Entrée

“ To fasten the door on the inside, is to denounce myself as plainly as if I had written above, ‘No admittance,—the king is within!’ Even now, sire, at this very moment, there is nothing to prevent the door opening, and your majesty being seen here. ”

“ Advance toward the left hand, from the entrance hall, and by the time you have moved on a dozen steps, the volumes in your hands, if they were gifted with consciousness, would begin to twitch and to jerk themselves about, as if uneasy in being held away from their old friends, right and left, whom they recognise, perched on the pedestals, and fixed to the walls. ”

“ Sometimes, in a scene which employs the ‘Let us in!’ formula, or on other ground looks like a threshold scene, we are suddenly pulled up either by a suggestion of the host that we are ‘in’ his house or under his roof, or by an indication that persons outside are to be brought ‘in’. ”

“ Life in the Theatre There are even odder ways of life than sitting alone behind a desk in a little room lined with books waiting for someone to come in and talk with you, or delivering sermons on literature to the beady red eyes of a television camera. ”

“ In less than twenty minutes they might be seen, in every part of the house, on every bench, in every window, stooping forward from their stands, in death-like silence, their features fixed in amazement and awe, all their senses listening and riveted upon the speaker, as if to catch the last strain of some heavenly visitant. ”

“ The most vivid impression the visitor gets in looking over that vast hall is the impression of space. A speaker must needs have a voice like O'Connell's, the practical visitor is apt to think, as he sits in the gallery, to fill even the silent spaces of that room ”

“ A window should, according to its name, be a wind-door, through which a breath of air may visit the audience; even so, an original figure, a noble image, a quaint comparison, a rich allegory, should open upon our hearers a breeze of happy thought, which will pass over them like life-giving breath, arousing them from their apathy, and quickening their faculties to receive the truth. ”

“ Slowly it is drawn together, shutting in the lights, the table and the violet-clad figure, but not until the watcher outside has caught a glimpse of a man, tall and, yes, handsome, in a dark fierce fashion, who is entering at the door on the other side of the room. ”

“ Directly we enter, we are struck by the stillness and solemnity that reign around, helped by the dim light, the windows with painted glass, the ponderous shelves, the illuminated missals, the graduates or attendants conversing in low whispers or moving quietly about. ”

“ The entrance into the hall of a cheerful, genial gentleman, with a kindly, brisk manner, and a reassuring expression of deliberation and repose in his observant face and easy bearing, rouses us from melancholy fancies, and with a {171} few words of courteous welcome we are at once conducted to the door that is to open to us the first scene in this wonderful visit. ”

“ The door at the farthest end of the room has been opened, and two people who are as yet invisible stand upon the threshold, too surprised to advance, too enthralled, indeed, by the sight before them to do so. ”

“ Because the room which they call a front-parlor is made expressly so that you never shall know. They sit in a back-room,—work, talk, read, perhaps. After the servant has let you in and opened a crack of the shutters, and while you sit waiting for them to change their dress and come in, you speculate as to what they may be doing. From some distant region, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary-bird, reaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do they love plants? ”

“ Or, if I can find any company [acting at the theatre] , I'll after dinner to the stage to see a play; where, when I first enter, you shall have a murmur in the house; every [76] one that does not know, cries, 'What nobleman is that?' All the gallants on the stage, rise, vail to me, kiss their hand, offer me their places ”

“ Ladies, gentlemen, women of the people, workmen, officials, nuns, and servants, all leading boys with one hand, and holding the promotion books in the other, filled the anteroom and the stairs, making such a buzzing, that it seemed like entering a theatre. ”

“ We pour into the theatre of life in a great rabble, there are not enough entrances, gangways, rows or sections for this silly show. From top to bottom of the theatre few are satisfied with their seats. ”

“ When we have exhausted the various schools of Art—during which discussion the whole body have remained profoundly attentive, except when some unusual noise at the Theatre over the way, has induced some gentleman to glance inquiringly towards the window in that direction, behind his next neighbor’s back—we burrow for information on such points as the following. ”

“ Who are you, I said; and where am I to come?
He showed me an enclosed space and an open door over against the wall. And there, he said, is the building at which we all meet: and a goodly company we are. ”

“ Each strove to be nearest the door, that he might enter first. At last the door was opened, and all rushed eagerly in, the strong pushing the weak, and quickly took their seats, seized the food placed before them, and lost no time in devouring it. ”

“ Just as he gained his feet, however, with this sense and that of the door standing open to the hall, he found himself afresh confronted, in the light, the warmth, the rosy space, with her big black perfumed presence. ”

“ A fair entrance, with an easy ascent, gives a great grace to a building, where the hall is a preferment out of the court, the parlor out of the hall; not (as in some old buildings) where the doors are so low, pigmies must stoop, and the rooms so high that giants may stand upright. ”

“ When the voice of the lecturer begins to fade, when the sun beats down upon the mound at Lord’s and the cricket becomes slow: at all times when the mind detaches itself from its surroundings I shall return in my imagination to that evening in the restaurant. ”

“ The literature which is displayed in the windows and on the counters has lost that freshness which it once may have had, and is, in fact, if one must use the term, fly-specked, like the cakes in the grocery windows on the side streets. ”

“ AT THE STAGE-DOOR.
The patrons of the theatre must all find their way into the house through the front doors; only the privileged few are allowed access to the mysteries and wonders of the stage through the back door. ”

“ If you are in earnest, you will simply endure the first year,—endure and study,—and all for what? That, after dressing in the corner farthest from the looking-glass, in a dismal room you would scarcely use for your housemaid's brooms and dusters at home, you may stand for a few moments in the background of some scene, and watch the leading lady making the hit in the foreground. ”

“ We now pass up and down a street, and, apart from the aid of the numbered doors and larger windows, and a more peculiar frontage, above the door we may see the name of the proprietor and the character of his occupation in letters so large that it is literally a fact that he who runs may read them. ”

“ The scene will become intensely exciting; the bright eyes will begin searching in every corner of the room, and the transport which will greet us when anything far out of sight and of the right color is discovered is truly refreshing. ”

“ I was thinking how much better some fellows are than I am, and whether it was too late to begin afresh, and whether the door was open to me still, when you came in, and said, ‘Too late,’ and banged the door, which I took for an answer to my thoughts. ”

“ The rocks which threaten disaster to our intent to devise a room which may serve as theatre, assembly hall, chapel, or whatever, are, if we go to beginnings, the traditional form of the theatre and its traditional décor. ”

“ There are no windows, for the centre of each front is, open, merely consisting of carved and painted framework, like the proscenium of a theatre, and displaying the contents of the shop on each hand, like side scenes. ”

“ Let there be, for instance, five or six sitting around a table, in a room with a single door; a ventriloquist among them wishes to mislead his companions, by making them believe that another is applying for admission. All he has to do, is to make a sound similar to that which a person on the outside would make, in applying for admission. ”

“ Our experience of the theatre for instance, which had played such a part for us at home, almost wholly dropped in just the most propitious air: an anomaly indeed half explained by the fact that life in general, all round us, was perceptibly more theatrical. ”

“ Only a week later the cellar walls were standing, and I was able to step inside and look out of a window. The entire aspect of the world undergoes some subtle, psychological transformation from the moment when first you survey it out of your own window. ”

“ The theater was darkened when she entered and, a quick glance apprizing her that no one followed her in immediately, she continued on down one of the side aisles and passed through the doorway into the alley. ”

“ As in a theatre, after the overture is played, the first thing shown to the audience is the scene in which the action of the drama commences, so let our first words be devoted to the locality in which the story opens. ”

“ He came, a small, slight, sandy-haired, keen-eyed man, with an eager, nervous manner, and a forest of light beard and moustache. He just showed himself at the door of the board room, and, being requested to bring a certain day-book from a certain shelf in a certain room, bowed and vanished. ”

“ Anon there befell a marvellous adventure, for all the doors and the windows of the place shut of themselves, yet then the hall was not greatly darkened, and therewith they were amazed, both one and other. ”

“ If you can put your five fingers throught it, it is a gate, if not a door. ”

“ Still, any theatre gives distinction to a fit-up tour which roams from hall to hall, and the company saved up their correspondence carefully, till they could use the theatre address, as a heading, carelessly. ”

“ Still, the whole has that look of dignity which always accompanies high finish; and the entrance, far from being commonplace, because it has nothing quaint or surprising about it, has a certain ample serenity which it is rare to find. ”

“ So I walked to a rising ground a little retired from the crowd, where I saw a booth, which I took to be built on purpose, for the conveniency of taking prospects, and went directly to it; and at the door I saw an old man, of whom I enquired; if he had ever a prospect glass, whereby I might be favoured with a full view of of the royal City, which I supposed to be the metropolis of the world. ”

“ The whole establishment is at your service.’ And with one final grin that remains in my mind as the most threatening and diabolical I have ever witnessed, he laid his hand on the knob of the door and slid quickly out. ”

“ In the same impressive silence we pass through the inner gateway and find ourselves in a broad passage flanked on either side by lofty audience chambers whose dimensions it is difficult to gauge in the semi-obscurity which reigns within them. ”

“ For to enter the palace of Learning at the great gate, requires an expense of time and forms; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door. For, the Arts are all in a flying march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear.... ”

“ I here use ‘scene’ in the sense of a continuous section of action in an unchanged locality, and do not follow either the usage of the playwrights, which tends to be based upon the neo-classical principle that the entrance or exit of a speaker of importance constitutes a fresh scene, or the divisions of the editors, who often assume a change of locality where none has taken place ”

“ The finding of objects hidden in an adjoining room, or upon the person of a spectator in a public hall, or at a distance, are also accomplished by skillful muscle readers, either by clasping the hand of the subject, or one end of a short wire held by him. ”

“ A door of utterance - Θυραν του λογου· The word θυρα, which commonly signifies a door, or such like entrance into a house or passage through a wall, is often used metaphorically for an entrance to any business, occasion or opportunity to commence or perform any particular work. ”