"Farcical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cynicism, to a corner of the king's own box, where sat she who had once been a laughing maid by his side and with whom he had played that diverting pastoral, called "First Love." It was only an instant's return into the farcical but joyous past, and a moment later he was sharply recalled into the arid present by ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Mollychunkamug had not smiled for us until now;—now a sunny grin spread over her smooth cheeks. She was all smiling, and presently, as the breeze dimpled her, all a "snicker" up into the roots of her hair, up among her forest-tresses. Mollychunkamug! Who could be aught but gay, gay even to the farcical, when on such a name? Is it Indian? Bewildered Indian we deem it,—transmogrified somewhat from aboriginal sound by the fond imagination of some lumberman, finding in it a sweet memorial of his Mary far away in the kitchens of the Kennebec, his Mary so rotund ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... I think he has more wit than Maillard, and occasionally displays a brilliant imagination; with the same singular mixture of grave declamation and farcical absurdities. He is called in the title-page the golden-tongued. It runs thus, Predicatoris qui lingua aurea, sua tempestate nuncupatus est, Sermones quadragesimales, ab ipso olim Turonis ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... dramatic art, declaring no play should contain an effect, a line, a scene or an act which does not bear on the end in view by developing either the characters or the action. The entire second act, containing the farcical examination-scene, is useless. Robertson again sinned in this way in the Nightingale: although it had no effect on the plot, although it was entirely unnecessary, he introduced a pretty tableau representing the heroine, a lovely prima-donna, singing under the silver ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... not renew former suit. Not yet may he face the world an unsuspected man. The death of Alice Webster still remains a mystery. Her murderer, escaping farcical arrest, is now at large. The agencies employed to unravel this triple conspiracy seem ineffective. He will not pose as suspected murderer of an innocent girl. Until this mystery is cleared, he will not think of marriage with Esther Randolph. This grand, pure-minded, cultured girl shall ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... satirised literary affectations in La Comedie des Academistes; these and other follies of the time are presented with spirit in Desmaret's remarkable comedy, Les Visionnaires. If we add, for sake of its study of the peasant in the character of Mathieu Gareau, the farcical Pedant Joue of Cyrano, we have named the most notable comedies of the years which preceded Les ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... these thoughts I take note of a little scene of comedy, or perhaps of a farcical kind, which is going on near me, in which two 'Harrys' of the purest kind were engaged, and whose oddities lightened the tediousness of the passage. One had seen foreign parts, and was therefore regarded ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... to vote as it did. Anyone who has spoken to one of those Bocchesi or Dalmatian volunteers who were at that time in Montenegro will quite believe that they applauded the result, but to pretend that they drove the Skup[vs]tina with bayonets to do what every reasoning creature would have done is so farcical that one might have thought it would not even form (as it did form) the subject for questions in the British House of Commons.... The only part played by bayonets was when on November 7 (one day previous to that fixed for the elections) a detachment ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... and pretty soon I saw Cockney go forward. So I knew that the farcical examination of Newman was ended, and that he was probably locked up with the rats in the lazaret. I promised myself I would have a heart-to-heart talk with Cockney just as soon as eight bells released me from ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... 1775 concerning the running away of some British soldiers, "we laugh at his idea of chasing the Royal Fusileers with the stores. Does he consider them as inanimate, or as treasure?" When the British in Boston sent out a bundle of the king's speech, "farcical enough, we gave great joy to them, (the red coats I mean), without knowing or intending it; for on that day, the day which gave being to the new army, (but before the proclamation came to hand,) we had hoisted the union flag in compliment to the United Colonies. But, behold, it ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... molded and restricted for all time by the talents of a single star performer, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt. Under the influence of Eugene Scribe, Sardou began his career at the Theatre Francais with a wide range of well-made plays, varying in scope from the social satire of Nos Intimes and the farcical intrigue of Les Pattes de Mouche (known to us in English as The Scrap of Paper) to the tremendous historic panorama of Patrie. When Sarah Bernhardt left the Comedie Francaise, Sardou followed in her footsteps, and afterwards devoted most of his energy to preparing a series ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... Johnsonianly upon lettered topics, puffing unending Virginia cigarettes, gazing with shy humor through thick-paned spectacles—well, on Friday, June 23, 1916, Bob and I decided to collaborate in writing a farcical novel. It is still unwritten, save the first few chapters. I only instance this to show ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... awaken a good deal of attention, not all of it pleasant, on the part of Friedrich. From the first he had, as usual, been a most clear-eyed observer of everything; and found the business, as appears, not of tragical nature, but of expensive-farcical, capable to shake the diaphragm rather than touch the heart of a reflective on-looker. He has a considerable Poem on it,—WAR OF THE CONFEDERATES by title (in the old style of the PALLADION, imitating an unattainable JEANNE D'ARC),—considerable Poem, now forming itself at leisure in his thoughts, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with just severity upon the strange way in which the divinity is addressed in this piece, says, "This blot defaces almost all the modern things called dramas or plays. In the farcical comedies we have low vulgar swearing unworthy even the refuse of society; while in the comedies larmoyantes (weeping comedies) and tragedies, we have eternal imprecations of the deity, indicative only of madness in literature." To this observation ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Tom's feats of marksmanship, though performed with what white men would despise as arms of precision, end seriously. Yet on one occasion the result was broadly farcical. He has a son, known to our little world as Jimmy, who, like his father, is given to occasional sulks, a luxury that even a black boy may become bloated on. Tom does not tolerate that frame of mind in others. The attentions ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Tarkington's studies of boy life (especially Penrod), and of adolescence (especially Seventeen and Clarence). Judged by your own experience and observation, are they presented with true knowledge and humor, or are they a farcical skimming of surface eccentricities? Compare them with Mark Twain's books about boys and with ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... discussions before the public are fatigued; and, the music sounding, the performers of the national dance appear, and take the place of the two advocates for a time. These combatants soon re-commence their struggle; and, at length, the judge is called upon to pronounce between them. A farcical kind of consultation ensues between the judge and the ministers around, who are supposed to send messengers even to the king himself by their mounted courier ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... recommending only certain legacies, and leaving an honourable and high-minded family dependent upon her bountiful consideration. "I could relate some very extraordinary anecdotes arising out of that circumstance," said Crony; "but you must be content with one, farcical in the extreme, which fully displays the lady's affection for her former profession, and shows she is a perfect mistress of stage effect. On the removal of the shrivelled remains of the old dotard for interment, his affectionate ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... beast's mouth. The lion's smile was not, properly speaking, a smile at all, chevalier; it was the torture which came of snuff getting into its nostrils, and when the beast made that uncanny noise and snapped its jaws together, it was simply the outcome of a sneeze. The thing would be farcical if it were not that tragedy hangs on the thread of it, and that a life, a useful human life, was destroyed by means of it. Yes, it was clever, it was diabolically clever; but you know what Bobby Burns says about the best-laid ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... The form of drama in which a present-day story is told, and the language, dress and manners of the actors are those of polite modern society. [1] You will see how superficial the distinction is, when you realize that the plot may be farcical, comic, tragic ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the solitary poet in hell, the strange shapes pass. The conclusion of this singular poem is entirely farcical. The devil is resolved ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... all this, no one, not even the wizened old man who was obviously the humorist of the tribune, had seen anything farcical. To be too hot—to be too cold! this is a serious matter in France. A jury surely has a right to protect itself against cold, against la migraine, and the devils of rheumatism and pleurisy. There is nothing ridiculous in twelve men sitting in judgment on a fellow-man, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... can be the object of it in this case? Wayne knows (or if he is too mad to know anything, at least Turnbull knows) that there is not, and never has been, the smallest chance of support for him outside; that the mass of the sane modern inhabitants of London regard his farcical patriotism with as much contempt as they do the original idiotcy that gave it birth—the folly of our miserable King. What Wayne and his horsemen are doing nobody can even conjecture. The general theory round here is that he is simply ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... saluting. The arms of men were never still. It was like the St. Vitus disease. Tommies and Jocks saluted every subaltern with an automatic gesture of convulsive energy. Every subaltern acknowledged these movements and in turn saluted a multitude of majors, colonels, and generals. The thing became farcical, a monstrous absurdity of human relationship, yet pleasing to the vanity of men lifted up above the lowest caste. It seemed to me an intensification of the snob instinct in the soul of man. Only the Australians ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... demarcation cannot be drawn with entire satisfaction to all. About twenty years ago an itinerant dealer was arrested in a New Jersey town for selling a certain book. I was present at the trial, which was somewhat farcical. The defendant had gathered together a large number of catalogues to show that the book had been sold by the most reputable dealers in the country; and that it was included in the catalogues of most of the public libraries. But the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... common life, must be a thing of course, Whereas there's nought so difficult, because There's nowhere less allowance made for flaws. See Plautus now: what ill-sustained affairs Are his close fathers and his love-sick heirs! How farcical his parasites! how loose And down at heel he wears his comic shoes! For, so he fills his pockets, nought he heeds Whether the play's a ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... a private meeting to attend to-night. Should he attend it or not? His situation had become farcical. Was it not his plain duty to withdraw at once from the political contest, that a serious candidate might as soon as possible take his place? Where could he discern even the glimmer of a hope in this sudden darkness? His heart was ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... conditions of health and disease. They appear to have left their physical interests to the doctors, with much the same spirit of cynical resignation with which they turned over their souls to the care of the clergy. Nowadays a system of education would be thought farcical which did not impart a sufficient knowledge of the general principles of physiology, hygiene, and medicine to enable a person to treat any ordinary physical disturbance without recourse to a physician. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... published; and it is impossible to read them without discerning in them all the powers which afterwards produced "Evelina" and "Cecilia"; the quickness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and manner; the skill in grouping; the humour, often richly comic, sometimes even farcical. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... deputy, Sir John Perrot, convened a parliament in Ireland. There was something farcical as well as grim in calling together a parliament under such conditions, when the delegates were supposed to be convened that they might give frank and sincere advice to the representative of the sovereign. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... called them. But when it came to helping his beloved Dad realize a long-cherished ambition to behold his only son and heir shatter Hicks, Sr.'s, celebrated athletic records, it was a different story. T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., ever since he committed the farcical faux pas of running the wrong way with the pigskin in the Freshman-Sophomore football contest of his first year, had been a super-colossal athletic joke ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... of human recklessness and extravagance. In some of these plays, the vanity of bold ambition is brought out with particular emphasis through the contrast between the daring and dissatisfied Faust and his farcical counterpart, the jolly and contented Casperle. In the last scene, while Faust in despair and contrition is waiting for the sound of the midnight bell which is to be the signal of his destruction, Casperle, as night watchman, patrols the streets of the town, calling out the hours and singing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... chinovniks who were anxious to train the Jewish masses in the fear of Russian bureaucracy and inculcate in them polite manners aroused the attention both of the Russian and the foreign press. It was universally felt that these farcical performances of uncouth administrators were only the manifestations of a bottomless hatred, of a morbid desire to insult and to humble the Jews, and that these administrators were capable at any moment to proceed from moralizing to more tangible forms of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... was revelation enough had Mary Coombe heard it. But she did not hear it; this new aspect of the situation had seemed to her so farcical that her laughter threatened to become hysterical. "Oh, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Potterism (COLLINS) "a tragi-farcical tract" Miss ROSE MACAULAY disarms our criticism that she conducts too heavy a discussion from too light a platform. I don't think the author of What Not is likely to write anything dull, anything I shan't be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... there is humor which does not. On the whole, it is as to what is purely wit that we are ever the most at fault. Certain phases of humor we cannot mistake,—especially those which are broadly comic or farcical. But sometimes we meet with incidents or scenes which have more in them of the pathetic than the comic, that we must still rank with the humorous. Here is a case in point. A time was when it was a penal ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... out of my mouth as it seemed of their own volition. I was tired of this farcical bargaining, and determined to put an end to it, once for all. I stood up and faced his blank stare of amazement, without at least any ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... you!" said he. "The centuries of education and belief that lie behind you compel you to protest. All the same, however, when people won't make restoration, things must be taken from them. What worries me is that Bergaz should have sold himself just now. The public prosecutor will use that farcical burglary as a crushing argument when he asks the jury for ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the glories of "Guillotina, the Tenth Muse," and fell down in worship before a Phrygian cap. It was due to his influence that in 1793 the death of Louis XVI. was celebrated throughout the American continent with grotesque symbolism and farcical solemnity. A single instance is enough to prove the malign effect of Jefferson's teaching. At Philadelphia the head of a pig was severed from its body, and saluted as an emblem ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... turned for relief to more than usual levity and mockery. Hence the perpetual interruption of the serious and affecting, and sometimes even awful, interest which belongs to the main argument of the piece, by scenes of farcical and extravagant caricature which might be pleasant enough as varieties in that farce of unreason with which he usually entertains us, but which, coming upon the mind in a state of serious emotion, are offensive ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the board. To-morrow they would descend upon her with their fussy attentions, their medical solemnities, their farcical search for something—for anything except the truth they wouldn't let her tell—to account for her nervous breakdown. But for a dozen hours she was, miraculously, to be let alone, with blessed open spaces round her. No need for ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his own happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good fellows, any one of whom might serve as a model ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... watch still in his hand, advanced to the bridge table. Strolling from player to player he made mental photographs of each hand, then took his stand behind Penny's chair to observe the horribly farcical playing of it. Poor little Penny! he reflected. She hadn't had a chance against that dumb-bell across the table from her. Fancy anyone's doubling a little slam bid on a hand like Carolyn Drake's—or even calling an informatory double in the first place! Why hadn't she bid four Clubs ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... destroys its tragic content by the two comic figures, Mercutio and the nurse, probably presented by two popular actors—the nurse undoubtedly acted by a man. If we examine the structure of the play very closely, we notice that these two figures and the elements touching them, appear only as farcical interludes, which, with our love of the logical and harmonious, must strike ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and all of these show an extraordinary power of invention; the most diverse passions, characters, and situations enter into the work, their stories stimulate our curiosity, and their characters appeal to our sympathies. Especially in half-farcical, half-pathetic comedy they have no superior; their wit and spirit here find freest play. Despite much coarseness, their work is full of delicate sensibility, and suffused with a romantic grace of form and a tenderness of expression that endears them to our hearts, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... company, and Radisson took one of the Hudson Bay captives as a witness. The thing was done as easily as a piece of farcical comedy. French hostages had been left among the New Englanders as guarantee of Gillam's safety in Radisson's fort. These hostages had been instructed to drop, as if by chance, blocks of wood across the doors of the guard-room and powder house and barracks. Even these precautions proved unnecessary. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... be seen every night in the theatres oldfashioned farcical comedies, in which a bedroom, with four doors on each side and a practicable window in the middle, was understood to resemble exactly the bedroom in the flats beneath and above, all three inhabited by couples consumed with jealousy. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... figures, Beaumarchais, Marivaux, Becque, Brieux at his best, and Maurice Donnay occasionally, there has not been a single writer in the history of the French theatre so inevitably au courant with human nature. His form is frankly farcical and his plays are so funny, so enjoyable merely as good shows that it seems a pity to raise an obelisk in the playwright's honour, and yet the fact remains that he understands the political, social, domestic, amorous, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... growing up almost unnoticed beside classical Hebrew literature, we find popular plays, comedies, chiefly farces for the Purim carnival. The first of them, "The Sale of Joseph" (Mekirath Yoseph, 1710), treats the biblical narrative in the form and spirit of the German farcical clown dialogues, Pickelhering (Merry-Andrew), borrowed from the latter, being Potiphar's servant and counsellor. No dramatic or poetic value of any kind attaches to the play. It is as trivial as any of its models, the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... down, smoothed his hat, and then with an engaging smile that showed his excellent teeth, began: "I've come—it sounds rather farcical, doesn't ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... interest because it was written during Williamson's A. Merritt "kick," when he was writing little else but, and it gave the earliest indication of a more general capability. The lightness of the handling is especially modern, barely avoiding the farcical by the validity of the notion that wireless transmission of matter is the next big transportation frontier to be conquered. It is especially important because it stylistically forecast a later trend to accept the background ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... whenever any affair of an interesting nature was pending, nothing could make her refrain from joining any company which might be in the house;—nothing;—not even O'Grady himself. At such times, too, she became strangely excited, and invariably executed one piece of farcical absurdity, of which, however, the family contrived to confine the exercise to her own room. It was wearing on her head a tin concern, something like a chimney-cowl, ornamented by a small weathercock, after the fashion of those which surmount ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... is a charmingly wicked person. The stories are well written, with a pleasant humour of a farcical ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... betray the woman to whom he owes his present prosperity, for he is prosperous and has a snug little balance at his bank. Besides, even though we took the matter in hand, what could we do? There is no evidence against him or against the woman. The farcical proceedings in the coroner's court had tied ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... was, clean shaven, and looking quite respectable; indeed, better dressed than Kearney had seen him since he left off his New Orleans "store" clothes. The Colossus was evidently an object of great interest to his new acquaintances; and, from the farcical look upon their faces, it was clear they had been doing their best to "draw" him. With what success Kearney could not tell; though, from the knowledge he had of his old comrade's cleverness, he suspected not much. There was just time for him to note the jovial air ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... "The farcical comedy is over, Blanquette," said he gently, "I'm a Monsieur no longer, do you see? We are going to live just as we did before you went away in the summer, and I am not going to be married. I am going to live with my little Blanquette for ever ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... rich and feather-brained young officer," I said to myself, "who treats everything in this farcical manner. He won't be the first of the species I have seen. They are amusing, but frivolous, and sometimes dangerous, wearing their honour lightly, and too apt to carry ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... devil from a sick person or family, is a ceremony as singular as it is silly, but as I have frequently been a spectator of this farcical performance, a description of it may not be uninteresting to you. I have before observed, that if their medicines, (many of which are very powerful), or, as they will have it, their incantations, are of no avail, they then ascribe the illness to the immediate agency of the ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... would have made an excellent short story, but to pursue its farcical developments through three hundred pages requires a considerable amount of perseverance. The scene of Mr. PETER BLUNDER'S book is laid in tropical Jallagar, where the British Resident was keener on cats than on his duties. A male tortoise-shell was what he fanatically and almost ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... to keep. Strength of character must decide the question of place in a household as it does elsewhere; and it is surely folly to require, and useless to insist on, the submission of the strong to the weak. The marriage oath is farcical. A woman is made to swear to love a man who will probably prove unlovable, to honour a man who is as likely as not to be undeserving of honour, and to obey a man who may be incapable of judging what is best either for himself or her. I have no respect ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... be in conformity with the institutes of their God. Worship takes the form, as at Eleusis, of tribal mysteries, originally instituted, as at Eleusis, by the God. The young men are initiated with many ceremonies, some of which are cruel and farcical, but the initiation includes ethical instruction, in conformity with the supposed commands of a God who watches over conduct. As among ourselves, the ethical ideal, with its theological sanction, is probably rather above the moral standard of ordinary practice. What conclusion ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... oder, Die Zauberflote," written by Liebeskind, but published by Wieland in a volume of Orientalia entitled "Dschinnistan." He had got pretty deep in his work when a rival manager brought out an adaptation of the same story, with music by Wenzel Muller. The farcical character of the piece is indicated by its title, which was "Kasper, der Fagottist; oder, Die Zauberzither"; but it made so striking a success that Schikaneder feared to enter the lists against it with an opera drawn from the same source. He was ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... news of the inquiry into the case of Gilbert and Vaucheray was becoming worse and worse, the days were slipping by, and not an hour passed without his asking himself, in anguish, whether all his efforts—granting that he succeeded—would not end in farcical results, absolutely foreign to the aim ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... led Mandane to the fire, and with farcical reverence requested her to be seated on her throne—an empty color cask, for she suffered under the strange permanent delusion that she was the wife of the Mukaukas George. They laughingly did her homage, craved some favor or made enquiries as to her husband's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Creation around us is not a caprice or a farce. It is designed for a Cause and moves steadily towards that Cause. There may be—no doubt there are—many men who elect to view life from a low, material, or even farcical standpoint—nevertheless, life in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... deception, and complete delusion of the former profession, than I was at the cant and hypocrisy of the latter. I soon became a disciple of Clifford's, yet so astonished was I with his account of the mummery of the courts, and the farcical deception of what was called the administration of justice, particularly in all political matters, that I really looked with such astonishment, and sometimes with such a suspicious and unbelieving eye, that he frequently thought it necessary to bring me living proof, and incontrovertible ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... of Christ, the divine tragedy, is the tragedy of the Cross. Pilate, the sceptic, the man of culture, by making a mockery of it, sought to convert it into a comedy; he conceived the farcical idea of the king with the reed sceptre and crown of thorns, and cried "Behold the man!" But the people, more human than he, the people that thirsts for tragedy, shouted, "Crucify him! crucify him!" And the human, the intra-human, tragedy is the tragedy of Don Quixote, whose face was daubed ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... and continued to examine me through his spectacles (which I, in my turn, inspected and estimated at about minus five dioptres). There was something highly diverting about this grim lawyer, with his dry contentiousness and almost farcical caution. His ostentatious reserve encouraged me to ply him with fresh questions, the more indiscreet ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... centre of a large lawn stood a double mansion of stone, and a little to each side were seen outhouses for servants and kitchen use. The open space toward the water was extensive enough to admit of the farcical tilting of the afternoon. A great variety of evergreen trees and shrubs gave the house a more shaded look than the season would otherwise have afforded. Among these were countless lanterns illuminating the grounds, and ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... come suddenly. With the swiftness of lightning they descend upon the world, often in the very midst of fancied peace and security,—and the farcical, grinning, sneering apes of humanity, for whom even the idea of a God has but furnished food for lewd jesting, are scattered into terror-stricken hordes, who are forced to realise for the first time in their lives, that whether ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Messrs. SIMS and RALEIGH and the Court Company for a good hearty laugh, and many of them at their new three-act farcical comedy, The Guardsman. It Raleigh is good, and Sims likely to be in for a long run. Therefore, congratulations to Mr. CHUDLEIGH, who is in the proud position of "Sole Lessee and Manager," of the Court. Odd, as a correspondent remarked in a letter to Mr. Punch last week, is the coincidental ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... taken should be thorough in order to be effective. We have had of late years in Germany very good evidence of the excellent results flowing from thorough methods, and the recent legislation in Massachusetts against the gypsy moth (Ocneria dispar), which at one time threatened to become farcical, has, fortunately, proved more than usually successful; the commission appointed to deal with the subject having worked with energy ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... ventured out of an antiquity more or less remote. Thus it is easy to conceive the delight of the music-loving people of Naples when they found that the opera which they adored could be enjoyed in combination with a mirthful and even farcical story, interpreted by characters who might have stepped out of one of their own market-places. But, apart from the freedom and variety of the subjects with which it dealt, the development of opera buffa gave rise to an art-form which is of the utmost importance to ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... a promise of future "copy"—of a story with farcical complications, or even a dramatic ending, in which the baby, adopted by him, should turn out to be somebody's stolen offspring. He lifted the little image that had suggested these fancies, carefully laid it on his table, went to bed, and presently ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... is interwoven with low comedy—the most lofty sentiments, the most exalted virtues, and heroism and magnanimity strained almost beyond the limits of probability, are checkered by uncouth pleasantries, and the most pathetic incidents intruded upon and interrupted by the farcical conundrums of MUG, a low cockney, who has become secretary of state to the king of the Mandingoes. Thus, oscillating between Kotesbue and O'Keefe, giving now a layer of exalted sentiment, and then a layer of mere farce, has Mr. C. raised a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... by means of the textual notes. The notes are bad enough, in all conscience, but the teacher's lack of humor piles Ossa upon Pelion. The solemnity that pervades such mechanical teaching would be farcical were it not so pathetic. The teacher who cannot indulge in a hearty, honest, ringing laugh with her pupils in situations that are really humorous is certain to be laughed at by her pupils. In her work, as in Lincoln's, a sense of humor will often ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... like beasts of burden, up once more to that hell of blood and mud, of nerve-shattering shell, of blinding glare and ear-bursting roar of gun fire, and, worse than all, to the place where, crouching in the farcical deceptive shelter of the sandbagged trench, their fingers gripping into the steel of their rifle hands, they would wait for the zero hour. But as the weeks passed and the orders failed to come they passed from that bewildering and subconscious anxious waiting, to an experience ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... caricatured in the comic. The English are always inadequate observers; they seem too full of themselves to have eyes and ears for any alien people; but as far as an Englishman could, Dickens had caught the look of our life in certain aspects. His report of it was clumsy and farcical; but in a large, loose way it was like enough; at least he had caught the note of our self-satisfied, intolerant, and hypocritical provinciality, and this was not altogether lost ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... warrant in the gospels. St. Matthew would as soon have thought of applying such adjectives to Judas Maccabeus as to Jesus; and even St. Luke, who makes Jesus polite and gracious, does not make him meek. The picture of him as an English curate of the farcical comedy type, too meek to fight a policeman, and everybody's butt, may be useful in the nursery to soften children; but that such a figure could ever have become a centre of the world's attention is too absurd for discussion; grown men and women may speak kindly of a harmless ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... most like a very shuffling anapaest—the verse which appears in the comedies of Udall and Still—held its ground. We have it in the morality of the New Custom, printed in 1573, but no doubt written earlier, in the Interlude of The Trial of Treasure, in the farcical comedy of Like Will to Like, a coarse but lively piece, by Ulpian Fulwell (1568). In the very curious tragi-comedy of Cambyses this doggerel appears partly, but is alternated with the less ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... lizards in company with a screech-owl. As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain the exceedingly farcical explanation ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Angus threw out his hand with an impetuous gesture—"that considering all the abominable, farcical tricks women play nowadays, it is simply amazing to find one who is contented with a simple life like this, and who manages to make that simple life so gracious ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... representations. When popular interest in these dramas began to lag, current topics were introduced into the dialogue, and characters from real life appeared on the stage for the first time. Early in the sixteenth century John Heywood invented a farcical composition called The Interlude to relieve the tiresome monotony of existing plays. But it was in 1540 that the first comedy appeared, and it is not too much to say that this play marks the beginning of modern English ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... helped to make the story serious. Nevertheless, this is strictly true. The introduction of Sam Weller had, to begin with, some merely accidental and superficial effects. When Samuel Weller had appeared, Samuel Pickwick was no longer the chief farcical character. Weller became the joker and Pickwick in some sense the butt of his jokes. Thus it was obvious that the more simple, solemn, and really respectable this butt could be made the better. Mr. Pickwick had been the figure ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... gushing terminations as Your Own Darling, Your own Dovey and other pet and silly endings should be avoided, as they denote shallowness. Love can be strongly expressed without dipping into the nonsensical and the farcical. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... of marrying the lady to the local bore, in the hope that she may end his career. Once started on the wrong tack, he works out his evidence with convincing logic, and ties up the whole neighbourhood in the toils of his misconception. The book is full of the wittiest dialogue and the most farcical situations. It will be as certain to please all lovers of Irish humour as the immortal "Experiences of ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... order, the judges, prosecuting attorneys, sheriff and drawers of jurors, and every other of court of law are in the hands of a despotic cabal who excessively tax, and whose courts convict all those who oppose them, and exonerate by trial the most farcical, the vilest criminal, rob and murder in broad day light, often at the bidding of their protectors. Such a status for a people claiming to be civilized seems difficult to conceive, yet the above was not an hypothesis of condition, but the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the wicket was drying after rain, under the influence of a steady south-west wind and occasional bursts of sunshine. Would any captain in Stott's second year have dared to take first innings under such conditions? The question is farcical now, but not a single member of the Hampdenshire Eleven had the least conception that the Surrey captain was deliberately throwing away his chances on ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... testimony was not for but against his theory. Burchell himself tells us that Bushman girls "are most commonly betrothed" when about seven years old, and become mothers at twelve, or even at ten. To speak of choice in such cases, in any rational sense of the word, would be farcical even if the girls were free to do as they please, which they are not. With regard to the Fuegians, Darwin cites King and Fitzroy to the effect that the Indian obtains the consent of the parents by doing them ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... from the accompanying sacrifice of a goat) sprang from the graver songs, and comedy (village-song) from the lighter and more farcical ones. Gradually, recital and dialogue were added, there being at first but a single speaker, then two, and finally three, which last was the classical number. Thespis (about 536 B.C.) is said to have introduced this idea of the dialogue; hence the term ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the Wicklow Mines,[G] which were worked some fifty years back, but which, for want of capital or perseverance, only furnished a few Cronobane halfpence, and materials for a musical farce to one of the most delightful farcical Irish writers of ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... to materialism is not positive but negative. It would be farcical at this day to make complaint of it for what it IS for 'grossness.' Grossness is what grossness DOES—we now know THAT. We make complaint of it, on the contrary, for what it is NOT— not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... fail—and God forbid!—then the whole world will lie in the grip of Flint and Waldron! With our other centers broken up and under espionage, our press forced into impotence—save our underground press—and political action now rendered farcical as ever it was in Mexico, when Diaz ruled, we have but ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... military German which eighty per cent. of all Russian officers know and the trend of which is never misunderstood. I pointed out that any further encroaching would be resented in a most drastic and sudden manner. The usual farcical exchange of cards, permitting all sorts of bluffs, does not impress a Russian, but the imminent chance of blows from fists does. A pair of astonished bulging eyes, a muttered apology and ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Wattier's Club was Bligh, a notorious madman, of whom Mr Raikes relates:—'One evening at the Macao table, when the play was very deep, Brummell, having lost a considerable stake, affected, in his farcical way, a very tragic air, and cried out—"Waiter, bring me a flat candlestick and a pistol." Upon which Bligh, who was sitting opposite to him, calmly produced two loaded pistols from his coat pocket, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... been noted as a droll. A grin was as much a part of his stock apparel as tow breeches or a palm-leaf hat. The negro, too, had from time immemorial been portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity hedged him about with peculiar sacredness. He was chivalrous and baronial in his instincts, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... another Comedy, entitled the Inconstant, or the Way to Win Him, which had sufficient merit to have procured equal success to the rest; but for the inundation of Italian, French, and other farcical interruptions, which, through the interest of some, and the depraved taste of others, broke in upon the stage like a torrent, and swept down before thorn all taste for competitions of a more intrinsic excellence. These ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... world does so, we should not. Nevertheless I mean to see to it that this subject becomes part of the Eugenic campaign which will yet dominate and mould the future. For surely the present spectacle has elements in it which would be utterly farcical if they were not so tragic. Here we have life present and life to come being destroyed for lack of knowledge. These horrible diseases, ravaging the guilty and the innocent, equally and indifferently, are at present allowed to do ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... they may, in their waning years, he returns to the shades. The play ends with the undignified reappearance of Xerxes, and a melancholy procession into the palace of Susa. It was, perhaps, inevitable that this close of the great drama should verge on the farcical, and that the poltroonery of Xerxes should, in a measure, obscure Aeschylus' generous portraiture of Atossa and Darius. But his magnificent picture of the battle of Salamis is unequalled in the poetic ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... madness; and need one marvel then at your talking of having encountered another impossibility, at your story about finding the dead Pietro come to life among the mountains, and not knowing him again, and about those almost farcical tricks of jugglery that were played you, all which you have related to us with the very same assurance? No, my good Antonio, pain and grief have distracted your sounder senses, so that you see and believe in things ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... known as the "sealing" process. Men are here married—by proxy—to others than the actual living wife, sometimes with her consent, sometimes without it. One old gentleman, whose name is not to be mentioned, was sealed thus for eternity to Martha Washington and to Empress Josephine. It sounds farcical and foolish in the extreme; fit only to be counted as a silly joke, unworthy the attention of a sane soul for a minute; but it is terribly sober when it is remembered that there are hundreds of thousands ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... allowed to look for himself. He was conducted to the great vaulted rooms of the Temple, to the vast ballrooms of the Palais Cond, where herded the condemned and those still awaiting trial; he was allowed to witness there the grim farcical tragedies, with which the captives beguiled the few hours ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Governor, Maciel, appears to have behaved very badly, and with no little treachery towards his fellow-countrymen. Nassau, when Maciel surrendered, treated him with contempt, and imprisoned him. The situation had now become grimly farcical. In Europe the Dutch were supplying the Portuguese with arms and stores, and acting in general as their allies; while in Brazil the two nations were openly at war, and the Dutch were sending hostile ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... I am a farcical character myself, after all. Don't touch a hair of that duck's head, HEDVIG. Come to my arms and all shall ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... of the season, but one which had beneficial results, was the strike of the Detroit players, entailing the staging of a farcical game in Philadelphia between the Athletics and a team of semi-professionals. This incident grew out of an attack on a New York spectator by Ty Cobb while in uniform and the immediate suspension of the ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... surroundings have in the smallest degree impaired the exquisite and waxen bloom of our author's sympathetic characters. Far from it. Of the young and oh-so-good-looking millionaire (weary of pleasures and palaces, too weary even to dismiss his preposterous and farcical butler—lacking, in effect, the definite object); of the heroine's young brother, crook in embryo, but reclaimable by influence of hero; and of the peach-like leading lady herself, I can only say that each is worthy of the rest, and all of a creator who must surely (I like to think) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... their newly created status of Sea-Fencibles, they were all elsewhere, following their time-honoured vocations of fishing and smuggling with industry and gladness of heart. As a means of repelling invasion the Popham scheme was farcical and worthless; as a means of evading the press it was the finest thing ever invented. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 581—Admiral Berkeley, Reports on Sea-Fencibles, 1805; Admiral Lord Keith, Sentiments upon the Sea-Fencible System, 7 Jan. 1805.] The only benefits ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... an indecent assault had been committed on his book by a theatrical adapter named Stirling, who seized upon it without leave while yet only a third of it was written; hacked, cut, and garbled its dialogue to the shape of one or two farcical actors; invented for it a plot and an ending of his own, and produced it at the Adelphi; where the outraged author, hard pressed as he was with an unfinished number, had seen it in the interval between the two letters I have quoted. He would not have ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Paphian divinity presides at the shrine of rouge et noir. The blood-stains are effaced from the floor. A fresh red mound in the city cemetery is the only relic of French Charlie. Philip Hardin, released upon heavy bail, awaits a farcical investigation. After a few days he bears no legal burden of this crime. Only the easy load upon his conscience. Although the mark of Cain sets up a barrier between him and his fellows, and the murder calls for the vengeance ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... like Glenbuckie's Stewarts after the mysterious death of their chief in Amprior's house of Leny before Prestonpans (1745). Glenbuckie was mysteriously pistolled in the night. "The style and tone is unlike that of the Iliad ... It is rather akin to comedy of a rough farcical kind." But it was time for "comic relief." If the story of Dolon be comic, it is comic with the practical humour of the sagas. In an isolated nocturnal adventure and massacre we cannot expect the style of an heroic battle under the sunlight. Is the poet not to be ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... schoolmaster nor the farcical clown of our Renaissance of intelligence—could exchange ideas with Pericles, say, or Caesar, without betraying a puritanical fussiness that would grievously bewilder the lucid minds of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the 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, the most inexhaustible, the most ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... her turn now to laugh. The very thought of it was farcical in its very odiousness. Merri, who had embarked on his proposal with grandiloquent phraseology, suddenly paused, almost awed by that strange, ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... of Ofterdingen reaches a depth of obscurity which is saved from absurdity only by the genuinely fervent glow of a soul on the quest for its mystic ideals: "The blue flower it is that I yearn to look upon!" No farcical romance of the nursery shows more truly the mingled stuff that dreams are made on, yet the intimation that the dream is not all a dream, that the spirit of an older day is symbolically struggling for some expression in words, gave it in its day a serious importance at which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke |
