About the Theatre: Essays and StudiesT. F. Unwin, 1886 - 350 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absolute actors admirable American artistic attempt audience Augustus Harris Bronson Howard burlesque Burnand called Cenci Censor censorship century chance character Charles Claudian comedy conceive Cromwell cynical dialogue doubt dramatist Edwin Booth effect England English drama fact farce first-night French G. R. Sims Grundy hand Henry Hernani Hugo's humour ideal judgment King least Les Burgraves less license literary London Lord Chamberlain Lyceum manager matter means melodrama ment merely merits Messrs modern Molière moral nature night opera opera-bouffe opinion patent theatres performance Pettitt piece Pinero play playgoer playwright plot poet poetic political popular possible present Princess's produced question realism Ruy Blas Sardou satire scarcely scene seems serious Shakespeare Shakespearean Sims society stage Stageland success surely Sydney Grundy talent tendency theatre theatrical criticism things tion to-day tragedy truth verse Victor Hugo Wagner whole Wilson Barrett words
Popular passages
Page 93 - This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, Touches us not with pity. [Exit Gentleman. Enter Kent. Edg. Here comes Kent, sir. Alb. O! it is he. The time will not allow the compliment, Which very manners urges. Kent. I am come To bid my king and master aye* good night ; Is he not here ? Alb.
Page 110 - In other words, Steele endeavoured to swell that tide of reformation which Collier had set flowing by his 'Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage...
Page 194 - ... trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honourable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom.
Page 299 - The characters of the ode are colossi — Adam, Cain, Noah; those of the epic are giants — Achilles, Atreus, Orestes; those of the drama are men — Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello. The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real. Lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources — the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.
Page 177 - This power has grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of the daily press.
Page 115 - If poets and players are to be restrained, let them be restrained as other subjects are, by the known laws of their country : if they offend, let them be tried as every Englishman ought to be, by God and their country. Do not let us subject them to the arbitrary will and pleasure of any one man. A power lodged in the hands of a single man to judge and determine without limitation, control, or appeal, is a sort of power unknown to our laws, inconsistent with our constitution.
Page 109 - Companies for the time to come may be performed by women so long as these recreations which by reason of the abuses aforesaid were scandalous and offensive may by such reformation be esteemed not only harmless delights but useful and instructive representations of human life to such of our good subjects as shall resort to the same.
Page 115 - ... control or appeal, is a sort of power unknown to our laws, inconsistent with our constitution. It is a higher, a more absolute power than we trust even to the King himself; and, therefore, I must think, we ought not to vest any such power in his Majesty's Lord Chamberlain.
Page 103 - May game or pageant jestingly or profanely speak or use the Holy Name of God, or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghost, or of the Trinity...
Page 311 - Dieu qui donne le sceptre et qui te le donna M'a fait duc de Segorbe et duc de Cardona, Marquis de Monroy, comte Albatera, vicomte De Gor, seigneur de lieux dont j'ignore le compte. Je suis Jean d'Aragon, grand-maître d'Avis, né Dans l'exil, fils proscrit d'un père assassiné Par sentence du tien, roi Carlos de Castille!