The part was an excellent one for the display of comic humour andclownish drollery, and the enumeration of the old ballads he sings and sells needs no illustration here, where, in fact, it would be out of place.
A clownish singularist, or nonconformist to ordinary usage.
They speak out loudly, with energy and assurance; educated persons would be more reserved, and less proper to fascinate the weak; they would not dare to attempt so audaciously a clownish Mesmerism in spiritual things.
So she took him by the hand with a blandishing air, to which he replied with some clownish grins.
He appears under the disadvantages of a Clownish Debauchee, and a Coward.
After an effort to conquer her native bashfulness, and to look as lovely as possible, she accosted him with such uncommon civility as utterly astounded the poor clownish misanthropic bachelor.
There is not in our language a strain of more beautiful and melodious poetry, than that so often quoted, in which Dryden describes the sleeping nymph, and the effect of her beauty upon the clownish Cymon.
A clownish mein, a voice with rustic sound, And stupid eyes that ever loved the ground.
A little and round face, shows a person to be simple, very fearful, of a bad memory, and a clownish disposition.
One night, at last, a clownish countryman came by with a bundle of hay on his back, drivelling and half silly.
She could not cease from crying, because she was given to such an uncouth, clownish husband that no tidy peasant wench would have married.
Villon, to dress an old clownish father greybeard, who was to represent God the father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole.
Clown we call him, because a noble and generous prince hath never a penny, and that to hoard up treasure is but a clownish trick.
The Vice was given a place, low clownish fellows were admitted to relieve the harrowed feelings, and our old acquaintance, Herod, was summoned from the Miracles to lend his aid.
I trust I shall find this clownish roisterer not less willing to deal in blows than in taunts.
Merely jaunty and clownish it would be but for the mischievous scream (of high flute) at the end.
After a climax of the clownish mood we return to the Intermezzo melodies.
Each one was elaborately addressed and furnished with a rhymed or unrhymed tag that often hid a sting beneath its clownish exterior.
At first they were, or seemed to be, mere plays of fancy--shadowy repetitions of daylight experiences in clownish distortion.
And being downe the villein sore did beat, 2 And bruze withclownish fistes his manly face: And eke the Hag with many a bitter threat, 4 Still cald vpon to kill him in the place.
These are fine Phrases of clownish Fellows that have a peculiar Way of speaking to themselves.
That's an idle, clownish Play indeed, fitter for them that are sitting in a Chimney Corner, than those that are ranging in the Field.
There are indeed some Persons that are such Churls, and of soclownish a Disposition, that if you salute them, they will scarcely salute you again.
It frequents scrubby wooded places rather than open hill sides and is very easy to approach and kill; this confidence or stupidity together with its clownish appearance are the reasons for its commonly used local name.
At the beginning of the feast a tall, clownish young man knelt before the Queen of the Fairies asking as a boon that to him might be given the first adventure that might befall.
Then the "clownish person" started up and demanded the adventure.
His good-natured wide mouth expanded into a broad grin, as he stood with a clownishair at the door, staring at Dorothy, without advancing a step.
He despised what he called book-larning, and suffered his only son to grow up as ignorant and clownish as himself.
The clownish Croudy is changed into a hog, which brings amusing and almost tragic complications into his life.
Clownish devils that appeared in the miracle plays prepared the way for the humorous and satiric treatment of the Elizabethan drama and late fiction.
