opera comique," only naturalised in our country during the present generation. The theatres in all the provinces are always full, always popular; the pieces only run for short periods, a perpetual variety being aimed at by the managers—a thing easily ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... the other horses, and finally finished the farce by leading out the roan cream-nose, and was pleased to notice the crestfallen ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... to one of the company, and a kick under the table to another, he endeavoured to make them join in his attempt to pass off the whole as mimickry of a Colonel Hallerton. His companions supported him as he continued the farce, and the laughter recommenced. Colonel Hauton filled his glass, and said nothing; by degrees, however, he joined or pretended to join in the laugh, and left the company without Buckhurst's being able exactly to determine whether he had duped him or not. After the colonel was fairly gone,—for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Ages, more than any other period, are rich in instances of that intimate blending of the comic and the horrible which we call the grotesque; the witches' Sabbath, the hoofed and horned devil, the hideous figures of Dante's hell; the Scaramouches, Crispins, Harlequins of Italian farce; "grimacing silhouettes of man, quite unknown to grave antiquity"; and "all those local dragons of our legends, the gargoyle of Rouen, the Taras of Tarascon, etc. . . . The contact of deformity has given to the modern sublime something ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ridiculous, but as he began to play I moved up to Annie, put my arm around her, and we began to glide round and round on the deck. Her face was turned away from mine, and looked over my shoulder; if our eyes had met, I am convinced I must have laughed or wept. It was half farce, half deadly earnest, and for me as near to hysterics as a sane man can go. Tubal Cain, that inspired young Plymouth Brother, was solemn as a judge. As for Annie, I would give a considerable amount, at this moment, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is the strongest argument and appeal that can be made, in behalf of granting them. The claim to their free enjoyment is undeniably just. Plainly such rights are inalienable, and plainly too, woman is entitled to their possession equally with man. Our whole plan of government is a hypocritical farce, if one-half the people can be governed by the other half without their consent being asked or granted. Conscience and common sense alike demand the equal rights of women. To the conscience and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... move though there was no longer violence in his hold. He spoke deeply, above her bent head. "I can't stand this farce much longer. I'm only human after all, and there is a limit to everything. I can't keep at arm's length for ever. Flesh and blood won't ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... too weak to run out, while the Frenchmen's spoons stood to attention in the thicker mess they found in the bottom. This, with other things, contributed to make bad blood between the two races. A great show was made of stirring up the mess, but it was a pure farce. ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... seen another member of the Local Education Authority—a man of some note in the larger world—and it seems that you cannot be exempted unless you convince the Authority that your knowledge is such that to give you a Council school education would be the most absurd farce." ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... conqueror in the ruins of his ambition. The messenger found Charles busy superintending the passage of the last of his cannon over the mountain of Pontremoli. This was no easy matter, seeing that there was no sort of track, and the guns had to be lifted up and lowered by main farce, and each piece needed the arms of as many as two hundred men. At last, when all the artillery had arrived without accident on the other side of the Apennines, Charles started in hot haste for Fornovd, where he arrived with all his following on the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... occasionally, and to dress it up by the help of fancy, to my own taste. When I get in the midst of it, it is too apt to lose its charm, and then there is the trouble and ennui of being obliged to take an active part in the farce; but to be a mere spectator is amusing. I am glad, therefore, that I brought no letters to Prague. I shall leave it with a favorable idea of its society and manners, from knowing nothing accurate of either; and with a firm belief that every pretty woman I have seen ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... Elizabeth received him at the palace. The Spanish ambassador, De Silva, met him there at dinner. He talked freely of where he had been and of what he had done, only keeping back the gentle violence which he had used. He regarded this as a mere farce, since there had been no one hurt on either side. He boasted of having given the greatest satisfaction to the Spaniards who had dealt with him. De Silva could but bow, report to his master, and ask instructions ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... to inquire deeply into the nature and effects of a constitution which can hardly be regarded but as a farce and a mockery. If, however, it could be supposed that its provisions were to have any effect, it seems equally adapted to two purposes; that of giving to its founder for a time an absolute and uncontrolled ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... its microcosmal life. The story has the completeness of a tragedy; but it runs over many centuries, and it ends like a farce, though it ends with a death. One feels, indeed, almost as great satisfaction in the catastrophe as the Mantuans themselves, who terminated their national existence and parted from their last Duke with ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... presence, 'is a fortunate woman. She has all kinds of cleverness, and she has her tall son. I have only one little talent, and I have no tall son.' Now it was not in nature that she could have had a son as tall as Somers, nor was that desire in her eyes. All civilization implies a good deal of farce, but this was a poor refuge, a cheap device; I was glad when it fell away from her sincerity, when the day came on which she looked into my fire and said simply, 'An attachment like ours ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... successful course of highway robbery runs in the channel of a swift accomplishment and a rapid getaway. Yet this crew, leaving the saddle-bags uninvestigated at their feet, were solemnly playing out their farce at the expense of valuable time—time which should have stood for miles put ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold-seeker, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... have often wondered why a man should feel gay doing violence to his entrails in this fashion. I have noticed again and again that he loses a little of his gaiety if the dinner is served slowly enough to give him time to think. The gay meal, like the farce, must be enacted quickly. The very spectacle of waiters hurrying to and fro with an air of peril to the dishes quickens the fancy, and the gastric juices flow to an anapstic measure. Who does not know what it is to sit ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... into tears when the poor minor seemed to have lost both his love and his property. But how can I touch off my feelings, when, in the fourth act; the villain was detected; and all ended as it should! And, oh! Tibbie, mommy enjoyed it nearly as much as I, though the farce at the end vastly shocked her—and, indeed, Tibbie, 't was most indelicate, and made me blush a scarlet, and all the more that Sir William whispered that he enjoyed the broad parts through my cheeks—and she says if dadda insists, we'll go again, though not to stay to the farce. We ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and on distinct subjects, through an innovation introduced by Sophocles, if not before—the tragic poet added a fourth or satyrical drama; the characters of which were satyrs, the companions of the god Dionysus, and other historic or mythical persons exhibited in farce. He thus made up a total of four dramas, or a tetralogy, which he got up and brought forward to contend for the prize at the festival. The expense of training the chorus and actors was chiefly furnished by the choregi,—wealthy citizens, of whom one was named for each of the ten tribes, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... Ghost by breathing on them, which she does with postures and practices that are scandalously indecent; they have likewise disposed of all their effects, and hold a community of goods, and live nearly an idle life, carrying on a great farce of pretended devotion in barns and woods, where they lodge and lie all together, and hold likewise a community of women, as it is another of their tenets that they can commit no mortal sin. I am ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... her. There is a mood in which a deprivation of high comedy may drive one to low-down farce. To-day people are even going farther. A worthy stage is dead, they say; and they patronize, somewhat willfully and contemptuously (or with a loose, slack tolerance that is worse), the moving pictures. Perhaps it was in ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... dexterity, and thus escaped the probable death-blow. But, as he was bleeding from a wound in the throat, his second interfered, and proposed a reconciliation. Neil angrily refused to listen. He declared that he "had not come to enact a farce;" and then, happening to glance at the ribbon on Hyde's breast, he swore furiously, "He would make his way through the body of any man who stood between him and ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... chose to give an entertainment in the schoolroom, and admitted the poor into the cheaper seats. Everybody knows the nature of these functions. There were readings and recitations; young ladies sang drawing-room songs or played the violin; tableaux were displayed or a polite farce was performed; a complimentary speech wound up the entertainment; and then the performers withdrew again for several months into the aloofness of their residences, while the poor got through their winter evenings as best they could, in their mean cottages ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... in daily communication with his friend. He learned that the list of prisoners was being taken, now, more in the order in which they stood. The farce of a trial had been gone through, in the case of Jean's wife, and she had of course been condemned. She stood a good deal lower on the list than his father. There was not much chance of the day of her ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... owes her much, and he has some good friends. Comte de Chassepot prevented him from playing the stupid farce of a Roman son by sacrificing his father's funeral to a discussion on the laicisation of the schools; for, seeing what he had in his mind, Comte de Chassepot simply moved an adjournment of the council. His evil genius is M. Petit, now a senator, the present mayor of Amiens. I have caught M. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to your sense of justice," cried our prisoner impatiently. "Hasn't this farce been allowed to go far enough? Is there any reason why this fake detective should make fools out of us all and keep my wife longer in this court? I'm not disposed to let the matter drop. I wish to enter a ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... mortial poor one in real life, and I'm best out of it." She turned the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy's expression would have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced to go on hearing all that Marjorie and ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... quite true. I always was that sort of chap. I'm very sorry. But now that you've found that life isn't a farce, but something quite sensible and serious, what further obstacle is there ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... This searching genius of philosophy and les petites moeurs solemnly warned that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his order, he never would resume it. About this period the masters were menaced by a sort of servile war. The famous farce of High Life below Stairs exposed with great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... sharply. The interruption had started a new train of thought. Beyond the flushed face of the man opposite him, he could see the empty stalls, row after row of gaunt-ribbed and featureless spectators, watching him. The play had become a nightmare farce in which he had chosen a ludicrous, impossible part. But he ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... to do with women; he treated them all as if ignorant of their existence, with a painful timidity which he disguised under a mask of bravado. And that girl must really think him a downright fool, to bamboozle him with that story of adventure—only fit for a farce. Nevertheless, he ended by saying, 'That's enough. You had better come in out of the wet. You ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... 'Thin th' quarantine at Oporto is a farce.' An' he plunged into th' seething mass iv handwritin' experts an' ex-prisidents iv th' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... young priests, fresh from the seminaries—I grant you, they're a nuisance! They swarm over us like locusts, ready for any bit of mischief against the Government. But the Government will win!—Italy will win! Manisty first of all takes the thing too tragically. He doesn't see the farce in it. We do. We Italians understand each other. Why, the Vatican raves and scolds—and all the while, as the Prefect of Police told me only the other day, there is a whole code of signals ready between the police headquarters and a ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wholly in Ah Moy's power, and quite well aware of it, exacted from all of his countrymen a certain amount of deference, and was loath that his visitor should prove an exception to this gratifying rule. Ah Moy knew this, but the little farce was becoming very irksome to him; it took up too much of his always valuable time, and he intended to forego it in future. Quong Lee, thought he, was a tiresome old goat who badly needed his whiskers trimmed and his ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... called the Neto, who first enters the ring to take the commands of the Inspector, and occasionally bears the shock of the bull, to the no small diversion of the lower class of spectators. The Spanish bull-fight is too serious an affair for a buffoon: it is a tragedy, and not a farce. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... days; and our whole attitude towards education was so fundamentally wrong that the absurdities of the yearly syllabus were merely so much by-play in the evolution of a drama which was a grotesque blend of tragedy and farce. But let us of the enlightened Twentieth Century try our hands at constructing a syllabus on which all the elementary schools of England are to be prepared for a yearly examination, and see if we can improve appreciably on the work of our predecessors. Some improvement there would certainly ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... meanders takes; There motley images her fancy strike, Figures ill paired, and similes unlike. She sees a mob of metaphors advance, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance; How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race; How Time himself stands still at her command, Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land. Here gay description Egypt glads with showers, Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers; Glittering with ice here hoary ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... was a youth, I was reckoned a good actor. Besides Harrow speeches (in which I shone), I enacted Penruddock in the Wheel of Fortune, and Tristram Fickle in Allingham's farce of the Weathercock, for three nights (the duration of our compact), in some private theatricals at Southwell, in 1806, with great applause. The occasional prologue for our volunteer play was also of my composition. The other ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... and other great writers, so you see we were giving them bits of the best living and dead dramatists. Our native Shakespeares do the same thing nowadays in all of their original works, and that's no idle fairy tale. We sandwiched comedy, drama, tragedy, and farce, and interlarded the mixture with Victor Herbert and Oscar Hammerstein's opera comique and May Irwin coon songs. Such a presentation of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was never before presented, and I am free to confess the chances are never will be again. We actually played ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... was given by the boys and girls, or rather by two boys and one girl, Dolly Hosmer, Craze Barlow and myself. We did Box and Cox, a short farce, produced to piece ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... time pass too rapidly on many a previous occasion. The Hour Before Dinner Series—not that this is the genuine title, but it might be, and is a suggestion—is a real "boon and a blessing" to those who, like Podgers, in JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD'S immortal farce, "only have a 'our," not for "their dinner," but for their novel-reading throughout the day. FARJEON soit beni! (Signed) The Baron ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... and his nose scarcely smaller than the rest of him together. The fellow's mouth was slit almost from ear to ear, and he showed his teeth with a grinning smile of idiot courtesy, while he overwhelmed me with bows and scrapes innumerable. The farce now becoming excessively irksome, I thanked him in the fewest words I could well use, turned about my still trembling charger, and purposed either to seek another adventure, or, should I meet with ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... added, speaking in a louder tone, we had better give our minds to the present scene of the farce, and perform the opening quadrille, as is ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... said, that to be buried by her father, she need not be carried out of England," (she was supposed to be actually the daughter of Colonel Graham.) When she found herself dying, she carried on the melancholy farce to the last. She sent for Anstis, the herald, and arranged the whole funeral ceremony with him. She was particularly anxious to see the preparations before she died. "Why," she asked, "won't they send the canopy for me to see? Let them send it, even though the tassels are not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... again a fierce fight would ensue between two good hands, and that seemed to arouse a spirit of general emulation and eagerness; the play grew more bold; bets apart from the game were laid by individual players between themselves. The putting up of the "ante" became a mere farce, for every one came in as a matter of course, even if he had to draw five cards; and already the piles of chips on the table had undergone serious diminution or augmentation—in the latter case there was a glimmer of gold among the bits of ivory. There was no visible excitement, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... look up to Verrina as a competent savior of society, however much one may sympathize with him in his private feud. His cynical tergiversation at the end makes his previous conduct ridiculous. It seems to say that he has been participating in a tragic farce which is now ended. One might almost get the impression that the whole play is only ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Mrs. Conner and Agnes had come out, asking in much surprise who the stranger could be, and what was the cause of her illness. As if there had been a previous understanding between them, the doctor and Guy were silent with regard to the recent farce enacted there, simply saying it was possible she was in the habit of fainting; many people were. Very daintily, Agnes held up and back the skirt of her rich silk as if fearful that it might come in contact with Madeline's plain ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... so," Duvall remarked, indifferently, then turned to the doctor. "Now, monsieur, let us have done with this farce as quickly as possible. I have no ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... other stories in this book. There is that screaming farce called "The Suicides in the Rue Sombre." Now, then, you Magazine zealots, speak up and tell me truly: is there anything too difficult for you in this? If so, the psychology of what is called "public taste" becomes a subject not suited to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Hassan.' And since that day his hatred of the English had been a monomania, and he has never spoken a word of English. Later on, when we used to travel together, his obvious avoidance of English people was at times both awkward and embarrassing, and I have often had to go through the farce of translating into French or Arabic remarks made to him by English fellow-travellers, that is, when he condescended to notice the remarks, which was not often. From the day he learned the truth ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... like secret understanding or sympathy; perhaps, however, it was only as head and representative of the family. She looked well; but, unfortunately, a trifling carelessness in dress had nearly concluded the farce. Recollecting, however, that they were packing up for a temporary removal, to take place this very day, an apology was obvious. Having made to myself the apology, I went further, and found that there was politeness, at least, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis |
