A Book about the Theater |
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achieved acrobat action actors altho amusing appeared artistic audience Augustus Thomas ballet ballet d'action beauty called Caran d'Ache characters Charles Reade Charlotte Brontë circus collaboration colored comedy comic composed dancer dancing delight dexterity dialog drama dramatic critic dramatic literature dramatic poets dramatist Dumas effect English episodes exhibited experiments in magic eyes fact feats figures five acts France French George Sand gesture Greek Grindorf Henry Arthur Jones human Ibsen invention Italian Jules Lemaître laborer less libretto Lothair lyric marionette masterpieces melodrama Molière negro-minstrelsy never Nohant novel novelist opera pantomime Paris performers pieces play play-making playhouse playwright plot poetic poetry popular possible presented prose fiction Punch and Judy puppet-show puppets Robert-Houdin scene-painter scenery scenes shadow picture Shakspere Shakspere's show business Skelt song Sophocles spec spectacle spectacular spectators Sphinx stage Stevenson story succession suggestion theater theatrical Théophile Gautier thru tion to-day tragedy trapeze variety-show women
Popular passages
Page 113 - In point of antiquity it dates back to a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary...
Page 190 - Again, if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play, which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.
Page 121 - story " twenty different ways, fifty excursions, alternatives, excrescences, and the novel, as largely practised in English, is the perfect paradise of the loose end. The play consents to the logic of but one way, mathematically right, and with the loose end as gross an impertinence on its surface, and as grave a dishonour, as the dangle of a snippet of silk or wool on the right side of a tapestry.
Page 203 - ... been twenty of them — and every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with diamonds. It was a powerful fine sight ; I never see anything so lovely. And then one by one they got up and stood, and went...
Page 204 - But pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse a-going like a house afire, too. He just stood up there, a-sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life — and then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and...
Page 233 - ... behold a vagabond with a corked face and a banjo sings a little song, strikes a wild note which sets the whole heart thrilling with happy pity.
Page 259 - Wealth is not an end in itself. It is only one of the means of rendering mutual service and procuring what one needs.
Page 229 - ... (The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar...
Page 118 - ... whom the novelist must needs be classed nowadays — has to do mainly with adventure and with character. His narrative is not necessarily dramatic; it may, if he should so prefer, be as placid as a mill-pond. There is no obligation on the novelist to deal with what Stevenson has finely called the great passionate crises of existence "when duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple.
Page 204 - Knock him down! throw him out!" and one or two women begun to scream. So, then, the ringmaster he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. So everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus men hanging...