Word: bentley
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Eric Bentley explored the "cathartic value of violent images" in farce at his fifth Charles Ellot Norton Lecture last night...
...Bentley saw two major emotional appeals of melodrama--"pity of the hero and fear of the villain...
Pity is the "weaker side" of the appeal of melodrama, Bentley said; the stronger side is fear. Melodrama plays up irrational fear, which includes superstition, religion, and neurosis, more than "common sense fear--the fear of slipping on the ice or falling off a cliff...
...audience will allow a playwright just enough "outrageous coincidence" to "sharpen the outline" of a play, Bentley said. They will permit him to exaggerate "about 10 per cent--after all, he is an artist...
Melodrama's appeal to fear, however, is essentially "childish," Bentley concluded. "The melodramatic vision is good up to a point," he said, "and that point is childhood." Nor can melodrama be separated entirely from tragedy. "There is melodrama in every tragedy, just as there is a child in every...