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My only regret in the theatre is that I could never sit out front
and watch me.
Author:
Source: None
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Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime.
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time;
Mad wag! who pardon'd none, nor spared the best,
And turn'd some very serious things to jest.
Nor church nor state escaped his public sneers,
Arms nor the gown, priests, lawyers, volunteers;
"Alas, poor Yorick!" now forever mute!
Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.
We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
Ape the swoln dialogue of kings and queens,
When "Chrononhotonthelogos must die,"
And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Hints from Horace (l. 329)
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As good as a play.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Hints from Horace (l. 329)
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But as for all the rest,
There's hardly one (I may say none) who stands the Artist's test.
The Artist is a rare, rare breed. There were but two, forsooth,
In all me time (the stage's prime!) and The Other One was Booth.
Author: Edmund Vance Cooke
Source: The Other One was Booth
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I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my
own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union
and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God
conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was
Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it
with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal
Drama.
Author: Edmund Vance Cooke
Source: The Other One was Booth
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See, how these rascals use me! They will not let my play run;
and yet they steal my thunder.
Author: John Dennis
Source: Biographia Britiannica (vol. V, p. 103)
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Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks;
Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks.
The founder's you: the table is the place:
The carvers we: the prologue is the grace.
Each act, a course, each scene, a different dish,
Though we're in Lent, I doubt you're still for flesh.
Satire's the sauce, high-season'd, sharp and rough.
Kind masks and beaux, I hope you're pepperproof?
Wit is the wine; but 'tis so scarce the true
Poets, like vintners, balderdash and brew.
Your surly scenes, where rant and bloodshed join.
Are butcher's meat, a battle's sirloin:
Your scenes of love, so flowing, soft and chaste,
Are water-gruel without salt or taste.
Author: George Farquhar
Source: The Inconstant; or, The Way to Win Him (prologue)
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Prologues precede the piece in mournful verse,
As undertakers walk before the hearse.
Author: David Garrick
Source: Apprentice (prologue)
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Prologues like compliments are loss of time;
'Tis penning bows and making legs in rhyme.
Author: David Garrick
Source: Prologue to Crisp's Tragedy of Virginia
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On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting
'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting.
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Source: Retaliation (l. 101)
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Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, actor,
prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeepeer, doorkeeper, all
in one, and audience into the bargain.
Author: A.W. Hare and J.C. Hare
Source: Guesses at Truth
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It's very hard! Oh, Dick, my boy,
It's very hard one can't enjoy
A little private spouting;
But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives,
Up comes our master, Bounce! and gives
The tragic Muse a routing.
Author: Thomas Hood
Source: The Stage-Struck Hero
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And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop
To the low mimic follies of a farce,
As a grave matron would to dance with girls.
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Source: Of the Art of Poetry
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The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give.
For we that live to please, must please to live.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: a prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick on opening Drury Lane Theatre
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Who teach the mind its proper face to scan,
And hold the faithful mirror up to man.
Author: Robert Lloyd
Source: The Actor (l. 265)
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This many-headed monster.
Author: Philip Massinger
Source: Roman Actor (act III, sc. 4)
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This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew.
Author: Philip Massinger
Source: Roman Actor (act III, sc. 4)
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A long, exact, and serious comedy;
In every scene some moral let it teach,
And, if it can, at once both please and preach.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Epistle to Miss Blount--With the Works of Voiture (l. 22)
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There still remains to mortify a wit
The many-headed monster of the pit.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Horace (ep. I, bk. II, l. 30)
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To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold--
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Prologue to Addison's Cato (l. 1)
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Your scene precariously subsists too long,
On French translation and Italian song.
Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage;
Be justly warm'd with your own native rage.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Prologue to Addison's Cato (l. 42)
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Tom Goodwin was an actor-man,
Old Drury's pride and boast,
In all the light and spritely parts,
Especially the ghost.
Author: J.G. Saxe
Source: The Ghost Player
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The play bill which is said to have announced the tragedy of
Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.
Author: Sir Walter Scott
Source: The Talisman (prologue), part of the Tales of the Crusaders
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If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good
play needs no epilogue.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: As You Like It (Rosalind at epilogue)
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Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Coriolanus (Coriolanus at V, iii)
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The best actors do not let the wheels show.
Author: Henry Fonda
Source: None
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Working in the theatre has a lot in common with unemployment.
Author: Arthur Gingold
Source: None
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You need three things in the theatre--the play, the actors and the audience,--and each must give something.
Author: Kenneth Haigh
Source: None
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I sweat. If anything comes easy to me I mistrust it.
Author: Lilli Palmer
Source: None
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Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
Author: Kate Reid
Source: None
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A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.
Author: Jean Anouilh
Source: None
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Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.
Author: Paul Newman
Source: None
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Acting is happy agony.
Author: Alec Guinness
Source: None
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The actor who slapped you on the stage waits behind
the curtain to congratulate you on your performance
Sai Baba
http://www.vahini.org/downloads.
Author: Sai Baba
Source: None
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The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.
Author: Oscar Wilde
Source: None
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