"Melodramatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the beginning anything upon which to base suspicion. Given the premises of an abnormal girl with a passion for himself which humiliated him, an abnormal woman like Miss Farrel with a similar passion, albeit under better control, the melodramatic phases of the candy, and sudden death, and traces of arsenical poison, what should be ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fortified cities yielded to the science of Vauban, or the terrors of his name. The boasted barrier of the Netherlands was passed in a few weeks; hardly any of its far-famed fortresses made any resistance. The passage of the Rhine was achieved under the eyes of the monarch with little loss, and melodramatic effect. One half of Holland was soon overrun, and the presence of the French army at the gates of Amsterdam seemed to presage immediate destruction to the United Provinces; and but for the firmness of their leaders, and a fortunate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... twenty-four years of age. He looked thirty. A serious faced, cadaverous individual, whom, given three guesses you would have judged to be a Scotch free kirk minister in mufti; an actor in the melodramatic line; a food crank. These being the three most serious ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... a universal tragic state of feeling, namely a kind of terror, even at the card-tables, which for the momentcould no longer, as before, chime in melodramatic, by weaving into the music sundry ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown by the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... this melodramatic nonsense is so amusing that I cannot forbear quoting it. This time the despairing lover is Sir Abraham Ninny, who quotes Kyd to his companions, and they with the cry of "Ha God-a-mercy, old Hieromino!" begin the ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... sake. Her first impulse was to write refusing to accept his sacrifice. But on second thought she craftily wrote: "I do not like to think of you writing to please the public, which I have put aside, but come and bring your play. I cannot believe that you have really written down to a melodramatic audience. What I will do I cannot say till I have seen your piece. Where have you kept yourself? Have you been West? Come and tell ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... he protested, "is inclined to be melodramatic. The gas which Bright has in that cylinder is simply one which would produce a little temporary unconsciousness. We might have used it—we may still use it—but if you others are able to persuade Mr. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as of the beauty of holiness. To accomplish this task the language of the Bible itself gives noble help. All the qualities of great literature shine forth from it and it should put to shame and flight the tawdry and the melodramatic. It is an ill service not to make all familiar with the actual words of Holy Writ. Commentaries and Bible histories may be at times convenient tools, but they are only tools, and accurate knowledge of what they teach ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Oppenheim's stories always display much melodramatic power and considerable originality and ingenuity of construction. These and other qualities of the successful writer of romance are manifest in 'A ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... on the bottom step to wait for his return. The clock in the dining-room struck twelve. It came over her with a clap that but half a day had passed since she had run out into the dawn. For an instant she had the naive, melodramatic instinct of youth to deck out its little events in the guise of crises. She began to tell herself with gusto that she had passed some important turning-point in her life; when, as was not infrequent with her, she lost the thread of her thought ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... so many sympathetic sketches of characters that I cannot help wishing the FRASERS (HUGH and MRS.) had either written a longer story depending completely on the interplay of temperament, or else built more carefully on their melodramatic substructure. For though Captain Mayhune, the villain of the piece, is the proprietor of a gaming-hell and terrorises Lady Trague with a piece of blotting-paper on which may be read a portion of her letter to a young man whom she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... sways a nation by its arbitrary will seems less august to us than that which multiplies and reinforces itself in the instincts and convictions of an entire people. Autocracy may have something in it more melodramatic than this, but falls far short of it in human ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription, in black letters: "Guilty of high treason." Then the wretched General shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray pall. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... said Sylla; "then we will consider that settled; you do the Ladies and I do the Chambermaids. Now, gentlemen, you must select your own lines. What will you be, Mr. Sartoris—Walking Gentleman, Low Comedian, or Melodramatic Villain?" ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... of the nil admirari school, whose reluctance to trust themselves to their emotions proceeds in great part from the absence of this instinct, he is proof against the approaches of the charlatan, and has never debased the word "art" by applying it to a mere melodramatic mechanism. But he rightly considers the office of the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the obligation of honestly desiring to understand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... humor of Du Maurier, the quiet incisiveness of his satire, and his inimitable skill at the portrayal of social types are delightfully manifested in this series of one hundred plates, ending up with the melodramatic ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... being stoutly maintained and constantly repeated by two ancient eye-witnesses, whose one melodramatic incident and treasure it was, the rustic mind saw no beauty whatever in those pellucid and delicious waters, where flowers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... said Wentworth. "Don't be so melodramatic! No man is guilty until he is proved so. And—thanks to the kindly offices of your good husband—I did ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of the dramatic, that the scene to which he and Davidge were presently conducted by a trim and somewhat surprised-looking parlour-maid, was one which might have been bodily lifted from the stage of any theatre devoted to work of the melodramatic order. The detective and the reporter found themselves on the threshold of a handsomely furnished dining-room, vividly lighted by lamps which threw a warm pink glow over the old oak furniture and luxurious fittings. On one side of the ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... in contemplation of this person's familiar contour, I was irresistibly moved to step over the intervening benches, lay my hand on his shoulder, put my mouth close to his ear, and address him in a sepulchral, melodramatic whisper: "Hollingsworth! where have you ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... startling apparition! Melodramatic in the extreme! And this singular being—what was ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... and look on its evils as necessaries, ancient and fixed as the universe, he entered the village fair, and was a little disappointed at his first glimpse of the village-green. Certainly his expectations had not been very exalted; but there had run through them a hope of something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village-belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school; or, failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humour here and there. But there did not seem much likelihood of it. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... A melodramatic burst of indignation frightened her nearly out of her senses, and happily brought Jane down. He was going the next day, but he returned once more to the charge, very dolorous and ill-used; but Charlotte had collected herself and taken ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of ink and paper, wrote his name in poster letters. When you look upon the Declaration the first thing you see is the signature of John Hancock, and you recall his remark, "I guess King George can read that without spectacles." The whole action was melodramatic, and although a bold signature has ever been said to betoken a bold heart, it has yet to be demonstrated that boys who whistle going through the woods are indifferent to danger. "Conscious weakness takes strong attitudes," says Delsarte. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... toward civilization includes well-grounded ambitions of art. Mentality, feeling, spirit, all reveal themselves in the canvases. Crudity is apparent, but it comes more from an untutored hand than from failure to grasp the significance of the subject. Many pictures are flamboyant, some are melodramatic, nearly all are big subjects handled with great boldness; what they lack in finish they make up in sincerity. Felix R. Hidalgo's contributions (10-20) won him a ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... interviews took place almost daily for four years, without any one knowing of them. Some hours before dawn La Farina ascended the narrow secret staircase which led directly to Cavour's bedroom, and he was gone when the city awakened. In spite of the almost melodramatic complexion of these secret meetings, it must not be supposed, as some have supposed, that Cavour pulled the wires of all the conspiracies in Italy. His visitor kept him informed of the progress made, the propaganda carried on, but he rarely interfered. He still thought ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... green-room traditions, to forswear their Tate and Brady emendations, in their heart of hearts they love him not; and it is with a light step and a smiling face that our great living tragedian flings aside Hamlet's tunic or Shylock's gaberdine to revel in the melodramatic glories of The Bells and The ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... his genius as a director. To counteract the depression caused by all the recent melodramatic and tragic happenings, he had brought in an eight- piece orchestra, establishing the men in the set itself so as to get full photographic value from their jazz antics. Where Werner and Manton had dispensed with music, in a desperate effort at ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... I should pick at the pudding or invade the cream, do you? Ungrateful girl, leave me!" And, with melodramatic sternness, John extinguished her in his broad-brimmed hat, and offered the glass like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... composure; indeed, I had been in bed an hour when the clock in the dining-room beneath me, which, since the evident occupancy of that long-deserted hall, had been wound and put in running order, struck twelve, with its deep-mouthed, melodramatic tones, and at the very moment I heard sounds indicative of the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to Paris by various strong inducements, Darnay is condemned to death as a ci-devant noble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion of the world's history such a thorough piece of melodrama ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Dixon's