"Dramatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burning building," he continued, undaunted. "It certainly was dramatic, Allen, old chap—we have ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... blackguard. By referring to the ethic inspiring the actor we can always pronounce some conduct to be fine and other acts base. It is this power of a fine or noble action to thrill the human heart that makes the triumphs of dramatic art possible. The dramatists, like Shakespeare, whose characters accept the current moral code, appeal to a wide audience—to nearly all. But those dramatists, such as Ibsen, Shaw, Maeterlinck, and above all, Sudermann, whose heroes and heroines attempt ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... meant. Tragedy? Well! passons! Their heavy, large-boned actresses might manage one or two big scenes where a commanding presence and a powerful voice would not come amiss, and where prominent teeth would pass unnoticed in the agony of a dramatic climax. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... "the speakers of primitive Aryan may have been (themselves) a mixture of two or more races, just as are the speakers of English or of French at the present time"; and archaeology takes us no further back than into the Neolithic or Second Stone Age, when the poetry of the human voice gave a dramatic value to the hitherto primitive sign-language limitation of the Old Drift-men. At this age, the Neolithic, arithmetical questions arising in the course of life would necessarily assume a vocal value instead of a digital one. No longer would fifteen be counted by holding out ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... with 32 photographs and scenes in half-tones; taken from F. C. Whitney's great dramatic production. A new and complete translation, printed from large clear type on a superior quality of paper, and bound in ornamental cloth with title stamped on front and back from unique dies. A sumptious edition ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... but not drinker; confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper-berry; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon the public a tale in prose, called 'Rosamund Gray,'—a dramatic sketch, named 'John Woodvil,'—a 'Farewell Ode to Tobacco,'—with sundry other poems, and light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octavos, and pompously christened his works, though in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... slightly astonished, therefore, when the two faced him, together with Bates. A dramatic explanation of their ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. Binding down an heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have previously dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the axe and the pruning knife by wholesale, and inconsistent in everything but their wish to make out a case ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the story," corrected Gouger. "She will lead him a race that will make him an enemy to the entire sex, if she is used for all the dramatic effect possible. People expect to find immaculate purity in the earlier chapters of a story, as they do in small children. With the progress of the action they look for something more exciting. To sketch a seraph who remains one would only be to repeat the failure you made in your ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Paris, which we wish to notice. She says, "it is strange, that among the many men of genius who have treated the subject of the unities, none should have clearly laid it down, that the great object of dramatic composition is the satisfaction of the audience, no matter by what means." What a fine thing it is to be endowed with uncommon powers of original thought! It is so delightful to be able to belie the assertion, that it is too late now to think of propounding any new idea, every thing having already ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... into his study presently and lighted a cigarette. Despite his determination to put the events of yesterday from his mind, he found himself constantly returning to them. What a splendid dramatic story they would make! And what a fascinating mystery could be woven round ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... to liberal verse the laws of verse set for use—cradle verse and march-marking verse (we are, of course, not considering verse set to music, and thus compelled into the musical time). Liberal verse, dramatic, narrative, meditative, can surely be bound by no time measures—if for no other reason, for this: that to prescribe pauses is also to forbid any pauses unprescribed. Granting, however, his principle ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... long-haired courtiers would help them, I trow." [Footnote: Clarendon remarks, that the importance of the military exercise of the citizens was severely felt by the cavaliers during the civil war, notwithstanding the ridicule that had been showered upon it by the dramatic poets of the day. Nothing less than habitual practice could, at the battle of Newbury and elsewhere, have enabled the Londoners to keep their ranks as pikemen, in spite of the repeated charge of the fiery Prince Rupert and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Paul cannot refrain from personal references. He points to his example of absolute disinterestedness, and with a dramatic gesture holds out 'these hands' to show how they are hardened by work. Such a warning against doing God's work for money would not have been his last word, at a time when all hearts were strung up to the highest pitch, unless the danger had been very real. And it is very real ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... story thus enlarged into dramatic form is not unknown to the Canadian muse, but has been sung by several of her votaries, notably by Miss Machar, of Kingston; Mr. John Reade, of Montreal; and Dr. ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... execution of it has been hindered and impaired by the demands of other duties. The real difficulty has been to compress within the prescribed limits a story covering so many years and so many topics, yet not possessing those features of dramatic action or adventure which could be ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... seems to be havin' the time of his life. He exhibits some clay models, either dancin' girls or a squad of mounted cops, I couldn't make out which, and he lets himself be persuaded to read two or three chunks out of his sonnets, very dramatic. Cousin Inez leads the applause. Then, strikin' a pose, he claps his hands, the velvet curtains are slid one side, and in comes a French chef luggin' a tray with a whackin' big ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... of play leaders, that the play may be full of life. Among games for boys he noted some still involving sense-play, as hiding games, colour games and shooting at a mark, which need quick hearing and sight, intellectual plays exercising thought and judgement, e.g. draughts and dramatic games. One form of play which seemed to him most important was constructive play, where there is expression of ideas as well as expression of power. This side of play covers a great deal, and will be dealt with later; its importance in Froebel's eyes ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... restrictions limiting the private sector's access to formal credit. Moreover, the September 2007 crackdown on prodemocracy demonstrators, including thousands of monks, further strained the economy as the tourism industry, which directly employs about 500,000 people, suffered dramatic declines in foreign visitor levels. In November 2007, the European Union announced new sanctions banning investment and trade in Burmese gems, timber and precious stones, while the United States expanded its sanctions list to include more Burmese ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... wearisome echo of novelists, who descant on fashion and term it life. No description of rose-coloured curtains and buhl cabinets—no miniature paintings of boudoirs and salons—no recital of conventional insipidities, interlarded with affected criticisms, and honoured by the name of dramatic dialogue, shall lend their fascination to these pages. Far other and far deeper aims are mine in stooping to delineate the customs and springs of polite life. The reader must give himself wholly up to me; he must prepare to go with me through the grave as through the gay, and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for exhibition. This performance was produced in the house of commons. The minister descanted upon the insolence, the malice, the immorality, and the seditious calumny which had been of late propagated in theatrical pieces. A bill was brought in to limit the number of playhouses; to subject all dramatic writings to the inspection of the lord chamberlain; and to compel them to take out a license for every production before it could appear on the stage. Notwithstanding a vigorous opposition, this bill passed through ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... dramatic compositions thus produced, as they embodied the perfection of Grecian art, so they were eminently calculated to invite a pan-Hellenic audience and to encourage the sentiment of Hellenic unity. The dramatic literature of Athens however belongs properly to a later ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Dramatic performance so hurried as this; and it is a thing, I believe, quite new, to have a comedy planned, finished, got up, and played in a fortnight. I do not say this to boast of an impromptu, or to pretend to any reputation on that ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... Holiness the Pope, there is none of that absolute and inflexible adherence to certain rigid forms and rules which gives to many of the proceedings of our courts that character of an inevitable destiny-like march which is so dramatic in its operations—that sense of the presence there of a power greater than that of the greatest of the men concerned in the administration of it, which constitutes on large element in an Englishman's respect for the law. At times this automatic power, which ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... laughed; for it was good acting, though of course greatly burlesqued. But both had a touch of dramatic genius, and they had often given this little exhibition in their ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... in a pleasant temper. It was true that as a student of dramatic emotion he had been disappointed by the calmness with which Olivia had received the news of the murder; but she had instructed him to do everything he thought fit. He saw his way to controlling the situation, and ruling the Castle till some one ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... moreover looks upon him as a man of great wit and prodigious acquirements. I have already hinted that Master Simon is a family beau, and considered rather a young fellow by all the elderly ladies of the connexion; for an old bachelor, in an old family connexion, is something like an actor in a regular dramatic corps, who seems "to flourish in immortal youth," and will continue to play the Romeos and Rangers for half a ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... born in Rouen in 1606, the son of an official; was educated by the Jesuits, and practised unsuccessfully as a lawyer. His dramatic career began with the comedy of "Melite," but it was by his "Medee" that he first proved his tragic genius. "The Cid" appeared in 1636, and a series of masterpieces followed—"Horace," "Cinna," "Polyeucte," "Le Menteur." After ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... Belgian pulpits, in particular, are probably unique, and certainly, to my knowledge, without parallel in Italy, England, or France. Sometimes they are merely adorned, like the confessionals at St. Charles, at Antwerp, and at Tirlemont, with isolated figures; but often these are grouped into some vivid dramatic scene, such as the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, at St. Andrew's, at Antwerp, or the Conversion of St. Norbert, in the cathedral at Malines. Certainly the fallen horseman in the latter, if not a little ludicrous, is a trifle ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... hunt, tramples her to death under their horses' hoofs. Gudrun incites her sons Sorli and Hamdir to avenge their sister: they boldly enter Jormunrek's hall, and succeed in cutting off his hands and feet, but are themselves slain by his men. This last dramatic episode is told ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... the variety of his views; as Milton's was scholastic, in the texture both of his thoughts and feelings. Shakespear had not been accustomed to write themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespear. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... composition, and that simplicity which characterized those of former ages. It is now become scarcely possible to connect so many different materials with the detail of other events; and that part of a traveller's narrative which we may call dramatic gives way to dissertations merely descriptive. The numerous class of readers who prefer agreeable amusement to solid instruction, have not gained by the exchange; and I am afraid that the temptation will not be great to follow the course of travellers who are incumbered with ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... certain interludes not mentioned on the programme. This was not indeed our only initiation into theatrical art, a career bearing so much analogy to that of every prince. Taking advantage of the close proximity of the Palais-Royal to the Comedie-Francaise, my father had added a regular course of dramatic literature to the educational plan he had laid out for us. So very often when the old stock plays were being given at the Francais, he would take us by a door leading from his drawing-room into the passage which separates the side scenes from ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... other, they would have presented a study of equal interest to the artist or to the philosopher. There was both a poem and a picture in their attitude. Grace and beauty revealed themselves on every feature and in every movement. They had arrived at one of those dramatic points in their life-journey, where all the tragic elements of existence seem to converge. Agitated by incomprehensible and delicious emotions, confronting insoluble problems, longing, hoping, fearing, they ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... had rather imagined that Gore was not a favourite with Ratcliffe. She noticed too that Schneidekoupon had come back again and spoke mysteriously of interviews with Ratcliffe; of attempts to unite the interests of New York and Pennsylvania; and his countenance took on a dark and dramatic expression as he proclaimed that no sacrifice of the principle of protection should be tolerated. Schneidekoupon disappeared as suddenly as he came, and from Sybil's innocent complaints of his spirits and temper, Mrs. Lee jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Ratcliffe, Mr. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the clothing of words. There came a curious, almost a dramatic interruption. Through the silence of the hall there pealed the summons of the great bell which hung over the front door. Dominey glanced ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... porous plaster while waiting for him, had she known that up stairs there was a note-book full of original poems. Rather than bear the stigma of never having had a love-affair, this sentimental lady invents one to tell her mocking young friends. The dramatic and unexpected denouement is ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... powers. On these occasions he would carry his hearers away with him, often against their better judgment, by his eloquence and verve; would send them into fits of hearty laughter by his sallies; his store of droll anecdotes, his jollity and gaiety; and would display his consummate gifts as a dramatic raconteur. Later in life, after he had raised the enmity of a large section of the writing world, and knew that there were many watching eagerly to immortalise in print—with gay malice and wit on the surface, and bitter spite and hatred below—the heedless and possibly ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Aeschylus in the development of the drama is immense. Before him tragedy had consisted of the chorus and one actor; and by introducing a second actor, expanding the dramatic dialogue thus made possible, and reducing the lyrical parts, he practically created Greek tragedy as we understand it. Like other writers of his time, he acted in his own plays, and trained the chorus in their dances and songs; and he did much to give impressiveness ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... oath never to separate until they had given a Constitution to France; and all the deputies immediately swore it, save one, who added "Dissentient" to his name, and who was hustled out by a backdoor, to save him from the fury of his colleagues. This dramatic action added little to that which had been done three days earlier. The deputies understood that a Constituent Assembly must be single, that the legislative power had, for the purpose, been transferred to them, and could not be restrained or recalled. Their authority was not to ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Wilson, "as it were a talismanic influence in regard to the most trivial circumstances connected with Shakspeare," and yet this enthusiast has not, in his Shaksperiana, alluded to the dramatic works of Mary Hornby, written under, and dated from, the dear old roof ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... following is Dr. Burney's account:—"Upon the success of Jomelli's 'Andromaca' a damp was thrown by the indisposition of Mingotti, during which Frasi was called upon to play her part in that opera; when suspicion arising, that Mingotti's was a mere dramatic and political cold, the public was much out of humour, till she resumed her function in Metastasio's admirable drama of 'Demofoonte,' in which she acquired more applause, and augmented her theatrical consequence beyond any period ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... this dramatic appearance. The officers stared, Diane gasped, her father leaped to has feet with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... fountains in the wings of the Tower draw their inspiration from the days of the conquistadors. Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's Fountain of El Dorado is a dramatic representation of the Aztec myth of The Gilded One, which the followers of Cortez, in their greed for gold, mistook for a fact instead of a fable. (p. 54.) The Fountain of Youth by Edith Woodman Burroughs finds its justification as a part of the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... exchange on himself, and bought himself free from her,—from the possibility of a second, unexpected invasion. She has grown old and fat, but it is still pretty and elegant. Every person has his own ideal: Varvara Pavlovna has found hers—in the dramatic productions of Dumas fils. She assiduously frequents the theatre where consumptive and sentimental ladies of the frail class are put on the stage; to be Mme. Doche seems to her the very apex of human felicity; one day, she declared that she desired no better lot for her daughter. It is to be ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the pilgrims tell tales, and these are as various as their relaters; in fact, the Prologue is the soil out of which they all grow. Dramatic propriety is everywhere instinctively preserved. "The Knight's Tale" is noble, splendid, and chivalric as his own nature; the tale told by the Wife of Bath is exactly what one would expect. With what good-humour the rosy sinner confesses her sins! how hilarious she ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Lloseta, with a quiet deliberation which was sometimes almost dramatic, stooped over the paper basket and recovered the crumpled slip of paper. He did not unfold it, but held it out, crushed up in his ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... These all belonged to the class which will gather round and watch silently while a motorist mends a tyre. They are not impatient. They do not call for rapid and continuous action. A mere hole in the ground, which of all sights is perhaps the least vivid and dramatic, is enough to grip their attention for hours at a time. They stared at George and George's cab with unblinking gaze. They did not know what would happen or when it would happen, but they intended to wait till something did happen. It might be for years or ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... persons to express an emotion which they feel and appreciate heartily, can be always overcome in this way. Relaxing frees the channels, and the channels being open the real poetic or dramatic feeling cannot be held back. The relief is as if one were let out of prison. Personal faults that come from self-consciousness and nervous tension may be often cured entirely without the necessity of drawing attention to them, ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... "A dramatic agent, passing through Lyons, engaged him and his menagerie for the Port Saint-Martin Theatre at a very high price. He says that he did not like to refuse ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... inspired so many writers as the Mutiny of the Bounty. Histories, biographies and romances, from Bligh's narrative in 1790 to Mr. Becke's "Mutineers" in 1898, have been founded upon it; Byron took it for the theme of the least happy of his dramatic poems; and all these, not because the mutiny left any mark upon history, but because it ranks first among the stories of the sea, instinct with the living elements of romance, of primal passion and of tragedy—all moving ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... the selections for the present book Mr. Cawein has endeavored to cover the entire field of his poetical labors, which extends over a quarter of a century. With the exception of his dramatic work, as witnessed by one volume only, "The Shadow Garden," a book of plays four in number, published in 1910, the selection herewith presented by us is, in our opinion, representative of the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... dramatic excellence in this book. Change of scene, incident and colour are the points which I had in view. There is not any sham sentiment in ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... of the Colenso persecution, see Davidson's Life of Tait, chaps. xii and xiv; also the Lives of Bishops Wilberforce and Gray. For full accounts of the struggle, see Cox, Life of Bishop Colenso, London, 1888, especially vol. i, chap. v. For the dramatic performance at Colenso's cathedral, see vol. ii, pp. 14-25. For a very impartial and appreciative statement regarding Colenso's work, see Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893, chap. ix. For testimony to the originality and value of Colenso's contributions, see ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... her limits, nor could it have more perfectly filled those limits to their utmost edge. It is one of the greatest parts in poetical drama, and it is written with a sense of the stage not less sure than its sense of dramatic poetry. There was a time when Racine was looked upon as old-fashioned, as conventional, as frigid. It is realised nowadays that his verse has cadences like the cadences of Verlaine, that his language is as simple and direct ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... familiar to every citizen of this State. No Californian should be unfamiliar with the great debate on what was to constitute the eastern boundary of the State of California, a debate accompanied by an intensity of feeling which in the end almost wrecked the convention. The dramatic scenes wrought by the patriotism that saved the wrecking of the convention stand out in bold relief. The constitution adopted by this convention was ratified November 13, 1849, and, at the same election, an entire State and legislative ticket, with two representatives in Congress, ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... grotesquely and extravagantly horrible; its personages are caricatures of passion; its comedy is inexpressibly sordid; its incidents are absurd when they are not simply abominable. But it is written in excellent dramatic verse and in a rich and brilliant diction, and it contains a number of pregnant epithets and ringing lines and violent phrases. And if you halve the blame and double the praise you will do something less than justice to that Revenger's Tragedy which is Tourneur's ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... where there was a little stage, a very little one, with red-velvet curtains. Next to this room was a long gallery, in which there was a quantity of chests containing every variety of costumes, wigs, pastiches, tinsel ornaments, and all sorts of appurtenances—enough to satisfy the most dramatic imagination. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... womanish impatience, but to reappear as nearly as possible at the appointed moment. It was well not to exceed the grace accorded by the generosity of the enemy, but it was better to meet it to a minute. Something of this dramatic effect mingles with most of the graver usages of the American aborigines, and no doubt, like the prevalence of a similar feeling among people more sophisticated and refined, may be referred to a principle of nature. We all love the wonderful, and when ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... was nothing in the least dramatic in the situation. It might almost have been described as ludicrous, but the white-faced woman in the compound ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... with a heartiness that made Eleanor flush with pleasure. Betty watched her happily, half afraid she would refuse the nomination, as she had refused the Dramatic Club's election; but she only sat quite still, her great eyes shining like stars. She was thinking, though Betty could not know that, of little Helen Adams and her "one big day" when she was elected to ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... of these ways. Had it been so, he would have chosen a different subject; he would have selected the glories of Louis XIV. which preceded the disasters of the Revolution; the glories of the empire, which followed it. His turn of mind is not dramatic; he is neither poetic in his imagination, nor pictorial in his description. Considering the close connexion between these arts and history, these are very great deficiencies, and must ever prevent his work ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of traditional games has in recent years become an important branch of folklore research in England, and has contributed not a little towards elucidating many unrecorded facts in early history. These games may be broadly divided into two kinds—dramatic games, and games of skill and chance. These differ materially in their object. Games of skill and chance are played for the purpose of winning property from a less fortunate player. The dramatic games consist of non-singing and singing games; they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with the dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and absorbing fascination of ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... cannot understand," said his chief, after awhile, "is why he should make a dramatic exit ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... double identity had gone forth; it was hinted that he was none other than the dreaded Belisario Cardi, that genius of a thousand crimes who had held all Sicily in fear. This report supplied the last touch of dramatic interest. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... from the liturgical, rhetorical, or controversial work of the clergy or clerical disputants. The Acts and Monuments of Foxe, popularly known as, the "Book of Martyrs," published in the first decade of the reign, showed the development of a power of vigorously dramatic narrative which should not be overlooked. The enormous popularity however which that work achieved was at least in part the outcome of the general sterility. Men had not yet learned to write, but they ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good farming, and no more. Who review ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... thing for a dramatic author to write prefaces to his plays. We are fortunate in possessing a series of personal opinions in this form that constitute a valuable asset in determining individual attitude and technical purpose. Read Schiller's ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... poems abound with the wayward pranks of a fancy which seems a little too restive to be entirely controlled by his artistic sense; but they possess much dramatic truth and power. He delights in the supernatural element, but approaches it from the gentler human side. In "The Carbuncle," only, we find something of that weird, uncanny atmosphere which casts its glamour around the "Tam O'Shanter" of Burns. A more satisfactory illustration of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... the resolution of the strikers who still stood by their guns.... He threw the fire of his soul into their dull, phlegmatic faces. It struck no answering spark. Never before had he spoken to men without a consciousness of his powers, without pose, without dramatics. Now he was himself, and more dramatic, more compelling than ever before. ... He pleaded, begged, flayed his audience, but it did not respond to his pleadings nor writhe under the whip of his words. It was apathetic, stolid. In its weary heart it knew ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the beginning that I did not know how to write a story. You must forgive me for being led away into divagations which seem to be irrelevant to the dramatic sequence. But when I remember that the result of all the pomp and circumstance of that meeting was seven recruits, of whom three were rejected as being physically unfit, my pen runs away with my discretion, and my ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... touch me with the foil once, but Jack Costigan's getting old and stiff now, sir), and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and 'twas there that my friend, Mr. Bows, who saw her capabilities, and is an uncommon 'cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made her what ye see. What have ye ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... London, Joanna Baillie, the celebrated authoress. She was the friend of Sir Walter Scott, who admired both her poetic and dramatic genius exceedingly. Her plays, although open to criticism as to selection of subject, plot, and stage effectiveness, display the poetic power of her mind ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... imaginary good; otherwise the titles of Honourable and Excellent would be always significant of his Honour's or his Excellency's intrinsic worth;—a thing "devoutly to be wish'd," but unfortunately too seldom exemplified; for, as the dramatic muse elegantly says of money,—"Who steals ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... gatherings. Therefore, having refused the offer of several fraternities that did him the honor to ask him to become a member, it was necessary for him to form a few clubs that held meetings, but no secrets. Perhaps the most successful of these were "The Mustard and Cheese," a dramatic club devoted to the presentation of farces and musical comedies, and The Arcadia Club, to the fortnightly meetings of which he devoted much time and thought. The following letter to his father will give some idea of the scope of the club, which, as in the case ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... himself the central figure of the county, the talk of gentry in their grand houses, of cottage women on their doorsteps, and labourers stopping to speak to each other by the roadside. Magic stories had been told of him, beflowered with dramatic detail. No incident could have been related to his credit which would not have been believed and improved upon. Shut up in his village working among his people and unseen by outsiders, he had become a popular ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... feature, the most interesting one of all connected with this tragedy, should have been kept so long in reserve and brought out just at this time, struck many of Mr. Jeffrey's closest friends as unnecessarily dramatic; but when the coroner, lifting out the ribbon, remarked tentatively, "You know this ribbon?" we were more struck by the involuntary cry of surprise which rose from some one in the crowd about the door, than by the look with which Mr. Jeffrey eyed it and made the necessary reply. That ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Poem, or Dramatic Satire, once famous, THE RAJAH IN LONDON (London, Limbo and Sons, 1889), now obliterated under the long wash of Press-matter, the reflection—not unknown to philosophical observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an Oriental Prince—produced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grabbed up paper and pencil and rushed to the telephone booth to which Larry's wire had been switched so that the story could be taken with fewer interruptions. Page after page of notes did Mr. Newton scribble down, as Larry dictated the dramatic finding of the missing millionaire during ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... the failure of his great climax. At first he regretted it, and a wave of annoyance, even contempt, passed unseen through his mind; then he was glad that the secret should be hidden for another four-and-twenty hours, to gain immensely in dramatic sensation by delay. Already he was planning the future, and designing wonderful histrionics. He could not be positive that he was right; though now the old man ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... to-day," I pleaded, and told him about the rescue of the babies Bird with so much dramatic force that his laughter rang out with such volume that old Rufus came to the kitchen window to look out and shake his head, and I knew he was muttering about "Peckerwoods," "devils," and the sixth day of the week. "Will the chicks ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Encyclopaedia Britannica. Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, the fruits of Sir Walter's tour through France and Belgium, in 1815, were published anonymously; and the Field of Waterloo, a poem, appeared about the same time. We may also here mention his dramatic poem of Halidon Hill, which appeared in 1822; and two dramas, the Doom of Devergoil and Auchindrane, in 1830—neither of which works excited more than temporary attention. Sir Walter likewise contributed a History of Scotland, in two volumes, to Dr. Lardner's Cabinet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... toothpicks, the royal toothbrush, the royal toilet set, and the royal mirror, all of gold set with jewels. The mothers of the brides, painted like courtesans and hung with jewels, were borne by in sedan-chairs, in which they sat cross-legged on silken cushions. Then, after a dramatic pause, their approach heralded by a burst of barbaric music, came the brides themselves, each reclining in an enormous scarlet litter borne by fifty coolies. Beside them sat attendants who sprinkled them with perfumes ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... and I can modestly say that in the little effort appended as an example to these lines it has been done successfully; but here must be mentioned the second point in my thesis—I could never have achieved what I have here achieved in dramatic art had I not harked back to the great tradition of the English heroic decasyllable such as our Shakespeare has handled with so felicitous ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... something so far removed from the stereotyped ways of political activity, that this circumstance alone, apart from the object for which they were pleading, touched and affected people, and gave a certain dramatic interest to the long pilgrimages of the two men who had only become orators because they had something to say which they were intent on bringing their hearers to believe, and which happened to be true, ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... about her was the strange enthusiasm and almost pathetic manner with which she spoke of the great and of the beautiful in Art. Under this heading, however, she would never have let me suppose that she included dramatic art, but only Poetry, Music, and Painting. Consequently, she often even threatened me with her curse should I ever express a desire to go on the stage. Moreover, she was very religiously inclined. With intense fervour she would ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Medium of Education," by Lieut. Ernest L. McKeag, is a short but terse essay on a neglected factor in liberal culture. It is true that our ordinary curricula lay all too little stress on dramatic art; and that as a result, this branch of aesthetic expression is grossly and consistently undervalued. The low estimate of the dramatic profession entertained by Dr. Johnson is a sad illustration of the one-sided state of mind prevailing ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... question Uncle Billy suddenly developed dramatic abilities that his master had never ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... prospect more lamentable than in dramatic literature. Tragedy and comedy had already before the present epoch become inwardly extinct in the Roman national literature. New pieces were no longer performed. That the public still in the Sullan age expected to see such, appears from the reproductions— belonging to this epoch—of Plautine ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... possesses considerable fire, and in his heroic songs he is dramatic. In "The Miller who grinds for Love," the feeling and intensity and dramatic quality he puts into its rendition are stirring. As he finishes his last encore, amidst a round of applause, he grasps his hat from the piano, ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... intervention of Marbeuf that his young friend was at length released. Bruised and wounded in spirit, the boy would gladly have shaken the dust of Brienne from his feet, but necessity forbade. Either from some direct communication Napoleon had with his protector, or through a dramatic but unauthenticated letter purporting to have been written by him to his friends in Corsica and still in existence, Marbeuf learned that the chiefest cause of all the bitterness was the inequality between the pocket allowances of the young French nobles and that of the young Corsican. The kindly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... expedition against the Pamunkey tribe he left the colony in June, 1645.[25] He was gone a whole year, and on his return found that Claiborne had driven the Indians far away from the settlements. In 1646 he received information which enabled him to close the war with dramatic effect. At the head of a body of cavalry he surprised old Opechancanough in an encampment between the falls of the Appomattox and the James, and brought him, aged and blind, to Jamestown, where, about three weeks later, one of ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... realise that she had been seen and her intentions recognised, she would beware of such attempts in the future. He is a kind-hearted fellow. Did you notice which end of the table he ignored when relating this dramatic episode?" ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... calamities—the earthquakes, shipwrecks, railway accidents, even the wars—which are often made a leading count in the arraignment of the Author of Sentience, we must not let ourselves be deceived by the fallacy of number. Their spectacular, dramatic aspect naturally attracts attention; but the death-roll of a great shipwreck is in fact scarcely more terrible than the daily bills of mortality of a great city. It is true that a violent death, overtaking a healthy man, is apt to involve moments, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... disposed to display the tall effects of buildings, the complex immensities of bridges and mono-railways and feats of engineering. London, Paris, Berlin, were shapeless, low agglomerations beside it. Its port reached to its heart like Venice, and, like Venice, it was obvious, dramatic, and proud. Seen from above it was alive with crawling trains and cars, and at a thousand points it was already breaking into quivering light. New York was altogether at its best that evening, its ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... about all for me," said Violet. "I don't feel strong enough to-night to stand any more of your dramatic criticism. Lead me home—and please talk ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... seem exaggerated in these pages; the observant visitor and the native will, it is hoped, recognize that neither the colors nor the shadows are too strong. These poems, however, are not local only, they are stories and pictures of a chapter of American history little known, but dramatic and colorful, and in the relation of an important part to the whole they may carry a decided interest to ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... "Then, by Heaven," he cried, "we shall never part." He caught her to his breast and held her there a moment without speaking. He was too dazed to speak. The scene was dramatic; and Miss Maria Sherwood, who entered the room at that moment, did not approve of the drama. She held that it was sensational in conduct, scurrilous in character, scandalous in its consequences; and it is highly probable that from this brief glimpse of it she saw ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... greatest of merely dramatic artists. Others are more beautiful; others are more stately and imposing; others have been fitted by external gifts of nature to personify characters of very marked features; others are more graceful and lovely and winning; most others mingle their own personality with the characters ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel. Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several hundred dollars ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... importance to art, unless it be to those branches of art which may treat the whole of each particular truth as the whole of a subject, a line of art that may produce a multitude of works, like certain scenes of dramatic effect, surprising to see once, but are soon powerless—can we hope to say of such, "decies repetita placebunt?" They will be the fascinations of the view schools, nay, may even delight the geologist and the herbalist, but utterly disgust the imaginative. This kind of "knowledge" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... you would heighten your cheer By a contrast that's very dramatic, Fancy what scenes may appear In a certain dim ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... what a change is wrought in this household after the dramatic interview, when the husband threatens to leave his wife forever unless she abandons her cups. What joy enters that family circle after the mother's transformation. Surely this revolution in her character was not the work ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... itself leads straight up to the borders of mystery and there comes to a dead stop, saying, "At present I can no longer see my way,'' the force of the charm is redoubled. On the other hand, the illimitable is no less potent in mystery than the invisible, whence the dramatic effect of Keats' "stout Cortez'' staring at the boundless Pacific while all his men look at each other with a wild surmise, "silent upon a peak in Darien.'' It is with similar feelings that the astronomer ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Alexandre Dumas, and others, have been forth in the high-ways and the high-seas, observing, portraying, poetizing, romancing. The last-mentioned of these, M. Dumas, a dramatist very ingenious in the construction of plots, and one who tells a story admirably, has travelled quite in character. There is a dramatic air thrown over all his proceedings, things happen as pat as if they had been rehearsed, and he blends the novelist and tourist together after a very bold and original fashion. It is a new method of writing travels ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... I am afraid postponement doesn't lie with me, now. From your uncle's manner and from what he said to me yesterday, I can't help feeling that the crisis is right here. For two days Mr. Colbrith has been very plainly leading up to some sort of dramatic climax. I can't remotely guess what it is going to be; though I can guess that the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... barber's shears could cut it, they wore the regulation uniform of the cavalry, with trim round-about jackets, and were the "cynosure of all eyes." Their parting words were said to their lady friends in the intervals of the music, and the pretty dramatic effect of it all suggested to an onlooker the famous parting scene in "Belgium's capital" which "Childe Harold" ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the sentiment should be refined. The great achievement of the French poets, on account of which they are to be remembered as founders and benefactors, is that they went to good masters for instruction. Solid dramatic interpretation of character was beyond them, and they were not able to make much of the openings for dramatic contrast in the stories on which they worked. But they were caught and held by the language of passion, the language ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... enough supposed that he lived by his pen. The only product of this period which has kept (or indeed which ever received) competent applause is Tom Thumb, or the Tragedy of Tragedies, a following of course of the Rehearsal, but full of humour and spirit. The most successful of his other dramatic works were the Mock Doctor and the Miser, adaptations of Moliere's famous pieces. His undoubted connection with the stage, and the fact of the contemporary existence of a certain Timothy Fielding, helped ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... The dramatic and picturesque surroundings which colored the seizure of these two Spanish ships have doubtless given an exaggerated idea of the danger and difficulty attending the exploit. The impression made upon a ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... into which I had fallen in London than if I had become the confidant of Rockingham himself. America was a long way from England in those days. I regretted that I had not arrived in London in time to witness Lord Chatham's dramatic return to politics in January, when he had completed the work of Junius, and broken up the Grafton ministry. But I told them of the debate I had heard in St. Stephen's, and made them laugh over Mr. Fox's rescue ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... word 'tragedy' itself has deteriorated in its meaning and is nowadays used mostly as a synonym for 'sad event', 'calamity' 'serious event', even 'crime' (Oxford Diet.). In its original meaning, however, springing from the dramatic poetry of ancient Greece, the word combines the concept of calamity with that of inevitability; the author of the destructive action was not held to be personally responsible for it, since he was caught up in a nexus of circumstances ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... certainty of the theater. But when Miss Primrose Cash knocked upon the door of the Phipps' sitting room and delivered her call to the seance, she was as opportune and nick-of-timey as was ever a dramatic Governor's messenger. Certainly that summons of hers was to Galusha Bangs a reprieve which saved him from ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Aside from these more dramatic assertions of independence of federal courts, State court interference with the federal judiciary has occurred for the most part in conflicts of jurisdiction which affect only the lower federal courts as courts of concurrent jurisdiction ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... mon Dieu! Do you remember I used to call you Don Carlos? Well, you have just reminded me of Philip II. 'I remember everything!' B-r-r! what a funereal tone. Our reminiscences are not, however, very dramatic." ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... points of information on the French language, on dramatic art, politics, literature, and science, will explain the bearings of the bourgeois intellect. A poet passing through the Rue des Lombards may dream of Araby as he inhales certain perfumes. He may admire the danseuses in a chauderie, as he breathes ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... the office to his own room, and there, sitting down, began to write—not a sonnet to his charmer, neither any dream about her, not even some sweet song of the waking spring which he felt moving within him, but the first speech of a dramatic poem. It was a bold beginning, but all beginners are daring, if not presumptuous. Hector's aim was to embody an ideal of check, of rousing, of revival, of new energy and fresh start. All that evening he wrote with running pen, forgot the dinner-bell after its ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... blood flow back upon his heart, an icy flood. The words were simple, sincere, unconscious of dramatic effect. They were as final as death itself, and he dropped his eyes unconsciously to the two guns at her hips. He wondered why she had ridden without a ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... was intensely dramatic. A fine drizzling rain was falling, and every head was bent, and every ear turned to catch the impassioned words of eloquence and hope that fell from the lips of the famed orator. Colonel Ingersoll was unprotected by either hat or umbrella. His invocation thrilled his hearers with ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... dragons, and other enemies of mankind, his sister the while keeping watch over his blindness, and calling to him when and where to deliver the deadly stroke. But to-day the heat disinclined them for these dramatic exertions, and they sat quiet, even on reaching the point at which Jack the Tinker, his friend Tom, the good-natured giant, and Tom's children, young Tom and Jane, fare forth with slings for ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his visits; so, when the Marchesa di Prie fell ill of a malady which required absolute repose and silence, Alfieri was bound to spend the whole morning seated at the foot of her bed. During one of these weary watches, it came into his head to kill time by scribbling some dramatic scenes on loose sheets of paper, which he hid during the intervals of his visits under the cushion of an arm-chair. A Piedmontese and a thorough ignoramus, he had scarcely ever attempted to write even so much as a letter in Italian; ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... him during his forty or fifty years of authorship, from the beginning when he first attempted to depict the teaching of Socrates in a dramatic form, down to the time at which the character of Socrates had disappeared, and we have the latest reflections of Plato's own mind upon Hellas and upon philosophy. He, who was 'the last of the poets,' in his book of Laws writes prose only; ...
— Laws • Plato
... about gesture or expression, and painters, even the best of them, used stock gestures and stock expressions without any of the eagerness of discovery. Now Poussin is, or appears to be, in many of his works a dramatic painter, and for us his drama is platitudinous. Take the "Plague of Ashdod," in the National Gallery. There are the gestures that we are already a little weary of in Raphael's cartoons. The figures express horror and fear with ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... however, when the language of the empire, formed and enriched by the great minds of Elizabeth's era, began to extend its influence at home and abroad, a school of Hiberno-English writers appeared, both numerous and distinguished. This school was as yet composed mainly of two classes—the dramatic poets, and the pamphleteers. Of the latter were Bishop French, Sir Richard Nagle, Sir Richard Belling, Lord Orrery, Father Peter Walsh, and William Molyneux; of the former, Ludowick Barry, Sir John Denham, the Earl of Roscommon, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... for some time he lapsed into silence. The others in the room were greatly moved, too—too moved to speak freely. There were none of those effusive congratulations which might seem natural under the circumstance. In a way the situation was dramatic, and ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... Now, true dramatic action is what characters do, at once contrary, as it were, to expectation, and yet because they have already done other things. No dramatist should let his audience know what is coming; but neither should he suffer his characters to, act without ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hysterically. She felt as if she were in the presence of the devil himself. She was not at all a hysterical woman nor often given to dramatic exhibitions of feeling, but she had never dreamt that a human being could behave ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... their influence on the literature of the present day is felt in a marked degree. They are more than the luxurious fancies of the Arab's mind, for they vividly set forth the love and hate, the craft and hypocrisy, the courage and revenge of his race. Moreover, they portray in a truly dramatic manner the innermost life and thought of the Moslem, while they captivate the senses by a magnificent panorama of exquisite banquets, lovely characters, charming gardens, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... extravagance of emphasis and quaint-ness of phraseology, "the one was born alone to speak what the other only knew to write!" The simple truth of the matter being that for the making of a consummate actor, reader, or impersonator, not only is there required, to begin with, a certain histrionic instinct or dramatic aptitude, but a combination—very rarely to be met with, indeed—of personal gifts, of physical peculiarities, of vocal and facial, nay, of subtly and yet instantly appreciable characteristics. Referring merely to those who ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... great favourite with the Wopples family, and they made a wonderful pet of her. Of course, being in Rome, she did as the Romans did, and went on the stage as Miss Kathleen Wopples, being endowed with the family name for dramatic reasons. The family were now on tour among the small towns of Victoria, and seemed to be well-known, as each member got a reception when he or she appeared on the stage. Mr Theodore Wopples used to send his agent ahead to engage the theatre—or ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... is too angry to see anything, and has only a half-conscious knowledge that she is looking more beautiful than ever, goes up to the lounging chair in which she is reclining, and looking down upon her, says sternly, and with a distinctly dramatic air: ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... was prepared for this dramatic announcement, although they all knew that Maitland sooner or later would assume a position which would link him up with the management of the business. But the suddenness of the change and the dramatic setting of the announcement created ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... desire for a wider sphere of action, and so I am, but chiefly for her sake. Courage! There 's nothing like having a blessed, tired little mother to take care of,—a mother whom you want to snatch from the jaws of a horrible fate. That 's a trifle strong, but it's dramatic! You see, Margery, a woman like my mother is not going to remain forever in her present rank in her profession,—she is too superior; she is bound to rise. Now, what would become of her if she rose? Why, first, she would keep a country hotel, and sit on the front piazza in a red rocker, and ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... tamp them in! History I also disliked as a dry thing without juice, and dates melted out of my memory as speedily as tin-foil on a red-hot stove. But I always was ready to declaim and took natively to anything dramatic or theatrical. Captain Harris encouraged me in recitation and reading and had ever the sweet spirit of a companion rather than the manner of ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... in 1816; and in the following year the Shepherd struck out a new path, by publishing two duodecimo volumes of "Dramatic Tales." This work proved unsuccessful. In 1813 he had dedicated his "Forest Minstrel" to the Countess of Dalkeith; and this amiable and excellent woman, afterwards better known as Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch, had acknowledged the compliment by a gift of a hundred guineas, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... kept most of them in Woodbridge. Few there were that had not some pleasant memory of Nancy, and the sacrifice of a day or two of vacation was counted as little. Furbush's dramatic end had held the centre of the Woodbridge stage, but it was now forced into the background by the question: Was Tom good enough for Nancy? It was generally agreed that he was getting the best of it, but not ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... novel I had ever read. The dramatic interest of the narrative, coupled with the poetry and the humor with which it is so richly spiced, was a revelation to me. I had had no idea that Gentiles were capable of anything so wonderful in the line of book-writing. To all of which should be added ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Westminster Abbey, when Mr. Montenero said he loved enthusiasm, how Mowbray encouraged, excited me to follow that line. At the Tower, my kneeling in raptures to the figure of the Black Prince—my exaggerated expressions of enthusiasm—my poetic and dramatic declamation and gesture—my start of horror at Mowbray's allusion to the tapestry- chamber and the picture of Sir Josseline—my horror afterwards at the auction, where Mowbray had prepared for me the sight of the picture of the Dentition of the Jew—and the appearance ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... CRITIC, Dramatic, a notorious prevaricator who tells the world to see all the shows, and thus preserves the advertising column for ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... soon as they Washed Up, they went and stood in front of the Theater, so as to give the Hired Girls a Treat, or else they stood around in the Sawdust and told their Fellow-Workers in the Realm of Dramatic Art how they killed 'em in Decatur and had 'em hollerin' in Lowell, Mass., and got every Hand in the House at St. Paul. Occasionally they would put a Card in the Clipper, saying that they were the Best in the Business, Bar None, and Good Dressers on and off the Stage. Regards ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... Vedic deities are male and the few goddesses that are mentioned such as Ushas. the Dawn, seem to owe their sex to purely dramatic reasons. Greece and Rome as well as India felt it appropriate to represent the daybreak as a radiant nymph. But though in later times such goddesses as Durga assumed in some sects a paramount position, and though the Veda is familiar with the idea ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... own father had received his death-blow, and had not seen who hurt him. That the one word "Gunpowder!" should drop from white, stern lips was to be expected. But do people ever do what is expected of them by others? In this case, at any rate, nothing half so dramatic took place. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Bezemenovs" ("The Tradespeople"), Gorki's first dramatic work, describes the eternal conflict between sons and fathers. The narrow limitations of Russian commercial life, its borne arrogance, its weakness and pettiness, are painted in grim, grey touches. The children of the tradesman Bezemenov ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... tales. But the Australians "do it more natural:" the stories are not the heritage of a traditional and dead, but the flowers of a living and actual condition of the mind. The stories have not the ingenious dramatic turns of our own MARCHEN. Where there are no distinctions of wealth and rank, there can be no CINDERELLA and no PUSS IN BOOTS. Many stories are rude aetiological myths; they explain the habits and characteristics of the birds ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... in which the dancers stamp on the planks of the floor in time to the music. The LUPAK is a kind of slow polka. In none of these do the dancers fall into couples. A fifth dance, the dance of the departure of the spirit, is a dramatic representation by three persons of the death of one of them, and of his restoration to life by means of the water of life (this is supposed to be brought from the country which is traversed on the journey to the land of shades). This dance is sometimes given with ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... brought by Andrea against the woman he had once adored. At the root of every action, every expression of Elena's love he now discovered studied artifice, an admirable natural gift for carrying out a pre-arranged scheme, for playing a dramatic part or organising a striking scene. He did not spare their most memorable episodes—neither the first meeting at the Ateletas' dinner, nor the Cardinal Immenraet's sale, nor the ball at the French Embassy, nor the sudden ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... "Hear bell, know bad mans hide in cave. I creep up an' watch!" His dramatic pause might have seemed funny at any other time ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... Evening Post says of "Miriam Monfort:" "Mrs. Warfield's new novel has freshness, and is so far removed from mediocrity as to entitle it to respectful comment. Her fiction calls for study. Her perception is deep and artistic, as respects both the dramatic side of life and the beautiful. It is not strictly nature, in the general sense, that forms the basis of her descriptions. She finds something deeper and more mystic than nature in the sense in which the term is usually used by critics, in the answer of the soul to life—in the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... events MAY have taken place. On neither supposition is there any reason for believing that he studied at one—or at both—of our English Universities. The poem cannot be accepted as Chaucerian, the author of which (very possibly by a mere dramatic assumption) declares:— ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Pache, the seamstress of the company, mended his greatcoat for him and Lapoulle cleaned his musket. The first item was a splendid victory won by Bazaine, who had driven an entire Prussian corps into the quarries of Jaumont, and the trumped-up tale was told with an abundance of dramatic detail, how men and horses went over the precipice and were crushed on the rocks beneath out of all semblance of humanity, so that there was not one whole corpse found for burial. Then there were minute details of the pitiable ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the king's brother, decided that Richard's extremity was their opportunity, and so concluded to divide up his kingdom between them. At this dramatic moment Richard, having paid his sixty thousand pounds ransom and tipped his custodian, entered the English arena, and the jig was up. John was obliged to ask pardon, and Richard generously gave it, with the exclamation, "Oh, ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... Jimison had surrendered on account o' the best little girl that walked, an' that he was the all around squarest boy the' was. I didn't cork up any natural eloquence I happened to have, an' I was some sorry 'at ol' Hammy couldn't have heard that plea. It was dramatic, an' I'll bet money on it. The outcome was, that he swore he'd have Jim out o' the pen as soon as he could get back an' do the signin'. He was a big man with steel gray eyes, an' by jing I felt good over it; but I stuck to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... stanza of this song, a little altered, is a favourite kind of dramatic interlude acted at country weddings, in the south-west parts of the kingdom. A young fellow is dressed up like an old beggar; a peruke, commonly made of carded tow, represents hoary locks; an old bonnet; a ragged plaid, or surtout, bound with a straw rope for a girdle; a pair of old ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... fellow members with the dramatic story of his sufferings, he said nothing of Bruce Burt. Bruce Burt was dead, of that he had not the faintest doubt. He intended to keep the promise he had made to hunt the Naudain fellow's relatives, but for the present he felt that his frosted ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Goethe's finest songs were written in a moment, a flash of inspiration; but Faust may be called the work of his lifetime. He himself describes the difficulties which attend the composition of a tragedy, in such a manner as may well deter others from attempting it. How few, indeed, are the dramatic poets in all times and countries! Even Byron did not succeed in this. Mrs. Hawthorne said that during the period while her husband was occupied with the "Scarlet Letter," there were a contraction of his brow, and a look of care and anxiety in his face, which were reflected in ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... why you should apprehend (or rather anticipate without apprehension) any absurd criticism on it. It is sure to be a popular book,—not as 'Uncle Tom' was, for that owed part of its popularity to its dramatic effect (the flight on the ice, etc.), which I did not like; but as a true picture of human life is always popular. Nor, I should think, would any critics venture at all ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... in the set of tapestries now in Madrid. (Plate facing page 62.) The emperor seems, from our point of view, to have done it all with dramatic forethought. There was his special artist on the spot, Jan Vermeyen, to draw the superb cartoons, and accompanying him was Wilhelm de Pannemaker, the ablest weaver of his day, to set the loom and thrust the shuttle. Granada was the place selected for the weaving, and the finest of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... curious, affect dramatic antiquities—a line which has special charms for the present age—no book published in our time has thrown so much light upon plays, playwrights, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... all this, and transport it here, probably with savages dogging their heels every step. Those certainly were determined, vigorous men, and a goodly number at that. And the fight they must have put up in the cathedral, defending their cache against the enemy, and dying for it, must been terrifically dramatic! ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... mean one who has peeled off his skin of natural armour. To preserve dramatic propriety, the Hindu commentators explain it in this sense when it occurs in any such passage, for the real origin of Karna, viz., his procreation by the deity of the sun, became known after ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... circumstances, is it not? I cannot have him arrested because he would at once relate his history, and my name would be ruined. And that would be quite as good a vengeance for him as the other thing. You will admit that it is a very dramatic situation!" ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... criticism and satire; moreover, I have never tried to do intentionally the one nor the other. I have always tried to go into the soul of things and to stick to the greatest generalities, and I have purposely turned aside from the accidental and the dramatic. No monsters and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... repose after a day of adventure, which they did for the space of forty seconds in singularly impossible attitudes and far too aggressive snoring. Indeed, Master Hickory's almost upright pose, with tightly folded arms, and darkly frowning brows was felt to be dramatic, but impossible for a longer period. The brief interval enabled Polly to collect herself and to look around her in her usual motherly fashion. Suddenly she started and uttered a cry. In the excitement of the descent she had ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... unsuitable and improbable: besides, as my father remarked the circumstances which in real life fix the attention, because they are out of the common course of events, are for this very reason unfit for the moral purposes, as well as for the dramatic effect of fiction. The interest we take in hearing an uncommon fact often depends on our belief in its truth. Introduce it into fiction, and this interest ceases, the reader stops to question the truth or probability of the narrative, the illusion ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... figure of Christ and that of the Blessed Virgin. Yet in spite of all, it is one of the most beautiful and touching groups in the whole world, and by many degrees the best work of art in the great church. Michelangelo was a man of the strongest dramatic instinct even in early youth, and when he laid his hand to the marble and cut his 'Pieta' he was in deep sympathy with the supreme drama of man's history. He found in the stone, once and for all time, the grief of the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... side with Ibsen, and the other established institutions of the new theatre. For these reasons it is pleasant to be able to chronicle the fact that, by way of contrast with the casual treatment normally handed out to Russian authors, the publishers are issuing the complete dramatic works of this author. In 1912 they brought out a volume containing four Chekhov plays, translated by Marian Fell. All the dramatic works not included in her volume are to be found in the present one. With the exception of Chekhov's masterpiece, "The Cherry Orchard" ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov |
