United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
American Pantomimes consisted of a semi-pastoral "opening," performed almost entirely in dumb show, and a big trick Harlequinade, and down to the time of Pantomime's decease in America was it played like this. George L. Fox made Pantomime highly popular in America.
Till that harlequinade, he had thought himself a funny boy in his way, and it had surprised him that his family had not found him more amusing than they did; but now he felt all at once that he was only a very humble beginner, and had never understood what real fun was.
But when we think of all those other requirements that these institutions answered, there opens before us the whole horrible harlequinade of our civilization.
In the harlequinade of fabulous material success the nations of "modern civilization" suffered a moral deterioration, in themselves and in their individual members; by a moral regeneration they may be saved. How is this to be accomplished? How, humanly speaking, is the redemption of society to be achieved? Not alone by change of heart in each individual, though if this could be it would be enough.
Then all motion ceases; the work is complete; the fumes of crimson, red, and blue fire begin to rise at the wings; the music bursts into a crash of exultation; and, possibly to the general disenchantment, a burly man, in a black frock coat, steps out from the side and bows awkwardly. Then, to a shrill whistle, the first scene of the Harlequinade closes in, and shuts out the brilliant vision.
Some subtle sense of fitness within me was touched as it might have been a nerve; and instantly the motley crew inside the car became not merely comic, but shocking. It seemed unseemly, this shuffling off the stage of the tragic old by the farce-like new. However little one may mourn the dead, something forbids a harlequinade over their graves.
Just wait about five minutes to let her punish us, before you out with it. 'Twill come best from you. What did you go down there for? But don't stand answering questions; come along. Don't heed her countenance at the going in: we've got the talisman. As to the dressing, it's a perfect trick of harlequinade, and she'll own it after a dose of Earlsfont. And, by the way, she's not Mrs.
You swell and strut on her pickings. You're a cock forced from the smoke of the dunghill! You shame your mother, damned adventurer! You train your boy for a swindler after your own pattern; you twirl him in your curst harlequinade to a damnation as sure as your own. The day you crossed my threshold the devils danced on their flooring. I've never seen the sun shine fair on me after it.
Their pride, as well as their piety, desired that these stones of their temples might be goodly; and all kinds of junctions, insertions, refittings, and elevations were undertaken; which, the genius of the people being always for mosaic, are so perfectly executed, and mix up twelfth and thirteenth century work in such intricate harlequinade, that it is enough to drive a poor antiquary wild.
Agnes said nothing, but the fingers of her delicate hand tightened upon the letter. When her husband snatched at it she resisted, and with the effect of a harlequinade everything went on the floor lamb, mint sauce, gooseberries, lemonade, whisky. At once they were swamped in domesticities. "I MUST see her letter," he repeated, when the agitation was over.
Word Of The Day