United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The court simulates reality. The masks are a multiform mockery at their own unreality, and as such are regarded by Schoppe, who takes them off with the utmost ridicule in his masked puppet-show, which, with its reflection in the mirror, is again indefinitely multiplied in the many-sided reflector of Schoppe's, or of Richter's, or of the reader's own imagination.
In the meantime Foote's Primitive Puppet-show, entitled the Handsome Housemaid, or Piety on Pattens, had been brought out at the Haymarket on the 15th of February. All the world, fashionable and unfashionable, had crowded to the theater. The street was thronged with equipages the doors were stormed by the mob. The burlesque was completely successful, and sentimental comedy received its quietus.
The spirit of mountebankism overshadows the spirit of the mighty man, and his very relics are rendered ridiculous. We turn from this puppet-show to contemplate with a melancholy wonder the truly iron records of the almost life-imprisonment of Baron von Trenck.
"It is the difference, I suppose, between a puppet-show and genteel comedy," said Elinor. "Precisely, Miss Wyllys," said Mr. Ellsworth, smiling. "We have very pretty puppets, though," observed Mrs. Creighton; "quite well-dressed, and sufficiently graceful, too; that is to say, the young lady puppets.
With this view, the puppet-show bequeathed by our grandmother was again brought forth, and arranged in such a way that the spectators sat in my gable-room; while the persons managing and performing, as well as the theatre itself as far as the proscenium, found a place in the room adjoining.
On the Pontneuf, at Paris, a sort of puppet-show was exhibited daily, whose boast it was to give a very exact imitation of a guillotinage; and the burthen of a popular song current for some months was "Dansons la Guillotine."
"Pardie," said Edward, with the haste natural to royalty, "what in common there can be between thy jargon of smoke and water and this huge ugliness of iron passeth all understanding. But spare us thy speeches, and on to thy puppet-show."
Having read one of his novels, you feel as if you had been amused with a puppet-show of rare merit, and you would like to have the ingenious mechanician before the curtain.
Even so; but look back through all the social customs of New England, in the first century of her existence, and read all her traits of character; and if you find one occasion, other than a funeral feast, where jollity was sanctioned by universal practice, I will set fire to my puppet-show without another word.
Destroy its monastic orders, and marry the priests, and the rest is a pretty puppet-show, with the idols, and the incense, and the polytheism, and the pomp of paganism. God bless you. "Bristol, Aug. 1802. Dear Cottle, Well done good and faithful editor. I suspect that it is fortunate for the edition of Chatterton, that its care has devolved upon you.
Word Of The Day