"Proscenium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he allowed us to have a night with the children. Well, we removed a partition in the school-room dividing the boys' from the girls' department, and made a sort of shake-down stage at one end of the room, and with a scene and proscenium the place looked like a pretty little theatre. There was a crowded audience for our performance, including the vicar and Mrs Mayne, the curate of St. John's (who, by-the-way, was a coloured gentleman), Mr John Butterfield, brother of Mr H. I. Butterfield, of Cliffe Castle, and, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... dark again, falling, falling, gripping with aching hands, and behold! a clap of sound, a burst of light, and he was in a brightly lit hall with a roaring multitude of people beneath his feet. The people! His people! A proscenium, a stage rushed up towards him, and his cable swept down to a circular aperture to the right of this. He felt he was travelling slower, and suddenly very much slower. He distinguished shouts of "Saved! The Master. He is safe!" The stage rushed up towards ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... lovers: To bed, to bed was the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my troth, of such a mingling much might come. Young Stephen said indeed to his best remembrance they had but ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... red plush curtain parted in the center and drew in graceful folds to the edges of the proscenium. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... with his left hand and saws away violently with the other; the triangle, who has fallen perhaps into a Euclidian dream, sits up and gets a move on; the stevedore—no, no, that is the next chapter—the oboe, the French horn, the kettledrum, the euphonium, the proscenium, the timbrel, the hautboy, the sackbut-and-ashes—all get a grip of the ground with both feet and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... develop that sense of good-fellowship which is inseparable from the traditions of the London hall. Intimacy is its very essence, and how can a man be intimate on a stage measuring something like seventy feet in length, a hundred feet in depth, with a proscenium over sixty feet high, facing an auditorium seating three thousand persons, and separated from them by a marbled orchestra enclosure four or five times as wide as it should be. It is pathetic to see George Mozart or ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... got up a theater party—her husband was always fond of the diversion of the theater. The party was to include General and Mrs. Grant. But the general's plans required him to go that evening to Philadelphia, and so Major Rathbone and Miss Harris were substituted. This party occupied the upper proscenium box on ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the hill. One of the most remarkable things here is the Olympic Theatre, which was begun by Palladio and finished by his son. It is a small Grecian theatre, exactly as he supposes those ancient theatres to have been, with the same proscenium, scenes, decorations, and seats for the audience. There appeared to me to be some material variations from the theatre at Pompeii. In the latter the seats go down to the level of the orchestra, which they do not here, and at ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... unconsciousness of the person who caused it. She went through her role with admirable aplomb, drew her salary, it may be assumed, punctually, and appears from first to last to have been ignorant that there was a miserable slave wearing her chains nightly in the left-hand proscenium box. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... delight in allowing themselves to be tyrannized over by a feeble being, and Gaudissart had found his tyrant in Jenny. He was bringing her home at eleven o'clock from the Gymnase, whither he had taken her, in full dress, to a proscenium ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... his handiworks, De Loutherbourg was especially adroit. He abandoned the unnatural system (introduced by Garrick on his return from the Continent in 1765) of lighting the stage by means of a flaming line of footlights, and ranged his lamps above the proscenium, out of sight of the audience. Before his lamps he placed slips of stained glass—yellow, red, green, blue, and purple; and by shifting these, or happily combining them, was enabled to tint his scenes so as to represent various hours of the day and different actions of light. His 'Storm at Sea ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... cumber the main entrance, and looked on the spacious arena and galleries within. Although greatly ruined, the materials of the whole structure remain, and might be put together again. It is a grand wreck; the colossal fragments which have tumbled from the arched proscenium fill the arena, and the rows of seats, though broken and disjointed, still retain their original order. It is somewhat more than a semicircle, the radius being about one hundred and eighty feet. The original height was ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historians must not linger after ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... dripped poison! He was drenched with it. How lightly Hermia's name had dropped from her satin wings! He smiled grimly at the thought of his own situation, the central figure in at least one act of this comedy, viewing it from the far side of the proscenium arch, gaping like the rustic in the metropolis who sees himself for the first time depicted upon the stage. What right had she—this little flutter-budget—to know these things—when he was denied them? Hermia—the report of her engagement had been disturbing, but ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... theatre, the stage was brought nearer to the audience (the arc not exceeding a semi-circle), and made considerably deeper than in the Greek theatre. The length of the stage was twice the diameter of the orchestra. The Roman orchestra contained no thymele. The back of the stage, or proscenium, was adorned with niches, and columns, and friezes of great richness, as may be seen in some of the theatres of Asia Minor, and in the larger theatre at Pompeii, which belong to ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being the back of the scene, the space left be- tween it and the chord of the semicircle (of the audi- torium) which formed the proscenium is rather less than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was very shallow, and appears to have been ar- ranged for a number of performers standing in a line, like a company of soldiers. There stands the silent ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... boxes present the same scene of confusion: actresses and courtesans, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics solemn of manner and frowning, lying back in their chairs with the impassive gloom of judges beyond the reach of corruption. The proscenium boxes are ablaze with light and splendor, occupied by celebrities of the world of finance, decolletee, bare-armed women, gleaming with jewels like the Queen of Sheba when she visited the King of the Jews. But one of those great boxes on the left ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... side by side, seemed a museum of familiar countenances, society men, artists, journalists, the whole category of those that never fail to go where everyone else goes. In the balcony and in the boxes he noted and named to himself the women he recognized. The Comtesse de Lochrist, in a proscenium box, was absolutely ravishing, while a little farther on a bride, the Marquise d'Ebelin, was already looking through her lorgnette. "That is a pretty debut," said ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... boxes (no, pews), and wondering if, when the Last Trump sounded, Mrs. Selfridge Merry would be there with the same towering ostrich feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Beaufort with the same diamond earrings and the same smile—and whether suitable proscenium seats were already prepared for ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... corners, and, notwithstanding its indisputable dimensions, has managed to screen it from observation, he has thereby smelt out several pretty little affairs, which shall in due time be exhibited and explained in front of his proscenium, for special amusement. In the mean time, to prove that PUNCH is tolerably well up in this line of pseudo-criticism, he has prepared the following description of the private view of either the Royal Academy or the Suffolk-street Gallery, or the British Institution, for 1842, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Then in the perfect freedom of privacy he said repeatedly, "My wife! my good Louise! Truly, she should be well satisfied." The truth is, that the desire to see the Emperor at the theater was so great in Paris, that as he always took his place in the box at the side, opening on the proscenium, each time that he made his appearance there the boxes situated on the opposite side of the hall were rented at incredible figures, and even the uppermost tiers were preferred to those from which they could not see him easily. No one who lived ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... rapturous applause, and received it with a "decent dignity," very unlike the leering smiles with which, in general, a danseuse thinks it necessary to advance to the front of the proscenium, shewing all her teeth, as she lowly ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... circle of the soldiery, and bubbled with impotent suggestions and reverential laughter at the witticisms of Mr. Taylour. Fanny Fitz and Captain Carteret finally removed themselves to a grimy corner behind the proscenium, and there practised, sotto voce, the song with banjo accompaniment that was to culminate in the hornpipe. Freddy Alexander had gone forth to purchase a pack of cards, in the futile hope that he could prevail ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... write it in great plays which open the dark chambers of the soul and make the heart stand still; or sing it in sweet and terrible verse, full-throated utterance of man's pride and hope and passion. Some act it before the altar or beneath the proscenium arch; some speak it, now in Cassandra-tones, now comfortably like shepherds of frail sheep. These folk are the brothers-in-blood, the fellow craftsmen of the preacher. By a silly convention, he is almost forbidden to consult ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... catskin cap and the chocolate-colored tights: on this occasion he was dressed like a little gentleman. In one balcony I caught a momentary glimpse of Votini, with a large lace collar; then he disappeared. In a proscenium box, filled with people, was the artillery captain, the father of Robetti, the boy with the crutches who saved the child from ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... a stage that overlooked the chairs Where dozens sat, and where a pop—eyed daub Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: "Whether to lie supine and let a clique Cold-blooded, scheming, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... the four principal boxes on both sides of the proscenium were adorned with pretty women, but not a single gentleman. In the interval between the first and second acts I saw gentlemen of all classes paying their devoirs to these ladies. Suddenly I heard a Knight of Malta say to a girl, who ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... bowing low to the meaningless compliments and remarks of General Harero, and now smiling at some pleasantry of Ruez who was close to her side, and now again regarding for a moment the tall, manly figure of an officer near the proscenium box, who was on duty there, and evidently the officer of the evening. This may sound odd to a republican, but no assembly, no matter how unimportant, is permitted, except under the immediate eye and supervision of ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... end of the house of Prometheus, and seemed all of goldsmiths' work. The women of Prometheus descended from their niches, till the anger of Jupiter turned them again into statues. It is evident, too, that the size of the proscenium, or stage, accorded with the magnificence of the scene; for I find choruses described, "and changeable conveyances of the song," in manner of an echo, performed by more than forty different voices and instruments in various parts of the scene. The architectural decorations were the pride ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Chinese theatre, are compositions that would impart to any book the interest of adventure and the zest of novelty. Such pictures as those have a broad background; they are not circumscribed within the proscenium frame. The man is seen in those passages as well as the actor; and he plays his part well, amid picturesque surroundings of evil and peril, of tragedy and of pathos. In Australia Jefferson met Charles Kean and his wife (Ellen Tree), of whom his sketches ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... if that wasn't enough, the County Councillor has or- dered a four-foot wall to be built up right across the proscenium, in ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... music-hall. Indeed, that is what it must once have been. But now there were tiers of benches on the stage; and on these was packed a quarter or so of the members and their friends. The other three-quarters or so were packed opposite the proscenium and down either side of the hall. And in the middle of this human oblong was a raised platform, roped around. Therefrom, just as I was ushered to my place, a stout man in evening dress was making some announcement. I did not catch ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm |
