"Drama" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... religions and rights, was a lie, for its first thought was to trample on the national religion, and to dispossess an inoffensive corporation of cloistered ladies of their right to then property. Here the first act of the drama ended. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... in the old bedroom. There were only two when we looked at the murdered man in his coffin. And in death there are no familiar facial expressions, no eccentricities of speech. So you can imagine my feelings when I tried to picture the drama that had gone on in that room. You can imagine poor Maria's. Which one? And Maria didn't know about the panel, or the use of Miss Katherine's hat-pin, or the handkerchief. All of those details ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... seems poorly of late, don't he, ma'am? His digestion ain't strong. P'r'aps something 'as disagreed with 'im." Thus Mrs. Derrick, taking her part in the drama, as the simple character who makes speeches of more significant portent than she ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... than Barnfield may be suspected of homosexual tendencies. Marlowe, whose most powerful drama, Edward II, is devoted to a picture of the relations between that king and his minions, is himself suspected of homosexuality. An ignorant informer brought certain charges of freethought and criminality against him, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a coincidence too remarkable and providential to be credited, thought Thornton, yet it was no coincidence at all. Bas knew of the drama that was to be played out that night—a drama of which he was the anonymous author—and he was coming, in leisurely fashion, to a lookout from which he could witness its climax while he still held ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... no drama on Elizabethan times in England; we must go to Heywood and Ben Jonson for the drama of his contemporary world. Many circumstances caused Stevenson, when at his best, to be a historical novelist, and he is, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a futile attack upon the one writer who stood out head and shoulders above his contemporaries, and whose works bore all the marks of unmistakable genius—the great CORNEILLE. With the production, in 1636, of Corneille's tragedy, Le Cid, modern French drama came into existence. Previous to that date, two main movements are discernible in French dramatic art—one carrying on the medieval traditions of the mystery-and miracle-play, and culminating, early in the seventeenth century, with ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... moment, rhyme had fairly driven all rivals from the field. Over the lyric its sway was undisputed. In narrative poetry, where its fitness was far more disputable, it maintained its hold till the closing years of Milton. In the drama itself, where its triumph would have been fatal, it disputed the ground inch by inch against the magnificent instrument devised by Surrey and perfected ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... unaware that its nickname in theatrical circles was "The Mugs' Graveyard"—a title which had been bestowed upon it not without reason. Built originally by a slightly insane old gentleman, whose principal delusion was that the public was pining for a constant supply of the Higher Drama, and more especially those specimens of the Higher Drama which flowed practically without cessation from the restless pen of the insane old gentleman himself, the Windsor Theater had passed from hand to hand with the agility of a gold watch in a gathering of race-course thieves. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... permanently shelved. He sidled to a corner of the landing, and sat down on an empty soap box with the air of a dramatic critic at the opening night of a new play. The scene looked good to him. It promised interesting developments. He was an earnest student of the drama, as exhibited in the theaters of the East Side, and few had ever applauded the hero of "Escaped from Sing Sing," or hissed the villain of "Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak-model" with more fervor. He liked his drama to have plenty of action, and to ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... attempt, to clothe what writers on divinity call "the plan of salvation" in a figurative dress, the narrative, with all its vividness of description in parts, its clearly drawn characters with their picturesque nomenclature, and the stirring vicissitudes of the drama, is necessarily wanting in the personal interest which attaches to an individual man, like Christian, and those who are linked with or follow his career. In fact, the tremendous realities of the spiritual history of the human race ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... In 1884 he publ. his autobiographical novel, Leicester, and in 1888 Songs of the Army of the Night, which created a sensation in Sydney. His remaining important work is Tiberius (1894), a striking drama in which a new view of the character of the Emperor is presented. He d. by his own hand at Alexandria in a fit of depression caused by ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... we have some great tellings "under the similitude of a dream." We have the nineteenth-century "Dream of Gerontius," our great Cardinal's drama of the soul in its parting and after. We have the seventeenth-century dream from the darkness of Bedford Gaol, whence John Bunyan saw the pilgrims on their way, through dangers and trials, on to the river that must be crossed before they could come to the Celestial ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... troubles ruined the count's fortunes, and it seemed necessary for the countess to return to the stage. Now again the court wished to separate diplomacy from the drama played on the open stage. Rossi was told that he might retain his ambassadorship if he would formally separate from his wife, at least until she could again leave the stage. But Rossi believed that it was his turn to make a sacrifice, and could not bear a separation; ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... known to more than five or six in the room. I thus had leisure not only to observe the different classes into which the company had divided itself, but to amuse myself by speculating as to the rank and character of many of the individual actors in the drama. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Field, a classmate in the school, says: "One incident occurred during our residence in Mount Pleasant which left an abiding impression on my mind. At the exhibition at the close of the year, either 1828 or 1829, the drama of 'William Tell' was performed by some of the students, and your father took the part of the tyrant Gessler. Although sixty years have passed, I think now, as I thought then, that it was the most impressive performance I ever witnessed. . ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... fifteenth-century Discovery, for instance, will be found to be chiefly one of less and greater detail. This difference depends, of course, on the prominence in the later time of a figure of extraordinary interest and force, who is the true hero in the drama of the Geographical Conquest of the Outer World that starts from Western Christendom. The interest that centres round Henry is somewhat clouded by the dearth of complete knowledge of his life; but enough remains to make something of the picture ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... so that in spite of his little learning he seems to have left nothing for his followers but to fill in his outline. The same keenness of discernment he applied casually in dissecting the genius of his own time. He associated the absence of drama with the French Revolution, its tendency to deal in abstractions and to regard everything in relation to man and not men—a tendency irreconcilable with dramatic literature, which is essentially individual and concrete.[64] To be sure the eighteenth century before the Revolution was as ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... took kindly to grand opera, and probably for the same reason that it patronized the drama. It sought entertainment and amusement, and grand opera is a serious business. As Field said of himself, Chicago liked music "limited"; and its liking was generally limited to light or comic opera and the entertainments of the Apollo Club, until Theodore Thomas, with admirable ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... retain the coolness and indifference of which St. Just is an extraordinary example. Most of the Terrorists were swayed by fear for themselves, or by the frenzy which is produced by familiarity with slaughter. But this is of small account. The significance of that sanguinary drama lies in the fact, that a political abstraction was powerful enough to make men think themselves right in destroying masses of their countrymen in the attempt to impose it on their country. The horror of that system and its failure have given vitality to the communistic theory. It ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... guidance of evil counsellors, the Lord is constantly admonishing her to heed the voice of her true Teacher and Guide, the Holy Ghost. How forcibly this admonition is introduced into the great Apocalyptic drama! As in the opening of the successive seals, representing the judgments of God upon apostate Christendom, the cry is repeated, "Come"! "Come"! "Come"! "Come"! (Rev. 6)—as though the church under chastisement ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... frequently in the afternoons. For hours at a time they had sat in the long, dim Bartlett parlor, with only the ghostly bust of old Madam Bartlett for a chaperon, ostensibly absorbed in the study of modern drama, but finding ample time to dwell at length upon Eleanor's qualifications for the stage and the Captain's budding genius as a playwright. And just when Ibsen and Pinero were giving place to Sudermann, and vague personal ambitions were ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... lover! What a shame! She had read so many books in which women, even mothers, had overstepped the bounds of propriety, to regain their honor at the pages of the climax, that she was not astonished beyond measure at finding herself enveloped in a drama similar to all those of her reading. The violence of her first grief, the cruel shock of surprise, had already worn off a little, in the confused remembrance of analogous situations. Her mind had rambled among such tragic adventures, painted by the novel-writers, that the ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... recalling this epoch of our first literary utterance (vagido), and I say our, for when he was but ten years old and I eleven, we composed and presented in the aforesaid school (San Telmo) a fearful and extravagant drama, which, if my memory serves me right, was entitled Los Conjurados ('The Conspirators'). We likewise began a novel. I wonder at the confidence with which these two children, so ignorant in all respects, launched forth upon the two literary ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... Caesars, in A.D. 476, it is, with the exception of a short interval when the strong hand of the great Theodosius stayed the avalanche of Rome's invaders, one long story of the defeat and humiliation of the citizens of the greatest power the world has ever known. It is a vast drama that the genius and patience of a Gibbon has alone been able to deal with, defying almost by its gigantic catastrophes and ever raging turbulence the pen of history to chronicle and arrange. When the curtain rises on a new order of things, the age of Paganism has passed away, and the period ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... erection of a second theatre in the same locality, the Curtain, and later, in spite of all difficulties and a great deal of local opposition, he started what became the most celebrated home of the rising drama,—the Blackfriars theatre, built in 1596 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... to consider the four principal tragedies of Shakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said of Shakespeare's place in the history either of English literature or of the drama in general. No attempt will be made to compare him with other writers. I shall leave untouched, or merely glanced at, questions regarding his life and character, the development of his genius and art, the genuineness, sources, texts, inter-relations of his various works. Even what ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... youths associated with him had declared irreconcilable war. Moreover, in a journal recently started by Wieland, there had appeared an unfriendly review of Goetz von Berlichingen. By the publication of a play, Alceste, in which he foolishly challenged comparison with Euripides' drama of the same name, Wieland gave the enemy his opportunity. On a Sunday afternoon, with a bottle of Burgundy beside him, as he tells us, Goethe tossed off his skit at one sitting. As a piece of improvisation, it certainly contains excellent ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... rebellion. But fancy cannot destroy the truth—the real exists in spite of the ideal, and, as I enter upon my description, faint and imperfect as it may be, I feel my hand shake with nervous excitement, my pulse throb faster, my heart beat heavier, as scene after scene of the great drama passes before me, clear and perfect as when first enacted. Had I only the language at my command, as I have the pictures before me, at my summons—I feel that I could do justice to the subject. But as ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... alert for interest and intellectual quality than our present "driven" multitude; its ampler leisure, its wider horizons, will keep it critical and exacting of what claims its attention. The rivalries of institutions and municipalities will be part of the drama of life. Under Socialism, with the extension of the educational process it contemplates, universities and colleges must become the most prominent of facts; nearly every one will have that feeling for some such place which now one finds in a Trinity ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Louis, you are the hero," said Vernon; "and what is the drama in which you have been acting so much to ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... have come to talk with you a little about the drama. Have you any decided opinions ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of reconciliation with old Mr. Sheridan. It will, therefore, not seem at all surprizing that he was zealous in acknowledging the brilliant merit of his son. While it had as yet been displayed only in the drama, Johnson proposed him as a member of THE LITERARY CLUB, observing, that 'He who has written the two best comedies of his age, is surely a considerable man.' And he had, accordingly, the honour to be elected; for an honour it undoubtedly must be allowed to be, when it is considered of whom ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... soon as he rounded the bend. There was a strange dramatic quality in the little beings running this way and that on the beach. Stonor, straining every nerve to reach them, was nevertheless obliged to be the witness of a drama in which he was powerless to intervene. He saw Imbrie throw what remained of his baggage into the dug-out. He saw the two petticoated figures start running up the beach towards him, Stonor. Imbrie started after them. The larger of the two figures dropped back ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... awaiting his cue in the wings of some turgid drama the plot of which he did not know. Venza was near the head of the incline. Some of the women and children were on it. A woman screamed. Her child had slipped from her hand; bounded up over the rail and ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... service to humanity, stole fire from heaven and gave it to man. For this crime against the authority of the gods, he was chained to a rock to suffer the torture of the vulture who pecked at his vitals. Aeschylus has made the most of this old legend in his great drama of Prometheus Bound. Nearly every tribe or nation has some tradition regarding the origin of fire. Because of its mystery and its economic value, it was early connected with religion and made sacred in many ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... them, that it is possible to have a stormy and passionate existence between four walls without even moving from the ottoman on which her very life is burning itself away. She had reached the final scene of the drama she had come to enact, and her mind was going over and over the phases of love and anger which had so powerfully stirred her during the ten days which had now elapsed since her first meeting with the marquis. A man's step suddenly sounded in the adjoining room ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... can only trace vaguely to Central Asian sources, and no farther back than the twelfth century of our era, has some points of contact with the Greek drama. In Greece the plays began at sunrise and continued all day, as they do still on the open-air stages of rural districts in China, in both cases performed entirely by men, without interval between the pieces, without curtain, without prompter, and ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... What important persons of the drama are absent from the banquet? Where is each at that time? How far do these circumstances influence any later events ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... become of him? Had Nancy Pringle waylaid him, as she positively swore she would do, on the first opportunity, and start the probationary stages of a drama in real life?" The fact was Bob never came, and no wonder. He was collared by the Dumbarton captain, and carried off to the field to practice for the great fight of the next day, under pains and penalties. He pleaded for Mary, but it was of no avail. "He had," he went on to ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... tell you," asked Rhodopis, "what conclusions various hints from Pythagoras and Onuphis have led me to draw, as to the meaning of this drama? Isis seems to me to represent the bountiful earth; Osiris, humidity or the Nile, which makes the earth fruitful; Horus, the young spring; Typhon, the scorching drought. The bounteous earth, robbed of her productive power, seeks this beloved husband ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the choirs of angels had begun to grow wearisome; for, after all, did he not deserve their praise? Had he not given them endless joy? Would it not be more amusing to obtain undeserved praise, to be worshipped by beings whom he tortured? He smiled inwardly, and resolved that the great drama should be performed. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... mine, boy!" he said to Shelby, as they were all at the Crane home afterward, "and it must be made into a spoken drama. There's scope for a ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... been the undoing of the one-night stand and the ten-twenty-thirty stock company. The old red-brick opera house furnished unlimited thrills for Josie and her mother. From the time Josie was seven she was taken to see whatever Wapello was offered in the way of the drama. That consisted mostly of ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... said I. "If drama is not one of the arts, the procession cannot be a branch of drama. But I think the drama is one of ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... up the stairs to the gallery. The floor was still stained with the pool of blood. Senor Zurro, the only witness to the drama, was telling the story to a group ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... works toward the same denouement, and certainly the protagonist remains unchanged. My protagonist is still the life of Manuel, as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still) to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of earth. 'Tis a drama enactable in ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... exactly the same, except that another woman had been added to it: The dancing also of the women was the same, but the interludes of the men were somewhat varied; he saw five or six performed, which were different from each other, and very much resembled the drama of our stage-dances. The next day, he went ashore again, with Dr Solander, and they directed their course towards the dancing company, which, from the time of our second landing, had gradually moved about two leagues in their course round the island. They saw more dancing and interludes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... with this. The unprecedented drama was in five acts, so fierce that Aeschylus himself would not have dared to dream of them. "The Ambush!" "The Struggle!" "The Massacre!" "The Victory!" "The Fall!" What a tangle and what an unwinding! A poet who would have predicted it would have seemed a traitor. God alone ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... do you? He had a farce ready for the stage before I left England, and asked me for a prologue, which I promised, but sailed in such a hurry, I never penned a couplet. I am afraid to ask after his drama, for fear it should be damned—Lord forgive me for using such a word! but the pit, Sir, you know the pit—they will do those things in spite of merit. I remember this farce from a curious circumstance. When Drury Lane was burnt to the ground, by which accident Sheridan and his son lost the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... treated them to the novel sensation of a comparatively moral performance. Occasional morality deftly inserted in the midst of a season of seductive legs, produces the same effect upon a Chicago audience that a naughty opera bouffe does upon the New York lovers of the legitimate drama. In either case there is the charm of foreign novelty; a charm, however, which soon loses its attraction. Opera bouffe in New York, and the moral drama in Chicago, can enjoy but a temporary success. The former city will always ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... The drama stands or falls with Hadda Padda, that is to say, it STANDS. She holds it with a firm hand, as the Saint in the old paintings bears the church. In her, the Iceland of ancient and modern times meets. She has more warmth, more kindness of heart, more womanly ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... Admiral Timworth's greeting, after salutes had been exchanged. "Accidentally, you became spectators this evening, at a little drama connected with both the diplomatic and the secret ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... himself, that lovely woman did unfold to me the most wonderful plan for the most enormous robbery of both her own government and mine—or should I say of both of my governments?—that it could be in the power of mortal mind to conceive. It was a beautiful, reasonable, generous, patriotic, sympathetic drama of the gigantic war mule and it had only one tiny, hidden obscure line in one of its verses, but in that line lay all of dishonor that could come to a man and a State who should allow a smaller nation fighting for ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... scheme of Northern mythology was therefore a drama, every step leading gradually to the climax or tragic end, when, with true poetic justice, punishment and reward were impartially meted out. In the foregoing chapters, the gradual rise and decline of the gods have been carefully traced. We have recounted how the AEsir tolerated the presence ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... certain type is famed, Vanderlyn, with his long lean figure, and stern pre-occupied face, did not suggest, to the French eyes idly watching him, a lover,—still less the happy third in one of those conjugal comedies which play so much greater a part in French literature and in French drama than they do in French life. He had thrust far back into his heart the leaping knowledge of what was about to befall him, and he was bending the whole strength of his mind to avert any possible danger of ignoble catastrophe to the woman ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... souvenirs in the way of arms and accoutrements; and secondly, of the knowledge that at least as many more of the enemy had been left permanently incapacitated for further warfare in the dug-outs. A grim and grisly drama when you come to criticise it in cold blood, but not without a certain humour of its own—and most ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... the, give the Father of the Drama his due Mercury. Don't be envious of the Father ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... discussions of Ardant du Picq take up, in a poignant way, the setting of every military drama. They envelop in a circle of invariable phenomena the apparent irregularity of combat, determining the critical point in the outcome of the battle. Whatever be the conditions, time or people, he gives ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... is a copy of the introductory song, as it used to be sung by the Wharfdale sword-dancers. It has been transcribed from a MS. in the possession of Mr. Holmes, surgeon, at Grassington, in Craven. At the conclusion of the song a dance ensues, and sometimes a rustic drama is performed. See post, p. 175. Jumping Joan, alluded to in the last verse, is a well-known ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... "Martin Chuzzlewit." We will not undertake to analyze all the reasons for these startling discrepancies; but one obvious reason is infelicity in the choice of a subject. A subject teeming with the right capabilities will often enable an ordinary playwright to produce a drama that will rouse an audience to wild enthusiasm; whereas, if the subject is un-pregnant with dramatic issues, not even genius can invest it with the charm that commands the sympathy and attention of the many. Watch a large, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... it was inevitable that she should acquire from the fashionable in literature, music, and the drama, that sorry and unnecessary ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the spokesmen of Melos, the little island that desired to stand out of the conflict, and the Athenian representatives who were determined to force her into their policy. And after that dialogue comes, in Thucydides' great drama, the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and Spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of Job carries no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the genius of the composition, and the drama of the piece, are not Hebrew; that it has been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that the author of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented under the name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is mentioned in the Bible) ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... with indignation, 'a German drama. No matter; it's better than a German comedy. Order a box for me—baignoire—or no ... better the Fremden-Loge,' she turned to the waiter. 'Do you hear: the Fremden-Loge it ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Aristide composed his face into an expression of parental interest; but within him there was shivering and sickening upheaval. He saw it all, the whole mocking drama.... ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... old heroic strain. Many of these poems, like 'Annus Memorabilis' and 'Coming,' were born of the great passion of patriotism which took possession of him, and were regarded only as the visions of a heated imagination. But when the storm burst it was seen that he had the true vision. As the dreadful drama unrolled, Brownell rose to greater issues, and became the war-poet par excellence, the vigorous chronicler of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... attained it: he was probably capable of reaching the fame of true comedy and instructive ridicule. Otway had a genius finely turned to the pathetic; but he neither observed strictly the rules of the drama, nor the rules, still more essential, of propriety and decorum. By one single piece, the duke of Buckingham did both great service to his age and honor to himself. The earls of Mulgrave, Dorset, and Roscommon wrote in a good taste; but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... from this direction, Johnny was caught unprepared. A knife flashed. He felt a heavy impact on his chest. A loud snap followed by a scream from his assailant. There came the wild patter of fleeing footsteps, then the little drama ended. ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... for me to dwell upon the subsequent developments of this unhappy business—if I am right in calling it unhappy. The piteous little drama is played, both the actors are dead, and the issue of the piece is unknown and, for the present, unknowable. Bitterly opposed as I was to the suit of Merchison, justice compels me to say that, under the cloak of ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... speak," I add, "of grand old Daisenberger, the gentle, simple old priest, 'the father of the valley,' who now lies in silence among his children that he loved so well. It was he, you know, that shaped the rude burlesque of a coarser age into the impressive reverential drama that we saw yesterday. That is a portrait of him over the bed. What a plain, homely, good face it is! How pleasant, how helpful it is to come across a good face now and then! I do not mean a sainted face, suggestive of stained glass and ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... would, I could not remember. It had sounded like Clam Shell. That I recalled, and how Breed had looked out at the sword-play through the cracks of the closed shutters, agonized between fear of ghosts within and the drama without. At the first faint light that came into our window I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had other teachers. He studied all classic literature. "The AEschylean drama had no attraction for him; he reveled in the rich and elegant strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of Horace and the silver lute of Catullus." From the full and inexhaustible fountain of English letters ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... he shrank back, and providentially he fell upon one knee. The wolf had sprung at his throat and the pioneer lad's sinking to the ice caused the beast to leap clear over both the human actors in the drama. But as its lean gray body flashed past, the stranger reached up and with Enoch's keen hunting-knife slit a great wound in the exposed body. A wild yell rose above the clamor of the pack and the old wolf rolled over and over on the ice in the agonies of death, the blood spurting from ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... could to smooth the path of any nervous youngster with excellent advice and cheerful help. He is still acting. Anybody who wishes can see him on any night, helping to troll forth the chorus of a song of Mexican warriors in the great spectacular drama of Montezuma. There is no more perfectly-satisfied being in existence. On that I am prepared to stake my life. Let this tale then be a warning to those who are over-hasty to construct romances of pathetic contrast on an insufficient foundation. One ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... catastrophe which a certain number of husbands cannot avoid, almost always forms the closing scene of the drama. At that point all around you is tranquil. Your resignation, if you are resigned, has the power of awakening keen remorse in the soul of your wife and of her lover; for their happiness teaches them ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... the only dull and commonplace spot on earth was that where we lived. Everywhere else life was a grand spectacular drama, full of thrilling effects. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... elasticity returned; ideas and forms of expression recurred to him without trouble. He had seized on a dramatic theme suggested in one of the books which Lettice had been reading, and a few days later admitted to her that he was at work on a poetic drama. She clapped her hands in almost childlike glee at the news, and Alan, without much need for pressing, read to her a whole scene which had passed from the phase ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... almost as abundant as in peace-time, and the peril of pedestrianism is kept at its normal pitch by the incessant dashing to and fro of those unrivalled engines of destruction, the hospital and War Office motors. Many shops have reopened, a few theatres are tentatively producing patriotic drama or mixed programmes seasonal with sentiment and mirth, and the cinema again unrolls ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... It is a little drama! To-morrow is Saturday and you 'receive.' 'Tout Paris', artistic Paris, at any rate, flocks to your studio. Your uncle, the Cardinal Bonpre, is known to be with you, and your visitors will be still more ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... romances were innumerable, and very extravagant and absurd, and were ridiculed by Cervantes, half-a-century afterwards, in his immortal "Don Quixote." Although Spain was mediaeval in its piety in the sixteenth century, this was the period of its highest intellectual culture, especially in the drama. De Vega and Cervantes were enough of themselves to redeem Spain from any charges of intellectual stupidity. But for the Inquisition, and the Dominican monks, and the Jesuits, and the demoralization which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... country. Celoron had been sent to Detroit. If Saint-Pierre had played his part feebly on the Saskatchewan, he was now made for a brief period one of the central figures in the opening act of a world drama. It is with a touch of emotion that we see on the stage, as the opponent of this not great Frenchman, the momentous figure of ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... weary hours wore on, and finally the sun was half-way down the horizon. Hans Vanderbum's heart gave a big throb as he started on his return to the village. In spite of the exciting drama that was now commencing, and in which he was to play such a prominent part, the most vivid picture that presented itself to him was his irate wife, waiting at the wigwam to pounce upon him, and he could not force the dire consequences of ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... middle, they heard Dixon's foot on the stairs. Mr. Hale started from his languid posture in his great armchair, from which he had been watching his children in a dreamy way, as if they were acting some drama of happiness, which it was pretty to look at, but which was distinct from reality, and in which he had no part. He stood up, and faced the door, showing such a strange, sudden anxiety to conceal Frederick from the sight ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... November the most memorable day of this most memorable year of the war. Under the heavy curtain of mist that brooded low over the scene, under the sombre clouds of uncertainty that hung drizzling and oppressive above the whole land, was enacted a drama whose grandeur has not been surpassed in history. The deep significance of that event it is not easy for the mind to fathom. As the accumulating majorities for the Union came rolling in, like billows succeeding billows, heaping up the waters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... heart, as of a nation, Throbs with thy tender love; And all our drama of salvation Thou watchest ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... on the lawn with a sporting peer. A man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia's feelings Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so watchful. To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her lover's breast, the strong pulsation of his heart sounding in her ear, like the rhythmical beat of the basses yonder in Waldteufel's last waltz? Was there still the uncertainty as ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... force, and attained a literary success to which Browning and other good judges bore testimony. Of Becket in particular he made a sympathetic figure, which, in the skilful hands of Henry Irving, won considerable favour upon the stage. But the times were out of joint for the poetic drama, and he had not the rich imagination of Shakespeare, nor the power to create living men and women who compel our hearts to pity, to horror, or to delight. For the absence of this no studious reading of history, no fine ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... external nullity which the marionette by its very nature emphasises. And so I find my puppets, where the extremes meet, ready to interpret not only the "Agamemnon," but "La Mort de Tintagiles"; for the soul, which is to make, we may suppose, the drama of the future, is content with as simple a mouthpiece as Fate and the great passions, which were ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... traverse the Channel, approach our own time, open our annals; and listen to the great political actors in the drama of our liberty. It would seem as if God was hidden from the souls of men; as if his name had never been written in the language. History will have the air of being atheistic, while recounting to posterity these annihilations, rather than deaths, of the celebrated men of the greatest years ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... this dream, or drama, are, as you will have gathered from the title-page, a Scholar, a Gypsy, and a Priest. Should you imagine that these three form one, permit me to assure you that you are very much mistaken. Should there be something ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Tillie very nearly lost her hold upon the Moonstone Drama Club. The club had decided to put on "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh," a very ambitious undertaking because of the many supers needed and the scenic difficulties of the act which took place in Andersonville ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... past the opening of the Springton road, and fancied her own figure walking alone up that bank for the last time. Several times she left Raby in the boat, and walked as far as the Fairfield guide-post, and returned. At last she had rehearsed the terrible drama so many times that it almost seemed to her as if it had already happened, and she found it strange to be in her own house with her husband and Jim and Sally and her servants. Already she began to feel herself dissevered from ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... why Conrad never tackled a straight-out story of adultery under Christianity, the standard matter of all our more pretentious fiction and drama. I was curious to see what his ethical agnosticism would make of it. The conclusion I came to at first was that his failure marked the limitations of his courage—in brief, that he hesitated to go against the orthodox axioms and assumptions in ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... injustice to Lufa! He did not reflect that he had done her the greatest injustice in helping her to believe that worthy which was not worthy, herself worshipful who was not worshipful. He told her that he finished her drama before going to bed, and was perfectly charmed with it. That it as much exceeded his expectations then as it had fallen below them since, he did ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... were of no account, he might have been coming, as he came five years ago, to hear her judgement on his neo-classic drama. Strange and great things had happened to his genius since that day. Between Helen in Leuce and the Nine and Twenty Sonnets there lay the newly discovered, heavenly countries ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... more than our share of them this season. I wish Mr. Pertell would swing to a good American drama again. Say, didn't we have fun at Rocky Ranch?" and as she asked this some of the weariness seemed to slip off Alice as a discarded garment is let fall. She sat up, her eyes flashing with fun, and her cheeks that had been pale were now ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... epochs; such a mixture of nationalities; so many and such violently contrasted atmospheres, that it is difficult to make it credible. The gold rush... the pioneers... the Vigilantes ... the Sand Lot days... San Francisco before the fire... the period of reconstruction. As for the drama lying submerged everywhere in the labor movement... the novelists have not even begun to mine below the surface. To the fiction-writer, the real, everyday life is so dramatic that the temptation is to substitute for invention the literal records ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... and something is escaping another creature. It is a constant drama of getting food and of seeking to escape being made food, evolving in the conflict structures fitted to accomplish both reactions. Everywhere the strong prey upon the weak, the swift upon the slow, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... closing scenes of the exciting drama. The king had triumphed, but not without encountering a spirited opposition from parliament, university, and clergy. If these had succumbed, it had only been before superior strength, and each of the bodies reserved to itself the right of treating the concordat as a nullity and the Pragmatic Sanction ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... high drama, and the sound of trumpets calling, and sometimes it is that. But I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning. The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds. And so today a chapter begins, a small and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... The serious drama and educational lectures are other favorite entertainments of the Cerebral. He cares little for vaudeville, girl-shows, or ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... This drama, sir, is beginning to open before us, and we begin to catch some idea of its magnitude. Appalled by the extent of it, and embarrassed by what they see before them and around them, the Senators who are themselves ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... importance, and both, like all the others named, were friends of Scott. Mr. Herford calls this period a day of "Specimens" and extracts: "Mediaeval romance was studied in Ellis's Specimens," he says, "the Elizabethan drama in Lamb's, literary history at large in D'Israeli's gently garrulous compilations of its 'quarrels,' 'amenities,' 'calamities,' and 'curiosities.'"[41] But the scholarship of the time on the whole is worthy of respect. In the case of ballads and romances notable work had been done before Scott ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... in the security of their collective strength and notorious deeds, the shadow of two men fell across the threshold of Peden's door. There the shadows lay through the brief moments of this little drama's enactment, immovable, as though cast by ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the mightiest events of the world have transpired, can never have for us the interest of that humble spot where the little drama of our own life will pass from act to act till ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... incandescence marked the passing of the hexan sphere into nothingness, and the cruiser shot back toward Callisto in search of more prey. It was all too plentiful, and twenty times the drama was reenacted before approaching day made it necessary for Czuv to take the controls and dive the vessel into the westermost landing-shaft of Zbardk. A rousing and enthusiastic welcome awaited them, and joy spread rapidly when their ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... he had been in command of the armies of Spain, that he had paused for repose in New York and had first learned of the Tessier inheritance. The precise manner of his discovery was left somewhat indefinite, but the Lapierres were not particular. So many distinguished persons had played a part in the drama that the recital left but a vague impression as to individuals. A certain Madame Luchia, widow of one Roquefailaire, whom he had accidentally met, had apparently been the instrument of Providence ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... tell me were utterly hollow; then perhaps Michael Rust might struggle on, like thousands of others, with some object in view, always to be striven for, but always receding as he advanced, or turning to ashes in his grasp. But it cannot be. I've played my part in the great drama of life, and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... that little drama. My poor article went into the fire; for whereas the materials for it were now more abundant and infinitely richer than they had previously been, there were parties all around me, who, although longing for the publication before, were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that awakening came which altered the whole course of her life. It was a summer's day Priscilla was seated in the old wainscoted parlor of the cottage, devouring a book lent to her by Mr. Hayes on the origin of the Greek drama and occasionally bending to kiss little Katie, who sat curled up in her arms, when the two elder children rushed in with the information that Aunt Raby had suddenly lain flat down in the hayfield, and they thought ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... twenty years ago, a clear and full and vivid recollection of the garden and the girl and the dog-cart. And then also there "had only been mamma for the girl." But oh, the relation the lassie who said those words bore to those past days, her place in the drama that filled them out! Little wonder her ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... avoided that trifling impediment? I tell you, it crossed his way as inevitably as all the long chain of Caucasus could have done. Yes, young man, in doing and suffering, we play but the part allotted by Destiny, the manager of this strange drama, stand bound to act no more than is prescribed, to say no more than is set down for us; and yet we mouth about free-will and freedom of thought and action, as if Richard must not die, or Richmond conquer, exactly where the Author has decreed it ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of an opportunity of presenting it in its proper mode by a performance in a theatre. The war has thrown me back on this expedient. Heartbreak House has not yet reached the stage. I have withheld it because the war has completely upset the economic conditions which formerly enabled serious drama to pay its way in London. The change is not in the theatres nor in the management of them, nor in the authors and actors, but in the audiences. For four years the London theatres were crowded every night with thousands of soldiers on leave from the front. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... frightened at the way she seems slated to become a lady cold cream magnate. They say she's scared pink for fear somebody will steal her recipes. She has a kid nephew who acts as general manager, and they're both on the job all the time. They say the lady herself looks like the spinster in a b'gosh drama. You can get a boy to ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber |
