"Horseplay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the parrots very much resemble the monkeys and other tropical fruit-feeders in their habits and manners. They are gregarious, mischievous, noisy, and irresponsible. They have no moral sense, and are fond of practical jokes and other schoolboy horseplay. They move about in flocks, screeching aloud as they go, and alight together on some tree well covered with berries. No doubt, they herd together for the sake of protection and screech both to keep the flock in a body and to strike alarm and consternation into the breasts of their enemies. When ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... service and who knew the rudiments of drill; but in the days of peace the men who had taken part in Indian fighting cared but little to attend the musters, and left them more and more to be turned into mere scenes of horseplay. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hundred would have been too few. The mob broke their carbines, broke some of their heads, and would indeed have torn them into pieces had they not beaten a timely and well-advised retreat before a form of horseplay to which they were ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... audience, on the subject of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Altogether, he was one of those curious characters whom one finds at times in the byways of life. His many oddities marked him out very distinctly from other people, and often made him a butt for the rude jokes and horseplay of idle ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... at the stook the shearers cow'r [shock, reapers] To shun the bitter blaudin' show'r, [driving] Or, in gulravage rinnin', scour; [horseplay running] To pass the time, To you I dedicate the hour In ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... drawn it for a good one. Yet it were not difficult to prove that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his glosses, and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry, of which they were not guilty. Besides that, he is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from the plow. I will not say: "The zeal of God's house has eaten him up;" but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility. It might also be doubted whether ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... curtain goes up. Fine: through the arch one can see the supper table (the wedding). The band plays flourishes. The groomsmen come out: they are drunk, and so you see they think they must behave like clowns and cut capers. The horseplay and pot-house atmosphere reduce me to despair. Then Kiselevsky comes out: it is a poetical, moving passage, but my Kiselevsky does not know his part, is drunk as a cobbler, and a short poetical dialogue is transformed into something tedious and disgusting: the public is perplexed. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... charmed the poor helpless one by reading—or rather intoning—"Evangeline." Seafaring folk will have sentiment in their literature and music; humour must be of the most obvious sort to suit them—in fact they usually care only for the horseplay of literature—but pathos of any sort they accept at once, and Tom had tears of pride in his eyes when he told Lewis how the man had understood the first part of the poem, and how he had talked for a good half-hour about the eviction of the Acadians, and its resemblance to the fate ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... play without doubt is The History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, in which, after a favourite fashion of the time, he mingles a certain amount of history, or, at least, a certain number of historical personages, with a plentiful dose of the supernatural and of horseplay, and with a very graceful and prettily-handled love story. With a few touches from the master's hand, Margaret, the fair maid of Fressingfield, might serve as handmaid to Shakespere's women, and is certainly ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... upon finding that next to 102—presumably 103—was the workhouse. He had loved me, but had always feared that I would end by disgracing the family—being hanged or something—but the "work'us," that was beyond him; he had not thought it would come to that. And so on through pages of horseplay; his relief on ascertaining the truth and learning his mistake, his regret at not finding me at home, closing ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... up the small tent we'd use in the forests, moving around with a good deal of horseplay and a certain brisk bustle. They were a good crew, I'd already discovered. Rafe and Lerrys and the three Darkovan brothers were tireless, cheerful and mountain-hardened. Kendricks, obviously out of his element, could be implicitly relied on to follow orders, and I felt that I could ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... lack the power to appreciate; that the diseases, the bent bodies, the harrowed faces, the drunkenness, quarreling, fighting, were safer guides to the real conditions of these people than their occasional guffaws and fits of horseplay. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... good or beautiful shall be carried safe from a play out into the street was the bigotry of English horseplay. Was a Lucretia the heroine of the tragedy, she was careful in the epilogue to speak like Messalina. Did a king's mistress come to hunger and repentance, she disinfected all the petites maitresses in the house of the moral, by assuring ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... appears as a drill sergeant, then as a headwaiter, then as a gas collector, then as some other familiar fellow. But what keen insight and penetrating humour in every detail of the picture! How mirth bubbles out! Here we have burlesque, of course, and there is even some horseplay in it, but at bottom how deft it is, and how close to life, and how wholly and irresistibly comical! You must see him do the headwaiter—hear him blarney and flabbergast the complaining guest, observe him reckon up his criminal bill, see ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... and idolaters who bow down to sticks and stones, if all these added cults would serve to make us more reverent. And I wish he could have said that it was as irreligious to go to Stonehenge, that ancient temple which man raised to the unknown god thousands of years ago, to indulge in noise and horseplay at the hour of sunrise, as it would be to go to Salisbury Cathedral for such ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... essence of the night displayed itself. Light rushed from the moon into the sky like a strong wind, carrying before it some shining vapours that might have been angels' clouts blown off a heavenly line. It was as if some horseplay was going on among the ethereal forces; for the stars, dimmed by the violent brilliance of the moon, were like tapers seen through glass, and were held, perhaps, by invisible beings who had been drawn to their windows by the sound of carnival. To ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... own time finds so valuable for their artistic qualities, was there anything outside of their beauty or richness of tone or color to redeem their coarseness and vulgarity. There was no poetry in the treatment, nor any sympathy with anything higher than the grossest guzzling, fighting, and horseplay. The great monarch, who, according to his lights, was a man of delicacy and refinement, was certainly right in contemning such subjects, and it is perhaps to his credit that he did not care enough for "Art for Art's sake" to excuse the brutality of the theme for the sake of the beauty ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... pious professor. She described him as a lad of parts, but full of pride, and in need of the curbing rein. He was soon to find how much these words implied. If a boy has been trained by gentle ladies he is hardly well equipped, as a rule, to stand the rough horseplay of a boarding-school; and if, in addition, he boasts blue blood, he is sure to come in for blows. And the Count was a delicate aristocrat, with weak legs and a cough. He was proud of his noble birth; he was rather officious in his manner; he had his meals at Franke's ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... catered to along this line in their homes, we can restrict the folly of appealing too strongly or too long to this elemental faculty in our schools. Of course, the temptation is strong because the appeal is so easy, but there is a tacit recognition that horseplay and practical jokes are no longer considered as an essential part of a child's education. We note this in the changed attitude in the schools, taken by more advanced educators, towards bullying, fagging, hazing, etc. As a reaction, then, from more obvious fun, there should be a certain number ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... two or three guns as we reached the final plateau. We should, properly speaking, have been uproariously triumphant over our victory. To say the truth, our party of that summer was only too apt to break out into undignified explosions of animal spirits, bordering at times upon horseplay.... ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... always chosen the most awkward places and the least excuse for horseplay, and the sleep seemed to have expelled the last of the fever from Fred's bones, so that he felt like a schoolboy on holiday. Will grabbed him around the neck and they wrestled, to their horses' infinite disgust, panting and straining mightily in the effort to unseat each other. It was natural that ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... convey them to jail for the disturbance, but are themselves badly mauled. Then the Pardoner and the Friar go off amicably together. There is no allegory, no moral; merely satire on the fraudulent and hypocritical practices of pardoners and friars, together with some horseplay to raise a louder laugh. The fashion of that satire may be judged from the following exchange of home truths by the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... humble often display after long and earnest pondering has made duty plain. "When I saw Niles pass through the street and the crowd following, I was afraid that a matter that's very serious to some of us would be turned into horseplay, and so I came along, too. But I am not led by a buck sheep, Mr. Thornton, nor are those ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... to come—that of my apprehending, years after, that the brilliant comedietta was the tribute of our Anglo-Saxon taste to Alfred de Musset's elegant proverb of the Porte Ouverte ou Fermee, in which nothing could find itself less at home than the horseplay of the English version. Miss Laura Keene, with a native grace at the start, a fresh and delicate inspiration, I infer from the kind of pleasure she appears to have begun with giving, was to live to belie her promise and, becoming hard and raddled, forfeit ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... but was waked between eleven and twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton, in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... gifts. The history, such as it is, runs currently; there are no hitches and stops and stagnations, the plentiful improbabilities are managed in such fashion that one does not trouble about them, and there is an atmosphere, sometimes of horseplay but almost always of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Power sat downstairs in the kitchen asking the children where they went to school and what book they were in. The children—two girls and a boy, conscious of their father helplessness and of their mother's absence, began some horseplay with him. He was surprised at their manners and at their accents, and his brow grew thoughtful. After a while Mrs. Kernan ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... jaw, and when her mother had not known how to master her, she had often cried: 'Ah, my girl, you'll eat your heart's blood out like your father.' Poor mother! how she, Christine, had worried her with her love of horseplay, with her mad turbulent fits. As far back as she could remember, she pictured her mother ever seated at the same window, quietly painting fans, a slim little woman with very soft eyes, the only thing she had inherited of her. When people wanted to please her mother they told her, 'she ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of the kind that runs for a year and costs the price of two books for a good seat. Its humor is either good horseplay or vulgar farce, and its literary quality nil. Its music is better, less banal than the words, and, sometimes, almost excellent. But its setting, the costumes, the scenic effects, the stage painting, and, most of ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... fight in various ways, Lord knows, and the worst are the said-to-be civilized; but from Nome to Cape Town and all the way from China to Peru the veriest tenderfoot can tell in the dark the difference between fight and horseplay. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... Not horseplay rough, the Saraband They danced in vanished years, But Love and Satire hand-in-hand, And laughter linked with tears, And Youth equipped his dove to win, And Age, who grudged the boon;— Sweet Columbine, bold Harlequin, Cross ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... the evening. Lockwood, because he had heard the laughter and horseplay of the men of the night shift as they went down the canon from the bunk-house to the tunnel-mouth, knew that it was a little after seven. It would not be necessary to go indoors and begin work on the columns of figures of his pay-roll for another hour yet. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished the recruits and the company were ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... younger generation of Rover boys, as well as their sisters, were brought up very much as one large family. At first they were sent to private schools in the Metropolis, but the boys, led by Andy and Randy, showed such an aptitude for fun and horseplay that their parents were compelled to hold ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... the air. The masters had granted the men a day off and given them plenty of beer. All that warm day they had made merry, drinking and singing and loafing about the streets like happy savages. He too had revelled with the rest, had been overcome by the drink and joined in everything, from the horseplay in the open air to the bestial amusements in those dark holes where the populace seeks its pleasure, that stimulant for the work of the morrow. Then that brutal drunkenness had come, with the loss of all his senses, till he found himself, dog-tired, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... was also the house of that person who through some ungovernable horseplay of destiny happened to be her father: and this gave the enchanted spot a background of lurking cyclone—no one could tell at what instant there might rise above the roseate pleasance a funnel-shaped cloud. With young Herbert's ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... awhile that the fishing trip would be called off, but in the boisterous horseplay that went with the washing of the scanty dishes, all differences were forgotten, especially when Phil, scuffling in friendly fashion, put Tod down on his back and pulled that squirming wrestler's nose till ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... produce the keys to the wine-cellar, and the consequences of his surrender were what might have been expected. The mischief already perpetrated in coarse fun—the horseplay of backwoods big boys cut loose from restraint, though rude and destructive, was harmless compared with the orgies to which it was a prelude. The rich and abundant liquors stored away to supply the family demand for twenty years were in a day poured down the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... finding out how to extinguish the lantern. For some time he lay listening. He had often read of the practical jokes that cowboys are supposed always to play on tenderfeet. But the steady concert of the snoring sleepers was unbroken by any horseplay. Presently ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... other—Andy working the schemes that Pete usually invented for the occasion. Up to the time that he arrived at the Concho ranch, Young Pete had never known the joy of good-natured, rough-and-tumble horseplay, that wholesome diversion that tries a man out, and either rubs off the ragged edges of his temper or marks him as an undesirable and to-be-let-alone. Pete, while possessing a workable sense of humor, was intense—somewhat quick on the trigger, so to speak. The frequent roughings he experienced ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... characters of many a German opera are there correctly dressed, joining in the songs and dances, shooting for wagers, making love, sometimes coming to blows. But you may look on at a Kirchweih from morning till night without seeing either horseplay or drunkenness. Not that the German peasant is an opera hero in his inner life. He is a hard-working man, God-fearing on the whole, stupid and stolid often, narrowly shrewd often, having his eye on the main chance. When ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... horseplay, Mahony stepped sharply back—his first thought was of Ned having unexpectedly returned from Mount Ararat. Then recognising the voice, he exclaimed incredulously: ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... reached Duck Bank, the vivacity of the town, loosed after the day's labour to an evening's orgy of oratory and horseplay and beer, had communicated itself to Edwin. He was most distinctly aware of pleasure in the sight of the Tory candidate driving past, at a pace to overtake steam-cars, in a coach-and-four, with amateur postilions and an orchestra ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... troopers. Wide grins on the faces of the three still against the bar suggested they were ready to back their companion in any form of horseplay he ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... horseplay, jugglers and histrions had, to please their audience, retorts, funny answers, witticisms, merry tales, which they acted rather than told, for gestures accompanied the delivery. This part of the amusement, which came nearest the drama, sharp repartees, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... service, especially that of the cup-bearer, was minutely regulated by etiquette. An honoured guest was welcomed by the host rising to receive him and giving him a seat near himself, but less distinguished visitors were often victims to the rough horseplay of the baser sort, and of the wanton young gentleman at court. The food was simple, boiled beef and pork, and mutton without sauce, ale served in horns from the butt. Roast meat, game, sauces, mead, and flagons set on the table, are looked on by Starcad ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... other festive occasions. Before midnight a good many of the men are more or less intoxicated, some deeply so; but most are able to find their way to bed about midnight, and few or none become offensive or quarrelsome, even though the men indulge in wrestling and rough horseplay with one another. After an exceptionally good harvest the boisterous merry-making is renewed on a second or even ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Frenchwoman, reared on classic models and confined by rigid canons of art, should stand aghast at this boisterous, barbaric, irreverent jester from the wilds of America. When it is remembered that Mark Twain began his career as one of the sage-brush writers and gave free play to his passion for horseplay, his desire to "lay a mine" for the other fellow, and his defiance of the traditional and the classic, it is not to be wondered at that Mme. Blanc, while honouring him with recognition in the most authoritative literary journal in the world, could ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... which are not lost upon the audience. In the practical jokes, the melodrama, the ranting bombast, and Bottom's ambition to play "a tyrant's vein," they recognise a satire on the amateur theatricals of the trades-guilds, the clownish horseplay of the "moralities" so-called. These crude plays, once so popular, have become the jest of an audience who pride themselves on a drama of ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... filling now in expectation of the fireworks; indescribable the mingled tumult that roars heavenwards. Girls linked by the half-dozen arm-in-arm leap along with shrieks like grotesque maenads; a rougher horseplay finds favour among the youths, occasionally leading to fisticuffs. Thick voices bellow in fragmentary chorus; from every side comes the yell, the cat-call, the ear-rending whistle; and as the bass, the never-ceasing ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... looked at us in a dazed sort of a way—thought us lunatics, and then when old Char-tens asked him not to mind a bit of miners' horseplay, but to sit down and have some fizz, he called him 'an audacious ruffian,' and ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the reader is of the modern cutlet-and-cup-of-coffee school of feeding, he will no doubt find the Noctes most grossly and palpably gluttonous. If he be a very superior person he will smile at the upholstery. If he objects to horseplay he will be horrified at finding the characters on one occasion engaging in a regular "mill," on more than one corking each other's faces during slumber, sometimes playing at pyramids like the bounding brothers of acrobatic fame, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... stirred around him, jubilant, bounteous, pulsing life. The levity of the people was without limit. Their childishness astonished Done, but he lived to find this a characteristic of the diggers in all parts; even the roughest men in the roughest camps exhibited a schoolboy's love of horseplay and a great capacity for primitive happiness. It was as if the people, having thrown off the more galling restraints of civilization and order, felt their limbs and spirits free for the first time, and exercised ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... his condemnation of both the Kanakas for getting drunk, and the captain for giving them any money wherewith to do so. The remainder of the watch fortunately concluded their carouse without any serious disorder. A few bruises bestowed upon one another, more in clumsy horseplay than real fighting summed up the casualties among them. By ten o'clock that evening we had them all safely on board again, ready for sore heads and repentance ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... not the first practice game staged for Merriwell. The first one had degenerated into a farce, for the spirit of fun had taken untimely grip of the players and a promising exhibition had gone to pieces on a reef of horseplay. Spink and Handy, for the club, had waited upon Merry and tendered apologies, and a second game had been arranged. Circumstances over which Merry had had little control had kept him away from that second game; and now, four days later, the Ophir ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... persiflage, raillery, chaff, badinage; quizzing &c. v.; asteism[obs3]. squib, satire, skit, quip, quib[obs3], grin. parody, burlesque, travesty, travestie[obs3]; farce &c. (drama) 599; caricature. buffoonery &c. (fun) 840; practical joke; horseplay. scorn, contempt &c. 930. V. ridicule[transitive], deride, mock, taunt; snigger; laugh in one's sleeve; tease[ridicule lightly], badinage, banter, rally, chaff, joke, twit, quiz, roast; haze [U.S.]; tehee[obs3]; fleer[obs3]; show up. [i.p.] play upon, play tricks upon; fool to the top of one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... trooped down to their hut-village. Noisily, profanely, full of horseplay and ear-burning jests; but never a voice spoke any word that failed in its homage when ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... man equally large, but not quite so ill-dressed, had not jumped up also and held him away. This other big man shouted a sort of speech to the mob as he was shoving them back. I don't know what he said, but, what with shouting and shoving and such horseplay, he got us out at a back door, while the wretched people went roaring ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... out. The Bellaconda "crossed the line," and there was the usual horseplay among the sailors when Father Neptune came aboard to hold court. Those who had never before been below the equator were made to undergo more or less of an initiation, being lathered and shaved, and then pushed backward into a canvas ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... in high spirits, and elaborate compliments alternated curiously with gentle horseplay. But soon they put up their legs on a pair of chairs ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... conciliating character of the General quite as much as any peculiar merit of the soldiers. The state of things in and about the camp was compared by the caustic Dr. Douglas to "a Cambridge Commencement," which academic festival was then attended by much rough frolic and boisterous horseplay among the disorderly crowds, white and black, bond and free, who swarmed among the booths on Cambridge Common. The careful and scrupulous Belknap, who knew many who took part in the siege, says: "Those who were on the spot have frequently, in my hearing, laughed ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... dregs the bitter poisoned cup of a dependent existence. He had been, in his time, the sport of the dull malignity and the boorish pranks of slothful masters. How often, alone in his room, released at last 'to go in peace,' after a mob of visitors had glutted their taste for horseplay at his expense, he had vowed, blushing with shame, chill tears of despair in his eyes, that he would run away in secret, would try his luck in the town, would find himself some little place as clerk, or die once for all of hunger in the street! But, in the first place, God had not ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... more of her! And we have grace after meat as well as before.' 'The devil take the insolent goodness of your imagination!' exclaims the lively old buck, now past eighty, and as well preserved as if he had never encountered Pope's 'scathing satire' (does satire ever 'scathe'?) or Fielding's rough horseplay. One of Richardson's lady admirers saw Cibber flirting with fine ladies at Tunbridge Wells in 1754 (he was born in 1671), and miserable when he was neglected for a moment by the greatest belle in the society. He ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... entered the ring, after one moment of breathless astonishment, the entire crowd arose as one man and cheered itself hoarse, in a frenzy of frantic delight. Now whether Charley was enthused by the applause, or whether the situation reminded him of some festive horseplay of his youth, one cannot tell. At any rate, what little life was left in Charley's blood asserted itself. Quickly jerking the rope of the halter from the astonished hand of Dimple Perkins, Charley turned briskly round, and trotted out of the yard ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... tumble exercises which characterise the activities of so many of our poorer population by some form of organised activity."[30] The aimless parading of our streets by the sons and daughters of the working and lower middle classes in their leisure time, the rough horseplay of the youth of the lowest classes, are due in large measure to the fact that during the school period they have not been habituated to take part with their fellows in any form of organised activity, have never realised what a corporate ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... monotonous patter. In the pine woods there were the song and flash of birds, and the quickening stimulus of the stirring aromatic sap. Miners and tunnelmen were already forsaking the direct road for a ramble through the woodland trail and its sylvan charms, and occasionally breaking into shouts and horseplay like great boys. The schoolchildren were disporting there; there were some older couples sentimentally gathering flowers side by side. Miss Trotter was also there, but making a short cut from the bank and express office, and by no means disturbed ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... less stringent treatment of the players than in the earlier days of the triumph of Puritanism. Cromwell, perhaps, rather despised the stage than condemned it seriously on religious grounds; the while he did not object to indulge in buffoonery and horseplay, even in the gallery of Whitehall. Some love of music he has been credited with, and this, perhaps, induced him to tolerate the operatic dramas of Sir William Davenant, which obtained representation during the Commonwealth: such as "The History of Sir Francis Drake," "represented ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... annoyances of the soldier's life; his arrival at the barracks, his examination by the adjutant, the fitting of his uniform by the gruff sergeant, the malodorous bedroom with its fetid air and filthy floor, the horseplay and coarse language of his new comrades, the merciless drill that stiffened his limbs and benumbed his brain. In a week's time, however, he had conquered his first squeamishness, and from that time forth ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... pre-Shakespearean dramatist is even remotely comparable. Yet, especially in the original text of these scenes as they stand unpurified by the ultimate revision of Shakespeare, there are tones and touches which recall rather the clownish horseplay and homely ribaldry of his predecessors than anything in the lighter interludes of his very earliest plays. We find the same sort of thing which we find in their writings, only better done than they usually do ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
