"Theatric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by thy scowl tremendous, fly Fair Comedy's theatric brood, Light satire, wit, and harmless joy, And leave us dungeons, chains and blood. Swift they disperse, and with them go, Mild Otway, sentimental Rowe; Congreve averts the indignant eye, And Shakespeare mourns ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... promising. For, if music is the most subjective expression of the arts, why should its highest form be used to dramatize a drama? Without the aid of scene and actors, that were needed by the original poet, the artisan in absolute tones attempts his own theatric rendering. Clearly this symphony is one of those works of art which within an incongruous form (like certain ancient pictures) affords episodes ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... the stage; Or thou, or beauteous Woffington, display What Dryden's self, with pleasure, might survey. Even he, before whose visionary eyes, Melantha, robed in ever-varying dies, Gay fancy's work, appears, actor renowned. Like Roscius, with theatric laurels crowned, Cibber will smile applause, and think again Of Harte, and Mohun, and all the female train, Coxe, Marshal, Dryden's Reeve, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... theatric. They examined Del's makeup box, they sniffed the scent of grease-paint, every minute they ran out to peep through the hole in the curtain, they came back to inspect their wigs and costumes, they read on the whitewashed walls of the dressing-rooms the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... uttered a muffled cry of relief, as the scene in a depression which had been the bed of an ancient river flashed before her with theatric completeness. In the bottom of it were five men, two moving and three stationary. Jim Galway and Ropey Smith were walking side by side, keeping a measured step as they paced off a certain distance, while Bill Lang ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... falling over the collar of mail, the clear and steadfast eye of blue, the cheek somewhat hollowed by kingly cares, but flushed now with manly pride—the form stalwart and erect, but spare in its graceful symmetry, and void of all that theatric pomp of bearing which was assumed by William—no greater contrast could there be than that which the simple earnest Hero-king presented, to the brow furrowed with harsh ire and politic wile, the shaven hair of monastic affectation, the dark, sparkling tiger eye, and the vast ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... paints, yet his art is decorative and dramatic—though in the climate of the ideal. He touches earth and its emotional issues in Poland only; otherwise his music is a pure aesthetic delight, an artistic enchantment, freighted with no ethical or theatric messages. It is poetry made audible, the "soul written in sound." All that I can faintly indicate is the way it affects me, this music with the petals of a glowing rose and the heart of gray ashes. Its analogies to Poe, Verlaine, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... so often engaged at that period, it strikes me, in literary—or, to be more precise in dramatic, accompanied by pictorial composition—that I must again and again have delightfully lost myself. I had not on any occasion personally succeeded, amid our theatric strife, in reaching the footlights; but how could I have doubted, nevertheless, with our large theatrical experience, of the nature, and of my understanding, of the dramatic form? I sacrificed to it with ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... too deep for words—too deep for all confessionals, penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance, not of the excitable, theatric Southern, unstable as water even in his most violent remorse, but of the still, deep-hearted Northern, whose pride breaks slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he will never tell to man, and having told it, is a ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... the diamond on his lily hand, And play his brilliant parts before my eyes, When I am hungry for the Bread of Life? He mocks his Maker, prostitutes and shames His noble office, and, instead of truth, Displaying his own beauty, starves his flock! Therefore, avaunt, all attitude and stare And start theatric, practised at the glass. I seek divine simplicity in him Who handles things divine; and all beside, Though learned with labour, and though much admired By curious eyes and judgments ill-informed, To me is odious as the nasal twang Heard at conventicle, where worthy men, Misled by custom, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... carried in the arms of his servants, and followed by an applauding crowd. His bearers set him down within the bar, and by the help of a crutch he made his way with difficulty to his seat. "There was a mixture of the very solemn and the theatric in this apparition," says Walpole, who was present. "The moment was so well timed, the importance of the man and his services, the languor of his emaciated countenance, and the study bestowed on his dress were circumstances that struck solemnity ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... lover's fancy! yet it had led him so far as to suspect, after parting with De Craye in the rain, that his friend and his bride were in collusion, and that he should not see them again. He had actually shouted on the rainy road the theatric call "Fooled!" one of the stage-cries which are cries of nature! particularly the cry of nature with men who have driven other men ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of this century, and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks of all for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley's play under the conditions he himself desired for it. For The Cenci was written absolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley's own wishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetime at Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O'Neill in the principal parts. In working out his conception, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... compositions which he could not himself have originated. Something like this has been said about every composer and writer, big and little, whose personality and habits did not impress his immediate neighbors as implying the possession of genius. The world usually expects direct inheritance and a theatric impressiveness of genius in its next-door neighbor before it accepts the proof of his works alone. For that reason Napoleon's paternity in Corsica was ascribed to General Maboeuf, and Henry Clay's in early Kentucky to Patrick Henry. That legend of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... right, where Apennine ascends, 105 Bright as the summer, Italy extends: Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side, Woods over woods in gay theatric pride; While oft some temple's mould'ring tops between With venerable grandeur mark the ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... unsurpassed. The redman is a genius in his gift of masquerade alone. He is a genius in detail, and in ensemble, and the producer of today might learn far more from him than he can be aware of except by visiting his unique performances. The redman's notion of the theatric does not depend upon artificial appliances. He relies entirely upon the sun with its so clear light of the west and southwest to do his profiling and silhouetting for him, and he knows the sun will cooperate ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... far less effective in evoking the special pleasure proper to the theater than the nineteenth on M. Polti's list, "To kill unknowingly one of your own blood." The full force of the theatric effect of this situation is dependent on the spectators' complete knowledge of the relationship of slayer and slain, unsuspected by the victims themselves; and the strength of the situation resides not in the mere killing, which may indeed be averted at the last ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... not with much eclat, or beat of drum, True patriots we, for be it understood, We left our country, for our country's good; No private views disgraced our generous zeal, What urged our travels, was our country's weal. But, you inquire, what could our breast inflame, With this new passion for Theatric fame? He, who to midnight ladders is no stranger, You'll own will make an admirable Ranger. To seek Macheath we have not far to roam, And sure in Filch I shall be quite at home. As oft on Gadshill we have ta'en our stand, When ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest; nor is it any strife of rival factions—of White and Red Roses; of theatric Neri and Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong, between Good and Evil.... Grander debate has not occurred in our history, rarely in any history; nor can this debate close or subside except with the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... after. The magnanimous Abbot makes preparation for departure; departs, and——And Jocelin's Boswellean Narrative, suddenly shorn-through by the scissors of Destiny, ends. There are no words more; but a black line, and leaves of blank paper. Irremediable: the miraculous hand, that held all this theatric-machinery, suddenly quits hold; impenetrable Time-Curtains rush down; in the mind's eye all is again dark, void; with loud dinning in the mind's ear, our real-phantasmagory of St. Edmundsbury plunges into the bosom of the Twelfth Century again, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... had loved her, and he would take her up and shield her against the hate of the world. There had not been a moment when her own love for him wavered; she worshipped him now as she had in the beginning. The revelation of Droom, the theatric scenes in the cafe, the crushing of the small hope she had cherished, all conspired in this secure moment to waken her into a realisation of what an overbalancing ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... figured in profound stupefaction. The lips opened and tensely breathed out the name: " Coleman." Instantly the correspondent felt about him that kind of a tumult which tries to suppress itself. He knew that it was the most theatric moment of his life. He glanced quickly toward the two figures on horseback. He believed that one was making foolish gesticulation while the other sat rigid and silent. This latter one he knew to be Marjory. He was content that she did not move. Only a woman who was glad ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... pure literary enjoyment. I shall hope to have demonstrated, or at any rate done something to show, how Dumas, when at his best, and even not quite at his best, escapes the actual melodramatic. Perhaps this was because he had purged himself of the stagy element in his abundant theatric exercise earlier. Sue, of course, dramatised or got dramatised a considerable part of his many inventions; but I think one can see that they were ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... knew the tone of enthusiastic theatric admiration in which the heroes of the stage like, or are supposed to like, to be addressed. Macklin, who was not asy to please, was pleased. The lines, or as Quin insisted upon their being called, the cordage of his face relaxed. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... figures, runs through them all. We are never jarred in them, as we are in all the attempts at ballad-writing and ballad-restoring before Mr. Tennyson's time, by discordant touches of the reflective in thought, the picturesque in Nature, or the theatric in action. To illustrate our meaning, readers may remember the ballad of "Fair Emmeline," in Bishop Percy's "Reliques." The bishop confesses, if we mistake not, to have patched one end of the ballad. He need not ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... pointed ears, and the man gazed steadily at Charles-Norton, his eyes shaded by his heavily-buckskinned hand. Charles-Norton, hypnotized, gazed back. There was something about the man, his flaming accouterment, specially about the gesture—the theatric peering from beneath gauntleted hand—which somehow stirred Charles-Norton with a sense of past experience. They gazed thus long at each other in immobility and silence; then suddenly there ran lightly through the meadow the resonance of a champed bit; the horse, rising on his hind ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... habit which arose of actually painting the flesh in water colour upon satin. Paint on satin, if you like. There may be occasions when there is no time to stitch, and it is necessary for some ceremonial and more or less theatric purpose to paint what had better have been worked. The more frankly such work acknowledges its temporary and makeshift character the better. Scene painting is art, until you are asked to take it for landscape painting. Anyway, the mixture of painting ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... human figure, glowing like a diamond ablaze, leaped out from it; another shot down from the foremast. I don't know how many I saw go. It was like a theatric effect, unreal, unconvincing, incredible. The ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... glow of enjoyment, of a bird in the first sunshine, of a butterfly in the first glitter of its wings. She was now continually forming some party, some ingenious surprise of pleasure, some little sportive excursion, some half theatric scene, to keep all our hearts and eyes as much alive as her own. Lafontaine obviously did not like all this; and some keen encounters of their wits took place, on the pleasure which, as he averred, "she took in all society ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... chin was thrust forward, every ligament in his body was strung taut. And yet, there was nothing of the theatric about him. If he felt excitement, it was suppressed. Determination was the only emotion of ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... of these masqueradings was the theatre of the Hotel du Petit Bourbon, which was contiguous to the Louvre. When royalty plays and courtiers fill pit and gallery, applause is without stint. The boy-king was much elated with his theatric triumphs. The queen and Cardinal Mazarin were well pleased to see the king expending his energies in ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... entered without speaking. The lamplight showed a pitiful change in him; he was yellow and fishy-eyed, unshaven, disorderly in dress indeed, so well did he look the part of the despairing lover that Warburton suspected a touch of theatric consciousness. ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... I can suggest, for the advantage of the state, a plea for the poor against the rich, and for men of property against the indigent; could we remove the clamor which some persons unfairly raise about the theatric fund, [Footnote: Boeckh, Schaefer, and others, regard it as conclusive against the genuineness of this Oration, that a different view is here taken on the subject of the Theoric fund from that which Demosthenes had expressed in the Olynthiacs. ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... bitter freezings and sinister dawns and weary travail of mind and body. The hills would busk themselves in emerald green, the wild crocus come to gladden our eyes, the long nights glow with sunsets of theatric splendour. No wonder, in the glory of reaction, we exulted and laboured on our boat with brimming hearts. And always before us gleamed the Golden Magnet, making us chafe and rage against the stubborn ice that ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the incredible luck of the play—was always in his ears without so much as a conscious turn of his head to listen; so that the queer world of his fame was not the mere usual field of the Anglo-Saxon boom, but positively the bottom of the whole theatric sea, unplumbed source of the wave that had borne him in the course of a year or two over German, French, Italian, Russian, Scandinavian foot-lights. Paris itself really appeared for the hour the centre of his cyclone, with reports and ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... came, about two hours later, and turned on the light in their bedroom, she was in the bed, apparently asleep. He stood staring with theatric self-consciousness at himself in the glass for several minutes, then sat down before the bureau and pulled out the third drawer—where he kept collars, ties, handkerchiefs, gloves and a pistol concealed under the handkerchiefs. With the awful solemnity of the youth who ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... from a butcher's shop, or a surgeon's operation-room, and we should turn from it with disgust. So if characters were brought upon the stage with their limbs disjointed by torturing instruments, and the floor covered with clotted blood and scattered brains, our theatric reverie would be destroyed by disgust, and we should ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... him repeat, one evening, 'Iphigenia's Dream,' at the request of his audience. All were held trembling, breathless by that worn and yet sovereign voice. We were amazed to find ourselves yielding to such a spell; there was no splendor and no theatric illusion. Iphigenia was a teacher in a black frock coat; the orchestra was a piano striking, here and there, an unexpected modulation; this was all the illusion—and the hall was silent, every heart throbbed, tears flowed from every eye. And then, when the tale was told, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... did not allow himself to search for anything theatric or unfeeling at the centre of the episode. Cairns had moved in many of the world atmospheres, and had done some work which the world noted with approval. Moreover, he had called from Bedient bestowals of friendship which could not be forgotten.... ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... there never was anything so ancient, unless it be an American lad of eighteen. There are not a great many of either, but they are made to recur often enough to produce the impression of numbers. They remind us of the theatric army, composed always of the same old guard of supernumeraries and candle-snuffers, and which, by marching round and round the paper forest in the background, would make six men pass muster very well for sixty, did not the fatally regular recurrence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... him since. Morning came, but no Jimmy. They searched the country around, on the theory that he had been killed or wounded, but without success. Then they followed after Saldar's gang, but it seemed to have disappeared. Manning concluded that the wily Mexican had recrossed the river after his theatric farewell. And, indeed, no further ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... scenes may be adapted with very little labor to the uses of the theatre. Certain novels, like "Jane Eyre," which exhibit an emphatic struggle between individual human wills, are inherently capable of theatric representment. But any novel in which the main source of interest is not the clash of character on character, in which the element of action is subordinate, or in which the chief appeal is made to the individual (instead ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... "Marvelous theatric display, a drama with scarcely a word—Europe, Asia, Africa, America in panoramic whirl, and yet as individualized as if they had never left their ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... explanations in parentheses are not intended to be read aloud; they will aid in giving the child the cue as to the way the part should be rendered. After the story has been read in this way, if thought advisable it can be played informally and simply, with no attempt at costuming or theatric effects. It will often add to the interest of the play to have some of the children represent certain of the inanimate objects of the scene, as the forest, the town gate, a door, etc. Occasionally, for the "open day," ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... very dangerous counsel; they have counselled parents to teach truth by falsehood. The privilege of using contrivance, and ingenious deceptions, has been uniformly reserved for preceptors; and the pupils, by moral delusions, and the theatric effect of circumstances treacherously arranged, are to be duped, surprised, and cheated, into virtue. The dialogue between the gardener and Emilius about the Maltese melon-seed, is an instance of this method of instruction. Honest Robert, the gardener, in ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... "Venetian secret," was produced, some experts believe, by first painting a solid monochrome in tempera on which the picture was finished in oil. Unquestionably Titian corrected and amended his work as much as did Velasquez. It is a pleasing if somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velasquez, duelled with their canvases, their rapier a brush. After inspecting many of the Hals portraits the evidences of direct painting, swift though calculated, are not to be denied. This may account, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... a glance of blank dismay and Garry with difficulty repressed a smile. Kenny's fashionable wardrobe, portentous in all truth, had an unmistakable air of originality about it at once foreign and striking. There were times when he looked irresistibly theatric and ducal. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... following these discourses any longer." "Therefore," says the writer, "I will give you my word I will enter no more upon arguments of this kind with him." The Prince and his visitor were perhaps both playing a part to some extent, and the whole discourse was probably a good deal less theatric in style than the English traveller has reported. But there can be no doubt that the letter fairly illustrates the spirit in which the leading Jacobites watched over the financial troubles in England, and the new hopes with which they were inspired—hopes ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... lessons showed him the character and talent hidden under those pale and grave little countenances. In a letter to Mrs. Gaskell he recounts instances of their early talent. More home-loving fathers will smile at the simple yet theatric means he took to discover the secret of his children's real dispositions. 'Twas a characteristic inspiration, worthy the originator of the ancient name of Bronte. A certain simplicity of confidence in his own subtlety gives ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... "We have played theatric roles to a small but carefully selected audience," he said. "I for a fee, and you—for needful ends. We might as well be frank, as we were the ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... to the occasion, and presents to the intelligent a representation of—we know not what! Fire-works here divide the public with the drum—to one or other all advertisement in Sicily is committed. A sale of fish and flesh, theatric entertainments, processions, and church invitations, are all by tuck of drum, or by squib and cracker. How did they get on before the invention of gunpowder? If a new coffeehouse is established, a couple of drums start it advantageously, and beat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... back them, too, and returned to the city with rudely dispelled hopes and empty purses, it is difficult to estimate. Every season brings forth a fresh crop. The industry has grown with the times, and the appetite for theatric fame has not in the least diminished. The number of fallen "angels" scattered throughout the country would cut a respectable ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... intelligent Christians, even of those who still cling to the old Orthodox dogmas, the day of judgment has been put forward as far as the day of creation has been put backward. Less and less do religious believers shudder before the theatric trials depicted in heathen and Christian mythology; more and more do they reverently recognize the intrinsic jurisdiction in the structure of the soul, and in the organism of society. The time is not far remote, let us trust, when the ancient spirit of national separation, political ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... our newly-raised militia, the two commanders and their respective troops came at length to a dead halt, completely exhausted by the toils of war. Never did two valiant train-band captains, or two buskined theatric heroes, in the renowned tragedies of Pizarro, Tom Thumb, or any other heroical and fighting tragedy, marshal their gallows-looking, duck-legged, heavy-heeled myrmidons with ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... to play the air again, and Carl took away the violin with simulated theatric anger. But Carl's treatment of the name of the ballad as though it were the name of a girl still extant gave Christopher a temptation, and he played the air once or twice again in ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... not so certain, though, that EVERYONE outside will accept my theatric 'slaughter' as ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... woman to need theatric affectations, Mary. I am proudest of all that we are unalloyed American in blood. Be American. Cut out the pidgin English and the interlarding of French ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck |
