History of the London Stage and Its Famous Players (1576-1903): With 10 Portraits Engraved on Copper

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George Routledge and Sons, 1904 - 557 oldal

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166. oldal - AN opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses, and keep up an indolent attention in the audience. Common sense, however, requires, that there should be nothing in the scenes and machines, which may appear childish and absurd. How would the wits of King Charles's time have laughed to have seen Nicolini exposed to a tempest in robes of ermine, and sailing in an open boat upon a sea of pasteboard? What a field of raillery would they...
487. oldal - You would have thought the very windows spake, So many greedy looks of young and old Through casements darted their desiring eyes Upon his visage, and that all the walls With painted imagery had said at once 'Jesu preserve thee! welcome, Bolingbroke! Whilst he, from one side to the other turning, Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed's neck, Bespake them thus: 'I thank you, countrymen...
40. oldal - Near these a Nursery erects its head, Where queens are formed, and future heroes bred; Where unfledged actors learn to laugh and cry,| Where infant punks their tender voices try, And little Maximins the gods defy.
446. oldal - There is the strangest thing in it that ever I have seen on the stage — the boy Pippo, by Miss Wilton. While it is astonishingly impudent (must be, or it couldn't be done at all), it is so stupendously like a boy, and unlike a woman, that it is perfectly free from offence.
163. oldal - ... occasioned such an undulation, from the voice of every actor, that generally what they said sounded like the gabbling of so many people in the lofty aisles in a cathedral.
9. oldal - English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs, from the horns of the one, and the teeth of the other; and it sometimes happens they are killed upon the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired.
5. oldal - Those who go to Paris Garden, the Bell Savage,* or The Theatre, to behold bear baiting, interludes or fence play, must not account of any pleasant spectacle unless first they pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold, and a third for a quiet standing.
167. oldal - Every limb, and every finger, contributes to the part he acts, insomuch that a deaf man might go along with him in the sense of it. There is scarce a beautiful posture in an old statue which he does not plant himself in, as the different circumstances of the story give occasion for it.
166. oldal - At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the opera ; and therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue.
26. oldal - Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster, with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave. While in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?

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