Alarums and Excursions |
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acting actor actress admirable Archimandrite Arnold Bennett artist asked audience beauty Beggar's Opera Bourchier brains C. E. Montague Chaplin character Charlie Charlie Chaplin charm clown Collins's comedian Comédie Française comedy comic conviction critic delight drama emotion English eyes Falstaff Fédora feel fellow French Garden of Allah genius gentleman give Gold Filling Guitry Hackney Hamlet hand heart Helmer hero horse human humour Ibsen imagine intellectual lady Leon Quartermaine Lincoln look lover Mademoiselle Bernhardt mare matter melodrama mind Miss mistress moral never Ophelia Othello passion Pavlova Peachum performance Phèdre Pierrot play players playwright poet pounds Ratelier realise red nose Rosmersholm Sarah Sarah Bernhardt scene seemed sense Shaw soul spirit stage talk theatre theatrical thing tion tragic truth turned Vesta Tilley Walkley Whereas whilst whole woman word write young
Popular passages
Page 59 - No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall— I will do such things, — "What they are, yet I know not ; but they shall he The terrors of the earth.
Page 67 - Lincoln sped the message on o'er the wide vale of Trent ; Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt's embattled pile, And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle.
Page 23 - To see the world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower . . . and then stopped.
Page 188 - I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the...
Page 70 - It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty into which the soul with all its maladies has passed?
Page 70 - Hers is the head upon which all the ends of the world are come, and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would...
Page 70 - If there had been a minute or more allowed between each round, it would have been intelligible how they should by degrees recover strength and resolution; but to see two men smashed to the ground, smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their bodies ; and then, before you recover from the shock, to see them rise up with new strength and courage, stand steady to inflict or receive mortal offence, and rush upon each other 'like two clouds over the Caspian' — this is the most...
Page 25 - And women — things that live and move Mined by the fever of the soul — They seek to find in those they love Stern strength, and promise of control. They ask not kindness, gentle ways; These they themselves have tried and known; They ask a soul which never sways With the blind gusts that shake their own.
Page 255 - ... too far. As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be privileged from it; namely, religion, matters of state, great persons, any man's present business of importance, and any case that deserveth pity. Yet there be some that think their wits have been asleep, except they dart out somewhat that is piquant, and to the quick : that is a vein which would be bridled ; " Parce, puer, stimulis, et fortius utere loris.
Page 141 - It is a new country with an old language; and while everything about them is of a day's growth, they are constantly applying to us to know what to think of it, and taking their opinions from our books and newspapers with a strange mixture of servility and of the spirit of contradiction. They are an independent state in politics: in literature they are still a colony from us—not out of their leading strings, and strangely puzzled how to determine between the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.