"Comedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to pick the wheat from the chaff, is no trifling task. So much for the amusement which our "Companion" may yield to the Londoner: his utility as a cicerone or guide will be more obvious to our country friends, who flock in thousands to see and hear comedy and tragedy at this play-going season. A young girl comes to town to see "the lions," and, with her "cousin," goes to the opera, where one guinea is paid for their admission, or even more if they be installed. Two ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... large piece of waste ground near the Railway Station. There are the usual set-out of booths, "Aunt Sallies," shooting-galleries, "Try your weight and strength, gentlemen" machines, a theatre, with a tragedy and comedy both performed in about an hour, and hot-sausage and gingerbread stalls in abundance. But the deafening martial music poured forth from a barrel-organ by means of a steam-engine, belonging to the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... steamers as they sail from shore to shore are like giant theaters. Every trip is an impromptu drama where comedy, farce, and often startling tragedy offer large speaking parts. The revelation of human nature in the original package is funny and pathetic. Amusement is always on tap and life stories are just hanging out of the port-hole waiting to attack your sympathy or ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... slowly towards the open door (centre) with his back to his audience and his head turned towards it over his left shoulder, by some extraordinary dislocation of his hip-joints, he achieved the immemorial salutation of the Folies Bergeres—the last faint survival of the Old Athenian Comedy. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... moment Skinski bounded on the stage, bowed right and left, and in five words he made it appear that I was only a comedy curtain raiser. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... bravos a momentary note of comedy intruded upon the intended tragedy, as is often the way when humanity foregathers on sinister business. Cocardasse plucked Passepoil by the sleeve and drew him a little away from their fellow-ruffians. "We cannot fight against the Little Parisian," he whispered ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Englishes was nearly filled with guests when Paul Clitheroe arrived upon the scene. These guests were not sitting against the wall talking at each other; the room looked as if it were set for a scene in a modern society comedy. In the bay window, a bower of verdure, an extremely slender and diminutive lady was discoursing eloquently with the superabundant gesticulation of the successful society amateur; she was dilating upon the latest production of a minor poet whose bubble reputation was at that moment resplendent ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in some sort like a 'prentice boy who, going to the play in the expectation of being delighted with a cut-and-thrust tragedy, is almost moved to tears of disappointment at the exhibition of a genteel comedy. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... us, I believe, were ever able to persuade Mr. Gladstone to do justice to Disraeli's novels,—the spirit of whim in them, the ironic solemnity, the historical paradoxes, the fantastic glitter of dubious gems, the grace of high comedy, all in union with a social vision that often pierced deep below the surface. In the comparative stiffness of Mr. Gladstone's reply on this occasion, I seem to hear the same ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Sensibility On devouring one's own God Anarchism New paths Longing for change Baroja, you will never amount to anything (A Refrain) The patriotism of desire My home lands Cruelty and stupidity The anterior image The tragi-comedy of sex The veils of the sexual life A little talk The ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... able theologian, philosophical in thought, but deeply spiritual in insight. His work on The Science of Thought shows the depth and vigor of his thinking; but his volumes on The Gospel of Paul, Religions before Christianity, Poetry, Comedy, and Duty, suggest the breadth of his inquiries and the richness of his philosophical investigations. In his position as the dean of the Harvard Divinity School he accomplished his best work, and ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... now reached the last infernal circle of the divine comedy of marriage; we are at the depths of the inferno. There is something, I do not know what, terrible in the situation in which a married woman finds herself when an illegitimate love has ruined her for the duties of a wife and mother. As has been so well and strongly expressed ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... more careful this time. During the revising process "The Woman-Haters" has more than doubled in length and, let us hope, in accuracy. Even now it is, of course, not a novel, but merely a summer farce-comedy, a "yarn." And this, by the way, is all ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and we will continue our conversation later—the denouement of this comedy has already taken place, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... impudence in me to say much of a comedy, which has had but indifferent success in the action. I made the town my judges, and the greater part condemned it: after which, I do not think it my concernment to defend it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... manner of Lilly. 'Henry VI.,' certainly collaborative, is a chronicle history of the earlier kind. Greene and Peele were the chief makers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almost masterly 'Edward II.' 'Titus Andronicus' ... is a tragedy of blood much in the manner of Kyd. 'The Comedy of Errors' adapts for popular presentation a familiar kind ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... The Tragi-Comedy of Court Intrigue, which had ever found its principal theatre in Spain since the accession of the House of Austria to the throne, was represented with singular complication of incident and brilliancy of performance during the ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... point. I am going to fulfill your wishes in perhaps a little different way from what you desire. To lie, to act a degrading comedy, to bribe women of the streets for evidence—the ugliness of it all disgusts me. I am a bad man, but this despicable thing I am utterly unable to do. My solution is after all the simplest. You must marry to be happy. I am the obstacle, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... This little comedy, enacted in fact and here faithfully reported, is not without its pathos. These people are "studying art." They really want to understand, and if possible, to enjoy. They have visited galleries and seen many pictures, and they will visit ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... types still to be represented; and when Irish melodrama, with its secret plots, murders, wicked land-agents, jovial muscular-christian priests, comic male peasants, and pretty and virtuous female ditto, shall have taken a rest for a while, Irish Comedy may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... that she had regained her normal spirits. Her capabilities as an actress, which had won for her leading parts in many amateur plays, had never been taxed so hardly. But then she had invariably been cast for comedy. Now she felt she was playing tragedy. For night and day she never forgot. Always there was one thought ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... alter his voice almost as he pleased. It was a custom of his to act a scene as between other people, and he performed it remarkably well. Whenever he said that anything he was going to narrate was 'as good as a comedy,' it was generally understood by those who were acquainted with him that he was to be asked so to do. Cecilia Ossulton therefore immediately said, ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... cuscus answers to the racoons of America. The pouched badgers explain themselves at once by their very name, like the Plyants, the Pinchwifes, the Brainsicks, and the Carelesses of the Restoration comedy. The 'native rabbit' of Swan River is a rabbit-like bandicoot; the pouched ant-eater similarly takes the place of the true ant-eaters of other continents. By way of carnivores, the Tasmanian devil is a fierce and savage marsupial ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... sideways out of his almond-shaped eyes. Domini heard the name "Irena," and guessed that Batouch was asking the Kabyle to send for her and make her dance. She could not help being amused for a moment by the comedy of intrigue, complacently malignant on both sides, that was being played by the two cousins, but the moment passed and left her engrossed, absorbed, and not merely by the novelty of the surroundings, by the strangeness of the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... notice also, in his illustrations on the First Epistle of the Second Book, that as the poetry of the Romans and that of the Grecians had the same beginning at feasts and thanksgiving (as it has been observed), and the old comedy of the Greeks (which was invective) and the satire of the Romans (which was of the same nature) were begun on the very same occasion, so the fortune of both in process of time was just the same—the old comedy of the Grecians was forbidden for its too much licence in exposing ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... appears on the stage as a sectary, and plays his part with resolute energy. This part again is that of a man not pursuing truth, but so occupied with maintaining his own conception of truth that he has no time to test it. It is a comedy of great humor, because Sylvanus, as a sectary, stands against all comers to protect a spring of deep and clear water, and is so engrossed in guarding the sacred wave from the least pollution that he does not find time to remark that it ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... gives a birthday fete in his garden: to whom, I wonder? I will name no one. To Phormio, perhaps, or Gnatho, or Ballion? Oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not to be borne!" These were the vile knaves of the Roman comedy—the Nyms. Pistols, and Bobadils. "Your Consulship no doubt will be salutary; but mine did only evil! You talk of my verses," he says—Antony having twitted him with the "cedant arma togae." "I will only say that you do not understand them or any ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and he would grope his way home through the traffic at high noon in profound, pathetic belief that darkness and slumber wrapped the streets; on which occasions the dialogue between him and the barber's parrot might be counted on to touch high comedy. I knew this, and knew also that in the next stage he would recover his eyesight, and at the same time turn dangerously quarrelsome. If Mr. Goodfellow and I could start him home quietly, he would have reason ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... you can enjoy The Magic Flute as a more than usually absurd musical comedy with easy, old-fashioned tunes. You can enjoy it anyway, if you are not solemn about it, as you can enjoy Hamlet for a bloody melodrama. But, like Hamlet, it has depths and depths of meaning beyond ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... instance, who and what were the Garths, mother and daughter? He looked in on a well-known dramatic agent, and raised the point. Reference to a ledger showed that Eileen Garth, age eighteen, tall, good-looking, no previous experience, had been a candidate for musical comedy, London engagement alone accepted; the almost certain sequel being that she had kept her name six months on the books without an offer to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Wedgwood was tragically in love—the word was used advisedly. One can play comedy; two are required for melodrama; but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... reader has divined, Rosa was preparing the comedy of a cool reception; but looking up, she saw his pale cheek tinted with a lover's beautiful joy at the bare sight of her, and his soft eye so divine with love, that she had not the heart to chill him. She gave him her hand kindly, and smiled brightly on him instead of remonstrating. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of life this same poetry, which thinks that love, the promoter of debauchery and vanity, should have a place in the council of the Gods! I am speaking of comedy, which could not subsist at all without our approving of these debaucheries. But what said that chief of the ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the Insubrian Gauls, and was probably taken as a prisoner to Rome (c. 200), during the great Gallic war. Originally a slave, he assumed the name of Caecilius from his patron, probably one of the Metelli. He supported himself by adapting Greek plays for the Roman stage from the new comedy writers, especially Menander. If the statement in the life of Terence by Suetonius is correct and the reading sound, Caecilius's judgment was so esteemed that he was ordered to hear Terence's Andria (exhibited 166 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... delicious," laughed Mrs Clyde—a cold sneering laugh, which made me shiver as if cold water were running down my back—"quite a comedy, I do declare, Mr Lorton. I did not think you were so good an actor. Love! Ha, ha, ha!" and she gave forth a merry peal—to my intense enjoyment, you may ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in her writing, her dress, her face,—kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red letters, October 2, 1860, largely and clearly written. I am sure the woman's hand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but there is no sign of it here; for it was a new, desperate adventure to her, and she ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... this growing estrangement came about by accident,—one of those chance occurrences that affect our lives more than years of ordered effort,—and it came in an inverted form of a situation old to comedy. Cressida had been on the road for several weeks; singing in Minneapolis, Cleveland, St. Paul, then up into Canada and back to Boston. From Boston she was to go directly to Chicago, coming down on the five o'clock train ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... best!" cried Alice, gaily dancing about the studio, after she had finished in a little comedy scene, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... answer. In the face of his perplexity he could not repress a grim chuckle as he rolled up his blankets. What a report he would have for the Department—if he lived to make it! On paper there would be a good deal of comedy about it—this burrowing oneself up like a hibernating woodchuck, and then being invited out to breakfast by a man with a club and a pack of brutes with fangs that had gleamed at him like ivory stilettos. He had guessed at the club, and a moment later as he thrust ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... had been made in the hope of attracting other Protestant gentry to the Jacobite cause—offered to submit to General Carpenter under certain conditions. Carpenter's reply was a demand for unconditional surrender, and the hopeless little tragi-comedy was played out. The last scene took place on Tower Hill three months later, when the gallant young Earl, then only twenty-six years old, laid down the life which, after all, had been spent in the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loves Labors Lost, his Love Labours Wonne, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Greek poetry and Scotch is very marked in this point. There is not one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... another proof of the success of the steps he has taken, and for which he hopes we shall give him credit—as to serve us, he adds, he betrays his friend in the most shameful manner, and acts a part in an odious comedy. M. de Bressac trusts that, in return for these good offices, we will deliver up to him those papers, which place him in our absolute dependence, as they might ruin for ever a woman he loves with an adulterous passion. He says that we ought to have pity ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Andromaque, his first chef-d'oeuvre, which placed him at once in the very front rank by the side of Corneille. From that time forth, until 1677, almost each year was marked by a new triumph. In 1668, he produced his one comedy, Les Plaideurs, a highly successful satire on the Law Courts, in the vein of the "Wasps" of Aristophanes. In 1669, he resumed his tragedies on historical subjects with Britannicus, largely drawn from Tacitus, followed by Brnice (1670), Bajazet (1672), ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... like those children, and in all this, his life had been much more miserable and poorer than theirs, and their goals were not his, nor their worries; after all, that entire world of the Kamaswami-people had only been a game to him, a dance he would watch, a comedy. Only Kamala had been dear, had been valuable to him—but was she still thus? Did he still need her, or she him? Did they not play a game without an ending? Was it necessary to live for this? No, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... eyes drooping before the gaze of my terrible and applauding audiences, how I mentally formed cursing words against the day when my misfortunes led me to apply at the Theatre Folie-Rouge for work! I had expected an audition and a role of comedy in the Revue; for, perhaps lacking any experience of the stage, I am a Neapolitan by birth, though a resident of the Continent at large since the age of fifteen. All Neapolitans can act; all are actors; comedians of the greatest, as every traveller is cognizant. ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... actor. In after years two distinguished members of the profession in France, M. Bocage and Mdme. Dorval, expressed similar opinions. For their father's name-day in 1824, Frederick and his sister Emilia wrote conjointly a one-act comedy in verse, entitled THE MISTAKE; OR, THE PRETENDED ROGUE, which was acted by a juvenile company. According to Karasowski, the play showed that the authors had a not inconsiderable command of language, but in other respects could not be called a very brilliant achievement. Seeing that fine comedies ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... enfranchisement of the black loyalists, as the only way to prevent Congress from being replenished with plotting and disloyal men. Fair play to them is thus fair play to all of us; and, like Tony Lumpkin, in Goldsmith's comedy, if we are indifferent as to disappointing those who depend upon us, we may at least be trusted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... now nearly at his wits' end how to continue the comedy, and beginning to flinch in his dismay at having gone so far, raised his hand slowly and closed his fingers upon the pen, while with a sigh of satisfaction Henry placed his index finger, upon which a large gem was glittering, upon the blank spot beneath ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the consent of the master or mistress. [82] During several generations accordingly the relation between divines and handmaidens was a theme for endless jest; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy of the seventeenth century, a single instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse above the rank of cook. [83] Even so late as the time of George the Second, the keenest of all observers of life and manners, himself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with hesitation that Fonsegue himself had ventured to suggest Dauvergne. But by degrees his selection appeared to him a real "find." "Wait a bit! I recollect now that in his young days Dauvergne wrote a comedy, a one act comedy in verse, and had it performed at Dijon. And Dijon's a literary town, you know, so that piece of his sets a little perfume of 'Belles-Lettres' around him. And then, too, he left Dijon twenty years ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... about Aristophanes. If you will indeed send me some notes of the passages that interest you in the "Birds," it will not only be very pleasant to me, but quite seriously useful, for the "Birds" have always been to me so mysterious in that comedy, that I have never got the good of it which I know is to be had. The careful study of it put off from day to day, was likely enough to fall into the great region of my despair, unless you had chanced thus ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... French literature in much the same relation as Shakespeare stands to English literature. Moliere's plays are constantly acted in French theatres with a scenic austerity which is unknown to the humblest of our theatres. A French audience would regard it as sacrilege to convert a comedy of Moliere into a spectacle. The French people are commonly credited with a love of ornament and display to which the English people are assumed to be strangers, but their treatment of Moliere is convincing proof ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... soul perceives it, is horribly and most tragically humorous. Man is the laughing animal; and the "perilous stuff" which tickles his aesthetic sense with a revelation of outrageous comedy has its roots in the profoundest abyss. This humorous aspect of the system of things is just as primordial and intrinsic as what we call the "beautiful." The human soul is able to pour the whole stream of its complex vision through this fantastic casement. It knows how to ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... we won't be here," he pointed out. "If it doesn't go through all right, we'll arrange a little comedy. Have you bound and gagged—before ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Dr. Price was a rhetorician whom any cause would have gladly enlisted as its champion. The Revolution Society, founded to commemorate the capture of the Bastille, corresponded with the leaders of the Revolution, and promised its alliance in a revolutionary compact. And, to add a touch of comedy to these more serious demonstrations, the young Duke of Bedford and other leaders of fashion discarded hair-powder, and wore their hair cut short in what was understood to be the Republican mode ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... us from enjoying their colouring and eloquence) might have avoided the more facile triumphs of the stage. However, Elektra needs no apology, and the joyous Rosenkavalier is a distinct addition to the repertory of high-class musical comedy. Strauss is an experimenter and no doubt a man for whom the visible box-office exists, to parody a saying of Gautier's. But we must judge him by his own highest standard, the standard of Elektra, Don Quixote, and Till Eulenspiegel, not to mention the beautiful songs. Ariadne on ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... find you have put on a mask to deceive me! Have you not succeeded in inspiring me with esteem for you by your proud and dignified behaviour, and the elevated sentiments you professed? And do you think I can be happy to find that all this was but a comedy? Could a gentleman have treated me so? But you have deceived yourself, Jonker van Zonshoven. I gave my heart to a young man without fortune, whose upright and noble character I admired, and in whom I had more confidence than in myself; ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... had not stopped to think what he should find, but at least it was, from her tone, a menace of some sort. There stood Eugene Martin, in his fur coat, his florid extravagance of scarf and pin, on his face the ironic smile adapted to his preconceived comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his butt, the fool of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... to tragedy, William J. Florence was to comedy. Indeed, he may be said to have gone farther than either Booth or Forrest, for he founded a school and gave to the stage the chivalrous, light-hearted and lucky Irishman, who has since become so familiar to the drama, however rare he may be ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... "Rolling my tub," replied he, "that whilst everybody is busy around me, I may not be the only idle person in the kingdom." In like manner, I, my dear Philo, being very loath in this noisy age to make no noise at all, or to act the part of a mute in the comedy, think it highly proper that I should roll my tub also; not that I mean to write history myself, or be a narrator of facts; you need not fear me, I am not so rash, knowing the danger too well if I roll it ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows, and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books. How that unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... curiosity, and the inexorable quality of the truth would not let him stand still. The poetic genius within him, as Blake called it, struggled on from one dogma concerning his nature to another. Behaviour malignant or beneficent, horrible in its tragedy and pitiable in its comedy, flowed inevitably on. Witchcraft trials and the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition belong among the more mentionable consequences of some of man's theories about his ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... name of Dumas was expected to make all current coin. For Dumas, unluckily, was as prodigal of his name as of his gold, and no reputation could bear the drafts he made on his celebrity. His son says, in the preface to Le Fils Naturel: "Tragedy, dramas, history, romance, comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the mould of your brain, and you peopled the world of fiction with new creations. The newspaper, the book, the theatre, burst asunder, too narrow for your ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... precision. She never came again, and announced indifferently, to all who cared to hear, that when she "wanted to see a passel o' monkeys, she'd go to the circus, an' done with it." There, too, one night when Comedy burlesqued her own rapt self, was Dana Marden; but he came alone. Mary had a cold, we heard, and "thought she'd better stay in." Dana sat through the foolish play, unmoved. His brow loomed heavy, like Tragedy's own mask, and it grew ever blacker while the scene went on. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... nothing about love. Once or twice he ventured to tell her of some pretty girl that he met, of some adventure with a laird's daughter; nay, insinuated laughingly that he had not escaped from it quite heart-whole. Caroline answered his letter in the same tone; told him, with excellent comedy, of the leading facts of life in Littlebath; recommended him by all means to go back after the laird's daughter; described the joy of her heart at unexpectedly meeting Mr. M'Gabbery in the pump-room, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... every new excuse," said H—— at my side, "as Boileau took off his hat at every plagiarism in his friend's comedy—on the score of old acquaintance. If one word of all this is true, it may be the breaking down of his post-chaise, and even that he probably broke down for the sake of the excuse. Sheridan could not walk from the door to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Chinese law forbidding women to act on the stage. Certain parts of the play were open to objections on account of immodesty, but when no ladies are present I presume a Chinese audience is not fastidious. The comedy was followed by something serious, of which I was unable to learn the name. I supposed it represented the superiority of the deities over the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... dreary hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls—her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good Heaven! what an actress this woman is. What an arch trickster—what an all-accomplished deceiver. But she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's roof. I have diplomatized long enough. She has refused to accept an indirect warning. To-night I ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... He was baffled and angry. Had Jen played the leading part in the mysterious and grim comedy of last night, or was he only a work coolie, a deck-steward, harmless, innocuous, babbling happily in his limited knowledge of a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... with the answer when it comes, and I will telegraph to Wendover morning and night, dear child," he said. "I knew you would feel for me." And with this, the sad little comedy between them ended, for Halcyone ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... actor of low comedy, and long famous on the London stage, to which he was introduced by Charles Kemble; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... historic reproduction, and for the fund presented for humour by ecclesiastical peculiarities, it seems impossible to overlook the covert satire intended on church beliefs.(305) The intermixture of a comic element would not alone prove this. The miracle plays of the middle ages admitted comedy without intending irreverence;(306) and a gentle humour pervades many of the Autos of Calderon, which were acted on solemn festivals.(307) But there exists in the manner in which the supernatural element is managed ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Devine worked his way towards London, and at length he appeared in a West-end theatre. His reminiscences of the stars are impressive, but we need not deal with them; it is enough to say that he was successful—and in light comedy no less. About this time he began to have his photograph taken very frequently, and the portraits made me feel sad. This dull, sodden man was once a handsome fellow, alert, well poised, brave and cheerful. The profile ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... crossed back, leaving but one corps north of the river. Such was now the very peculiar situation of the two armies. General Lee was moving steadily in the direction of Warrenton to cut off his adversary from Manassas, and that adversary was moving back into Culpepper to hunt up Lee there. The comedy of errors was soon terminated, but not so soon as it otherwise would have been but for a ruse de guerre played by Generals Rosser and Young. General Rosser had been left by Stuart near Brandy, with about two hundred horsemen and one ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... have not made a serious reply since I gave up practice at the Scottish Bar. At my age," added Sir Patrick, cunningly drifting into generalities, "nothing is serious—except Indigestion. I say, with the philosopher, 'Life is a comedy to those who think, and tragedy to those who feel.'" He took his sister-in-law's hand, and kissed it. "Dear Lady Lundie, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... endeavoured, both by argument and by ridicule, to bring his countrymen to a right way of thinking. [See "Spectator," Nos. 84. 97, and 99; and "Tatler," Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, and 39; and "Guardian," No. 20.] His comedy of "The Conscious Lovers" contains an admirable exposure of the abuse of the word honour, which led men into an error so lamentable. Swift, writing upon the subject, remarked that he could see no harm in rogues and fools shooting each other. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... strong, and they find their greatest delight in seeing the purpose of each part in a complex mechanism. With others, this work does not afford much pleasure. These are children who, later, can take delight in the flimsy plot of a musical comedy. Such pupils should be encouraged to do their best to discover some points of beauty or skill in the arrangement of the selection. In different lessons there is a difference in construction. In some, the logical connection and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... from outside; but an irreparable evil brought about by myself, a renunciation for life of my liberty, my peace of mind, the very thought of it is maddening—I expiate my privilege indeed. My privilege is to be spectator of my life drama, to be fully conscious of the tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in the secret of the tragi-comic itself, that is to say, to be unable to take my illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theater on the stage, or to be like a man looking from ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Charles Sedley's comedy of "Bellamira" was performed, the roof of the theatre fell down, by which, however, few people were hurt except the author. This occasioned Sir Fleetwood Shepherd to say, "There was so much fire in his play, that it blew up the poet, house and all." "No," replied the ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... of petty irritation ever wrote anything like the passage where that expression occurs. Criticism is not your forte, Collins. The writer I'm speaking of sees a landscape photographed in those two words. Pardon me for saying that your talent seems to run more in the line of low-comedy acting. I don't like referring to it again, but d—n it all, my interest in you personally makes me feel very strongly over your interview with ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... for his part, was amazed at her being so little disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways, refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was pledged, married with twenty words. They had no more to say about it since they were agreed, and they now sat, both ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... young enough to be delighted at the idea of such a pretty little comedy, and you trip away to the study, and archly keep dear WILLIAM in conversation until the Captain is ready to make his appearance. At last, a little impatiently, you give the cue by mentioning that there is a clock-winder ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... Jennie had come with the real actors, and were to appear in the picture. The story related incidents at a Sunday-school picnic, and most of the comedy had already been ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... captain was reluctant. To take part in such a sinister comedy; to make a poor wretch tipsy in order to deliver him to the authorities for punishment, wounded the captain's self-respect. Juve overcame his ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... this false comedy," he thought with irritation. "It goes without saying that I've now become the by-word of the entire university. The devil nudged me! And even during the day yesterday it wasn't too late, when she was saying that she was ready ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... conference was held in the cabin, and the various parts of the comedy rehearsed. Also the three ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the busy woodpecker ceased his drumming, cocking his head inquisitively at the intruders; then shyly drew away, mounting spirally the trunk of the tree to the hole, chiseled by his strong beak for a nest. As Barnes gazed around upon the pleasing prospect, he straightway became the duke in the comedy of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... handkerchief into bits. It is a piece of inspired acting to make the discriminating weep, but my friend the audience always giggled irresistibly, as if the sound of rending lace, when a woman's agony was the most intense, were a bit of exquisite comedy. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... rival. In 1689 he resumed his work under the persuasion of Mme. de Maintenon, and produced "Esther" and "Athalie," the latter ranking among his finest productions, although it did not receive public recognition until some time after his death in 1699. Besides his tragedies, Racine wrote one comedy, "Les Plaideurs," four hymns of great beauty, and a ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... great epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "But it's a comedy face," he commented. "It's hard to associate intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... appeals. Sitting down at length within earshot, they had it out in a wild scolding match, a contest of lung and tongue. Meanwhile I rested on a canoe midway betwixt them, in the hope of averting a renewal of hostilities. By and by an old Sacred Man, a Chief, called Sapa, with some touch of savage comedy in his breast, volunteered an episode which restored good humor to the scene. Leaping up, he came dancing and singing towards me, and there, to the amusement of all, reenacted the quarrel, and mimicked rather cleverly my attempt ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... painted, but they demand an interesting story, a fine sentiment, a great thought: so since our national glory is understood to be the happy home, the happy home must be triumphant everywhere, even in satiric comedy. The best expression of this fallacy is in Thackeray. Concluding a most eloquent, and a somewhat patronising examination of Congreve, 'Ah!' he exclaims, 'it's a weary feast, that banquet of wit where ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Aristophanes' satiric rage, When ancient comedy amus'd the age, Or Eupolis's or Cratinus' wit, And others that all-licens'd poem writ; None, worthy to be shown, escap'd the scene, No public knave, or thief of lofty mien; The loose adult'rer was drawn forth to sight; The ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and friends, even as far as Simpkinsville and Washington, had their little jokes over Mis' Trimble's giving her splendor-despising husband a swinging ice-pitcher, but they never knew of the two early trips of the twin pitcher, nor of the midnight comedy in the Trimble home. ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... herself, was all eagerness to learn of her pupil's progress. The lesson began at once. Already, she found, the miracle had begun to work. The old man sat down to the organ with a flourish that, if it had not been full of pathos, would have been a little comedy act. After a brief preliminary search the old fingers found their place and pounded out triumphantly the few ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Forces from us, by its powerful artistic realism, those choky sensations which it should be the aim of the human writer to elicit, whether in comedy ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... sally was supplemented only by a sorry smile, for form's sake, from Tess. What was comedy to them was tragedy to her; and she could hardly bear their mirth. She soon rose from table, and, with an impression that Clare would soon follow her, went along a little wriggling path, now stepping to one side of the irrigating channels, and now to the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... funny. It might have been sublimest farce-comedy, had they not lacked the perspective necessary for its appreciation. But it was enough that they realized that the demagogue had come crashing down—enough that, watching his furtive disappearance that night, they learned how pitiful a coward ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... said Bill, "was to see if I couldn't get Mabel a job in some straight comedy. That would take the curse off the thing a bit. Then I wouldn't have to dwell on the chorus end of the ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the general, "that I have had enough of this comedy, and that since Monsieur Koupriane has not been able to arrest these men, and since, on their side, they don't seem to decide to do their duty, I shall go myself and put them out of ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... Another twenty minutes and the hotel would loom up before them, and the little farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it might be, would be finished. The curtain would fall, and the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... could perform all the parts in a comedy himself, and with the help of Fred Loring, or some other, would improvise a burlesque on almost any well-known play. It was after one of these performances that Whittier (who sat in his quiet corner enjoying ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... an old play, and that is the whole superstition, the origin of which seems somewhat inexplicable. The phrase is thrice used by Shakespeare, and constantly occurs in the old burlesques and comedies; in one instance, in a comedy entitled "Love's Convert" (1651), it is altered to "lead an ape in heaven." Many will remember the fate of "The young Mary Anne" in the famous ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... knoll by the path, while the jack-hares, sitting on their haunches, boxed and scratched, and rolled over each other in a singularly harmless conflict, neither suffering more than the loss of a few tufts of fur. The comedy might, however, have had a tragic ending. Presently one of the combatants—the hare that had come late on the scene—became slightly exhausted, and, ignominiously yielding to his rival's superior dexterity, ran back towards the distant hedge. Almost ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... silence. A giggle from the fags' table showed that the comedy of the situation was not ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... short of a certain point,—the point where wit degenerates into mockery, and liberty into license: nature is never put to shame, and will commonly bear much more. Especially to the American sense did their humorous and comic strokes, their negro-minstrelsy and attempts at Yankee comedy, seem in a minor key. There was not enough irreverence and slang and coarse ribaldry, in the whole evening's entertainment, to have seasoned one line of some of our most popular comic poetry. But the music, and the gymnastic, acrobatic, and other feats, were of a very high order. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... 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 pranks ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... York business man, his pretty sweetheart, his sentimental stenographer, and his fashionable sister are all mixed up in a misunderstanding that surpasses anything in the way of comedy in years. A story with ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... belonged to the female sex. This animal has been one of the most remarkable characters in literature. Her virtues have been quoted in the stately cathedral, in the courts of justice, in the editorial sanctum, in both tragedy and comedy on the stage, to point a moral and adorn a tale. Some of the fairest of Eve's daughters bear her baptismal name, and she has been immortalized in poetry and prose. Wordsworth sends her with his Peter Bell to enjoy the first flowers of early spring. To express her love of the beautiful "upon ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... writing for interest, this species of autorial clap-trap is very effective, if cleverly done. So we will make no excuse for leaving nuestros amigos at the lawyer's office, and drawing a green curtain, as it were, on the actors of this humble comedy. ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of deceit. Sometimes, after palming off a particularly fantastic and outrageous lie upon me, he was so 'full of laugh' that he had to step aside for a minute, upon one pretext or another, to keep me from suspecting. I staid faithfully by him until his comedy was finished. Then he remarked that he had undertaken to 'learn' me all about a steamboat, and had done it; but that if he had overlooked anything, just ask him and he would supply the lack. 'Anything ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... celebrated comedy of "Figaro," an abridgment of which has been rendered more famous by the music of Mozart, made a large fortune by supplying the American republicans with arms and ammunition, and lost it by speculations in salt and printing. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently tragic situation into one of delicious comedy. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... His Holiness the Pope comes forth in his pontificals, with twelve cardinals in purple canonicals—for the action of my comedy is supposed to take place at the season of mutatio caparum, when their eminences are not dressed in scarlet but in purple—therefore propriety absolutely requires that my cardinals should wear ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
