Word: bard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...century of hero worship is not the best school for criticism. But though Henderson's judgments on Shaw are uniformly gentle, they are not undiscerning. The only writer of whom Shaw could be said to be jealous was Shakespeare; Henderson concedes the Beard's criticism of the Bard to have been often "provocative, unilateral, unjust, savage and false." And he credits Shakespeare with teaching Shaw "the technique of ultra-naturalism in dialogue," just as Moliere schooled him in "the plotless conversation piece," and Dickens showed him how to exaggerate characters "far beyond verisimilitude...
...lyrical, of action and reaction, of brass-choired public spectacles and sad-fiddled private woes. The big scenes were for the most part handsomely played; in the rise and fall of Kings there were actors who could do rich justice to the king's English, and the Bard's, and Director Michael Benthall contrived much regal flow and movement...
...imprisonment, while their lovers were broken on the wheel, flayed alive, castrated and decapitated. His intriguing daughter Isabella was unhappily married to Edward II of England, a king who would rather drape his arm with "suspect familiarity" around a young workman than em brace his queen. Courtiers, prelates, Lom bard bankers and the rising burghers scrabbled greedily for power...
Alfred B. Harbage, professor of English, sharply criticized those "eccentrics" who stir up controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays as being symbolic of the uninformed and unappreciative attitude which exists in this country towards the Bard's work...
...guarded by blackamoors with gilded scimitars, King Saud of Saudi Arabia entertained 400 dinner guests at once, headed by little Imam Ahmed of Yemen, "who waggles his big, richly turbaned head like a teetotum in a sort of passion of politeness." While the guests drank orange pop, "a court bard, descended straight from the poetic line that sang before Agamemnon at Mycenae . . . recites a long poem in praise of the King and Imam into a deafening loudspeaker system." The King's interpreter, "last seen in Washington in a fairly sensational convertible," now "kneels on the floor by his master...