"Melodramatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I do not vouch for the strict correctness of Lenz's somewhat melodramatic narrative; and having given this warning I shall, to keep myself free from all responsibility, simply translate the rest of what ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... danced away, and gathered in, the shimmering, sun-flooded desert ... an endless flat expanse of silver sage and sentinel cactus. I saw bleached bones and a side-cast skull with whitened horns, poking up into the sky ... I saw a sick steer straggling alone, exactly like some melodramatic painting of Western life ... the kind we see hanging for sale in second-rate ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... head was anxiously bowed down on his breast, relax and unburden himself in his conversations with me, but I was unsuccessful, on account of his constant reserve and suspicion, and his studied aloofness. An opportunity arose for a discussion between us when he wanted the orchestra to take a melodramatic part (which they afterwards did) in a certain scene of his Uriel Acosta, where the hero had to recant his alleged heresy. The orchestra had to execute the soft tremolo for a given time on certain chords, but when I heard the performance it appeared ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy, that the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a morning like this, and would never draw there any more. "I've seen him look down into it, when he was tired with ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Why have you never been here before? Why are her letters to you sealed with red wax, bought especially for the purpose? Why does she go away before you come? Lady Gwendolen Hetherington," he demanded, with melodramatic fervour, "answer me these things ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... after they had seen the last of the guidons as they fluttered away over the "divide" towards Lodge Pole, and with these afflicted ones Mrs. Whaling, the "commanding officer's lady," would fain have lavished hours of time in sympathizing converse. She loved the melodramatic, and was never so happy, said Blake, as when bathed in tears. Detractors of this estimable woman, indeed, were wont to complain that she was too easily content with these pearly but insufficient aids to lavatory process; and her propensity ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... like a melodramatic hero of a slide-by-night, but like a matter-of-fact young man going to see some one about business of no great importance. He abstractedly brushed his left sleeve or his waistcoat, now and then, as though he ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... only person I could incriminate you to would be Mr. Piper, and not even there very much, due to Sargent's melodramatic appearance in the middle of dinner. But I shan't even there—it would mean incriminating myself a little too much too, don't you know? and even if the apartment here does get a trifle lonely one evening and another, ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... had always disgusted John. A book wherein the hero overcame the villain by desperate means and won the girl by a single stroke of manly dauntlessness was to him like so much trash. Melodramatic plays he despised. Griffith's pictures were the only ones in which he could tolerate a ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... "Melodramatic! If it is melodrama for a man to show a little genuine feeling, I'm guilty. But I was never more in earnest in my life. I want a chance to win you. I value you above any woman I have ever met. Most ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... from the alloy. Unlike the critics of the nil admirari school, whose reluctance to trust themselves to their emotions proceeds in great part from the absence of this instinct, he is proof against the approaches of the charlatan, and has never debased the word "art" by applying it to a mere melodramatic mechanism. But he rightly considers the office of the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... his trunk carefully with everything he would not need on the roundup, and his typewriter he put in the middle. He told himself bitterly that he had done with crimply haired girls, and with every other sort of girl. If he could figure in something heroic—only he said melodramatic—he might possibly force her to think well of him. But heroic situations and opportunities come not every day to a man, and girls who demand that their knights shall be brave in face of death need not complain if they are left knightless ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... a melodramatic look on paper. But he spoke them not only with his lips, but with his whole self. They were not out of keeping with his nature. There is no more desperate blood in the world's veins than that of the Celt when he is driven to bay or exasperated by passion. In him the reckless fatalism ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... after the eight years of Monroe and the four years of Adams, an immense popular demand for something piquant and even amusing, and this quality they always had from Jackson. There was nothing in the least melodramatic about him; he never posed or attitudinized—it would have required too much patience; but he was always piquant. There was formerly a good deal of discussion as to who wrote the once famous "Jack Downing's" letters, but we might almost say that they wrote ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... marks, indicating the places of objects that had been removed. In one part is painted on the plaster a false door partially open, behind which is seen the figure of Tasso about to enter; but every person of good taste must condemn the melodramatic exhibition, and wish that he could obliterate it with a daub of whitewash. The custode directed my attention to it with an air of great admiration, and could not understand the scowl with which I turned away my face. There are several ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naia. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... judicial cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to govern—some always, and others occasionally only—the condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which proved ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a mere passport to the fun. They are in France what the Irish harvesters and the Kent hop-pickers are in England, although always preserving the peculiarities, that distinguish the former country, giving even her vagabondage a melodramatic look, just as if they were 'made up' for the occasion. 'The gendarmerie,' says our author, 'have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... conscience did Barry go to the cinema show that night, which in this camp was run under the chaplain service and by a chaplain. He knew what the thing would be like. His whole soul shrunk from the silly, melodramatic films which he knew would constitute the programme as from a nauseating dose of medicine. The billboard announced a double header, a trite and, especially to Canadians, a ridiculous representation of the experiences of John Bull and his wife and pretty daughter as immigrants to the ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... flung out an imperative, melodramatic arm; and veritable sparks sprayed from his crackling finger-tips. The servant retired in ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... that he could be trying to trap her by any such cheap melodramatic threat as this; ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... which treats with him as a dependent entitled to know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... which was published in March, as warmly espoused the cause of the maid servant whom he calls "a poor, honest, innocent, simple Girl, and the most unhappy and most injured of all human Beings." The excitement of the Town over this melodramatic mystery is reflected in the fact that a second edition of Fielding's pamphlet (entitled A clear state of the Case of Elizabeth Canning) was advertised within a few days of its first publication. [3] And, also, in the appearance of the sixpenny print, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... the real detective does not disguise himself in any elaborate or melodramatic fashion. He will not wear a false moustache or a wig, for instance. But the beginner is taught how a difference in dressing the hair, the combing out or waxing of a moustache, the substitution of a muffler for a collar, a cap for a bowler will ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... English gentleman—what business had he with a lot of South American Republicans? What did he want among such people? Why should he care about them? Why should he want to govern them? And if he did want to govern them, why did he not stay there and govern? The thing was in any case mere bravado, and melodramatic enterprise. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the history of homiletical literature as remarkable of their kind, but not as a pulpit classic for all times; for the critic will truly say that the imagination is too exuberant, the dramatic element sometimes becoming melodramatic, and the style lacking in simplicity. In the second epoch, best illustrated by the Harper and Brothers edition of his selected sermons, preached in the earlier and middle portion of his Brooklyn ministry, the imagination is still pervasive, but no longer predominant. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but it certainly had become more natural—more human, as it were—and the melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto appeared ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... That was the melodramatic title which Napoleon had conferred upon the man he could not trust, but dare not openly distrust or dismiss, any more than could Louis XVIII. Even in the calmest and most peaceful times the Duke of Otranto remained menacing and terrible. The background which I see when I ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... consideration for cost of ink and paper, wrote his name in poster letters. When you look upon the Declaration the first thing you see is the signature of John Hancock, and you recall his remark, "I guess King George can read that without spectacles." The whole action was melodramatic, and although a bold signature has ever been said to betoken a bold heart, it has yet to be demonstrated that boys who whistle going through the woods are indifferent to danger. "Conscious weakness takes strong attitudes," says Delsarte. The strength of Hancock's ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... piece at Boston with a view to considering it for the Lyceum. He told his brother Charles of the play, and advised him to go up and see it, adding that it was too big and melodramatic for the somewhat intimate scope ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... other side of the piano, and placed herself exactly opposite Panshine. He repeated his romance, giving a melodramatic variation to his voice. Varvara looked at him steadily, resting her elbows on the piano, with her white hands on a level with her lips. The song ended, "Charmant! Charmante idee," she said, with the quiet confidence of a connoisseur. "Tell me, have you ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... could conceivably risk the spoiling of his hat in a shower, much less his life. Both are alike forced to borrow motives for the more strenuous actions of their personages from the common stockpot of melodramatic plots; so that Hamlet has to be stimulated by the prejudices of a policeman and Macbeth by the cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens, without the excuse of having to manufacture motives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superfluously punt ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... have followed us on purpose to denounce me," I thought. Yet it seemed a stupidly melodramatic conclusion, like the climax of a chapter in an old-fashioned, sentimental story. Besides, the man—evidently the leader—had not at all the face of Nemesis. He looked a merry, happy-go-lucky Italian, only a little subdued at the moment ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... what would be most effective, so that there is a hollowness and a superficiality about his best work which we cannot ignore, even while we admit the ingenuity of the means employed. His influence upon modern opera has been extensive. He was the real founder of the school of melodramatic opera which is now so popular. Violent contrasts with him do duty for the subtle characterisation of the older masters. His heroes rant and storm, and his heroines shriek and rave, but of real feeling, and even of real expression, there is ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... cultivated, a sense of the dramatic, that the scene to which he and Davidge were presently conducted by a trim and somewhat surprised-looking parlour-maid, was one which might have been bodily lifted from the stage of any theatre devoted to work of the melodramatic order. The detective and the reporter found themselves on the threshold of a handsomely furnished dining-room, vividly lighted by lamps which threw a warm pink glow over the old oak furniture and luxurious fittings. On one side of the big table sat Professor Cox-Raythwaite and Selwood both looking ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... when the eyes of Pierre moved away from him and returned to the figure of Carlos Diaz. The Mexican was a perfect model for a painting of a melodramatic villain. He had waxed and twirled the end of his black mustache so that it thrust out a little spur on either side of his long face. His habitual expression was a scowl; his habitual position was with a cigarette in the fingers ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... a week more melodramatic than the most stirring moving picture film. Although the writ had been applied for in the greatest secrecy, a detective suddenly appeared to accompany Mr. O'Brien from Washington to Norfolk, during his stay in Norfolk, and back to Washington. Telephone ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... "Sounds overly melodramatic to me," Connor said when they were outside. "Who'd want to harm a psychiatric worker with no knowledge except what's in his head ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... ascertain exactly who was its author,—his mind misgave him. He knew my father's necessities and his childish capacities for business. With a keen sense of the power displayed in "Don Juan," and even in more melodramatic works, Shelley had acquired a full knowledge of the singularly licentious training from which Byron had then scarcely emerged, and of the vacillating caprice which enfeebled all his actions. His own ability to grapple with practical affairs was very great; but he himself had scarcely formed a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... corner to the nearest theatre. You will not be apt to find a pure example of the Intimate-and-friendly Moving Picture, but some one or two scenes will make plain the intent of the phrase. Imagine the most winsome tableau that passes before you, extended logically through one or three reels, with no melodramatic interruptions or awful smashes. For a further discussion of these smashes, and other items in this chapter, read ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... thinking in his home life, and school life is not likely to find pleasure in the rudeness, idleness, and vulgarity of the village poolroom. The pupil who is taught to appreciate the beautiful, the true, and the good in standard literature is not likely to find pleasure in reading the melodramatic and sentimental trash that now has prominence of place and space in many book stores and in some public libraries. It is the duty of the teacher, and it should be her pleasure, to cultivate in her pupils such a taste for good literature as will lead them to choose the good and reject the bad, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... before vast audiences all over the United Kingdom, and in his two visits to America. It is not surprising, either, to learn that upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and farce. His own serious writing was always dangerously close to the melodramatic, and his humor to the farcical. There is much false art, bad taste, and even vulgarity in Dickens. He was never quite a gentleman, and never succeeded well in drawing gentlemen or ladies. In the region of low comedy he is easily the most original, the most ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... first of those characteristic scenes of the fainting Virgin which was, probably from its dramatic element, so favourite a subject with Signorelli. Sincerely and naturally felt, it in no way trenches on the melodramatic, as one or two of the later groups tend to do, and the solitary figure of Christ, raised high above the sorrowing women, is for once, among his Crucifixions, of dignity and real pathos. The solemnity of the mood given, is enhanced by the fine idea of the soldier ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... of August my husband told me the plan of "Marmorne" (for the "No Name Series"), and I had been afraid that it would be too melodramatic; however, I was charmed when he read me the beginning, and my fears were soon dispelled by the strength ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Chicago was tame enough although the circumstances of it were rather melodramatic. She did not make any thrilling escape such as jumping from the moving car onto a passing train the way they do in the movies, or shrieking that she was being abducted and, as a result, being rescued by a handsome young man who became infatuated ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... these is a legitimate method for planning a serious play, and that by following either the one or the other, it is possible to make a truthful representation of life. For the ruinous events of life itself divide themselves into two classes—the melodramatic and the tragic—according as the element of chance or the element of character shows the upper hand in them. It would be melodramatic for a man to slip by accident into the Whirlpool Rapids and be drowned; but the drowning of Captain ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... anathema, and the tempting of women into these employments seemed but the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as right for a woman to ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... passing falsely as a widow, and playing a double game between the attentions of foolish but honourable young men, and the fitful appearances of a wandering and good-for-nothing sailor-husband; a man prepared to act that most well-worn of melodramatic roles, the conjugal bully and blackmailer, the man who uses marital rights as an instrument for the worse kind of wrongs. Or, again, if we had the story of the fall of King Arthur told from the stand-point of Mordred, it would only be a matter of a word or two; in a turn, in the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Landover's comment. "I don't believe it was because of any particular delicacy of feeling on his part, my dear. In any case, the fact remains that he let you go ahead with the affair, and then, bang! right in the middle of it he stages his cheap, melodramatic, moving-picture act. Bosh!" ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... had stopped, laboring under the conscientious delusion that food for the entire army depended upon his private exertions. I respected this style of mule; and, had I possessed a juicy cabbage, would have pressed it upon him with thanks for his excellent example. The histrionic mule was a melodramatic quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat and apparently dying a la Forrest; a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... long and expressive breath, and, with melodramatic movements of the shoulders, he sighed. "I have not seen you since. Oh, I had terrible scenes with the father. They had a house up the river. I followed them, and put up at the Angler's Hotel. She told her father that I must be allowed to come to the house, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... that in many robust and energetic people the sense of what is beautiful is so far atrophied that it can only be aroused by scenes and places of almost melodramatic picturesqueness, by ancient buildings clustered on craggy eminences, great valleys with the frozen horns of mountains, wind-ravaged and snow-streaked, peering over forest edges, the thunder and splendour of great sea-breakers plunging landward under rugged headlands ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Deus ex machina who was to come down upon the Barchester stage, and bring about deliverance from these terrible evils. But how can melodramatic denouments be properly brought about, how can vice and Mr Slope be punished, and virtue and the archdeacon be rewarded, while the avenging god is laid up with the gout? In the mean time evil may be triumphant, and poor innocence, transfixed to the earth ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... over yet," Marion said, pressing the hand she held. "There is one thing that perplexes me. The time has come for explanations, I suppose, and the situation seems a little melodramatic and silly." ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... may be classed as that melodramatic type that goes about labelled "dangerous," only she had the wit to take off the label and to advertise herself under the guise of a harmless ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... with considerable power. Little Miss NORREY'S shrill squeak, or scream, or whatever it is, at the end of the First Act, imperils the situation, and might be toned down with advantage, as also might her spasmodic melodramatic acting later in the piece. Mrs. TREE'S is a pretty part, but not a strong one. To sum up, apart from the two situations I have cited, I should say, that what will linger in the memory of man when it runneth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... Red-cotton Night-cap Country, a versified novel, melodramatic in circumstances, frankly familiar in scenery and atmosphere. Once more, as in the Blot in the 'Scutcheon, and in James Lee's Wife, Browning turned for his "incidents in the development of souls" ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... community around,—and who, when that time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child, without a throb of compunction, a word of exultation, or an act of superfluous outrage? Mrs. Stowe's "Dred" seems dim and melodramatic beside the actual Nat Turner. De Quincey's "Avenger" is his only parallel in imaginative literature: similar wrongs, similar retribution. Mr. Gray, his self-appointed confessor, rises into a sort ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... theatre, and not under the homely lamp of an actual country house, that one expects to see a girl leading her friend on to spit upon the portrait of a father who has lived and died for nothing and no one but herself; and when we find in real life a desire for melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic' instinct that is responsible for it. It is possible that, without being in the least inclined towards 'sadism,' a girl might have shewn the same outrageous cruelty as Mlle. Vinteuil in desecrating ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... novelists, if any, surpass Mr. Wm. Le Queux in the art of making a frankly and formidably melodramatic story go with alluring lightness in ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... by the strong tendency of his disposition to pathetic or humorous idealization. Perhaps in "The Old Curiosity Shop" these qualities are best seen in their struggle and divergence, and the result is a magnificent juxtaposition of romantic tenderness, melodramatic improbabilities, and broad farce. The humorous characterization is joyously exaggerated into caricature,—the serious characterization into romantic unreality, Richard Swiveller and Little Nell refuse to combine. There is abundant evidence of genius both in the humorous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... came to Weimar from Vienna a gifted dog, who assisted his master in the presentation of a play of the melodramatic order, entitled "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The director of the Grand Ducal Theater at the time was one Wolfgang von Goethe. To him the dog's manager applied for the privilege of producing his edifying piece. Goethe refused permission, and there was danger that the patrons of ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... departed. Bob looked after her until the door had closed behind her. Then, quite deliberately, he made a tour of the office, trying doors, peering behind curtains and portieres. He ended at the desk, to find Baker's eye fixed on him with sardonic humour. "Melodramatic, useless—and ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... never tell her that, for she is a Frenchwoman, and wouldn't believe it. I'll tell her something more melodramatic. I'll say that Mr. Nokes is my father, who has suddenly recognized and discovered his long-lost child.—Madame, c'est mon pere longtemps absent, qui vous en prie d'accepter ses remerciments pour votre bonte ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Tales, however, are masterpieces of faithful delineation. The strong passions, the lights and shadows of Irish peasant character, have rarely been so ably and truly depicted. The incidents are striking, sometimes even horrible, and the authors have been accused of straining after melodramatic effect. The lighter, more joyous side of Irish character, which appears so strongly in Samuel Lover, receives little ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... rate, the old picture in the "Arabian Nights" represented Morgiana in the act of pouring the boiling oil into vessels marvellously like these, and in each of these was room for at least four robbers of true melodramatic stature. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... intelligence he fainted away, and remained for some time unconscious. He continued, indeed, his grossness and frivolity, but the wildest and fiercest schemes chased each other through his melodramatic brain. He would slay all the exiles; he would give up all the provinces to plunder; he would order all the Gauls in the city to be butchered; he would have all the senators invited to banquets, and would then poison them; he would have the city set on fire, and the wild beasts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... I got over that little shock," Pamela went on, "than you turn up with this melodramatic story, and an offer from Mr. Fischer, which I can read in his face. Really, I feel that I shall hear the buzz of a cinema machine in a moment. How much ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Danton the 'Minister of Justice' were employing Maillard the 'hero of the Bastile' and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... village beauty is forced to combat by her rustic suitor. Fortunately, however, Mr. GEORGE STEVENSON has no tragedy like that of Hetty in store for his Rose. His picture of rural life is more mellow than melodramatic; and his tale reaches a happy end, unchequered by anything more sensational than a mild outbreak of scandal from the local wag-tongues. There are many pleasant, if rather familiar, characters; though I own to a certain sense of repletion arising from the elderly and domineering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... told you of his childhood and of how he became a priest; didn't it strike you at the time like rather a made-up, melodramatic history?" ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... bottom step to wait for his return. The clock in the dining-room struck twelve. It came over her with a clap that but half a day had passed since she had run out into the dawn. For an instant she had the naive, melodramatic instinct of youth to deck out its little events in the guise of crises. She began to tell herself with gusto that she had passed some important turning-point in her life; when, as was not infrequent with ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... for miscellaneous concerts. The "Floral Hall" adjoins this theatre on the Covent Garden side. "Drury Lane Theatre," the fourth on the same site, was built in 1812; its glories live in the past, for the legitimate drama now alternates there with entertainments of a more spectacular and melodramatic character, and the Christmas pantomimes, that purely indigenous English institution. The "Haymarket Theatre," exactly opposite "Her Majesty's," was built in 1821; under Mr. Buckstone's management, comedy and farce were chiefly performed. The "Adelphi ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... for a minute looking at the other curiously, with something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one of the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... did not like the way the whole Branchell business was being handled. It seemed slipshod and hurried, and, worse, it was entirely too mysterious and melodramatic. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... points to the present Government, "the late Ministers commenced a career, perilous in the extreme to all the best interests of the nation—demoralizing public opinion, wasting public resources, and entangling the country in quarrels alike endless and aimless; and all this with a labouring after melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." We were, in the words of truth and soberness, fast losing our moral ascendency in Europe—by a series of querulous, petty, officious, needless, undignified interpositions; by the exhibition of a vacillating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... great struggle between Labour and Capital, between class and class, between principal and interest, between those with moral principles and those without them. It is suggestive of the very climax of melodramatic sensation, and, being suggestive of all this to the majority, the majority will be disappointed when it doesn't get all that this very responsible title has led them to expect. Those who know the French novel will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... level with Dickens's conceptions; his Monk and Rose Maylie are as poor as the originals. But as the defects of Dickens are overbalanced by his merits, so Cruikshank's strength is far in excess of his weakness. It is not to his melodramatic heroes or wasp-waisted heroines that we must look for his triumphs; it is to his delineations, from the moralist's point of view, of vulgarity and vice,—of the "rank life of towns," with all its squalid tragedy ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... his stories is romantic, melodramatic, often almost shocking. He handled it, however, with humor, irony, or pathos. He was a realist who pictured, marvelously, the life about ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... acknowledge that they expect it twice in three deals, and there are generally from twenty-nine to thirty-two coups in each deal. The odds in favour of winning several times are about the same as in the game of Pharaon, and are as delusive. 'He who goes to Hombourg and expects to see any melodramatic manifestation of rage, disappointment, and despair in the losing players, reckons without his host. Winners or losers seldom speak above a whisper; and the only sound that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the muffled jingle ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... too good for young Dick Ballard, even if she was merely a girl in his father's office. You couldn't blame her for liking Dick, though. Everyone did—the scatter-brained scamp! And when my brother went through all that melodramatic folly of cutting him off with a thousand a year—well, we had our big row over that. That was when I took my money out of the firm. Lucky I did too. When the panic came ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... of no avail; the position of Christ in baptism in the paintings of Verrocchio and Ghirlandajo is mean and servile; the movements of the "Thunderstricken" in Signorelli's lunettes is an inconceivable mixture of the brutish, the melodramatic, and the comic; the magnificently drawn youth at the door of the prison in Filippino's "Liberation of St. Peter" is gradually going to sleep and collapsing in a fashion ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... and ruddy healthy face seemed to be a positive insult to me in my present condition. Had I been a courageous or a muscular man I could have struck him. As it was, I treated the honest sailor to a melodramatic scowl which seemed to cause him no small astonishment, and strode past him to the other side of the deck. Solitude was what I wanted—solitude in which I could brood over the frightful crime which was being hatched before my very eyes. One of the quarter-boats was hanging rather ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you are absurd to-day; you are hurting me. This melodramatic pose approaches the ludicrous, and I have really no patience with your folly. A little period of calm reflection may prove beneficial, and I will leave you to it. Clara is ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... murderously, opposes the natural desires of a child whom he has promised to another. Where Maria is idyllic, poetic, flowing smoothing along the current of a realism tempered by sentimentalism, Innocencia (by no means devoid of poetry) is romantic, melodramatic, rushing along turbulently to the outcome in a death as violent as Maria's is peaceful. There is in each book a similar importance of the background. In Innocencia the "point of honor" is quite as strong and vindictive ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... home, a little amused by her melodramatic conduct, but much comforted by the fact that Charles, though ignorant of his part, was with her in this conspiracy. She was ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... sexes, though this is not the rule, as we will readily agree, thinking over the great portrait painters of character. To state a single illustrative case: Hall Caine must be allowed to have framed some mighty men, tragic, or melodramatic sometimes, somber always, but men of bulk and character. Pete, in "The Manxman," is a creation sufficient to make the artist conceiving him immortal; and Red Jason is no less real, manly, mighty, self-mastering, self-surrendering. Caine's men are giants; but his women do not satisfy and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... appeared ridiculous in the case of the burly George IV., would have been something pretty and poetic in that of the young maiden-Queen, but she doubtless felt that as every Englishman was disposed to be her champion, the old form would be the idlest, melodramatic bravado. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... audience is here often in trouble; for a certain acquaintance with history is required and both actors and stage-management offer little aid to the average ignorance. While the more obvious and melodramatic situations—such as the death of L'Aiglon or the business of the sentry—are treated at great leisure, it is assumed that all historical allusions, however necessary to an understanding of the situation, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... The landlady drew away, pointing toward the back-parlor warningly. The situation was to her taste. She seemed to be a part of one of those very scenes for which her soul yearned—melodramatic scenes such as she had witnessed across footlights, with her husky-voiced favorite in ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... almost absurd. Chauvelin was not the man for such a mock-heroic, melodramatic situation. Commonsense, reason, his own cool powers of deliberation, would soon reassert themselves. But for the moment he was dazed. He had worked too hard, no doubt; had yielded too much to excitement, to triumph, and to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... received a visit from an officer of rural police, who painted in very sombre colours the habits and moral character—or, more properly, immoral character—of the people whose acquaintance we were about to make. He related with melodramatic gesticulation his encounters with malefactors belonging to the villages through which we had to pass, and ended the interview with a strong recommendation to us not to travel at night, and to keep at all times our eyes open and our revolver ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... run away and really ran, home, to see if the dear surroundings of her life were intact after all she had heard. Since this temporary seclusion in a melodramatic tale, she almost felt as if she should never again see the vision of Mary Nellen making cake or Anne brushing her long hair and looking like a placid saint. The library was dim, but she heard interchanging voices there, and knew Jeffrey ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the French population are generally of a melodramatic order. The temperament of the nation is eminently theatrical; and the multitude of minor theatres scattered through France, naturally sustain this original tendency. A villain in the south of France, lately constructed a sort of machinery for murder, which was evidently on the plan of the trap-doors ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... that had given offence to his Imperial master had been practically banished by being sent to German East Africa. That was two years before the war. Upon the outbreak of hostilities he hoped by melodramatic means to find himself restored to favour, but to his chagrin he saw that younger officers gained promotion in the German Colonial Forces while he remained at this present ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... somebody to be arrested? What a melodramatic display! Well, Ganimard, say what you have ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... look on its evils as necessaries, ancient and fixed as the universe, he entered the village fair, and was a little disappointed at his first glimpse of the village-green. Certainly his expectations had not been very exalted; but there had run through them a hope of something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village-belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school; or, failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humour ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... indefinable unnecessary "Ah!" and sank down into a chair, loosing my hand swiftly. I was going to say that she loosed my hand as if it had been the tail of a snake that she had picked up in mistake for something else. But that would leave the impression that her gesture was melodramatic, which it was not. Only there was in her demeanor a touch of the bizarre, ever so slight; yes, so slight that I could not be sure that ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... Shaw's plays (except of course such things as How he Lied to her Husband and The Admirable Bashville) this drama does not turn on any very plain pivot of ethical or philosophical conviction. The artistic idea seems to be the notion of a melodrama in which all the conventional melodramatic situations shall suddenly take unconventional turns. Just where the melodramatic clergyman would show courage he appears to show cowardice; just where the melodramatic sinner would confess his love he confesses his indifference. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... atmosphere; Italian scenery is painted with accuracy, but not Italian life or character. Irving could draw the early Dutch in America, or the mediaeval Moors in Spain, or the Englishman in England or Italy: the modern Italian on his own soil he did not know except in his melodramatic exterior. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... of a spray. The irritability of the one active cell subsided, that of the others was aroused. Somnambulism ceased. The entire brain awoke. But the truth had not yet fully permeated all the cerebral convolutions and the fact that it had not, manifested itself in the melodramatic phrase which, a week previous, Lennox had uttered, which all have uttered, all at least before whom ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... This was a melodramatic laugh of the most sarcastic description, prefatory to the letting off of a very ponderous joke. "Currying! Indian curry! That's what he was brought up on. Curry and rice instead of pap. Look at the colour of his skin. But only wait a bit," continued Slegge darkly. "Just wait till ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... Harriet the Seeress of Hidden Hollow!" replied the apparition, in a melodramatic manner that would not have discredited the queen of tragedy herself. ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... warblings of Finocchi—whose pronunciation of Russian was as near Chinese or Hebrew as the Slavic tongue: to argue vainly with La Menschikov, the soprano, who, to Ivan's unbounded disgust, used every vocal trick invented by the melodramatic Italians, from a revolting tremolo, and a barefaced falsetto to an incorrigible persistence in the appoggiatura, an affectation peculiarly unadapted to Ivan's rich, strong style. Many a concerted passage, moreover, did he, in silent despair, alter to suit the stubborn inabilities ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tell her how much you enjoyed yourself yesterday?—or to ask for a respite till to-morrow, to give you time to pass decently through a process of purification? May I ask where you are going to find it and what it is going to consist of? Oh, don't look so melodramatic! If you can put up with what you got from Riis's girl yesterday and her mother to-day, surely you can put up with a little angry talk or a little chaff from your father. I have had to put up with the whole affair—the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... had had from the beginning anything upon which to base suspicion. Given the premises of an abnormal girl with a passion for himself which humiliated him, an abnormal woman like Miss Farrel with a similar passion, albeit under better control, the melodramatic phases of the candy, and sudden death, and traces of arsenical poison, what ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hardly believable that such an incompetent judge as the directress should herself assign the roles for all our plays!" she once remarked to Wladek greatly embittered by the fact that she had been ignored in the selection of the cast for an old melodramatic caricature entitled ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Sloat, with melodramatic intensity. "Never! This is my ideal of perfection,—of divinity in woman. I will bear it home with me, set it above my fireside, and adore it ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... Dickens evidently prided himself, I must confess, never laid hold of me. He is a melodramatic young man. The worst I could have wished him would have been that he should marry Rose Dartle and live with his mother. It would have served him right for being so attractive. Old Peggotty and Ham are, of course, impossible. One must accept ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... the beach. The ambuscade now prepared to attack the enemy. Creeping stealthily down as near as possible without being discovered, they simultaneously rushed upon the astonished animals; and the tragic scene of slaughter, mingled with melodramatic and comic incidents, that ensued, baffles all description. In one place might be seen my friend Jordan swinging a huge club round with his powerful arms, and dealing death and destruction at every blow; while in another place a poor weazened-looking Scotchman (who had formerly ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... his astonishment when he just peeped out, by way of caution, to see that the person who had opened it was—not Job Trotter, but a servant-girl with a candle in her hand! Mr. Pickwick drew in his head again, with the swiftness displayed by that admirable melodramatic performer, Punch, when he lies in wait for the flat-headed comedian with the tin box ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... dilated. Here indeed was a terrible prospect. She knew her brother as only a woman can know a man. She had not noted the melodramatic manner in which her husband had ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... house immediately," M. Roussillon ordered, as soon as they were restored to consciousness; and he shook himself, as a big wet animal sometimes does, covering everybody near him with muddy water. Then he led the way with melodramatic strides. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... thing than you seem to see, because you keep your eyes fixed on one spot. If Lady Diana's engaged to Major Vandyke, then he'd have no incentive to strike at another man who was gone on her. It would be the other way round. The chap who had lost her would be the one, if any, to be up to melodramatic stunts. It might be said about March that he risked trouble for himself, for the pleasure of having a smack at Vandyke; putting the blame on him for a mad order to fire off guns at the good little Mexicans, for instance, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Majesty wants to distinguish himself by a melodramatic coup d'etat" he said, leaning easily back in his chair, and studying the tips of his carefully pared and polished finger-nails;— "Poor fool! I don't blame him for trying to do something more than walk about his palace in different costumes at stated ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... remainder. At many of the theatres an entire change in the style of the performances is of no unfrequent occurrence. We have known the Gaite in the dolefuls, and the Porte St. Martin abandoning its scaffolds, trap-doors, and other melodramatic horrors, for fun, farce, and ballet. As a regular thing, dancing is only to be seen at the Grand Opera. The license of each theatre specifies the nature of the performances allowed it, but this is a matter difficult exactly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... excursion was made into the realm of the melodrama. Glover, as he was called, was intensely Byronic, after the fashion of the times, and he prepared a succession of thrilling scenes from Byron's sensational poem, "The Corsair," for presentation by his fellow players. This melodramatic production was staged with all the pasteboard pomp and secondhand circumstance the little workshop theater could afford and was given with all the fire the high-toned author could impart to his ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... great sigh of relief.] Now, that really is fine of you! Every other woman in the world would have seized that chance for a melodramatic exit. "Good-night, Sir Geoffrey; I must go to my husband." "Good-night, Lady Torminster." A clasp of the hand—a hot tear—mine—on your wrist. But you sit ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... "Homicide is decidedly better. It's more melodramatic, and I don't like that, but it will be more appreciable, as a real sin, to most of the audience; we steal and cheat so much, and we kill comparatively so little in the North. Well, I was going to say that I shall have this whole act to ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... collapse of the Empire is tremendous. I have no pity for the melodramatic villain who ends as he began, in causeless and wanton blood." Lord Coleridge, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... passages as sumptuous as this in Venetia, the romance about Byron and Shelley, which Disraeli was thought indiscreet in publishing so soon after Byron's death. In the story the heroine Venetia is the daughter of Shelley (Marmion Herbert) and the bride of Byron (Lord Cadurcis). Marmion is a most melodramatic figure, but the indiscretions are not noticeable nowadays, while the courage with which the reviled and hated Shelley is described in the preface to Lord Lyndhurst as one of "the most renowned and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Souspennier," he declared. "This is unworthy of you. It is positively melodramatic. It reminds me of the plays of my Fatherland, and of your own Adelphi Theatre. We should be men of the world, you and I. You must take your defeats with your victories. I can assure you that the welfare of the Countess Lucille shall be my ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us have any melodramatic nonsense with straws, or bits of wood of different lengths. We'll go down to the gateway to-morrow between one and two, when there's scarcely a creature about, and one shall look up the street, and the other down. Whoever can count twenty human beings first shall have first ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... "Coly says he hears the voices of women and children. Sure no human creature that's got a woman and child in his company would be such a cruel brute as you make out this desert Ethiopian to be? Sailors' stories, to gratify the melodramatic ears of Moll and Poll and Sue! Bah! if there be an encampment, let's go straight into it, and demand hospitality of them. Sure they must be Arabs; and sure you've heard ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... forced her to take in the affair at the office. Not that she regretted that she had connived in the escape of Bridge; but it was humiliating that a girl of her position should have been compelled to play so melodramatic a part before ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... things and persons in the history of our own race. They foster race-consciousness, the feeling of kinship and community of blood. It is this property which makes the historical story so good an agent for furthering a proper national pride in children. Genuine patriotism, neither arrogant nor melodramatic, is so generally recognised as having its roots in early training that I need not dwell on this possibility, further than to note its connection with the instinct of hero-worship which is quick in the healthy child. Let us feed that hunger for the heroic which gnaws at the imagination ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... superciliously, contemptuously. His lip curled and his beard bristled. Moved by a sudden wild impulse she picked up "The Chaplet of Pearls" and threw it at him. It hit him (not very severely), and he gave the sharp, melodramatic howl that he always used when it was his dignity rather than his body that was hurt. Jeremy looked up, saw what had happened, and a fine scene followed. Mary had hysterics, stamped and screamed and howled. Jeremy, his face white, stood and said nothing, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... a month, during which Mr. Ross diverted himself by making appointments, postponing them, forgetting them, telephoning, telegraphing, sending special-delivery letters, being paged at hotels, and doing all the useless melodramatic things he could think of, except using an aeroplane or a submarine, he decided to make her his secretary at twenty dollars a week. Two days later it occurred to him to test her in regard to speed in dictation and typing, and a few other minor things of the sort which her ability as a long-distance ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... us is that we're so civilized we bend over backward with it. You're going to find us mighty tame. The melodramatic romance of the West is mostly in storybooks. What there was of it has gone ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... chain. He could not resist the unique opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational framework. 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 him pause. Yet, on the other hand, these were the very factors of the temptation. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... made melodramatic by any hesitation as he approached, but, with a businesslike directness, he went right up to the men who held ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Barcelona had announced the death of Esteban Ferragut in the torpedoing of the Californian. The commercial traveler was still relating everywhere his version of the event, concluding it now with his melodramatic meeting with the father, the latter's fatal fall on receiving the news, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the audience if not select are enthusiastic; the stage is narrow, but affords room for a deal of strutting and striding about on the part of an overpowering actor in the inevitable belt and boots of the melodramatic highwayman. The play represents certain startling passages in the career of one Claude Duval, formerly a running footman, afterwards—strange anomaly!—a robber on horseback, distinguished for ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... a bit haughty in virginal safety and pride; No rival too near her high throne, Prince FORTUNIO aye at her side; But now a poor PERDITA, prone at the feet of her foes she lies bound, And that melodramatic thud-thud draweth near—a most ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various |
