A Dictionary of the Drama: A Guide to the Plays, Play-wrights, Players, and Playhouses of the United Kingdom and America, from the Earliest Times to the Present, Volume 1

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Chatto & Windus, 1904 - Actors - 627 pages

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Page 36 - Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like : sufficient, in truth, within a while, to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch...
Page 36 - King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground.
Page 133 - ... and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all the great towns of England; was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c.
Page 133 - Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen.- Had the Play remain'd, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent moral.
Page 405 - In expressing slowness of apprehension this actor surpassed all others. You could see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up by little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight conception — its highest meridian.
Page 133 - Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of a thing, a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for some time ; but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the
Page 36 - True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous.
Page 107 - Barabas is a mere monster, brought in with a large painted nose, to please the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, invents infernal machines. He is just such an exhibition as a century or two earlier might have been played before the Londoners by the Royal command, when a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously resolved on in the cabinet.
Page 133 - As to the parts, I have observed such a nice impartiality to our two ladies, that it is impossible for either of them to take offence. I hope I may be forgiven that I have not made my opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue; for I have no recitative...
Page 195 - She was of a lovely Height, with dark- brown Hair and Eye-brows, black sparkling Eyes, and a fresh blushy Complexion ; and, whenever she exerted herself, had an involuntary Flushing in her Breast, Neck and Face, having continually a chearful Aspect, and a fine Set of even white Teeth ; never making an Exit, but that she left the Audience in an Imitation of her pleasant Countenance.

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