Sentence Examples:
Neither did she approve of seeing them, as now, seated together over that ridiculous farce of pothooks.
Inasmuch as the spectators were left uninformed as to the result of the race, the event was a farce.
They are at best indifferent farce, and cannot be even called excrescences on the main action, inasmuch as they do not grow out of it at all.
He was a writer of verses, farces, and comedies, a musician, and a man of great talent and accomplishments; but he was a profligate, absolutely insincere and without principle.
No harm will come of all the sentimental strutting and the romantic attitudinizing, other than viewing the scene, later, in perspective, as a rather amusing bit of emotional farce.
He drew direct from life; in so far as he idealized, he did so not in obedience to scholarly precepts or dogmatic theories, but in the immediate interests of good-natured farce and tender-hearted sentiment.
These plays, carried about the country, taken up by the baser sort of people, descended through all degrees of farce to obscenity, and, in England, becoming entangled in politics, at length disappeared.
It was not entirely out of keeping with what was to follow that a huge and bewhiskered Russian should have staged the prologue of what was later to assume something of the nature of an international farce.
It cited the charges first brought by Sargent, copied Sargent's first statement in full, and then charged that the profligate use of money had done more than anything else to make the elective franchise a farce.
To give their brutalities the semblance of right, they improvise two pompous demonstrations, first, the sudden manufacture of a paper constitution, which molders away in their archives, and next, the scandalous farce of a hollow and compulsory plebiscite.
The miserable farce of circulating copies of a work, and then alleging that the publication had become a necessary measure of self-defense, was one of those transparent pretences which deceived no one except the person who fancied that he was deceiving.
Comedy presents us with the imperfections of human nature: Farce entertains us with what is monstrous and chimerical. Farce was theoretically unpopular because it relied on the extravagant and unnatural, as opposed to the play of real character found in comedy.
Battles, embassies, farce, orations, death, and much else mingle together, each scene being treated like another and no discernible method being followed in their arrangement or proportion, except that of a loose adherence to the scheme of "a life and death."
High Comedy represents those follies which, however striking they may be, are reconcilable with the ordinary course of things; whatever forms a singular exception, and is only conceivable amid an utter perversion of ideas, belongs to the arbitrary exaggeration of farce.
Had the Habeas Corpus Act been suspended in November, and the farce of Irish patriotism been hindered from turning into a burlesque tragedy, for one person whom it would have been necessary to imprison or transport, fifty must now undergo that punishment.
In the midst of this riot of tyranny, while the nation yet seethed with indignation at the outrageous electoral farce imposed upon it, the first Centennial of Mexican independence was being celebrated before the foreign diplomats with unprecedented pomp and display.
Then, unless the whole universe is a farce, and religion and the soul impostures, they are the most practical and practicable of all possible principles, because otherwise the soul's salvation could not be made by beneficent Omnipotence dependent upon fidelity to them.
After a quarter of an hour, he started again the same farce and repeated it often during the evening; he mimicked as if he were calling a person on the second floor and giving her equivocal advices drawn from his imagination of a commercial traveler.
The classical principles in this respect, and the practical consequences which flow from them, are more like a humorous farce than an institution of justice; and it is only the force of habit which prevents the world from realizing its full comicality.
It is impossible, utterly impossible, that I should lend myself to the sanctimonious farce, when I thought the moment propitious for acting with determination I have made superhuman efforts to free you from your own fanaticism, but, as you know, it has proved impossible.
The attitude of the so-called Egyptian Nationalist Party in connection with this murder has shown that they were neither desirous nor capable of guaranteeing even that primary justice the failure to supply which makes self-government not merely an empty but a noxious farce.
Though naturally averse to everything requiring study or application, Marie Antoinette was very assiduous in preparing herself for the parts she performed in the various comedies, farces, and cantatas given at her private theater; and their acquirement seemed to cost her no trouble.
The comedy I had seen had convinced me that farce, inanity, and supreme nonsense, might not only pass current but find partisans; yet proofs in abundance were on record that genius itself had no security against faction, envy, and mistaken opposition.
Sometimes persons were severely punished for the performance of this farce, and when any individuals experienced some great misfortune, they often imagined that it had arisen in consequence of their image having been made by their enemy, and maltreated in the manner described.
And since we were concerned not with a light comedy or farce, but with a grand opera, and one which, in spite of the trifling character of its music, contained numerous and powerful concerted passages, the undertaking might have been regarded almost as foolhardy.
Extraordinarily bold in both capacities, and sometimes, perhaps, as usually happens in these cases, a little too bold; but in meter practically never, in rhyme very seldom (and then only for purposes of designed contrast, like the farce in tragedy), overstepping actual bounds.
Thirdly, farce and melodrama, indeed all drama depending predominantly on mere situation, may succeed, though lacking individualization of character, with any audience which, like the Roman or the Elizabethan, gladly hears the same stories or sees the same figures handled differently by different writers.
Others called it a mock marriage, a formal marriage, a sham marriage, fictitious marriage, a marriage sacrament, the preliminary part of marriage, a meaningless ceremony, an empty form, a ridiculous farce, an incongruous custom, a waste of money, and a device for becoming involved in debt.
A baker, taking home ready-cooked joints to the respective owners, is pausing awhile to enjoy the farces transacting around him, while the lamplighter, perched on a ladder above to attend his lamps, is pouring some of his oil over the baked meats by way of sauce.
It is a land where justice is a farce, where lies are told as truths, where the police persecute and murder, where the poor are oppressed, where the official grows wealthy, and where no man is secure from the false denunciation of spies eager for reward.
The man who kept his head kept a head full of fantastic nonsense; he was a writer of rowdy farces, a demagogue of fiction, a man without education in any serious sense whatever, a man whose whole business was to turn ordinary cockneys into extraordinary caricatures.
I have just suggested as a reason for the absence of these interludes, or farces, in the mysteries as they are found in the manuscripts, that they were probably not looked upon as parts of the mysteries themselves, but as separate pieces which might be used at pleasure.
The mastery of our style is all lies and foolishness, our renown and honor are a farce, the confidence of the masses in us is highly ridiculous, and the training of the public and of youth through art is a precarious undertaking which should be forbidden.
Discredited, a virtual prisoner, finished as a monarch, he was converted into a constitutional fiction, and was compelled by his circumstances to resume the farce of kingship, and to put his signature to the Constitution which, on the 3rd of September, was sent to him.
Others called it a mock marriage, a formal marriage, a sham marriage, a fictitious marriage, a marriage sacrament, the preliminary part of marriage, a meaningless ceremony, an empty form, a ridiculous farce, an incongruous custom, a waste of money, and a device for becoming involved in debt.
If he means that there is no essential difference betwixt comedy, tragedy, and farce, but what is only made by the people's taste, which distinguishes one of them from the other, that is so manifest an error, that I need not lose time to contradict it.
The striking alternation between two extremes of character and conduct, between tragedy and farce, between ridiculous meanness and pathetic unselfishness, is to be found in all his novels, though in his later and finer work it is controlled and tempered to more artistic proportions.
Every right-minded person readily acknowledges that far greater weight ought to be attached to the finding of this Commission than to the declarations of the complainants, who contradicted one another in nearly every particular, and who caused the whole inquiry to degenerate into a farce.
The compliment was so ridiculous and absurd, that no one who beheld it could avoid reflecting on the taste of those who had set it up; but as its history developed the farce improved, and what was before esteemed contemptible, proved in the end entertaining.
And so when we collapsed and could move our arms no longer, the claque had recuperated its strength, and the brilliant farce was hailed once more with thundering applause by the joyless spectators behind us, where a whole chorus of poor devils shouted "bravo, bravo!"
The carriages and omnibuses rattle away with their loads; other travelers straggle in for the next train, and when it arrives the Grand Central will repeat its little farce comedy with new actors, and new specialties and various readings between the lines.
Naturally I have known all these men and women well and, as I have seen practically every drama, farce and comedy of any importance at all that has been produced during all these thirty-five years, I may claim fairly enough an acquaintance with our American players.
It is, as a matter of fact, a very skillful, uproarious and plausible farce, almost too successful in that you can't hear one-third of the jokes because of the laughter at the other two-thirds (and a little because of the indistinct articulation of one or two of the players).
Dinner was a matter of perhaps more respectful consideration with these rather prosperous bohemians than even the new paper, which they still regarded, and possibly with some reason, as a sort of farce, or than the Muses, whom they were inclined to woo somewhat cavalierly.
With few exceptions, his plays were affairs of partnership with Samuel James Arnold, a writer of ephemeral popularity, whose tale of "The Haunted Island" was wildly admired by readers of the intensely romantic school, but whose tragedies, melodramas, comedies, farces, operas, are now forgotten.
He admits that the states have surrendered the power to make treaties, coin money, and regulate commerce, and yet we will probably have the novel and ridiculous farce of a negotiation between the President and a state, for the surrender of forts, and arsenals, and sovereignty.
Secondly, the difference between the ideal and familiar style is not to be explained by the difference between the genteel and vulgar; for it is evident that Hogarth was almost as much at home in the genteel comedy, as in the broad farce of his pictures.
At one Kerry Assize, a criminal caught by four policemen in the very act of breaking into a house, was acquitted, and at the Cork Assize the Crown Prosecutor, after half a dozen acquittals, announced he would not continue the farce of putting criminals on their trial.
In this same epoch I should place the Comedy of Errors, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed a priori, have their representatives in Shakespeare's works.
"I can endure anything else," said he, while an expression of intense abhorrence passed over his countenance; "but when she gets on to one of her pious strains, I have to call to mind all the consistent piety of my parents to keep me from thinking religion a farce."
He doesn't suspect that his sister's nowhere in the matter compared with his wife; his whole position of being independent of me, and all that, has been so undermined and honeycombed by Gen, that, in reality, his sticking it out there at Raleigh is a farce!
Then take eight paper cases, as wide and as high as your quail, put a little oil on the inside of the cases, and half fill them with a farce of sausage, with which you have mixed four chopped truffles, as many mushrooms, a little salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
The whole case would be a case of criminality too gross and palpable to merit a syllable of comment but for the astounding assurance with which the accused adhered to his plea in the face of evidence that was so complete as to make denial little more than a farce.
The immediate vogue of Don Quixote was due chiefly to its variety of incident, to its wealth of comedy bordering on farce, and perhaps also to its keen thrusts at eminent contemporaries; its reticent pathos, its large humanity, and its penetrating criticism of life were less speedily appreciated.
The life at the quiet little cottage home was entirely changed, for brother and sister were playing parts for which they were quite unsuited in a melancholy farce of real life, wearing masks, and trying to hide their sufferings from each other, with a miserable want of success.
As, however, modern critics have generally looked upon Aristophanes as no better than a writer of extravagant and libelous farces, and had no notion of eliciting the serious truths which he veiled beneath his merry disguises, it is no wonder if they have paid but little attention to his opinion.
Our quarantine regulations are extremely strict, and rightly so, on the subject of smallpox; but is it not a farce to take so much trouble about the health of our immigrants when inside the city we are all the time encouraging a high degree of receptivity towards this very disease?
Social life in the poor little place is almost a pure farce with the number of its dictated, prompted intimacies, not controlled by general laws of expediency as at home, but each on its own basis of hope and expectancy, broadly and ludicrously obvious as a case by itself.
I thought five a ridiculously small number at the time, especially when I remembered my amateur days, and the thirty or so rehearsals, nearly all full-dressed ones, required for a short farce; but there came a time when I looked upon two as betokening extraordinary anxiety about a production.
All the plays given for the next twenty-five years, although constructed on the old plan, contained a more or less appreciable dose of that comic observation and good sense which gradually raised the French farce almost to the level of the comedy of character and manners.
In thus acting, the young man obeyed a presentiment which told him that in what had passed before him a melancholy farce had been played by Don Pablo, and that the readiness with, which he had consented to part with them concealed some perfidy or other.
He proved so intractable, in short, that even before he set out for Albany, where he was to assume command, the conspirators saw it was useless to continue the farce; but they allowed him to depart on his cold journey as the easiest way of letting the matter end.
Only one performance was given each night, and a farce preceded the play, the interval between the pieces being filled up with a comic song, sung by the low comedy man, and an acrobatic performance by a young lady whose name I learned was Sarah Saunders.
As it would have been impossible for the authors of this farce to keep themselves concealed from the indefatigable inquiries of the physicians, they made no secret of their having directed the whole: though they took care to own it in such an ambiguous manner, as afforded no handle of prosecution.
As it would have been impossible for the authors of the farce to keep themselves concealed from the indefatigable inquiries of the physicians, they made no secret of their having directed the whole; though they took care to own it in such an ambiguous manner as afforded no handle of prosecution.
Here politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for "King Lear," or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.
The presumption of the act is so outrageous, that at this time of day, and forgetting for a moment all the consequences which flowed from this deed, one is ready to burst into a hearty fit of laughter, as at a solemn farce, irresistibly ludicrous from its grave extravagance.
Medical men kept up the custom of wearing wigs for a long period: perhaps they felt like a character in Fielding's farce, "The Mock Doctor," who exclaims, "I must have a physician's habit, for a physician can no more prescribe without a full wig than without a fee."
I was wild with rage and shame at having allowed myself to be caught in this suspicious position, and the thought darted like lightning through my brain that the whole scene had been merely a prearranged farce, to which in my good-natured simplicity I had fallen a victim!
I further argued that if we attempted to complicate affairs by the election of a judge of appeals, and possibly by the institution of other tribunals for the correction of error, we turn a system simple in itself, and beneficent in its operations in the past, into a complicated farce.
They came peaceably, but the farce must be gone through, the Riot Act was read; a few sheepish, innocent Highlanders were made prisoners, but nothing could be laid to their charge, and they were almost immediately set at liberty, while the soldiers were ordered back to Fort George.
Lamb, with his sister, sat, as he anticipated, in the front of the pit; and having joined in encoring the epilogue, the brilliancy of which injured the farce, he gave way with equal pliancy to the common feeling, and hissed and hooted as loudly as any of his neighbors!
Many an Irish farce we recall, during his stay at Burton's, to which he gave a new lease of life; and we congratulate ourselves that our memory holds record of having once seen him as Sir Lucius O'Trigger, the only cast in our experience wherein Sheridan's creation found a fitting representative.
Forrester had thought it would be "just a farce" to produce again at six o'clock, their usual hour; and from half-past four till nine, when the small and light repast known in the house under the pleasantly indefinite name of "the tray" made its appearance, is a long time.
Whether based on history or fiction, its main purpose was the presentation of a story, the more marvelous the better; and, even if it ended in deaths, it was likely to contain a mixture of farce, romantic love, stage spectacle, and, as time went on, a diminishing inculcation of morality.
It is a remarkable fact that all that we can point to as the native product of Latin art is comic farces, whereas the more cultivated types of comedy, not excluding those of Plautus and Terence, are borrowed from Greece, and are rather an affair of imitation than independent production.
When a little later they heard the stamp of the Colonel's crutch the boys looked up expectantly, knowing they would have the laugh on the old veteran traveler, who had flown to the rescue when the alarm was all a farce, and slept through the real thing.
Believe me that I only feel gratified and flattered by your inquiry after the farce, and that if I had as much time as I have inclination, I would write on and on and on, farce after farce and comedy after comedy, until I wrote you something that would run.
He would have written to her, but he was still unable to hold a pen; and he reflected that, after all, it would have been a hideous farce for him to offer condolences and sympathy, however much he might desire to hide from himself his secret satisfaction at her husband's death.
The shabby little theater on South Street was no longer relegated to opprobrium, but put in some repair and made a place of fashionable entertainment; the versatile Englishmen turning their hands and their wits to almost anything in that line, from scene-painting to acting in comedy, farce, or tragedy.
Lilly was far too wrapped up in her own affairs to be able to bestow on the humor of these confessions the appreciation they merited, though she did experience a faint glimmer of amusement as she realized what strange pranks human puppets can be made to play in life's great farce.
Behind them was a vast body of more or less unthinking men who recognized the indubitable facts that the law had become a farce, that justice had degenerated to tricks, and who were, therefore, instinctively against law, lawyers, and everybody who had anything to do with them.
In my depressing perplexities, I had begun to think that there was no such thing as redress in the order, and that the clause in my book of rule, "the right to apply to high ecclesiastical authority," was a blind and a farce, as was the teaching of "fatherly" kindness.
In the course of time not only did the farce and the secular drama branch off from the Mystery, as in other countries of Europe, but the pantomime also, with its accompaniments of singing and dancing, the effect of which depended on the richness and beauty of the spectacle.
Every form, principle, and intention of the constitution would have been violated; and instead of a President, it would have had a mute, a sort of image, hand-bound and tongue-tied, the dupe and slave of a party, placed on the theater of the United States, and acting the farce of President.
Moreover, his whole demeanor, carriage, and manner were so essentially those of a gentleman, that the broadest farce never betrayed him into either coarseness or vulgarity; and the comedy he acted, though often the lightest of the light, was never anything in its graceful propriety but high comedy.
The first consists of those in which republican institutions, purporting to exist legally, are a mere farce, the government being, in fact, a military despotism, more or less oppressive and corrupt, according to the character of the ruler, but carried on for the benefit of the Executive and his friends.
One of his great elements of strength is his sense of humor, which has created an almost unlimited number of delightful scenes and characters; but it very generally becomes riotous and so ends in sheer farce and caricature, as the names of many of the characters suggest at the outset.
It is probable that this farce was especially written to suit Kitty Clive in her excelling character of hoyden; and to it, as we have seen, together with two of its predecessors, is assigned the credit of having first given that superb comic actress an opportunity of revealing her powers.
If desired we may however engage to bring to England all who are not domiciled in South Africa; but we cannot undertake to bring all the rank and file to trial, for that would make a farce of the whole proceedings, and is contrary to the practice of all civilized Governments.
With capital dethroned, the principles of the Republic will at last be applied with controlling power to the field of economics, just as they are to the field of politics, and political democracy will have ceased to be a farce, for it will have developed into its perfect flower, Industrial Democracy.
What with those who knew something about racing and had games of their own to play, and those who knew nothing about it but, though honest and ignorant, were too self-important to stand aside and refrain from taking any part in it, they had made the handicapping a farce.
Afterwards, in the interval between the comedy and the farce, he was seen to appear cautiously, diffidently, at the low door of the orchestra (where the musicians enter), and beckon to his friends, who then perceived that he was armed with a mighty pot of porter, for their refreshment.
No constitutional devices or cleverness of parliamentary machinery could have possibly made popular government anything but a farce, so long as the private economic interest of the citizen was distinct from and opposed to the public interest, and the so-called sovereign people ate their bread from the hand of capitalists.
They may say some of the pieces I have done so far are of no account; I assure you I have had far more joy from scribbling a farce that bought smart costumes or a bracelet for Elise than I could have had from evolving classics that left her worried about the washing bill.
Their wretched plight was reduced to farce by the fact that they were locked out of their bedrooms, unable to get at their wardrobes, their soaps and sponges and brushes, his collars, her hairpins, all those trifles of the toilette without which civilized man can scarcely feel himself civilized.
The astonished audience bore it as best they might till the last act, when the two lovers, having first inserted themselves respectively into the skins of a mummy and a crocodile, talk at one another across the boards; then they rose in their rage, and made an end of that farce.
Such a face, flushed with the jovial features of punch, was enough to turn grave business matters into a farce; so that the embryo banker had been forced to put himself through a long course of mimicry before he managed to acquire even the semblance of a manner that accorded with his fictitious importance.
Fortunately, I did not allow myself to be thus dealt with, but penetrated the handsome little swindle at the outset; yet I made up my mind to continue playing the farce for some time, because it afforded me an opportunity to discover and foil the intentions, wishes, and schemes of my adversaries.
By the time they had reached their places in the balcony Millicent was rather flushed, and a good deal ruffled; but she had composed herself in season for the rising of the curtain upon the farce which preceded the melodrama and which the pair had had no intention of losing.