"Farcical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to spiritualism, table rappings, and such things, because they were undignified, because the ghosts cracked jokes or waltzed with dinner-tables. I do not share this objection in the least. I wish the spirits were more farcical than they are. That they should make more jokes and better ones, would be my suggestion. For almost all the spiritualism of our time, in so far as it is new, is solemn and sad. Some Pagan gods were lawless, and some Christian saints were a little too serious; but the spirits of modern spiritualism ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Night,' also gave him some hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the 'Two Gentlemen,' but passages of high poetic spirit are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, Launce and Speed—the precursors of a long line of whimsical serving-men—overflow with farcical drollery. The 'Two Gentlemen' was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime; it first appeared in the folio of 1623, after having, in all probability, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... poetry that the Irish captain recites to Pump, the innkeeper, the gallant innkeeper who, against all opposition, keeps the flag flying and the flagon full. If the book is a little overdrawn it is, no doubt, because the subject is slightly farcical; the arguments of the Oriental are well put, and, if the discussion of the merits of vegetarianism are a little wearisome, the poetry of a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... possibly from the accompanying sacrifice of a goat) sprang from the graver songs, and comedy (village-song) from the lighter and more farcical ones. Gradually, recital and dialogue were added, there being at first but a single speaker, then two, and finally three, which last was the classical number. Thespis (about 536 B.C.) is said to have introduced this idea of the dialogue; ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... relief to more than usual levity and mockery. Hence the perpetual interruption of the serious and affecting, and sometimes even awful, interest which belongs to the main argument of the piece, by scenes of farcical and extravagant caricature which might be pleasant enough as varieties in that farce of unreason with which he usually entertains us, but which, coming upon the mind in a state of serious emotion, are offensive and disagreeable. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... he would not face but he saw his days upon the road with truth and shame. He had failed in his penance. Garry was right. He did everything by fits and starts. And he could justify whatever was most conducive to his comfort and his inclination. His pilgrimage had been farcical. He had fled from discomfort, magnifying pettiness into tragedy. And he had been disloyal to the son he loved. For there under the willow when his startled eyes had found Joan, he had passionately made up his mind to linger. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... watch still in his hand, advanced to the bridge table. Strolling from player to player he made mental photographs of each hand, then took his stand behind Penny's chair to observe the horribly farcical playing of it. Poor little Penny! he reflected. She hadn't had a chance against that dumb-bell across the table from her. Fancy anyone's doubling a little slam bid on a hand like Carolyn Drake's—or even calling an ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... it. It is curious, and yet it is not curious, to find the pathos and the polish of one of the most touching and elegant of poets in the man who has with such irresistible humor, sometimes approaching to the farcical, delineated humble Scotch life. One passage in the book always struck me very much. We have in it the poet as well as the humorist and it is a perfect example of what I have been trying to describe in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... to attend to-night. Should he attend it or not? His situation had become farcical. Was it not his plain duty to withdraw at once from the political contest, that a serious candidate might as soon as possible take his place? Where could he discern even the glimmer of a hope in this sudden darkness? His ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... at feud with everybody? As for Una Meredith being hateful to anybody, the idea was so farcical that Rilla had much ado to keep from laughing in ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "It is evident from the opening scene, that Shakespeare, even in dealing with classical subjects, laughed at the classic fear of putting the ludicrous and sublime into juxtaposition. After the low and farcical jests of the saucy cobbler, the eloquence of Marullus 'springs upwards like a ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... sufficient men for the purpose. Immune from the press by reason of their newly created status of Sea-Fencibles, they were all elsewhere, following their time-honoured vocations of fishing and smuggling with industry and gladness of heart. As a means of repelling invasion the Popham scheme was farcical and worthless; as a means of evading the press it was the finest thing ever invented. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 581—Admiral Berkeley, Reports on Sea-Fencibles, 1805; Admiral Lord Keith, Sentiments upon the Sea-Fencible System, 7 Jan. 1805.] The only benefits ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the lives of saints. These were followed by the Moralities, plays in which were personified abstract virtues and vices. The first step in the creation of the regular drama was taken by Heywood, who composed some farcical plays called Interludes. The people of the sixteenth century were fond of pageants, shows in which classical personages were introduced, and Masques, which gradually developed from pageants into dramas accompanied with music. About the middle ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... shades. The play ends with the undignified reappearance of Xerxes, and a melancholy procession into the palace of Susa. It was, perhaps, inevitable that this close of the great drama should verge on the farcical, and that the poltroonery of Xerxes should, in a measure, obscure Aeschylus' generous portraiture of Atossa and Darius. But his magnificent picture of the battle of Salamis is unequalled in the poetic annals of naval war. No account of ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the parlour, the ground glass of the door, the tumblers and bottles on the table, the sharp features and strained, farcical eyes of Malkiel framed in the matted, curling hair. Then all was not over yet. There was something still in store for him. He sat up, pushed the creaming four-shilling foam out of his sight, turned to his interlocutor, and with a ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... The farcical element is not wanting in the Inferno, a fact proving that our poet, in furnishing the episodes, not superior to his age which demanded especially in the religious plays presented in the public square the sight of the discomfiture of the devil in scenes provoking the audience to laughter. ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Quarterly Review for having murdered his friend with—a critique![N] If criticism killed the disciples of that school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an Elegy on another:—but the whole is most farcical from a pen which on other occasions, has treated of the soul, the body, life and death agreeably to the opinions, the principles, and the practice of Percy Bysshe ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Mr. Pascoe rose. "My Lord," he said, "it must be clear to you that the ends of justice have been defeated by the dramatic power of this tale. It would be farcical to ask this jury to deliver an impartial verdict now. This new evidence must be weighed and sifted with calm minds. I request that you ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... modern Athenians, the volatile Parisians, might in their national concern of an OPERA COMIQUE. It was the business of the dramatic parody to turn the solemn tragedy, which the audience had just seen exhibited, into a farcical comedy; the same actors who had appeared in magnificent dresses, now returned on the stage in grotesque habiliments, with odd postures and gestures, while the story, though the same, was incongruous and ludicrous. The Cyclops of Euripides is probably the only remaining ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... dejectedly; "I can't say it was what, in farcical composition, I should call such nuts to me as that, sir. Still, he was in a low way—seemed a pedlar or a hawker, selling out of a pannier on the Rialto—I mean the Cornmarket, sir—not even a hag by his side, only a great dog—French. A British dog would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... simplest and most innocent of objects. The actual impossibility of the Prince of Wales escaping from his entourage, his identity, and his surroundings, were sufficient to make Continental fictions and foreign fancies about him absolutely farcical to those who knew something of his daily life—aside altogether from those who knew ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... already escaped; Mark remained trying to persuade his uncle to come away before the matter ceased to be farcical. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Tarkington's studies of boy life (especially Penrod), and of adolescence (especially Seventeen and Clarence). Judged by your own experience and observation, are they presented with true knowledge and humor, or are they a farcical skimming of surface eccentricities? Compare them with Mark Twain's books about boys and with ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... necessary rule of dramatic art, declaring no play should contain an effect, a line, a scene or an act which does not bear on the end in view by developing either the characters or the action. The entire second act, containing the farcical examination-scene, is useless. Robertson again sinned in this way in the Nightingale: although it had no effect on the plot, although it was entirely unnecessary, he introduced a pretty tableau representing the heroine, a lovely prima-donna, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Information.' The bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl. As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain the exceedingly farcical explanation ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of Ofterdingen reaches a depth of obscurity which is saved from absurdity only by the genuinely fervent glow of a soul on the quest for its mystic ideals: "The blue flower it is that I yearn to look upon!" No farcical romance of the nursery shows more truly the mingled stuff that dreams are made on, yet the intimation that the dream is not all a dream, that the spirit of an older day is symbolically struggling for some expression in words, gave it in its day a serious importance at which our own age ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Citizen-Deputy was allowed to look for himself. He was conducted to the great vaulted rooms of the Temple, to the vast ballrooms of the Palais Conde, where herded the condemned and those still awaiting trial; he was allowed to witness there the grim farcical tragedies, with which the captives beguiled the few hours which separated ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... useful moral lessons. The moral philosophy of the Mime, Sophron, was so pure that Plato kept a book of his poems under his pillow when on his death-bed. Besides these Moralities, as they were termed, there were, in addition, light pieces of a farcical kind, in the portrayal of which the Mimes were equally as successful as in ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... was almost the first of an order of entertainments which have gone on increasing in favor up to the present day of universally triumphant parody and burlesque, by no means as laughable and by no means as unobjectionable. Indeed, farcical to the broadest point as was that mythological travesty of "The Danaides," it was the essence of decency and propriety compared with "La grande Duchesse," "La belle Helene," "Orphee aux Enfers," "La Biche au ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... there is wit which makes us laugh, and there is humor which does not. On the whole, it is as to what is purely wit that we are ever the most at fault. Certain phases of humor we cannot mistake,—especially those which are broadly comic or farcical. But sometimes we meet with incidents or scenes which have more in them of the pathetic than the comic, that we must still rank with the humorous. Here is a case in point. A time was when it was a penal offence in Ireland for a priest to say Mass, and under particular ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Pennsylvania is nothing, a mere tempest in a tea-pot. Whom do they hope to humbug in this way? The disgrace is nameless, only they are callous enough not to feel it. Their cheeks can no more redden.... However, Stanton is not so optimist. It would look so farcical if it were not so deadly to witness. Hooker groping his way after Lee; Lincoln and the all-knowing head-quarters in the utmost darkness about Lee, his army, his movements, and his plans. And all this while the country, the people, is kept officially ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... which were illustrated, as he proceeded, by H. K. Browne (Phiz). The work met and has retained an unprecedented popularity. Caricature as it was, it caricatured real, existent oddities; everything was probable; the humor was sympathetic if farcical, the assertion of humanity bold, and the philosophy of universal application. He had touched our common nature in all ranks and conditions; he had exhibited men and women of all types; he had exposed the tricks of politics and the absurdity of elections; the snobs of society ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... It was a farcical ending to a very arduous thirty-six-hour campaign, and Ross, feeling like a man who, having rolled a huge stone to the top of a hill, has been ordered to drop it, said, "I insist on the maximum penalty of the law, Justice Higley, especially for this ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... day are repeated against the republicans and the legitimists by the Younger Branch, flourished in the speech. These trite commonplaces, which might have some meaning under a fixed government, seem farcical in the mouth of administrators of all epochs and opinions. A saying of the troublous times of yore is still applicable: "The label is changed, but the wine is the same as ever." The public prosecutor, one of the most ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... and once more weakly lent himself to what was rapidly becoming a farcical procedure. The King, without ceremony, presented himself to the National Assembly and announced that in view of the events of the day before he had recalled his minister, and ordered Besenval's troops to be withdrawn. The assembly manifested its satisfaction, and sent a deputation headed ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... farcical trial that resulted in the predetermined sentence of death, Miss Cavell courageously and freely admitted her assistance in the specified cases of escape. When she was asked why she did it, she declared her fear that if she had not ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... strange at the first glance to say that Sam Weller helped to make the story serious. Nevertheless, this is strictly true. The introduction of Sam Weller had, to begin with, some merely accidental and superficial effects. When Samuel Weller had appeared, Samuel Pickwick was no longer the chief farcical character. Weller became the joker and Pickwick in some sense the butt of his jokes. Thus it was obvious that the more simple, solemn, and really respectable this butt could be made the better. Mr. Pickwick had been ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... Sally shuddered to the core of her being and had to hold more tightly to the rope to support herself. The two wise guys mocked openly. To the wise guys, expert connoisseurs of swat, the thing had appeared richly farcical. They seemed to consider the blow, administered to a third party and not to themselves, hardly worth calling a blow at all. Two more, landing as quickly and neatly as the first, left ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... farcical, futile, incorrect. To suppose you have learned a word by so cursory a glance at its resources is like supposing you have learned a man through having had him render you some temporary and trivial service, as lending you a match or telling you the time of day. To acquaint yourself thoroughly ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Mr. Spalding responded for the American ball players in happy fashion, his remarks being greeted with generous applause on the part of the audience, after which we returned to our seats to witness an after-piece illustrating in farcical style the evils of Chinese immigration, and then, returning to the hotel, we were introduced to many of the leading business men of the city, remaining ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... watching Pattmore closely during the interval before the verdict was delivered, and I saw plainly that, in spite of the farcical character of the inquest, he was in a state of nervous dread lest something unforeseen should occur to reveal his criminality. When the verdict was read, an expression of relief and triumph came into his face, and he received the congratulations of his friends like a man ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... I say, that Granaglia smiled: to him it was ludicrous. I laughed: to me it was farcical—the chatter of a bavard. The Pope become the patron of a secret society! The priests become our friends and allies! Very well, my friend; but listen. The little minds see what is absurd; the great minds are serious. Granaglia is a little devil of courage; but he ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... be impressive, sometimes stilted when he would be fine, that his sentiment is often false and worked up, that his attempts at tragedy are melodramatic, and that sometimes his comedy comes near being farcical. His whole literary attitude has been compared to his boyish ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... she refused to do so and turned a deaf ear to his arguments, losing all self-control, he flung his felt hat on the floor, continued to rage and rail against me, and, no result coming of it, dashed at last, in a towering passion, out through the door, which he slammed behind him. There was a farcical ending to the scene, since he was obliged to ring at the door again for his hat, which, in his exasperation, he had forgotten. This was a kind of private prologue to the ecclesiastical drama which from the year 1871 upwards was enacted in most of the pulpits of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... oration made him reach out another clutching hand to the vanished reporter. "But it's farcical, father, to be always interviewed ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... now to laugh. The very thought of it was farcical in its very odiousness. Merri, who had embarked on his proposal with grandiloquent phraseology, suddenly paused, almost awed by ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... award is assured us. If we want Texas, we send an army after it. Every case that does not rouse our anger. Let the Maine blow up and we fight. A treaty with an elastic exception like this is a farcical ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... with his brains at puzzles, and with his hands at conjuring, and it did not take him long to learn how he might convey simple messages by what would seem to be idle taps upon a table or knee. But wine and companionship had always the effect of inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, and the Professor soon found himself struggling with the too vast energy of the new language, as it passed through the heated brain ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... to teach moral lessons by allegorical representations. When popular interest in these dramas began to lag, current topics were introduced into the dialogue, and characters from real life appeared on the stage for the first time. Early in the sixteenth century John Heywood invented a farcical composition called The Interlude to relieve the tiresome monotony of existing plays. But it was in 1540 that the first comedy appeared, and it is not too much to say that this play marks the beginning of modern English drama. Nicholas ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Angus threw out his hand with an impetuous gesture—"that considering all the abominable, farcical tricks women play nowadays, it is simply amazing to find one who is contented with a simple life like this, and who manages to make that simple life ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... at herself with admiring reproach, as she looked in Guida's mirror, and added, glancing with farcical approval round the room, "and it all shines like ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... characters and a pleasantly-amused interest in their fate. There is, of course, plenty of distinction in the writing. But I could have wished more or earlier movement. Even the motor-car, whose appearance promised a hint, the merest far-off possibility, of farcical developments, shared in the general lethargy and refused to move from its ditch. In spite, however, of this procrastination I wish it to be understood that the story is in some ways one of unusual charm; it has style, atmosphere and a very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... This incident is unsatisfactorily treated. We never know how Waka circumvented Malio and restored her grandchild to the husband designed for her. The whole thing sounds like a dramatic innovation with farcical import, which appeared in the tale without motivation for the reason that it had none in its inception. The oral narrator is rather an actor than a composer; he may have introduced this episode as a surprise, and its success as farce ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... When this farcical scene began, Servin had gone into his own office, and had given his secretary an order. The secretary had just returned. The lieutenant, having recorded the answer brought him, had just that moment returned to ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his own happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good fellows, any one of whom might serve as a model ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... found there, nor were any 'fossil remains' of the noble animal discovered in the Wicklow Mines,[G] which were worked some fifty years back, but which, for want of capital or perseverance, only furnished a few Cronobane halfpence, and materials for a musical farce to one of the most delightful farcical Irish writers of his time;[H] for ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... every night in the theatres oldfashioned farcical comedies, in which a bedroom, with four doors on each side and a practicable window in the middle, was understood to resemble exactly the bedroom in the flats beneath and above, all three inhabited by couples consumed with jealousy. When these people came home drunk at night; mistook ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... man-market. Hence, where the means for exercising the mind upon the right is forbidden-where ignorance becomes the necessary part of the maintenance of a system, and religion is applied to that end, it becomes farcical; and while it must combine all the imperfections of the performer, necessarily tends to confine the ignorance of those it seeks to degrade, within the narrowest boundary. There are different ways of destroying the rights of different classes; ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the study of a thing new to him. It was like him, too, to have conceived and risked all upon this last desperate and madcap scheme—this message to a poor, crazed fanatico cruising about with his grotesque uniform and his farcical title. But his companions had been at their wits' end; escape had seemed incredible; and now he was pleased with the success of the plan they had called ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... this, no one, not even the wizened old man who was obviously the humorist of the tribune, had seen anything farcical. To be too hot—to be too cold! this is a serious matter in France. A jury surely has a right to protect itself against cold, against la migraine, and the devils of rheumatism and pleurisy. There is nothing ridiculous in twelve men sitting in judgment on a fellow-man, with their handkerchiefs ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... becoming rather a farcical dissertation upon the relations that should obtain between states, irrespective of size, when it was broken off by a cry from Tambi, who, with another lantern hanging overside at the end of his arm had ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... hollows,—as much a tomb of its past as Birs Nimroud of that great city, Nineveh. Old Sarum is now best remembered by its long-surviving privilege, as a borough, of sending two members to Parliament. The farcical ceremony of electing two representatives who had no real constituency behind them was put an end to by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you for your song, or, rather, your two songs,—your new song on love, and your old song on religion. [1] I admire the first sincerely, and in turn call upon you to admire the following on Anacreon Moore's new operatic farce, [2] or farcical ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Jonathan—had long been noted as a droll. A grin was as much a part of his stock apparel as tow breeches or a palm-leaf hat. The negro, too, had from time immemorial been portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity hedged him about with peculiar sacredness. He was chivalrous and baronial in his instincts, surroundings, and characteristics. He was nervous, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... outside. But what can be the object of it in this case? Wayne knows (or if he is too mad to know anything, at least Turnbull knows) that there is not, and never has been, the smallest chance of support for him outside; that the mass of the sane modern inhabitants of London regard his farcical patriotism with as much contempt as they do the original idiotcy that gave it birth—the folly of our miserable King. What Wayne and his horsemen are doing nobody can even conjecture. The general theory round here ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... short time, the prospect of liberating the "Pioneer" was seen to be farcical, and all the officers and men from the "Resolute" returned to their ship, although parties of novices would walk down constantly to see the first vessel beset ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... "The farcical comedy is over, Blanquette," said he gently, "I'm a Monsieur no longer, do you see? We are going to live just as we did before you went away in the summer, and I am not going to be married. I am going to live ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Gilbert and Vaucheray was becoming worse and worse, the days were slipping by, and not an hour passed without his asking himself, in anguish, whether all his efforts—granting that he succeeded—would not end in farcical results, absolutely foreign to the aim ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... comrades there existed a freemasonry that made them all sense a thing beyond the ken of most of their elders. Perhaps this was because the elders, being blind in their superior wisdom, saw neither this thing nor the communion that flourished. They saw only the farcical joke. But His Honor, Judge Priest, to cite a conspicuous exception, seemed not to see the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the season, but one which had beneficial results, was the strike of the Detroit players, entailing the staging of a farcical game in Philadelphia between the Athletics and a team of semi-professionals. This incident grew out of an attack on a New York spectator by Ty Cobb while in uniform and the immediate suspension of the player for ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... election to the chair, but when Mr O'Brien and Mr Davitt (who had returned from the Transvaal) got word of the plot they wired urgent messages to their friends in Parliament that Mr Redmond's selection was the only one that could give the leadership anything better than a farcical character. Result—Mr Redmond was elected by a very considerable majority, and Mr Dillon had further reason for having his knife in his former friend and ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... society had been of farcical ease. Not her prospective millions nor her conquering loveliness, either of which might eventually have gained the entree for her, would have sufficed to set her on the throne. Shrewd social critics ascribed her effortless success to what Lord Guenn called ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... more than passing notice. In the earlier ones, at least, we still find a tendency to introduce extraneous elements. Thus Gl' Intricati, printed in 1581, and acted a few years before at Zara, the work of Count Alvise, or, it would appear, more correctly Luigi, Pasqualigo, contains a farcical and magical part combined with some rather coarse jesting between two rogues, one Spanish and one Bolognese, who speak in their respective dialects. Another play in which a comic element appears ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... as a duty to make every proper effort to bring the perpetrators of the foul assassination of their leaders to justice; sixty names were presented to the local grand jury, and of the persons so designated, nine were indicted. After a farcical semblance of a trial, these were acquitted, and thus was notice, sanctioned by the constituted authority of the law, served upon all anti-"Mormons" of Illinois, that they were safe in any assault they might choose to make ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... as intellectual superiority. Of his own country he used to say to his French associates: "Imagine an atmosphere of opera-bouffe in which all the comic business of stage statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all their farcical stealing, intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead earnest. It is screamingly funny, the blood flows all the time, and the actors believe themselves to be influencing the fate of the universe. Of course, government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... a doomed man," commented Myra, with a mocking laugh. "But perhaps the fact that I do not love you will induce you to spare his life," she added hastily. "Don't you find it rather difficult to be melodramatic and to talk farcical nonsense before breakfast, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... farce, divertissement, extravaganza, burletta^, harlequinade^, pantomime, burlesque, opera bouffe [Fr.], ballet, spectacle, masque, drame comedie drame [Fr.]; melodrama, melodrame^; comidie larmoyante [Fr.], sensation drama; tragicomedy, farcical-comedy; monodrame monologue; duologue trilogy^; charade, proverbs; mystery, miracle play; musical, musical comedy. [movies] western, horse opera; flick [Coll.]; spy film, love story, adventure film, documentary, nature film; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... heart beat—as strong, he thought, as a bell. In a way Emmy had deceived him —she probably had always been fragile, but was careful to conceal it from him at their marriage. It was unjust to him. He wished that she would take her farcical meals in her room, and not sit here—a skeleton at the feast. Positively it made him nervous to ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... traditional subjects of study and traditional methods of teaching and discipline as will retain all the youth under educational influences until they are equipped to be masters of their own economic and social careers. The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education. The same principle has application on the side of the considerations which concern the relations of one nation to another. It is not enough to teach the horrors of war and to avoid ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... believe, is of itself enough to fever the very coldest feelings into madness; and need one marvel then at your talking of having encountered another impossibility, at your story about finding the dead Pietro come to life among the mountains, and not knowing him again, and about those almost farcical tricks of jugglery that were played you, all which you have related to us with the very same assurance? No, my good Antonio, pain and grief have distracted your sounder senses, so that you see and believe in things which have no ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the pen of a popular Cuban author, and is called 'Los Mocitos del Dia' (Fops of the Period). The subject of the play is of local interest, with a moral exposing in farcical colours the foibles of the Cuban 'Pollo,' or dandy, whose taste for pleasure and idleness is only exceeded by his aversion for manual labour and for early matrimony. The characters ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... resents. But the real cross-purposes come from the contrary direction of the two exaggerations, the American making life more wild and impossible than it is, and the Englishman making it more flat and farcical than it is; the one escaping from the house of life by a skylight and the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... faithful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing versification of that singular author, but a very just representation of that mixture of extravagance and jocularity which has impressed most of his writings with the character of a sort of farcical horror."—JEFFREY, Edinburgh Review. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... by saying that he did it by the President's direction? If he could, then no executive officer could ever be impeached who obeys the President; and the whole notion of making such officers impeachable at all would be farcical. If he could not so justify himself, (and all will allow he could not,) the reason can only be that the act of removal is his own act; the power, a power confided to him, for the just exercise of which the law looks ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... With the swiftness of lightning they descend upon the world, often in the very midst of fancied peace and security,—and the farcical, grinning, sneering apes of humanity, for whom even the idea of a God has but furnished food for lewd jesting, are scattered into terror-stricken hordes, who are forced to realise for the first time in their lives, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Calverley. "You informed me—which was your duty as a friend—of this curmudgeon's boast that he would have me horsewhipped if I dared venture into England. You will readily conceive that any gentleman of self-respect cannot permit such farcical utterances to be delivered without appending a gladiatorial epilogue. Well! what are the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... have not left any misgivings on record. They relate that during Xavier's sojourn in Bungo he had numerous public debates—one continuing for five days—with Buddhist priests, but even Fernandez not being available as an interpreter, these debates must have been either farcical or imaginary, though brilliant results are claimed for them by the Church historians. That Xavier himself was not satisfied is proved by his determination to transfer his ministrations to China, for he said, "if the Chinese adopt the Christian religion, the Japanese ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Christ, the divine tragedy, is the tragedy of the Cross. Pilate, the sceptic, the man of culture, by making a mockery of it, sought to convert it into a comedy; he conceived the farcical idea of the king with the reed sceptre and crown of thorns, and cried "Behold the man!" But the people, more human than he, the people that thirsts for tragedy, shouted, "Crucify him! crucify him!" And the human, the intra-human, tragedy is the tragedy ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... references to the convivial habits of the members. The seconder of the motion was greeted with loud laughter. He good-naturedly said that he was well aware of the cause of hilarity, but that he was ready to sacrifice his pleasure to the general good. Sir Allan MacNab, the leader of the Opposition, moved a farcical amendment, under which every member was to sign a pledge of abstinence, and to be disqualified if he broke it. Brown made an earnest speech in favour of the motion, in which he remarked that Canada then contained nine hundred and thirty-one ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... of Stillman's air of delicate banter as he emphasized the hour for beginning his business venture struck Claire ironically the more she pondered his words. She had a feeling that there was something farcical in the prospect, and yet there seemed nothing to do but to go through with the preliminaries. She presented herself, therefore, at the appointed time ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... in 1518. I think he has more wit than Maillard, and occasionally displays a brilliant imagination; with the same singular mixture of grave declamation and farcical absurdities. He is called in the title-page the golden-tongued. It runs thus, Predicatoris qui lingua aurea, sua tempestate nuncupatus est, Sermones quadragesimales, ab ipso olim Turonis ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Bompas to conceal this mesalliance, and the assistance given them in their difficulties by the Hon. Montague Trimble, constitute the motive of the play. But the question that must occur to the critical mind is, "Did the author mean this piece for high comedy, or farcical comedy?" If the former, then Mr. TERRY is wrong in his conception of the part; if the latter, everybody else is wrong in their conception of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... her Potterism (COLLINS) "a tragi-farcical tract" Miss ROSE MACAULAY disarms our criticism that she conducts too heavy a discussion from too light a platform. I don't think the author of What Not is likely to write anything dull, anything I shan't be pleased to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... it was written during Williamson's A. Merritt "kick," when he was writing little else but, and it gave the earliest indication of a more general capability. The lightness of the handling is especially modern, barely avoiding the farcical by the validity of the notion that wireless transmission of matter is the next big transportation frontier to be conquered. It is especially important because it stylistically forecast a later trend ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... with kindled imagination, judged them by the dreams they cherished in their hearts, and was a romanticist and an optimist. Both men were humorists; but where Thackeray was delicately satirical, causing us a momentary smile, Dickens was broadly comic or farcical, winning ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... in a fair way to find himself in the same boat as both the local Governor and the Chief of Gendarmery: with the result that the whole trio were reduced to a frame of mind in which they were only too glad to turn to him (Samosvitov) for advice. The ultimate and farcical upshot was that report came crowding upon report, and that such alleged doings were brought to light as the sun had never before beheld. In fact, the documents in question employed anything and everything as material, even to announcing that such and such an individual had an illegitimate ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... money and no admitted scruples, but enough beauty and wit to match when and with whom she chooses, who dominates the play; and though Loveworth, whom she finally permits to win her, is rather substantial than gay, she is gay enough for them both. The action, though somewhat farcical, has verve throughout, and the dialogue crackles. And, as regards the nature of comedy, Baker now knows where he stands. There is no character who could possibly be taken as an "example." On the contrary, whenever a pathetic or "exemplary" ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... Tommies and Jocks saluted every subaltern with an automatic gesture of convulsive energy. Every subaltern acknowledged these movements and in turn saluted a multitude of majors, colonels, and generals. The thing became farcical, a monstrous absurdity of human relationship, yet pleasing to the vanity of men lifted up above the lowest caste. It seemed to me an intensification of the snob instinct in the soul of man. Only the Australians stood out against it, and went by all officers except their own ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... properly speaking, musical farce, is becoming more and more popular in both Europe and America it is also becoming proportionately more farcical; although in many theaters it is staged as often as the more serious drama, in some having exclusive dominion; and although theater managers find that these plays draw bigger crowds and fill their houses better than any other, in the large ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... low comedy—the most lofty sentiments, the most exalted virtues, and heroism and magnanimity strained almost beyond the limits of probability, are checkered by uncouth pleasantries, and the most pathetic incidents intruded upon and interrupted by the farcical conundrums of MUG, a low cockney, who has become secretary of state to the king of the Mandingoes. Thus, oscillating between Kotesbue and O'Keefe, giving now a layer of exalted sentiment, and then a layer of mere farce, has Mr. C. raised ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... dramatists and satirists. He loves a monologue that passes from mockery to regret, that gathers up by the way anecdote and history and essay and foolery, that is half a narrative of things seen and half an irresponsible imagination. He can describe a runaway horse with the farcical realism of the authors of Some Experiences of an Irish R.M., can parody a judge, can paint a portrait, and can steep a landscape in vision. Two recent critics have described him as "the best English prose writer since Dryden," but that only means that Mr. Belloc's ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... affairs had little interest for the man who was always a law unto himself. Yet by some extraordinary prescience, some inexplicable presentiment, the approaching catastrophe cast its shadow over his mind and he felt vaguely that the life-journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the final tragedy: whoever lives for the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of those Bocchesi or Dalmatian volunteers who were at that time in Montenegro will quite believe that they applauded the result, but to pretend that they drove the Skup[vs]tina with bayonets to do what every reasoning creature would have done is so farcical that one might have thought it would not even form (as it did form) the subject for questions in the British House of Commons.... The only part played by bayonets was when on November 7 (one day previous to that fixed ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... and Friday an indecent assault had been committed on his book by a theatrical adapter named Stirling, who seized upon it without leave while yet only a third of it was written; hacked, cut, and garbled its dialogue to the shape of one or two farcical actors; invented for it a plot and an ending of his own, and produced it at the Adelphi; where the outraged author, hard pressed as he was with an unfinished number, had seen it in the interval between the two letters I have quoted. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... perspicacity, I realized that he took me for an emissary of the great Blenheim. Exasperation overwhelmed me; would these farcical ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical, humorous satire on the art nouveau of to-day. Mr. Chambers, with all his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... of the weaver of ideas, who tissues a book, that other Spider's web, and out of his thought makes something that shall instruct or thrill us. To protect our 'bone,' we have the police, invented for the express purpose. To protect the book, we have none but farcical means. Place a few bricks one atop the other; join them with mortar; and the law will defend your wall. Build up in writing an edifice of your thoughts; and it will be open to any one, without serious impediment, to abstract stones from it, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... farcical. Every tack you make lands you in a different port—with a woman waiting in every one of them." The first notes of the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Club was Bligh, a notorious madman, of whom Mr Raikes relates:—'One evening at the Macao table, when the play was very deep, Brummell, having lost a considerable stake, affected, in his farcical way, a very tragic air, and cried out—"Waiter, bring me a flat candlestick and a pistol." Upon which Bligh, who was sitting opposite to him, calmly produced two loaded pistols from his coat pocket, which he placed on the table, and said, "Mr Brummell, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... be taken up as a branch of education, and learned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the most farcical in our scheme of education. It is only matched in absurdity by the other current idea, that literature is something separate and apart from general knowledge. Here is the whole body of accumulated thought and experience of all the ages, which indeed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... led Mandane to the fire, and with farcical reverence requested her to be seated on her throne—an empty color cask, for she suffered under the strange permanent delusion that she was the wife of the Mukaukas George. They laughingly did her homage, craved some favor or made enquiries as to her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was frankly, as she put it afterward, "hopping mad," and Wilbur was unhappy and Margaret aghast, although apparently quite cool. There was not a guest besides Martha. The dinner was simple. Afterward it seemed too farcical to ask a guest attired like a young princess to go out on the verandah and lounge in a wicker chair, while Wilbur smoked. Then Annie Eustace appeared and Margaret was grateful. "Dear Annie," she said, after she had introduced the ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cheap cabinets, and the ready-made black and gilt overmantel, with its panels of swans, hawthorn-blossom, and landscapes sketchily daubed on dead gold—surely it had all been transferred bodily from the stage of some carelessly mounted farcical comedy! ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... have only taken some soup, and a couple of eggs, and drank nothing but water; my tongue is discolored; and without medicine and tonics, whatever my farcical doctor may say, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... do," thought he, sorrowfully. "We must either retreat or advance. This war is a miserable failure—the impotent effort of a shattered old man whose head is powerless to plan, and his hand to execute. How often since I entered upon this farcical campaign, have I repeated ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Assommoir—-contain striking and amusing scenes, no doubt, but scenes which are often suggestive of the stage, while description, dissertation, explanation too frequently take the place of life. His best work after all is to be found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d'un notaire (1862); Le roi des montagnes (1856); L'homme a l'oreille cassee (1862); Trente et quarante (1858); Le cas de M. Guerin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... rural 'desert' along with his wife Gynecia and his daughters Philoclea and Pamela. Here they live in company with the 'most arrant dotish clowne' Dametas, his wife Miso and daughter Mopsa, rustic characters which supply a coarsely farcical element in the plot, certainly no less out of place and inharmonious in the play than in the romance. There are also the cousins Pyrocles and Musidorus, son and nephew respectively to Euarchus, king ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... whenever any affair of an interesting nature was pending, nothing could make her refrain from joining any company which might be in the house;—nothing;—not even O'Grady himself. At such times, too, she became strangely excited, and invariably executed one piece of farcical absurdity, of which, however, the family contrived to confine the exercise to her own room. It was wearing on her head a tin concern, something like a chimney-cowl, ornamented by a small weathercock, after the fashion of those ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover |
