"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these little books we find much of the plain sense of law. There is no mystification by technicalities, but all the information is practical, all ready to hand, we mean mouth; so that, as Mrs. Fixture says in the farce of A Roland for an Oliver—"If there be such a thing as la' in the land," you may "ha' it." Joking apart, they are sensible books, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... land is full of apes, which have Their own gods and worship; how ghastly, this!— That demons (for it must be so) should build, In mockery of man's upward faith, the souls Of monkeys, those lewd mammets of mankind, Into a dreadful farce of adoration! And flies! a land of flies! where the hot soil Foul with ceaseless decay steams into flies! So thick they pile themselves in the air above Their meal of filth, they seem like breathing heaps ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... all, my good man... What more do you want? The farce is over. I will only ask you to take this little note to Master Prasville, your employer. Clemence, please show Mr. Polonius out. And, if ever he calls again, fling open the doors wide to him. Pray look upon this as your home, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... impose conditions upon possessors—was nearer to liberty and equality than any nation has been since. If the Senate had been intelligent and just,—if, at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of possessions,—the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the duty of labor, would not, in attaining its wealth, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... in demand were theatrical performances of a lower kind. These were farces, interludes, character-pieces, and dumb-shows known as "pantomimes." The farce was a loosely constructed form of fooling comedy, containing much of the ready Italian improvisation or "gag," and regularly introducing the four stock characters which have lasted with little disguise for so many centuries ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Come now. If I wished to forgive him, how should I begin? Would he be gracious if I went to him? Does he love me, do you think,—or hate me? Uncle Barty is a good hater. It is the best point about him. No, Brooke, we won't try the farce of a reconciliation after a long life of enmity. Nobody would believe us, and we should not believe ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Verrina as a competent savior of society, however much one may sympathize with him in his private feud. His cynical tergiversation at the end makes his previous conduct ridiculous. It seems to say that he has been participating in a tragic farce which is now ended. One might almost get the impression that the whole play is only a satire ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Difference. Fowl, to dress. Ditto to farce. Fricassee of Chickens, brown. Ditto white. Fish Gravey for Soups. Flounders, pickled. Frontiniac-Wine imitated. Fruits preserv'd for Tarts. Florence-Wine imitated. Frontiniac-Wine to make. Fowls, the Sorts. Fish, to boil firm. ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... with barred tails and yellow beaks, flitted about in restless quest, their constant cries being the only sound which broke the peaceful stillness, until the faint and distant sound of shouts and tom-toms showed that the first act of the farce had begun. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... "The man wouldn't be above plundering the natives. . . ." He sat down heavily on the chest. "A most appropriate costume for this farce," he continued. "But do you mean to wear it in open ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... you have some honesty left in your composition. You acknowledge the deception, and we will let the farce end here. You have become a thief and a midnight incendiary. I have been weak and indulgent towards you. My eyes are opened, and I shall pursue a ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... original and sufficiently varied in character and sentiment to enable the reader to make up a well-rounded program in which high comedy mingles with farce and pathos in a manner suitable for all occasions. Nineteen monologues and nine short poems which are especially adapted to that particular form of entertainment called the pianologue, ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... system of the trades is, for some reason, quite confounded by this multiplicity of reefs, the wind intermits, squalls are frequent from the west and south-west, hurricanes are known. The currents are, besides, inextricably intermixed; dead reckoning becomes a farce; the charts are not to be trusted; and such is the number and similarity of these islands that, even when you have picked one up, you may be none the wiser. The reputation of the place is consequently infamous; insurance offices exclude it from their field, and it was not ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my life with him. I am also sure that, at the very first revelation, he will kill me if he can, and I take a strange interest in knowing that I risk my life thus. Here we are in the woods," said Gerfaut, as he dropped the artist's arm and ceased limping; "they can no longer see us; the farce is played out. You know what I told you to say if you join them: you left me at the foot of a tree. You are forbidden to approach the sycamores, under penalty of receiving the shot from my ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her day," Smith slowly said— "Let us plan to carry out the crowning farce, May it serve to charm the haughty Powhatan, As it pleases England's monarch for the time. Yes, the scarlet robe will dazzle Indian chief, An' it is your wish to make of him a clown. 'Tis a trifling matter that; more serious far Charges given you by the London Company, ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... of the Board," said Jim, "I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't know about yourselves. You are simply making a farce of the matter of hiring a teacher for this school. It is not as if any of you had a theory that the teaching methods of one of these teachers would be any better than or much different from those of the others. You know, and I know, that whichever is finally engaged, or even if your silly ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... event would seldom indeed happen. But the lay rulers of Nepal judged more strictly; and as they knew that whatever proofs they might bring would produce no conviction, they probably deemed it quite unnecessary to put the parties to any trouble, or to go through the farce of a trial, where the measure to be adopted was predetermined; nor are the chiefs of Nepal men against whom any complaints of injustice are made by those ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... appear; but when at last he had seen her brougham, she had driven rapidly past him, thickly veiled, and he did not think she had even noticed him. He would have written to her, but he was still unable to hold a pen; and he reflected that, after all, it would have been a hideous farce for him to offer condolences and sympathy, however much he might desire to hide from himself his secret satisfaction at her husband's death. Too proud to think of obtaining information through such base channels as Del Ferice was willing to use, he was wholly ignorant of Corona's intentions; ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Pastoral; a Romantic Farce; Bruce, a Chronicle Play; Smith, a Tragic Farce; Scaramouch in Naxos, a Pantomime. With a frontispiece and cover design by Aubrey Beardsley. Printed at the Ballantyne Press, London. Small 4to. 294 pp. ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... you want to go through the farce of playing one round and making idiots of yourselves, you'll have to wait a bit. You've got a bye in the ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... stiff, one more account was closed for good or evil, the echo of one more tread had passed from the earth for ever. The old million-numbered tragedy in which all must take a part had repeated itself once more down to its last and most awful scene. Yes; the grim farce was played out, and the little actor ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... favorite with her. One of them was to love the other and to die broken-hearted because the loved one would not requite the passion. For Agatha, prompt to ridicule sentimentality in her companions, and gifted with an infectious spirit of farce, secretly turned for imaginative luxury to visions of despair and death; and often endured the mortification of the successful clown who believes, whilst the public roar with laughter at him, that he was born a tragedian. There was much in her nature, she felt, that did not find ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... This little farce is repeated in some shape every day. I am very idle. I smoke a great deal, and lounge about all day, with my hands in my pockets. I am free from that ineffable weariness of ceaseless giving which I experienced six months ago. I was shorn of my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... producing a masterpiece oscillated between the novel and the drama. Two stories, entitled respectively Coquecigrue (an imaginary animal) and Stella, were abandoned before they were begun. A comic opera had the same fate. The Two Philosophers, a farce in which a couple of sham sages mocked at the world and quarrelled with each other, while secretly coveting the good things they affected to despise, appears to have been worked at, but uselessly. Next a tragedy, tackled with greater resolution, was composed and entirely finished. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the only reasonable thing to do. Our present mode of life is a farce. We are drifting farther apart every day. Perhaps I have changed. I know you have. We are two strangers chained together. We have made a muddle of it, and the best thing we can do is to ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... of dramatic justice—that the farce should succeed the tragedy—our attention was at this moment called to a ludicrous incident. The Mexican trapper had ridden up, and halted beside the waggon; when all at once his eyes became fixed upon an object that lay near at hand upon the grass. It was the black silk hat ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... seated himself with great dignity in the teacher's chair, and began to "play school-master," to the amusement of several other boys. It so happened that the teacher arrived earlier than usual that day, and he was not a little amused, as he suddenly entered the room, and witnessed the farce that was going on. Oscar jumped from his seat, but the master made him take it again, and remain in it just as he caught him, with his great-coat, pasteboard spectacles and quill, until all the ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... What a way for you to talk! The idea of your having to work—it's preposterous." He brought out his sentences in short violent jerks, as though they were forced up from a deep inner crater of indignation. "It's a farce—a crazy farce," he repeated, his eyes fixed on the long vista of the room reflected in the blotched glass ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... knowledge and talents. But what security is there for the same qualities on the part of monarchy? or, when the monarchy is a child, where then is the wisdom? What does it know about government? Who then is the monarch, or where is the monarchy? If it is to be performed by regency, it proves to be a farce. A regency is a mock species of republic, and the whole of monarchy deserves no better description. It is a thing as various as imagination can paint. It has none of the stable character that government ought to possess. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... than done. Dulaurier turned and clasped Stephano's hand again, and now the young man saw with apprehension that Dulaurier's eyes were dim with tears. Dulaurier could keep up the farce no longer, and his heart was breaking behind the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... to this childish and feigned regret," cried Wilhelm with rude impatience. "I pray you end the farce with less of verbiage and of pretended justice. You have his Majesty here a prisoner. You have, through my own folly, my neck at the mercy of your axe or your rope. There stands the executioner eager for ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... gratifications it was yet an untasted pleasure, was quite alive at the idea. "I really believe," said he, "I could be fool enough at this moment to undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what should prevent us? Not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... driven off into the wilderness of London's night. In this theatrical business there was, to my mind, something ridiculous—almost childish—and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to farce. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... until all are numbered among her followers and wear the livery she has prescribed. Garrick's opinion of those playgoers of his time, whom he at last banished from his stage, may be gathered from the dialogue between AEsop and the Fine Gentleman, in his farce of "Lethe." AEsop inquires: "How do you spend your evening, sir?" "I dress in the evening," says the Fine Gentleman, "and go generally behind the scenes of both playhouses; not, you may imagine, to be diverted with the play, but to intrigue and show myself. I stand upon the stage, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... "at length the farce is played—away with those slaves whom I have forced through the difficult gates of Joy!" and she clapped her hands. But when they had borne the bodies thence she drew me to her, and ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... different from what it was generally supposed to be: he saw the futility of popular morals and popular metaphysics; but he neither swallowed the conventions nor threw up his hands in despair, declaring the whole thing to be an idiotic farce. He knew that truth and goodness had nothing to do with law and custom; but he never doubted that there were such things; and he went beneath the surface to find them. It was Ibsen's revelation of a new world, in which moral values were real and convincing, that thrilled ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... in with me, and go back to the Captain's and assist me to back out, beg the pardon of Miss Figgles and her father, and terminate this unpleasant farce." ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Wellington. One thing, young gentlemen, you'll be nearly home. Ferret has arranged about the inquest on von Ruhle. Your evidence will be taken down in writing, and in that case you won't have to put in an appearance at that grim farce." ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... ten years' practice in the war for wages and strike-management, with the public in it as partisans, will bring with it in the way of favouritisms, celebrities, and indispensabilities. Popular jockeys, successful surgeons, managers of sports' clubs, tenors, demimondaines, farce-writers and champion athletes could, even to-day, if they were class-conscious and joined together to exploit their opportunities, demand any income they liked. Even as a matter of practical political economy, the ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... Phil and his wife a fourth—wouldn't it be like children playing house! And there's another thing about it, Billy," Susan went on enthusiastically, "it's honest! These people are really worried about shoes and rent and jobs—there's no money here to keep them from feeling everything! Think what a farce a strike would be if every man in it had lots of money! People with money CAN'T get the taste ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... burial. After all, we do feel an interest in what is to become of our bodies. There is a modesty that belongs to death. Upon this subject Voltaire was infinitely sensitive. It was that he might be buried that he went through the farce of confession, of absolution, and of the last sacrament. The priests knew that he was not in earnest, and Voltaire knew that they would not allow him to be buried in any of the cemeteries of Paris. His death was kept a secret. The Abbe Mignot made arrangements ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... little, if at all, for the wants or wishes of others, but grudging nobody anything that does not interfere with his own pursuits, and seeing with complacency those who surround him lap up the superfluities which may chance to bubble over from his cup of pleasure and happiness. It is a farce to talk of friendship with such a man, on whom, if he were not Duke of Bedford, Brougham would never ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the company of their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out. A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend themselves ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... commonly said, that it requires more wit to perform the part of the fool in a farce than that of the master. Without intending any offence to the fool by the comparison, we may remark, that qualities of an elevated character are required for the support of the role of a man of fashion in the solemn farce of life. He must have invention, to vary ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... urge, and, though he made light of Sir Edward, it was with a startling candor that he added, "But woman's a riddle indeed if Elizabeth would give her shoe-tie for Cecil." Lady Angleby was so amazed and shocked that she made no answer whatever. The squire went on: "The farce had better pause—or end. Elizabeth is sensitive and shrewd enough. Cecil has no heart to give her, and she will never give hers unless in fair exchange. I have observed her all along, and that is ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... ancestry is fairly remote. This is by way of parenthesis. "The High Road," found after thirty years, is a most interesting document to the lover of Chekhov. Every play he wrote in later years was either a one-act farce or a four-act drama. [Note: "The Swan Song" may occur as an exception. This, however, is more of a Shakespeare recitation than anything else, and so neither ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... his nature; for though by act of parliament he cancelled the former act that had deprived her, as against all reason, conscience, and course of nature, and contrary to the laws of God and man,(57) and restored her possessions to her, this was but a farce, and like his wonted hypocrisy; for the very same year he obliged her to convey the whole estate to him, leaving her nothing but the manor of Sutton for her maintenance. Richard had married her daughter; but what claim had Henry to her inheritance? This attachment ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... the victory, the fellowship which, developed under Partow, who believed that Napoleons and Colossi and gods in the car and all such gentlemen belonged to an archaic farce-comedy, had grown under Lanstron. "The staff reports," began the messages that awakened a world, retiring with the idea that the Browns were grimly holding the defensive, to the news that three millions had ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... south or west wind, with a hot sun, following a frost, or a day with cold showers, with bright, sunny intervals, or during the afternoon (but not always the morning) before a storm of wind or rain,—such are the conditions which make so many of our attempts to hunt the fox by scent a miserable farce; yet even on these days hounds may run during some part of the day. When the barometer is thoroughly unsettled there may be light local currents, perfectly imperceptible to man, yet felt by cows and sheep—currents created like winds by a variation of temperature ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... or Inoculation with specific serums derived from such germs, as a preventative of disease is simply a pernicious farce; "pernicious," since the introduction of such poisons by inocculation into the blood constitutes in itself a serious menace ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... appear original that besets us all, or due to some freak of fashion. The countess showed some signs of a wish to see the floured face of the actor who had so delighted several people of taste, and I obtained the honor of taking her to a first presentation of some wretched farce or other. A box scarcely cost five francs, but I had not a brass farthing. I was but half-way through the volume of Memoirs; I dared not beg for assistance of Finot, and Rastignac, my providence, was away. These constant perplexities were the bane ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... is the wretched outcome of the hundred years of American education in politics—making of every man not only a sovereign, but a possible candidate for President. What is it all but a roaring farce? If we could forget that this is real government coupled with all the pains and penalties which are the heritage of ignorance, and not mere child's play, then even serious intelligence might smile though commiserating the follies of grown men. Have we finally reached the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... the bold denouncer of Alexander VI.; but there was a lack of benevolence in his head and his heart. Without that anterior depression of the sinciput, he could hardly have permitted two friends to walk into the fire in his stead, as they were about to do in the stupendous and horrible farce enacted in the Piazza Gran Duca. There was no lack of self-esteem either in the man or his head. Without it, he would scarcely have thought so highly of his rather washy scheme for reorganizing the democratic government, and so very humbly of the genius of Dante, Petrarch, and others, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... gentleness came over him as he adjusted the tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards from heart to lungs, and from lungs to heart again; while the Old Lady looked on as merry as Destiny, and nodded her head and smiled, as much to say, "Tchee-tchee, what a farce it is!" ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... unnecessary to meddle. When he had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached him with the proposition that he should wear eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to his cheeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his early years was to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made him ashamed. He wept and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... all his goods and be imprisoned for two years; secondly, the royal palaces of St James's and Whitehall were exempted from the operation of this statute, so long as the sovereign was actually resident within them—which last clause probably showed that the entire Draconian enactment was but a farce. It is quite certain that it was inoperative, and that it did no more than express the conscience of the legislature—in deference to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... his lungs. He went into the back room and looked at himself in the glass and began and laughed all over from the beginning again. Then he looked at me and repeated himself. That's why I asked you if you thought an Irishman had any humor. He'd been doing farce comedy from the day I saw him without knowing it; and the first time he had an idea advanced to him with any intelligence in it he acted like two twelfths of the sextet in a 'Floradora' ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... softly, it was such an age since she had laughed, and it was such a happy, contented little sound that she was quite startled thereat. The custom-house officials were going through the farce of examining the luggage, and while the rest of the passengers groaned and lamented at the delay, Jack and his companion stood together in the background, blissfully unconscious of ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... keep her spirits up, She sent for company to sup: When all the while you might remark, She strove in vain to ape Wood Park. Two bottles call'd for, (half her store, The cupboard could contain but four:) A supper worthy of herself, Five nothings in five plates of delf. Thus for a week the farce went on; When, all her country savings gone, She fell into her former scene, Small beer, a herring, and the Dean. Thus far in jest: though now, I fear, You think my jesting too severe; But poets, when a hint is new, Regard not whether false or true: Yet raillery gives ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... "Error") is nearly always amusing, whether on the stage or in actual life. The Comedy of Errors is a play in which this situation is developed to the extreme of improbability; but we lose sight of this in the roaring fun which results. Nowadays we should call a play of this type a farce, since most of the fun comes in this way from situations which are improbable, and since the play depends on these for success rather than on characterization ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... had assembled in the square, despite the increasing rain. Many had come to scoff. What a farce it all would be! They did well, however, to wait two days! The rain was almost over. It would probably stop by the time they got ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... forcing him to do this?" demanded Gaylor. "No! He's forcing it on us. My God!" he exclaimed, "do you think I want this farce? You say, yourself, you told him it would kill him, and he will go on with it. Then why do you blame us? ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... to compare their arguments, that the same might not come twice over. But, after I left Cambridge, it became the fashion to invite the respondent to be present, who therefore learnt all that was to be brought against him. This made the whole thing a farce: and the disputations ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the sulky reply, "but I'm tired of this lemon-squeezing farce. We can never raise a thousand dollars, ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... nobles, who said the king was apprehensive of being shot during the conference. Cortes engaged by the most solemn oaths that no injury should be offered, but all to no purpose. At this time two of these nobles played a most ridiculous farce: They took out from a sack a fowl, some bread, and a quantity of cherries, which they began to eat deliberately, as if to impress us with the belief that they had abundance of provisions. When Cortes found that the proposed conference was only a pretext to gain time, he sent a message ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... and summoning up all her strength, she went at last to the chamber where that dread scene had been enacted—that scene which seemed to her a double tragedy—that scene which had burned itself in her memory, combining the horror of the death of her dearest friend with the ghastly farce of a forced and unhallowed marriage. In that place a full tide of misery rushed over her soul. She broke down utterly. Chetwynde Castle, the Earl, Mrs. Hart, all were forgotten. The past faded away utterly. This only was her true home—this place darkened by a cloud ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... a farce composed by the British officers during the siege—not written by Burgoyne (note), ii. 49; turned into a tragedy by Knowlton's attack ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the most cheerful novels we have chanced upon for many a day. It has much of the rapidity and vigor of a smartly written farce, with a pervading freshness a smartly written farce rarely possesses.... A book decidedly worth reading."—London ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... means," I said eagerly. I couldn't get away too soon. "I'll go and get my—" Then I stopped. Why, the man wouldn't expect me to leave; I would have to play out the wretched farce to ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... New York. It is not an ideal or a specially selected audience; but it is somewhat above the average of the theatre-going public, that average being sadly pulled down by the myriad frequenters of musical farce and absolutely worthless melodrama. It is such an audience as assembles every night at, say, the half-dozen best theatres of each city. A peculiarly intellectual audience it certainly is not. I gladly admit that ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... as common. To a believer in immortality, death, even when premature, can scarcely be regarded as an unmitigated evil, but pain enforces its own recognition. We can hardly agree with the frightened recruit in the farce, who thinks "Victory or Death" a forbidding war-cry, but "Victory or Wooden Legs" a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Tower been otherwise than a mere formality, or "a farce," neither his wife nor his servants would under any circumstances have been permitted to attend or even see him whatever the state of his health might have been; and had he survived, nothing serious would have been ...
— The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 • William Parker
... took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn The Sunburst Trail at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began, O'Ryan could scarcely trust his ears ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... be. It is time to end this farce, I think. So far as treachery, malice and truth are concerned you, not I," Marjorie swept the tense, listening group with an inclusive gesture, "are guilty. Some one of you deliberately wrote me a lying note in order to get me here. Now I am here, but your whole scheme has ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... what it is for a soul in this state to have to return to the commerce of the world, to see and look on the farce of this life, [6] so ill-ordered; to waste its time in attending to the body by sleeping and eating! [7] All is wearisome; it cannot run away,—it sees itself chained and imprisoned; it feels then most keenly ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Ages, more than any other period, are rich in instances of that intimate blending of the comic and the horrible which we call the grotesque; the witches' Sabbath, the hoofed and horned devil, the hideous figures of Dante's hell; the Scaramouches, Crispins, Harlequins of Italian farce; "grimacing silhouettes of man, quite unknown to grave antiquity"; and "all those local dragons of our legends, the gargoyle of Rouen, the Taras of Tarascon, etc. . . . The contact of deformity has given to the modern sublime something purer, grander, more sublime, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the stars compel you to make the son whom you loved miserable?" Throwing his hands behind his back and stepping a short pace backwards, the Baron raised his eyes upwards and said in a low and well-nigh broken voice, "Poor, infatuated old man! Your carnival farce with its shallow delusions is now over. Now you no doubt see that the possessions which are so niggardly dealt out to us here on earth have nothing in common with Hereafter beyond the stars. What will—what power can reach over beyond ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and make me more human. I am, I thought, a tragedy; a character that he comes to see act: now and then he gives me my cue[64] that I may make a speech more to his purpose: perhaps he is already planning a poem in which I am to figure. I am a farce and play to him, but to me this is all dreary reality: he takes all the profit and I bear all ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... the Goucourts was of short duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the ambiance of gossip, scandal, duplicity and invidious criticism that the two brothers had created around them in the guise of an Eighteenth Century style salon. He hated the human comedy, the social farce. ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... set out, in the columns of the Morning Chronicle, all the reasons why this movement, inaugurated by the three men who had met, six months before, at the office of the Chronicle, should be supported by the white public. Negro citizenship was a grotesque farce—Sambo and Dinah raised from the kitchen to the cabinet were a spectacle to make the gods laugh. The laws by which it had been sought to put the negroes on a level with the whites must be swept away in theory, as they had failed in ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... night I was dreaming in the usual way in the demon-sphere and they played one, of their familiar dismal pranks. We were acting a farce, some friends of my youth and I, and the stage was a cemetery and all the actors had grinning skulls. Then, firmly regarding one of these acting apparitions, I said: "There is no death," as though to resist this obtruding ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... where the rouge never stuck, were jaded by excesses, his lips clammy, though his tongue was forever wagging, especially when he was drunk; his glances were immodest, and his gestures compromising. Such a face, flushed with the jovial features of punch, was enough to turn grave business matters into a farce; so that the embryo banker had been forced to put himself through a long course of mimicry before he managed to acquire even the semblance of a manner that accorded with ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... that only about one sixth of the registered voters have really voted; and this, too, when not more, perhaps, than one half of the rightful voters have been registered, thus showing the thing to have been altogether the most exquisite farce ever enacted. I am watching with considerable interest to ascertain what figure "the free-State Democrats" cut in the concern. Of course they voted,—all Democrats do their duty,—and of course they did not ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... ever examine a goat's expression of face? For utter asininity a donkey cannot approach him. Nothing can, except, perhaps, an Irish farce-comedian. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... farce is well under way, people make ready to hunt for the cabbage. They bring a stretcher and place upon it the "infidel," armed with a spade, a cord, and a large basket. Four powerful men raise him on their shoulders. His wife follows ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... "I believe now you have played all your tricks, and the farce is nearly at an end! With your apishness and absurdity however you have taught me one thing; and, whereas before I have winced at them with torture, I am now as tough as an elephant. I shall crush you in the end with the same indifference, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... horrible—even if vitally necessary—for these three to have to go through the farce of playing a bridge hand while one of the original players was lying on a marble slab at the morgue, her cold flesh insensible to the coroner's ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... persuade people that all is well, when all is not well! That's exactly what women always do and always have done, and plume themselves upon it. And so this ridiculous farce is kept up, because these wretched women go smiling about the world, hugging their stupid resignation to their hearts, and pampering up their sickly virtue, at the expense of their ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... hourly. Last Monday we mids of the Leander gave a grand entertainment to the inhabitants of Halifax and officers of the fleet; a play, ball, and supper, which went off remarkably well. The Iron Chest was the play; the Wags of Windsor the farce. I did not perform being steward of the supper, but merely spoke the prologue. Our stage was very large and scenery very good, and on the whole, nothing could go off with ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... it appeared, was the merest farce. There were only five white children, belonging to Dutch farmers in the mountains. The native side was more flourishing, but the mission schools at the locations got most of the native children in the neighbourhood. Mr Wardlaw's educational zeal ran high. He talked of establishing ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... canon law; and therefore, whilst gaining the ardent sympathy of our rebellious instincts (which are flattered by the brilliancies with which Don Juan associates them) finds himself in mortal conflict with existing institutions, and defends himself by fraud and farce as unscrupulously as a farmer defends his crops by the same means against vermin. The prototypic Don Juan, invented early in the XVI century by a Spanish monk, was presented, according to the ideas of that time, as the enemy ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... natural voice. On these occasions the blacks thought I was in my natural element as a spirit. But they never ventured to follow me or attempted to satisfy themselves that I was not fooling them all the while. Yamba, of course, knew the joke, and as a rule helped me to dress for the farce, but she took good care never to tell any one the secret. No doubt had the blacks ever learned that it was all done for effect on my part, the result would have been very serious; but I knew I was pretty secure because of the abnormal ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Lee, while wholly in Ah Moy's power, and quite well aware of it, exacted from all of his countrymen a certain amount of deference, and was loath that his visitor should prove an exception to this gratifying rule. Ah Moy knew this, but the little farce was becoming very irksome to him; it took up too much of his always valuable time, and he intended to forego it in future. Quong Lee, thought he, was a tiresome old goat who badly needed his whiskers trimmed and his horns sawed off; and he, Ah Moy, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... proper discipline is maintained. From time to time, similar regulations were made by the Faculty of Arts, e.g. in 1469, it is ordered that no student is to wear the habit of a fool, except for a farce or a morality (amusements permitted at this period). Any one carrying arms or wearing fools' dress is to be beaten in public and in his own hall. These last regulations are doubtless connected with town and gown riots, for which the Feast of Fools ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... to an English play-house. The first time "The Nabob" was represented, of which the late Mr. Foote was the author, and for the entertainment, a very pleasing and laughable musical farce, called "The Agreeable Surprise." The second time I saw "The English Merchant:" which piece has been translated into German, and is known among us by the title of "The Scotchwoman," or "The Coffee-house." I have not yet seen the theatres ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... short and the long," he proceeded. "All of you in Shed B are bound to know. And I want to ask you where is the common sense of keeping up this farce, and maintaining this cock-and-bull story between friends. Come, come, my good fellow, own yourself beaten, and laugh at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for knockabout clowns in a farce. They pushed with their hands, with their heads, they pushed for dear life with all the weight of their bodies, they pushed with all the might of their souls—only no sooner had they succeeded in canting the stem clear of the davit than they would leave off like one man and start ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... and that one of them was drunk while there. It was also shown that the father and mother had free access to the bed, while the watchers were absolutely prohibited from examining it. It is therefore with entire justification that Dr. Fowler states that the watching "was the greatest possible farce and mockery." ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... her real name has not hitherto leaked out, and to this day the O'Keeffes are unaware of their relative's reputation and believe their one connection with the stage to be a dubious and undesirable consanguinity with O'Keeffe, the actor and fertile farce-writer whose Wild Oats made a sensation at Covent Garden at the end of the eighteenth century. To her many brothers and sisters, Eileen was just the baby, and always remained so, even in the eyes of the eminent civil engineer who was only her senior by a year. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Woman" is a gigantic farce of the most ingenious construction. The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a heartless nephew on his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end, turns out neither ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... day's journey of the establishment, I pretended to have sprained my foot so badly, that I walked with the greatest seeming difficulty. My men, who were aware of the ruse, requested me to place my bundle on their sledges, to enable me to keep up with them. This farce commenced in the evening. Next morning my leg was worse than ever, until we came on the river at about ten miles' distance from the post. I was delighted to find but little snow upon the ice, so that I had a fair opportunity ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... there is no use in carrying on this farce any longer," said Yates. "I knew you, Mr. Benedict, soon after arriving here, and it seems that you recognized me; and now, here is my hand. I never meant you ill, and I did not expect to find you alive. I have tried my ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... wished the world to continue along its present lines. But, if these pretended followers really think—as they say that they do—that the teachings of Jesus are ridiculous and impracticable, why continue the hypocritical farce of calling themselves 'Christians' when they don't really believe in ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... believe his companion on his word. Nevertheless, he reflected on the extraordinary things he had seen in four days—the sun on the Rigi, the farce of William Tell—and Bompard's inventions seemed to him all the more probable because in every Tarasconese the braggart is ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... quoted by Mr. Bernard Holland (Life of Duke of Devonshire, vol. ii, pp. 38, 39), suggests that the Hartington section had difficulty in reconciling Sir Charles's attitude on other Imperial matters with his Egyptian policy: "It would indeed be a farce, after all the fuss about the Cameroons and Angra Pequena, to allow Suakim, which is the port of Khartoum, and the Nile to pass into the hands of foreigners." The answer is, first, that Sir Charles would certainly never have consented to let any port in Egypt or the Soudan pass into the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... This fearful farce was enacted in the cemetery of St. Ouen, behind the beautifully severe monastic church so called, and which had by that day assumed its present appearance. On a scaffolding raised for the purpose sat Cardinal Winchester, the two judges, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had recovered the stun of this ominous farce, in obedience to the mandate, "Remove the prisoner," he was led from the dock. The lamps seemed all to have gone out, and there were stoves and charcoal-fires here and there, that threw a faint crimson light on the walls of ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... saw them severall tymes. The first was called Odip, who resolved the Sphinx his enigma: was so unfortunat to slay his father by ignorance, marry his mother, and to conclud al to put out his oune eyes: the fellow acted his griefe exceeding lifelylie. The farce was le Marriage du rien. A fool fellow in a scoolmasters habit wt a ugly nose, which I was angry at, a scoop hat, comes on the stage wt his daughter, who proposes to him that she apprehended furiusly that she might dy a maid and never tast of the pleasure in marriage. In comes a poet to ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... excuse to scold her.... Merely by looking at her I could remind her that she is indebted to me for a sacrifice. Make-believe sacrifice gives one the unconsciousness of virtue without any of its discomforts. I'm irritated because she refuses to play her part in the farce and so makes me seem cheap. She knows I'm lying but she can't figure out how or what about. So she looks at me and says to herself, 'Erik has changed. He's different.' She means that I've become an actor and able to offer her cheap things. But she ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... however, that the French appeared to me equally mad, in expecting any thing from their flotilla. Three English frigates would sink the whole force at Boulogne in the open sea. The French seem to know this; yet, to amuse the populace, and to play upon the fears of the English Ministry, the farce is kept up, and daily reports are made by the Commandant of the state of the flotilla. There is a delightful walk on the beach, which is a flat strand of firm sand, as far as the tide reaches. In the summer evenings when the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... a bad thing to get punished will largely depend upon the punishment, but when you deserve to be punished, and some one else is at hand to receive it in your stead, then punishment is apt to become a farce. Just consider this: I deserve the whipping, but you are hired to take it for me. Perhaps you think this is a joke, but I am really in earnest. I am alluding to a practice which was actually once in vogue—though never to a great extent—in this and ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... man's statement it was plain that he harboured very bitter and contemptuous thoughts about himself. His auditors were led to imagine that his love affair was nearer his heart than he admitted, and that he had a design on his own life. The farce of the cream tarts began to have very much the air of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sleep on straw in return for making them sleep on rosewood. But when their beauty is bought by the ounce at the perfumer's, and will not stand three drops of water on a rag; then their wit consists in a couplet of a farce, and their talent lies in the hand of the claqueur, it is hard indeed to understand how respectable men with good names, ordinary sense, and decent coats, can let themselves be carried away by a common place passion for ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... afterwards found, that two theatres were more than the town chose to support; therefore that in Moor-street was set for a methodist meeting, where, it was said, though it changed its audience, it kept its primeval use, continuing the theatre of farce. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... care little for this silly farce," observed the Major, looking in at one of the windows, after I had gone over Marble's affair in detail. "If not, we will continue our walk, and wait for the ladies to come out. Drewett and Hardinge will take good ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... but a civilized education has drawbacks; it makes a man scrupulous; I did not fire. I lay still, hoping that I should not be noticed. And I should not have been noticed but for one thing. Acting up to his part in the ghastly farce which these two ruffians were playing with the wife of one of them, Constantine turned to bestow kisses on the woman before he parted from her. Vlacho, in a mockery that was horrible to me who knew his heart, must needs be facetious. With a laugh he drew back; he drew back farther ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... himself, with the exception of the consuls. After the death of Caesar, the comitia continued to be held, but was always controlled by the rulers, whose unlimited powers were ultimately complied with without resistance. Finally the comitia became a mere farce, and all legislation passed away forever, and was completely in the hands ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Bob, but I can discriminate between your seriousness and your farce. Perhaps it is well to mix them, or to take them as they are mixed for us. You may be right in that; I'll think it over. Yes, I can see now that Heraclitus overdoes it, and that I used to. Well, my lad, you are a queer professor of ethics; ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... is like a tragic rendering of the scene where Diana Vernon and Osbaldistone encounter each other on the moonlit moor. The wild words of Clara, "Is it so, and was it even yourself whom I saw even now?... And, all things considered, I do carry on the farce of life wonderfully well,"—all this passage, with the silence of the man, is on the highest level of poetic invention, and Clara ranks with Ophelia. To her strain of madness we may ascribe, perhaps, what Sydney Smith calls the vulgarity of her lighter moments. But ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... conviction of the folly and futility of international strife must disappear the last apology for war. Nations will cease to struggle, not when they have learned that war is a tragedy but when they have discovered that it is a farce. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... adds his scene in the farce: "La Plessis said to Rahuel (he was the concierge) yesterday that she had been gratified at dinner to find that Madame had turned the child out of her seat and put herself in the place of honour. And Rahuel, in his Breton way: 'Nay, Miss, there's no wonder. 'Tis an honour to your years, naturally. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... farce. Why should wise men turn themselves into wild animals, if it is only in sport? I never enjoy such ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... In bidding his mother good night, he would naturally, after the custom of the time, have sought her blessing: it would be a farce now: when she seeks the blessing of God, he will beg hers; now, a ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... will confess, the precaution was superfluous, the managers having apparently entered into league to ensure me as much obscurity as I had any use for. But at length in an unguarded moment the manager of the Duke of Cornwall's Theatre (formerly the Euterpe) accepted a three-act farce. It was poorly acted, yet for some reason it took the town. 'Larks in Aspic, a Farcical Comedy by George Anthony,' ran for a solid three hundred nights; and before it ceased my unsuspecting uncle had closed his earthly career, leaving me with ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... everything which to me had been previously sacred appalled me like the overture to some approaching tragedy. Their confident attempts at some new scheme of affirmations affected me like a solemn farce. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... all. The Emperor will interfere, for this is going too far. We must hinder this farcical ceremony; his Highness cannot marry two wives! It will be Moempelgard over again! Think how absurd, Graevenitz! Cannot you see that this farce is bigamy?' ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... schoolman; but taken as a whole the poem is the work not of a man of letters but of a man of action. Chaucer has received his training from war, courts, business, travel—a training not of books but of life. And it is life that he loves—the delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its farce, its laughter and its tears, the tenderness of its Griseldis or the Smollett-like adventures of the miller and the clerks. It is this largeness of heart, this wide tolerance, which enables him to reflect man for us as none but Shakspere has ever reflected him, and to do this with a pathos, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... ten days. Some of the leaders were executed, the others swore to keep the peace, and a glowing account of the pacification of the Miaotze region was sent to Pekin. Some severe critics suggested that the whole arrangement was a farce, and that Hengan's triumph was only on paper; but the lapse of time has shown this skepticism to be unjustified, as the Miaotze have remained tranquil ever since, and the formidable Yaoujin, or Wolfmen, as they ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... married to Thomas-she was, after the fashion of slavery, one of the slaves performing the ceremony for them; as no true minister of Christ can perform, as in the presence of God, what he knows to be a mere farce, a mock marriage, unrecognised by any civil law, and liable to be annulled any moment, when the interest or caprice of the master ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... an interruption, except perhaps an occasional snore. We were so good to him, I think, because of his sense of humor. He used to stop talking now and then and with a quizzical hopeless smile he would look about the hall. And we would all smile broadly back, enjoying to the full with him the droll farce of our presence there. "Go to it, Madge," someone would murmur. And the work of revealing the wonders of this material universe would limp quietly along. In examinations Madge gave no marks, at least not to the mass of us. If he had, over half of us would have been dropped, so he ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... himself bold for any situation. He would carry the farce through if they insisted on it. He no longer planned to elude the waster. They ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Cibber was substituted for Theobald as the hero of Pope's Dunciad. Cibber had introduced some gag into the Rehearsal, in which he played the part of Bayes, referring to the ill-starred farce of Three Hours after Marriage (1717). This play was nominally by Gay, but Pope and Arbuthnot were known to have had a hand in it. Cibber refused to discontinue the offensive passage, and Pope revenged himself in sarcastic allusions ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... for wit, but, as he was fond of saying himself, no sympathy with farce or mere high spirits. I doubt even if he had a sense of humour in the ordinary meaning of that term, or in the Frenchman's definition: "la mlancholie gaie que les Anglais nomment 'humour.'" To say this is not to say that he did not enjoy a humorous, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron law a "farce." "There is as much cruelty and injustice done to natives by acts that are legal as by deeds unlawful. The regulations that exist are unjust and inadequate—unjust and inadequate they must ever be." He furnishes his reasons for his position, but they are too ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an amusing game. He held the reins of power so firmly that he could safely enact a transparent farce. He refused the sceptre. The grandees and the people begged him to accept it, and he took refuge from their solicitations in a monastery. This comedy, which even Caesar had not long played, Boris kept ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... in an official report, says the "trial of a white man for the murder of a freedman in Texas would be a farce; and, in making this statement, I make it because truth compels me, and for no other reason.... Over the killing of many freedmen nothing is done." General Sheridan cites cases in which our National soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic have been deliberately shot "without provocation" by ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... its microcosmal life. The story has the completeness of a tragedy; but it runs over many centuries, and it ends like a farce, though it ends with a death. One feels, indeed, almost as great satisfaction in the catastrophe as the Mantuans themselves, who terminated their national existence and parted from their last Duke ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... teeth. Their shoulders stooped, their chests were narrow, their arms flabby. They came in their hundreds to the hall at night. It was square-shaped with a stage and galleries, for a jargon-company sometimes thrilled the Ghetto with tragedy and tickled it with farce. Both species were playing to-night, and in jargon to boot. In real life you always get your drama mixed, and the sock of comedy galls the buskin of tragedy. It was an episode in the pitiful tussle of hunger and greed, yet ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... himself into his former position, but to this Mrs Greenow decidedly objected. If he were allowed to go down again, there was no knowing what force might be necessary to raise him. "Mr Cheesacre," she said, "let there be an end to this little farce ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... forthwith changed the subject. "There are a few necessary details that must be attended to, Mr. Carroll. That is why I sent for you at this early hour. Mr. Leslie Wrandall will take charge—Ah!" she straightened up suddenly. "What a farce it is going ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... us on our backs, as though they looked upon our capture as a most excellent joke. The majority of our fellow-prisoners were confined for attempting to leave the camp to visit their friends; but putting them in the guard-house was only a farce, for I had not been in the room fifteen minutes before I saw three men make their escape through a window. I determined to try the same thing; so, after waiting a few moments, to see that they were not brought back, I walked ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... published them under the first and best known title, "Sketches by Boz." The familiar story of "Pickwick," its early conception and its final publication, is well known. Its first publication (in parts) dated from 1836-37. About this time Dickens had another bad attack of stage-fever, and wrote a farce, "The Strange Gentleman," the libretto of an opera called "The Village Coquettes," and a comedy, "Is She His Wife?" more particularly perhaps for amateur representation, in which he was very fond of taking part. "Oliver Twist," ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... genuine Irish raciness that gives it a perennial freshness. He is a man gaily in love with life, and with a quick eye for all the varied humours of it. "Handy Andy" is one of the most amusing books ever written; a roaring farce, written by a man who combined the liveliest sense of fun with a painter's gift of portraying real character in a few vivid touches. Samuel Lover died ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... water-bottle as soon as she went out. Once when she brought us a rare dish of calvered roach and, with wenchlike curiosity, lingered to pick up a crumb or two of gossip, we had a snap of comedy, for, in his play-acting, he would take none till Maclachlan, to keep up the farce, thrust a pistol at his head and forced him. Whereupon the maid, in plucky fashion, threw a cottage loaf at Maclachlan and took him fairly in the chest. The doctor, to his credit, rose to protect her, but she braved it out. She would, she averred, lend the thingamyjig ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Ryde. We stayed at Rose Cottage (for which I sought in vain when I revisited the place the other day), and the change was pleasant, even though we were working hard. One of the pieces father gave at the theater to amuse the summer visitors was a farce called "To Parents and Guardians." I played the fat, naughty boy Waddilove, a part which had been associated with the comedian Robson in London, and I remember that I made the unsophisticated audience shout with laughter by entering with my hands covered ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... lover begins his first addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs, small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals of marriage are made ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... nauseam," he insisted hotly, "of demands for abrogation of those laws, for yielding up of those two reverend criminals to the ecclesiastical courts, of Nani's soft replies to the quick speeches of his Holiness—an unending farce!" ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... have to be held several times a day. That, however, is impossible in view of the number of women concerned, and also of the costs. Where thirty or forty prostitutes must be "done" in an hour, inspection is hardly more than a farce; moreover, one or two inspections a week is wholly inadequate. The success of these measures also suffers shipwreck in the circumstance that the men, who transmit the germs of disease from one woman to another, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... existence in nature, without possibility in life. In uncivilised countries, or in lawless times, independence, for a while, may perhaps stalk abroad; but in a regular government, 'tis only the vision of a heated brain; one part of a community must inevitably hang upon another, and 'tis a farce to call either independent, when to break the chain by which they are linked would prove destruction to both. The soldier wants not the officer more than the officer the soldier, nor the tenant the landlord, more than the landlord ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... French privateers, and taking shelter under the grins of the Tower. The office of Chorus was performed by a Jackpudding who expressed very freely his opinion of the naval administration. Immense crowds flocked to see this strange farce. The applauses were loud; the receipts were great; and the mountebanks, who had at first ventured to attack only the unlucky and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now, emboldened by impunity and success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of much higher ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knew as well as the judges that his trial was a merely perfunctory formality. The verdict was decided ere it began, and, indeed, so eager was Megales to get the farce over with that several times he interrupted ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... quite right. What an escape those poor ladies have had! Another quarter of an hour, we might have been too late, for those villains would not have kept up the farce long." ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... caused his father, but over the fact that Roger had treated him like a boy—and had done it all so briefly. He blushed, too, for the vulgar ending of the episode (if ended, indeed, it were); for it seemed to outrage all literary and artistic precedent. No farce at the Palais Royal had ever developed so grotesque a denouement; no novel of Veron, of Belot, of Montepin had ever come to so sordid an ending; no Mimi, no Musette could have ever followed a line of conduct ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... and contortions, which are fittest to give pleasure by the raising a laugh. And certainly this has its merit; but in no other proportion to the truth of the art, which consists in moving the nobler passions, than as farce is to tragedy or to genteel comedy. They are in this art of dancing, what Hemskirk and Teniers ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini |
