"Burlesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had achieved was, in the first place, the creation of French Comedy. Before him, there had been boisterous farces, conventional comedies of intrigue borrowed from the Italian, and extravagant pieces of adventure and burlesque cast in the Spanish mould. Moliere did for the comic element in French literature what Corneille had done for the tragic: he raised it to the level of serious art. It was he who first completely discovered the aesthetic possibilities that lay in the ordinary life ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... money. Will So-and-so win the Derby? What a splendid run we had with the West Somerset on Wednesday! Were you in at the death of that big fox at Coulson's Corner? Ought the new vintages of Madeira to be bottled direct or sent round the Cape like the old ones? Capital burlesque at the Gaiety, but very slow at the Lyceum. Who will go to the Duchess of Dorsetshire's dance on the twentieth:—and so forth for ever. Their own petty round of selfish pleasures from week's end to week's end—no thought of anybody else, no thought of the world at large, no thought even of any higher ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... of Gordon surrendered the Castle of Edinburgh on June 13th, after a resistance which towards the end assumed the character almost of a burlesque. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... dared to have given vent to her real feelings at that time, she would have burst into a fit of laughter; it was too ludicrous. At the same time, the very burlesque reassured her still more. She went into the cabin with a heavy weight ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Walton, who is put forward as a substitute for argument on this question, and whose sole merits consisted in his having a taste for nature and his being a respectable citizen, the trumping him up into an authority and a kind of saint is a burlesque. He was a writer of conventionalities; who, having comfortably feathered his nest, as he thought, both in this world and in the world to come, concluded he had nothing more to do than to amuse himself by putting worms on a hook, and fish into his stomach, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... writer can be of no consequence to me—and I should imagine of very little to himself—that is to say if he knows himself, personally, as well as I have the honor of knowing him. The first misrepresentation is contained in this sentence:—'This letter is a keen burlesque on the Aristotelian or Baconian methods of ascertaining Truth, both of which the writer ridicules and despises, and pours forth his rhapsodical ecstasies in a glorification of the third mode—the noble art of guessing.' ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... to Indolence and Impudence; and they called my poems "agreeable light pieces," which was the very character I wished for. Had they said less, I should not have been satisfied; and had they said more, I should have thought it a burlesque. ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... professor Burman hath styled Tom Thumb "Heroum omnium tragicorum facile principem:" nay, though it hath, among other languages, been translated into Dutch, and celebrated with great applause at Amsterdam (where burlesque never came) by the title of Mynheer Vander Thumb, the burgomasters receiving it with that reverent and silent attention which becometh an audience at a deep tragedy. Notwithstanding all this, there have not been wanting some who have represented ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... pursued its spectacular course; Ione Burke, Polly Marshall, and Mrs. Vining were in the cast; tableau succeeded tableau; "I wish I were in Dixie," was sung, and the popular burlesque ended in the celebrated scene, "The Birth of the Butterfly in the Bower of Ferns," with the entire company kissing their finger-tips to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... started up and would have got the head into his own hands, "for it is my due," said he, "and no man's else." The king was greatly pleased, and gave presents, according to the custom of the Parthians, to them, and to Jason, the actor, a talent. Such was the burlesque that was played, they tell us, as the afterpiece to the tragedy of Crassus's expedition. But divine justice failed not to punish both Hyrodes, for his cruelty, and Surena for his perjury; for Surena not long after ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... is the next scene that the author seems to have reserved for putting forth his strongest powers of burlesque and broad humour. Isabella and Castaldo are together; the latter feels a little afraid to murder Martinuzzi, but is impelled to the deed by a thousand imaginary torches, which he fears will hurry his "moth-like soul" into their "blinding sun-beams," till ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... and incident are attractively arranged, the expression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. There are traces of Dickens' burlesque without his sympathy, and the high colouring of Lytton with less than Lytton's wit. Disraeli's satire, too, is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose experiences in England were to have formed the main purpose of the book, is allowed no opportunity to show the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... Alone". 'Foote's' was the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, where, in February, 1773, he brought out what he described as a 'Primitive Puppet Show,' based upon the Italian Fantoccini, and presenting a burlesque sentimental Comedy called 'The Handsome Housemaid; or, Piety in Pattens', which did as much as 'She Stoops' to laugh false sentiment away. Foote warned his audience that they would not discover 'much wit or humour' in the piece, since 'his brother writers had all agreed that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... entertainments by the "Y" and their own efforts to battle ennui with minstrel show and burlesque and dances have already been mentioned. The great high Gorka built by the American engineers in the heart of the city afforded a half-verst slide, a rush of clinging men and women as their toboggan ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the bounds of moderation. Many were intoxicated; guests and attendants mingled together without distinction, the serious and the ludicrous; drunken fancies and affairs of state were blended one with another in a burlesque medley; and the discussions on the general distress of the country ended in the wild uproar of a bacchanalian revel. But it did not stop here; what they had resolved on in the moment of intoxication, they attempted when sober to carry into execution. It was necessary to manifest to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... had been inscribed by Pope to Lord Bolingbroke, so was the parody by Wilkes to Lord Sandwich; thus it began, "Awake my Sandwich!" instead of "Awake my St. John!" Thus also, in ridicule of Warburton's well-known commentary, some burlesque notes were appended in the name of the Right Reverend ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... ridiculous: it differs in its characters by introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently, of inferior manners, whereas the grave romance sets the highest before us: lastly, in its sentiments and diction; by preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime. In the diction, I think, burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of which many instances will occur in this work, as in the description of the battles, and some other places, not necessary to be pointed out to the classical reader, for ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... any chance have dreamed of that stately honor. His ambitions did not lie in the direction of mental achievement. It is true that now and then, on Friday at school, he read a composition, one of which—a personal burlesque on certain older boys—came near resulting in bodily damage. But any literary ambition he may have had in those days was a fleeting thing. His permanent dream was to be a pirate, or a pilot, or a bandit, or a trapper-scout; ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 'the Boz' with a delectable clatter, which drew from him a good warm-hearted speech. . . . He looked very well, and had a younger brother along with him. . . . Then we had songs. Barham chanted a Robin Hood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord H——; and somebody, unknown to me, gave a capital imitation of a French showman. Then we toasted Mrs. Boz, and the Chairman, and Vice, and the Traditional Priest sang the 'Deep deep sea,' in his deep deep voice; and then we drank to Procter, who wrote the said ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... loud and disreputable "pal" with large checks and a billy-cock hat. Portia was attired as a barrister in wig and gown and Nerissa as a clerk with a green bag and a pen behind his ear. This being much appreciated, Your Humble Servant questions what portion of the Bard of Avon he shall next burlesque. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of a woman's coquettish humor; he knew still less of that mimic stage from which her present voice, gesture, and expression were borrowed; he had no knowledge of the burlesque emotions which that voice, gesture, and expression were supposed to portray, and finally and fatally he was unable to detect the feminine hysteric jar and discord that underlay it all. He thought it was strong, characteristic, and real, and ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... who had just addressed him with much curiosity. He was dressed in the height or rather the burlesque of fashion, wore an eyeglass, and an enormous locket on his chain. The face which surmounted all this grandeur was almost that of a monkey, and Toto Chupin had not exaggerated its ugliness when he ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... They sometimes not only forgot what they had seen, but what they had said; and when to one of them his own testimony to the privy council was read, he mistook it for that of another, whose evidence he declared to be "the merest burlesque ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... people of fashion; nor do they, in using the pronoun thou, or their improper nominative thee, ordinarily inflect with st or est the preterits or the auxiliaries of the accompanying verbs, as is done in the solemn style. Indeed, to use the solemn style familiarly, would be, to turn it into burlesque; as when Peter Pindar "telleth what he troweth." [213] And let those who think with Murray, that our present version of the Scriptures is the best standard of English grammar,[214] remember that in it they have no warrant for substituting s or es for the old termination eth, any more than ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... The burlesque vigour of his illustrations sometimes ran to anti-climax. One day, he talked of something (if I recollect right, the electric telegraph), moving with the rapidity of a flash of lightning, with a pair ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... rather dull imitation. On the whole, I agree with Mr. Arnold that parody is a vile art; but the dictum is a little too sweeping. A parody of anything really good, whether in prose or verse, is as odious as a burlesque of Hamlet; but, on the other hand, parody is the appropriate punishment for certain kinds of literary affectation. There are, and always have been, some styles of poetry and of prose which no one endowed with an ear for rhythm ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a clever burlesque of the casket scene in which Gratiano played Portia's part, Shylock was Nerissa, Gobbo Bassanio, and Jessica the Prince of Morocco. Next Alice called for the Gobbos and Portia and the Prince of Morocco "stood forth" and went through a solemn travesty of the scene ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... to the martial appearance of this six-foot mystery, with eyes of jet and Italian fervor. The amplitude of his pleated trousers, which allowed only the tips of his boots to be seen, revealed his faithfulness to the fashions of his own land. There was something really burlesque to a romantic woman in the striking contrast no one could fail to remark between the captain and the count, the little Pole with his pinched face and ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... with the most delightful tenderness. This spectacle grated against our sensibilities: it seemed to us that he who first invented this parody upon one of the most touching incidents in nature must have been a man without a heart. A somewhat burlesque circumstance occurred one day, to modify the indignation with which this treachery inspired us. By dint of caressing and licking her little calf, the tender parent one fine morning unripped it: the hay issued from within; and the cow, manifesting not the slightest ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... against heedless imitation of Sterne, representing chiefly the perils of such endeavor and the bathos of the failure. Wieland includes in the letter some "specimen passages from a novel in the style of Tristram Shandy," which he asserts were sent him by the author. The quotations are almost flat burlesque in their impossible idiocy, and one can easily appreciate Wieland's despairing cry ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... you that owing to the indisposition of the young lady, Miss Beatrice Franklin and her father are unable to appear to-night. I have pleasure in announcing an extra turn, namely the Sisters De Vere in their wonderful burlesque act." ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the closing year; and with the exception of the various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President pro tempore; of the noctes ambrosianae of the secret societies; of appointments, prize essays, and the periodical issue of the Yale Literary, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the wind-up spends most of his time running around in circles because the beautiful flower of the rancho gives him the bad eye?" He twisted sidewise in the saddle, took a half-hitch with the reins around the saddle-horn, and proceeded to manufacture a cigarette while he went on with the burlesque. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... and, like the golden ornaments of a fair woman, give it a peculiar air of distinction. There is merriment in it also, with choice illustrations of both wit and humour; a laughter, often exquisite, ringing, if faintly, yet as genuine laughter still, though sometimes sinking into mere burlesque, which has not lasted quite so well. And Shakespeare [162] brings a serious effect out of the trifling of his characters. A dainty love-making is interchanged with the more cumbrous play: below the many artifices of Biron's amorous speeches we may trace sometimes the "unutterable ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... before the affinity of that clean-limbed, shining figure and his small soul was recognized. But he carried his point at last. The Mercury became his inseparable darling, his symbol, his private god, the one dignified and serious thing in a little life much congested by the quaint, the burlesque, and all the smiling, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... in the crowded house. The ruffling of the face of the sea before a storm. The Sisters Sigsbee, Coon Delineators and Unrivalled Burlesque Artists, have finished their dance, smiled, blown kisses, skipped off, skipped on again, smiled, blown more kisses, and disappeared. A long chord from the orchestra. A chord that is almost a wail. A wail of ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... life! what a life! All my work! I seem to have done it all. So you're the red-haired boy that hit me in the waistcoat. What have I done? God, what have I done? I thought I would have a joke, and I have created a passion. I tried to compose a burlesque, and it seems to be turning halfway through into an epic. What is to be done with such a world? In the Lord's name, wasn't the joke broad and bold enough? I abandoned my subtle humour to amuse you, and I seem to have brought tears to your eyes. What's to be done with people when you write a ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... are, child! What a silly you were not to come! How's your headache?... I do wish your father would have those stairs altered. It's like the ascent of Mount Parnassus." Buckstone was presenting a burlesque of that name just then, and her ladyship may have had ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... machines, as patronised by the nobility (either sex) when travelling"; another of "Mrs. Rodd's anatomical ladies' stays (which ensure the wearer a figure of astonishing symmetry";) and another of a "Brilliant burlesque ballad, 'Get along, Rosey,' sung with the most positive triumph every ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Utterly impos. Amateurish to the limit. Dialogue sounds like burlesque of Laura Jean ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... exactly what we see in Lothair. It is airy, fantastic, pure, graceful, and extravagant. The whole thing goes to bright music, like a comic opera of Gilbert and Sullivan. There is life and movement; but it is a scenic and burlesque life. There is wit, criticism, and caricature;, but it does not cut deep, and it is neither hot nor fierce. There is some pleasant tom-foolery; but at a comic opera we enjoy this graceful nonsense. We see in every page the trace of a powerful mind; but it is a mind laughing at its own creatures, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... it is exactly the wit in it. The wit is often entirely superficial—a mere tricky playing with light resemblances and wordy jingles. I do not feel as though it were the humour in it; for Byron is not really a humorist at all. I think it is something deeper than the mere juxtaposition of burlesque-show jests with Sunday-evening sentimentality. I think it is the downright lashing out, left and right, up and down, of a powerful reckless spirit able "to lash out" for the mere pleasure of doing so. I think it is the pleasure we get from the spectacle of mere splendid energy ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... about the sailor and his Portsmouth Poll, it all at once came to my mind that no Portsmouth Poll would ever wait for me. Did you ever hear anything so ridiculously absurd—such a bit of maudlin nonsense. I laughed at myself afterwards. It gave me a good, idea, though. I'll compose a burlesque, and the ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... starts the heroic agility of his tongue, and he writes a long letter without a full stop, which is as full of substance as one of his essays. His technique is so incredibly fine, he is such a Paganini of prose, that he can invent and reverse an idea of pyramidal wit, as in this burlesque of a singer: 'The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that the time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... And then followed a burlesque narrative of how this gentleman had almost been married two days before. There was not a word about the marriage, however, but the story was adorned with generals, colonels and kammer-junkers, while Zverkov almost took the lead among them. It was greeted with approving ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... pleasure to her. She especially enjoyed overcoming the difficulties of interpreting aright my clumsy, circumlocutory phrases in attempting to describe shawls, gowns, and bonnets; and taught me the exact millinery language which I ought to have made use of with an arch expression of triumph and a burlesque earnestness of manner, that always enchanted me. At that time, every word she uttered, no matter how frivolous, was the sweetest of all music to my ears. It was only by the stern test of after-events that I learnt to analyse her conversation. Sometimes, when I was away from her, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Burlesque, that is comic imitation, comprises parody and caricature. The latter is a valuable addition to humorous narrative, as we see in the sketches of Gillray, Cruikshank and others. By itself it is not sufficiently suggestive and affords no story or ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... expressly for the sake of the opportunities it afforded of bright, amusing dialogue, pleasing lyrical interludes, and charming displays of brilliant stage effects and pretty dresses. Unlike other plays of the same Author, there is here apparently no serious political MOTIF underlying the surface burlesque ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... the fiercest or tenderest passions of the heart: witness the devoted love of Thekla for Max in Wallenstein; or the furious jealousy of the Queen in Don Carlos. He has not the grotesque of Shakspeare; we do not see in his tragedies that mixture of the burlesque and the sublime which is so common in the Bard of Avon, and is not infrequent with the greatest minds, who play, as it were, with the thunderbolts, and love to show how they can master them. Hence, in reading at least, his dramas produce a more uniform and unbroken impression ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... a sort of burlesque "fashionable" lounge suit and wore a straw hat set rakishly backward on his well-oiled dark hair. He carried gloves and a malacca cane, and his gait was one of assured superiority. He was a stoutly-built, muscular young ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... he writes, "we do not occupy the territory, and cannot give foreigners the necessary protection, because Mataafa and his people can at any moment forcibly interrupt me in my jurisdiction." Yet in the eyes of Anglo-Saxons the severity of his code appeared burlesque. I give but three of its provisions. The crime of inciting German troops "by any means, as, for instance, informing them of proclamations by the enemy," was punishable with death; that of "publishing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were, or imagined themselves to be, caricatured in it. Constable, the "Crafty," and Pringle and Cleghorn, editors of the Edinburgh Magazine, as well as Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, came in for their share of burlesque description. ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... early escapade is perhaps to be connected what seems to have been one of Fielding's earliest literary efforts. This is a modernisation in burlesque octosyllabic verse of part of Juvenal's sixth satire. In the "Preface" to the later published Miscellanies, it is said to have been "originally sketched out before he was Twenty," and to have constituted "all the Revenge taken ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... called a trilogy, together with what was called a satyric play. This last might be related to the tragedies or be quite independent, as they usually were in Sophocles and Euripides. The satyric play was named from the satyrs or attendants upon Bacchus, and was a farce or burlesque intended to relieve the feelings of the spectators after the tragedies. The 'Alcestis' was entered by Euripides as a satyric play, but it only in parts approaches the characteristics of such a play. In other parts it has the dignity and beauty of a tragedy. ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... governor; Don Guillermo sent a messenger after him and bribed him, too; and thus, at length, after myriad rebuffs, and after being obliged to spend the last evening at a puppet-show, in which the principal figure was a burlesque on his own personal peculiarities, the weary Don Guillermo, with his crew of renegadoes, and his forty chasseurs and their one hundred and four muzzled dogs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... she was wrong, and yet We spoke in accents low, For life with perils is beset, And friends oft quickly go. But she was right; he'd gone in debt To "back" a burlesque show. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... system, in full operation. Men live there, year in year out, to cut timber for a nominal wage, which is all consumed in supplies. The longer they remain in this desirable service the deeper they will fall in debt - a burlesque injustice in a new country, where labour should be precious, and one of those typical instances which explains the prevailing discontent and the success of the ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gayety, nor thought of the pathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery, and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the melancholy mirth of this light-hearted race's burlesque of itself. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a neighbour's door, as a nuptial serenade on the occasion of some unsuitable marriage; when the clamour of horns and kettles, marrow-bones and cleavers, saluted the mother's ears, accompanied by thirty burlesque verses, the composition of the father of the child who had just ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... a court of justice usually cured them. The indifferent, business-like manner in which the oaths are put, the sing-song tone of voice, the rapid utterance of the words, give to this solemn act an appearance of excellent burlesque, which ultimately renders the whole proceedings remarkable for the absence of truth and reality; but, at the same time, gives them unquestionable merit as a dramatic representation, abounding with fiction, well related and ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... more scientific music [9],—gradually, in Attica, it gave way before the familiar and fantastic humours of the satyrs, sometimes abridged to afford greater scope to their exhibitions—sometimes contracting the contagion of their burlesque. Still, however, the reader will observe, that the tragedy, or goatsong, consisted of two parts—first, the exhibition of the mummers, and, secondly, the dithyrambic chorus, moving in a circle round the altar of Bacchus. It appears on the whole most ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... imitating Shakespeare. If we assume that he was presenting his story as he presented the dialogue in "A Psalm of Montreal" in a form "perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of the one and a little of the other," it would be quite in the manner of the author of The Fair Haven to burlesque the methods of the critics by ignoring the sincerity of the emotions and fixing on the little bit of inaccuracy in the facts. We may suppose him to be saying out loud to the critics: "You think Shakespeare's Sonnets ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... word, and a silly performance it was! But she would keep it, at least until Lady Hamilton released her from her promise. Patty's ideas of honour were, perhaps, a little strained, but she took the promise of that burlesque document as seriously as if it had been of national importance. And now she was in a dilemma. To refuse to walk with the Earl was so rude, and yet to talk with him was to ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... aprons, went to the hydrant and washed their hands, then put on their coats and went home in silence and shamefacedness, amid the angry remonstrances of the master-builder. A little farther on Farnham saw what seemed like a burlesque of the last performance. Several men were at work in a hole in the street; the tops of their heads were just visible above the surface. A half-grown, ruffianly boy, with a boot-black's box slung over his shoulder, came up and shouted, "You —— —— rats, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... allusion. Nearly all of his most popular novels—and this was one of the main reasons for their phenomenal popularity—were thinly veiled representations of Disraeli's own contemporaries, who were easily recognizable by the reading public. Take, for instance, the admirable burlesque entitled Ixion in Heaven, where the author tells how Ixion, king of Thessaly, having fallen into disrepute on earth, was taken up into heaven by Jupiter and feasted by the gods. Here Jupiter is really George the Fourth and Apollo is the poet Byron. The latter's pose of gloomy ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Two Noble Kinsmen" there is a "distinct imitation of the circumstances of Ophelia's madness and death in Hamlet." In "The Woman Hater," assigned conjecturally to 1605 or 1606 by Professor Thorndike, there are "several burlesque imitations of Hamlet." ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... naturalness and ease of our author's writings, is to be found in the ready appreciation of them by all classes of readers. Whether the vein be a serious one, or the theme turn upon the humorous or the burlesque, it is not too much, we think, to say that the writer takes always with him the heart or the fancy of the reader. Without however pausing to characterize productions which bid fair to become very widely and favorably ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... room, a man in a broad-skirted green coat, with corduroy knee-smalls and gray cotton stockings, was performing the most popular steps of a hornpipe, with a slang and burlesque caricature of grace and lightness, which, combined with the very appropriate character of his costume, was inexpressibly absurd. Another man, evidently very drunk, who had probably been tumbled into bed by his companions, was sitting up between the sheets, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... in wait for charity, murmured a modulated appeal; if you heard shouts or yells afar off they died upon your ear in a strain of melody at the moment when they were lifted highest. I am aware of seeming to burlesque the operatic fact which every one must have noticed in Naples; and I will not say that the neglected or affronted babe, or the trodden dog, is as tuneful as the midnight cat there, but only that they approach it in the prevailing tendency of all the local discords to soften and lose ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... evils, and ardently desirous of averting them from their country, cannot without laughter mention the bill which they oppose, or enumerate the consequences which they dread from it, in any other language than that of irony and burlesque. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... into his canvas has any foundation in fact. He adopts the theory that there really was a tower of Babel, and all the rest he founds on conjecture." In point of fact, the anachronisms are numerous enough to make the text almost a burlesque. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, is made the chief builder of the tower, which is supposed to be in process of erection as an insult to the Deity. Abraham appears upon the scene (many years before he was born), and rebukes ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... from Clemens to the Overland Monthly—notably 'By Rail through France' (later incorporated in The Innocents Abroad)—because of their perfect gravity. At last, 'A Mediaeval Romance'—a story which has been said to contain the germ of 'A Connecticut Yankee', because of its burlesque of mediaevalism—won the enthusiastic approval ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... the scurry of pattering feet had both ceased. The sounds of the night were now more soothing, more harmoniously blended. The earliest arrivals of the theatre crowd were besieging the sidewalk ticket office of the burlesque house opposite. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... here is a kind of good old-fashioned burlesque Friar, more like that one some years ago at the Gaiety, in Little Robin Hood than the Friar in Ivanhoe. But I should say that this Friar would be uncommonly thankful to have got anything like the song that Sir ARTHUR has given his Friar ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... a rather more sentimental vein, was a good deal scandalised, and put out by the general's reciting with jolly emphasis, and calling thereto his daughter's special attention, his receipt for 'surprising a weaver,' which he embellished with two or three burlesque improvements of his own, which Puddock, amidst his blushes and confusion, allowed to pass without a protest. Aunt Rebecca was the only person present who pointedly refused to laugh; and with a slight shudder and momentary elevation of her eyes, said, 'wicked and unnatural cruelty!' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... coloring drop of romance, for, as he himself would have said, he was diablement epris with Lucy. This was regarded as one of the best of Zavier's jokes. He himself laughed at it, and his extravagant compliments and gallantries were well within the pale of the burlesque. Lucy laughed at them, too. The only one that took the matter seriously was Bella. She was ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... such a word as fortitude that Mrs. Eddy's book takes on its most discouraging aspect. Her foolish logic, her ignorance of the human body, the liberties which she takes with the Bible, and her burlesque exegesis, could easily be overlooked if there were any nobility of feeling to be found in "Science and Health"; any great-hearted pity for suffering, any humility or self-forgetfulness before the mysteries of life. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... scribbling when not at the wheel," said Bixby, "but the best thing he ever did was the burlesque of old Isaiah Sellers. He didn't write it for print, but only for his own amusement and to show to a few of the boys. Bart Bowen, who was with him on the "Edward J. Gay" at the time, got hold of it, and gave it to one of the New ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... backing away, around the room, and she pursued me at arm's length, her long graceful legs dramatically striding, making of her pursuit a humorous burlesque, yet I knew she was quite serious about it. If little Nokomee had not warned me against her, I might have succumbed then and there, for, as she said—"What good is a tomorrow that may never ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... was pushed far back on his head, and the sun fell full on his face. Even at this distance, the resemblance to his sister was so marked as to be almost comical. The eyes were the same. The nose, with its unmistakable upward turn, a burlesque on the short, straight one which lent piquancy to Winifred's face. The soft, subtle curve of her cheek developed in Jimmy to a hardened rotundity inevitably suggesting the desire to pinch it, which one feels toward the tomato pin-cushions ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... concludes it as follows: "Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet mentioned ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... could not prevent him from taking up theatricals, but they made him take theatricals seriously. All his plays were indeed "plays for Puritans." All his criticisms quiver with a refined and almost tortured contempt for the indulgencies of ballet and burlesque, for the tights and the double entente. He can endure lawlessness but not levity. He is not repelled by the divorces and the adulteries as he is by the "splits." And he has always been foremost among the fierce modern critics who ask indignantly, "Why do you object ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... burlesque, humor, playfulness, waggishness, drollery, jest, pleasantry, witticism. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... partially disturbed. I'll bet my bottom dollar that their Royal Highnesses are now adorning the parlour." (Sinking his voice.) "It's a very fair weather-cock, sir; we are not a hundred miles from a pretty strong commando. It must be under some influential leader, or we shouldn't have this little burlesque." ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... which I was dismissed. I soon found that my exploit had placed me upon quite a different footing in the ship from that which I had occupied before. The men treated me with real respect, instead of the good-humoured burlesque thereof which they had accorded me hitherto; and my fellow-mids at once received me into the berth upon a footing of perfect equality with themselves, each one striving to do me some little kindness or show me some little attention, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... No. 11 will be commenced a new burlesque serial, "The Mystery of Mister E. Drood," written expressly for this paper by the celebrated ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... natural turn for comic burlesque, which comes out so plainly in his drawings, had become ingrained and inveterate by early practice, and certainly his immoderate delight in setting snobs and flunkeys on a pillory became a flaw in the perfection of his higher composition. It might well produce, among foreigners at any rate, an unreal ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Critic," the scene a burlesque rehearsal of an old-time melodrama. Our opportunities were great, and Heaven knows we missed none of them. New York audiences are quick, and in less than three minutes they knew the actors had taken the bit between ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the veriest embryonic reader of Horace, if he will but remember that, while some of these transcriptions are indeed very faithful reproductions or adaptations of the original, others again are to be accepted as the very riot of burlesque verse-making. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... it a club of the lowest species. Here, in advance, we contemplate the ways of the future revolutionary inquisition. They welcome burlesque denunciations; enter into petty police investigations; weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the gossip of servant-girls; devote an all-night session to the secrets of a drunkard.[2218] They enter on their official report and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... move before the observer in a large city; but he has not enough of the vision and the faculty divine, to make them more than melancholy ghosts of what they profess to be. The attempts at humor are inexpressibly dismal; the burlesque overpowers the most determined reader, by its leaden dulness. The style is ingeniously tasteless and feeble. He who has read it through can do or dare any thing. Mr. MATHEWS suffers from several erroneous opinions. He seems to think that literary elegance consists in the very ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... an excellent pantomimist; 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 it as much as an honest Quaker dared to) said to Mrs. Thaxter, "Celia, thou knowest I have never been to the theatre, but I think at last the theatre has come to ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... burlesque upon legislative proceedings, we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... such means occurred to his mind and were used up. Examined closely and without prepossession, Wagner's life, to recall one of Schopenhauer's expressions, might be said to consist largely of comedy, not to mention burlesque. And what the artist's feelings must have been, conscious as he was, during whole periods of his life, of this undignified element in it,—he who more than any one else, perhaps, breathed freely only in sublime and more than sublime spheres,— ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... not have thought either that Marbodius, or even Virgil, could have known the Etruscan tombs of Chiusi and Corneto, where, in fact, there are horrible and burlesque devils closely resembling those of Orcagna. Nevertheless, the authenticity of the "Descent of Marbodius into Hell" is indisputable. M. du Clos des Lunes has firmly established it. To doubt it would be to doubt ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... singular English burlesque of the unprofitable sermons of the preaching friars in the Middle Ages, which is worthy of Rabelais himself, and of which this is a ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... little laugh. It sounded to her as if her own ghost—the ghost of her former self—were laughing in satire. There was a devilish, mischievous joy in battling to outwit Bouchard more than in her deceit of Westerling. Satire, yes—needle-pointed, acid-tipped! Melodrama done in burlesque, too. In the name of the noble art of war, a bit of fooling about ghosts in a tunnel might influence the fate of armies that were the last word in modern equipment. And men played at killing with a grand front of martial dignity, when such ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... I not been able at times to understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal—a degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... you forget yourself in your eternal daubs!" exclaimed M. Leminof, reseating himself. "You know that I dislike to wait. I profess, it is true, a passionate admiration for the burlesque masterpieces with which you are decorating the walls of my chapel; but I cannot suffer them to annoy me, and I beg you not to sacrifice again the respect you owe me to your foolish passion for those coarse paintings; if you do, I shall some fine morning bury your sublime ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... [Footnote: The heavy taxes laid to meet the expenses of the wars created great discontent, which during the struggle with Spain led to a series of conspiracies or revolts against the government, known as the Wars of the Fronde (1648-1652). "Notwithstanding its peculiar character of levity and burlesque, the Fronde must be regarded as a memorable struggle of the aristocracy, supported by the judicial and municipal bodies, to control the despotism of the crown.... It failed;... nor was any farther effort ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... for investigation? Has not each thoroughfare its distinctive feature—its saintly, heathenish, courtly, national, heroic, perhaps burlesque, name? Its peculiar origin? traceable sometimes to a dim—a forgotten past; sometimes to the utilitarian present time. What curious vistas are unfolded in the birth of its edifices—public and private—alive with the memories of their clerical, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... my search and my hands trembled. In what burlesque comedy is there a jealous lover so stupid as to inquire what has become of a cup? Why seek to discover whether Smith and Madame Pierson had drunk from the same cup? What a ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... pulled the curtain of the box between him and the audience. But he was not so easily to escape. Leaving the orchestra to continue unheeded with the prelude to the next verse, Miss Winter walked slowly and deliberately toward him, smiling mischievously. In burlesque entreaty, she held out her arms. She made a most appealing and charming picture, and of that fact she was well aware. In a voice loud enough to reach every part of the house, she ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... right. One way or the other. Either go back to the old life or start a new one. What we are living now is a horrible burlesque." ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... unconsciously they put it in practice. They have by heart their chapters—Love-Taste, Love-Passion, Love-Caprice, Love-Crystalized, and more than all, Love-Transient. All is good in their eyes. They invented the burlesque axiom, 'In the sight of man, all women are equal.' The actual text is more vigorously worded, but as in my opinion the spirit is false, I do not stand ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... foolishness of the old life. The ludicrous side of human wealth and importance turned itself upon me, a shining novelty, poured down upon me like the sunrise, and engulfed me in laughter. Swindells! Swindells, damned! My vision of Judgment became a delightful burlesque. I saw the chuckling Angel sayer with his face veiled, and the corporeal presence of Swindells upheld amidst the laughter of the spheres. "Here's a thing, and a very pretty thing, and what's to be done with this very pretty thing?" I saw a soul ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... unlucky dexterity, mixes the grand and the burlesque together; the violation of faith, sir, says Cassius, lies at the door of the Rhodians by reite-rated acts of perfidy.—The iron grate fell down, crushed those under it to death, and catched the rest as in a trap.—When ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... into an abode of drunkenness and grossness; they defaced the sacred trees and the grey walls with inscriptions which the indignation of a purer age has caused to be removed; they carried on nightly revels which no historian could describe, and in their wicked buffoonery mocked the Creator with burlesque religious rites. Such an unholy place would be pulled down by the mob nowadays, and the gang of debauchees would figure in the police-court; but in those "good old times" the Prime Minister and the Secretary ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... inconsistent with her evident habits, and the lace-edged petticoat that peeped beneath it was draggled with mud and unaccustomed usage. Her glossy black hair, which had been tossed into curls in some foreign fashion, was now wind-blown into a burlesque of it. This incongruity was still further accented by the appearance of the room she had entered. It was coldly and severely furnished, making the chill of the yet damp white plaster unpleasantly obvious. A black harmonium organ stood in one corner, set out with black and white hymn-books; ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... McChesney, hatted and veiled by 5:45, saw the curtains of the berth opposite rent asunder to disclose the rumpled, shapeless figure of Miss Blanche LeHaye. The queen of burlesque bore in her arms a conglomerate mass of shoes, corset, purple skirt, bag and green-plumed hat. She paused to stare at Emma McChesney's ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... Heaven, why was one man a nobleman and rich, while another had no money in his purse and but one change to his back? Was not love all in all, and why did Cydaria laugh at a truth so manifest? There she was under the beech tree, with her sweet face screwed up to a burlesque of grief, her little hand lying on her hard heart as though it beat for me, and her eyes the playground of a thousand quick expressions. I strode up to her, and caught her by the hand, saying no more than just ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... could scarcely be imagined than that which was now afforded by these two races, the phlegmatic, plodding German and the vibrant Irish, a contrast in American life as a whole which was soon represented in miniature on the vaudeville stage by popular burlesque representations of both types. The one was the opposite of the other in temperament, in habits, in personal ambitions. The German sought the land, was content to be let alone, had no desire to command others or to mix with them, but was determined to ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... impossible the rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth—one verse is better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so not having time to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... early and riper years; but it was not his intention in these few lines to give a serious imitation of him. All that he attempted was to show how exactly he could apply the language and manner of Spenser to low and burlesque subjects; and in this he has completely succeeded. To compare these lines, as Dr Warton has done, with those more extensive and highly-finished productions, the Castle of Indolence by Thomson, and the Minstrel by Beattie, is manifestly unjust"—and stupidly absurd. What ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... class-room, not too soon. One of the young scamps had taken his chair, and was delivering a burlesque lecture, near enough to the head-master's style to excite irreverent laughter. They listened for his step upon the stair, however, and when he entered the room they might have been taken for a synod discussing a Revised Edition ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... took all I gave and even seemed to hang on for a little more. He sat quietly to one side for a while, and I tried not to act the bull of Bashan again. Anyhow, he didn't start a second time. Presently he pulled out rather unceremoniously: the two young business-men had begun a sort of burlesque fandango, and their feet were pretty noisy on the bare floor. He started off after looking toward the piano and then toward me; and Mrs. Phillips glanced about as if to hint that any display of surprise or of indulgence would be misplaced. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... of writing very peculiar, procured to himself the name of Namby Pamby. This was first bestowed on him by Harry Cary, who burlesqued some little pieces of his, in so humorous a manner, that for a long while, Harry's burlesque, passed for Swift's with many; and by others were given to Pope: 'Tis certain, each at first, took it for ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... the error to him: he replied, "I fear the sea must remain at Nazareth: you know an old painter would have made no bones if he wanted it for his background." I cannot say whether Collinson, if put to it, would have pleaded the like arbitrary and almost burlesque excuse: at any rate he made the blunder, and in a much more detailed shape than in Rossetti's lyric. "The Child Jesus" is, I think, the poem of any importance that he ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... the latest resultant of the two forces of ennui and dissipation acting on a Society that is willing to spend money and desires to kill time. She has played many parts, some (of infinitesimal proportions), on the burlesque stage, others in the semi-private life of her own residence in the South-west district of London. Her versatility has gained for her many admirers and a precarious income, but so long as she possesses the former she scorns to live upon the latter. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... which no one had yet gazed upon except her husband and maids. Of course Katenka sided with her mother and, in general, there became established between Avdotia and ourselves, from the day of her arrival, the most extraordinary and burlesque order of relations. As soon as she stepped from the carriage, Woloda assumed an air of great seriousness and ceremony, and, advancing towards her with much bowing and scraping, said in the tone of one who is presenting something ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... imposts, and putting ourselves in a posture of defence," the American Minister informed his Government, could make an impression on England. National action along any of these lines was impossible, because each State had control of its own commerce. Individual retaliation was a burlesque. Virginia at one time placed a tonnage duty on British vessels four times that charged French and Dutch traders with whom the United States had treaty arrangements. British vessels simply avoided Virginia ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... hypocrisy of the Puritans as the Cavaliers insisted on seeing them in the person of the absurd Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralph (partly suggested by Cervantes' Don Quixote and Sancho). These sorry figures are made to pass very unheroically through a series of burlesque adventures. The chief power of the production lies in its fire of witty epigrams, many of which have become ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... piece of burlesque as Swift might have written: but many circumstances lead me to think it must be much older. Has it ever ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... consign such persons to everlasting suffering. Not only would the good in them be speedily extinguished but the evil would be intensified beyond all calculation. And I think such effects are reckoned upon, and expected, by the advocates of eternal torment. What a burlesque that seems to be on the beneficent purpose of God. Far easier is it to believe that a state of education and discipline is ordained, whereby the good that God Himself has created will be conserved ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... its subjects are sublime, its writer's genius should be so too; otherwise it becomes the meanest thing in writing, viz. an involuntary burlesque. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... children, but you can't bring in a Bill for reforming us. You can't make us go by decimals. You can't increase our consumption by lowering our taxation. I wish you had gone back to some Board." This she said looking up into his face with an anxiety which was half real and half burlesque. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... physician, Dr. Constantin James. In his work, On Darwinism, or the Man-Ape, published at Paris in 1877, Dr. James not only refuted Darwin scientifically but poured contempt on his book, calling it "a fairy tale," and insisted that a work "so fantastic and so burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge joke, like Erasmus's Praise of Folly, or Montesquieu's Persian Letters. The princes of the Church were delighted. The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris assured the author that the book ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... he listened patiently (by the help of the Princess Goritza) to the many dull people who related to him the petty miseries of provincial life,—an egg ill-boiled for breakfast, coffee with feathered cream, burlesque details about health, disturbed sleep, dreams, visits. The chevalier could call up a languishing look, he could take on a classic attitude to feign compassion, which made him a most valuable listener; he could put in an "Ah!" and a "Bah!" ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... Arnold must have read Franklin's piece hastily, since he has mistaken a bit of ironic trifling for a serious attempt to rewrite the Scriptures. The Proposed New Version of the Bible is merely a bit of amusing burlesque in which six verses of the Book of Job are rewritten in the style of modern politics. According to Mr. William Temple Franklin the Bagatelles, of which the Proposed New Version is a part, were "chiefly written by Dr. Franklin for the amusement of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... burlesque upon religion, a caricature of all things holy, divine, and beautiful, and an outrage upon the common sense and culture of the community. A collection of comic churchyard poetry might be made in this place ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... wedding-ring), and follow him whither he listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal presents being ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had been quite as ardent in politics during the burlesque activity of the Fronde as Madame de Longueville; and although, perhaps, equally beautiful, happily she was entirely devoted to her domestic duties. Her husband on taking flight had been constrained to leave her behind in Paris, she being near her accouchement, which circumstance however did not prevent ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies |
