"Burlesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... left it. It is entirely without any kind of consciousness or intelligence, and is drifted passively about upon the astral currents just as a cloud might be swept in any direction by a passing breeze; but even yet it may be galvanized for a few moments into a ghastly burlesque of life if it happens to come within reach of a medium's aura. Under such circumstances it will still exactly resemble its departed personality in appearance, and may even reproduce to some extent his familiar expressions or handwriting, but it does so merely by the automatic action of the ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... is the basal element in the laughable? What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and a scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will yield us invariably the same essence from which so many different products borrow either their obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume? The greatest of thinkers, from Aristotle downwards, have tackled this little problem, which ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... rare, and the men are slow to take them. There is a man towards the end of the evening who wins one unmistakably with an inimitable burlesque of "Alice, where art thou?" The pianist fails to keep in touch with the astonishing vagaries of this performance, and the singer, unabashed, finishes without accompaniment. The audience yells with delight, and continues to yell till the singer comes forward ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... wholesome reverence for its sanction, two or three testimonies given in a court of justice usually cured them. The indifferent, business-like manner in which the oaths are put, the sing-song tone of voice, the rapid utterance of the words, give to this solemn act an appearance of excellent burlesque, which ultimately renders the whole proceedings remarkable for the absence of truth and reality; but, at the same time, gives them unquestionable merit as a dramatic representation, abounding with fiction, well related and ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... "A burlesque polo match: ladies against men: the men to play on side-saddles by way of a mild handicap! Some of the older folk are a bit horrified at the notion. But I believe it'll come off; and they want me to captain ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... ever render impossible the rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth—one verse is better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... daughter Mary of Troyes; but the subject was one neither of courtesy nor of France; it belonged to an age far behind the eleventh century, or even the tenth, or indeed any century within the range of French history; and it was as little fitted for Christian's way of treatment as for any avowed burlesque. The original Tristan—critics say—was not French, and neither Tristan nor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their veins. In their form as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; they came from Brittany, Wales, Ireland, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... letters in the style of Junius—generally signing them Decimus or Probus—that kind of vague libellous ranting which will always serve to voice the discontent of the inarticulate. He wrote essays—moral, antiquarian, or burlesque; he furbished up his old satires on the worthies of Bristol; he wrote songs and a comic opera, and was miserably paid when he was paid at all. None of his work written in these veins has any value as literature; but the skill with which this mere lad not eighteen ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... po'traits," suggested Miss Woodburn, "or just paint the ahdeal?" A demure burlesque lurked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the portal, swaying drunkenly. They shuddered at the sight of its face as it crossed toward the fire. It did not walk; it shuffled, haltingly, with flexed knees and hanging shoulders, the strides measuring inches only—a grisly burlesque upon senility. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... and a bath tub of lemonade and we all had an awful time with ourselves cracking rare quips. Me the center of an admiring throng. They all knew I was an actress and they asked me to act. You know the extent of my acting, a champagne dance and a burlesque on the 'Merry Widow' waltz, and my lines are limited to, 'Oh! girls, here comes the prince, now, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.' Therefore I ducked the request to exhibit my art. I was going home after the show—I mean entertainment—and Waldo, ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... slowly coming down the Housatonic Valley, with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar train, and the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and shaking his huge sides over some broad burlesque. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... quote more examples. They are not unknown to the historian, but because they are in rhyme they have been hastily assumed to be spurious or even burlesque.[142] But the evidence of a rhyming formula is the opposite to this. It is evidence of their genuineness, and if some of the words appear to be nonsensical it is due to the fact that the sense of the old formula has been misunderstood, and has ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... pyramid was erected in the centre of the church, surmounted by a temple, inscribed, 'To Philosophy.' The torch of 'Truth' was on the altar of 'Reason,' spreading light, &c. The National Convention, and all the authorities, attended at this burlesque and insulting ceremony. In February, 1794, a grand fete was ordered by the convention, in which hymns to Liberty were chanted, and a pageant in honor of the abolition of slavery in the colonies, was displayed in the ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... mention is the boastful knight, Basilisco, whose incredible vaunts and invariable preference for the very freest of blank verse, in a play almost entirely exempt from either, read like an intentional burlesque of Tamburlaine. If so, and the suggestion is not ill-founded or improbable, it may be interpreted as an emphatic rejection of the influence of Marlowe and as a claim, on Kyd's part, to sole credit for his own form of tragedy ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... expressed the manhood of England; but many of the Puritan practices were open to ridicule, and the Royalists, in revenge for their defeat, began to use ridicule without mercy. During the early years of the Restoration doggerel verses ridiculing Puritanism, and burlesque,—that is, a ridiculous representation of serious subjects, or a serious representation of ridiculous subjects,—were the most popular form of literature with London society. Of all this burlesque and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... become bromidic. Time alone can accomplish this effect. Literature itself is either bromidic or sulphitic. The dime novel and melodrama, with hackneyed situations, once provocative, are so easily nitro-bromidic that they become sulphitic in burlesque ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... excursion into the theater must later have seemed to him a minor episode in his life, Payne's enemies were aware of the fact that he was a playwright and have written their knowledge into the record of his treasonable activities. For example, the author of a burlesque life of Payne, which contains, so far as I know, the only connected account of his activities, makes this useful remark: "Then [after his return from Ireland in 1672] he composes a Tragedy of a certain Emperour of ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... the burlesque or bantering spirit. While one faction drives out another, the abuse of extraordinary powers is equally fatal. Thus we are consoled while we are afflicted, and we are protected while we ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... could see that it would be at the moment Mr. Bernard Shaw so forgot himself as to be interested in something he had not himself written. The Press was charmed with the play and went so far as to say, with a gross burlesque of Chesterton, that it was 'real phantasy and had soul.' Chesterton by his one produced play had earned the right to call himself a dramatic author, who could make the public shiver and think at the same time, an ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... scoffers were silent. But as the sultry night drew on toward one o'clock, Bill Day and his party felt their spirits revive a little. The calculation had failed in one part, and it might in all. Bill resumed his burlesque exhortations to the rough-looking "brethren" about him. He tried to lead them in singing some ribald parody of Adventist hymns, but his terror and theirs was too genuine, and their voices died down into husky whispers, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... manner. Contrast it with the simple statement—"His memory is good." Sometimes Simile is prostituted to a low and degrading use; as "His face was like a danger signal in a fog storm." "Her hair was like a furze-bush in bloom." "He was to his lady love as a poodle to its mistress." Such burlesque is never permissible. Mere likeness, it should be remembered, does not constitute a simile. For instance there is no simile when one city is compared to another. In order that there may be a rhetorical simile, the objects compared must be of different classes. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... indeed. But the sketch is most imperfect. I shall now have much to add. I can say that the Prince, whom I had accused of idleness, is zealous in the department of police, taking upon himself those duties that are most distasteful. I shall be able to relate the burlesque incident of my arrest, and the singular interview with which you honour me at present. For the rest, I have already communicated with my Ambassador at Vienna; and unless you propose to murder me, I shall be at liberty, whether you please or not, within ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its spectacular course; Ione Burke, Polly Marshall, and Mrs. Vining were in the cast; tableau succeeded tableau; "I wish I were in Dixie," was sung, and the popular burlesque ended in the celebrated scene, "The Birth of the Butterfly in the Bower of Ferns," with the entire company kissing their finger-tips to a vociferous and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Burlesque, that is comic imitation, comprises parody and caricature. The latter is a valuable addition to humorous narrative, as we see in the sketches of Gillray, Cruikshank and others. By itself it is not sufficiently suggestive and affords no story or conversation. Hence in the old caricatures ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of plot and incident are attractively arranged, the expression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. There are traces of Dickens' burlesque without his sympathy, and the high colouring of Lytton with less than Lytton's wit. Disraeli's satire, too, is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose experiences in England were to have formed the main purpose ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... will be commenced a new burlesque serial, "The Mystery of Mister E. Drood," written expressly for this paper by the celebrated ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... and manfully—Get on, man," said the King, who never doubted that this was the introduction to something burlesque or witty, not conceiving that the charge was made ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and as he kept a good table, gave good wines, and excelled in his cuisine, it was a delight he could command whenever he chose. He had the entre, also, of the green-room at both theatres, and acquired an intimate knowledge of all the feuds, rivalries, managerial oppressions, intrigues, burlesque dignity, and solemn plausibilities, of that mimic world. Living thus in an atmosphere electrical, as it were, with excitement, it is no wonder that, by degrees, he became less and less sensitive with regard to that ambiguous difficulty which had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... Guildenstern." Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality that is claimed for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only making a delightful idiot of himself in it! Anyhow, it is frankly a burlesque, a skit, a satire on the real "Macaire." The Lyceum was not a burlesque house! Why ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... paraphrases. However, there can be no chance for mistake even to the veriest embryonic reader of Horace, if he will but remember that, while some of these transcriptions are indeed very faithful reproductions or adaptations of the original, others again are to be accepted as the very riot of burlesque verse-making. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee to the shambles? Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to break thee upon the wheel? A sense of the mockery of such an execution, of the horrible burlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a mighty people so slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd. There was a low murmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous sympathy of the mob was perceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little fitted for the reception of his confidences had I not been able at times to understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal—a degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of death ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... by a way of writing very peculiar, procured to himself the name of Namby Pamby. This was first bestowed on him by Harry Cary, who burlesqued some little pieces of his, in so humorous a manner, that for a long while, Harry's burlesque, passed for Swift's with many; and by others were given to Pope: 'Tis certain, each at first, took ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... and my hands trembled. In what burlesque comedy is there a jealous lover so stupid as to inquire what has become of a cup? Why seek to discover whether Smith and Madame Pierson had drunk from the same cup? What ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an opera in an extravagant burlesque style, with characters, music, and other accompaniments to match; is the creation of OFFENBACH (q. v.), his more distinguished successors in the production of which have ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to ask me how I like him? Do want, and I will tell you.—I like her exceedingly; her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know how, he does not improve so fast upon me: there is a great deal of parts, and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal too of mimicry and burlesque. I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly; but unluckily I know it. I was accustomed to it enough when my father was first minister: on his fall I lost it all at once: and since that, I have lived with Mr. Chute, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Owenson) and "Rosa Matilda" even more roughly and asks (as has been asked about a hundred years later and was asked about a hundred years before), "Is it not amazing that the [two] most licentious writers of romance are women?" And it starts with a burlesque account of a certain Margaret Marsham who exclaims, "What then? to add to my earthly miseries am I to be called Peggy? My name is Margaritta!" "I am sure that if I am called Peggy again I shall go into a fit." But this promise of something ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Noble Kinsmen" there is a "distinct imitation of the circumstances of Ophelia's madness and death in Hamlet." In "The Woman Hater," assigned conjecturally to 1605 or 1606 by Professor Thorndike, there are "several burlesque ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... shapes as she struggled to cry out. "Hamoud!" she screamed at last, raising her arms as high as she could, and trying to tear her gaze away from that spectacle. The Arab's pose, as he bent over his enemy, was a frightful burlesque of solicitude. How many times had she not seen him bending thus over David, maybe to smooth his pillow? And now, against the colonnade of gloomy trees, there was something sacrificial in that tableau—the blue robe, the wet dagger, the plumed head ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... of a carriage, quarrelled rhythmically with one another; the mendicants, lying everywhere in wait for charity, murmured a modulated appeal; if you heard shouts or yells afar off they died upon your ear in a strain of melody at the moment when they were lifted highest. I am aware of seeming to burlesque the operatic fact which every one must have noticed in Naples; and I will not say that the neglected or affronted babe, or the trodden dog, is as tuneful as the midnight cat there, but only that they approach it in the prevailing ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... years beyond the seas" is spoken by the lips of the judge, and the burlesque of justice is at an end. Mr. Martin heard the sentence with perfect composure and self-possession, though the faces of his brothers and friends standing by, showe signs of the deepest emotion. "Remove the prisoner," were the next words uttered, and then John Martin, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... of the early Romans made little progress beyond personal satire, burlesque extravagance and licentious jesting, but upon this was ingrafted the new Greek comedy, and hence arose that phase of the drama, of which the representatives were Plautus, Statius, and Terence. The Roman comedy was calculated to produce a moral result, although the morality it inculcated was extremely ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... recollecting himself, and thinking, as he owned afterwards, that the dispute grew too serious, with a skill all his own, suddenly and unexpectedly turned it to burlesque; and taking Sir Philip by the hand at the moment we arose after supper, and were ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... for the puff and humbug attracted people. The Montefiores, like fashionable knicknacks, succeeded that whimsical jade, Rose Peche, who had gone off the preceding autumn, between the third and fourth acts of the burlesque, Ousca Iscar, in order to make a study of love in company of a young fellow of seventeen, who had just entered the university. The novelty and difficulty of their performance, revived and agitated ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... all this for Edith Darrell?—Edith Darrell, who such a brief while gone, used to sweep and dust, sew and darn, in dull, unlovely Sandypoint, and get a new merino dress twice a year? No, it could not be—such transformation scenes never look place out of a Christmas pantomime or a burlesque Arabian Night—it was all a dream—a fairy fortune that, like fairy gold, would change to dull slate stones at light of day. She would never be Lady Catheron, never be mistress of this glittering Aladdin's Palace. It grew upon her day after day, this feeling ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... much choked by his tears on his pronouncing these words, that Fleur-de-Marie, very much affected, turned quickly toward him: he had turned away his head. An incident, half burlesque, diverted the attention of La Goualeuse, and prevented her from remarking more closely the emotion of her father: the worthy squire, who still remained behind the curtain, and, apparently was very attentively looking into the garden of the hotel, could not refrain from blowing his nose with ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... from all over the State, and from every class of society. Eichenstine Bros. sent fifty dollars, and six ragged newsboys came to present thirty cents. A lavender note, with huge monogram and written in white ink, stated that some of the girls of the "Gay Burlesque Troupe" sent a few dimes to the "kid's" mother. The few dimes amounted to fifteen dollars. Mrs. Van Larkin's coachman had to wait with her note while Lucy answered the questions of a lame old negro ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... are the subjects of the next two cuts. In the former, Death has assumed the mitre and the crosier of his victim, and drags him off with such an expression of fun and burlesque pomp as we sometimes see in the face of a mischievous boy who mocks his betters. In the companion group his look is that of a demon; and with his head fantastically dressed, he drags the Abbess off by the scapulary which hangs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies was one "Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove with music and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy stepped before ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Juggler is not amiss applicable to those of their craft, considering all their tricks and mummery not a whit superior to those of these poor savages, in the eyes of common-sense. Who does not know, that the low-burlesque word of Hocus-pocus, is an humorous corruption of their Hoc est corpus meum, by virtue of which, they make a God out of a vile wafer, and think it finely solved, by calling it a mystery, which, by the way is but another name for nonsense. Is there any thing amongst the savages ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... it's true! You preach to me no more, You, once so glib with holy words! I am Astonished!. . . (With burlesque fury): Stay, I will surprise you too! Hark! I permit you. . . (He pretends to be seeking for something to tease her with, and to have found it): . . .It is something new!— To—pray for ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... this luxury; then the universe is stupid in company with it; then Paris awakes, rubs its eyes, says: "How stupid I am!" and bursts out laughing in the face of the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it is a strange thing that this grandioseness and this burlesque should be amicable neighbors, that all this majesty should not be thrown into disorder by all this parody, and that the same mouth can to-day blow into the trump of the Judgment Day, and to-morrow into the reed-flute! Paris has a sovereign joviality. Its gayety is of the thunder and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... character in his gifted daughter's novel of the Heiress [Inheritance]. I wrote a long letter after I came home to my Lord Elgin about Greenshields, the sculptor.[241] I am afraid he is going into the burlesque line, to which sculpture is peculiarly ill adapted. So I have expressed my veto to his patron, valeat quantum. Also a letter to Mrs. Professor Sandford at Glasgow about reprinting Macaulay's History of St. Kilda,[242] advising them ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... know what I am doing. I have a studio here on Broadway, and am painting portraits. The old gift, that you were the first to discover in me, when you said a kind word for my burlesque sketch of you on the board, at Emburg (how often I do get back to that old school-room), at last proved my salvation. Gradually I found that I had talent in this direction, and I am making the most of it. Carefully and honestly I took up the work, and with perseverance I have attained ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... locomotive; also a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque and dramatic productions; have been with good shows, bad shows, medicine shows, and worse, and some shows where we had landlords singing in the chorus. Have played variety houses and vaudeville houses; have slept in a box car one night, ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... twisted and misshapen by storms and floods—or characters gnarled by some interior force working in conjunction with or in opposition to outward circumstances. She draws no monstrosities, or monsters, thus avoiding on the one side romance and on the other burlesque. She keeps to life—the life that fails from "the meanness of opportunity," or is "dispersed among hindrances" or "wrestles" unavailingly "with ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Resident de France, and directed by the attorney-general, made a declaration against my work, by which, in the most severe terms, it was declared to be unworthy of being burned by the hands of the hangman, adding, with an address which bordered upon the burlesque, there was no possibility of speaking of or answering it without dishonor. I would here transcribe the curious. piece of composition, but unfortunately I have it not by me. I ardently wish some of my readers, animated by the zeal of truth and equity, would read over the Letters from the Mountain: ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... on his entry into subterranean portals, we find ourselves in the abode of wonder and terror; but not till Meredith's Shaving of Shagpal (1856) do we meet again Beckford's kinship with the East, and his gift for fantastic burlesque. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the Stage through the distance-entrance [Left Side-door] the colossal figure of Hercules. Here is the turning-point of the play: which has the peculiarity of combining an element of the Satyric Drama (or Burlesque) with Tragedy, the combination anticipating the 'Action-Drama' (or 'Tragi-Comedy') of modern times. Accordingly the costume and mask of Hercules are compounded, of his conventional appearance in Tragedy, in which he is conceived as the perfection of physical strength toiling and suffering ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... a burlesque poem by Samuel Butler (1663). It satirized the leading persons and parties of the Commonwealth, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... His pieces include numerous burlesques and pantomimes, the libretti of Savonarola (Hamburg, 1884) and of The Canterbury Pilgrims (Drury Lane, 1884) for the music of Dr (afterwards Sir) C. V. Stanford. The Happy Land (Court Theatre, 1873), a political burlesque of W. S. Gilbert's Wicked World, was written in collaboration with F. L. Tomline. For the last ten years of his life he was on the regular staff of Punch. His health was seriously affected in 1889 by the death of his only son, and he died on the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... nervous fever or violent convulsions on the part of young women, fond to excess of music, which have no other origin than the prayer of the Hebrews in the third act, with its superb change of key.'" Thus by a stroke of genius, a scene which first impressed the audience as a piece of theatrical burlesque, was raised to sublimity by the solemn music written ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... to have given vent to her real feelings at that time, she would have burst into a fit of laughter; it was too ludicrous. At the same time, the very burlesque reassured her still more. She went into the cabin with a heavy weight ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... evening I went to the "Frivolity," to see the latest rays of the lamp of burlesque. That scene, at any rate, was familiar. There, in all their spotless panoply of expressionless face, and irreproachable shirt-front, sat the golden lads of the Metropolis in their rows, images of bored stupidity, stiffly cased in black and white. There too, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... say just now? Perhaps I did not hear you aright," inquired Alden, elevating his eyebrows, for there was something that struck him as unreal, ludicrous and bordering upon the burlesque in the whole situation. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... they may consequently appear ridiculous, as here he does. Again, in his third objection against my third Song, where he says— I, (that is in my own person) make a jest of the Fall, rail at Adam and Eve; and then Oliver's Porter, raving again, says, I burlesque the Conduct of God Almighty; [Footnote: Ibid.] now, pray judge whether it ought to be Constru'd so or no. This Song is suppos'd to be made and sung by Gines de Passamonte, a most notorious Atheistical Villain, who, as he is going Chain'd to the Galleys, is redeem'd from them by ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... of perverted Christian mysticism and idolatry. The Baibailanes of Negros are not entirely pagans; there is just a glimmer of Christian precept mingled in their belief, whilst the scores of religious monomaniacs and saint-hawkers who appear from time to time present only a burlesque imitation of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... image of himself as a worthy astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied husband of Viviette, the present imputation was humiliating. The glorious light of this tender and refined passion seemed to have become debased to burlesque hues by pure accident, and his aesthetic no less than his ethic taste was offended by such an anti-climax. He who had soared amid the remotest grandeurs of nature had been taken to task on a rudimentary question of morals, which had never been a question with him at all. This was what ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... for its Successor: Royalist Squib predicting Milton's speedy Acquaintance with the Hangman at Tyburn: Another Squib against Milton, called The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book: Specimens of this Burlesque: Republican Appeal to Monk, called Plain English: Reply to the same, with another attack on Milton: Popular Torrent of Royalism during the forty days of Interval between the Parliament of the Secluded Members and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... sublime, its writer's genius should be so too; otherwise it becomes the meanest thing in writing, viz. an involuntary burlesque. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... irrepressible and joyous; he is full of comicality and drollery, of fun, jeers, jokes, yah-yas, and merriment; and this element will be needed in our midst to temper our puritan and national seriousness. He loves music whether sad, burlesque, or gay; is devoted to those who treat him worthily, his affections being easily won; and there is something touching, soothing, and delightful in his inherent respect for gentleman and lady. His aptitude ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... This burlesque poem is preserved in the Bannatyne MSS. It is in the same strain with the verses concerning the Gyre Carline (Vol. II.) As the mention of Bettokis Bowr occurs in both pieces, and as the scene of both is laid in East Lothian, they are perhaps composed by the same author. The humour of these fragments ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... disorder; and, in some form or another—sometimes tolerated, sometimes the object of the Church's anathema—the tradition held its own down through the Dark Ages, and we meet with the substance of the Saturnalia, during the centuries immediately preceding the Reformation, in the burlesque festivals with which the rule of the Boy-Bishop has been often identified. We shall see presently how far this judgment is correct. An example will, no doubt, readily recur to the reader from a source to which we owe so many impressions of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Duke ends the burlesque by upsetting the chair. The Captain and Patch-Eye, chuckling at their jest, sit to a game of cards. The Duke returns to the chest. Once in a while he lays down the ship and seems to be thinking. The broken crystal of the fortune-teller lies ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a later period, that the real character of the persecuted class is to be gathered. Walker writes with a simplicity which sometimes slides into the burlesque, and sometimes attains a tone of simple pathos, but always expressing the most daring confidence in his own correctness of creed and sentiments, sometimes with narrow-minded and disgusting bigotry. His turn for the marvellous was that of his time and sect; but there is little ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pure and undisturbed between the contrasts it thus simultaneously calls up; the obvious danger being that, where matters of taste are concerned, the habit of forming such incongruous juxtapositions—as that, for example, between the burlesque and sublime—should at last vitiate the mind's relish for the nobler and higher quality; and that, on the yet more important subject of morals, a facility in finding reasons for every side of a question may end, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Honore the coachman struck his cocked hat against a burlesque effigy of Marat swinging from the cord of a ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... look up and are not fed,'" quoted the rector in a burlesque despair. "Why, what we believe, boy,—what we believe! The rest of my flock know better, Mr. Ward, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... personal, and subjectively true at least. Of the great external world, however, their knowledge was exceedingly crude; and the facts in nature had become so strangely distorted, through centuries of ignorance and superstition, that the solemnly pronounced verities of the time were but a burlesque upon the truth. Belief in the existence of the antipodes was considered by ecclesiastical authority as a sure proof of heresy, the philosopher's stone had been found, astrology was an infallible science, and the air was filled with demons who were ever waiting for an opportunity to steal away ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... them {11} to his friends. At the College Debate, of which he became secretary and president in his second year, he was a frequent and fluent speaker, with a remarkable command of language, though sometimes his eloquence was more than half burlesque. His powers of thought and real strength in argument were more often displayed in private discussions, where irony and humour hardly veiled ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... side. They are called principal dancers. Then I make a separate group of those who expect to sing, or to do any sort of a musical specialty, or any kind of a "stunt" that might be included in the show. I have had the greatest variety of specialties in a show. I have had them do magic, burlesque magic, play ukuleles, and all sorts of stunts which I have placed effectively in a show. We had a man in the Princeton show who did a little trick with a cigarette that was a scream. I saw him standing around, and I asked him if he could do a specialty. "I don't ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... the most remarkably successful men of his century was Rossini, son of a village inspector of slaughter-houses, and a baker's daughter. Once, while the husband was in jail on account of his political sympathies, the mother became a burlesque singer, and when the father was released, he joined the troupe as a horn-player. Rossini was left in the care of a pork-butcher, on whom he used to play practical jokes. He always took life easily, this Rossini. At the age of sixteen he was already a successful ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... appear, however, to belong to a later date; and the quaint stanza, afterwards employed in a modified form with such effect by Fergusson and Burns, is that used by Alexander Scot in The Justing at the Drum, and in other burlesque pieces of the early or middle ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... Guiteau shows that he was that night in that square; and, knowing the President had left the White House, was on the look-out, with intent to murder him. The incarnate sneak was lying in wait, a horrible burlesque, to take his revenge because he thought he had been slighted, and was so malignant a fool he believed public opinion might applaud the deed. One of the dusky figures on ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... man impulsively. It was impossible to resist the human quality, the confiding friendliness, of the Governor's manner. The chances were, he said to himself, that the whole thing was mere burlesque, one of the successful sleight-of-hand tricks of the charlatan. In theory he was still sceptical of Gideon Vetch, yet he had already surrendered every faculty except that impish heretical spectator that dwelt ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... gives us on the whole the noblest books, the early part of the fourteenth affords the loveliest. They come from England, France, and the Netherlands. A noticeable element in their art is that of the grotesque and burlesque, never, of course, quite absent even from early books, but now most prominent and most delightful. The defect of the art of this time is lack of strength and austerity; ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... sculptor sat at the same board as Marsilio Ficino, interpreter of Plato; Pico della Mirandola, the phoenix of Oriental erudition; Angelo Poliziano, the unrivalled humanist and melodious Italian poet; Luigi Pulci, the humorous inventor of burlesque romance—with artists, scholars, students innumerable, all in their own departments capable of satisfying a youth's curiosity, by explaining to him the particular virtues of books discussed, or of antique works of art inspected. During those halcyon years, before the invasion ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... in his Eclogues with boyish inexperience, the praise, which these compositions obtained, tempted him into a belief that Nature was not to be trusted, at least in pastoral Poetry. To prove this by example, he put his friend Gay upon writing those Eclogues which their author intended to be burlesque. The instigator of the work, and his admirers, could perceive in them nothing but what was ridiculous. Nevertheless, though these Poems contain some detestable passages, the effect, as Dr. Johnson well observes, 'of reality ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Story of the Severed Hand"; "The Story of Little Muck"; "Nosey the Dwarf"; "The Young Englishman"; "The Prophecy of the Silver Florin"; "The Cold Heart," etc. What prospects for winter evenings are here! And while we can assure the adult reader that the promise which these titles give of burlesque or humorous description, and bold, romantic narrative, shall be more than kept, it may be well also to say, for the comfort of those whom we hope to see buy the book for their children's sake, that the stories in it are entirely free from certain objections which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... mouldering in an extinct servants' hall. Not a word passed, in the drawing-room, between Lady Lundie and Blanche. Each waited the appearance of the persons concerned in the coming inquiry, absorbed in her own thoughts. Their situation at the moment was a solemn burlesque of the situation of two ladies who are giving an evening party, and who are waiting to receive their guests. Did neither of them see this? Or, seeing it, did they shrink from acknowledging it? In similar positions, who does ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... various words: in those of the agriculturist of the Seine-et-Marne, whom I could name, and who for perhaps the first time in his life takes an interest in the sunset; in those of the young middle-class Parisian who had seemed incapable of speech save in terms of unbelief and burlesque; in those of the artist who utters his emotion in poetry and lifts it up to the heights of stoical philosophy. Through all unlikenesses, in the hearts of all—peasant, citizen, soldier, German schoolmaster—one prevailing thought is revealed; the living man, passing away, feels, at ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... free and easy clubs met on Wednesday evenings at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street. It was somewhat in the style of the Three Jolly Pigeons; songs, jokes, dramatic imitations, burlesque parodies and broad sallies of humor, formed a contrast to the sententious morality, pedantic casuistry, and polished sarcasm of the learned circle. Here is a huge "tun of man," by the name of Gordon, use to delight Goldsmith by singing the jovial song of Nottingham Ale, and looking like ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... that owing to the indisposition of the young lady, Miss Beatrice Franklin and her father are unable to appear to-night. I have pleasure in announcing an extra turn, namely the Sisters De Vere in their wonderful burlesque act." ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gifts which serve to arrest and fix the attention are wanting in this style, neither grandeur of imagination nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations, vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor variety of representation. But, amidst so many ingenious tricks, apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone is perfect. If; as an author, he develops a paradox ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... either that Marbodius, or even Virgil, could have known the Etruscan tombs of Chiusi and Corneto, where, in fact, there are horrible and burlesque devils closely resembling those of Orcagna. Nevertheless, the authenticity of the "Descent of Marbodius into Hell" is indisputable. M. du Clos des Lunes has firmly established it. To doubt it would be to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... apprenticeship at it, during which most of my labour was in the field of comedy—"walking gentleman," burlesque, and low comedy parts—the while my soul was yearning for high tragedy. I did my best with all that I was cast for, however, and the unpleasant experience did me a world of good. Had I followed my own bent, I would have been, long ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... sportiveness in parliament, was a humorist at table, and fond of humorous recollections. His story of Dunning on his travels has got into print; but, in the hands of a genuine humorist, it must have been an incomparable ground for burlesque. Dunning, when solicitor-general, had gone to see the Prussian reviews. Some of these were profoundly secret, and were presumed to be experiments in those tactical novelties with which Frederick dazzled Europe. But others were showy displays, to which the king invited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... called "Zingit." What it is I don't know, and I haven't as yet come across the inevitable big advertisement; but what I have ascertained is, that Mr. EDWARD SOLOMON, who is now wearing the diamond scarf-pin presented to him by the Guards whom he led on to victory in their recent burlesque engagement, has composed a polka or waltz which bears the name of "Zingit," and which might bear on the wrapper, "If you can't play it, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... legs were lost in gum boots, also loose and cavernous, and his entire costume looked relaxed and flapping, so that he gave the impression of being able to shake himself out of his raiment, and to rise like a burlesque Aphrodite. His face was overgrown with a grizzled tangle that looked as though it had been trimmed with button-hole scissors, while above the brush heap grandly soared a ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... pandemonium in Paris, and the royal flight to Varennes in June 1791, and the loss of the "Royal George" in 1782, all form the subjects of quizzical comments, and there are many other allusions the interest of which is quite as ephemeral as those of a Drury Lane pantomime or a Gaiety Burlesque. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... moment, and then springing upon me with such wild bounds of delight that I had to call hold, lest his great paws play havoc with my fine Paris clothes that I had donned in mademoiselle's honor. And to quiet him I said in a high, small voice, in palpable burlesque of mademoiselle: ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon monarchy. It puts it in the most ridiculous light, by presenting it as an office which any child or idiot may fill. It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but to be a king requires only the animal ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... that pleased me most was a gay little piece of burlesque by Mr. ARTHUR CHESNEY as the red-haired shop assistant who was not a pacifist. Mr. CHARLES GLENNEY so thoroughly enjoyed the robustious sea-captain that we had to enjoy it too—a sound notion of entertainment, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... without much discretion, and to call him a little too often in requisition for walks or rides, for tapestry drawings, for playing duets with her, sometimes for nothing, simply to disturb him, standing in front of his windows, and asking him, in the midst of his reading, all sorts of burlesque questions. All this was charming; Monsieur de Lucan lent himself to it with the utmost good nature, and did not surely deserve great credit ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... shirt cuff protruded in limp dejection; at the other an ancient collar, with the grotesque attachment known as a "dickey," asserted its presence. No wonder the manager frowned his annoyance. "The Safe" was in low enough repute among its patrons at that moment without any burlesque interlude to its ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... passions of the heart: witness the devoted love of Thekla for Max in Wallenstein; or the furious jealousy of the Queen in Don Carlos. He has not the grotesque of Shakspeare; we do not see in his tragedies that mixture of the burlesque and the sublime which is so common in the Bard of Avon, and is not infrequent with the greatest minds, who play, as it were, with the thunderbolts, and love to show how they can master them. Hence, in reading at least, his dramas produce a more uniform and unbroken impression ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... will be time to note the extent to which he utilized these results of his widely discursive reading, and to examine the legitimacy of the mode in which he used them: here it is enough to say generally that the materials for many a burlesque chapter of Tristram Shandy must have been unconsciously storing themselves in his mind in many an amused hour passed by Sterne in the library of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... molten matter of the new world.... Let there breathe once more in our heaven that air which flames in the prodigious song of Dante in which he describes the flight of the Roman eagle, of your eagle, citizens!... Italy is arming, not for the burlesque, but for a serious combat.... Viva, viva Roma, without shame, viva the great and ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... S. Gilbert (in Patience) or Robert Hichens (in The Green Carnation) to satirize its distorted attitudinizing. It strained itself to death; it became its own burlesque of the bizarre, an extravaganza of extravagance. "The period" (I am again quoting Holbrook Jackson) "was as certainly a period of decadence as it was a period of renaissance. The decadence was to be seen in a perverse and finicking glorification of the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... comic interlude. Years ago a musical humorist in Vienna caused much amusement by writing the words of a quarrel of Jewish pedlers under the voices of the fugue in Mozart's overture to "The Magic Flute." Three hundred years ago Orazio Vecchi composed a burlesque madrigal in the severe style of that day, in which he tried to depict the babel of sounds in a synagogue. Obviously the musical Jew is supposed to be allied to the stage Jew and to be fit food for the humorist. Strauss's music gives ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... have made Emily smile in these moments, it would have been this speech of her aunt, delivered in a voice very little below a scream, and with a vehemence of gesticulation and of countenance, that turned the whole into burlesque. Emily saw, that her misfortunes did not admit of real consolation, and, contemning the commonplace terms of superficial comfort, she was silent; while Madame Montoni, jealous of her own consequence, mistook this for the silence of indifference, or of contempt, and reproached ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... at adaptations of popular pictures,—witness the more than happy parodies of Herrman's "A Bout d'Arguments," and "Une Bonne Histoire." His book-illustrations have been comparatively few, those to Burnand's laughable burlesque of "Sandford and Merton" being among the best. Rumour asserts that he is at present engaged upon Kingsley's "Water Babies," a subject which might almost be supposed to have been created for his pencil. There are indications, it may be added, that Mr. Sambourne's talents are by no means ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... in the crowded house. The ruffling of the face of the sea before a storm. The Sisters Sigsbee, Coon Delineators and Unrivalled Burlesque Artists, have finished their dance, smiled, blown kisses, skipped off, skipped on again, smiled, blown more kisses, and disappeared. A long chord from the orchestra. A chord that is almost a wail. A wail of regret for that which is past. Two liveried menials appear. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... series of skating stunts. In rapid and bewildering succession there are ballets on skates, solo skating numbers, skating carnivals and skating races. Finally scenery is slid in on runners and the whole company, in costumes grotesque and beautiful, go through a burlesque that keeps you laughing when you are not applauding, and admiring when you are doing neither; while alternating lightwaves from overhead electric devices flood the picture with shifting, shimmering tides of color. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of life to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and above all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and gnomes that frolic before young children and once before mature people. The Griffin and the Minor Canon is a beautiful ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... not look especially promising. It was to develop into a really remarkable work, and to place Irving's name in a secure place among living humorists. The "Knickerbocker History of New York" really laid the foundation of his fame. The first plan was for a mere burlesque of an absurd book just published, a Dr. Samuel Mitchill's "Picture of New York." Mitchill began with the aborigines: the Irvings began with the creation of the world. Fortunately Peter was soon called away to Europe, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... follows: "Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadduceeism can ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... faces, the sorcerers kneeling with their heads and bodies humbly bowed down, and the magicians, who stood highest in importance, only kneeling. After this they all went through the formality of denying God and the Saints. Then they had a diabolical service in burlesque of that of the church, at which the Evil One served as priest in a violet chasuble; the elevation of the demon host was announced by a wooden bell, and the sacrament itself was made of unleavened bread. The scenes which followed resembled those of other witch-meetings. Gaufridi acknowledged ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... girl offered another bonne bouche to the crowd. She would never again skip airily behind the footlights of the Wellington, or any other important theater in England. So far as she was concerned, the musical comedy candle that succeeded to the sacred lamp of West End burlesque was snuffed out. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... when not at the wheel," said Bixby, "but the best thing he ever did was the burlesque of old Isaiah Sellers. He didn't write it for print, but only for his own amusement and to show to a few of the boys. Bart Bowen, who was with him on the "Edward J. Gay" at the time, got hold of it, and gave it to one of the ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and forty-six years ago, produced the Sot-Weed Factor's Voyage to Maryland. He wrote, printed, published, and sold it in London for sixpence sterling, and then disappeared forever. We do not know certainly that Mr. Cook himself was the actual adventurer who suffered the ills described by him "in burlesque verse." Indeed, "Eben: Cook, Gent." may be a myth—a nom de plume. Yet, there is a certain personal poignancy and earnestness about the whole Story that almost forbid the idea of a secondhand narrative. Nay, I think it extremely probable ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... made us ambitious, and we think of getting up another piece—a burlesque, entitled 'Sir Dagobert and the Dragon,' from one of my Beeton's 'Annuals.' There is not much in it; but, faute de mieux, it may do very well. But to revert to less "towny" and much more interesting matters passing ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers of the princess' executive, and their usage ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Paris, which had been filled with priests and laymen arrested on charges of complicity with the enemies of liberty, were entered by ruffians acting under influence of Marat and the commune's "committee of surveillance," and, after "a burlesque trial" before an armed jury, were murdered. In Versailles, Lyons, Orleans, and other towns, there were like massacres. The victims of these massacres numbered ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... been thoroughly naturalised among people whose ideas about knight-errantry, if they had any at all, were of the vaguest, who had never seen or heard of a book of chivalry, who could not possibly feel the humour of the burlesque or sympathise with the author's purpose. Another curious fact is that this, the most cosmopolitan book in the world, is one of the most intensely national. "Manon Lescaut" is not more thoroughly French, "Tom Jones" not more English, "Rob Roy" not more Scotch, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... come, and forth he would be drawn like a shy, unwilling periwinkle from its shell, once more to play his abased and bashful role of free entertainer to guffawing mixed audiences. For all others in the great city there were havens and homes. But for a poor, lorn, unguided vagrant, enmeshed in the burlesque garnitures of a three-year-old male child, what haven was there? By night the part had been hard enough—as the unresponsive heavens above might have testified. By the stark unmerciful sunlight; by the rude, revealing ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Franklin was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim. He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... as he himself would have said, he was diablement epris with Lucy. This was regarded as one of the best of Zavier's jokes. He himself laughed at it, and his extravagant compliments and gallantries were well within the pale of the burlesque. Lucy laughed at them, too. The only one that took the matter seriously was Bella. She was ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... this, and as Elder Stenhouse read it to me "my feelings may be better imagined than described," to use language I think I have heard before. I pleaded, however, that it was a purely burlesque sketch, and that this strong paragraph should not be interpreted literally at all. The Elder didn't seem to see it in that light, but we ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the first time, it turned its livid stare full upon my uncle with a hateful smile of significance, lifting up the little parcel of papers between his slender finger and thumb. Then he made a long, cunning wink at him, and seemed to blow out one of his cheeks in a burlesque grimace, which, but for the horrific circumstances, would have been ludicrous. My uncle could not tell whether this was really an intentional distortion or only one of those horrid ripples and ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... days grew more mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion: Now my sere Fancy "falls into the yellow Leaf,"[232] and Imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk Turns what was once romantic to burlesque. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... issues had made the Republican party, by 1897, the party of organized business. For twelve years the alliance had grown steadily closer. Marcus A. Hanna was its spokesman. The burlesque of his sincere and kindly face, drawn by a caricaturist, Davenport, for Eastern papers, created for the popular eye the type of commercialized magnate, but it did him great injustice. Self-respecting and direct, he believed ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... than overworn, was still of a quality inconsistent with her evident habits, and the lace-edged petticoat that peeped beneath it was draggled with mud and unaccustomed usage. Her glossy black hair, which had been tossed into curls in some foreign fashion, was now wind-blown into a burlesque of it. This incongruity was still further accented by the appearance of the room she had entered. It was coldly and severely furnished, making the chill of the yet damp white plaster unpleasantly obvious. A black harmonium organ stood in one corner, set out with black and white ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte |
