"Dramatis personae" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great admirer of Miss Austen's novels: "The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane Austen, though a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid." He was therefore pleased to find apple-blossoms ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Mistress (1687), one can only conclude that Aphra gave it to Sir Charles and altered her own character's nomenclature. Mrs. Behn, it may be remembered, was more than once extraordinarily careless with regard to the names of the Dramatis Personae in her comedies. A striking example occurs in Sir Patient Fancy, where the 'precise clerk' is called both Abel and Bartholomew. In The Feign'd Curtezans Silvio and Sabina are persistently confused, and again, in The Town Fop (Vol. III, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Our DRAMATIS PERSONAE have been so limited, that, excepting Montrose, whose exploits and fate are the theme of history, we have only to mention Sir Dugald Dalgetty. This gentleman continued, with the most rigorous punctuality, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... The author of ten novels, immensely popular for more than a score of years, he has to his credit not a single figure—man or woman—generally accepted by the public as either a type or a person. With remarkably few exceptions he has seen his dramatis personae from without and—doubtless for that reason—has apparently felt as free to saw and fit them to his argument as he has felt with his plots. Something preposterous in the millionaire reformer Mr. Crewe, something cantankerous and passionate in the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... actors prefixed to the comedy in the folio of Jonson's works, 1616. But it is a mistake to infer, because Shakespeare's name stands first in the list of actors and the elder Kno'well first in the 'dramatis personae', that Shakespeare took that particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was generally that of their importance or priority as shareholders in the company and seldom if ever corresponded to the list ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... of those loud, violent, blustering, boisterous personages who always put me in mind of the description so often appended to characters of that sort in the dramatis personae of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, where one constantly meets with Ernulpho or Bertoldo, or some such Italianised appellation, "an old angry gentleman." The "old angry gentleman" of the fine old dramatists generally ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... the true dramatis personae, to the drollest violin accompaniment, consisting of chords till the end of each verse, and then a few ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... among the leaves of the play. "Look here," I said, "here's the list of the Dramatis Personae. There's no ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... but simply by faith. This he illustrated, among other ways, by introducing a domestic scene from the life of the children of Israel in the Wilderness at the time the brazen serpent was lifted up. The dramatis personae were a Young Convert, a Sceptic, and the Sceptic's Mother. The convert, who has been bitten by the serpent, and, having followed Moses' injunction, is cured, "comes along" and finds the sceptic lying down "badly bitten." He entreats him to look upon the brazen serpent which Moses ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... wonders of the country in the manner most likely to impress both the imagination and the memory; and with his artistic sense of the value of the picturesque he would have brought into strong relief the dramatis personae of the story. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the state of an assistant, which was introduced between the acts to heighten the effect by recitation or singing, and by explaining the subject in its progression. He introduced another actor, which made his dramatis personae three. He divided his pieces into acts, and laid the foundation of those principles of dramatic poesy upon which Aristotle afterwards built his rules. Thespis and his successors before AEschylus, acted from a cart in the streets: neither his actors nor himself were distinguished by any more than ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... over which a later medieval colour has been cast. Unhappily many of these beautiful old legends have been greatly marred by the absurd sentimentality of the German writers of the early nineteenth century, and their dramatis personae, instead of exhibiting the characteristics of sturdy medieval German folk, possess the mincing and lackadaisical manners which mark the Franco-German novel of a century ago. This contrasts most ludicrously in many cases with the simple, almost childlike, honesty which is typical of all ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... what this can be. Browning published nothing between 1855 ('Men and Women') and 1864 ('Dramatis Personae'), and there is no long poem in the latter, unless 'A Death in the Desert' and 'Sludge the Medium' may be so described. The latter is not unlikely to have been written now, when Home's performances were rampant. His next really ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... dramatis personae—Blinky Bill, prosperous once more. He has got a string of ponies and punters together. The first are not much use to a man without the second; but, in spite of all temptations, Bill has always declined to number among his punters the mother of the child he stole. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... rhythmic cadence. "A holy tune was in my soul when I fell asleep; it was going when I awoke. This melody is always moving along in the background of my spirit. If I wish to compose, I abstract my attention from the things which occupy the front of the stage, the 'dramatis personae' of the moment, and fix myself upon the deeper scene in the rear." "All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody," he writes at another time. His best poems move to the cadence of a tune. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... for that reason alone, the most difficult. And then the poet's favorite art-form, the dramatic, or, rather, psychologic, monologue, which is quite original with himself, and peculiarly adapted to the constitution of his genius and to the revelation of themselves by the several "dramatis personae", presents certain structural difficulties, but difficulties which, with an increased familiarity, grow less and less. The exposition presented in the Introduction, of its constitution and skilful management, and the Arguments given of the several poems included in the volume, will, it is hoped, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... proprietor,—MR. EDWARD WALMSLEY[1]—to whose cost and liberality this edition owes its appearance—to be a volume, in itself, of pleasant and profitable perusal; composed perhaps in a quaint and original style, but in accordance with the characters of the Dramatis Personae. Be this as it may, it is a work divested of all acrimonious feeling—is applicable to all classes of society, to whom harmless enthusiasm cannot be offensive—and is based upon a foundation not ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to confirm this truth, the whole dramatis personae might be summoned as evidence, in whose characters human nature is powerfully described; and if, at times, too boldly for a reader's sober fancy, most judiciously adapted to that spirit ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... fictions, still the causes and personages acting on these changes have varied with the progress of the adventurer's fortune, and do not present that combined plot, (the object of every skilful novelist), in which all the more interesting individuals of the dramatis personae have their appropriate share in the action and in bringing about the catastrophe. Here, even more than in its various and violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel. The life of man rolls forth like a stream from the fountain, or it spreads out into tranquillity like ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... extract deals with a very different subject, but illustrates directness equally well. The scene is the Athenian colony of Amphipolis on the Struma; the dramatis personae are the Spartan general Brasidas who wishes to capture it, and the Athenian Thucydides who was then at Thasos, distant half a day's sail from Amphipolis. 'As soon as Thucydides heard the news about ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Monaldeschi Daniel Bartoli Death in the Desert, A De Gustibus Dis Aliter Visum Donald Dramas, The Strafford King Victor and King Charles The Return of the Druses A Blot in the 'Scutcheon Colombe's Birthday Luria A Soul's Tragedy Pippa Passes Dramatic Idylls Dramatic Lyrics Dramatic Romances Dramatis Personae Easter Day Echetlos Englishman in Italy, The Epilogue to Asolando, in Epilogue to Ferishtah's Fancies Epilogue to Pacchiarotto Epistle of Karshish, An Evelyn Hope Fears and Scruples Ferishtah's Fancies Fifine at the Fair Filippo Baldinucci Flight of the Duchess, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Personae: Celia] Mr. Theobald seems not to know that the Dramatis Personae were first enumerated ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Gifford objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an angel of gentler sympathies. By the way, recollect to alter Michael to Raphael in the scene itself throughout, for I have only had time to do so in the list of the dramatis personae, and scratch out all the pencil-marks, to avoid puzzling the printers. I have given the 'Vision of Quevedo Redivivus' to John Hunt, which will relieve you from a dilemma. He must publish it at his own risk, as it is at his own desire. Give him the corrected ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... winter fog and summer haze, I grew to know and love it, and those that may be called its dramatis personae, especially its tatterdemalions, the long procession led by Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild the Great. Inevitably I sought their haunts—and they were not all gone in those days; the Bull-and-Gate in Holborn, whither Mr. Tom ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... recorded as our friend and benefactor. Our case is just that of the Trojans, who entertained the tragic actor only to find him reciting their own calamities. Well, recite away, our tragedian, with these pests of ours for dramatis personae. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... Mr. Wells beckons villagers. Enter villagers and all the dramatis personae, dancing joyously. Mrs. Partlet and Mr. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... under the similar descriptive title of "Dramatis Personae," he added to this class of work, shaping in the mould of blank verse mainly used for "Men and Women" his personifications of the Medium Mr. Sludge, the embryo theologian Caliban, the ripened mystical saint of "A Death in the Desert"; while Abt Vogler, the creative musician, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... another class of anecdote in the Acts and Monuments, the errors of which do not lie so much in the facts of the story as in the oblique vision of Foxe himself, in regarding the dramatis personae, as heroes. Thus, a madman named Collins, who, entering a church during Mass, seized his dog at the Elevation, and held it over his head, showing it to the people in derision, is accounted "as one belonging to the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... us fables now present, not what is strange and difficult of comprehension, but mentally fanciful folly. In some few instances in La Fontaine and Gay, the wisdom of the lessons atones for the strangeness of their garb, and the peculiarity of the dramatis personae may tend to rivet them in our minds. There is something also fresh and pleasant in the scenes of country life which they bring before us. But the taste for such conceits is irrevocably gone, and every attempt to revive it, even when recommended by such ingenuity ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... A glance at the dramatis personae reveals a curious artificial symmetry which, as we shall shortly see, is significant of the spirit in which Fletcher approached the composition of his play. In Clorin we have a nymph vowed to perpetual virginity, an anchorite at the tomb of her dead lover; in Thenot a worshipper of her constancy, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... with a letter of introduction to Don Beltran d'Arragon, a Grandee of the First Class, who has a daughter Dona Seraphina (Miss Middleton), the proudest beauty of her day, in the custody of a duenna (Miss Dale), and plighted to Don Fernan, of the Guzman family (Mr. Whitford). There you have our dramatis personae." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pearls and silver lace, and on his head a coronal of snowy plumes. Before each mounted masquer rode a torch-bearer, whose right hand waved a scourge of flame, instead of a leathern thong. In a gorgeous chariot, preceded by a long train of heralds, were exhibited the Dramatis Personae—Honor, Plutus, Eunomia, Phemeis, Capriccio—arrayed in their appointed costumes; and it was rumored that the golden canopy of their coach had been bought for an enormous sum. Two other triumphal cars conveyed the twelve chief musicians of the kingdom, and these masters of melody were guarded ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... November Alleynian he contributed a racy and rattling parody of the modern sensational drama entitled Red Blood: a Western Drama in Two Acts, in which the dramatis personae are an English cowboy (heir to a million dollars without knowing it), an Indian chief (his friend), a wicked uncle, a murderer, and a New York detective. His historical tastes peep out in his report of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Shakespeare taking a part. The evidence of this is contained in the list of actors prefixed to the comedy in the folio of Jonson's works, 1616. But it is a mistake to infer, because Shakespeare's name stands first in the list of actors and the elder Kno'well first in the dramatis personae, that Shakespeare took that particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was generally that of their importance or priority as shareholders in the company and seldom if ever corresponded ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... animation, appeared to him in the light of a digression. Hence his names are, for the most part, expressive even to an unpleasant degree of distinctness: and, to add to our satiety, he not unfrequently tacks explanatory descriptions to the dramatis personae. On the other hand, he acted upon the principle, that the comic writer must exhibit real life, with a minute and petty accuracy. Generally he succeeded in seizing the manners of his own age and nation: in itself this ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... overhaste and negligence, he left it still deformed by many palpable errors. The best part of the work is that with which his experience of the stage as a dramatic poet had made him familiar. In many cases he first prefixed to the play a list of dramatis personae, he supplied the defects of the Folios in the division and numbering of Acts and Scenes, and in the entrances and exits of characters. He also corrected and further modernized the spelling, the punctuation, and ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... Dramatis personae: pere Russel, amusing, long-winded, in many points like papa; mere Russel, nice, delicate, likes hymns, knew Aunt Margaret ('t'ould man knew Uncle Alan); fille Russel, nominee Sara (no h), rather nice, lights up well, good voice, interested face; Miss L., nice also, washed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I think, sufficiently described in the dramatis personae; and I believe we shall find few plays where greater care is taken to maintain them throughout, and to preserve in every speech that characteristical mark which distinguishes them from each other. "But (says ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding |
