?1795 tr. Flareau (title) The ocean spectre, an entire new grand melo drame, in five acts. Intersperced with songs, chorusses, &c.

1802 Sketch of Paris II. lxx. 390 Melo drames and pieces connected with pantomime.

1803 in Spirit of Public Jrnls. (1804) 7 68 The Melo-drame, which was performed..upon the re-opening of this [sc. the National] Theatre.

1814 New Brit. Theatre III. 255 Had it [sc. The Spaniards; an Heroic Drama] been condensed into three acts, and called a melo-dram, it might have, even in the opinion of the managers, served the interests of their concern [etc.].

1818 Lady Morgan Diary Dec. in Passages from Autobiogr. (1859) 212 Shakspeare is supreme in melodrame, and he is its founder; and the melodrame of Macbeth is finer than any modern exhibition which has followed it.

1835 J. P. Kennedy Horse-shoe Robinson II. xxxiii. 276 It [sc. the bugle]..was displayed as ostentatiously as if worn by the hero of a melodrame.

1842 T. P. Thompson Exercises VI. 186 Might not there be hope for the ministry, if it were to..send its adherents to make progresses by threes and fours throughout the country, to ‘solemn music’ as the melodrames have it.

1896 G. B. Shaw in Sat. Rev. 20 June 623/2 Even our modern music-hall songs and the orchestral ‘melodrame’ which accompanies our acrobats are symphonic in construction..compared to the couplets and quadrilles of Offenbach and Lecocq.

1981 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 20 Dec. ii. 19 Humperdinck first conceived of ‘Konigskinder’ in 1897 as a ‘melodrame’ throughout: a spoken drama, but with the words strictly notated and shaped by the underlying orchestral music.

1998 Times (Nexis) 16 Jan. 32/8 The Strangler, comissioned by Martha Graham, is a smoothly composed mélodrame for six players on verses by Robert Fitzgerald.

1814 Ld. Byron Let. 10 June (1975) IV. 124 It won't trouble you long—besides what is it or anything else compared with our melodrame?

1817 Lady Morgan France II. viii. 147 To perform a subordinate part in this splendid melo-drame of the elements.

1845 Q. Rev. 75 234 All this melodram of Mullaghmast was but a prelude to a design of unmixed gravity.

1873 A. Dobson Vignettes in Rhyme 102 ‘A grave appeal’? The sufferers by the war, of course; Ah, what a sight for us who feel,—This monstrous mélodrame of Force!

1827 G. Croly May Fair 42 So, M—re has melodramed the Ghebers.

1836 New Monthly Mag. June 235 We have seldom read a novel more suited to be melodramed.