United States or North Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Harmonies are more beautiful than contrasts in acting as in other things and more difficult, too. Henry Irving was immensely funny as Doricourt. We had sort of Beatrice and Benedick scenes together, and I began to notice what a lot his face did for him. There have only been two faces on the stage in my time his and Duse's.
One declared that women were governed by their feelings; another maintained that they had no heart; a third propounded that it was all imagination; a fourth that it was all vanity. Lord Castlefyshe muttered something about their passions; and Charley Doricourt declared that they had no passions whatever.
His feelings were really worn, but it was a fact he always concealed. He had entered life at a remarkably early age, and had experienced every scrape to which youthful flesh is heir. Any other man but Charles Doricourt must have sunk beneath these accumulated disasters, but Charles Doricourt always swam. Nature had given him an intrepid soul; experience had cased his heart with iron.
Bevil could never have been a child, but that he must have issued to the world ready equipped, like Minerva, with a cane instead of a lance, and a fancy hat instead of a helmet. His essence of high breeding was never to be astonished, and he never permitted himself to smile, except in the society of intimate friends. Charles Doricourt was another friend of the Count Mirabel, but not his imitator.
My face has never been of much use to me, but my pace has filled the deficiency sometimes, in comedy at any rate. In "The Belle's Stratagem" the public had face and pace together, and they seemed to like it. There was one scene in which I sang "Where are you going to, my pretty maid?" I used to act it all the way through and give imitations of Doricourt ending up by chucking him under the chin.
Bevil whispered his approbation to Lord Catchimwhocan. 'The fact is, said Charles Doricourt, 'it is only boys and old men who are plagued by women. They take advantage of either state of childhood. Eh! Castlefyshe? 'In that respect, then, somewhat resembling you, Charley, replied his lordship, who did not admire the appeal.
'By-the-bye, Blandford, you shirked last night. 'I promised to look in at the poor duke's before he went off, said Mr. Blandford. 'Oh! he has gone, has he? said Lord Castlefyshe. 'Does he take his cook with him? But here the servant ushered in Count Alcibiades de Mirabel, Charles Doricourt, and Mr. Bevil. 'Excellent Sharpe, how do you do? exclaimed the Count.
Bond Sharpe glided along, dropping oracular sentences, without condescending to stop to speak to those whom he addressed. Charley Doricourt and Mr. Blandford walked away together, towards a further apartment. Lord Castlefyshe and Lord Catchimwhocan were soon busied with écarté. 'Well, Faneville, good general, how do you do? said Count Mirabel.
Before Charley Doricourt was in Parliament he was always in this sort of houses, but I got him out somehow or other; I managed it. Once I bought of the fellow five hundred dozen of champagne. 'A new way to pay old debts, certainly, said Ferdinand. 'I tell you have you dined? 'I was going to; merely to have something to do.
Alas, our novels are but for a season; and I know characters whom a painful modesty forbids me to mention, who shall go to limbo along with "Valancourt" and "Doricourt" and "Thaddeus of Warsaw." A dear old sentimental friend, with whom I discoursed on the subject of novels yesterday, said that her favorite hero was Lord Orville, in "Evelina," that novel which Dr. Johnson loved so.
Word Of The Day