"Playhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before even the doors were opened, so that they could get first choice of the unreserved seats which sold at twenty-five cents. Then there would ensue the long, tedious wait in the dimly lighted cavern of the playhouse, smelling with a curious fascination of stale cigars and staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Lilian awhile," besought Claire. "I want her to inspect my playhouse, while you and mother put ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... There is some error here. The city had no jurisdiction over Whitefriars, or Blackfriars either; but there was a playhouse in Blackfriars at the time, and it was suppressed in 1584, though not by the city authorities. Possibly Reulidge should have ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... accomplice in this scheme was lord Mohun, to whom he communicated his intention, and who concurred with him in it. They appointed an evening for that purpose, hired a number of soldiers, and a coach, and went to the playhouse in order to find Mrs. Bracegirdle, but she having no part in the play of that night, did not come to the house. They then got intelligence that she was gone with her mother to sup at one Mrs. Page's in Drury-Lane; thither they went, and fixed their post, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... the latter was perfectly practicable; but that, as a junior counsel, five minutes of very common-place recitation was all my province, and with the main business of the day I had about as much to do as the call-boy of a playhouse has with the success of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... hath more discoursing in his head Than Jove when Pallas issu'd from his brain; And still he strives to be delivered Of all his thoughts at once; but all in vain; For, as we see at all the playhouse-doors, When ended is the play, the dance, and song, A thousand townsmen, gentlemen, and whores, Porters, and serving-men, together throng,— So thoughts of drinking, thriving, wenching, war, And borrowing money, ranging in his mind, 10 To issue all at once so forward are, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... playhouse of New York and of the New World! Imagine it filled with people from foot-lights to the last row in the topmost gallery—orchestra, dress circle, and balconies—a huge uprising, semicircular bowl, lined with human beings. Imagine it thus, and then strip the stage; take away the Indians ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... women to stand or kneel in before God. And there were no high or low standing or kneeling places; all were on a level before Him. It is our modern Protestantism which has brought in lazy lolling in cushioned pews; and the gallery, which makes a church as like a playhouse ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Instead of being glad at the unexpected value ascribed to her gift, she seemed decidedly put out about it. She strolled round by Patty's booth. That enterprising young matron had caused to be built for her use a little child's playhouse. It was just large enough for half a dozen children, and would perhaps hold nearly as many grown people. But it had a good-sized verandah and on this were tables piled with the loveliest fairy-like gossamer garments and comforts ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... are the successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense. Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down— Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you hate, Might somewhere ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... did not care to venture among the justling of the Crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his Entertainment, and we guarded him to his Lodgings in the same manner that we brought him to the Playhouse; being highly pleased, for my own part, not only with the Performance of the excellent Piece which had been Presented, but with the Satisfaction which it had given to the good old ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a rich western friend the chums established a photo playhouse in the great metropolis, where new adventures ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... buy their clothes in Paris and are only satisfied with the latest fashion. They drink French liquor in French style and demand the best Parisian comedy and opera in their theaters. The Colon theater is finer than anything in New York, and rivals any playhouse in Europe. It seats thirty-seven hundred and fifty people and I am told that a man cannot get in unless he is ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... that the theatre in which the plays of Shakespeare were represented could or should be called a "low play house." The fact that "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," "Julius Caesar," and the other great dramas were first played in that playhouse made it the greatest building in the world. The gods themselves should have occupied seats in that theatre, where for the first time the greatest productions of the human mind were put upon ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... attendant courtiers; so, too, were the Prince Primate and the minor rulers of Germany. The drawing-rooms, streets, and theaters of Erfurt were filled with the splendors of their gorgeous apparel and that of their bedizened attendants. On October fourth the "Oedipe" of Voltaire was given at the playhouse before the assembled courts. At the words, "A great man's friendship is a boon from the gods," Alexander rose, and, grasping Napoleon's hand, stood for a moment in an attitude that typified a renewed alliance. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... wanted to leave the theatre between the acts. I explained that as our performances did not last from early afternoon until nearly midnight it was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre until the play was over. At a Japanese playhouse, however, a portion of the audience may be disposed to go home at some stage of the proceedings and return later. The careful manager of a small theatre identifies these patrons by impressing a small stamp on the palms of ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Story. Romulus was the first Person who ever made this use of the Theatre, when he ordered his Soldiers to fall foul on the Sabine Ladies, whom he invited to a Play acted by his Command. Not that I would have you think, that Theatre was like the Playhouse in Convent-Garden, enriched with Scenes, Machines, and other Decorations. To say the truth, it was no better than a Barn, or Booth. Here he assembled the Sabine Girls, and ordered his Romans to chuse every Man his ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... if by my suit you'll not be won, You know what your unkindness oft has done,— I'll e'en forsake the playhouse, and turn Nun." ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... for even months, the little Tenas Klootchman laughed and smiled, waked and slept, dreamed and dimpled in her pretty playhouse. Then one day, in the hot, dry summer, there was no smile. The dimples did not play. The little flower paled, the small face grew smaller, the tiny hands tinier; and one morning, when the birds awoke in the forests of the Squamish, the eyes of the ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... favorite retreat of Mary-'Gusta's. She had discovered it herself—which made it doubly alluring, of course—and she seldom invited her juvenile friends to share its curtained privacy with her. It was her playhouse, her tent, and her enchanted castle, much too sacred to be made common property. Here she came on rainy Saturdays and on many days not rainy when other children, those possessing brothers or sisters, played out of doors. She liked to play by herself, to invent plays all her own, and ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... course," she sez; "but I know 'at she's somewhere hereabouts, 'cause the day before my birthday—why, it was only day before yesterday, wasn't it? It seems years ago. Well, day before yesterday I found a big pan o' cakes in my playhouse, an' no one can't ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... old song books. It was evidently founded on an old black-letter dialogue preserved in the Roxburgh collection, called A Mad Kinde of Wooing; or, a Dialogue between Will the Simple and Nan the Subtill, with their loving argument. To the tune of the New Dance at the Red Bull Playhouse. Printed by the assignees of ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... suitable for a girl's playhouse, on Public Square—this playhouse may be given as first prize to the girl of school age writing the best essay on "Why You Should ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... arrived at the playhouse, Miss Price, after a moment's reflection, said, that since fortune favoured them, a fair opportunity was now offered to signalize their courage, which was to go and sell oranges in the very playhouse, in the sight of the duchess and the whole court. The proposal being worthy of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the playhouse like to row, Some with the Watch to battle, Exchanging many a midnight blow To Music of the Rattle. Some folks like rowing on the Thames, Some rowing in an Alley, But all the Row my fancy ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Eskimo is probably the unhealthiest of buildings made by any savage to live in, but it makes an excellent playhouse in winter, and represents at the same time a most ingenious employment of the arch system in building. The Eskimos build their snow houses without the aid of any scaffolding or interior false work, and while there is a keystone at the top of the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... my lad, do not entirely agree with me," added he, a twinkle gleaming beneath his shaggy brows. "You are thinking of that playhouse of yours and Laurie's that was carried off by ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... scarlet riding-cloak, handsomely laced, would become you wonderfully well?—and a grey hat with a blue feather—and a pretty nag to ride on—and all the soldiers to present arms as you pass, and say, "There goes the Captain's lady"? What do you think of a side-box at Lincoln's Inn playhouse, or of standing up to a minuet with my ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sometimes see a whole playhouse in tears. But the audience at a theatre, though a public assembly, are not a public body. They are not Incorporated into a framework of exclusive, narrow-minded interests of their own. Each individual looks out of his own insignificance at a scene, ideal perhaps, and foreign to himself, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... excited to fiction by less visible gratifications: the present age abounds with a race of liars who are content with the consciousness of falsehood, and whose pride is to deceive others without any gain or glory to themselves. Of this tribe it is the supreme pleasure to remark a lady in the playhouse or the park, and to publish, under the character of a man suddenly enamoured, an advertisement in the news of the next day, containing a minute description of her person and her dress. From this artifice, however, no other effect can ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... considered those combinations which are formed in the playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty. He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public. He that hisses in malice or in sport is an oppressor and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... made a beautiful playhouse, with all the leaves brushed away and the rooms marked out with little sticks, they had to leave it next day. This was very discouraging, of course. Even the fathers and mothers grew discouraged sometimes, when they rode through the beautiful country. It was so sweet and so ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... you can look over the ground more carefully. You'll sleep in the old playhouse—the log cabin—down by the creek. They'll show you. It's connected with this house by 'phone. I'll talk to you again to-morrow; you'd better go down and get ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... reading public only, and no performance, representation, production, recitation, or public reading, or radio broadcasting may be given except by special arrangement with Walter H. Baker Company, 41 Winter Street, Boston, Mass., or Playhouse Plays, 14 East ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... four pints. And to the town, to the King's Head; and hear that my Lord Buckhurst and Nelly are lodged at the next house, and Sir Charles Sedley with them; and keep a merry house." Lord Buckhurst had just persuaded Nell Gwynne to leave the King's playhouse for a hundred pounds a year and his company: she was to act no more, which saddened Pepys. However, she was back at the playhouse next month, jeered at by the graceful Buckhurst and as poor as ever. She was less exacting than Barbara Villiers: she never ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... explicit precursor of the coming burlesque at one of the minor theatres last summer. The great actress whom they had come to see on another scene was ill, and in their disappointment they embraced the hope of entertainment offered them at the smaller playhouse. The drama itself was neither here nor there as to intent, but the public appetite or the manager's conception of it—for I am by no means sure that this whole business was not a misunderstanding—had exacted that the actresses should appear ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons. At the pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the Death's-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an Institution. I walked up Bow-street, disposed to be angry with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and robes of kings are made. I noticed that some shops which ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... were romping over from a near-by playhouse, a little tepee made of cast off "shutters" the janitor had put outside after wrenching them from hinges, and the girls had promptly availed themselves of the material for ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... John Chamberlaine to Sir Ralph Winwood, dated July 8, 1613, in which this accident is likewise mentioned, we learn that the theatre had only two doors.[4] "The burning of the Globe or playhouse on the Bankside on St. Peter's day cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of chambers, (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used in the play,) the tampin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch that covered the house, burn'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... to the Globe playhouse, where my Lord bade me dismount and deliver a secret message to the chief player—which message was, "had he diligently perused and examined that he wot of, and what said he thereof?" Which I did. Thereupon ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... homage paid in England not long ago to the drama, when the highest nobility and the first statesmen in the land were present at a banquet in honor of Charles Kean, is evidence enough that no puerile or uncultivated taste is this which relishes the theatre. Goethe presiding over the playhouse at Weimar, Euripides and Sophocles writing tragedies, the greatest genius of the English language acting in his own productions at the Globe Theatre, people like Siddons and Kean and Cushman and Macready illustrating this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Burke, Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, and Garrick. At this time she wrote a number of poems and aspired to become a dramatist. Her Percy (1777), with a prologue and epilogue by Garrick, had a long run at Covent Garden. Somewhat later she came to believe that the playhouse was a grave public evil, and refused to attend the revival of her own play with Mrs. Siddons in the leading part. After 1789 she and her sisters devoted themselves to starting schools for poor children, teaching them religion and housework, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sober-minded and intelligent; for I take it that you have no lingering prejudice against the theatre, or else I should not be here. Nor are you disposed, like certain good people, to object to the theatre simply as a name. These sticklers for principle would never enter a playhouse for worlds; and I have heard that in a famous city of Massachusetts, not a hundred miles from here, there are persons to whom the theatre is unknown, but who have no objection to see a play in a building which ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... less actable. If they're touched—the large loose men—it's only to be mutilated and trivialised. Besides, they had a simpler civilisation to represent—societies in which the life of man was in action, in passion, in immediate and violent expression. Those things could be put upon the playhouse boards with comparatively little sacrifice of their completeness and their truth. To-day we're so infinitely more reflective and complicated and diffuse that it makes all the difference. What can you do with ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... whither they were bidden by Serenissimus, the magnificent Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg, who had commanded a brilliant ball as commencement of a series of festivities. There was to be a grand hunt in the Red Wood, and finally court theatricals in his Highness's own playhouse. The beautiful castle gardens were illuminated with a myriad coloured lamps in the trees; the rose-garden had become an enchanted bower, with little lanterns twinkling in each rose-bush, and the fountain in the centre ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... a big Plush Bear, tossing toward the Wax Doll a quilt he took from a bed in a playhouse that stood next to him on the work table. "This will keep you warm. I guess some of the men who work for Santa Claus must have gone off and forgotten ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... of fortune manfully, and did not abstain from exercising his own Shandean humor thereon. It must be confessed that "John Woodvil" is not a tragedy likely to bring much success to a playhouse. It is such a drama as a young poet, full of love for the Elizabethan writers, and without any knowledge of the requisitions of the stage, would be likely to produce. There is no plot; little probability in the story; which itself is not very scientifically developed. There ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage. This objection, however, or some other rather political than moral, obtained such prevalence that when Gay produced a second part ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... this season are The Companion to the Playhouse. or To be sold to the best Bidder, My seat in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... her bread and drank her water with a downcast air. She was not thinking about the scolding and her punishment. She was troubled because Miss Farlow had forbidden her to go off the 'Home' grounds again. Must she give up her dear secret playhouse? She and Honey-Sweet had had such a good time! And they were planning to spend all their Saturday afternoons there. Finally she asked Emma what would be done if she disobeyed Miss Farlow and ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... the theatre is the most original and lively of all. The serio-comic advice to the gallant how he "should behave himself in a playhouse"[305] is a perfect picture of what was daily taking place, be the play Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Dekker's "Patient Grissil."[306] Of course the gallant must sit on the stage and "on the very rushes," which in the theatre, and also in palaces and ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... stand together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the same father and mother, you fight each other across the parental grave ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the present day may vie with palaces in extent, splendour, and decoration; and nothing can more strongly exhibit the contrast between the present age and that of Queen Elizabeth, than the difference in the expense of a London theatre. The Rose playhouse, which was erected about the year 1592, cost only 103l. 2s. 7d.,—a sum which would scarcely pay half the expenses of a modern patent theatre for a single night. Only let the reader think of the rush roof of the Globe, and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... who had so recently left the house. In fancy she saw the brilliantly lighted streets, the throng of pleasure seekers and pretty women in gay attire. She heard the sound of wheels, the persistent "honk-honk" of motor cars, and, in the playhouse, the crash of cymbals and drums. Somewhere in the happy crowd were Allison and Isabel, while she sat in silence ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... back; and, when they met Uncle and Aunt, also entirely out of breath with the chase, Aunt declared that this was only another case of Chicago's base deceptions. It could joke with dead people and jest with fires and make a playhouse exhibition costing many millions of dollars, and fool old people and the young ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... dull a time of winter, presented in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted (that which is the only grace and setting-out of a tragedy) a full and understanding auditory; and that since that time I have noted, most of the people that come to that playhouse resemble those ignorant asses (who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books), I present it to the general ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... up en fix de way for us to have everything we want. Oh, honey, we chillun never been harness up in no little bit of place to play like dese chillun bout here dese days. We had all de big fields en de pretty woods to wander round en bout en make us playhouse in. Seems like de Lord had made de little streams just right for we chillun to play in en all kind of de prettiest flowers to come up right down side de paths us little feet had made dere, but dat wasn' nothin. Dere was flowers scatter bout everywhe' you look in de ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was apparently of the theatre, where she had already made her debut on the stage of the playhouse in Smock Alley (Orange Street), Dublin during the season of 1715, as Chloe in "Timon of Athens; or, the Man-Hater."[7] One scans the dramatis personae of "Timon" in vain for the character of Chloe, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... made a playhouse in one corner of the cabin and stood up sticks for Indian children to whom she told over what had been taught her. They blundered just as she had done, but she had a curious patience with them that would have touched ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... "she loves a church much better than a playhouse, and she never laughs nor goes to sleep in church as I do. And she is breaking me of swearing—by degrees. She says that no fashion can justify what is profane, and that it must be vulgar as well as wicked. And she is ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... chosen to be made anew, with happiness, effectiveness, health! She realized that a satisfactory understanding of it would come slowly; but walking here in the winter sunshine along the village street, she had that sensation of strangeness which the child has on coming from the lighted playhouse into the street.... The set vision that tormented her within—that, too, might it ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on Marilla's part. "Oh Marilla, I'm the happiest girl on Prince Edward Island this very moment. I assure you I'll say my prayers with a right good-will tonight. Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr. William Bell's birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of china that are out in the woodshed? Diana's birthday is in February and mine is in March. Don't you think that is a very strange coincidence? Diana is going to lend me a ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... flattered; he was not unmindful of the more honest compliments, yet he had the shrewdness to eschew the mere meaningless blague that no one could better employ with the creatures of Versailles, who liked their olives well oiled, or the Jeannetons and Mimis of the Italian comedy and the playhouse. Under his genial and shining influence Olivia soon forgot the ignominy of these recent days, and it was something gained in that direction that already she looked upon ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... alive here. You ought to come to New York to live. Both of you will love it when you are there for a few days. I don't mean to come to a hotel. I mean to take a little apartment, a furnished apartment at first, to see how you like it—two rooms and kitchenette, like a playhouse." ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... friend! Instruct another man the way To win thy mistress! Thou'lt not break my heart? Take my advice, thou shalt not be in love A month! Frequent the playhouse!—walk the Park! I'll think of fifty ladies that I know, Yet can't remember now—enchanting ones! And then there's Lancashire!—and I have friends In Berkshire and in Wiltshire, that have swarms Of daughters! ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... the means of securing access, would have walked in every night to the city to attend the playhouse; and it quite astonished him, he used to say, that I, who really knew something of the drama, and had four shillings a day, did not nightly at least devote one of the four to purchase perfect happiness ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Castle."—Pepys, in his Diary, 14th September, 1667, says, "To the King's playhouse, to see The Northerne Castle, which I think I never did see before." Is anything known of this play and its authorship? or was it The Northern Lass, by Richard Brome, first published in 1632? Perhaps Pepys has quoted the second ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... agricultural exhibit in the pavilion, the commission maintained a small theater fitted up with opera chairs, stage, electric fans, and all accessories of the modern playhouse. In the theater a free stereopticon and moving-picture exhibition was given, illustrating the resources and industries of the State. Another attractive feature of the agricultural exhibit was the mounted steer "Challenger," which won the first prize of the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Mrs. Ireland would be near sixty years old, I would take it, dressed in a brown sac, such as had been fashionable ten years back, and her daughter, I should think about thirty years old. They told me that they had been to supper, and to the play in the Duke's Playhouse, where Mr. Shirley's tragi-comedy The Young Admiral had been done; and that Mr. Ireland was to come for them here, as presently he did, for it was scarce safe for ladies to be abroad at such an hour in the streets without an escort, so wild were the ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the lights went up amid murmurs of pleasure and expectancy, I glanced across the rows of heads with awakened interest. "Who Killed Cock Robin?" had been praised with such unanimity that if Alice were in any playhouse that night I was as likely to see her in the "As ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... embarrassment of the man's talk incessant. He was plainly a practised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, the elegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, told us that. We, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we could see the actors were upon some material business and performing well, but the plot of the drama remained undiscoverable. Names of places, the name of Captain Hart, occasional disconnected words, tantalised without ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cast out Satan? Whom think ye to deceive by whitening the sepulchre? Is it yourselves? The devil has blinded you already. Is it God? Who shall hide anything from Him? I tell you that he who makes the pursuit of virtue a luxury, and takes refuge from sin, not before the altar, but in the playhouse, is casting out devils by Beelzebub, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... for, when we have a great deal of company, I have often observed that they never talked about anything but eating or dressing, or men and women that are paid to make faces at the playhouse, or a great room called Ranelagh, where everybody goes to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... take ship for France, and in Southampton. Linger your patience on, and we'll digest The abuse of distance, force a play. The sum is paid; the traitors are agreed; The King is set from London; and the scene Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton. There is the playhouse now, there must you sit; And thence to France shall we convey you safe, And bring you back, charming the narrow seas To give you gentle pass; for, if we may, We'll not offend one stomach with our play. ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... interior of the machine, but there seemed nothing to distinguish it from the thousands of other piratical craft which pillage the public with the aid of the taximeter clock on the port beam! Soon they were at the big Broadway playhouse, where Shirley floundered out first, after the ungallant manner of many sere-and-yellow beaux. He swayed unsteadily, teetering on his cane, as Helene leaped lightly to the sidewalk beside him. The driver stood by the door of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... institution from hell and an invention of devils. D'Alembert paid a compliment to his patriarch and master at Ferney, as well as shot a bolt at his ecclesiastical foes in Paris, by urging the people of Geneva to shake off irrational prejudices and straightway to set up a playhouse. Rousseau had long been brooding over certain private grievances of his own against Diderot; the dreary story has been told by me before, and happily need not be repeated.[146] He took the occasion of D'Alembert's mischievous suggestion to his native Geneva, not merely to denounce the drama ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... thought, and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it would be well for us all to profit by experience—"burned bairns should dread the fire," as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of the playhouse, for instance—which I shall afterwards have occasion to commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful life—I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after night, to pay my shilling for a veesy of vagrants in buckram, and limmers ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... it seemed Nicknack would do, for he was hungrily eating the leaves of the branches from which Jan and Ted had made their playhouse. ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... the meaning of this play or that, its moral purpose or its symbolic significance. We may be confident that their talk would turn promptly to technic; and, perhaps, Shakspere would congratulate Moliere on his advantage in coming later, when the half-open, semi-medieval playhouse, with which the English dramatist had perforce to be contented, had been superseded by a more modern theater, roofed and lighted and set with scenery. And, in his turn, Moliere might be curious to inquire how the English playwright was able to produce ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... would not go. Her father would be expecting her when he came home, she said. So Pierre Radisson and I escorted Lady Kirke and her daughter to the play, riding in one of those ponderous coaches, with four belaced footmen clinging behind and postillions before. At the entrance to the playhouse was a great concourse of crowding people, masked ladies, courtiers with pages carrying torches for the return after dark, merchants with linkmen, work folk with lanterns, noblemen elbowing tradesmen from the wall, tradesmen ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... were enjoyed by the Rose and the Hummums. The former was conveniently situated for first-nighters at the King's Playhouse, as Pepys found on a May midday in 1668. Anxious to see the first performance of Sir Charles Sedley's new play, which had been long awaited with great expectation, he got to the theatre at noon, only ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... taken to corrupt the Religion and Morals of the People, that they should be indisposed to attend to any thing serious, or that they grow sick of Religion, which has no Comforts for them; that they fly from the Church and crowd to the Playhouse: That they are tired of themselves, and their own Thoughts, and want to lose themselves in Company from Morning to Night? It is this unhappy, unsettled State of Mind that has introduced a Kind of general Idleness among the People, ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... all had their company of actors—not all at the same time. The principal Houses were those at Southwark, and especially at Bank Side, where there were three, including the famous Globe: the Blackfriars Playhouse: the Fortune in Golden Lane, and the Curtain at Shoreditch. If you will look at the map you will observe that not one of these theatres is within the City—that at Blackfriars was in the former precinct of the Dominicans ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... Hannele's visions have a richness and sweetness, the verses of the angels a winsomeness and majesty which transcend any possible dream of the poor peasant child, The external encouragement which the attempt met was great, for with it Hauptmann conquered the Royal Playhouse ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... as if he'd waited for us, the sun came out from behind the mountain; the mists lifted and rolled away as if they had been gray curtains. Everything showed clear out like a playhouse, the same Jim and I used to see in Melbourne. From where we stood you could see everything, the green valley flats with the big old trees in clumps, some of 'em just the same as they'd been planted. The two little river-like silver ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... with these two good-looking eyes of mine. This fog opens and shuts like a playhouse-curtain, and I got a peep at the chap, about ten minutes since. It was a short look, but it was a sure one; I would swear to the fellow in any admiralty ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a thousand playwrights and play-goers by asserting that in this impalpable land of souls we are guilty of encouraging the playhouse! But so it is; we cannot live on "honors;" the fame and glory which has been awarded to us by our fellow-men on earth is like chaff ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... provided uninterrupted opportunity for her talents. She turned the playhouse into a theatre, and organized a supporting company. Sometimes Miss Watts assisted with the scenario, sometimes Isabelle ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... and presented his own production of a farce, "She's In Again," at Gaiety Theatre, New York City; also put on his own $150,000 production of "Town Topics," with Will Rogers, at the Century Theatre, New York, for which playhouse he created a Continental Music ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... in the play, preparatory to giving it, Boker, even, revising it in part. The American premiere was reserved for James E. Murdoch, at the Philadelphia Walnut Street Theater, January 20, 1851, and it was revived at the same playhouse in April, 1855, by E.L. Davenport. As Stoddard says of it, one "should know something—the more the better—about the plays that Dr. Bird and Judge Conrad wrote for Forrest and his successors, about Poe's 'Politian', ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... unwholesomely still. A dog yelped, and an Indian silenced it with a kick. Each paddle-stroke threw the canoes into sharper relief, and we could distinguish lank arms, and streaming hair. The prisoner's voice echoed as clear as if he were in some great playhouse, and were singing to gain the plaudits of a ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... his enemies would call fanaticism and his friends piety, though it must be confessed that this piety was prone to take a fierce and fiery shape. As I look back, one or two instances of that stand out so hard and clear in my recollection that they might be scenes which I had seen of late in the playhouse, instead of memories of my childhood more than threescore years ago, when the second Charles was on ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... your youth and inexperience will be ready to lead you into, I now proceed to others less momentary indeed, but very necessary to be strictly observed. Go not near the Soaping-Club, never mention Drury-lane Playhouse; be attentive to those Pinchbeck buckles which fortune has so graciously given you, of which I am afraid you're hardly fond enough; never wash your face, but above all forswear Poetry: from experience I can assure you, and this letter may serve as a proof, that a ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Street in 1672. Mary Long was the widow of William Long, and her initials, together with those of her husband, appear on a token issued from the Rose tavern in Bridge Street, Covent Garden. Mary Long's token from the "Rose coffee house by the playhouse" in Covent Garden is shown among the group of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the Metropolitan Opera Company opened a two weeks' engagement the previous Monday night, was one of the oldest theaters in San Francisco. It was located on Mission street between Third and Fourth streets and for a number of years was the leading playhouse of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... can taste and relish, though not the things now mentioned, yet things that agree with their fleshly minds, and with their polluted, and defiled, and vile affections. They can relish and taste that which delighteth them; yea, they can find soul-delight in an alehouse, a whorehouse, a playhouse. Ay, they find pleasure in the vilest things, in the things most offensive to God, and that are most destructive to themselves. This is evident to sense, and is proved by the daily practice of sinners. Nor is the Word barren as to this: They 'feed on ashes' (Isa 44:20). They 'spend their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a brilliant idea!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed—"to lay out, say, a hundred pounds or so on copies of Shakespeare, and give them to working men. Some of your clever friends who get up meetings might help us, Katharine. And that might lead to a playhouse, where we could all take parts. You'd be Rosalind—but you've a dash of the old nurse in you. Your father's Hamlet, come to years of discretion; and I'm—well, I'm a bit of them all; I'm quite a large bit of the fool, but the fools in ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... us the name or purpose of each building as it appeared, and the novel exhibition closed with the presentation of a large and splendid playhouse. ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... children whom you choose to amuse with this sight. For that purpose, he has only to change the arrangement of the sheet, by requiring it to be suspended from the ceiling, between him and the spectators, much in the same manner as the curtain of a playhouse, which separates the stage from the public. The transparency of the cloth shews through it the coloured rays, and, provided it be not of too thick and too close a texture, the image presents itself as clear on the one side as ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... plaster-of-Paris categories and pigeon holes and classifications, labelled the teeming creatures of the mind, becomes anon a strutting actor upon a multitudinous stage, and an audience in a crowded playhouse. Scenes are enacted the febrile fancy of a Poe or a de Maupassant never could have conjured. The complex, the neurosis, the compulsion, the obsession, the slip of speech, the trick of manner, the devotion of a life-time, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... that had been left behind and sought the shelter of a hollow oak which had been the playhouse of the Indian girls and boys. An old owl hooted and flew from a hole above, but Nonowit had no fear of him, though he was glad the hole by which he had crawled into the oak was far above the ground. This was some protection from the wolves, ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... is too plain to understand ends of playhouse verse, my lord," said the Colonel suddenly. "Has your Grace no other service to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... question, and in justice to him it had to be considered: since, had he known and kept the secret in my uncle's lifetime, beyond a doubt, and unpleasant as the thought might be, I was enormously his debtor. That stern warrior's attitude towards the playhouse had ever been uncompromising. Stalls, pit, and circles—the very names suggested Dantesque images and provided illustrations for many a discourse. Themselves verbose, these discourses indicated A Short ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rant at them until they considered him insane. We were on very intimate terms, and I was never more pleased than when he made his appearance, as it was invariably the signal for mirth. The first time I certainly considered him to be a lunatic, for playhouse phraseology was quite new to me. "Boat, sir," cried I to him as he came ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... one day when he was in Baltimore, and when he showed it to her, he shone with pleasure. He's a good old Peter, and he is so glad that Beulah is to marry Eric. Eric will rent a little house not far up the road. It is a dear of a cottage, and Peggy and I call it the Playhouse. We sit on the porch when we come home from school, and peep in at the windows and plan what we would put into it if we had the furnishing of it. I should like a house like that, Uncle Rod, for you ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... over his shoulder. They looked into a kind of open glade not much larger than a good-sized room and walled on all sides by tall trees and thick underbrush. It had a flooring of soft green turf, and about in the middle lay a great rock as large as a playhouse. This rock was all covered over with moss and lichens, and the strange thing about it was that a neat door had been cut in its side. Before this door, talking and waving his hands to the crowd that thronged ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... way, too," said Midget; "let's just keep this for a playhouse. But maybe it isn't right; maybe we ought to do ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... bliss within. It was a serious paradise. As you entered at the gate, gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher-boy who galloped his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes and common, whistled wild melodies (caught up in abominable playhouse galleries), and joked with a hundred cook-maids, on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servants' entrance. The rooks in the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the peacocks walked demurely ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... down the incline as rapidly as possible in order to cut the nina off from the water, knowing that it would not make its exit from the cave by the upper opening. When he reached the bottom, a wonderful scene unfolded. He could easily imagine that he had unconsciously stumbled into the playhouse of Neptune's rollicking subjects. The water formed a great pool surrounded by an amphitheatre of towering crags of most fantastic shapes, which reached far up toward the sky, there being no roof to its vast extent. The waves beat in from the sea; but as no opening was visible, a subterranean passage ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... it fine in the coffee-mill and salted and served it close beside the candle. "It's good white corn," she said, laughing. "Many a time when I was a child I used to eat this in my playhouse and thought it delicious. Didn't you? What! ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... written and spoken by Macklin, gives an excellent picture of the playhouse humours, and of the wild pit, of those exuberant days; and contains moreover the following sound ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... may praise this tragedy, complain that it wants the very first requisite of a dramatic work—power to affect the passions. This criticism shows, to the full extent, how men were impassioned, at that time, by their political sentiments. They brought their passions with them to the playhouse, fired on the subject of the play; and all the poet had to do was to ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;—on which point there were ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... before the R.B. poem comes out. And what is 'Luria'? A poem and not a drama? I mean, a poem not in the dramatic form? Well! I have wondered at you sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works into the great mill of the 'rank, popular' playhouse, to be ground to pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one, would as soon have 'my soul among lions.' 'There is a fascination in it,' says Miss Mitford, and I am sure there must be, to account for it. Publics in the mass are bad enough; but ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... finished in West Street that spring, the old one having proven too small for our gay capital. 'Twas then the best in the New World, the censor having pronounced it far above any provincial playhouse he had seen abroad. The scenes were very fine, the boxes carved and gilded in excellent good taste, and both pit and gallery commodious. And we, too, had our "Fops' Alley," where our macaronies ogled the fair and passed from box ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... left to complete survey of river. Silk cotton-tree. Fertility of Whirlwind Plains. Attempt of one of the crew to jump overboard. Reach the Ship. Suffer from sore eyes. Lieutenant Emery finds water. Geological specimens. Bird's Playhouse. Tides. Strange weather. Range of Barometer. Accounted for by proximity of Port Essington. Hurricane. Effects of the latter. Dreary country behind Water Valley. Fruitless attempt to weigh ship's anchors. Obliged to slip from ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes |
