Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Burlesque   Listen
verb
Burlesque  v. i.  To employ burlesque.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Burlesque" Quotes from Famous Books



... the burlesque by upsetting the chair. The Captain and Patch-Eye, chuckling at their jest, sit to a game of cards. The Duke returns to the chest. Once in a while he lays down the ship and seems to be thinking. The broken crystal of the fortune-teller lies on the floor. He picks it up and puts it ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks

... which, for near two centuries, divided and agitated the whole population of Holland and Zealand. One bore the title of Hoeks (fishing-hooks); the other was called Kaabel-jauws (cod-fish). The origin of these burlesque denominations was a dispute between two parties at a feast, as to whether the cod-fish took the hook or the hook the cod-fish? This apparently frivolous dispute was made the pretext for a serious quarrel; and the partisans of the nobles ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... him and silenced him; a dragoon was, however, sent to report to the governor; Don Guillermo sent a messenger after him, and bribed him too; and thus at length, after myriad rebuffs, and after being obliged to spend the last evening at a puppet-show in which the principal figure was a burlesque on his own personal peculiarities, the weary Don Guillermo, with his crew of renegadoes, and his forty chasseurs and their one hundred and four muzzled dogs, set sail ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... you can do a bedside burlesque of 'East Lynne' that made even that Boston-looking interne with the thick glasses laugh. Go on and do it for me, there's a good girl. I could use ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... crowded house. The ruffling of the face of the sea before a storm. The Sisters Sigsbee, Coon Delineators and Unrivalled Burlesque Artists, have finished their dance, smiled, blown kisses, skipped off, skipped on again, smiled, blown more kisses, and disappeared. A long chord from the orchestra. A chord that is almost a wail. A wail of regret for that which is past. Two liveried menials ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... succession there are ballets on skates, solo skating numbers, skating carnivals and skating races. Finally scenery is slid in on runners and the whole company, in costumes grotesque and beautiful, go through a burlesque that keeps you laughing when you are not applauding, and admiring when you are doing neither; while alternating lightwaves from overhead electric devices flood the picture with shifting, shimmering tides of color. It is like seeing a Christmas pantomime under an aurora borealis. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed a selection from a recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the White Hussars. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... You preach to me no more, You, once so glib with holy words! I am Astonished!. . . (With burlesque fury): Stay, I will surprise you too! Hark! I permit you. . . (He pretends to be seeking for something to tease her with, and to have found it): . . .It is something new!— To—pray for me, to-night, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... A parody is a burlesque imitation and degradation of something serious. In his song, "Those Evening Bells," Moore ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... described by Tacitus, Annals, b. xiv. s. 16. And yet it may be a question, whether the satirist would have the hardiness to insert the very words of an imperial poet, armed with despotic power. A burlesque imitation would answer the purpose; and it may be inferred from another passage in the same poem, that Persius was content to ridicule the mode of versification then in vogue ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... it is said, to frequent excesses of drunkenness, and whom the National Assembly raised again imprudently to a throne which was not made for him,—if we show him hereafter some pity, it shall not be the result of the burlesque ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... in "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... Certain animals, and especially frogs, were created, shaped, and educated to do the grotesque, that men might study them, laugh, and grow fat. It was a droll moment with Nature, when she entertained herself and prepared entertainment for us by devising the frog, that burlesque of bird, beast, and man, and taught him how to move and how to speak and sing. Iglesias and I did not disdain batrachian studies, and set no limit to our merriment at their quaint, solemn, half-human pranks. One question still is unresolved,—Why do frogs stay and be tickled? They snap ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... every class of society. Eichenstine Bros. sent fifty dollars, and six ragged newsboys came to present thirty cents. A lavender note, with huge monogram and written in white ink, stated that some of the girls of the "Gay Burlesque Troupe" sent a few dimes to the "kid's" mother. The few dimes amounted to fifteen dollars. Mrs. Van Larkin's coachman had to wait with her note while Lucy answered the questions of a lame old negro ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan

... Liquors, Didst inspire WITHERS, PRYN, and VICARS. This Vicars was a man of as great interest and authority in the late Reformation as Pryn or Withers, and as able a poet. He translated Virgil's AEneids into as horrible Travesty, in earnest, as the French Scaroon did in burlesque, and was only outdone in his way by the politic author ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... were scurrying out of the room now, a few in too much haste to thank the givers of the feast, the others bowing and shaking hands in mock burlesque of their chief. Stango had thrown down his ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various

... burlesque sigh of a fat man pitying himself, and passed through the room to the door at the far end. Not till it had closed behind him did talk resume. A man who had been three weeks ashore leant back against the wall and let his breath escape in a sigh, which was not burlesque. For him there was no hope; ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... it into an abode of drunkenness and grossness; they defaced the sacred trees and the grey walls with inscriptions which the indignation of a purer age has caused to be removed; they carried on nightly revels which no historian could describe, and in their wicked buffoonery mocked the Creator with burlesque religious rites. Such an unholy place would be pulled down by the mob nowadays, and the gang of debauchees would figure in the police-court; but in those "good old times" the Prime Minister and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... performance," said Mr. Charteris, as we came out of the Opera House. "I have always had a sneaking liking for burlesque." ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... morning till night, among the ladies. The "acting drama" was turned over leaf by leaf by the gentlemen. The sound of many a heavy tread of many a heavy student, was heard in the chambers; the gardens were haunted by "the characters" getting their parts; and the poet's burlesque of those who "rave, recite, and madden round the land," was realized to the life in the histrionic labours of the votaries of Thalia and Melpomene, who ranged the groves of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... undergraduate talent. In fact, more than once it has been the music which has given these operas their chief merit. Save for one war-time emergency, when University women participated, the entire cast has always been recruited from the men of the University and the burlesque of the "chorus girls" has always been one of the perennial charms of the opera in undergraduate estimation. The first opera, given in 1908, was entitled Michigenda and became instantly popular, not only because of its novelty and the excellence ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... gain a name, but to make a deep impression. One of his professed admirers made a strange mistake when he called them doggerel rhymes.[320] His Caution to Watch Against Sin is full of solemn and impressive thoughts, the very reverse of doggerel or burlesque. his poem on the house of God is worthy of a most careful perusal; and thousands have been delighted and improved with his emblems. One rhyme in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... abounds. As the original had been inscribed by Pope to Lord Bolingbroke, so was the parody by Wilkes to Lord Sandwich; thus it began, "Awake my Sandwich!" instead of "Awake my St. John!" Thus also, in ridicule of Warburton's well-known commentary, some burlesque notes were appended in the name of the Right Reverend the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... was "The Critic," the scene a burlesque rehearsal of an old-time melodrama. Our opportunities were great, and Heaven knows we missed none of them. New York audiences are quick, and in less than three minutes they knew the actors had taken the bit between their teeth ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... No. 11 will be commenced a new burlesque serial, "The Mystery of Mister E. Drood," written expressly for this paper by the celebrated humorist, ORPHEUS ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... labors. Our little social excursions, parties of pleasure, and the contingencies that occurred in them, we decked out poetically; and thus, by the description of an event, a new event always arose. But as such social jests commonly degenerate into personal ridicule, and my friend Horn, with his burlesque representations, did not always keep within proper bounds, many a misunderstanding arose, which, however, could soon be ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... the writer of Athenian Sport, or Two Thousand Paradoxes, merely argued to amuse and divert the Age, by a Member of the Athenian Society, London, 1707?[1] It would almost appear to have been a burlesque upon the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... strength of the other artists, such as Ostade, Mieris, and Dou. But, even taking into consideration its satirical character, one must say that Steen has often exceeded his purpose if he really had a purpose. The fury with which he pursued the burlesque often got the better of his feeling for reality; his figures, instead of being merely ridiculous, became monstrous and hardly human, often resembling beasts rather than men, and he has exaggerated these figures until sometimes he awakens, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... burning of Olindo and Sofronia, and the death of Clorinda by the sentimental Tasso. Neither poet, the one with his cheerfulness, the other with his mild melancholy, brings home, conceives the horror of the situation; the one treats the tragic in the spirit almost of burlesque, the other entirely in the spirit of elegy. So, again, with the novel writers: these professional retailers of anecdotes will pick up any subject to fill their volumes. In default of pleasant stories of filthy intrigue or lewd jest, men ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... 6: For another early instance of our genre and a very pure one, see an anonymous Cambridge correspondent's critique of the burlesque broadside ballad of "Moor of Moore-Hall and the Dragon of Wantley," in Nathaniel Mist's Weekly Journal (second series), September 2, 1721, reproduced by Roger P. McCutcheon, "Another Burlesque of Addison's ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe

... was afterwards to become a king of hearts! A Charivari was, however, going on in front of a neighbour's door, as a nuptial serenade on the occasion of some unsuitable marriage; when the clamour of horns and kettles, marrow-bones and cleavers, saluted the mother's ears, accompanied by thirty burlesque verses, the composition of the father of the child who ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... often said, but as we believe without sufficient proof, that the wit combats of the lords and ladies, {146} and the artificial speech of the sonneteering courtiers, were also introduced for burlesque. These elements appear, however, in other plays than this, with no intention of burlesque; and it seems probable that Shakespeare greatly enjoyed this display of his power as a master in the prevailing fashion of courtly repartee. In ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... the seas" is spoken by the lips of the judge, and the burlesque of justice is at an end. Mr. Martin heard the sentence with perfect composure and self-possession, though the faces of his brothers and friends standing by, showe signs of the deepest emotion. "Remove the prisoner," were the next words ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... of mind, was yet the greatest Parliamentarian of his day? What of Justin Huntly McCarthy, under his puerile mask a most dark, most dangerous conspirator, who, lightly swinging the sacred lamp of burlesque, irradiated with fearful clarity the wrath and sorrow of Ireland? What of Blocker Warton? What of the eloquent atheist, Charles Bradlaugh, pleading at the Bar, striding past the furious Tories to the very Mace, hustled ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... of the details of history, which are always wearisome and usually inaccurate, let us say generally, that the forms of art have been due to the Greek critical spirit. To it we owe the epic, the lyric, the entire drama in every one of its developments, including burlesque, the idyll, the romantic novel, the novel of adventure, the essay, the dialogue, the oration, the lecture, for which perhaps we should not forgive them, and the epigram, in all the wide meaning of that word. In ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... all the fun, the burlesque, the amusing exaggerations and the bombastic humor runs a scheme of advice and instruction. Sometimes it takes the form of a direct caution to the reader, again it may be shown by inference, and lastly the events ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... that which was now afforded by these two races, the phlegmatic, plodding German and the vibrant Irish, a contrast in American life as a whole which was soon represented in miniature on the vaudeville stage by popular burlesque representations of both types. The one was the opposite of the other in temperament, in habits, in personal ambitions. The German sought the land, was content to be let alone, had no desire to command others or to mix with them, but was determined to be ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... hung far out of his mouth. I stopped, perplexed, and asked: 'What do you mean by this screaming? take another piece of gold, take two, but leave me.' He then began again his hideous burlesque of politeness, and snarled out: 'Not gold, not gold, my young gentleman. I have too much of that trash myself, as I will show you ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... began to reflect on the advisability of illustrating it, and bringing in the artist's pencil to aid the writer's pen. I soon resolved to do this, and the third and fourth numbers contained a woodcut on the front page. In the fifth number there appeared an exquisite little burlesque sketch of the Calling of Samuel, by a skilful artist whose name I cannot disclose. Although not ostensibly, it was actually, the first of those Comic Bible Sketches for which the Freethinker afterwards became famous; and from that date, with the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... puerile street fights with slings, of the printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque form of cavalry, called the corps of the Portes Cocheres, formed by a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate, became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the people, at the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... this gloomy writer, who is so mightily scandalised at a gay epilogue after a serious play, speaking of the fate of those unhappy wretches who are condemned to suffer an ignominious death by the justice of our laws, endeavours to make the reader merry on so improper an occasion by those poor burlesque expressions of tragical dramas and monthly performances.—I am, Sir, with great respect, your most obedient, most ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... I. Fellow Travellers with a Bird, II. Children in Midwinter That Pretty Person Out of Town Expression Under the Early Stars The Man with Two Heads Children in Burlesque Authorship Letters The Fields The Barren Shore The Boy Illness The Young Children Fair and Brown ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... went to the "Frivolity," to see the latest rays of the lamp of burlesque. That scene, at any rate, was familiar. There, in all their spotless panoply of expressionless face, and irreproachable shirt-front, sat the golden lads of the Metropolis in their rows, images of bored stupidity, stiffly cased in black and white. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various

... misshapen by storms and floods—or characters gnarled by some interior force working in conjunction with or in opposition to outward circumstances. She draws no monstrosities, or monsters, thus avoiding on the one side romance and on the other burlesque. She keeps to life—the life that fails from "the meanness of opportunity," or is "dispersed among hindrances" or "wrestles" unavailingly ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... gaming-tables, in a few days, or even hours. While a few gained a competence, many gained only a bare subsistence; thousands lost their health, and not a few their lives. It was a strange play that men enacted there, embracing all the confusion, glitter, rapid change of scene, burlesque, and comedy of a pantomime, with many a dash of darkest tragedy intermingled. Tents were pitched in all directions, houses were hastily run up, restaurants of all kinds were opened, boats were turned keel up and ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... our public likely to muster the slightest taste for comic analysis that does not tumble to farce? The doubt reduced her whole MS. to a leaden weight, composed for sinking. Percy's addiction to burlesque was a further hindrance, for she did not perceive how her comedy could be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... men of each village grouped themselves together. Some were garbed in beaver skins, others in the shaggy hide of the bear. Still others were guiltless of apparel, and all bore themselves with an excessive dignity bordering on burlesque. Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost stood by in their sable vestments; and in the midst of all was Champlain surrounded by the soldiers of his garrison. The next two days were given up to trade—a beaver-skin ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... To burlesque such a work as "Norma," then, is to paint the lily, to gild refined gold, to caricature Lord Morpeth, or to attempt to improve PUNCH. Yet the opportunity was too tempting to be wholly overlooked, and a hint having been dropped in one of our "Pencillings," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various

... served on his dining cars do not seem to be suffering from car-sickness. And you can get a beefsteak measuring eighteen inches from tip to tip. There are spring chickens with the most magnificent bust development I ever saw outside of a burlesque show; and the eggs taste as though they might have originated with a hen instead of a cold-storage vault. If there was only a cabaret show going up and down the middle of the car during meals, even the New York passengers would be satisfied with ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... season, the demirep of many, the antiquary, and the dilettanti,—painters, sculptors, engravers, all brought news to the 'Strawberry Gazette;' and incense, sometimes wrung from aching hearts, to the fastidious wit who professed to be a judge of all material and immaterial things—from a burlesque to an Essay on history or Philosophy—from the construction of Mrs. Chenevix's last new toy to the mechanism of a clock made in the sixteenth ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... that "to learn the duties of town, city, and county officers, has nothing whatever to do with the grand and noble subject of Civil Government," and that "to attempt class drill on petty town and county offices, would be simply burlesque of the whole subject." But, suppose one were to say, with an air of ineffable scorn, that petty experiments on terrestrial gravitation and radiant heat, such as can be made with commonplace pendulums and tea-kettles, have nothing ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... the days that remained of her visit passed pleasantly enough. Hetty contrived to turn her lessons into a sort of burlesque, and to impose a good deal on Miss Davis, who was not a humorous, but indeed a most matter-of-fact person. Every day Phyllis grew more and more disgusted with their visitor, who interrupted the even course of their studies and ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... mean to give offence," said the Idiot. "I've read so much of yours that was purely humorous that I believe I'd laugh at a dirge if you should write one; but I really thought your lines in the Observer were a burlesque. You had the same thought that Rossetti expresses ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs

... children, but you can't bring in a Bill for reforming us. You can't make us go by decimals. You can't increase our consumption by lowering our taxation. I wish you had gone back to some Board." This she said looking up into his face with an anxiety which was half real and half burlesque. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... very early period; there appears also to have been another such temple either at or near Athens,[105] where we must look for the scene of the ridiculous cure which Aristophanes makes Aesculapius to perform on the blind god of riches. Though there is undoubtedly a rich vein of the burlesque in the Plutus of the Grecian dramatist, yet we may gather much concerning our present subject from the scene in which the slave, who had attended Plutus in the Temple, relates the whole process of his master's wife. Here also the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... burlesque solemnity, and sank down with his fragile cup into the most comfortable of the Louis Quinze ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... nor Ben-Zayb, nor Padre Irene, nor Padre Camorra knew it, so they begged for the story, some in jest and others from genuine curiosity. The priest, adopting the tone of burlesque with which some had made their request, began like an old tutor ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... by any chance have dreamed of that stately honor. His ambitions did not lie in the direction of mental achievement. It is true that now and then, on Friday at school, he read a composition, one of which—a personal burlesque on certain older boys—came near resulting in bodily damage. But any literary ambition he may have had in those days was a fleeting thing. His permanent dream was to be a pirate, or a pilot, or a bandit, or a trapper-scout; something gorgeous and active, where ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Bible, of course, and Aesop, Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, and a few histories, these last unfortunately of the poorer sort. He early displayed a bent for composition, scribbling verses that were very poor, and writing burlesque tales about his acquaintances in what passed ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... the address, retired with the usual profound obeisances, which not only amused the spectators, but afforded much diversion to her majesty, whose mode of smiling indicated how much she enjoyed the burlesque of the scene. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... face of the girl. She looked at the young man with fine disdain, as a great lady might reprove with a glance the man who snapped a camera at her. "Yes?" she asked. "Well, what are you going to do about it—arrest me?" Mocking him, in a burlesque of melodrama, she held out her arms. "Don't put the handcuffs on me," ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... tongue. Natacha could do nothing but cry, "My God, my God, my God!" Feodor held onto his stomach, still crying, "I'm burning, I'm burning!" The scene was frightfully tragic and funny at the same time. To add to the burlesque, the general's watch in his pocket struck eight o'clock. Feodor Feodorovitch stood up in a final supreme effort. "Oh, it is horrible!" Matrena Petrovna showed a red, almost violet face as she came back; she distorted it, she choked, her mouth twitched, but she brought something, a little ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... adopt you. Only don't be cross, little goosey. Let us go into the garden." Young Musgrave made such a burlesque of his remorse that Bessie, wounded but skin-deep, was fain to laugh too and be friends again. And thereupon they went forth together ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... which starts the heroic agility of his tongue, and he writes a long letter without a full stop, which is as full of substance as one of his essays. His technique is so incredibly fine, he is such a Paganini of prose, that he can invent and reverse an idea of pyramidal wit, as in this burlesque of a singer: 'The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that the time, to a common air or ballad, keeps ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Kyhlamske vech C. Bredahl: Kiobenhavn, 1834. It is a mixture of tragedy and farce: the former occasionally good, the latter poor buffoonery. In the notes, readings of the old MS. are referred to with apparent seriousness; but Gammel Gumba's Saga is quoted in a manner that seems burlesque. I cannot find the word "Kyhlam" in any dictionary. Can any of your readers tell me whether it signifies a real country, or is a mere fiction? The work does not read like a translation; and, if one, the number of modern allusions show that it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... "Salmagundi," Irving in connection with his brother Peter projected the work that was to make him famous. At first nothing more was intended than a satire upon the "Picture of New York," by Dr. Samuel Mitchell, just then published. It was begun as a mere burlesque upon pedantry and erudition, and was well advanced, when Peter was called by his business to Europe, and its completion was fortunately left to Washington. In his mind the idea expanded into a different conception. He condensed the mass of affected learning, which was their joint work, into five ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... from the groove human nature has laid down. There is exaggeration, but no distortion. The most wildly funny people are low comedians of the highest order, whose fun is never forced and never fails; they found themselves on fact, and only burlesque what they have seen in actual life—they never evolve their fun from the depths of their inner consciousness; and in this naturalness, for me, lies the greatness of Leech. There is nearly always a tenderness ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier

... ballets. These charming improvisations turned the children's heads and made their legs nimble. He led them just as he chose, making them pass, according to his fancy, from the amusing to the severe, from burlesque to solemnity—now graceful, now impassioned. We invented all kinds of costumes, so as to play different characters in succession. No sooner did the artist see them appear than he adapted his theme and rhythm to the parts wonderfully. This ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings, we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the assembly which we are ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... engine. Have been a freight and passenger brakeman, fired and ran a locomotive; also a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque and dramatic productions; have been with good shows, bad shows, medicine shows, and worse, and some shows where we had landlords singing in the chorus. Have played variety houses and vaudeville houses; have slept in a box car one night, and a swell hotel the next; have been a traveling ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart

... service of history that "knack ... for selecting the striking and interesting points out of dull details," which he felt was his endowment.[412] The original introduction to the Tales of the Crusaders has the following burlesque announcement of his intention, in the words of the Eidolon Chairman: "I intend to write the most wonderful book which the world ever read—a book in which every incident shall be incredible, yet strictly true—a work recalling recollections ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... inserted the following poetic vignette in their City Mouse and Country Mouse, written in burlesque of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... made some remarks on the corruptions, or, as they are called, alterations and adaptations of the plays of Shakspeare. As he has not prosecuted the subject, I will, with your permission, say a word or two on that vilest and most infamous of literary treasons, Tate's burlesque of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... imagine whether these now wonderful, now charming improvisations quickened the brains and made supple the legs of our performers. He led them as he pleased and made them pass, according to his fancy, from the droll to the severe, from the burlesque to the solemn, from the graceful to the passionate. We improvised costumes in order to play successively several roles. As soon as the artist saw them appear, he adapted his theme and his accent in a marvellous ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... he asked, negligently; and his easy burlesque of her name was like the familiarity of the rest of him. He was one of those full-bodied, grossly handsome men who are powerful and active, but never submit themselves to the rigour of becoming athletes, though they shoot and ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... "I regret very much to inform you that owing to the indisposition of the young lady, Miss Beatrice Franklin and her father are unable to appear to-night. I have pleasure in announcing an extra turn, namely the Sisters De Vere in their wonderful burlesque act." ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... notes of my impressions I finally got upstairs again to bed. It was four o'clock in the morning. I laughed all the way up—at the grotesque banisters, the droll physiognomy of the staircase window, the burlesque grouping of the furniture, and the memory of that outrageous footstool in the room below; but nothing more happened to alarm or disturb me, and I woke late in the morning after a dreamless sleep, none the worse for my experiment except for a slight headache and a coldness of the extremities ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... Abbess are the subjects of the next two cuts. In the former, Death has assumed the mitre and the crosier of his victim, and drags him off with such an expression of fun and burlesque pomp as we sometimes see in the face of a mischievous boy who mocks his betters. In the companion group his look is that of a demon; and with his head fantastically dressed, he drags the Abbess off by the scapulary which hangs from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... surrendered the Castle of Edinburgh on June 13th, after a resistance which towards the end assumed the character almost of a burlesque. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... bed, crosses down stage to lower left side of bed, sits facing LAURA.] But I do care. I know how you feel with an old cat for a landlady and living up here on a side street with a lot of cheap burlesque people. Why, the room's cold [LAURA rises, crosses to window.], and there's no hot water, and you're beginning to look shabby. You haven't got a job—chances are you won't have one. What does [Indicating picture on bed with thumb.] this fellow out there do for you? Send you ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... was in due course published. Philips was furious, and providing himself with a birch rod, threatened to flog Pope. The latter, not content with his ingenious revenge, prevailed upon his friend Gay to continue the warfare and to burlesque Philips' performances in a series of realistic representations of country life."[3] Gay entered into the sport with joy—it was a game after his own heart, and one for which his talent was particularly fitted. He begins his "Proeme to the Gentle Reader" with a most palpable hit: ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... embers of the bivouac-fire. Never had we seen him so utterly unlike himself as on this burlesque of a scout, and now that we were virtually homeward-bound, and empty-handed too, he was completely weighed down by the consciousness of our lost opportunities. If something could only have happened to Gleason before the start, so that the command might ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... forehead; and, for a last adornment, the collar of his shirt and that of his coat came so high that his head seemed enveloped like a bunch of flowers in a horn of paper. Add to these queer accessories, which were combined in utter want of harmony, the burlesque contradictions in color of yellow trousers, scarlet waistcoat, cinnamon coat, and a correct idea will be gained of the supreme good taste which all dandies blindly obeyed in the first years of the Consulate. This costume, utterly uncouth, seemed to have been invented as a final ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... Rue Honore the coachman struck his cocked hat against a burlesque effigy of Marat swinging from the cord of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... of moderation. Many were intoxicated; guests and attendants mingled together without distinction, the serious and the ludicrous; drunken fancies and affairs of state were blended one with another in a burlesque medley; and the discussions on the general distress of the country ended in the wild uproar of a bacchanalian revel. But it did not stop here; what they had resolved on in the moment of intoxication, they attempted when sober to carry into execution. It was necessary to manifest to the people in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... any nursery maid and her young man, while her groom stood at the brougham door in the bridle-path beyond. He had broken off a sprig of the box one day and given it to her, and she had kissed it foolishly, and laughed, and hidden it in the folds of her riding-skirt, in burlesque fear lest the guards should arrest them for breaking the ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... is a word used in the theatrical business to distinguish the full-evening drama, its actors, producers, and its mechanical stage from those of burlesque and vaudeville. Originally coined as a word of reproach against vaudeville, it has lost its sting and is used by vaudevillians as well ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... every way did honour to her progenitors. As the reader is aware, there is what is known as a "cultivated voice," the result of education—it is absolutely without affectation: there is also the voice which, in imitation of the well-trained one, is little more than a burlesque, and is affected in the highest degree: this was the only ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... paint brushes and shillings of admission. Mr. Sambourne is excellent, too, at adaptations of popular pictures,—witness the more than happy parodies of Herrman's "A Bout d'Arguments," and "Une Bonne Histoire." His book-illustrations have been comparatively few, those to Burnand's laughable burlesque of "Sandford and Merton" being among the best. Rumour asserts that he is at present engaged upon Kingsley's "Water Babies," a subject which might almost be supposed to have been created for his pencil. There are indications, it may be added, that Mr. Sambourne's talents are by no means ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... a university professor,[117] and had something of Luis de Leon's fearlessness.[118] Zuniga (alias Rodriguez) was a man of a very different type: pedantically attached to the letter of the law, morbidly scrupulous on points of discipline. There seems to be no touch of burlesque intention in Luis de Leon's presentment of the man. According to Luis de Leon, Zuniga (alias Rodriguez) was half-crazed with vanity, much given to boasting of the esteem in which he was held at the Papal Court. On one ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... The ancients, he said, surpassed the moderns in poetry, painting, oratory, history, architecture, and, in fact, all arts and sciences which depend more on genius than on experience. It was no lightening of the judgment when he added that the moderns surpass the ancients in doggerel, humour burlesque, and all the trivial arts of ridicule, the arts of the "unlucky little wits." So degraded had wit become! In the Adventurer, nos. 127 and 133, Joseph Warton showed himself to be essentially in agreement with Addison's verdict, differing only ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton

... supper after they got home, and Polly gave them a burlesque opera that convulsed her hearers, for her spirits rose again and she was determined to get the last drop of fun before she went back ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... about Miss Owens to one of the somewhat older married ladies who were kind to him, the wife of one of his colleagues. She ought to have burnt his letter, but she preserved it to kindle mild gossip after his death. It is a burlesque account of his whole adventure, describing, with touches of very bad taste, his disillusionment with the now maturer charms of Miss Owens when her sister brought her back to New Salem, and making comedy of his own ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... Californian's Tale A Helpless Situation A Telephonic Conversation Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale The Five Boons of Life The First Writing-machines Italian without a Master Italian with Grammar A Burlesque Biography How to Tell a Story General Washington's Negro Body-servant Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds" An Entertaining Article A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Amended Obituaries A Monument to Adam A Humane Word ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and delighting to turn even matters of seriousness into ridicule, was immeasurably captivated by the true burlesque of those disputes, the childish virulence, the extravagant pretensions, and the still more extravagant impostures fabricated in support of the rival pre-eminence in absurdity; the visions of half-mad nuns and friars; the Convulsionaries; the miracles at the tomb of the Abbe ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... written in the early part of the revolutionary war to burlesque the meeting of the country militia, and afterwards became very popular. Although Brown had not much voice, he managed to give a correct and exceedingly laughable expression to ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... of their previous travels. They were not allowed to leave Vienna, however, without a ray of sunshine to cheer them on their homeward journey. Wolfgang had written an operetta, 'Bastien und Bastienne,' founded upon a burlesque of one of Rousseau's operas, and he had the pleasure of hearing his little work performed before a select company of connoisseurs, and of receiving their praises. Nor would the Emperor let him depart without a further ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... for school, and a mother for a school-mistress—is not absolutely new or original; but, again, what matters this to anyone, so long as the new shape given to the old material is genuinely amusing? So "farcical" goes with "original." But now, as to its being a "Romance?" Would not the term "burlesque" be a better term than "Farcical Romance?" The characters of the three adventurous lovers are not less burlesque than were those of the three Knights in ALBERT SMITH'S romantic Extravaganza, The Alhambra, played then by ALFRED WIGAN, and Mr. and Mrs. KEELEY. So if I may take it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... means of a touch of gum on the insect's back, and had placed in the grasp of each fly a piece of pine an inch long, cut into the shape of a rifle. The walking motion of the fly's feet twirled and balanced the stick in rather droll burlesque of musketry drill; and a dozen of these insects-at-arms, disposed in open order on the counter, were ministering ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... amicably in obedience to him." By virtue of this injunction, the Guises, the Colignies, and the Montmorencies ended by embracing, the first-named accommodating themselves with a pretty good grace to this demonstration: "but God knows what embraces!" [Words used in La Harenga, a satire of the day in burlesque verse upon the Cardinal of Lorraine.] Six years later the St. Bartholomew brought the true sentiments out ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... if she could double and quadruple 530 At pleasure the play of either pupil —Very like, by her hands' slow fanning, As up and down like a gor-crow's flappers They moved to measure, or bell-clappers. I said, "Is it blessing, is it banning, 535 Do they applaud you or burlesque you Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?" But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue, At once I was stopped by the lady's expression: For it was life her eyes were drinking 540 From the crone's wide pair above unwinking, —Life's ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... novelty of which caused them to succeed for a few years. One of the earliest productions of this kind, which distinguished him as a painter, is supposed to have been a representation of Wanstead Assembly; the figures in it were drawn from the life, and without burlesque. The faces were said to bear great likenesses to the persons so drawn, and to be rather better coloured than some of his more finished performances. Grace, however, was no attribute of his pencil; and he was more disposed to aggravate, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... rout:—but we will say nothing of it just yet. Polish Confederation—horror-struck, as may be imagined, at its auxiliary Brother of the Sun and Moon and his performances—is weltering in violently impotent spasms into deeper and ever deeper wretchedness, Friedrich sometimes thinking of a Burlesque Poem on the subject;—though the Russian successes, and the Austrian grudgings and gloomings, are rising on him as a very serious consideration. "Is there no method, then, of allowing Russia to prosecute its Turk War in spite of Austria and its umbrages?" thinks Friedrich ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... said he, "I know it is an age of burlesque. But let us spare the sacraments, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... most unlucky dexterity, mixes the grand and the burlesque together; the violation of faith, sir, says Cassius, lies at the door of the Rhodians by reite-rated acts of perfidy.—The iron grate fell down, crushed those under it to death, and catched the rest as in a trap.—When the Xanthians heard the military shout, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... cravat added to the martial appearance of this six-foot mystery, with eyes of jet and Italian fervor. The amplitude of his pleated trousers, which allowed only the tips of his boots to be seen, revealed his faithfulness to the fashions of his own land. There was something really burlesque to a romantic woman in the striking contrast no one could fail to remark between the captain and the count, the little Pole with his pinched face and ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac

... to prove that an impugner of algebra could attempt ridicule. He was, in 1803, editor of a periodical The Gentleman's Monthly Miscellany, which lasted a few months.[474] To this, among other things, he contributed the following, in burlesque of the use made of 0, to which he objected.[475] The imitation of Rabelais, a writer {209} in whom he delighted, is good: to those who have never dipped, it may give such a notion as they would not easily get elsewhere. The point of the satire is not so good. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... Boucicault; by the resuscitation of the spectacle play, with its lavish tinsel and calcium glare and its multitudinous nymphs; by the opera bouffe, with its frequent licentious ribaldry; by the music-hall comedian, with his vulgar realism; and by the idiotic burlesque; with its futile babble and its big-limbed, half-naked girls. Nevertheless there are just as good actors now living as have ever lived, and there is just as fine a sense of dramatic art in the community as ever existed in any of "the palmy days"; only, what was ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... money, or taxes, or any thing else when yer honor is near? Will yer enter me tent and partake of me hospitalities?" demanded Pat, with a serious face, and a show of politeness that was refreshing, knowing as I did that it was intended as burlesque. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... Burlesque, that is comic imitation, comprises parody and caricature. The latter is a valuable addition to humorous narrative, as we see in the sketches of Gillray, Cruikshank and others. By itself it is not sufficiently suggestive and affords no story or conversation. Hence in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... if a Sir Launcelot had appeared in fiction one or two generations earlier, had the fact been recognised (which is not indubitable) that he bore the name of the most celebrated knight of later Arthurian romance, he would have been nothing but a burlesque figure. But in 1760, literary taste was changing. Romanticism in literature had begun to come to the front again, as Smollett had already shown by his romantic leanings in Count Fathom. With it there came interest in the Middle ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... once came to my mind that no Portsmouth Poll would ever wait for me. Did you ever hear anything so ridiculously absurd—such a bit of maudlin nonsense. I laughed at myself afterwards. It gave me a good, idea, though. I'll compose a burlesque, and ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... and preparing for wider fields. Then he acted the rollicking Irishman to perfection; the real live Yankee, with his genuine mannerisms and dialect, with proper spirit and without ridiculous exaggeration, and the Negro, so open to burlesque. The special charm of his acting in those characters was his artistic execution. He never stooped to vulgarities, his humor was quaint and spontaneous, and the entire absence of apparent effort in his performance gave his audience a most favorable impression ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... the reception of his confidences had I not been able at times to understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal—a degradation of funny grimaces in the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... be on the same street car. A drizzle softens the windows. She sits with her pasty face and her dull, little eyes looking out at the dripping street. Her cotton suit curls at the lapels. The ends of her shoes curl like a pair of burlesque Oriental slippers. She holds her hands in her lap. Red, thick fingers that whisper tiredly, "We have worked," lie in ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... cannot trust a man who, unless he is intending a burlesque, can bring himself to write like that. Crabbe not only brings himself to it, but rejoices and luxuriates in the style. The tale from which that last luckless distich is taken, "The Elder Brother," is full of pathos and about equally full of false notes. If we turn to a far different ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... received my first ignorance of his plagiaristic tendency as if I had known all about it: and years after Aytoun had (as I was told) avenged justice by that cleverest of spasmodic poetries, "Firmilian, by Percy Jones"—a burlesque on Alexander Smith, and a book which the world has too willingly let die. Let no one, however, after all this, fancy that I am unaware of Alexander Smith's true merit. He very neatly fitted into his ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... stage: Jaques had been a player where he ought to have been a true man. The whole of his account of human life is contradicted and exposed at once by the entrance, the very moment when he has finished his wicked burlesque, of Orlando, the young master, carrying Adam, the old servant, upon his back. The song that immediately follows, sings true: "Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly." But between the all of Jaques and the most of the song, there is just the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... new belles lettres of that new time, to such grave and politic uses was first suggested; he is the genius of that company, that even in such frolic mad-cap games as Love's Labour's Lost, and the Taming of the Shrew, and Midsummer Night's Dream, could contrive to insert, not the broad farce and burlesque on the old pretentious wordy philosophy and pompous rhetoric it was meant to dethrone only, and not the most perilous secret of the new philosophy, only, but the secret of its organ of delivery and tradition, the secret of its use of letters, the secret of its ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... ancestors more than these blind encounters; even kings took part at these burlesque representations. At Mid-Lent annually they attended with their court at the Quinze-Vingts, in Paris, in order to see blindfold persons, armed from head to foot, fighting with a lance or stick. This amusement was quite sufficient to attract all Paris. In 1425, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... what was really beautiful and charming in the scene. I thought most of the priests, very good and gentle looking,—and in all respects they were much pleasanter to the eye than the monks of the Carmelite order, who, in shaving their heads to simulate the Saviour's crown of thorns, produce a hideous burlesque of the divine humiliation. Yet many even of these had earnest and sincere faces, and I could not think so much as I ought, perhaps, of their idle life, and the fleas in their coarse brown cloaks. I confess, indeed, I felt ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... story was at first received in this community—and which found utterance in a burlesque article in an obscure country journal, the Stars and Stripes, of Auburn—has finally been dispelled, and we find ourselves forced to admit that we stand even now in the presence of the most alarming fate. Too much credit cannot be awarded to our worthy coroner for the promptitude ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... into which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend; think how unpleasant a situation! He bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke {82} of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel, and flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop hovering over him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... such attempts, are totally unlike the original, which the writers imagined they were turning into ridicule. There is not similarity enough for burlesque, or even for caricature. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... beauty; won for them the cordial and unanimous praise of the press throughout the Union, and frequent laudatory notices from the English journals. Reminiscences of early days; expositions of the Ludicrous and the Burlesque, in amusing Anecdote; Limnings from Nature; and 'Records of the Heart,' were among their prominent characteristics. It is not too much to say of the other Prose Writings which the volume will contain, that although of a somewhat different character, they are in no respect ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... observed to Barty that his father often made jokes worthy of Tom Hood, to which Barty agreed hastily, as he did not know who Tom Hood was, and besides was flirting in a mild manner with Miss Fanny Wopples, a pretty girl, who did the burlesque business. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... the odd medley in the suburbs of Paris. Retired opera-singers, Bohemians who have made a fortune by chance, superseded politicians, officials who have perfected libeling into an art, and reformed female celebrities of the dancing-gardens and burlesque theatres. But, as society is constituted, it would have earned him the reputation of a tyrant if he had refused her receiving and returning the visits of the venerable Marchioness de Latour-Lagneau, to whom the Bishop always accorded an hour during his pastoral ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... from no restraint in consequence of his marriage. He is adored by a certain class of burlesque actresses. He flatters them by adoring himself. He owns a small house in Belgravia, but he frequently lives elsewhere. No pigeon-shooting matches, and few poker parties, amongst a certain set, are complete without him. Having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... of the dining-room door, and realises that his scent is not so good as he had thought it. He bids his hostess and the COMTESSE good-bye in a burlesque whisper and tiptoes off to safer places. JOHN having gone out with him, MAGGIE can no longer avoid the COMTESSE's reproachful eye. That much injured lady advances upon her with ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie

... 1728, and at once took London by storm. A letter of Mrs. Pendarves, dated January 19, but evidently continued later, tells us that she went to a rehearsal of Siroe: "I like it extremely, but the taste of the town is so depraved, that nothing will be approved of but the burlesque. The Beggar's Opera entirely triumphs over the Italian one." Even Mrs. Pendarves could not help enjoying it, once she ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... changed from a Princess to a Shop-Lifter and was assigned to Cissy St. Vitus, late of a Burlesque Bunch known ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade



Words linked to "Burlesque" :   lampoon, sendup, put-on, parody, mockery, spoof, show, charade, caricature, mock



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com