"Dramatist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effect as well as in dialogue was a stage one, rather than prompted by literary fervour. No dramatization of Washington Irving's immortal story has approached the original in art of expression or in vividness of scene. But, if historical record can be believed, it is the actor, rather than the dramatist, who has vied with Irving in the vitality of characterization and in the romantic ideality of figure and speech. Some of our best comedians found attraction in the ri?1/2le, yet, though Charles Burke and James A. Herne are recalled, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... In this town the talk was mostly about Art, and many fine things were said in regard to "sweetness and light." Everybody claimed to be an artist of some kind, whether painter, musician, novelist, dramatist, verse-maker, reciter, singer, or what not. But although they seemed so greatly devoted to the Graces and the Muses, it was but the images of the Parnassian Gods that they worshipped. For in the purlieus of this fine town, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the plays is another matter; a combination of collation and judicious borrowing, it was provided by George Steevens. Steevens' contributions to the text and annotation of Shakespeare's plays concern students of the dramatist; That Johnson had to say about the plays concerns Johnsonians as veil as Shakespeareans. And it is unfortunately true that too little attention has been paid to what is after all Johnson's final and reconsidered judgment on a number of passages in ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... line 2.—"Earth helped him with the cry of blood." This line is from The Battle of Bosworth Field by Sir John Beaumont (Brother to the Dramatist), whose poems are written with so much spirit, elegance, and harmony, that it is supposed, as the Book is very scarce, a new edition of it would be acceptable to Scholars and Men of taste, and, accordingly, it is in contemplation to ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... Dumas pere, the great French novelist and dramatist, who here tells the story of his youth, was born on July 24, 1802, and died on December 5, 1870. He was a man of prodigious vitality, virility, and invention; abounding in enjoyment, gaiety, vanity, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... talked to Jerrold about the humor of a celebrated novelist, dramatist, and poet, who was certainly ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... students indulged in some boyish manifestations of their sympathies; their proceedings made some stir in Germany, and Metternich declared that they were revolutionary. The horror of liberalism was destined to be heightened in 1819 by the murder of the tsar's agent, the dramatist Kotzebue, by a lunatic member of a political society at Giessen. Its immediate result was a conference of German ministers at Carlsbad, where several resolutions for the suppression of political agitation were passed, and afterwards adopted by the diet ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... nostrils. The poor are vulgar, and in our franker moments we confess our wish to have nothing to do with them. The middle classes are sordid; we have enough of them in real life, and no desire to observe their doings at the theatre, particularly when we wear our evening clothes. But when a dramatist presents duchesses to our admiring eyes, we feel at last in our element; we watch the acts of persons whom we would willingly meet at dinner, and our craving for the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry as much in its head as it does in its body! The autobiography of a broken-down hackney-coach, would surely be as amusing as the autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist; and it might tell as much of its travels with the pole, as others have of their expeditions to it. How many stories might be related of the different people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or pain! And how many melancholy ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Raymond. Goodman immediately wrote Clemens; also a letter came from Warner, in Hartford, who had noticed in San Francisco papers announcements of the play. Of course Clemens would take action immediately; he telegraphed, enjoining the performance. Then began a correspondence with the dramatist and actor. This in time resulted in an amicable arrangement, by which the dramatist agreed to dispose of his version to Clemens. Clemens did not wait for it to arrive, but began immediately a version of his own. Just how much or how little of Densmore's work found ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Hugo, the great French poet, dramatist, and novelist, was born at Besancon, on February 26, 1802. He wrote verses from boyhood, and after minor successes, achieved reputation with "Odes et Poesies," 1823. Hugo early became the protagonist of the romantic movement in French literature. In 1841 he was elected ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Alloa, which is here referred to, took its origin early in the century—being composed of admirers of the illustrious dramatist, and lovers of general literature in that place. The anniversary meeting was usually held on the 23d of April, generally supposed to be the birth-day of the poet. The Shepherd was laureate of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and only pure friend was taken away from him. His love for the child was well known in London society; and of it did Sheridan's friends take advantage, when they wanted to get Selwyn out of Brookes', to prevent his black-balling the dramatist. The anecdote is given in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... a scheme half-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage already in hand. No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds and the rag of association can ever, for "excitement," I judge, have bettered it at its best. For the dramatist always, by the very law of his genius, believes not only in a possible right issue from the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more than this—he believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... was a more popular dramatist than either AEschylus or Sophocles. His fame passed far beyond the limits of Greece. Herodotus asserts that the verses of the poet were recited by the natives of the remote country of Gedrosia; and Plutarch says that the Sicilians were so fond of his lines that ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... necessary link between knowing and willing. Many legends in the biographies of artists have sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generous sentiments should not be a noble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist who gives a great many stabs in his plays, should not himself have given a few at least in real life. Vainly do the artists protest: lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba. They are merely taxed in addition with lying and hypocrisy. O you poor women of Verona, how far ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... chorus singer; coryphee danseuse [Fr.]. property man, costumier, machinist; prompter, call boy; manager; director, stage manager, acting manager. producer, entrepreneur, impresario; backer, investor, angel [Fig.]. dramatic author, dramatic writer; play writer, playwright; dramatist, mimographer^. V. act, play, perform; put on the stage; personate &c 554; mimic &c (imitate) 19; enact; play a part, act a part, go through a part, perform a part; rehearse, spout, gag, rant; strut and fret one's hour upon a stage; tread the boards, tread the stage; come ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Tempest, are ready to maintain that its author must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in Hall v. Russell, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's profound knowledge of sound old ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... world-wide. His eyes were for ever observant of what was around him. At a time when science was hardly out of its shell he had observed Nature with the liveliest curiosity. He studied human nature like a dramatist. Shakespeare himself drew from him. His memory was a museum of historical information, anecdotes of great men, and old German literature, songs, and proverbs, to the latter of which he made many rich additions ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... independent of the world and its chances." But he could not manage to get going. For some time he could write nothing at all. Fortunately, after an unprofitable month or two, he fell in with John Howard Payne, now remembered only for his "Home, Sweet Home," but then esteemed as an actor and dramatist. Irving had met him several years before, and now became associated with him in some dramatic translating and adapting. The results were nearly worthless from a literary point of view, but served to keep him busy, and to put him once more in the ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... speak, Barry. There may be some among us that are not for a day. Who foresaw in the strolling player, in the wild, thoughtless Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Dramatist of all time? Your pet Homer was a mendicant. Legions of our best poets were not acknowledged, until the brain that thought, was worn out, the hand that toiled, cold, and the lips that murmured, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... kind-hearted as to take into your house the—the villain as has done it all, him and Rosa could never have known each other. I allow as it was nothing but your own goodness as did it; but it was a black day for me and mine," said the dramatist, with a pathetic turn of voice. "Not as I'm casting no blame on you, as ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Husbands marks a distinct departure in the dramatist's literary progress. As a critic has well observed, it substitutes for situations produced by the mechanism of plot, characters which give rise to situations in accordance with the ordinary operations of human nature. Molire's method—the ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... by the excitement of his child's departure, is soon restored to Kanwa's mind. "Now that my child is dismissed to her husband's home, tranquillity regains my soul." The closing reflection is worthy of a Greek dramatist: "Our maids we rear for the happiness of others; and now that I have sent her to her husband I feel the satisfaction that comes from ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... in the twoscore short stories and sketches—the contes and the nouvelles which are now spring-like idyls and now wintry episodes, now sombre etchings and now gayly-colored pastels—in all the works of the story-teller we see the firm grasp of the dramatist. The characters speak for themselves; each reveals himself with the swift directness of the personages of a play. They are not talked about and about, for all analysis has been done by the playwright before he rings up the curtain in the first paragraph. And the story unrolls itself, also, ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... forgotten; neither must Sam Lake, the clever little dancer. Rube Meer was invariably to be found in company with a pot of malt; and he was usually assisted by P. Jones, a personage who never allowed himself to be funny until he had consumed four pints. Charley Saunders, the comedian and dramatist, the author of "Rosina Meadows" and many other popular plays—kept the "table in a roar," by his wit and also by his excruciatingly bad puns. Bird, of "Pea-nut Palace" notoriety, held forth in nasal accents to Bill Colwell, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... the history of genius is the 23rd of April, as being at once the day of the birth and death of Shakspeare; and these events took place on the same spot, for at Stratford-upon-Avon this illustrious dramatist was born, in the year 1564, and here he also died, in 1616. It has been conjectured, that his first dramatic composition was produced when he was but twenty-five years old. He continued to write for ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... heard and the more I considered, the more this mystery of Tembinok's behaviour puzzled and attracted me. And the explanation, when it came, was one to strike the imagination of a dramatist. Tembinok' had two brothers. One, detected in private trading, was banished, then forgiven, lives to this day in the island, and is the father of the heir-apparent, Paul. The other fell beyond forgiveness. I have heard it was a love-affair with one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expert in, but contemner of, physical and astrological science, and above all, alchemist, if not sorcerer; the handsome and gallant, but "not intelligent" and not very chivalrous soldier Phoebus de Chateaupers, with minors not a few, "supers" very many, and the dramatist Pierre Gringoire as a sort of half-chorus, half-actor throughout. The evolution of this story could not be very difficult to anticipate in any case; almost any one who had even a slight knowledge of its actual author's other work could make a guess at the scenario. The end must be tragic; the beau ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... his perception in some direction or other. To the musician, notes and intervals and vibrations are just the fairy flights and dances of forms audible to the ear; to the painter, it is a question of shapes and colours perceptible to the eye. The dramatist sees the same beauty in the interplay of human emotion; while it may be maintained that holiness itself is a passionate perception of moral beauty, and that the saint is attracted by purity and compassion, and repelled by sin, disorder, and selfishness, in the same way as the artist is attracted ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... course, all good talk, and we suffered then, as now, from the a priori critic. Just as nowadays he goes about declaring that the work of such-and-such a dramatist is all very amusing and delightful, but "it isn't a Play," so we' had a great deal of talk about the short story, and found ourselves measured by all kinds of arbitrary standards. There was a tendency to treat the short story as though it was as definable a form as ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... God" by our American novelist and dramatist, George Henry Miles, is not only a romantic and interesting story, it recalls one of the most striking achievements ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... it is true, profess to find in it a reference to the unfortunate Sicilian Expedition, then in progress, and a prophecy of its failure and the political downfall of Alcibiades. But as a matter of fact, the whole thing seems rather an attempt on the dramatist's part to relieve the overwrought minds of his fellow-citizens, anxious and discouraged at the unsatisfactory reports from before Syracuse, by a work conceived in a lighter vein than usual and mainly unconnected with contemporary realities. The play was produced in the year 414 B.C., just ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... reasons why you should," I said, striking an attitude which I had once seen a music-hall dramatist take when he was going to blast somebody's future—a stick with a star on top of it in his hand and forty lines of ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... invalid. The easily rendered, and too surely recognised, image of familiar suffering is felt at once to be real where all else had been false; and the historian of the gestures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause of a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who introduces on the stage of his flagging action a carriage that can be driven or a fountain that will flow. But the masters of strong imagination disdain such work, and those of deep sensibility shrink from it.[154] Only under conditions of personal weakness, presently to be noted, would ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of Alfieri and those of the noble poet of England, no less remarkable coincidences might be traced; and the sonnet in which the Italian dramatist professes to paint his own character contains, in one comprehensive line, a portrait of the versatile ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... laborer, the tramp, followed; an interest that was something of a reaction against the influence of Yeats and his mystic otherworldliness. And, in 1904, the Celtic Revival reached its height with John Millington Synge, who was not only the greatest dramatist of the Irish Theatre, but (to quote such contrary critics as George Moore and Harold Williams) "one of the greatest dramatists who has written in English." Synge's poetry, brusque and all too small in quantity, was a minor occupation with ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Shakespeare will ultimately supersede all others. It must certainly be deemed an essential acquisition by every lover of the great dramatist."—N. Y. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... for what it is worth. His personality may in some degree be constructed from his works: it is, I think, generally admitted, that that of Shakespeare cannot; and in so far as this is the test of a complete dramatist, Mr. Browning fails of being one. He does not sink himself in his men and women, for his sympathy with them is too active to admit of it. He not only describes their different modes of being, but defends them from their own point of view; and it is natural that he should often select ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... partly followed an Italian comedy, written by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, under the name of Le Gelosie fortunata del principe Rodrigo; the style, loftiness and delicacy of expression are peculiar to the French dramatist. ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... objected to the rhyme, 'dear brother Jem,' as being ludicrous; but we all enjoyed the joke of hitching in our friend James Tobin's name, who was familiarly called Jem. He was the brother of the dramatist; and this reminds me of an anecdote which it may be worth while here to notice. The said Jem got a sight of the "Lyrical Ballads" as it was going through the press at Bristol, during which time I was residing in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... images are better than satires; but continue, in preference to other thoughts or pursuits, the noble career you have entered. Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory of our first great dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one. Why vex and torment yourself about the French? They buzz and are troublesome while they are swarming; but the master will soon hive them. Is the whole nation worth the worst of your tragedies? All the present race ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of aspiration to do those things for which nature had not fitted me, and to the extent that I recognized my inability to do those things I failed to be content. I should have liked to be a great writer, a poet, a great dramatist, a novelist—a little of everything in the literary world. I should have liked to know Shakespeare, to have been the friend of Milton; and when I came out of my dreams it made me unhappy to think that such I never could be, until one day this ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... not to show them what they have seen before, but to present them with a new vision of life. And if drama be an art (which the great public denies daily, but a few of us still believe), it must reasonably be expected to present life as each dramatist sees it, and not to express things because they pander to popular prejudice, or are ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... sure that I didn't find Mr. Bourchier's "Foreword" or Apologia (kindly given away with the programme) rather more entertaining than the play itself. As long as the dramatist (a New Zealander) concerned himself with the delightfully unconventional atmosphere of Antipodean politics he was illuminating and very possibly veracious. But the relations between the Premier and the widow Pretty, which promised, as the title hinted, to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... Kit! he was a great dramatist; the next greatest after Shakspeare, I think,—at least, well, leaving out the Greeks, you know. He was a year younger than Shakspeare, and died when he was only twenty-eight, killed in a ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... poet, but his celebrated works date from 1620. At the age of thirty he knew only his own language, but later he learned French and Latin, and applied himself with ardor to the study of the classics; at fifty he gave himself up to Greek. His first tragedy (for he was chiefly a dramatist), entitled "The Destruction of Jerusalem," was not very successful. The second, "Palamades," in which was delineated the piteous and terrible tale of Olden Barneveldt, a victim of Maurice of Orange, caused a criminal ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... Hitchin, and is believed to have been born in that town. Young, the author of the Night Thoughts, was for many years Rector of Welwyn; his son was visited there by Boswell and Dr. Johnson. Macaulay was at school at Aspenden. John Scott, the Quaker poet, lived at Amwell; Lee, the dramatist, was born at Hatfield. Skelton probably stayed at Ashridge just before the Dissolution of the Monasteries; Sir Thomas More lived awhile at Gobions, North Mimms. Cowper was born at Berkhampstead. The county has been immortalised by Walton and Lamb in ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... my opinion, in elucidating, if it were only a single word in our great dramatist. Even the attempt, though mayhap a failure, is laudable. I therefore have made, and shall make, hit or miss, some efforts that way. For example, I now grapple ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... theatrical effect, is often found working rather away from it than toward it, and at a meaning and beauty beyond the limits of stage expression. This is because he is more dramatist than playwright, and will always produce and complete his work in its ideal integrity, even if, in so doing, he outruns the sympathy of his audience. This disposition may be traced not only in the plays it ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... magnifico, to Coleridge, who has begemmed it all over with his fine pencillings. As Ben once handled the trowel, and did other honorable work as a bricklayer, Coleridge discourses with much golden gossip about the craft to which the great dramatist once belonged. The editor of this magazine would hardly thank me, if I filled ten of his pages with extracts from the rambling dissertations in S.T.C.'s handwriting which I find in this rare folio, but I could easily pick out that amount of readable matter from the margins. One manuscript ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... The Mirror for Magistrates (which was, considering its constant accretions, a sort of miscellany) have been already noticed. They were followed by not a few others. The first in date was The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576), edited by R. Edwards, a dramatist of industry if not of genius, and containing a certain amount of interesting work. It was very popular, going through nine or ten editions in thirty years, but with a few scattered exceptions it does not yield much to the historian of English poetry. Its popularity shows what was expected; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the chief actor, and the source from which the dramatist must cull his choicest beauties, painting up to nature the varied scenes which mark the changeful courses of her motley groups. Here she opes her volume to the view of contemplative minds, and spreads her treasures forth, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... is employed to prove that the drama may be pure in itself, and effectual as a moral educator,—argument which, however excellent it may be in theory, has hitherto proved impotent in fact. But from the beginning it was not so; Ezekiel was a dramatist; he acted his prophecies and his preachings on a stage. The warnings were in this form clearly articulated, and forcefully driven home; if they failed to produce the ultimate result of repentance, the obstacle lay not in the feebleness of the instrument, but in the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... having been misapprehended by one or two critics, it is respectfully stated that the translation has not been made by a resident dramatist, as inferred, but by the celebrated European scholar and linguist, Jonathan Birch, whose translation has been recognized by Frederick William, of Prussia, as the best rendition of the original of Goethe's Faust ever given in English ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... pleasure bent, for the Trans-Siberian is no tourist line, notwithstanding the alluring advertisements which periodically appear during the holiday season. Climatically the journey is a delightful one in winter time, for Siberia is then at its best—not the Siberia of the English dramatist: howling blizzards, chained convicts, wolves and the knout, but a smiling land of promise and plenty even under its limitless mantle of snow. The landscape is dreary, of course, but most days you have the blue cloudless sky and dazzling sunshine, so often sought in vain ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the story-teller's or the playwright's hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time. It is probable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his ink-horn and sat down to his work he used many phrases that he had just heard, as he sat at dinner, from his mother or his children. In Ireland, those of us who know the people have the same privilege. When I was writing "The Shadow of the Glen," ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... devoted their ingenuity and research to the illustration of Shakspeare. In the hope of attracting them to "fresh fields and pastures new," in which to recreate themselves, and to instruct and delight the world-wide readers of the great dramatist, I venture to solicit attention to Professor Hilger's pamphlet and its subject. In this I only echo the German reviewer's language, who most highly praises the Professor's acuteness, and the value of his strictures, and promises ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... gave, in short, was a many-sided representation of life; what the Greek dramatist gave was an interpretation. But an interpretation not simply personal to himself, but representative of the national tradition and belief. The men whose deeds and passions he narrated were the patterns and examples on the one hand, on the other the warnings of his race; ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... eminent schoolmaster, intimately connected with Dean Swift and other illustrious writers in the reign of Queen Anne. He was husband to the ingenious and amiable author of Sidney Biddulph and several dramatic pieces favorably received. He was father of the celebrated orator and dramatist, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He had been the schoolfellow, and, through life, was the companion, of the amiable Archbishop Markham. He was the friend of the learned Dr. Sumner, master of Harrow School, and the well-known Dr. Parr. He took his first academical degree in the University ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... one of the Berlin gentlemen to whose spirit of self-sacrifice and taste for art the Konigstadt Theater owed its prosperity, and was thus brought into intimate relations with Carl von Holtei, who worked for its stage both as dramatist and actor. When, as a young professor, I told the grey-haired author in my mother's name something which could not fail to afford him pleasure, I received the most eager assent to my query whether ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age. Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his character in a play written for John T. Raymond. Clemens had taken out dramatic copyright on the book, and immediately stopped the performance by telegraph. A correspondence between the author and the dramatist followed, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage, than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their distinguished excellence is a reason that they should be so. There is so much in them, which comes not under the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, and gesture, have nothing ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of the famous quadroon[8] is not more marvellous than the multiplicity of characters he assumes. "Dumas at Home and Abroad" offers an inexhaustible theme and a boundless field for pen and pencil caricaturists. Alternately dramatist, novelist, tourist, ambassador, the companion of princes, the manager of theatres, an authority in courts of justice, a challenger of deputies, and shining with equal lustre in these and fifty other capacities equally diverse, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... by the countless graceful acts as host, and shown to his players. As soon as a Fitch play began to be a commodity, coveted by the theatrical manager, he nearly always had personal control of its production, and could dictate who should be in his casts. No dramatist has left behind him more profoundly pleasing memories of artistic association than Clyde Fitch. The names of his plays form a roster of stage associations—the identification of "Beau Brummell" with Richard Mansfield; of "Nathan Hale" ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, and is dimly discerned in the ode or the epic, as ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Benrimo, the dramatist, who wrote "The Yellow Jacket," relates that when he was a young writer, fresh from the breezy atmosphere of San Francisco, he visited London. Coming out of the Burlington Gallery one day, he saw a little man mincing toward ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... publication of the two Parts of "Absalom and Achitophel," "The Medal," and "Mac-Flecknoe," all of a similar tone, and rapidly succeeding each other, gave to Dryden, hitherto chiefly known as a dramatist, the formidable character of an inimitable satirist, we may here pause to consider their effect upon English poetry. The witty Bishop Hall had first introduced into our literature that species of poetry; which, though its legitimate use be to check vice and expose folly, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... bags for use on our way towards Oxford. This industry in Banbury is a very old one, for the cakes are known to have been made there as far back as 1602, when the old Cross was pulled down, and are mentioned by Ben Jonson, a great dramatist, and the friend of Shakespeare. He was Poet Laureate from 1619, and had the honour of being buried in Westminster Abbey. In his comedy Bartholomew Fair, published in 1614, he mentions that a Banbury baker, whom he facetiously named Mr. "Zeal-of-the-Lord ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... offered GRILLPARZER, the German dramatist, $4,000 for his writings, but he refuses, not because he thinks the price too low, but because he will not take the trouble of preparing and publishing a collected edition of his dramas, the last of which was entitled Maximilian Robespierre, a five act tragedy. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... "all that is only a dramatist's attitude. Don't—don't look grieved! Why, every now and then some man discovers he can attract more attention by standing on his head. That is all—really, that is all. Barnard Haw on his feet is not amusing; but the same gentleman on his head is worth an orchestra-chair. When a man wears his trousers ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... unity of the race that the dramatist owes much of his power; for let him but strike the common strings of grief and love, and the crowd at once show by their words, their gestures, their looks, and often by their tears, their earnest sympathy. Even at the spectacle of an imaginary grief their hearts are moved, the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wishing to appear intelligent and literary, went in to see the little play which Madeline Ayres had written. It was called "The Animal Fair," and three of the class animals appeared in it. But the mis- en-scene was an artist's studio, the great red lion was a red-faced English dramatist, the chick a modest young lady novelist attired in yellow chiffon, and the dragon a Scotch dialect writer. The repartee was clever, the action absurd, and there were local hits in plenty for those ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... his days and nights were as the days and nights of God. There he forecast the schemes of dramas yet to be, dramas no longer neo-classic. And as his genius foresaw the approach of its maturity, it purified and emptied itself of the personal passion that obscures the dramatist's vision of the world. This it did in a sequence of Nine and Twenty sonnets, a golden chain that bound Lucia's name to his whether she would or no. They recorded nine and twenty moments in the life of his passion, from the day of its birth up to ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... did I know how you produced your marvellous effects on the door of Billy Button, the tailor of Brentford. The Vizier's knocker was a caricature; but it showed your style. So, read the love-scenes of any dramatist during Shakspeare's period—or the heroic passages of any poetaster copying his manner;—isn't that Bedlam, my dear Smith? isn't that Hanwell? Read the rhapsodies of Nat Lee—(by a stretch of truth-speaking which it would be wise to make more common)—called mad Nat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Brompton Square, a very quiet little place, a cul-de-sac, which has also the great recommendation that no "street music" is allowed within it, can boast of having had some distinguished residents. At No. 22, George Colman, junior, the dramatist, a witty and genial talker, whose society was much sought after, lived for the ten years previous to his death in 1836. The same house was in 1860 taken by Shirley Brooks, editor of Punch. The list of former residents also includes the names of ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... preceded "Every Man in His Humour" on the stage. The former play may be described as a comedy modelled on the Latin plays of Plautus. (It combines, in fact, situations derived from the "Captivi" and the "Aulularia" of that dramatist). But the pretty story of the beggar-maiden, Rachel, and her suitors, Jonson found, not among the classics, but in the ideals of romantic love which Shakespeare had already popularised on the stage. Jonson never again produced so fresh and lovable ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... to earth, he took a passing car and came home to luncheon. The glamour had faded suddenly from his dreams, as if a bat's wing had fluttered overhead, and in his new mood, he felt a resurgence of his old self-consciousness. He was provoked by the suspicion that he had shown less as a coming dramatist than as a present fool, and he contrasted his own awkwardness with Adams' whimsical ease of manner. Did a woman ever forget how a man appeared when she first met him? Would any amount of fame to-morrow obliterate from Laura's memory his embarrassment of yesterday? ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... everything he said, whereas all the others were quite content to let the matter drop when convenient. A man of the latter type was Gutzkow, who was often with us; he had been summoned to Dresden by the general management of our court theatre, to act in the capacity of dramatist and adapter of plays. Several of his pieces had recently met with great success: Zopf und Schwert, Das Urbild des Tartuffe, and Uriel Acosta, shed an unexpected lustre on the latest dramatic repertoire, and it seemed as though the advent of Gutzkow would ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 1832, M. Henri Meilhac, like M. Emile Zola, dealt in books before he began to make them. He soon gave up trade for journalism, and contributed with pen and pencil to the comic Journal pour Rire. He began as a dramatist in 1855 with a two-act play at the Palais Royal Theatre: like the first pieces of Scribe and of M. Sardou, and of so many more who have afterward abundantly succeeded on the stage, this play of M. Meilhac's was a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... of recognition came from the front rows of the pit, together with a craning of necks on the part of those in less favoured seats. It heralded the arrival of Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world. Lady Caroline, who was already directing little conversational onslaughts from her box, gazed gently for a moment at the new arrival, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Sir Charles Sedley (properly Sidley), the famous wit and dramatist of Charles II.'s reign. In his reprint of 1735, Faulkner prints the name "Sidley," though the original twopenny tract and the "Hibernian Patriot" print it as "Sidney." Sir W. Scott corrects ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... position I shall examine later on; but, as regards the theory that Shakespeare did not busy himself much about the costume-wardrobe of his theatre, anybody who cares to study Shakespeare's method will see that there is absolutely no dramatist of the French, English, or Athenian stage who relies so much for his illusionist effects on the dress of his ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... said I; "Lope de Vega was one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived. He was not only a great dramatist and lyric poet, but a prose writer of marvellous ability, as he proved by several admirable tales, amongst which is the best ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... amber mass, its unbroken divine days concrete in it, there is no inequality on which to forbid the banns between May and December. In San Francisco there is no work for the scene-shifter of Nature: the wealth of that great dramatist, the year, resulting in the same manner as the poverty of dabblers in private theatricals,—a single flat doing service for the entire play. Thus, save for the purpose of notes-of-hand, the Almanac of San Francisco might replace its mutable months and seasons with one great kindly, constant, sumptuous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... was deplorable that he should be throwing his life away in such occupations, recalled him to Liverpool. To Liverpool accordingly he returned, to work as a draughtsman, and fired withal with a double ambition—for one thing to win fame as a poet, for another to succeed as a dramatist. Already in 1870 he had written a long poem, which was published in 1874 anonymously by an enterprising Liverpool publisher. About this poem George Gilfillan, to whom Hall Caine sent it in 1876, wrote ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... "tells his churlish tale in his manner," of which manner the less said the better; while in the "Reeve's Tale," Chaucer even, after the manner of a comic dramatist, gives his Northern undergraduate a vulgar ungrammatical phraseology, probably designedly, since the poet was himself a "Southern man." The "Pardoner" is exuberant in his sample-eloquence; the "Doctor of Physic" is gravely ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... idea of an all-girl cast, saying that each year many girls' colleges presented Shakespearian plays with marked success. The main thing to be considered was the intelligent delivery of the great dramatist's lines. The thing to do would be to find out what girls could most ably portray the various characters, it would be necessary to try each girl separately with a few lines from the play. In order to facilitate matters, he suggested that those girls who really desired ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... actually see her very shamefully produced again. Now all these things, that remain as they were in life, and are not transmuted into any artistic convention, are terribly stubborn and difficult to deal with; and hence there are for the dramatist many resultant limitations in time and space. These limitations in some sort approximate towards those of painting: the dramatic author is tied down, not indeed to a moment, but to the duration of each scene or act; he is confined to the stage, almost as the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been written. During this time, Mr Blackie was still pursuing his Latin and Greek studies; and one article, on a classical subject, deserves especial notice. It is a thorough criticism of all the dramas of Euripides, in which he takes a view of the dramatist exactly the reverse of that maintained by Walter Savage Landor—asserting that he was a bungler in the tragic art, and far too much addicted to foisting his stupid moralisings into his plays. Another article in the Westminster, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Bronson Howard a dramatist, and then made him the first American dramatist of his day, were his human sympathy, his perception, his sense of proportion, and his construction. With his perception, his proportion, and his construction, ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... he murmured. 'Not thus shall they treat my lines. Every syllable must be engraved upon their hearts, or I forbid the curtain to go up. Not that it matters with this fool-dramatist's words; they are ink-vomit, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... half the best troops of the country were trained with the tomahawk and half the best journalism of the capital written in picture-writing, if later, by general consent, the Chief known as Pine in the Twilight, was the best living poet, or the Chief Thin Red Fox, the ablest living dramatist. If that were realised, the English critic probably would not say anything scornful of red men; or certainly would be sorry he said it. But the extraordinary avowal does mark what was most peculiar in the position. This has not been the common case of ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... face of Agamemnon; neither height nor depth, propriety of expression was his aim.' It is a question whether Timanthes took the idea from the text of Euripides, or whether it is his invention, and was borrowed by the dramatist. The picture must have presented a contrast to that of his rival Parrhasius, which exhibited the fury ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... I seem to see the Uhlans stand, Paying their pious sixpences to enter That little homestead of the Fatherland That housed the dramatist in Stratford's centre; A trifle flushed, maybe, with English beer, But mutely reverent and not talking chattily, They write beneath their names: "A friend lives here; Not to be ransacked. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... round, and a blush on both sides, but the lady was on firm earth again, and in a minute or two the drawling call of the conductor brought the party back to the train. The journey was renewed, and the incident forgotten by everybody save the dramatist, who sat coiled in his corner, with his eyes fixed upon a book which he might as well have held upside-down. The women of the company, five in number, were chattering like a nest of starlings, shrilling high against the slow rumble of the wheels. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... repertory dramatist! And I've insulted him!—me, a town councillor. (He has grown white to the lips; this is not easy, but can be managed.) There'll be a play about me—about us, this house— everything. But (passionately) I'll thwart him yet. Janet, my girl, do thee write at once and say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... magic of poetry; but he has seldom drawn a tear, and millions of radiant eyes have been witnesses for Otway, by those drops of pity which they have shed. Otway might be no scholar, but that, methinks, does not detract from the merit of a dramatist, nor much assist him in succeeding. For the truth of this we may appeal to experience. No poets in our language, who were what we call scholars, have ever written plays which delight or affect the audience. Shakespear, Otway and Southern ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... this pessimistic conclusion Le Roy finds it repugnant, and is unwilling to acquiesce in it. Like an embarrassed dramatist he escapes from the knot which he has tied by ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... was ousted in spite of the eminent services of a personal character which he had rendered to the emperor, in order to make way for the count. The latter's intimacy with his sovereign is largely due to his cleverness as a poet, a dramatist, and a composer, and while he has furnished the words to many of the musical compositions of the kaiser, William has, in turn, had much of his own poetry set to music by ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... fascinated him. At first he was prejudiced against it because it was in the Bible, but the majesty of the poem charmed him, overwhelmed him. He had read the plays of Shakespeare; he had closely studied what many consider to be the great dramatist's masterpiece, but "Macbeth" seemed to him poor and small compared with the Book of Job. The picture of Satan going to and fro on the earth, the story of Job's calamities, of his sorrows, and of the dire extremity in which he found himself, appealed to him and fascinated him. Yes, it was fine. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the Inner Temple in the second year of James I., where in due course he numbered, amongst his literary contemporaries,—William Browne, Croke, Oulde, Thomas Gardiner, Dynne, Edward Heywood, John Morgan, Augustus Caesar, Thomas Heygate, Thomas May, dramatist and translator of Lucan's 'Pharsalia,' William Rough and Rymer were members of Gray's Inn. Sir John David and Sir Simonds D'Ewes belonged to the Middle Temple. Massinger's dearest friends lived in the Inner Temple, of which society George ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... great-grandfather of the dramatist Steele Mackaye, named John Morrison, was an old Covenanter and preached in the same parish a hundred years. He lived to be 122. His name, written in the old Bible after he was a centenarian, looks like ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... and do it better. But he hardly ever did anything first. To his contemporaries he must have seemed deficient in originality, at least as compared with Lilly, or Marlowe, or Ben Jonson, or Beaumont and Fletcher. He was the most obviously imitative dramatist of all, following rather than ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... to musical accompaniment are essential features of Plautus' style, and many other implements of the lower types of modern drama are among his favorite devices. If then we can place Plautus toward the bottom of the scale, we relieve him vastly of responsibility as a dramatist and of the necessity of adherence to verisimilitude. Where does he actually belong? The answer must be sought in a detailed consideration of his methods of producing his effects and in an endeavor to ascertain how far the audience and the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... that he, too, is in this instance mistaken. I have never specially admired Henrik Hertz as a dramatist. Hence it is impossible for me to believe that he should, unknown to myself, have been able to exercise any ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... exclusiveness, this aloofness, is rare nowadays in the West; it is perhaps less rare in the East, but it is becoming rarer there as Western influences, Western ideas, and Western modes of life and method of regarding life make progress. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the novelist, the dramatist, if their work is to be other than ephemeral, need an atmosphere of repose and quietude wherein the mind can work and fashion those ideas which are to be given material expression free from all distracting ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester Square: a spot, I think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake of the dramatist, still very foolishly claimed as a glory by the English race, in spite of his disgusting political opinions; but from the fact that the seats in the immediate neighbourhood are often thronged by children, errand-boys, unfortunate young ladies of the poorer class and infirm ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson |
