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More "Prompter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the winter holidays a real joy; we rehearsed and acted in the Gallery, originally built to hold the Harleian Manuscripts, and divided by columns into three parts, making an admirable theatre and a handsome proscenium. On one great occasion we had Frank Matthews as prompter, and we none of us forget seeing him initiate Lady Agneta in the art of making a stage kiss. Oh! how we laughed. He cried so much during the performance that he prompted badly; but perhaps the dear man was touched by the family talent! A letter from Tom ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... however remained unmoved, and nothing but his brutal stupidity could have prevented him from endeavouring to arrest the tide of public feeling, but he was quite bewildered by the diversion, and for the first time failed in finding a prompter in Field. The Chartist was cowed by Gerard; his old companion in scenes that the memory lingered over, and whose superior genius had often controlled and often led him. Gerard too had recognized him and had made some personal allusion and appeal to him, which alike ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... inspirations of home. Every female should be an intellectual and moral guardian to some portion of the young around her. In bestowing of her substance, and especially of her personal attentions, on the sick and the poor, she will find all she has done of good at home an invaluable prompter and aid. For the sake, therefore, of others, as a social and responsible being, let the flame she would support on the public altar be kindled from the vestal fire of ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Chiozza, where Goldoni's mother then resided. The boy pleased them. Would he like the voyage? This offer seemed too tempting, and away he rushed, concealed himself on board, and made one of a merry motley shipload. 'Twelve persons, actors as well as actresses, a prompter, a machinist, a storekeeper, eight domestics, four chambermaids, two nurses, children of every age, cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, birds, pigeons, and a lamb; it was another Noah's ark.' The young poet felt at home; how could a comic poet feel otherwise? They ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... blackness. Rain-drops struck the roof at intervals, a shower of apple-blossoms rustled against the window and drifted on, and below the muffled sound of music and shuffling feet was now and then pierced by the shrill calls of the prompter. There was something ominous in the persistent tread of feet and the steady flight of the gloomy clouds, and quivering with vague fears, Easter sank down from her chair to Clayton's feet, and burst into tears, as he put ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... come back for my pocket-handkerchief. I must have dropped it in here somewhere. (He begins to search for it, and in the ordinary course of things comes upon Isobel on the sofa. He puts his rifle down carefully on a table, with the muzzle pointing at the prompter rather than at the audience, and staggers back.) Merciful heavens! Isobel! Dead! (He falls on his knees beside the sofa.) My love, ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... away from some youth fathoms deep in love, his favorite partner. Sometimes, too, a lot of them pre-empted all the prettiest girls, and danced a special set with them. Thus were they delivered into the hands of the oppressed—the lads made treaty with the fiddlers and prompter to play fast and furious—to call figures that kept the oldsters wheeling and whirling. It was an endurance contest—but victory did not always perch with the youths. Plenty of pursy gentlemen were still light enough on their feet, clear enough in their wind, to dance through Money Musk double, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... Old Room," the page answered rather resentfully, but resigned himself as he remembered that, however this curtailed his importance, it left open a prompter return to his game ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... has been stoutly asserted, that however well guano might answer at the South, it was of no use in the hard soil and cold climate of New England. This is a fallacy which will soon be cured by knowledge, and self-interest is a very strong prompter towards the acquisition of the knowledge, that guano is the best, cheapest, most suitable, convenient and productive manure ever used by a New England farmer, and just as suitable for that climate and soil ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... though Mr. Wilkes Booth an observer of the audience, visited the stage and took note of the positions. His alleged associate, the stage carpenter, then received quiet orders to clear the passage by the wings from the prompter's post to the stage door. All this time, Mr. Lincoln, in his family circle, unconscious of the death that crowded fast upon him, watched the pleasantry and smiled and felt heartful ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... suppression. To others it will appear that the old governor's rashly timorous edict was, after all, the true source of deliverance. Certainly the question remains, whether even the most sudden and ill-timed concession of rights, if only backed by energetic police action, is not a prompter, surer cure for public disorder than whole batteries of artillery without the concession of rights. I believe the most blundering effort for the prompt undoing of a grievous wrong is safer than the shrewdest or strongest effort for its continuance. Meanwhile, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... before the performance we debated the weather prospects until the moon rose. Lysander said his bit of seaweed which he brought from Bognor was as dry as parched peas and he would back it against any fool barometer. Cocklewhite, our prompter, said he didn't want to depress the company, but he had a leech in a bottle of water which rose for fine weather and sank for wet, and he was bound to tell us it was like lead at the bottom at the present moment. Hermia pointed to the heavens, 'Red sky at night shepherds' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... no delay nor interruption throughout. Not the sound of a hammer nor the whisper of a prompter was ever heard. There was no applause whatever from the audience until the end, and then it seemed to come from the strangers. The three hours—for the end was precisely at twelve—seemed not more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... eyes. A sad smile gave a melancholy grace to the lovely Aphrodite. Both the actors had forgotten that they were not alone. Hypnotized under the gaze of Paris, the young girl made a gesture towards him. A sharp, "Don't move" from the prompter brought her back to herself. She turned her head, saw the audience, with the eyes and glasses of everyone focussed upon her. It seemed to her that they must all know her secret. She tottered; and supported herself upon Athene. She must have fallen from the frame ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... seated at table, or passing in and out; waiters running back and forth from the fires, drawers from the cabaret. I paused to scan the throng, jostled by one and another, before I descried my master and my knave. M. Etienne, the prompter at the rendezvous, had, like a philosopher, ordered dinner, but he had deserted it now and stood with Peyrot, their backs to the company, their elbows on the deep window-ledge, their heads close together. I came up suddenly to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... cannot hiss in private theatricals, but they could not help a suppressed titter, which confused Crawley still more. He forgot what he had to say, and looked appealingly to the prompter, who prompted rather too loudly. Altogether the scene ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... heard her case, And plainly told her 'twas a want of grace; Bade her "such fancies and affections check, And wear a thicker muslin on her neck." Abased, his human foes the combat fled, And the stern clerk yet higher held his head. They were indeed a weak, impatient set, But their shrewd prompter had his engines yet; Had various means to make a mortal trip, Who shunn'd a flowing bowl and rosy lip; And knew a thousand ways his heart to move, Who flies from banquets and who laughs at love. Thus far the playful Muse has lent her aid, But now departs, of graver theme afraid; ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... seemed seething in the very blood,—the provoking coolness of old play-goers,—the music that rather excited than soothed the fever of expectation,—the mystery of mimic life that throbbed behind the curtain,—the welcome tinkle of the prompter's bell,—the capricious swaying to and fro of that mighty painted scroll,—its slow uplift, revealing for an instant, perhaps, the twinkle of flying dancers' feet and the shuffle of belated buskins? And then, the unveiled wonders of that strange, new world of canvas and pasteboard and trap-doors,—people, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... memory was a mine: she knew by heart All Calderon and greater part of Lope; So, that if any actor missed his part, She could have served him for the prompter's copy; For her Feinagle's were an useless art,[26] And he himself obliged to shut up shop—he Could never make a memory so fine as That which adorned the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... effects of their subordinates, whenever such effects did not heighten their own. Hamlet had been known to be jealous of the ghost, and the success of his sepulchral bass. It was in fact a world of jostling jealousies, as hidden from the public as the prompter. In the Halls she was her own company and her own playwright and her own composer. She ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... comes, and she sees an angel in the flies, and informs it that she is coming soon (here it is usual for a lady to be removed from the gallery in strong hysterics), and keeps her word by letting her arm fall upon the bed-clothes and shutting her eyes, whereupon somebody says that she is dead, and the prompter whistles for the scene to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... in the hitherto discouraging struggle Portia Van Brock had been his keen-sighted adviser, prompter, ally of proof. He told himself now and again in a flush of gratitude that he was coming to owe her more than he had ever owed any woman; that where other men, more—or less—fortunate, were not denied the joy of possession, he, the disappointed one, was finding a true and ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... of the old St. Charles theater, called "old Drury," are rich with history. Practically all our great players from 1835 until long after the Civil War, appeared in this theater, and an old prompter's book which, I believe, is still in existence, records, among many other things, certain details of the appearance there, in 1852, of Junius Brutus Booth, father of Edwin Booth, and mentions also that Joseph Jefferson (Sr.) then a young man, was reprimanded ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... had long quitted the stage, and Dazincourt, both of acknowledged good character, were selected to give lessons, the first in comic opera, of which the easier sorts were preferred, and the second in comedy. The office of hearer of rehearsals, prompter, and stage manager was given to my father-in-law. The Duc de Fronsac, first gentleman of the chamber, was much hurt at this. He thought himself called upon to make serious remonstrances upon the subject, and wrote to the Queen, who made him the following answer: "You cannot ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... guests who were coming, chief among them, Miss Cameron, who kept her promise faithfully. The orchestra tuned their instruments with unusual care, the scene-shifters set their stage with lavish elegance, the prompter heroically took his seat in the stifling nook provided for him, and the actors dressed with trembling hands that dropped the pins, and perspiring brows whereon the powder wouldn't stick. Beaumont and Fletcher were everywhere, feeling that their literary reputation was at stake; ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... sobbing. I wondered in my soul how many broken hearts were covered by those lace and velvet garments, and those smiling, superficial faces. The thought absorbed me so that I forgot everything and the prompter thought I'd forgotten my part entirely and gave me ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... as unworthy of every trust. It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief, had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I would gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure: but that done, return with joy to that state of things, when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the large Republican majority, already elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress, would adopt the Amendment, but such adoption implied postponement for a whole year, with loss of the moral influence which would be gained by prompter action. It implied also that the Amendment would depend solely upon Republican votes, and the President was especially anxious that it should receive Democratic support. Still another reason wrought upon the President's mind. