The Romance of the American Theatre

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Little, Brown, 1925 - Theater - 508 pages

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Page 396 - Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me, Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell; And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee...
Page 139 - Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life, When you do take the means whereby I live.
Page 38 - I saw a power of topping folks, all sitting round in little cabbins, "just like father's corn-cribs"; and then there was such a squeaking with the fiddles, and such a tarnal blaze with the lights, my head was near turned. At...
Page 17 - I can never cease to remember with affection and gratitude, so warm, steady, and disinterested a friend; and I can most truly bear this testimony to his memory, that I never witnessed, in any family, more decorum, propriety, and regularity than in his : where I never saw a card, or even met (except in one instance) a person of his own profession at his table : of which Mrs. Garrick, by her elegance of taste, her correctness of manners, and very original turn of humour, was the brightest ornament....
Page 14 - I'd feed, And pipe upon mine oaken reed, To please my lovely Peggy. With her a cottage would delight, All's happy when she's in my sight, But when she's gone it's endless night, All's dark without my Peggy.
Page 4 - Majesty, not choosing to have as much patience as his good subjects, sent to them to know the meaning of it, upon which the master of the company came to the box, and, rightly judging that the best excuse for their default would be the true one, fairly told his Majesty that the queen was not shaved yet...
Page 301 - Ellen Terry is an enigma. Her eyes are pale, her nose rather long, her mouth nothing particular, complexion a delicate brick-dust, her hair rather like tow. Yet, somehow, she is beautiful. Her expression kills any pretty face you see beside her. Her figure is lean and bony, her hand masculine in size and form. Yet she is a pattern of fawn-like grace. Whether in movement or repose, grace pervades the hussy.
Page 30 - Desdemona, who is not cruel or covetous, but is foolish enough to dislike the noble Moor, his son-in-law, because his face is not white,, forgetting that we all spring from one root. Such prejudices are very numerous, and very wrong.
Page 29 - MORAL DIALOGUES, IN FIVE PARTS, Depicting the Evil Effects of Jealousy and other Bad Passions, and Proving that Happiness can only Spring from the Pursuit of Virtue.
Page 169 - Without question Booth was royal heir and legitimate representative of the Garrick-Kemble-Siddons dramatic traditions; but he vitalized and gave an unnamable race to those traditions with his own electric personal idiosyncrasy. (As in all art-utterance it was the subtle and powerful something special to the individual that really conquer'd.) To me, too, Booth stands for much else besides theatricals.

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