"Playhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... embarrassment of the man's talk incessant. He was plainly a practised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, the elegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, told us that. We, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we could see the actors were upon some material business and performing well, but the plot of the drama remained undiscoverable. Names of places, the name of Captain Hart, occasional disconnected words, tantalised without enlightening us; and the less we understood, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... widow of William Long, and her initials, together with those of her husband, appear on a token issued from the Rose tavern in Bridge Street, Covent Garden. Mary Long's token from the "Rose coffee house by the playhouse" in Covent Garden is shown among the group of coffee-house keepers' ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... out Satan? Whom think ye to deceive by whitening the sepulchre? Is it yourselves? The devil has blinded you already. Is it God? Who shall hide anything from Him? I tell you that he who makes the pursuit of virtue a luxury, and takes refuge from sin, not before the altar, but in the playhouse, is casting out devils by Beelzebub, the prince ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... you had a party," said Ann. "I remember that, for I came. And the playhouse was built for ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... language for which he would have been kicked out of any respectable private house—and yet there are respectable people here, old and young, all listening and seeming to enjoy it. That shows there is insincerity somewhere; either these people hush their sensitive feelings in the playhouse, or they are hypocrites at home, and profess to be much more refined than ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... the gallery, and together should aloud the applause, greeting that which caricatures religion, sneers at virtue, or hints at indecency." Not only the actors and the onlookers of the average theater are vile, but all of the immediate associations of the playhouse must correspond with it. If not in the same building with the theater, in adjoining ones, at least, are found the wine-parlor and the brothel. It is generally conceded that no theater can be prosperous if it is wholly separated from these ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... ladies' ruelles without the quota of shoulder-knots. "That fellow," cries one, "has no soul: where is his shoulder-knot?" {75} Our three brethren soon discovered their want by sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty mortifications and indignities. If they went to the playhouse, the doorkeeper showed them into the twelve-penny gallery. If they called a boat, says a waterman, "I am first sculler." If they stepped into the "Rose" to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, "Friend, we sell no ale." If they went to visit a lady, a footman met them at the door ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... was a brilliantly illumined palace on F Street, once a choice little playhouse, now given over to screen productions. The house was packed, and Jean and her father, following the flashlight of the usher, found harbor finally in a box to the left of the stage. Derry settled himself behind them. He was an eavesdropper ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... last night, on purpose to show me you knew I had just got a divorce from my wife! And if I have divorced her, let me tell you she's a finer woman than you ever knew in your whole fool life! It was d——d funny, wasn't it, to send a lonely man—a stranger—into a playhouse to see his own misery acted out before him! Well, in New York that may be fun, and call for laughter, but at my home it would call for ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... show letters, lockets, pictures, and rings; and if there be occasion for witnesses, I can summon the maids at the chocolate-houses, all the porters at Pall Mall and Covent Garden, the door-keepers at the Playhouse, the drawers at Locket's, Pontack's, the Rummer, Spring Garden, my own landlady and valet de chambre; all who shall make oath that I receive more letters than the Secretary's office, and that I have more vizor-masks to enquire for me, than ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... says. Look, girls! Look, Walter!" and Nan excitedly pointed out the sheet hung above the arched entrance of the playhouse. "'A Rural Beauty'!" she cried. "That's the very picture those two girls took part ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... &c., the people of no fashion, besides one royal place, called his Majesty's Bear-garden, have been in constant possession of all hops, fairs, revels, &c. Two places have been agreed to be divided between them, namely, the church and the playhouse, where they segregate themselves from each other in a remarkable manner; for, as the people of fashion exalt themselves at church over the heads of the people of no fashion, so in the playhouse they abase themselves in the same degree under their feet. This distinction I have never met with any ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... world, the Athenians passed the greatest part of their time in the open air; and their theatres, like those in the rest of Greece and in ancient Rome, had no other covering than the sky. Their structure accordingly differed greatly from that of a modern playhouse, and the representation in many respects was executed in a different manner. But we will mention those peculiarities only which are necessary ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse;[161] independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... largest playhouse of New York and of the New World! Imagine it filled with people from foot-lights to the last row in the topmost gallery—orchestra, dress circle, and balconies—a huge uprising, semicircular bowl, lined with human beings. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... applicants in this, as well as in the asylums of Whitecross Street and Wapping, was strongly on the increase, and a crowd of the homeless had to be sent away every night for want of room. In another refuge, the Central Asylum in Playhouse Yard, there were supplied on an average 460 beds nightly, during the first three months of the year 1844, 6,681 persons being sheltered, and 96,141 portions of bread were distributed. Yet the committee of directors declare this institution began to meet the pressure of the needy to a limited ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... friend! Instruct another man the way To win thy mistress! Thou'lt not break my heart? Take my advice, thou shalt not be in love A month! Frequent the playhouse!—walk the Park! I'll think of fifty ladies that I know, Yet can't remember now—enchanting ones! And then there's Lancashire!—and I have friends In Berkshire and in Wiltshire, that have swarms Of daughters! Then my shooting-lodge ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... my dear, we will just keep our Christmas where we are! We won't deprive Ishmael of his grand Christmas dinner with his grand friends; but we will ax him to come over and go to the playhouse with us and see the play, and then we'll all come back and have a nice supper all on us together. We'll have a roast turkey and mince pie and egg-nog and apple toddy, my dear, and make a night of it, once in a way! ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... them away just as this ocean would wash away the child's playhouse built upon the sands. They had believed they could make their lives, that it was for their spirit to elect what they should do, their hands build as they had willed; and all that the spirit had willed ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... chemical laboratory will excite more wonder or be carried on with more interest, than those which the boy performs with his pipe and basin of soapy water. The little girl's mud pies and other sham confectionery furnish her first lessons in the art of preparing food. Her toy dinners and playhouse teas offer her the first experiences in the entertainment of guests. With her dolls, the domestic ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... of nineteen, when happening to pass by the playhouse one evening, he took it into his head to go in, and see the last act of a very celebrated tragedy acted that night.—But it was not the poet's or the player's art which so much engaged his attention, as the numerous and gay assembly ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... application, I cannot tell. In my opinion he seems such a one as will keep an entertainment to its primitive institution, and not suffer it to be changed, sometimes into a mooting hall, sometimes a school of rhetoric, now and then a dicing room, a playhouse, or a stage. For do not you observe some making fine orations and putting cases at a supper, others declaiming or reading some of their own compositions, and others proposing prizes to dancers and mimics? Alcibiades and Theodorus turned Polition's banquet into a temple of initiation, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... strengthen the illusion for the children whom you choose to amuse with this sight. For that purpose, he has only to change the arrangement of the sheet, by requiring it to be suspended from the ceiling, between him and the spectators, much in the same manner as the curtain of a playhouse, which separates the stage from the public. The transparency of the cloth shews through it the coloured rays, and, provided it be not of too thick and too close a texture, the image presents itself as clear on the one side as ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... was once more sitting with affectionate reverence at his feet. When he left her in a great low house that fronted on the majestic Hudson, June clung to him with tears and of her own accord kissed him for the first time since she had torn her little playhouse to pieces at the foot of the beech down in the mountains far away. And Hale went back with peace in his heart, but to trouble in ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... like Joseph Hart, was led to Christ after a reckless boyhood and youth, by the work of the Divine Spirit in his soul, independent of any direct outward influence. Sickened of his cards, novels, and playhouse pleasures, he had begun a sort of mechanical reform, when one day, walking in the streets of London, he suddenly seemed to hear the text spoken "I am thy salvation!" His consecration ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... next day, and his request was granted. Franklin came into the kitchen just when all the servants had gathered round the butler, who, with great importance, was reading aloud the play- bill. Everybody present soon began to speak at once, and with great enthusiasm talked of the playhouse, the actors, and actresses; and then Felix, in the first pause, turned to Franklin, and said, "Lord, you know nothing of all this! YOU never went to a ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... girls who make up the classes are not so far removed from their "playhouse" days that a survey of the dishes, stoves, and tables will not give them an eager desire to begin using them. This desire should be gratified, but as the use always necessitates the cleaning as well, it may be advisable at first to make use of the equipment only for the purpose ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... they grew more talkative. Mrs. Ireland would be near sixty years old, I would take it, dressed in a brown sac, such as had been fashionable ten years back, and her daughter, I should think about thirty years old. They told me that they had been to supper, and to the play in the Duke's Playhouse, where Mr. Shirley's tragi-comedy The Young Admiral had been done; and that Mr. Ireland was to come for them here, as presently he did, for it was scarce safe for ladies to be abroad at such an hour in ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... tragedy, or laughed over wine and oysters in the midst of a garden with its flowers and fountains afterwards. 'T was a long day since the poor little woman had known such merrymaking; and as for me, this playhouse, this mimicry of life, was a new sphere. We went again and again,—sometimes the painting-mistress, too; then she and the governess fell behind, and Angus and I walked at our will. Other times we wandered through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... could love, and who could give her something else besides approval of her beauty and her mind, had not disclosed himself. She had begun to think that he never would, that he did not exist, that he was an imagination of the playhouse and the novel. The men whom she knew were careful to show her that they appreciated how distinguished was her position, and how inaccessible she was to them. They seemed to think that by so humbling themselves, and by emphasizing her position they pleased her best, when ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... you and every playhouse bill Style the divine, the matchless, what you will, For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, And grew ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... presented his own production of a farce, "She's In Again," at Gaiety Theatre, New York City; also put on his own $150,000 production of "Town Topics," with Will Rogers, at the Century Theatre, New York, for which playhouse he created a Continental Music ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Some in the playhouse like to row, Some with the Watch to battle, Exchanging many a midnight blow To Music of the Rattle. Some folks like rowing on the Thames, Some rowing in an Alley, But all the Row my fancy claims ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... and sometimes taken occasion to observe, it would be well for us all to profit by experience—"burned bairns should dread the fire," as the proverb goes. After the miserable catastrophe of the playhouse, for instance—which I shall afterwards have occasion to commemorate in due time, and in a subsequent chapter of my eventful life—I would have been worse than mad, had I persisted, night after night, to pay my shilling for a veesy of vagrants in buckram, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... hardly more than glance at it from time to time. His eyes roved far and wide over the lovely prospect that lay outside, broad stretches of sunny, rolling meadows, dotted with clumps of trees, and framed in the arched opening of the summer-house. This summer-house had been a favorite playhouse of his father and uncles in their boyhood. He knew a dozen stories about it; and now his eyes turned to the lattice walls, carved everywhere with the familiar initials, and the devices of the four brothers Montfort: John's egg and Jim's oyster, Roger's book and Dick's ship. What glorious ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... Playhouse, where Radisson, the American fur-trader, was in the royal box. Never was such a combination of French, English, and Indian savage as Sir John Kirke's son-in-law....He was not wont to dress so when he was last here, but he has got him a new coat with much lace upon it, which ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... sorry to say,"—and here the emphasis was very strong on the word sorry,—"so cold as Longroyston." And the tone in which Longroyston was uttered would almost have drawn tears from a critical audience in the pit of a playhouse. The Duchess was a woman of about forty, very handsome, but with no meaning in her beauty, carrying a good fixed colour in her face, which did not look like paint, but which probably had received some little ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... all variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the play good or bad-except on Moli'ere's nights, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Lane "to shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism of the Pots of Porter that are made to do duty ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... was finished in West Street that spring, the old one having proven too small for our gay capital. 'Twas then the best in the New World, the censor having pronounced it far above any provincial playhouse he had seen abroad. The scenes were very fine, the boxes carved and gilded in excellent good taste, and both pit and gallery commodious. And we, too, had our "Fops' Alley," where our macaronies ogled the fair and passed from box ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... they made a beautiful playhouse, with all the leaves brushed away and the rooms marked out with little sticks, they had to leave it next day. This was very discouraging, of course. Even the fathers and mothers grew discouraged sometimes, when they rode through the beautiful ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... and attendant courtiers; so, too, were the Prince Primate and the minor rulers of Germany. The drawing-rooms, streets, and theaters of Erfurt were filled with the splendors of their gorgeous apparel and that of their bedizened attendants. On October fourth the "Oedipe" of Voltaire was given at the playhouse before the assembled courts. At the words, "A great man's friendship is a boon from the gods," Alexander rose, and, grasping Napoleon's hand, stood for a moment in an attitude that typified a renewed alliance. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... elect nor for the mob. Both classes demand a plausible excuse for stage happenings. The picture of an insane husband strangling his wife and child might be accepted as the logical sequence of some startling train of events. But to enter a playhouse and watch a couple of murders for no other reason than that the murderer was a madman, is not enlivening. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... and drank her water with a downcast air. She was not thinking about the scolding and her punishment. She was troubled because Miss Farlow had forbidden her to go off the 'Home' grounds again. Must she give up her dear secret playhouse? She and Honey-Sweet had had such a good time! And they were planning to spend all their Saturday afternoons there. Finally she asked Emma what would be done if she disobeyed Miss Farlow and went ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... here a playhouse was likewise erected, and some of the more clever among the officers and men amused the troops in that way. The scenery was rather rude, to be sure; but with these and various other games and freaks the three months that we lay there passed off very pleasantly The poor blacks, however, ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... ruffians to assist him in carrying her off. His chief accomplice in this scheme was lord Mohun, to whom he communicated his intention, and who concurred with him in it. They appointed an evening for that purpose, hired a number of soldiers, and a coach, and went to the playhouse in order to find Mrs. Bracegirdle, but she having no part in the play of that night, did not come to the house. They then got intelligence that she was gone with her mother to sup at one Mrs. Page's in Drury-Lane; thither they went, and fixed their post, in expectation of Mrs. Bracegirdle's ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... till the novelty began to wear off a little, then adopted Mrs. Halford's suggestion about going back to their gooseberry playhouse. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... "Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... winter, presented in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted (that which is the only grace and setting-out of a tragedy) a full and understanding auditory; and that since that time I have noted, most of the people that come to that playhouse resemble those ignorant asses (who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books), I present it to the general ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... brief memoir of Mrs. Verbruggen and her first husband, handsome Will Mountford, will be found in "Echoes of the Playhouse."] ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... suggestion became so insistent that I went further and began to wonder whether I was not in fact reading a "story-form" of some already triumphant film. Certainly the resemblance is almost too pronounced to be fortuitous; from the sensational branding scene, through cowboy stunts, to the up-town playhouse, where a repentant and wife-seeking hero recognises his mark upon the shoulder of the leading lady—and so to reconciliation, slow fade-out, and the announcement of Next Week's Pictures. But though it is impossible not to suspect ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... if by my suit you'll not be won, You know what your unkindness oft has done,— I'll e'en forsake the playhouse, and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... until the next year, including a family, but often "blued' in a 'spree' chyack: (chy-ike) like chaffing; to tease, mildly abuse cocky: a farmer, esp. dairy farmers ('cow-cockies') cubby-house: or cubby. Children's playhouse ("Wendy house" ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... a rich western friend the chums established a photo playhouse in the great metropolis, ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... a tiny girl, playing by herself in a wide, grassy yard. The older children had gone to school, but she, too young for that, was busying herself with putting in order a playhouse in an arbor—arranging it as nearly as possible as it had been the day before, when she and two or three little mates had enjoyed such a merry time there. To and fro trudged the tireless feet, patiently the small hands ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... and Aunt Betsy generously offered "to pay the fiddler," as she termed it, "provided 'Tilda would never let it get to Silverton that Betsy Barlow was seen inside a playhouse!" To Mrs. Tubbs it seemed impossible that Aunt Betsy could be in earnest, but when she was, she put no impediments in her way; and so, conspicuous among the crowd of transient visitors who that night entered the Academy of Music was Aunt ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... beneath and between old forest trees, the college, an admirable church—Bruton Church—the capitol, the Governor's house or "palace," and many very tolerable dwelling-houses of frame and brick. There were also taverns, a marketplace, a bowling-green, an arsenal, and presently a playhouse. The capitol at Williamsburg was a commodious one, able to house most of the machinery of state. Here were the Council Chamber, "where the Governor and Council sit in very great state, in imitation of the King and Council, or the Lord Chancellor and House of Lords," and the great room of the ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... Mr. de Muralt's time, and was not the poet of the polite part of the nation. His dramatic pieces, which pleased some time in acting, were despised by all persons of taste, and might be compared to many plays which I have seen in France, that drew crowds to the playhouse, at the same time that they were intolerable to read; and of which it might be said, that the whole city of Paris exploded them, and yet all flocked to see them represented on the stage. Methinks Mr. de Muralt should have mentioned an excellent ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... I believe my father is at the playhouse: if you please, we will read it now; but I must call on a young lady first—Hey, who's there? Is my footman there? Order my chair to the door. Your servant, gentlemen.—Caro vien. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the self-exploiting professional office hunters. Parties are parties. Professional politics and politicians are probably neither worse nor better—barring their pretensions—than other lines of human endeavor. The play actor must be agreeable on the stage of the playhouse; the politician on the highways and the hustings, which constitute his playhouse—all the world a stage—neither to be seriously blamed for the dissimulation which, being an asset, becomes, as it were, a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... with anger, and he turned back toward the theater. But he had been among the last to leave, and already the lights of the playhouse were being turned out. The boy in charge of the check room ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... happy day as it was, but it was over at last, and after they had eaten their supper, where Kirsty served it to them in their playhouse, Scotty went to the house to bid the old woman ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... of Double Door you will remain transfixed until you know what's behind it." Bernard Sobel, Daily Mirror. "Double Door is a thriller of a new kind, beautifully written, superbly played, clean as a whistle, and arousing in its spectators a tenseness of interest I have rarely seen equaled in a playhouse." E. Jordan, America. Leading part acted by Mary Morris in America and by Sybil Thorndike in London. A play that will challenge the best acting talent of Little ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... rudeness of our northern genius is so apt to fall. And, therefore, it is observable in those sprightly gentlemen about the town, who are so very dexterous at entertaining a vizard mask in the park or the playhouse, that, in the company of ladies of virtue and honour, they are silent and disconcerted, and out ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... her baldness with a large white fruz, that she may look sparkishly in the forefront of the King's box at an old play.' In Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living[1] we have one from Julian, 'late Secretary to the Muses,' to Will. Pierre of Lincoln's Inn Fields Playhouse, wherein, recalling how in his lampoons whilst he lived characters about town were shown in no very enviable light, he particularizes that 'the antiquated Coquet was told of her age and ugliness, tho' her vanity ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... his country. You know who I mean George Washington. They have a piano here that plays itself like a sewing machine. They let me do it. They have after-dinner coffee and gold spoons to it. I guess you would like to see a gold spoon. I did. They are about the size of the tin spoons we had in our playhouse. I have a lot of fun with that boy too. At first I thought he was very affected, but that is just the way they teach him to talk. He is nine and plays tricks on other people. He dares me to do things that ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... that both in itself and in its surroundings it is immoral and demoralising." I stared aghast at this utterance. I knew that I went to theatres occasionally, but until then I had believed that Edward Baines had never crossed the threshold of a playhouse. He saw my look of surprise, and continued, "Yes, I am sorry to say that between the years 1819 and 1822 I attended the theatre frequently in London, and I can never forget the shocking immorality I witnessed both on the stage and among the audience." Dear, simple, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... much as they may praise this tragedy, complain that it wants the very first requisite of a dramatic work—power to affect the passions. This criticism shows, to the full extent, how men were impassioned, at that time, by their political sentiments. They brought their passions with them to the playhouse, fired on the subject of the play; and all the poet had to do was ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... with happiness, effectiveness, health! She realized that a satisfactory understanding of it would come slowly; but walking here in the winter sunshine along the village street, she had that sensation of strangeness which the child has on coming from the lighted playhouse into the street.... The set vision that tormented her within—that, too, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and the authour that gratifies private malice, aniuam in vulnere ponit, destroys the future efficacy of his own writings, and sacrifices the esteem of succeeding times to the laughter of a day. It is no wonder, therefore, that the sarcasms, which, perhaps, in the authour's time, set the playhouse in a roar, are now lost among general reflections. Yet whether the character of Holofernes was pointed at any particular man, I am, notwithstanding the plausibility of Dr. Warburton's conjecture, inclined to doubt. Every man adheres ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... to a little boy named Gary. He was building a playhouse with them. And as soon as he had carried in the wood and swept the walks, he would call, "Grandma, everything's done! May I play in my ...
— Rags - (The Story Of A Dog) • Karen Niemann
... successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense. Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down— Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you hate, Might somewhere else be call'd a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... fire. They turned back; and, when they met Uncle and Aunt, also entirely out of breath with the chase, Aunt declared that this was only another case of Chicago's base deceptions. It could joke with dead people and jest with fires and make a playhouse exhibition costing many millions of dollars, and fool old people and the young alike ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... closely it is associated with the discomforts of the climb—with fatigue and the blinding light of the sun, with out-of-breathness, and all the other sensations that rouse and stimulate life and make the body tingle, so that the remembrance of it all is carved indelibly on the mind. The comfort of a playhouse adds nothing to the illusion of a play; and it may even be due to the entire inconvenience of the old concert-rooms that I owe my vivid recollection of my ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Lucindy Bascom, how d' you know that?' 'Why,' says I to them, 'I don't ask no questions, 'n' folks don't tell me no lies; I just set in my winder, 'n' put two 'n' two together,—that's all I do.' I ain't never ben in a playhouse, but I don't suppose the play-actors git down off the platform on t' the main floor to explain to the folks what they've ben doin', do they? I expect, if folks can't understand their draymas when the're actin' of 'em out, they have to go ignorant, don't they? Well, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... youths that thunder at a Playhouse, and fight for bitten Apples, that no Audience but the tribulation of Tower Hill, or the Limbes of Limehouse, their deare Brothers are able to endure. I haue some of 'em in Limbo Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... principle. Porter's friends could not deny that he was a rake and a coxcomb, that he drank, that he swore, that he told extravagant lies about his amours, and that he had been convicted of manslaughter for a stab given in a brawl at the playhouse. His enemies affirmed that he was addicted to nauseous and horrible kinds of debauchery, and that he procured the means of indulging his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding; that he was one of a gang of clippers; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I did drink four pints. And to the town, to the King's Head; and hear that my Lord Buckhurst and Nelly are lodged at the next house, and Sir Charles Sedley with them; and keep a merry house." Lord Buckhurst had just persuaded Nell Gwynne to leave the King's playhouse for a hundred pounds a year and his company: she was to act no more, which saddened Pepys. However, she was back at the playhouse next month, jeered at by the graceful Buckhurst and as poor as ever. She was less exacting than Barbara Villiers: she never ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the Playhouse, and there saw "Rule a wife and have a Wife;" [A comedy by J. Fletcher.] very well done. And here also I did look long upon my Lady Castlemaine, who, notwithstanding her sickness, continues ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... us to have everything we want. Oh, honey, we chillun never been harness up in no little bit of place to play like dese chillun bout here dese days. We had all de big fields en de pretty woods to wander round en bout en make us playhouse in. Seems like de Lord had made de little streams just right for we chillun to play in en all kind of de prettiest flowers to come up right down side de paths us little feet had made dere, but dat wasn' nothin. Dere was flowers scatter bout everywhe' you look in de ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... A. A. M.'s play is now comfortably settled in its new home (No. 3) at The Playhouse. A correspondent informs Mr. Punch that since the opening night Mr. DION BOUCICAULT'S popular part has been developed to the slight disturbance of the balance of things; not so much by new dialogue as by deliberate iteration and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... and they, who ne'er durst write, Turn critics, out of mere revenge and spite: A playhouse gives them fame; and up there starts, From a mean fifth-rate wit, a man of parts. (So common faces on the stage appear; We take them in, and they turn beauties here.) Our author fears those critics as his fate; And those he fears, by consequence must ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... even the doors were opened, so that they could get first choice of the unreserved seats which sold at twenty-five cents. Then there would ensue the long, tedious wait in the dimly lighted cavern of the playhouse, smelling with a curious fascination of stale cigars and staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them the security to put off their ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... not the things now mentioned, yet things that agree with their fleshly minds, and with their polluted, and defiled, and vile affections. They can relish and taste that which delighteth them; yea, they can find soul-delight in an alehouse, a whorehouse, a playhouse. Ay, they find pleasure in the vilest things, in the things most offensive to God, and that are most destructive to themselves. This is evident to sense, and is proved by the daily practice of sinners. Nor is the Word barren as to this: They 'feed on ashes' (Isa ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Aha, you've been playing truant, have you? Straying into alien precincts, roving in search of something newer and gaudier than anything you have here? Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet for a cultured nostril!" Of course Austin made all this nonsense up himself, but he felt so happy that it amused him to attribute the words to the dear flower-friends who were all around ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... a playhouse serves A giant Lyre, ornately gilded, On whose convenient coignes and curves The pert brown sparrows late have builded. They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings, Not awed at all by golden glitter, And make among the silent strings Their ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... suppose, among the clerks and servants of the brew-house; for when the Quaker Barclay bought the whole, I read that name with wonder in the Writings."—"But there were really curious remains of the old Globe Playhouse, which, though hexagonal in form without, was round within, as circles contain more space than other shapes, and Bees make their cells in hexagons only because that figure best admits of junction. Before I quitted the premises, however, I learned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... dood as anjils," lisped Janie, as the procession, at a signal from Mercedes, quietly trooped forth into the June sunshine once more, and, with radiant faces and happy hearts, skipped down to their boulder playhouse to celebrate. ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... does not now appear what were the characters which he personated. They were probably the most dignified and majestic, for to these the portly and graceful figure of his person was well adapted. At length he became master of a company of players, and the proprietor of a playhouse called the Fortune, which he erected at his own expense, near Whitecross-street; and he was also joint proprietor and master of the Royal Bear-Garden, on the Bank side, in Southwark. By the profits ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Dorcas, represented her danger from Singleton, in order to dissuade her from going at all, unless she allowed me to attend her; but I was answered, with her usual saucy smartness, that if there were no cause of fear of being met with at the playhouse, when there were but two playhouses, surely there was less at church, when there were so many churches. The chairmen were ordered to carry ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... of their diversions. I did not even look upon the horse races, although they were to be seen from the windows in the back room of the State House: nor have I attended a single play, although the theatre has been open twice a week the chief part of the Winter, and the playhouse adjoins the house where ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... less visible gratifications: the present age abounds with a race of liars who are content with the consciousness of falsehood, and whose pride is to deceive others without any gain or glory to themselves. Of this tribe it is the supreme pleasure to remark a lady in the playhouse or the park, and to publish, under the character of a man suddenly enamoured, an advertisement in the news of the next day, containing a minute description of her person and her dress. From this artifice, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... in low and vulgar natures, of these the actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye (without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a playhouse, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are apt not only to sink the play-writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but even to identify in our minds in a perverse manner, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... made cuts in the play, preparatory to giving it, Boker, even, revising it in part. The American premiere was reserved for James E. Murdoch, at the Philadelphia Walnut Street Theater, January 20, 1851, and it was revived at the same playhouse in April, 1855, by E.L. Davenport. As Stoddard says of it, one "should know something—the more the better—about the plays that Dr. Bird and Judge Conrad wrote for Forrest and his successors, about Poe's 'Politian', Sargent's 'Velasco', ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... or two to let you know how deeply I appreciate the honor which the children who are the actors and frequenters of this cozy playhouse have conferred upon me. They have asked me to be their ambassador to invite the hearts and brains of New York to come down here and see the work they are doing. I consider it a grand distinction to be chosen as their intermediary. Between ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the interior of the machine, but there seemed nothing to distinguish it from the thousands of other piratical craft which pillage the public with the aid of the taximeter clock on the port beam! Soon they were at the big Broadway playhouse, where Shirley floundered out first, after the ungallant manner of many sere-and-yellow beaux. He swayed unsteadily, teetering on his cane, as Helene leaped lightly to the sidewalk beside him. The driver stood by the door of the car, leering ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... resolved to lodge him at his brother-in-law's, where he dined the next day; drank a pint of brandy and a bottle of sherry for his morning draught; and after that about eight more bottles of sack and so went to the playhouse."[9] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... theatres were little better than barns, while those of the present day may vie with palaces in extent, splendour, and decoration; and nothing can more strongly exhibit the contrast between the present age and that of Queen Elizabeth, than the difference in the expense of a London theatre. The Rose playhouse, which was erected about the year 1592, cost only 103l. 2s. 7d.,—a sum which would scarcely pay half the expenses of a modern patent theatre for a single night. Only let the reader think of the rush roof of the Globe, and the gilt-work ceilings of our present theatres; the open area,—and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... "The Golden Age of the English Pulpit," the period when sermons were extremely popular, and discharged, with the playhouse, some of the functions of the modern newspaper. At this time Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, who was eminent in the capacities of prelate, preacher, and writer, was generally regarded as the very "stella praedicantium." Of his published sermons the Library now possesses "XCVI Sermons," ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... when Louis XIV. was about seventeen years of age, he followed him and his brother, the Duke of Orleans, out of the playhouse, and that he heard the duke ask the king what he thought of the play they had just been seeing, and which had been well received by the audience: "Brother, (replied Louis,) do not you know that I never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... in his Diary, 14th September, 1667, says, "To the King's playhouse, to see The Northerne Castle, which I think I never did see before." Is anything known of this play and its authorship? or was it The Northern Lass, by Richard Brome, first published in 1632? Perhaps Pepys has quoted the ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage. This objection, however, or some other rather political than moral, obtained such prevalence ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... of a playhouse has long been an accepted feature of primary work, but we have not always made it yield all of which it is capable, either in the self-directed activity of the children or in correlated subject matter. It has, in many cases, been only a bit of recreation ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... practical details, which take the form of one or two valuable notes on the theatre of his day. We learn, for instance, that actors were in the "custom of looking . . . full upon the Spectators," and that some members of the Restoration audience took printed copies into the playhouse in order to be able to follow the play on the stage.[10] It is a real loss to the historian of drama and to the critic that these two volumes were Laurence Echard's solitary adventure into the criticism and ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... most material dangers which your youth and inexperience will be ready to lead you into, I now proceed to others less momentary indeed, but very necessary to be strictly observed. Go not near the Soaping-Club, never mention Drury-lane Playhouse; be attentive to those Pinchbeck buckles which fortune has so graciously given you, of which I am afraid you're hardly fond enough; never wash your face, but above all forswear Poetry: from experience I can assure you, and this letter may ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... "she loves a church much better than a playhouse, and she never laughs nor goes to sleep in church as I do. And she is breaking me of swearing—by degrees. She says that no fashion can justify what is profane, and that it must be vulgar as well as wicked. And she is frankness ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade |