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of character as this implies could not take place in a month or two, for the mind of Egyptians and Sudanese was at first an utter blank as to the need of prompt obedience and still prompter action. An amusing case of their incredible slackness has been recorded. On the first parade of a new camel transport corps before Lord Kitchener, the leading driver stopped his animal, and therefore all that followed, immediately in front ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... actions wait, are well The prompter's hand is on his bell; The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings; Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled,— And yet, one moment for the Past; One retrospect,—the ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... editor Henry Morley (Spectator, 1883, I, 318) to have caused Addison to "flinch" a little in his revision of the ballad essays. It is scarcely apparent that he did so. The last paragraph of the third essay, on the Children in the Wood, is a retort to some other and even prompter unfriendly critics—"little conceited Wits of the Age," with their "little ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... ant-heap; that, a bed of nettles. I wait. Your cousin brings her sketch-book, and There in the shadow of the Roman thingummies, She on her camp-stool, I amid the mud, She looking like an English tourist sketching, I whispering from my cavern like a prompter, We plan the means to ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... eagerly; and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish voyages, which all the London prentices know. All the mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. They have been the property of the Theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole Scene, or adding a song, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was just beginning to tell her about the drama of the hair when my name echoed through the room: "Mademoiselle Chara Bernhardt!" It was Leautaud, who later on was prompter at the Comedie Francaise, and who had a strong accent peculiar to the natives of Auvergne. "Mademoiselle Chara Bernhardt!" I heard again, and then I sprang up without an idea in my mind and without uttering a word. I looked round for my partner who was to give me my cues, and together ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... any of the household, and she gleaned more than a little amusement from the efforts of the others to reassure her. "You know I'll be right there with the book," said Aunt Abigail, who had accepted the important post of official prompter. "So it won't be a serious matter if you forget." The others had similar encouragement to offer, some of it mingled with good counsel. "Don't lose your head if you get tangled up," Peggy warned her. "Because the rest of us know our parts perfectly, and we can go on with it, even if something is ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... of the wing, And kept away; but Mr. Thing- um bob, the prompter man, Gave with his hand my chaise a shove, And said, "Go on, my pretty love; Speak ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... by this means, I the less remember the injuries I have received; insomuch that, as the ancient said,—[Cicero, Pro Ligar. c. 12.]—I should have a register of injuries, or a prompter, as Darius, who, that he might not forget the offence he had received from those of Athens, so oft as he sat down to dinner, ordered one of his pages three times to repeat in his ear, "Sir, remember the Athenians";—[Herod., v. 105.]—and then, again, the places which ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... a marvel of supple, exaggerated grace and the quadrille looked like a free-for-all for unbroken colts. The honor of prompter was conferred upon the sheriff, and he gravely called the changes as they were usually called in ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... see how artfully he could warp aside the better nature of Aurelian, and pour his own venom into veins, that had else run with human blood, at least not with the poisoned current of tigers, wolves, and serpents, of every name and nature most vile. My hope was that, away from his prompter, the first purpose of Aurelian would return and ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Personae for the play. It does not contain the Stage-Keeper, who speaks only once, the Servant whose single word is accompanied by the stage direction "This Servant is to be on from the beginning," nor the Romp (probably the Prompter, who speaks twice off-stage during the play). Hic and Haec Scriblerus, however, although he is listed in the cast of characters, speaks only once, and his entrance on stage is ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... alive from personal knowledge some oral Shakespearean tradition during the fifty years and more that followed his death. Little of their gossip is extant. But some of it was put on record, before the end of the century, by John Downes, the old prompter and librarian of a chief London theatre. According to Downes's testimony, Taylor repeated instructions which he had received from Shakespeare's own lips for the playing of the part of Hamlet, while Lowin narrated how Shakespeare taught ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... of high birth to desertion, aggravated by breach of trust and by gross falsehood? That Cornbury was not a man of brilliant parts or enterprising temper made the event more alarming. It was impossible to doubt that he had in some quarter a powerful and artful prompter. Who that prompter was soon became evident. In the meantime no man in the royal camp could feel assured that he was not surrounded by traitors. Political rank, military rank, the honour of a nobleman, the honour of a soldier, the strongest professions, the purest Cavalier blood, could ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said I, and hurried after him, leaving Farrell to limp down the hill-side in our wake. For once the dog recognised me as more intelligent or, at any rate, prompter than his master, and gave his whole attention to me. . . . I tumbled down the hill after him in a haste that fairly set my temples throbbing. Once sure of me, he played no more at backwards-and-forwards, but bounded down the slope towards the innermost ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a number of plantains, and you want to take them across the river," whispered his invisible prompter ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Pause."—Macklin had three pauses in his acting—the first, moderate; the second, twice as long; but his last, or "grand pause," as he styled it, was so long, that the prompter, on one occasion, thinking his memory failed, repeated the cue (as it is technically called) several times, and at last so loud as to be heard by the audience. At length Macklin rushed from the stage, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... the room—Baron, an honest, blundering fellow—started toward the window to see who the prompter was, but the host—of intuitive perception—saw that this might not be agreeable to their entertainer and said quietly: "Don't go to the window, Baron. See, Mrs. Detlor is going ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... supposed throughout, that the country has mines of its own, and no commercial intercourse with other countries; for, in a country having foreign trade, the coin which is rendered superfluous by an issue of paper is carried off by a much prompter method. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... commences, it means to them, "The Lord be praised, here is an end to that cursed tempo, which off and on compels us to a kind of rational rendering; we can now float about in all directions, dwell on any note we like until the prompter has supplied us with the next phrase; the conductor has now no power over us, and we can take revenge for his pretensions by commanding him to give us the beat when it suits us," etc. Although perhaps not all singers are conscious of this privilege of their genius, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... make every effort to guard against stage waits and delays of every sort. Have your stage hands, prompter, property managers, scene painters and all your assistants on hand at every rehearsal, if possible. Long waits between the acts, tardiness in beginning the performance, and all delays do much to destroy an otherwise happy impression. Every ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... would produce this harmony must survey the whole field, as if all parts were as interesting to himself as they are to others, and with that generous, patriotic feeling, prompter and better than the mere dictates of cool reason, which leads him to embrace the whole with affectionate regard, as constituting, altogether, that object which he is so much bound to respect, to defend, and to love,—his country. We have around us, and more or less within the influence ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... move to Lochlea, and Burns went to the neighboring town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing. The only result of this experiment, however, was the formation of an acquaintance with a dissipated sailor, whom he afterward blamed as the prompter of his first licentious adventures. His father died in 1784, and with his brother Gilbert the poet rented the farm of Mossgiel; but this venture was as unsuccessful as the others. He had meantime formed an irregular intimacy with Jean Armour, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to express by written signs: "May, commang! maydemosels, je suis atonnay! May! commang! Maydemosel Descuilles, je suis surprise! Kesse ke say! vous permattay maydemosels etre lay filles d'ung seraglio! je ne vou pau! je vous defang! je suis biang atonnay!" And so she departed, with our prompter's copy, leaving us rather surprised, ourselves, at the unsuspected horror we had been about to perpetrate, and Mademoiselle Descuilles shrugging her shoulders and smiling, and not probably quite convinced of the criminality of a piece of which the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... entertainments, and had won a title as "the politest negro in the world." Music of a lively sort he scraped from the fiddle or beat upon the triangle. He was head usher at meetings, chief cook at picnics, a stentorian prompter at dances, and ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... figure in the pageant which Iamblichos called "the indissoluble bonds of Necessity" was about to reappear in his appointed place in response to the call of the unseen Prompter. Hideous are the settings of that pageant to-day; for where in the glowing pages of Dumas we see D'Artagnan, the gallant Forty-five and many another good friend riding in through the romantic gates of Old Paris, the modern historian finds himself concerned with railway stations which have supplanted ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... 23, originated in the same quarter as the previous attempts to slander and discredit Serbia. Count Forgach, the arch-forger of the Austrian Legation in Belgrade, was permanent Under-secretary in the Foreign Office, and as Count Berchtold's right hand and prompter in Balkan affairs, was directly responsible for the pronounced anti-Serb tendencies which have dominated the foreign policy of the Dual Monarchy since the rise of the Balkan League. As a Magyar nobleman with intimate Jewish connections, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... should hate to push a piano through one of my host's parlor walls just for the want of a little care. (They push until the piano stands against the wall on the other side of the room, keyboard in.) There! That's first-rate. You can put a camp-chair on top of it for the prompter to sit on; there's nothing like having the prompter up high, because amateur actors when they forget their lines, always look up in the air. Perkins, go sit out in the hall and imagine yourself an ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... remembrance of events were not confused. How could he be at once stationed at my shoulder and shut up in my closet? How could he stand near me and yet be invisible? But if Carwin's were the thrilling voice and the fiery visage which I had heard and seen, then was he the prompter of my brother, and the author of these ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... did fall into such an exorbitant temptation of lust, that there was not angel, man, devil, nor deviless upon the place who would not then have bricollitched it with all their heart and soul. The prompter forsook his copy, he who played Michael's part came down to rights, the devils issued out of hell and carried along with them most of the pretty little girls that were there; yea, Lucifer got out of his ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... de Morny died. He had been the moving spirit in the Mexican imbroglio, and it would be difficult to believe that the withdrawal of the prompter did not have a weakening effect upon the performance. His death, by removing one of the strongest influences in favor of the intervention, not only in the Corps Legislatif and at court, but in the financial world, was certainly one of the many untoward circumstances which ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... house of which she, Lady Mary, was mistress, was exasperating. Pansey Cottrell, too, had contributed not a little to her irritation by dwelling somewhat persistently at dinner on Miss Sylla's dramatic talent. He had done this, dear pleasant creature! simply for his own diversion. He was acting as prompter to a little comedy of real life; and it is ideas, not words, that the prompters on such occasions instil into our minds. As a rule, Pansey Cottrell would have judiciously shirked such an entertainment ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... psychology of the prompt reward will be considered later at length, but it cannot be emphasized too often that the prompter the reward, the greater the stimulus. The reward will become associated with the fatigue in such a way that the worker will really get, at the time, more satisfaction out of his fatigue than he will discomfort; at the least, any dissatisfaction over ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... in defence of his monopolies, told the Iroquois that they might plunder the canoes of traders who had not a pass from him. The adverse faction now retorted by adding the permission of murder to the permission of pillage. Margry thinks that La Chesnaye was the prompter of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... an hour of high suspense. For this hour every man present had waited with a keen desire that had been his prompter and spur through all the long, wearying months of training. All the schooling in theory was now behind. Experience, that hard teacher, was now at the controls. The school of machine gunnery, where ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... behind the Arras. This relates not to the present Scene, but to Scene 2, where the King and Guise play chess (cf. I, 2, 184). Either it has been inserted, by a printer's error, prematurely; or, more probably, it may be an instruction to the "prompter" to see that the properties needed in the next Scene are ready, which has crept from an acting version of the play ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... mightily applauded the act, crying out, as they were dragged through the forum, that it was a goodly sight, grateful to the gods themselves, adding, however, that the gods and men alike demanded justice on Tigellinus, the very tutor and prompter of all the tyranny. This good man, however, had taken his measures beforehand, in the shape of a present and a promise to Vinius. Turpilianus could not be allowed to escape with life, though his one and only crime had been that he had not betrayed or shown hatred ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the emetic apomorphine is injected anywhere under the skin, vomiting surely follows within a very short time. It is well known that morphine is injected under the skin in preference to taking it through the mouth as its action as a pain killer is much prompter. ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... the traditional hump, the youthful, representative of Richard appeared for the first time before an audience in the Tent Scene, preceded by the Cottage Scene from "The Lady of Lyons." The back drawing-room was arranged as a stage; her mother acting as prompter, though her help was little needed; and, judged by the enthusiastic applause of friends and neighbors, the performance was a great success. The young actress received it all with even more apparent coolness than if she had trodden ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... man, by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and prompter of slave-dealers and the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Justice) Bushe, being asked which of Mr. Power's company of actors he most admired, maliciously replied, "The prompter; for I heard the most, and saw ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Frederic?" the distracted manager would cry. Frederic was down stairs in the cafe under the theatre playing games where the stakes were high, and almost always losing. "Monsieur Frederic, the curtain is up!" the prompter would rush in to say. "Ciel! What can I do?" the imperturbable actor would reply. "I can't leave here, my dear fellow: I must win back what I've lost." Poor Harel had to pay again. As the receipts of the theatre ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... says, he literally had intolerance for nothing. Though he could see but little religion in many professing Christians, he nevertheless saw that the motley players, "made up of mimic laughter and tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at the prompter's call," were not so godless and impious as the world believed them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... smaller the matter the prompter, as a general rule, the settlement; on the other hand, the more sweeping the change that is felt to be necessary, the ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... which required any degree of regularity. The command of a troop requires some degree of attention from the idlest. He had the prospect of competence from his father's wealth; and his absolute abhorrence of all exertion was probably his chief prompter in throwing away the remarkable advantages of his position—a position from which the exertion of a moderate degree of intellectual vigour, or even of physical activity, might have raised him to high rank in either the state ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... monument in Westminster Abbey, suitable to the respect which is due to his wit and his valour. There are through the course of the work very many incidents which were written by unknown correspondents. Of this kind is the tale in the second Tatler, and the epistle from Mr. Downes the prompter,[47] with others which were very well received by the public. But I have only one gentleman,[48] who will be nameless, to thank for any frequent assistance to me, which indeed it would have been barbarous in him to have denied to one with whom he has lived in an intimacy from childhood, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Room.' A famous actor from Spain is the star of the present season. At rehearsal he is a fallen star, being extremely old and shaky, but at night his make-up is wonderful, and he draws large audiences, who witness his great scene of a detected thief in convulsions. The prompter is seated under a cupola in the centre of the stage near the footlights, as at the opera, and his duties are arduous. It devolves upon him to read over the part of each performer in a suppressed tone, and to direct their manner of exit and their position on the stage. He is unseen by ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... whereas, the French could convey but half of their force. Unfortunately, between Lord Raglan, the English Commander-in-Chief, and Marshal Saint Arnaud, the French commander, there was little concert or agreement. The French, whose arrangements were far better, and whose movements were prompter than our own, were always complaining of British procrastination; while the English General went quietly on his own way, and certainly tried sorely the patience of our allies. Even when the whole of the allied armies were embarked, nothing had ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... maladroitness of a much over-praised Creator. Women, it would seem, actually have smaller brains than men, though perhaps not in proportion to weight. Their nervous responses, if anything, are a bit duller than those of men; their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter. One finds quite as many obvious botches among them; they have as many bodily blemishes; they are infested by the same microscopic parasites; their senses are as obtuse; their ears stand out as absurdly. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... boxes, and all the timber work had been covered with coloured paper. A little iron chandelier hung beneath the ceiling, and that it might be made to disappear into the ceiling, as it does in great theatres, when the ting-ting of the prompter's bell is heard, a great inverted tub has been ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy's expression would have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to improvise in the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... all pay it," returned Straws. "He acted as if he were dazed while the play was in progress and I could not but notice it, standing in the wings. The prompter spoke of it to me. 'I don't know what is the matter with Mr. Barnes,' he said, 'I have had to keep throwing him his lines.' Even Miss Carew rallied him gently between acts on ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... his hands and assuming the attitude and smile of thankfulness, a slight embarrassment checked him, and he paused, still keeping his posture and his look—the prompter made himself heard by every one but the bewildered Malcolm, who still continued mute, every instant of his silence naturally increasing ten-fold his perplexity—Macduff whispered the words in his ear—Macbeth who ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... This Honorary Secretary was no other than Albert Smith's brother Arthur—one who was not only the right-hand, as it were, of the Ascender of Mont Blanc, and of the Traveller in China, but who (behind the scenes, and unknown to the public) was the veritable wire-puller, prompter, Figaro, factotum of that farceur.among story-tellers, and of that laughter-moving patterer among public entertainers. Arthur Smith, full of resource, of contrivance, and of readiness, possessed in fact all the qualifications ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... hours to look off and on a book, to read just as much and of such a kind, to stand up and be seated, just as another thought proper to direct. I hated to be classed, cribbed, rebuked, and feruled at the pleasure of one who, as it seemed to me, knew no guide in his rewards but caprice, and no prompter in ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... high time. The orchestra, really intoxicated, could not have gone on. The leader's baton is no longer anything but a broken stick on the prompter's box. The violin strings are broken, and their necks twisted. In his fury the drummer has burst his drum. The counter-bassist has perched on the top of his musical monster. The first clarionet has swallowed the reed of his instrument, and the second hautboy is chewing his reed keys. The groove ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... that is not yet the definite formula, the general formula; what I will call, the dynamite formula. At best, Bakounine would become an incendiary, and burn down cities. And what is that, I ask you? Bah? A second-hand Rostopchin! He wants a prompter, and I offered to become his but he did not take ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... rage; And there, in the midst of some "property" storm, While the sheet-iron thunder is rattling its best, And the rosin lightning, and all the rest Of the elements are, for some tragedy-reason, Making the "awfullest gale of the season—" See, at the sound of the prompter's tap, The fiend come up through the "Vampyre trap;" Take a mental photograph then, and there, Of that imp, with his "fixins" all complete— The elfish grin, the tangled hair, The dragon wings and the scaly feet— And you'll have a notion of him I mean, The demon of this, my opening scene. ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... one of the landlord's properties: Miller, you must provide that, you know—send down for some cold tankards now; they will do very well for rehearsal." At last we got to work, and proceeded, with the prompter's assistance, pretty smoothly, and mutually applauding each other's performance, going twice over some of the more difficult scenes, and cutting out a good deal of love and sentiment. The play was fixed for the next Monday night, playbills ordered to be printed, and cards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... memoirs of the celebrated French actor, Preville, we find the following letter, addressed by the manager of a strolling company to his prompter:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... moment the cast had been called together for final instructions. When all were gathered Wee laid down the law. The fairies were not to talk in the wings. All were to keep an eye on the prompter, and Blue Bonnet was especially informed that if the wind apparatus got on a rampage, as it did at the dress rehearsal, and drowned what she was saying at her first entrance, she was to raise her voice and compete with the elements, ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Post-Office Department and the making and enforcement of orders by the Department requiring immediate notification to their sureties of all delinquencies on the part of postmasters, and compelling such postmasters to make more frequent deposits of postal funds, have resulted in a prompter auditing of their accounts and much less default ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... was incessant, till the tinkling of the prompter's bell, and the rising of the curtain, put an end to his remarks on persons, and turned them all on the piece. I cannot but own the author opened an ample field for the effluvia of critic gall. I know not whether Glibly might influence the tone of my mind, but I think I never ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights—the orchestra lights—came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell—which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... O King Alfonso, Guilty though in naught I be, For it doth behoove a vassal To obey his lord's decree; Prompter far am I to serve thee Than thou art ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... argue that the scene ought to be shifted; that the king's household wants a better manager; that there is no necessity for a wardrobe-keeper; that his majesty's company are a set of very bad actors; and he humbly moves that the king should discharge his prompter. Some time ago, the president of this society had a great constitutional point to decide; but not acquitting himself to the satisfaction of the ladies, this spirited female seized the chair of state, and with the crack of her fan ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... of the following act, when he was asked "Why did you not keep your children with you? they would have amused you in many a dreary hour," he turned to reply—and "for the space of about ten seconds, he paused as if waiting for the prompter to give him the word"—says Mr. Whitfield the actor, who was then with him upon the stage—"then put out his right hand, as if going to take hold of mine. It dropt, as if to support his fall, but it had no power; in that instant he fell, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... must not only repeat, but invent lies. He must make speeches and write handbills; he must be devoted to the wishes and objects of the society, its creature, its jackal, its busybody, its mouthpiece, its prompter; he must deal in law cases, in demurrers, in charters, in traditions, in common-places, in logic and rhetoric—in everything but common sense and honesty. He must (in Mr. Burke's phrase) 'disembowel himself of his natural entrails, and be stuffed with paltry, blurred sheets of parchment ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... signs of communication between him and this audacious child, who is like to become a power among us, for that popgun is fatal to any talker who is hit by its pellet. I have suspected a foot under the table as the prompter, but I have been unable to detect the slightest movement or look as if he were making one, on the part of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. I cannot help thinking of the flappers in Swift's Laputa, only they gave one a hint when to speak and another a hint to listen, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ends "The Boys,"—a lifelong play. We too must hear the Prompter's call To fairer scenes and brighter day Farewell! ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fill their places with my mice. Mercedes, of course, was leading lady; Monsieur and Madame Denis were the heavy parents; and a gentlemanlike young mouse named Leander was jeune premier. Then, in my leisure, they used to act the most tremendous plays. I was stage-manager, prompter, playwright, chorus, and audience, placing the theatre before a looking-glass, so that, though my duties kept me behind, I could peer round the edge, and watch the spectacle as from the front. I would invent the lines and deliver them, but, that my illusion might be the more complete, I would ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... monk who played the part of prompter lost his place and skipped some paragraphs. The text returned to San Diego, and with a long series of exclamations and contrasts the father brought to a close the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... which she rehearsed with much spirit. She was unwearied in her efforts at arranging costumes, constructing scenery, and coaching her fellow performers in their speeches. She soon had the whole play by heart, and could act prompter without the help of the book—a decided convenience to those whose memories were liable to fail them at ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... smile Washington extended his hand and said: "An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard; but I am pleased to find that you can play so active a part in private and without a prompter." ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... will leave the prompter of Monday night on the table this morning," said Uncle Geoffrey, smiling in that manner which, to a certain degree, removed any feeling of obligation, by making it seem as if it was entirely for his own diversion. Nor could it be denied that he ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hands Both you of my inclining, and the rest. Were it my Cue to fight, I should haue knowne it Without a Prompter. Whether will you that I goe To answere this your charge? Bra. To Prison, till fit time Of Law, and course of direct Session Call thee ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tongue of Slander so presum'd, My vengeance had not been of that slow sort To need a prompter; nor should any arm, No, not a father's, dare dispute with mine, The privilege to die in her defence. ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... appeared a flame of considerable brightness, which blazed cheerfully, and this for about an hour. That flame signified the advent of some spirits of Mercury who, for penetration, thought, and speech, were prompter than those who preceded them. When they were come, they instantly ran over the things that were in my memory, but, owing to their promptness, I was unable to apperceive what they observed. Immediately afterwards, I heard them say that the matter was thus and thus. With regard to the things which ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell; A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that's anything ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... beneath which a small and shallow harbour emits a powerful odour of mud, sewage, and rotten fish. Every hut is surmounted by a "badgir," or wind-catcher—a queer-looking contrivance, in shape exactly like a prompter's box, used in the summer heats to cool the interior of the dark, stifling huts. A mob of ragged, wild-looking Baluchis, with long, matted locks and gaudy rags, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... fragrant clouds would be some consolation in the eyes, or rather in the noses, of some of us. But still,—almost six hours of tragedy! It is too much of a good thing for these degenerate days; and we must allow the prompter to use his pencil on the actors' copy of "Hamlet," though he strike out page upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and half the boxes were empty, whilst those who were there seemed merely to occupy them from the effect of habit, and because this is the only evening amusement. The prompter spoke ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... wanted to make sure of seeing Mary before she could see him. He decided that if she did not make her appearance by the time Mrs. Blythe arrived he would go back behind the scenes and look for her. Maybe Mrs. Blythe would station her there somewhere as prompter, for fear that she might forget her speech. If that were the case it would be a pity to distract the prompter's attention, but it was a greater pity that the few hours he had to spend with her should ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... it like men in the old days," he bitterly murmured. "Now, the only gold that I see before me is to be had by gentlemanly blackmail! Right here—between old Hugh Johnstone and this flinty-hearted woman avenger—lies my fortune. And I swear that nothing shall stop me! I will be the prompter of the little play now ready for a first rehearsal!" His eyes lighted up viciously as he was swept along past the great marble house, gleaming out in the shady compound, where the Rosebud of Delhi ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... concert every day. Besides, the copying of the airs will not cost me much, for a M. Weber who is going there with me has copied them. He has a daughter who sings admirably, and has a lovely pure voice; she is only fifteen. [Footnote: Aloysia, second daughter of the prompter and theatrical copyist, Weber, a brother of Carl Maria von Weber's father.] She fails in nothing but in stage action; were it not for that, she might be the prima donna of any theatre. Her father is a downright honest German who brings ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... prompter, grey and frail, They heard him murmur low, "It only could be Meg Coverdale, ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... an instant, hesitated; then she was prompter still. "I don't mean there was anything to rectify; everything was as it had to be, and I'm not speaking of how she may have been concerned for you and me. I'm speaking of how she took, in her way, each time, THEIR lives in hand, and how, therefore, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... warm-hearted, honest man; and disagreeing as we do, on almost every point of religion, of morals, of politics, and philosophy, we like each other uncommonly well. He is a great favorite with Sara. Energetic activity of mind and of heart, is his master feature. He is prompt to conceive, and still prompter to execute; but I think he is deficient in that patience of mind which can look intensely and frequently at the same subject. He believes and disbelieves with impassioned confidence. I wish to see him doubting, and doubting. He is intrepid, eloquent, and honest. Perhaps, the only ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... his life ebbed away in the contemplation of undertakings still to be achieved, the result of weakness of will rather than of indolence. The romance of "Christabel," the most powerful of all his works, and the prompter of Scott and Byron, was thrown aside when scarce begun, and stands as an interrupted vision of mysterious adventures clothed in the most exquisite fancies. His tragedy of "Remorse" is full of poetic ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Davis, in 1781. The last Latin syllogisms were in 1792, on the subjects, "Materia cogitare non potest," and "Nil nisi ignis natura est fluidum." The first year in which the performers spoke without a prompter was 1837. There were no Master's exercises for the first time in 1844. To prevent improprieties, in the year 1760, "the duty of inspecting the performances on the day," says Quincy, "and expunging all exceptionable parts, was assigned to the President; on whom it was particularly enjoined ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... with a theatrical company to London, where for three years he led a hard and obscure life. He was at first a menial at the theatre; some say he held gentlemen's horses at the door, others that he was call-boy, prompter, scene-shifter, minor actor. At length he began to find his true vocation in altering and adapting plays for the stage. This earlier practice, in every capacity, was of great value to him when he began to write plays of his own. As an actor he never rose above mediocrity. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... single more or less articulate Iliad. From Plato and others we get hints leading to the supposition that an authorized state copy was prepared; that it was ordained that the whole poem should be recited at the Panathenaic Festivals by relays of Rhapsodoi; this state copy being in the hands of a prompter whose business it was to see there should be no transgression by the chanters.* The wandering songs of the old blind minstrel have become the familiar Sacred Book of the brightest-minded ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Shakspeare as having from the very first been borne upon the establishment of the theatre, and so far contradicts the other fable, but originally in the very humble character of call-boy or deputy prompter, whose business it was to summon each performer according to his order of coming upon the stage. This story, however, quite as much as the other, is irreconcileable with the discovery recently made by Mr. Collier, that in 1589 Shakspeare ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the street before they met the ubiquitous Mr. Ogilvie, saying that Cheviot, Norman's prompter, was aware of the report, and was guarding him, while he came to escort the ladies, through what he expressively called "the bear fight." Ethel resolutely adhered to her father, and her cousin took care of Meta, who had been clinging ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Great Prompter's hand shall ring Down the last curtain upon earth and sea, All the Good Mimes will have eternity To praise their Author, worship love and sing; Or to the walls of Heaven wandering Look down on those damned for a ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... I'm to quarrel with Stevens or anybody else, 'twouldn't be your pistols in my pocket that would make me set on, and 'twouldn't be the want of 'em that would make me stop. When it's my cue to fight, look you, I won't need any prompter, in the shape of friend or pistol. Now THAT speech is from one of your poets, pretty near, and ought to convince you that you may as well lend the puppies and say no more about it. If you don't you'll only compel me to carry my rifle, and that'll be something worse ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... down in content, and as a mark of gratitude stuck out his tongue at his prompter, who had arisen blushing with shame and ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... words, when actions wait, are well: The prompter's hand is on his bell; The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings; Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled; And yet, one moment for the Past, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... she exclaimed, turning the dainty white hat trimmed with pink flowers round on her hand, "let me introduce M. Denoisel again. You have met him before in the old days—that sounds as though we were quite aged, doesn't it?—and he is our theatrical manager, our professor of elocution, our prompter—scene shifter—everything." ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... she agreed to let me bring Mr. Bridges to see her—they were not acquainted. I had no trouble with him, for he was always glad to know pretty girls, and he had seen Rebecca. There never was a piece of match-making which succeeded better than that, and it delighted me to act as prompter of the play, while those two were the actors, and I was also the ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... appearance, and in a disastrous endeavor to be affable inquired, with an affectation of interest, "How long has your lordship been in town?" The peer's surprise and chagrin were great until the monarch, having received further instruction from the courtly prompter at his elbow, frankly apologized in bad English and with noisy laughter. "Had Lord Hardwicke," says Campbell, "worn such a uniform as that invented by George IV. for ex-Chancellors (very much like a Field Marshal's), he could not have been mistaken ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... it less out of curiosity than as a prompter gives a cue; for he had come to a full stop. She was wondering how Lady Caroline could injure him, being so far ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... there is only one man among them and he is half a child; all the others are women and girls, even to the ticket taker and the prompter." ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Webster at a gathering of his political friends, when he had to be prompted by a friend who sat just behind him, and gave him successively phrases and topics. The speech proceeded somewhat after this fashion: Prompter: "Tariff." Webster: "The tariff, gentlemen, is a subject requiring the profound attention of the statesman. American industry, gentlemen, must be ——" (nods a little). Prompter: "National Debt." Webster: "And, gentlemen, there's the national debt—it should be paid (loud cheers, which rouse the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... once to all; Free as the sun-beams, or the lucid air. Nor would the fruits and aliments suffice, The rich earth from her surface threw, but deep Within her womb they digg'd, and thence display'd, Riches, of crimes the prompter, hid far deep Close by the Stygian shades. Now murderous steel, And gold more murderous enter'd into day: Weapon'd with each, war sallied forth and shook With bloody grasp his loud-resounding arms. Now man by rapine lives;—friend fears his host; And sire-in-law his son;—e'en brethren's ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... attributes Hill's attack on him to his jealousy of his successful performance of Harlequin, and opens some of the secret history of Hill, by which it appears that early in life he trod the theatrical boards. He tells us of the extraordinary pains the prompter had taken with Hill, in the part of Oroonoko; though, "if he had not quite forgotten it, to very little purpose." He reminds Hill of a dramatic anecdote, which he no doubt had forgotten. It seems he once belonged to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the book-holder or prompter who is subsequently mentioned, and whom Will Summer, in the licence of his character, calls by his name. Perhaps his "cousin Ned" was another of the actors. Harry Baker is spoken of in the scene, where Vertumnus is despatched for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... very serious; "do I jest, Carlisle?" And turning to Mr. Cross, the prompter, who stood by, "Fetch me the St. James's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was ready to go up again could nowhere be found. "Frederic! where is Frederic?" the distracted manager would cry. Frederic was down stairs in the cafe under the theatre playing games where the stakes were high, and almost always losing. "Monsieur Frederic, the curtain is up!" the prompter would rush in to say. "Ciel! What can I do?" the imperturbable actor would reply. "I can't leave here, my dear fellow: I must win back what I've lost." Poor Harel had to pay again. As the receipts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... instances Heminge and Condell reprinted the earlier quarto impressions with a few changes, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse; and it is most probable that copies of those editions (whether surreptitious or not) had taken the place of the original prompter's books, as being more convenient and legible. Even in these cases it is not safe to conclude that all or even any of the variations were made by the hand of Shakespeare himself. And where the players printed from manuscript, is it likely to have been that of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... gran'pa, if I'm to quarrel with Stevens or anybody else, 'twouldn't be your pistols in my pocket that would make me set on, and 'twouldn't be the want of 'em that would make me stop. When it's my cue to fight, look you, I won't need any prompter, in the shape of friend or pistol. Now THAT speech is from one of your poets, pretty near, and ought to convince you that you may as well lend the puppies and say no more about it. If you don't you'll only compel me to carry ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... desertion, aggravated by breach of trust and by gross falsehood? That Cornbury was not a man of brilliant parts or enterprising temper made the event more alarming. It was impossible to doubt that he had in some quarter a powerful and artful prompter. Who that prompter was soon became evident. In the meantime no man in the royal camp could feel assured that he was not surrounded by traitors. Political rank, military rank, the honour of a nobleman, the honour of a soldier, the strongest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "The prompter's bell tingles and then tingles again. The bearded Germans of the orchestra hush their music, and the big field of green baize shoots to the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... work of uniting the individual soul with God's purpose that Spirit is our Helper. In the work of righteousness He is a Partner with us. In the life of faith and prayer He is our unwavering Prompter and Guide. In the submission of our wills to God and the chastening of our spirits He is the great Co-worker with us. In the bearing of burdens and the enduring of trial and sorrow He joins hands with us to lead us on. In the purifying ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... dismayed whisper to himself, "a duelist couldn't be prompter." He walked to the door, gazing at the superscription. "It feels like my letter sent back. Ah, well! that's just what it ought to be. Confound the women, all; I wonder how it feels for a man just to mind his own business and ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... undergone a pitiable experience as prompter at head-quarters, and no one has a better appreciation of the value of such services than myself; and it is particularly in a council of war that such a part is absurd. The greater the number and the higher the rank of the military officers who ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Id., ibid., pp. 223, 231, 233. (The copy of "Athalie" with the erasures of the police still exists in the prompter's library of the Theatre Francais.)—Id., ibid., p 244. (Letter of the secretary-general of the police to the weekly managers of the Theatre Francais, Feb. 1, 1809, In relation to the "Mort d'Hector," by Luce de Lancival.) "Messieurs, His Excellency, the minister-senator, has expressly charged me ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had intolerance for nothing. Though he could see but little religion in many professing Christians, he nevertheless saw that the motley players, "made up of mimic laughter and tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at the prompter's call," were not so godless and impious as the world ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... but the renowned Mr. Timothy Turbot, of the Corn Law campaigns, Reform agitations, and all manifestly popular movements requiring the heaven-endowed man of speech, an interpreter of multitudes, and a prompter. Like most men who have little to say, he was an orator in print, but that was a poor medium for him—his body without his fire. Mr. Timothy's place was the platform. A wise discernment, or else a lucky accident (for he came hurriedly from the soil of his native isle, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Plot of the Plays of Frederick and Basilea, and of the Deade Man's Fortune, the original papers which hung up by the side scenes in the playhouses, for the use of the prompter and the acter, earlier than the time of Shakspeare. 11 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... on the scene, and reciting, should prepare their parts so as to know them by heart and in every detail of place and time follow the music with all care as to time. It will not be a bad idea to have a prompter to aid the ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... manner. 'Donec cantor vos "Plaudite" dicat,' says Horace. Who the 'cantor' was, is a matter of dispute. Madame Dacier thinks it was the whole chorus; others suppose it to have been a single actor; some the prompter, and some the composer. Before the word 'Plaudite' in all the old copies is an O which has also given rise to several learned conjectures. It is most probable, according to the notion of Madame Dacier, that this O, being the last letter of the ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... much prompter with animals. When compelled to abandon their native land, they undergo such rapid and profound modification, that at first sight they can hardly be recognized as the same race, and cannot be detected in their disguise till after the most careful inspection, and on grounds of analogy only. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the dramatic representatives of which listened with a kind of fascination to their own speeches, tripped off lightly and easily by their Seniors. It was more particularly galling as all realized that the whole thing was on a rather higher scale than theirs; it was better staged, much prompter, the actions were more appropriate, and the players less stiff and self-conscious, to say nothing of the superior dresses. In gloomy resignation they sat the scene out, and had the magnanimity to applaud heartily at the end. Then ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... disastrous endeavor to be affable inquired, with an affectation of interest, "How long has your lordship been in town?" The peer's surprise and chagrin were great until the monarch, having received further instruction from the courtly prompter at his elbow, frankly apologized in bad English and with noisy laughter. "Had Lord Hardwicke," says Campbell, "worn such a uniform as that invented by George IV. for ex-Chancellors (very much like a Field Marshal's), he could ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Creator. Women, it would seem, actually have smaller brains than men, though perhaps not in proportion to weight. Their nervous responses, if anything, are a bit duller than those of men; their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter. One finds quite as many obvious botches among them; they have as many bodily blemishes; they are infested by the same microscopic parasites; their senses are as obtuse; their ears stand out as absurdly. Even assuming that their special ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... them all off, and fill their places with my mice. Mercedes, of course, was leading lady; Monsieur and Madame Denis were the heavy parents; and a gentlemanlike young mouse named Leander was jeune premier. Then, in my leisure, they used to act the most tremendous plays. I was stage-manager, prompter, playwright, chorus, and audience, placing the theatre before a looking-glass, so that, though my duties kept me behind, I could peer round the edge, and watch the spectacle as from the front. I would invent the lines and deliver them, but, that my illusion might be the more complete, I would change ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... upon ideas or the fanciful creations of art a passionate affection which he grudgingly withheld from human beings, stubbornly tenacious of a set of political dogmas to which he was ready to sacrifice his dearest friends, morbidly sensitive to the faintest suggestion of a personal slight, and prompter than the serpent to vent against the aggressor the bitterness of his poison, he plays the role of Ishmael among the men of letters in his day. The violence of his retorts when he felt himself injured ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless, and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who understood each other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they understand each other so well that they could afford to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... a fondness for the wisdom of proverbs and familiar sayings, and among his earliest writings were a series of pithy homilies to the people upon questions of morals and manners, published first in the Connecticut "Courant," but early collected into a volume entitled "The Prompter;" a little book which one may trace to a good many different printing-offices and to various sections of the country, certainly the most widely spread of Webster's writings, after his text-books, and the most worthy of a repeated life. If I am not mistaken, it is even now making ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... much embarrassed. After I had been an hour at the play, the manager came around and asked me to go underneath the stage, as they were putting on a ballet of 300 girls, the finest ballet in Europe. It seems there is a little hole on the stage with a hood over it, in which the prompter sits when opera is given. In this instance it was not occupied, and I was given the position in the prompter's seat, and saw the whole ballet at ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... have seriously overstrained his physique. In 1771 the family move to Lochlea, and Burns went to the neighboring town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing. The only result of this experiment, however, was the formation of an acquaintance with a dissipated sailor, whom he afterward blamed as the prompter of his first licentious adventures. His father died in 1784, and with his brother Gilbert the poet rented the farm of Mossgiel; but this venture was as unsuccessful as the others. He had meantime formed an irregular intimacy with ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to her had pleased or interested her, to wear this wreath that night. After he had done this he trembled; he had courted a decision, when, perhaps, his safety lay in patience and time. She made her entree; he turned cold as she glided into sight from the prompter's side; he raised his eyes slowly and fearfully from her feet to her head; her head was bare, wreathed only by its own rich glossy honors. "Fool!" thought he, "to think she would hang frivolities upon that glorious head for me." Yet ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... that the old governor's rashly timorous edict was, after all, the true source of deliverance. Certainly the question remains, whether even the most sudden and ill-timed concession of rights, if only backed by energetic police action, is not a prompter, surer cure for public disorder than whole batteries of artillery without the concession of rights. I believe the most blundering effort for the prompt undoing of a grievous wrong is safer than the shrewdest or strongest effort ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... clung to its own idea of woman's sphere as to a thing divinely ordered, and to seek to leave which was scarcely less than rebellion against high God. In patriarchal days, when heaven's justice had been prompter, such a disobedient one would suddenly have found herself rebuked into a bit of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... end of the seventeenth century, was in the habit of telling visitors that he entered the playhouse as a servitor. Malone recorded in 1780 a stage tradition 'that his first office in the theatre was that of prompter's attendant' or call-boy. His intellectual capacity and the amiability with which he turned to account his versatile powers were probably soon recognised, and thenceforth ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... remained. And into the scenery went the actor 'like mad.' Planks and canvas came tumbling down; the manager called his assistants; the house was delirious with joy. The manager rushed on the stage; the actor kicked him over into the orchestra, and seizing the prompter's box, hurled it ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the night before the performance we debated the weather prospects until the moon rose. Lysander said his bit of seaweed which he brought from Bognor was as dry as parched peas and he would back it against any fool barometer. Cocklewhite, our prompter, said he didn't want to depress the company, but he had a leech in a bottle of water which rose for fine weather and sank for wet, and he was bound to tell us it was like lead at the bottom at the present moment. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... this: kind prompter, touch the bell! Children of mirth and midnight, fare ye well! The vision melts away, the motley crowd Is veiled by Prospero in a passing cloud; Like his dissolving pageantry they fade, The vap'ry stuff whereof our dreams are made; No more malignant winter to beguile, Nor ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Besides, the copying of the airs will not cost me much, for a M. Weber who is going there with me has copied them. He has a daughter who sings admirably, and has a lovely pure voice; she is only fifteen. [Footnote: Aloysia, second daughter of the prompter and theatrical copyist, Weber, a brother of Carl Maria von Weber's father.] She fails in nothing but in stage action; were it not for that, she might be the prima donna of any theatre. Her father is a downright ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... that he did not see or hear the boy and Chad, awed by the stern, solemn face, withdrew and, without a word to anybody, climbed into the loft and went to bed. He could hear every stroke on the floor below, every call of the prompter, and the rude laughter and banter, but he gave little heed to it all. For he lay thinking of Caleb Hazel and listening again to the stories he and the cattle-dealer had told him about the wonderful settlements. "God's Country," the dealer always called ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of morals, of politics, and philosophy, we like each other uncommonly well. He is a great favorite with Sara. Energetic activity of mind and of heart, is his master feature. He is prompt to conceive, and still prompter to execute; but I think he is deficient in that patience of mind which can look intensely and frequently at the same subject. He believes and disbelieves with impassioned confidence. I wish to see him ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Engena, flourished during Alfred's reign, was a lecturer at Oxford, and the founder or chief prompter of scholastic divinity. The earliest specimen of the Anglo-Saxon language extant is the Lord's prayer, translated from the Greek by Ealdfride, Bishop of Sindisfarne, or Holy Island, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... the men in the room—Baron, an honest, blundering fellow—started toward the window to see who the prompter was, but the host—of intuitive perception—saw that this might not be agreeable to their entertainer and said quietly: "Don't go to the window, Baron. See, Mrs. ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... regarding the lions of the town, she would only acknowledge two,—Bastholm's library, and the English fire-engine. The curtain in the theatre represents an alley with a fountain, the jets of which are painted as if spouting out of the prompter's box; or is this, perhaps, the English fire-engine? I know not. The scene-decoration for towns represents the market-place of Slagelse itself, so that the pieces thus acquire a home-feeling. This is the modern ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Mrs. Lora Rewbush was again heard from the wings; it sounded bloodthirsty. Penrod released his victim; and the Child King Arthur, somewhat disconcerted, extended his sceptre and, with the assistance of the enraged prompter, said: ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... you see, V.V., why I wasn't prompter answering your letter. I've tried to keep my courage up like you advised, but it's too much for one man to carry. May you never know the awful feeling that you're an outcast, not wanted ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... May, 1899, on the eve of the Bloemfontein Conference, he writes to Mr. Fischer, prompter and organiser of the Conference, foreseeing the results of the policy advocated by ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... hand on the door-knob, felt herself obliged to decline this theme so tardily introduced—though the old man's tart tone promised great possibilities. She would have thanked David Marshall for a prompter contribution of conversational material; she felt that her own efforts during this interview had been out of all proportion to his. She made no response, and he stepped forward to conduct her through the outer office to her carriage. "You needn't ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... a given subject, as the father did, is called "recitare a soggetto." When the girls spoke, the father prompted, if necessary, and this they call "recitare col suggeritore"—to speak, with the assistance of a prompter, words that ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... faithful and intelligent friend, suggested that if they sincerely accepted the policy, they would do well to take the politician with it, that the Count of Provence could be best disabled by depriving him of his prompter, that the magic is not in the wand but in the hand that waves it. The queen hesitated, for Mirabeau had threatened her in the last days at Versailles, and it was not yet proved that he was not concerned in the attempt to murder her. She declared that nothing would induce her to see him, and ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a settled occupation in the prompter's copy. Not that Shakespeare does not elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so nolenter volenter (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!—and is besides so much more likely to have been conceived in the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... musicians were the orchestra and the leader "called out" the figures of the lancers and quadrilles. "Face your pardners," he called out as the square dance was begun. Several sets of four couples were formed ready for the first strains of the lancers music and the prompter. "Forward all," and all the couples advanced to the center. "Swing your pardners," "balance corners," the lady and gentleman faced to the right and took steps to the music. "Swing," and ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... Tripoli by the Bashaw of Fezzan, who it seems must dabble in slave-dealing, notwithstanding his imprecations against the merchants of Ghadames for the same crime. He is from Mandara, and was kidnapped by the Tibboos. This is the captain of all the sham-fighters, and the leader and prompter of all other sports on the way. There is always one who assumes superiority over the rest, in every troop of human beings; so it was in the beginning, and so it will ever ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... praise, Fair Dian, virgin-goddess of the skies! And myriads will raise Their songs, as time yet onward flies, To thee, chaste prompter of the lover's sighs, And of the minstrel's lays! Yet still exhaustless as a theme Shall be thy name— While lives immortal Fame— As when to people the first poet's dream ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... spirits of the age: But, above all, amongst the rest There came a genius who profess'd To have a curious trick in store That never was perform'd before. Through all the town this soon got air, And the whole house was like a fair; But soon his entry as he made, Without a prompter or parade, 'Twas all expectance and suspense, And silence gagg'd the audience. He, stooping down and looking big, So wondrous well took off a pig, All swore 'twas serious, and no joke, For that, or underneath his cloak He ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... success of the mission, the rest of the time being devoted to their spiritual edification; that is, they were employed in repeating Latin prayers and a Spanish catechism, after an old Indian who acted as prompter. Sometimes it was necessary to allow the Indians to go abroad for a time, but then their return was provided for by retaining the squaws and papooses as hostages, in the same manner as they provided for the return of the plantation bulls, by shutting up the cows and calves ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... men hear eagerly; and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish voyages, which all the London 'prentices know. All the mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. They have been the property of the Theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole scene, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... more critical, none was more moved than Fleeming. The rest of us did not aspire so high. There were always five performances and weeks of busy rehearsal; and whether we came to sit and stifle as the prompter, to be the dumb (or rather the inarticulate) recipients of Carter's dog whip in the TAMING OF THE SHREW, or having earned our spurs, to lose one more illusion in a leading part, we were always sure at least of a long and an exciting holiday in ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'Scutcheon drew near it is evident that he feared further losses and would gladly have been released from his promise to produce the play; but Browning failed to divine the true state of affairs. The tragedy was read to the company by a grotesque, wooden-legged and red-nosed prompter, and it was greeted with laughter. To make amends, Macready himself undertook to read it aloud, but he declared himself unable, in the disturbed state of his mind, to appear before the public: his part—that of Lord Tresham—must be taken by Phelps. From certain rehearsals ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... campaign. With the fatuity incidental on occasions to even the shrewdest minds, he had not counted upon independence in the host which he believed slave to him, in thought and word and deed. He rated himself the dictator, the prompter without whose suggestion no one of all the players in this gigantic tragedy could speak his line. As a matter of fact, like all leaders of his class, he could drive his followers forward at will, while totally unable to hold them back. He was wholly master so long as he used the spur. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... continued none the less to run at the least as dissolute a course as did those that were still bachelors. The young wife, being advised of this, could not keep silence upon it, so that she very often received payment after a different and a prompter fashion than she could have wished. For all that, she ceased not to persist in lamentation, and sometimes in railing as well; which so provoked the young man that he beat her even to bruises and blood. Thereupon she cried out yet more loudly than ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... of that were also open, and through them they heard the scream of the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump, pump of the oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick transition, and heard the prompter's drawl. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... serious air, sung by them all. We got up, and went forward to see them; and though we must have been strange objects to them, they continued their dance, without paying the least attention to us. They seemed to be directed by a man who served as a prompter, and mentioned each motion they were to make. But they never changed the spot, as we do in dancing, and though their feet were not at rest, this exercise consisted more in moving the fingers very nimbly, at the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... were commenced with Shakespearian loftiness and ended with the actor's own emendations, which were certainly questionable improvements. Anything but a tragic effect was produced by seeing the swarthy Moor turn to the prompter at frequent intervals, and inquire, "What?" in a hoarse whisper. A running colloquy took place between Othello and his audience, in which he made good his assertion that he was rude in speech. Since then, Shakespeare has not been attempted on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... leave the prompter of Monday night on the table this morning," said Uncle Geoffrey, smiling in that manner which, to a certain degree, removed any feeling of obligation, by making it seem as if it was entirely for his own diversion. Nor could it be denied that he did ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know, with any degree of spirit?" "Oh! of course," said I; "that's one of the landlord's properties: Miller, you must provide that, you know—send down for some cold tankards now; they will do very well for rehearsal." At last we got to work, and proceeded, with the prompter's assistance, pretty smoothly, and mutually applauding each other's performance, going twice over some of the more difficult scenes, and cutting out a good deal of love and sentiment. The play was fixed for the next Monday night, playbills ordered to be printed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... where else; and loved the commonwealth as well as ever a patriot of them all; he would carry away the Vice on his back, quick to hell, in every play where he came, and reform abuses' (Ben Jonson's The Staple of News). But our present purpose is with Nichol Newfangle and his arch-prompter. Nevertheless these few general remarks will save us from the necessity of returning to the subject later. The truth of the matter is that here, in Like Will to Like, we have as full a delineation of these two popular characters as may be found in any of ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... back into the game. I gave each of them something. I saw that several of them had on linen dusters, and as I looked about, I noticed that there were perhaps a dozen men in the room similarly clad. I asked the fellow who had been my prompter at the dice table why they dressed in such a manner. He told me that men who had lost all the money and jewelry they possessed, frequently, in an effort to recoup their losses, would gamble away all their outer clothing and even their shoes; and that the proprietor kept on hand a supply ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... not attending to her part," remarked the manager. "Coralie is smitten with our friend here, all unsuspicious of his conquest, and Coralie will make a fiasco; she is missing her cues, this is the second time she had not heard the prompter. Pray, go into the corner, monsieur," he continued. "If Coralie is smitten with you, I will go and tell her that you have ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... sooth, 95 From disappointment, not to find some change In look and air, from that new region brought, As if from Fairy-land. Much I questioned him; And every word he uttered, on my ears Fell flatter than a caged parrot's note, 100 That answers unexpectedly awry, And mocks the prompter's listening. Marvellous things Had vanity (quick Spirit that appears Almost as deeply seated and as strong In a Child's heart as fear itself) conceived 105 For my enjoyment. Would that I could now Recal what then I pictured to myself, Of mitred Prelates, Lords ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... or windjammer. Dey dances out on de grass, forty or fifty niggers, and dem big gals nineteen year old git out dere barefoot as de goose. It jes' de habit of de times, 'cause dey all have shoes. Sometimes dey call de jig dance and some of dem sho' dance it, too. De prompter call, 'All git ready.' Den he holler, 'All balance,' and den he sing out, 'Swing you pardner,' and dey does it. Den he say, 'First man head off to de right,' and dere dey goes. Or he say, 'All promenade,' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the cast had been called together for final instructions. When all were gathered Wee laid down the law. The fairies were not to talk in the wings. All were to keep an eye on the prompter, and Blue Bonnet was especially informed that if the wind apparatus got on a rampage, as it did at the dress rehearsal, and drowned what she was saying at her first entrance, she was to raise her voice and compete with the elements, if ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Both you of my inclining, and the rest; Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it Without a prompter." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... of surprise to any body. For his apostasy he could not plead even the miserable excuse that he had been neglected. The ignominious services which he had formerly rendered to his party as a spy, a raiser of riots, a dispenser of bribes, a writer of libels, a prompter of false witnesses, had been rewarded only too prodigally for the honour of the new government. That he should hold any high office was of course impossible. But a sinecure place of five hundred a year had been created for him in the department of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... spies and reporters,—no stirring of his finger can escape it here. He has much suspicion to encounter: Papa looking always sadly askance, sadly incredulous, upon him. He is in correspondence with Grumkow; takes much advice from Grumkow (our prompter-general, president in the Dionysius'-Ear, and not an ill-wisher farther); professes much thankfulness to Grumkow, now and henceforth. Thank you for flinging me out of the six-story window, and catching me by the coat-skirts!—Left ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... very badly, nobody was word-perfect and a rasping prompter would not keep ahead as he ought to have done; the scenery and the make-ups were daubs, and I was filled with amazement that having quite wantonly undertaken to do this thing these people could then do it so slackly. Then a certain sudden warmth in the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... was a marvel of supple, exaggerated grace and the quadrille looked like a free-for-all for unbroken colts. The honor of prompter was conferred upon the sheriff, and he gravely called the changes as they were usually called in ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... which only two could be called rehearsals, for the other two were tournaments in which messieurs les artistes exercised themselves in altercation and abuse. Davydov and Glama were the only two who knew their parts; the others trusted to the prompter and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... case, And plainly told her 'twas a want of grace; Bade her "such fancies and affections check, And wear a thicker muslin on her neck." Abased, his human foes the combat fled, And the stern clerk yet higher held his head. They were indeed a weak, impatient set, But their shrewd prompter had his engines yet; Had various means to make a mortal trip, Who shunn'd a flowing bowl and rosy lip; And knew a thousand ways his heart to move, Who flies from banquets and who laughs at love. Thus far the playful Muse has lent her aid, But now departs, of graver ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... trade union is to keep its feet on the earth, no matter where its head may be; to take one step at a time, and not to trouble about the future of society. This purpose, which has from the first been the prompter of union activity, was clearly enunciated in the testimony of Adolph Strasser, a converted socialist, one of the leading trade unionists, and president of the Cigar-makers' Union, before ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... sway his decision. But, like his more distinguished colleagues, he had to rely upon counsel from outside, and in his case, as in theirs, the official adviser was not always identical with the real prompter. He, too, as we saw, set aside the findings of the commissions when they disagreed with his own. In a word, Mr. Wilson's fatal stumble was to have sacrificed essentials in order to score on issues of secondary moment; for while success enabled him to obtain his paper ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... thou didst cries out, and its avengers still will follow. But here they may not come: nor those, who, tempting, track thy path. Wise counsel take. Within our hearts is all we seek: though in that search many need a prompter. Him I have found in blessed Alma. Then rove no more. Gain now, in flush of youth, that last wise thought, too often purchased, by a life of woe. Be ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... into a deep and convalescent sleep. By the end of the hour, however, Jimsy had decided for natural sleep, urged thereto, perhaps, by that unseen playwright who had decreed another time for the curtain; or perhaps he was kept by Doctor Thayer's professional persuasions, in defiance of the prompter's signal. However the case, the heart slowly but surely began to take up its job like an honest force-pump, the face began to lose its death-like pallor, the breathing became more nearly normal. Doctor ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights—the orchestra lights—came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell—which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries—of six short twelve-months—had ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... HOLD! Prompter, hold! a word before your nonsense; I'd speak a word or two, to ease my conscience. My pride forbids it ever should be said, My heels eclips'd the honours of my head; That I found humour in a piebald vest, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... in the Old Room," the page answered rather resentfully, but resigned himself as he remembered that, however this curtailed his importance, it left open a prompter return to his game ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... greater security, immensely more of the national viewpoint, much larger and prompter accomplishment where our divisions are along party lines, in the broader and loftier sense, than to divide geographically, or according to pursuits, or personal following. For a century and a third, parties have been charged with responsibility ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of all nations made it very gay that night in honour of the guests who were coming, chief among them, Miss Cameron, who kept her promise faithfully. The orchestra tuned their instruments with unusual care, the scene-shifters set their stage with lavish elegance, the prompter heroically took his seat in the stifling nook provided for him, and the actors dressed with trembling hands that dropped the pins, and perspiring brows whereon the powder wouldn't stick. Beaumont and Fletcher were everywhere, feeling that their literary ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... This was her idea of a medieval Maffeo Orsini. As Azucena, the mother of a forty-year-old troubadour, she got herself up as a damsel of sixteen, with a much too short dress and a red bandana around her head, from which dangled a mass of sequins which she shook coquettishly at the prompter. The audience did not make any demonstration; they remained indifferent and tolerant, and there was not a breath of applause. The only criticism that appeared in the papers was: "Madame Philips, une Americaine, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... I have just come back for my pocket-handkerchief. I must have dropped it in here somewhere. (He begins to search for it, and in the ordinary course of things comes upon Isobel on the sofa. He puts his rifle down carefully on a table, with the muzzle pointing at the prompter rather than at the audience, and staggers back.) Merciful heavens! Isobel! Dead! (He falls on his knees beside the sofa.) ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... life, for which, by mine own avowal, you knew that I, albeit cause I had none, did thirst. But God, more regardful of my duty than I myself, has now, in this moment of supreme stress, opened the eyes of my mind, that wretched envy had fast sealed. The prompter was your compliance, the greater is the debt of penitence that I owe you for my fault; wherefore wreak even such vengeance upon me as you may deem answerable to my transgression." But Nathan raised Mitridanes ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... ecclesiastical dignity to dignity, till at last there was only one further height left for him to scale. It could surprise no one to see the vacant mitre set on the astute head of Gloucester's confessor and prompter. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... "property" storm, While the sheet-iron thunder is rattling its best, And the rosin lightning, and all the rest Of the elements are, for some tragedy-reason, Making the "awfullest gale of the season—" See, at the sound of the prompter's tap, The fiend come up through the "Vampyre trap;" Take a mental photograph then, and there, Of that imp, with his "fixins" all complete— The elfish grin, the tangled hair, The dragon wings and the scaly feet— And you'll have a notion of him I mean, The demon of this, ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... Glibly was incessant, till the tinkling of the prompter's bell, and the rising of the curtain, put an end to his remarks on persons, and turned them all on the piece. I cannot but own the author opened an ample field for the effluvia of critic gall. I know not whether Glibly might influence the tone of my mind, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of rather as a struggle with the proletariat. Hillar, the producer, has effectually disenchanted the footlights by putting steps down to the audience in the position of the prompter's box. The characters frequently make their entrances as it were from the body of the audience. This is especially striking in the crowding up of the Roman Bolsheviks on to the stage in the opening scene—a remarkable piece ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... kept us and of our daily discipline, the goal for which we asked their help, and the race in which they promised to be our friendly rivals. [37] Remind them also that this day will test the worth of every man. With learners late in life, we cannot wonder if now and then a prompter should be needed: it is much to be thankful for if they show themselves good men and true with the help of a reminder. [38] Moreover, while you help them you will be putting your own powers to the test. He who ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... the stage that folks make a graceful exit, clearing up the little mystery, forgiving the wrongs, boasting with feeble voice of the good they have done—with lowering tone and soft music slowly working together to the prompter's bell. It is not in real life that dying men find much time to prattle about their own souls. They usually want all their breath for those they leave behind. And who knows! Perhaps those waiting on the other side think no worse of the man who ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... "shoddy." It is often just the other way. Perhaps it arises simply from the fact that the good works demand the care, study, attention, and, in certain cases, even the mind, talent, and inspiration of every one in the theatre, from the manager down to the prompter. The others, on the contrary, being made especially for lazy, mediocre, superficial, ignorant, and silly people, naturally find a great many supporters. Well! a manager likes, above everything, whatever brings him in amiable speeches ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... wanted to get away from his house, which was permeated and soaked in association with the other two actors, who in company with himself, had surely some tragedy for which the curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene was already prepared for them; the setting and stage were ready, the prompter, and who was he? was in the box ready to tell them the next line if any of them faltered. The prompter, surely he was destiny, fate, the irresistible course of events, with which no man can struggle, any more than the actor can struggle with or alter the lines that are ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... me feel like sobbing. I wondered in my soul how many broken hearts were covered by those lace and velvet garments, and those smiling, superficial faces. The thought absorbed me so that I forgot everything and the prompter thought I'd forgotten my part entirely and ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... same time, the poor wretch was thoroughly courageous in the face of some physical and external dangers. The puniest man in camp could cow him with a look, yet none was prompter than he to face the grave perils of breaking a log-jam, and there was no cooler hand than his in the risky labors of stream-driving. Altogether he was a disagreeable problem to the lumbermen,—who resented any element of ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... tragic tone; A very woman—scarce restrains her own! Can she, with fiction, charm the cheated mind, When to be grateful is the part assign'd? Ah, No! she scorns the trappings of her Art; No theme but truth, no prompter but the heart! But, Ladies, say, must I alone unmask? Is here no other actress? let me ask. Believe me, those, who best the heart dissect, Know every Woman studies stage-effect. She moulds her manners to the part she, fills, As Instinct teaches, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... the hornet was truer than she anticipated: animamque in vulnere ponit. Internal evidence leads almost irresistibly to the conclusion that he was the author or prompter of "The Sentimental Mother: a Comedy in Five Acts. The Legacy of an Old Friend, and his 'Last Moral Lesson' to Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale, now Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi. London: Printed for James Ridgeway, York Street, St. James's Square, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... versification seems to serve the purpose of a prompter. It lets us know in advance just what syllables are to receive the emphasis which shall make the sense clear. There are many lines in poetry which become obscure the instant they are written in prose, and probably the advantages of poetry over prose, or, to express it modestly, the excuse for poetry ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... different parts of the town. Sometimes religious plays were acted in churches before the Reformation; but in Cornwall the people formed an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, and as the players did not learn their parts very well, a prompter used to follow them about with a book and tell them what to say. Coventry, York, Wakefield, Reading, Hull, and Leicester were famous for their plays, and in the churchwardens' accounts we find many entries ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... contrive scenes. It was like playing the whole performance before the actors. These hints of scenes were all the rehearsal. When the actor entered on the scene he did not know what was to come, nor had he any prompter to help him on; much, too, depended on the talents of his companions; yet sometimes a scene might be preconcerted. Invention, humour, bold conception of character, and rapid strokes of genius, they habitually exercised—and the pantomimic arts of gesture, the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... night. The next day it was announced that Mademoiselle —— would take her accustomed place in the performance. I went early to the theatre, and found, to my amazement, there had been some changes made in the orchestra; the prompter's box had been enlarged, and my newly-discovered niche had been rendered inaccessible and almost entirely filled in! In vain did I attempt to find some other position that might correspond to it. I only attracted the attention of the early comers to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... extraordinary, though by no means obtrusive or offensive, consistency to the enormous world of detail and scenery and general "surroundings" in which their parts are played—are never interfered with by the pointing-stick or the prompter. They are there; they can't help being there, and you have to make the best or the worst of them as you can. Considering the general complexion of this universe, its inevitableness and apparent [Greek: autarkeia] may seem, in some moods and to some persons, a little oppressive; ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little joke was in La Vendee. Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money, raises the question—whether any of them can tell the name of the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell—if so, let her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... confines of insanity, shouting and driving about, in my own person, to an extent which would justify any philanthropic stranger in clapping me into a strait-waistcoat without further inquiry, endeavoring to goad H. into some dim and faint understanding of a prompter's duties, and struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and inextricable entanglement of speech and action as you would grow giddy in contemplating. We perform A Roland for an ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... completed scheme of goodness would rather confuse than ease our daily actions. Science does not readily connect with life. For most of us all the time, and for all of us most of the time, instinct is the better prompter. But if we mean to be ethical students and to examine conduct scientifically, we must evidently at the outset come face to face with the meaning of goodness. I am consequently often surprised on looking into a treatise on ethics to find no definition ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... son; call it by any name you please, only do not interrupt the prompter;" and with this the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... and so we are educating ourselves up to the emergency,—the whole mighty nation at school, and learning, we are bound to say, with Yankee quickness. Love has been for us, also, a marvellous brain-prompter. Some of our grandest charities—I mean charities in the broadest and sweetest sense, for it is we who owe, not our soldiers—have been the inspiration of a moment's need,—thoughts of the people, who, in crises and at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... apomorphine is injected anywhere under the skin, vomiting surely follows within a very short time. It is well known that morphine is injected under the skin in preference to taking it through the mouth as its action as a pain killer is much prompter. ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
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