account of his interview with Douglas is too melodramatic to be taken literally, but no doubt ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... but was brought back by the winds, and his servants could not persuade him to make another attempt. Plutarch tells us that he was minded to go to Rome, to force his way into young Caesar's house and there to stab himself, but that he was deterred from this melodramatic death by the fear of torture. The story only shows how great had been the attention given to every detail of his last moments, and what the people in Rome had learned to say of them. The same remark applies to Plutarch's tale as to the presuming crows ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... in this fashion: and the lady insisted on singing in her own way, with heavy pathos and melodramatic effects—until one day when Christophe declared coldly that he saw the truth: it was her nature and nothing could change it: but since the Lieder could not be sung properly, they should not be sung at all: he withdrew them from ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... number of Fraser's Magazine, and possibly also, he intimates, a brief notice to the Westminster Review. Upon the whole he seems favourably inclined to the work, though he hints disapprobation of the melodramatic portions. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... conscience did Barry go to the cinema show that night, which in this camp was run under the chaplain service and by a chaplain. He knew what the thing would be like. His whole soul shrunk from the silly, melodramatic films which he knew would constitute the programme as from a nauseating dose of medicine. The billboard announced a double header, a trite and, especially to Canadians, a ridiculous representation of the experiences of John Bull and his wife and pretty daughter as immigrants to the ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... still said nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but it certainly had become more natural—more human, as it were—and the melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto appeared ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... persons who had been unsuccessful in getting his play represented. Remonstrance merely irritated Tobias. His new novel was but a fainter echo of his old novels, a panorama of scoundrelism, with the melodramatic fortunes of the virtuous Monimia for a foil. If read to-day, it is read as a sketch of manners, or want of manners. The scene in which the bumpkin squire rooks the accomplished Fathom at hazard, in Paris, is prettily conceived, and Smollett's indignation at the British system of pews ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... not to write. I knew she would hear through father, for she corresponds with him. He is very punctilious about answering letters; and suspecting nothing he would tell the news. When I found her with Marie yesterday—but I see now I was a fool. These melodramatic things don't happen. And after ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he turned and went out of the chamber. Yet, as the door closed, old habit was so strong on him that, even in his hot and bitter pain, and his bewildered sense of sudden outrage, he almost smiled at himself. "It is a mania; he does not know what he says," he thought. "How could I be so melodramatic? We were like two men at the Porte St. Martin. Inflated language is ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... more shouldered my pack and went my way, the character of the country side began to change, and, from a semi-pastoral heathiness and furziness, took on a wildness of aspect, which if indeed melodramatic was melodrama carried to the point ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... pleasant evening, pointing out such people as he knew (who were anybody) to Mrs. Warrender between the acts, and enjoying the sight of Chatty's absorption in the play, which made it twice as interesting to himself. The play was one in which there was a great deal of pretty love-making along with melodramatic situations of an exciting kind. The actors, except one, were not of sufficient reputation to interest any reader save those with a special inclination to the study of the stage. But though the performance ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... that his decision gave me a sense of triumph; without speculating as to the truth, it was enough for me to know that Julianna had not, as I had at first suspected, been a party to this vulgar and melodramatic flourish. I berated myself for having entertained any doubt and now felt anew, and with aggravation, my affection for her. This outcome of my adventure with the Sheik, in fact, restored my spirit, made me forget my pride, and, as you will see, was enough ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... people, all in wreaths of flowers, and a number of guests were there to witness the festivities. Well, we fed our sailors, who were all very red and hot and smiling, and the way they dipped into the lemonade was a caution. Then, to a guitar accompaniment, one of them sang a song with a melodramatic story running through it about a poor fellow going to a house and sitting on the door-step wan and weary, and seeing on the doorplate the name of Jasper. Soon Jasper comes out, and though the poverty-stricken ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the door, and then turning peremptorily desired Meryon not to follow them. Philip hesitated, and yielded. He stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, watching them, a splendid figure, with his melodramatic good looks and ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... however, acknowledge that they expect it twice in three deals, and there are generally from twenty-nine to thirty-two coups in each deal. The odds in favour of winning several times are about the same as in the game of Pharaon, and are as delusive. 'He who goes to Hombourg and expects to see any melodramatic manifestation of rage, disappointment, and despair in the losing players, reckons without his host. Winners or losers seldom speak above a whisper; and the only sound that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the muffled ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... messengers for those States,' but it should be remembered that such accusation requires clear proof. With this single exception, we commend the pamphlet in question as a document well worth perusal and investigation. The subject, as it stands, appears trashy and melodramatic; but be it remembered the Southern mind is prone to trash and romance, and quacks and adventurers would be more likely to be found actively working to aid treason founded on folly than would men of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... appeared there; but for all that Varvara Pavlovna none the less assiduously attended the theatres. She went into raptures about Italian music, and laughed over the ruins of Odry, yawned in a becoming manner at the legitimate drama, and cried at the sight of Madame Dorval's acting in some ultra-melodramatic piece. Above all, Liszt played at her house twice, and was so gracious, so ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... that the form of the play, as given at the Broadway Theatre, New York, September 26, 1855,[B] was the only one used by him. Winter claims that as Lanciotto, Davenport was "unimaginative, mechanical, and melodramatic," and that the whole piece "proved tedious." This is strange, considering the heroic and romantic characteristics in Davenport's method of acting. It may be that he attempted Boker's play because of his interest in the development of American drama. He had assisted Mrs. Mowatt in her career ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... of the necessity of replying by a diversion without the door. Two male voices were heard declaiming in a sort of mock-melodramatic duet, "Are you at home, are you at home? May ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy, that the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a morning like this, and would never draw there any more. "I've seen him look down into it, when he was tired with his drawing, just as I do now, and when he rested a bit before carrying the buckets home! But ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... sight is this to blast mine eyes?" ejaculated Charlie, as he pointed to the glove with a melodramatic start, for, like most accomplished amateur actors, he was fond of introducing private theatricals into his daily ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... immediately," M. Roussillon ordered, as soon as they were restored to consciousness; and he shook himself, as a big wet animal sometimes does, covering everybody near him with muddy water. Then he led the way with melodramatic strides. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... laboring under the conscientious delusion that food for the entire army depended upon his private exertions. I respected this style of mule; and, had I possessed a juicy cabbage, would have pressed it upon him, with thanks for his excellent example. The histrionic mule was a melodramatic quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps, and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat, and apparently dying a la Forrest; a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so on, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... name of liberty, of patriotism, and of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch." He closed with the three words, "Victory or death," not written in any vainglory or with any melodramatic appeal, but with the full consciousness of the desperate crisis, and a quiet resolution ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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
... I do. There, sit down, both of you, and, Malcolm Stratton, don't put on that wicked, melodramatic frown; it does not become you. You're a pair of impostors. Think I'm blind? You don't come here to call upon a poor old woman like—Quick, Percy, my dear boy! Blow it out; we shall have the room in ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... out of the sea of colours so beautiful and happy a vision that the priest felt his suspicion shaken and shifted. "After all," he thought, "perhaps the poison isn't hers; perhaps it's one of Muscari's melodramatic tricks." ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... "I'll do it for you, Darling." And listening to that dominant voice in the next room, she slowly grew crimson before a vision of herself in the middle of a country road, appealing to a stranger for succor, like the heroine of melodramatic fiction. Decidedly, she would never see Lestrange, never let him discover ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... imperceptible degrees there grew in Scrope's mind the persuasion that he was in the presence of the living God. This time there was no vision of angels nor stars, no snapping of bow-strings, no throbbing of the heart nor change of scene, no magic and melodramatic drawing back of the curtain from the mysteries; the water and the bridge, the ragged black trees, and a distant boat that broke the silvery calm with an arrow of black ripples, all these things were still before him. But God was there too. God was everywhere about him. This persuasion ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... lacked the necessary conviction. After all I was the average citizen, with the average incredulity of the far-fetched, the melodramatic, the absurd. To connect the head waiter's panic at my departure with the episode in my room, to declare that the floor clerks had been called from their posts for a set purpose, and the halls deliberately cleared for the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... attained only with the aid of the ethical imagination.[18] Because without the ethical restraint, the creative spirit roams among unbridled emotions; art becomes impressionism. What it then produces may indeed be picturesque, melodramatic, sensual, but it will not be beautiful because there will be no imaginative wholeness in it. In other words, the artist who divorces aesthetics from ethics does gain creative license, but he gains it at the expense of a balanced and harmonious ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the nature of the case, everything was new. What the music sought to do almost immediately, beginning with Monteverde himself in his opera "Tancred," was to represent the feeling of the dramatic moment. Almost at the very first they began to use music in the melodramatic way for accompanying the critical moments of the action, when the performers were not singing, and the forms of the singing utterance differentiated themselves into recitatives for the explanatory parts and arias for the more ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... anomalous life of those times, when good faith had as little to do with the intercourse of nations as at present; but good fortune, when she appeared in the world, liked to put on a romantic and melodramatic guise. An ambassador from the Grand Turk on his way to Rome was taken by an enemy of the Pope, despoiled of all his money, and left planted, as the Italians expressively say, at Ancona. This ambassador was come to concert with Alexander ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... ex machina who was to come down upon the Barchester stage and bring about deliverance from these terrible evils. But how can melodramatic denouements be properly brought about, how can vice and Mr. Slope be punished, and virtue and the archdeacon be rewarded, while the avenging god is laid up with the gout? In the mean time evil may be triumphant, and poor innocence, transfixed to the earth by an arrow from Dr. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... himself, and with a visible limp in his gait hastened across the stage; as he went, he turned towards the audience, brandished the bloody dagger with which he had just struck Rathbone, and cried "Sic semper tyrannis!" Some one recognized John Wilkes Booth, an actor of melodramatic characters. The door at the back of the theatre was held open for him by Edward Spangler, an employee, and in the alley hard by a boy, also employed about the theatre, was holding the assassin's horse, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... yourself yesterday?—or to ask for a respite till to-morrow, to give you time to pass decently through a process of purification? May I ask where you are going to find it and what it is going to consist of? Oh, don't look so melodramatic! If you can put up with what you got from Riis's girl yesterday and her mother to-day, surely you can put up with a little angry talk or a little chaff from your father. I have had to put up with the whole affair—the betrothal and the breaking it off as well! ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... a bit haughty in virginal safety and pride; No rival too near her high throne, Prince FORTUNIO aye at her side; But now a poor PERDITA, prone at the feet of her foes she lies bound, And that melodramatic thud-thud draweth near—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... LECLERCQ, also rendered with considerable power. Little Miss NORREY'S shrill squeak, or scream, or whatever it is, at the end of the First Act, imperils the situation, and might be toned down with advantage, as also might her spasmodic melodramatic acting later in the piece. Mrs. TREE'S is a pretty part, but not a strong one. To sum up, apart from the two situations I have cited, I should say, that what will linger in the memory of man when it runneth not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... character peculiar to Edith, Claire, and the Brand. She wheedled and whined one moment in the husky tones of Sister Magdalen's late favorite; when dignity was required she became the escaped nun; and in her rage she would burst into the melodramatic frenzy dear to the McMeeter audiences; but Colette, the heedless, irresponsible, half-mad butterfly, dominated these various parts, and to this charming personality she returned. Through his own sad experience this spectacle ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... and robbing concession of its grace, of all its power to conciliate. From the battle of the Boyne to Catholic emancipation, the king of Ireland had never set foot on Irish soil, except in the case of George IV., whose visit was little better than a melodramatic exhibition, repaid by copious libations of flattery, which however failed to melt his bigotry, or to persuade him to redeem his solemn promises and pledges, until, nine years later, he was compelled to yield by the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... spray. The irritability of the one active cell subsided, that of the others was aroused. Somnambulism ceased. The entire brain awoke. But the truth had not yet fully permeated all the cerebral convolutions and the fact that it had not, manifested itself in the melodramatic phrase which, a week previous, Lennox had uttered, which all have uttered, all at least before whom the ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... said it it sounds to me melodramatic and absurd. I am melodramatic and absurd, with my running feet, and my small figure and earnest, upturned face, standing under a Convent wall at midnight, and talking about la vie et la mort. It is too improbable. I am too ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... it was to find her there and so very much at home! I could have killed her! But I did nothing melodramatic, believe me. I was too stunned. Instead, I boiled with the desire for a reprisal. Since I could not fight her like a savage, being, of course, a highly civilised person, I fought her with the only weapons at my command. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... "Melodramatic! If it is melodrama for a man to show a little genuine feeling, I'm guilty. But I was never more in earnest in my life. I want a chance to win you. I value you above any woman I have ever ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... over yet," Marion said, pressing the hand she held. "There is one thing that perplexes me. The time has come for explanations, I suppose, and the situation seems a little melodramatic and silly." ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... with melodramatic suddenness. Casting off the steamer's tow-ropes, the Belles Soeurs swung alongside the wharf much more easily and quickly than did the friendly vessel by whose aid she ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... making a melodramatic search for concealed listeners at the doors: 'Now, friends, I have a revelation to make in Mrs. Roberts's absence. I have found ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... George did not know she was the widow of the murdered Lemuel Krill, whose name had been so widely advertised. But Hay spoke before anyone could make a remark. "What an unpleasant subject," he said, with a pretended shudder, "let us talk of less melodramatic things." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... he sees it without being in any doubt about it, he must not put it. There is no such sure way of corrupting one's colour sense as the habitual practice of putting down colour which one does not see; this and the neglecting to look for it are equal faults. The first error leads to melodramatic vulgarity, the other to torpid dullness, and it is hard ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... judicial cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to govern—some always, and others occasionally only—the condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... still small voice, which treats with him as a dependent entitled to know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan which the great leader was conducting, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... melodramatic adventure the previous day did not seem to distress Mr. Crips; he ate heartily, but had only reached his second course, which was represented by the chicken, when his attention was attracted by a very lean, very ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... are, this was especially melodramatic, as the royal lover seems to have set forth to meet the lady of his choice with a sword in one hand and a wedding ring ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... summit, looking every inch and more of its 12,080 ft.; and this is said by the Canary fishermen to be a certain sign of rain, or fine weather, or a gale of wind; but whenever and however it may be seen, soft and dream-like in the sunshine, or melodramatic and bizarre in the moonlight, it is one of the most beautiful things the eye of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... false romanticism of painting comes from this sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it, to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. The ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... were reflected without interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat was the only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps, are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and there on the waves below, reminding ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... "Homicide is decidedly better. It's more melodramatic, and I don't like that, but it will be more appreciable, as a real sin, to most of the audience; we steal and cheat so much, and we kill comparatively so little in the North. Well, I was going to say that I ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... had always disgusted John. A book wherein the hero overcame the villain by desperate means and won the girl by a single stroke of manly dauntlessness was to him like so much trash. Melodramatic plays he despised. Griffith's pictures were the only ones in which he could ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... quite ready to help me, and told me there were two companies in the town, one of large puppets, about as high as my umbrella, the others, to which he went every evening, being rather smaller. Accordingly, at about a quarter to eight, he called for me, wrapped in his melodramatic cloak, and hurried me through the wet and windy streets to the teatrino. He kept me on his right hand because he was the host and I the guest, and if, owing to obstructions, he found me accidentally on his left he was round in a moment and I was in the ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... the Age of Gold, has changed nothing. That prurient heat in Twenty-five millions of hearts is not cooled thereby; but is still hot, nay hotter. Lift off the pressure of command from so many millions; all pressure or binding rule, except such melodramatic Federation Oath as they have bound themselves with! For 'Thou shalt' was from of old the condition of man's being, and his weal and blessedness was in obeying that. Wo for him when, were it on hest of the clearest necessity, rebellion, disloyal ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Nursey's sketches as in the Rubenses and Claudes here: and if that is evident, and serves to cherish and rekindle one's own sympathy with the world about one, the great end is accomplished. I do not know very much of Salvator: is he not rather a melodramatic painter? No doubt, very fine in his way. But Claude and the two Poussins are the great ideal painters of Landscape. Nature looks more stedfast in them than in other painters: all is wrought up into a quietude ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... she went home, a little amused by her melodramatic conduct, but much comforted by the fact that Charles, though ignorant of his part, was with her in this conspiracy. She was met by ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... not yet realised decay, not to speak of death. The immortality of the soul is a question wide of you, who have as yet practically no doubt of the immortality of the body. But I—well, it would be melodramatic to say that I face death every day. The metaphor applies but to desperate callings and romantic complaints. To some Death comes like a footpad, suddenly, and presents his pistol—and the smoke that curls upward from his empty barrel ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... are apt to be rather melodramatic. Wonderful passions work wonderfully. Eyes flash, lips are set, cheeks grow pale, quite often. Great coolness, vast powers, are continually displayed; yet they are well displayed, after the fashion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... example of Mary Shelley's methods of revision. A study of the manuscript shows that she was a careful workman, and that in polishing this bizarre story she strove consistently for greater credibility and realism, more dramatic (if sometimes melodramatic) presentation of events, better motivation, conciseness, and exclusion of purple passages. In the revision and rewriting, many additions were made, so that Mathilda is appreciably longer than The Fields of Fancy. But the additions ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... sub-strata amusement, "I want to impersonate you, when you leave, so that this man tries to send me after the other three. Don't interrupt, let me finish—You will say that it is impossible to deceive any one at close range. Surely, it does sound melodramatic, like a lurid tale of a paper back novel. But I have studied the photographs of your friends. You and I bear the closest resemblance of any in the group. Your weight is about the same as mine—your shoulders are a trifle stooped and you walk with a curious drag of your left foot. Your hair is ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the warm, greasy, indigestible fare of the elaborate table-d'hotes at Lucerne and Interlaken serve us now. But we, in our "superior" condition, pooh-pooh the Byronic spirit of indifference to events and scorn of trifles,—we say it is "melodramatic," completely forgetting that our attitude towards ourselves and things in general is one of most pitiable bathos. We cannot write Childe Harold, but we can grumble at both bed and board in every hotel under the sun; we can discover teasing midges in the air and questionable insects ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... a band of more than a hundred lay sunning themselves upon the beach. The ambuscade now prepared to attack the enemy. Creeping stealthily down as near as possible without being discovered, they simultaneously rushed upon the astonished animals; and the tragic scene of slaughter, mingled with melodramatic and comic incidents, that ensued, baffles all description. In one place might be seen my friend Jordan swinging a huge club round with his powerful arms, and dealing death and destruction at every ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the burglar's inquisition in the character of "Mr. Snaith," which had all been calculated to discover the location of the jewels. And, when he did recall this fact, and how easily he had been duped, Maitland could have ground his teeth in melodramatic rage—but for the circumstance that when first it occurred to him, such a feat was a physical impossibility, and even when ungagged the operation would have been painful ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... of modern experience with psychology, with economics, depressions, journalism, we focus on this and similar stories, and we find them thoroughly unreliable. We cannot believe this one. It is too melodramatic, too moralistic perhaps to suit our modern taste. The underlying causes for the conduct, life and end of Apicius have not been told. Of course, we have to accept the facts as reported. If only a Petronius had written that story! What a ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... book, the catalogue gives Kerr's position in London at the time as Prompter of the Regency Theatre. He must have ventured, with a relative, into independent publishing, for there was issued, in 1826, by J. & H. Kerr, the former's freely translated melodramatic romance, "The Monster and Magician; or, The Fate of Frankenstein," taken from the French of J. T. Merle and A. N. Bi?1/2raud. He did constant translation, and it is interesting to note the similarity between his "The Wandering Boys! or, The Castle of Olival," ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... making an ass of yourself. If you had taken more time to think it over you wouldn't have followed me up with any such melodramatic intention as murder. Good God! Haven't you seen enough of murder in the past four years? I could readily fancy you going in for some sort of revenge but I should have expected something ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... was afraid to test you. If you, too, had failed me, it would have crushed me. Perhaps all this sounds absurd and melodramatic, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart |
