v. [f. THEATRICAL + -IZE.]
1. trans. To make or render theatrical.
1778. Mme. D’Arblay, Diary, Sept. I shall occasionally theatricalize my dialogues.
1899. Westm. Gaz., 2 June, 2/1. The scene in which the unhappy hero has his epaulettes … torn from him, and his sword broken, though a little too ‘theatricalised,’ is really very moving.
1909. Daily Chron., 9 Sept., 5/3. As Lamb has said, any attempt to theatricalise the grandeur of Shakespeare’s conception must fail.
2. intr. a. To act on the stage. b. To attend or frequent theatrical performances.
1794. Coleridge, Lett., to Southey (1895), 86. It is an Ipswich Fair time, and the Norwich company are theatricalizing.
1833. E. FitzGerald, Lett. (1889), I. 20. He and I have been theatricalizing lately. We saw an awful Hamlet the other night.
Hence Theatricalization, the process of making theatrical; dramatization; also fig.
1875. Howells, Foregone Concl., iii. Ferris was an uncompromising enemy of the theatricalisation of Italy.
1890. Judy, 1 Oct., 160/1. Ravenswood, as Herman Merivale calls his dramatization, or theatricalization, of the story of ‘The Bride of Lammermoor.’
