"Melodramatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inferred that the form of the play, as given at the Broadway Theatre, New York, September 26, 1855,[B] was the only one used by him. Winter claims that as Lanciotto, Davenport was "unimaginative, mechanical, and melodramatic," and that the whole piece "proved tedious." This is strange, considering the heroic and romantic characteristics in Davenport's method of acting. It may be that he attempted Boker's play because of his interest in the development of American drama. He had assisted Mrs. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... Jimmy stared at him for a full quarter minute and then, recovering his good humor, clapped his hat on his head and assuming a highly melodramatic air in imitation of the Judge's ponderous methods said, "Harold, beware! Beware! I say! It's a long worm that has no turning. Them papers shall be mine! I swear it on me lyfe." And with a boisterous shout of laughter turned ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... a week more melodramatic than the most stirring moving picture film. Although the writ had been applied for in the greatest secrecy, a detective suddenly appeared to accompany Mr. O'Brien from Washington to Norfolk, during his stay in Norfolk, and back to Washington. Telephone wires at our ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... under various disguises) and they picture him as a proud, mysterious stranger, carelessly generous, fiendishly wicked, profoundly melancholy, irresistibly fascinating to women. Byron is credited with the invention of this hero, ever since called Byronic; but in truth the melodramatic outcast was a popular character in fiction long before Byron adopted him, gave him a new dress and called him Manfred or Don Juan. A score of romances (such as Mrs. Radcliffe's The Italian in England, and Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland in America) had used ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... me, boy," said Gordon. "I don't mean to blaspheme; but Job is not in it with me just now. You cannot imagine what I had to contend with before this melodramatic villain appeared on the stage. Sometimes I think this is the finish," Gordon's mouth contracted. He looked savage. James continued to stare at him. Gordon laid his hand on James's shoulder. "Thank the Lord for one thing," he said almost tenderly, "that he sent you here. Between us we will take care ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... the advice of the variety theatre's prima donna. While a stranger to the City of Breweries, he knew that its predestination toward thirst was due to its being the site of an ancient rock-salt mine. In other cities, subterraneans were melodramatic; here, a labyrinth under the surface and at the level of the dancing and drinking cellars was so natural that a child of Munich, dropped into a well, would have no misgivings as to his worming his way up into the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Hopkins was well known by the squire to be the owner of three or four hundred pounds, the hint about the workhouse must be allowed to have been melodramatic. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... special direction. What was my discomfiture to find that my blouse was much too small and refused to meet. I could only use gestures for the dressmaker's enlightenment, but in order not to waste my recently gained knowledge, I tried to tell a melodramatic tale of a friend of mine whose blouse bagged and sat in wrinkles between the shoulders. It was not successful, because I was obliged to substitute the past for the present tense ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... persistently refused to see, in revenge for her mother's unfaithfulness, and the still more famous scene in Nature and Art where a judge passes the death-sentence on a woman whom he has betrayed—have, as has been allowed, the dramatic or melodramatic quality which attracts people in "decadent" periods. There seems, indeed, to have been a certain decadent charm about Mrs. Inchbald herself—with her beauty, her stage skill, her strict virtue combined with ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... light and color are the chief defects of stage-lighting to-day. One turns hopefully toward the gallant though small band of stage artists who are striving to realize a harmony of lighting, setting, and drama in the so-called modern theater. Unappreciated by a public which flocks to the melodramatic movie, whose scenarios produced upon the legitimate stage would be jeered by the same public, the modern stage artist is striving to utilize the potentiality of light. But even among these there are impostors ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... To think that out of a mere chain of chance coincidences I should have forged a perfect melodramatic intrigue! To think that I should have let my fancy run away with me in such a fashion, and have worked myself into such a state of nervousness and alarm! I could not help feeling a trifle ashamed. 'Well,' I pleaded, 'for my part, I had never seen the men before, ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... she rose out of the sea of colours so beautiful and happy a vision that the priest felt his suspicion shaken and shifted. "After all," he thought, "perhaps the poison isn't hers; perhaps it's one of Muscari's melodramatic tricks." ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... morning when Jim Thorpe turned his stiffly squared back upon the "AZ" ranch. He wanted no melodramatic accompaniment. He wanted the light, he wanted the cheering sun, he wanted that wealth of natural splendor, which the Western prairie can so amply afford, to lighten the burden which had so suddenly ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... to her on the palm of my hand. It was melodramatic, probably; but I was very young, and by that time wildly in love with her. I thought, for a moment, that she would take it; but she only drew a deep breath and pushed ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... take deliberate aim and shoot at a man, it would be all right and proper—because that man would not be in any danger; but these random assaults are what I object to. I do not wish to see any more places like Esdraelon, where the ground is level and people can gallop. It puts melodramatic nonsense into the pilgrims' heads. All at once, when one is jogging along stupidly in the sun, and thinking about something ever so far away, here they come, at a stormy gallop, spurring and whooping at those ridgy old sore-backed plugs till their heels fly higher ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... matter as this it was not safe to take chances. Varney had a curious feeling that young Mr. Smith's melodramatic warnings had been offered in a spirit of friendliness, rather than of hostility. Nevertheless, the eccentric young man had unmistakably threatened them. While Varney had been more interested by the man, personally, than by his whimsical menaces, the editor's ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fast on the heels of his own melodramatic and written views concerning their property, nettled him greatly. Each downright syllable was a sting to his conscience, but of this Iris was blissfully unaware, else she would not have applied caustic to the rankling wound caused by ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... hard little mirthless laugh, and stretched out her withered hand with a melodramatic gesture. "But I was never a fool, my dear," was her retort, "and there are few women of whom it can be said with truth that they were never at any time, from the beginning to the end of their career, a fool. Nobody is a fool always, but there are ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... daughter (of whose great artistic powers there is no doubt) sang and declaimed last Sunday in Jena with the greatest success. The vocal numbers were "two songs by Schumann," one of which was encored—and at the end of the concert she declaimed the Ballade Leonore (with my melodramatic ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... down on his breast, relax and unburden himself in his conversations with me, but I was unsuccessful, on account of his constant reserve and suspicion, and his studied aloofness. An opportunity arose for a discussion between us when he wanted the orchestra to take a melodramatic part (which they afterwards did) in a certain scene of his Uriel Acosta, where the hero had to recant his alleged heresy. The orchestra had to execute the soft tremolo for a given time on certain chords, but when I heard the performance it ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Old Catholic movement and the Jesuit intrigues to suppress the spread of reform in the papal communion. We think it one of the best, if not the best, novels we have met with upon such topics. It is thoroughly well written, not exaggerated, not melodramatic, and the characters admirably drawn and finely discriminated.... Apart from its great interest and exceptional cleverness as a novel, this book is ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... small leaden pigs for good luck; and novelties of every description. Here one sees women with baskets of ecrivisse boiled scarlet; an acrobat tumbles on the pavement, and two men and a girl, as a marine, a soldier, and a vivandiere, in silvered faces and suits, pose in melodramatic attitudes. The vivandiere is rescued alternately from a speedy death by the ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... the melodramatic title which Napoleon had conferred upon the man he could not trust, but dare not openly distrust or dismiss, any more than could Louis XVIII. Even in the calmest and most peaceful times the Duke of Otranto remained menacing and terrible. The background which I see when I ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... was like the burst of admiration with which the picture of the human heart was at the same time hailed in France, drawn by the magic hand of Rousseau; or, in the next age, the fierce passions of the melodramatic corsairs of Byron were received in the artificial circles of London society. Nature was something new; they had never heard her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... is retribution, this is punishment! Blinder than the veriest mole have I been through it all. Nellie!" he cries, turning suddenly toward her again as she stands there trembling at his melodramatic misery. "There is no engagement! There has been nothing said, ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... taken aback - almost too taken aback to speak; but a red spot burned in each cheek, and a sudden flash seemed to gleam angrily in her eyes. Her quick brain, however, took in the position instantly. If she grew indignant and melodramatic, he would ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church which had broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up with various tawdry decorations, much after the manner of the extinct London may-poles. These attractions had induced several young priests or deacons in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young ladies interested in that holy order (the proportion ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... addressed suddenly lost their scornful expression, and sheathing his sword with an air of almost melodramatic solemnity, he gravely pulled up his mustaches, and after a pause of a few seconds, solemnly ejaculated a malediction upon ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... time the people in the court-room were beginning to believe in this new witness. They were amused by his melodramatic action in thus fixing the hour; but they seemed to have confidence in the outcome. As for the President, it looked as if he also had made up his mind to take the young man in the same way. He had certainly been impressed by Rouletabille's ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... "the talented young English actor, William Whally." In the intimacies of private association he was known as Bill Whally, and his descent was straight down from "Mount Sinai's awful height." He was a Hebrew and no better or more uneven and reckless actor ever played melodramatic "heavies." He had a love for Shakespeare, but could not play him; he had a love of drink and could gratify it. His vigorous talents purchased for him much forbearance. I've seen Mr. Whally play the fastidious and elegant "Sir Archibald Levison" in shiny ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... the men of death that came to take him away,' consumption. Bunyan was a true artist, though he knew nothing of the rules, and was not aware that he was an artist at all. He was not to be tempted into spoiling a natural story with the melodramatic horrors of a sinner's deathbed. He had let his victim 'howl' in the usual way, when he meant him to recover. He had now simply to conduct him to the gate of the place where he was to receive the reward of his iniquities. It was enough to bring him thither still impenitent, with ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... Hervey's rage was melodramatic. But the girl, even in the depths of her misery and distraught feelings, was impressed. Her heart cried out for her lover, and proclaimed his innocence in terms which would not be silenced. His image rose ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the rudeness, idleness, and vulgarity of the village poolroom. The pupil who is taught to appreciate the beautiful, the true, and the good in standard literature is not likely to find pleasure in reading the melodramatic and sentimental trash that now has prominence of place and space in many book stores and in some public libraries. It is the duty of the teacher, and it should be her pleasure, to cultivate in her pupils such a taste for good literature as will lead them to choose the good and reject the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... good deal of poetry and fiction in which he spoke of himself as a martyr who had been persecuted and downed all his lifetime. His stories were of a fantastic, adventurous kind, in which gambling, shooting, and similar highly melodramatic situations were enacted. On July 17, 1911, he was returned to prison as recovered. Another point of interest in this case and one to which I have briefly alluded before, was his tendency to the exaggeration of symptoms and to malingering, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... reckless breeding insisted upon. But beneath all this wordy pretension and economic jargon, we detect another aim. That is the unconscious dramatization of human society into the "class conflict." Nothing was overlooked that might sharpen and accentuate this "conflict." Marx depicted a great melodramatic conflict, in which all the virtues were embodied in the proletariat and all the villainies in the capitalist. In the end, as always in such dramas, virtue was to be rewarded and villainy punished. The working class ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... councils, because, forsooth, their will there expressed may affect the government of another class of the same general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was the institution of slavery itself. Such a condition of affairs has not the melodramatic and soul-stirring incidents of chattel slavery, but its effects can be as far-reaching and as debasing. There has been some manifestation of its possible consequences in the recent outbreaks of lynching and other race oppression in the South. The practical ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... immediately," M. Roussillon ordered, as soon as they were restored to consciousness; and he shook himself, as a big wet animal sometimes does, covering everybody near him with muddy water. Then he led the way with melodramatic strides. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... protested, "is inclined to be melodramatic. The gas which Bright has in that cylinder is simply one which would produce a little temporary unconsciousness. We might have used it—we may still use it—but if you others are able to persuade Mr. Orden to restore ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with; and after that, a lantern to trace the footsteps with; and after that, a pitchfork to poke the bushes with. This done, amidst the breathless interest of all beholders, they came in again; and Mr. Giles and Brittles were put through a melodramatic representation of their share in the previous night's adventures: which they performed some six times over: contradicting each other, in not more than one important respect, the first time, and in not more than a dozen the last. This consummation being arrived at, Blathers and Duff ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... at it until two. The actors seem frightened about it. Mr. Warde quakes about the pinching (an incident in the play taken, I suppose, from Ruthven's proceeding toward Mary Stewart at Lochleven). I am only afraid I cannot do anything with my part; it is a sort of melodramatic, pantomimic part that I have no capacity for. The fact is, that neither in the first nor last scenes are my legs long enough to do justice to this lady. The Douglas woman who barred the door with her arm to save King James's life must have been ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... was allowed to stand in his way. During the last few years he had composed a number of occasional things—which we need not stop to consider—but nothing on the sumptuous scale of Rienzi. Heroic personages, dramatic or melodramatic situations, opportunities for huge gaily-dressed crowds and scenic display—these were what the young man was after; and in the story of Rienzi he found plenty to fire an imagination always prone to flame and flare at the slightest suggestion. The libretto was written; the music was partly ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... have as much vanity as most girls, but you make me blush. You are indeed dazed, for you appear to take me for a melodramatic heroine." ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... in that melodramatic way," said Oliver, quietly. But his lip twitched a little as if something had touched him unpleasantly. "You know very well that you have no more power of ruining me than you have of flying to yonder moon. You can't substantiate any of your stories. You can blacken me in the eyes of a few persons ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... morality but scientific theories. Herein, permit me to say, you entirely misapprehend the spirit of the age. People read novels merely to be amused, not educated; and they will not tolerate technicalities and abstract speculation in lieu of exciting plots and melodramatic denouements. Persons who desire to learn something of astronomy, geology, chemistry, philology, etc., never think of finding what they require in the pages of a novel, but apply at once to the text- books of the respective sciences, and would as soon ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Italian life or character. Irving could draw the early Dutch in America, or the mediaeval Moors in Spain, or the Englishman in England or Italy: the modern Italian on his own soil he did not know except in his melodramatic exterior. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... long and expressive breath, and, with melodramatic movements of the shoulders, he sighed. "I have not seen you since. Oh, I had terrible scenes with the father. They had a house up the river. I followed them, and put up at the Angler's Hotel. She told her father that I must be allowed to come to the house, and he had ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... his conscience did Barry go to the cinema show that night, which in this camp was run under the chaplain service and by a chaplain. He knew what the thing would be like. His whole soul shrunk from the silly, melodramatic films which he knew would constitute the programme as from a nauseating dose of medicine. The billboard announced a double header, a trite and, especially to Canadians, a ridiculous representation of the experiences of John Bull ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... deception that had been put upon her. She was going to say good-bye now and be free. Molly's money would now be her own, she could take it away and share it with the deserted, misjudged mother. Nothing in all this was melodramatic; it would have been but natural if the facts had been as she supposed, only Molly made the little mistake of treating as facts her carefully built-up fancies, her long, childish story of her ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... little tales given us by a wandering revivalist, who was on a starring tour through the New England villages, "How Gussie Grew in Grace," and "Little Harriet's Work for the Heathen,"—melodramatic histories of spiritually perfect and physically feeble children who blessed the world for a season, but died young, enlivened by a few pages devoted to completely vicious and adorable ones who lived to curse the world to a ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... have been equal to Calverley's famous examination-paper, and he had a special liking for the 'Uncommercial Traveller.' But when Dickens deserted his proper function Fitzjames was roused to indignation. The 'little Nell' sentimentalism and the long gallery of melodramatic deathbeds disgusted him, while the assaults upon the governing classes generally stirred his wrath. The satire upon individuals may be all very well in its place, but a man, he said, has no business to set up as the 'regenerator of society' because he is its most 'distinguished ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... sit down," she said pleasantly. "Our present attitude is a little melodramatic. No—not on the bed. Draw a chair up to the table, that's right. Now I'll sit opposite you with the revolver in front of me—just in case of accidents. Splendid. Now, ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... looking at the other curiously, with something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... know too much already, Mr. Smith," she said; "you must find out all the rest in your own inimitable way; so far as I am concerned, you must leave me to work out my plan of vengeance. That sounds horribly melodramatic, but I am just as horribly in earnest, as you shall learn. They took George Doughton from me and they murdered him; the man who did this was Montague Fallock, and I am perhaps the only person in the world who has met Montague ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... should pick at the pudding or invade the cream, do you? Ungrateful girl, leave me!" And, with melodramatic sternness, John extinguished her in his broad-brimmed hat, and offered the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... seems to have taken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of Candide, and continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage. There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... United Kingdom, and in his two visits to America. It is not surprising, either, to learn that upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and farce. His own serious writing was always dangerously close to the melodramatic, and his humor to the farcical. There is much false art, bad taste, and even vulgarity in Dickens. He was never quite a gentleman, and never succeeded well in drawing gentlemen or ladies. In the region of low comedy he is easily the most original, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Note this theme in "Fine Feathers" (January 7, 1913) and "Nancy Lee" (April 9, 1918). In this sense, his plays all possess a consistency which makes no compromises. Arthur Ruhl, in his "Second Nights", refers to Walter as of the "no quarter" school. He brings a certain manly subtlety to bear on melodramatic subjects, as in "The Wolf" (April 18, 1908) and "The Knife" (April 12, 1917); he seems to do as he pleases with his treatment, as he did right at the start with his first successful play. For, of "The Easiest Way" it may be said that, for the first time in his managerial career, Mr. ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... eight years of Monroe and the four years of Adams, an immense popular demand for something piquant and even amusing, and this quality they always had from Jackson. There was nothing in the least melodramatic about him; he never posed or attitudinized—it would have required too much patience; but he was always piquant. There was formerly a good deal of discussion as to who wrote the once famous "Jack Downing's" letters, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... have that vigorous health which is the secret of perpetual youth. You have not yet realised decay, not to speak of death. The immortality of the soul is a question wide of you, who have as yet practically no doubt of the immortality of the body. But I—well, it would be melodramatic to say that I face death every day. The metaphor applies but to desperate callings and romantic complaints. To some Death comes like a footpad, suddenly, and presents his pistol—and the smoke that curls upward from his ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Just how melodramatic his sentimentalism forces him to be has often been overlooked because of his diction and his pictures. Though he tends to the mellifluous and the saccharine he has in his better pages a dewy, luminous ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... beautiful aria ("Le crede il padre"). The act closes with the fall of Dinorah, who attempts to cross the bridge, into the torrent, and her rescue by Hoeel, to the accompaniment of a storm set to music. The scene, though melodramatic, is very ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... station-house. But as the darkness changed to gray, and the black bulk of the Cafe Ducrot came into view, his interest quickened. He encouraged himself with the thought that while in New York the wording of the note would be improbable, hysterical, melodramatic, in hot, turbulent Venezuela it was in keeping with the country and ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... here: and if that is evident, and serves to cherish and rekindle one's own sympathy with the world about one, the great end is accomplished. I do not know very much of Salvator: is he not rather a melodramatic painter? No doubt, very fine in his way. But Claude and the two Poussins are the great ideal painters of Landscape. Nature looks more stedfast in them than in other painters: all is wrought up into a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naia. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel or ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... brought into play. It was decided by those who had a right to render an authoritative verdict, that he would shine best in that which we call the "domestic drama." Here it was thought his broad fun, rustic waggery, and curious mastery of provincial dialect might admirably contrast with the melodramatic intensity, and the homely, but touching pathos of which in so eminent a degree he was the master. Hence the dramas, written expressly and deliberately to his measure and capacity, of "Daddy Hardacre," "The Porter's Knot," and "The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... slavery.... If the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our enemies would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of thousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending with the melodramatic fury of pirate kings." ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... keep your eyes fixed on one spot. If Lady Diana's engaged to Major Vandyke, then he'd have no incentive to strike at another man who was gone on her. It would be the other way round. The chap who had lost her would be the one, if any, to be up to melodramatic stunts. It might be said about March that he risked trouble for himself, for the pleasure of having a smack at Vandyke; putting the blame on him for a mad order to fire off guns at the good little Mexicans, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... will develop itself in proportion as the story approaches the close; and whatever may appear violent or melodramatic in the catastrophe, will, perhaps, be found, by a reader capable of perceiving the various symbolical meanings conveyed in the story, essential to the end in which those meanings converge, and towards which the incidents that give them the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... E.), while THOMAS proceeds to scale the wall and climb the boughs of the nearest pear-tree. Melodramatic Music. The Monster Man-trap stealthily emerges from long grass below, and fixes a baleful eye on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... Dickens evidently prided himself, I must confess, never laid hold of me. He is a melodramatic young man. The worst I could have wished him would have been that he should marry Rose Dartle and live with his mother. It would have served him right for being so attractive. Old Peggotty and Ham are, of course, impossible. One must accept them ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... impersonate you, when you leave, so that this man tries to send me after the other three. Don't interrupt, let me finish—You will say that it is impossible to deceive any one at close range. Surely, it does sound melodramatic, like a lurid tale of a paper back novel. But I have studied the photographs of your friends. You and I bear the closest resemblance of any in the group. Your weight is about the same as mine—your shoulders are a trifle stooped ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... "I hate to seem melodramatic," he declared, "and I never carry firearms, but I have a little life-preserver here which I have learned how to use pretty effectively. Come, you know, it isn't a fair fight. You've had all you want, Lassen, and Henri there hasn't the muscle of ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... treated as conspirators and not as brigands, the judges only had the small fry of the plot before them, and the imperial commissary took care to name the chiefs only with great discretion. He did it by means of epithets, and in a melodramatic tone that caused the worthy people who jostled each other in the hall to shiver ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... was nothing beyond the recollection of that guilt that was really shocking in the woman—between the extravagant extremes of hope and fear suggested by their words, there was something so grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with difficulty suppressed ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... to-night. He wanted to turn over in his mind what he had learned from Brokaw, and to-morrow act with the cool judgment which was more or less characteristic of him. He did not believe even now that there would be anything melodramatic in the outcome of the affair. There would be an unpleasantness, of course; but when both Hauck and Brokaw were confronted with a certain situation, and with the peculiarly significant facts which he now held ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... feel a little uneasy about that imagined self of mine—the Me of my daydreams—who leads a melodramatic life of his own, quite unrelated to my real existence. So one day I shadowed him down the street. He loitered along for a while, and then stood at a shop-window and dressed himself out in a gaudy tie and yellow waistcoat. Then he bought a great sponge and two stuffed birds and took ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Sacred Veil,"—he said gayly, addressing himself to the King—"Your Majesty considers this venerable gentleman with too much gravity! I recognize in him one of my craft,—a poet, tragic and taciturn of humor, and with a taste for melodramatic simile, . . marked you not the mixing of his word-colors in the picture he drew of Al-Kyris, foundering like a wrecked ship in a blood-red sea, whilst overhead trembled a white sky set thick with blackening ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was called, was intensely Byronic, after the fashion of the times, and he prepared a succession of thrilling scenes from Byron's sensational poem, "The Corsair," for presentation by his fellow players. This melodramatic production was staged with all the pasteboard pomp and secondhand circumstance the little workshop theater could afford and was given with all the fire the high-toned author could impart to his company. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... girl, sir, but I up and spoke to her as plain as she spoke to me. 'I want to know,' I says, 'why I am sent away in this uncivil manner?' I couldn't possibly repeat what she said. My blood boils when I think of it," Phoebe declared, with melodramatic vehemence. "Somebody has found us out, sir. Somebody has told Mrs. Farnaby of your private meeting with Miss Regina in the shrubbery, and the money you kindly gave me. I believe Mrs. Ormond is at the bottom of it; you remember nobody knew where she was, when I thought she ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... companion, with sudden renewal of consciousness of the deshabille of her dressing-gown, retreated to the corner of the brass bed. She sat down, to scrutinize the better this strange intruder. The moonlight which fell in pale green bars across the Bokhara beneath her slippered feet; the melodramatic situation which had brought them together; the unmistakable gentility of this compelling intruder of her maidenly domain; the curious collapse of his aggressiveness—all these things united to cast a sympathetic spell over her. She was foolish—to the extreme of ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... to leave his house. The example of Mrs. Travis was too near. Escape, with or without melodramatic notes of farewell, never suggested itself. She knew that it was a practical impossibility to make that absolute severance of their lives without which they were still man and wife, though at a distance ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... highly coloured sensationalism. Those readers who want a good melodramatic story smartly told, Mr Golsworthy's latest effort will suit down to ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... on a silver platter. Cutting loose from the old crowd, appointing himself a committee of one to nominate himself on an Independent Reform ticket, campaign himself, and elect himself. A whippersnapper of thirty-two. Paul had been amused by it all, almost indulgent. "You do get melodramatic, don't you, Dan? Well, if you want to cut your own throat, that's your affair." And Dan had burned, and told Paul to watch the teevies, he'd see a thing or two, and he did, all right. He remembered Paul's face a few months ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... clever and very interesting criticism," Mr. Merrill replied. "I had to edit it somewhat, because he was inclined to be Hugoesque and melodramatic in describing the action with very short sentences. But I am very ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... had developed with melodramatic suddenness. Casting off the steamer's tow-ropes, the Belles Soeurs swung alongside the wharf much more easily and quickly than did the friendly vessel by whose aid she had so soon ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... head, lifted off his beaver-skin cap, rolled his eyes about, and by his melodramatic movements claimed the attention of all. He, however, found, time to shoot a quick glance at the sun. Those almanac people were wonderfully accurate, but he must hurry up, for in another minute the eclipse would begin. In ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... is spoken of as 'degenerating into farce'; it would be fair criticism to speak of it 'changing into farce'; but as for degenerating into farce, we might equally reasonably speak of it as degenerating into tragedy. Again, a story is spoken of as 'melodramatic,' and the phrase, queerly enough, is not meant as a compliment. To speak of something as 'pantomimic' or 'sensational' is innocently supposed to be biting, Heaven knows why, for all works of art are sensations, and a good pantomime (now extinct) is one of the pleasantest sensations of all. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... By means of a young language, simple and modest, it will unite all foreigners—those prisoners of themselves. It will mow down the hateful complexity of judicial procedure, with its booty for the somebodies, and its lawyers as well, who intrude the tricks of diplomacy and the melodramatic usages of eloquence into the plain and simple machinery of justice. The righteous man must go so far as to say that clemency has not its place in justice; the logical majesty of the sentence which condemns the guilty one in order to frighten possible evil-doers (and never for ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... stock in trade of the remainder. At many of the theatres an entire change in the style of the performances is of no unfrequent occurrence. We have known the Gaite in the dolefuls, and the Porte St. Martin abandoning its scaffolds, trap-doors, and other melodramatic horrors, for fun, farce, and ballet. As a regular thing, dancing is only to be seen at the Grand Opera. The license of each theatre specifies the nature of the performances allowed it, but this is a matter difficult exactly to define, and the rule is easy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... muttered, "no perceptible reaction for fortyeight hours. Laboratory conditions? Or my own idiocy? But I approximated ..." Her voice trailed off and for a full minute the absolute silence of the kitchen was broken only by the melodramatic dripping of a tap. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... woman. Pretty as a picture, she was, and as true as gold too,—a lot too good for young Dick Ballard, even if she was merely a girl in his father's office. You couldn't blame her for liking Dick, though. Everyone did—the scatter-brained scamp! And when my brother went through all that melodramatic folly of cutting him off with a thousand a year—well, we had our big row over that. That was when I took my money out of the firm. Lucky I did too. When the panic came I ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... murderously, opposes the natural desires of a child whom he has promised to another. Where Maria is idyllic, poetic, flowing smoothing along the current of a realism tempered by sentimentalism, Innocencia (by no means devoid of poetry) is romantic, melodramatic, rushing along turbulently to the outcome in a death as violent as Maria's is peaceful. There is in each book a similar importance of the background. In Innocencia the "point of honor" is quite as strong and vindictive as in any play of the Spanish Golden Age. Maria shares with Innocencia ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... from the hotel, Presley ate his long-deferred Mexican dinner—an omelette in Spanish-Mexican style, frijoles and tortillas, a salad, and a glass of white wine. In a corner of the room, during the whole course of his dinner, two young Mexicans (one of whom was astonishingly handsome, after the melodramatic fashion of his race) and an old fellow! the centenarian of the town, decrepit beyond belief, sang an interminable love-song to the accompaniment of a guitar ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... needlessly melodramatic," Spencer answered. "I will admit, of course, that her position may be an unfortunate one, but the personage whom I have the honor to call my friend does not often protect blackguards. Be reasonable, Duncombe! These young people are not ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his name in poster letters. When you look upon the Declaration the first thing you see is the signature of John Hancock, and you recall his remark, "I guess King George can read that without spectacles." The whole action was melodramatic, and although a bold signature has ever been said to betoken a bold heart, it has yet to be demonstrated that boys who whistle going through the woods are indifferent to danger. "Conscious weakness ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... grandeur and originality of his works of art. He had thrown the whole of the English painters into insignificance, for who would compare the luscious commonplace of the Stuart painters, or the melodramatic reality of Hogarth, or the imitative beauty of Reynolds, or the clumsy strength of West, with the overbearing grandeur of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... folk, Degas is also a psychologist, an ironical commentator on the pettiness and ugliness of daily life, of its unheroic aspects, its comical snobberies and shocking hypocrisies; and all expressed without a melodramatic elevation of the voice, without the false sentimentalism of Zola or the morbidities of Toulouse-Lautrec. There is much Baudelaire in Degas, as there is also in Rodin. All three men despised academic rhetoric; all three dealt with new material in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... small voice, which treats with him as a dependent entitled to know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... everything was new. What the music sought to do almost immediately, beginning with Monteverde himself in his opera "Tancred," was to represent the feeling of the dramatic moment. Almost at the very first they began to use music in the melodramatic way for accompanying the critical moments of the action, when the performers were not singing, and the forms of the singing utterance differentiated themselves into recitatives for the explanatory parts and arias for the more ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Fortunately for us (or we should have missed the song) Finland never knew of the 'fresh fere' who dried the bright blue eyes so soon. He would not have carried his pike so cheerily either, if his eyes had been good enough to see across the German Ocean. Well, perhaps the story isn't true; very few melodramatic ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... enunciated the two last words with great relish—"you ask to search my rooms and I give you permission. You lock yourself in through your own carelessness and when I release you you have a revolver in your hand, and are even more melodramatic than ever. I know what you are ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... ruddy healthy face seemed to be a positive insult to me in my present condition. Had I been a courageous or a muscular man I could have struck him. As it was, I treated the honest sailor to a melodramatic scowl which seemed to cause him no small astonishment, and strode past him to the other side of the deck. Solitude was what I wanted—solitude in which I could brood over the frightful crime which was being hatched before my very eyes. One of the quarter-boats ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... magnificent toilette, receiving the bows and the money of the customers as they passed before her, whilst M. Jerome—exactly in appearance as before, except that prosperity had begun to round him—was leaning against a pillar in rather a melodramatic attitude, a white napkin gracefully depending from his hand. They started on seeing me, and were a little confused, but soon laughed over their adventure; called Penelope to take her turn at the counter—the little serf whispered to me as she passed, that I was 'a traitor, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... to room, waiting patiently while I scrutinised the panelled walls and stared at the attenuated old furniture. I was determined to observe George Sheldon's advice to the very letter, though I had little hope of making any grand melodramatic discovery in the way of documents hidden in old cabinets, or mouldering ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... seen me was when I sat down to Harry Miller's lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller; he had a gallant way of skirting the indecent which (in my case) produced physical nausea; and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and starving genius. I found he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence with Pinkerton: adventures of my own were here and there horridly misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and exaggerated till I blushed to recognise them. I will do Harry Miller justice: ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... a melodramatic look on paper. But he spoke them not only with his lips, but with his whole self. They were not out of keeping with his nature. There is no more desperate blood in the world's veins than that of ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... had seen the piece at Boston with a view to considering it for the Lyceum. He told his brother Charles of the play, and advised him to go up and see it, adding that it was too big and melodramatic for the somewhat intimate scope of the small ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... than was necessary has been spilt over the motive of this wildly melodramatic play. Seward expressed an opinion that there was nothing in the action of the brother and sister deserving such severe retribution. To him Mason retorted, with somewhat childish seriousness, that, the characters being supposed pagan, the speech of the princess must be held a sacrilegious blasphemy. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... considerable power. Little Miss NORREY'S shrill squeak, or scream, or whatever it is, at the end of the First Act, imperils the situation, and might be toned down with advantage, as also might her spasmodic melodramatic acting later in the piece. Mrs. TREE'S is a pretty part, but not a strong one. To sum up, apart from the two situations I have cited, I should say, that what will linger in the memory of man when it runneth not to the contrary, is not the false sentiment, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... 'And so melodramatic,' she told herself. 'It is really almost vulgar. In a story I should have no patience with it.' But she went on stirring her coffee ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... doubt that he meant this melodramatic twaddle. It did not seem twaddle or melodramatic to her—or, for that matter, to him. She clasped him more closely. "What's the matter, dear?" she asked, her head ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... therefore, pleased with Stiggins and Chadband), of those who fed greedily on plentiful pathos (and were, therefore, delighted with the deathbeds of Smike and Paul Dombey and Little Nell) and also of those who asked for unexpected adventure (and were, therefore, glad to disentangle the melodramatic ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... side. "Drury Lane Theatre," the fourth on the same site, was built in 1812; its glories live in the past, for the legitimate drama now alternates there with entertainments of a more spectacular and melodramatic character, and the Christmas pantomimes, that purely indigenous English institution. The "Haymarket Theatre," exactly opposite "Her Majesty's," was built in 1821; under Mr. Buckstone's management, comedy and farce were chiefly performed. The "Adelphi Theatre," in the Strand, near Southampton ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... them gentlemen. It told how they were dragged, tied to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription, in black letters: "Guilty of high treason." Then the wretched General shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray pall. He saw, in the hollow square ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... give us no more of those melodramatic acts!" said M. le Marquis contemptuously. "You are too fond of trafficking in those showy fooleries. You bribe your comrades for their favoritism too openly. Ventre bleu! I forbid ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... that I attribute this fact to the detestable influence of the theatre, to which nearly all these artists are attached as Kapellmeister, or directors of opera. To this they owe the melodramatic character of their music, even though it is on the surface only—music written for show, and aiming ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... was published in March, as warmly espoused the cause of the maid servant whom he calls "a poor, honest, innocent, simple Girl, and the most unhappy and most injured of all human Beings." The excitement of the Town over this melodramatic mystery is reflected in the fact that a second edition of Fielding's pamphlet (entitled A clear state of the Case of Elizabeth Canning) was advertised within a few days of its first publication. [3] And, also, in the appearance of the sixpenny print, here for the first time reproduced, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... They took an unconscionable time about it, but, as I said, it promised well. However, Mr. VACHELL had other designs than our mere amusement. We were not to have our comedy without paying for it with our heart's blood. Very soon the shadow of melodramatic pathos and mystery crept over the sunny scene. Fishpingle takes a box from a cupboard and glances at a miniature and a bundle of letters. There is illegitimacy in the air, and a lady near me in the stalls confides to her neighbour that "he's the Squire's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... fight at about the 1899 level, would be lavish with cavalry and great attacks, that it would be reluctant to entrench, and that the French and British had learnt the lesson of the Boer war better than the Germans. I trusted to the melodramatic instinct of the Kaiser. I trusted to the quickened intelligence of the British military caste. The first rush seemed to bear me out, and I opened my paper day by day expecting to read of the British and French entrenched and the Germans beating themselves ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... is insulting us!" cried Betty, turning upon her friend with a melodramatic frown. "Do you mean to imply that one or all ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope |
