Word: cassandra
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...fifty-third production the Cercle Francais presented a new play by ex-Harvard Professor Baldensberger on the tempting theme of Cassandra, the Trojan prophetess. This version of the story may be good French literature, but it certainly is not good theatre. It has an undoubted appeal for the many students who can understand French when it is spoken rapidly, but apart from this esoteric group the appeal is definitely limited, since a reading knowledge will not suffice...
Though the author makes Cassandra, whom Shakspeare wisely treated as a minor character, the center of his play, he fails in giving any clear picture of the tragic prophetess, and his play is a mere retelling of the familiar events encompassing the fall of Troy. Added to this the acting was insufficient to carry the foreign language. One of the major players, an officer, was far more interested in the audience than in the play and turned constantly to face them. This kind of acting is typically high-schoolish. Bright spot in the evening was Aesop, of fable fame...
Bursting at a time when class distinction is carefully soft-pedaled and most old school ties are in mothballs, Bingham's bomb raised hob. "Since when," asked the Mirror's acid columnist Cassandra, "has Democracy, fighting for its life, been a spittoon for an elderly brass hat?" "If," suggested the Herald, "only the youths from public schools prove to be efficient officers, it would be well if the public schools, which were founded for the poor . . . should be given back to the classes for whom they were intended." "The views expressed . . . do not reflect those...
Lord Woolton is a Tory and the left-wing press answered the Minister of Food by headlining "WOOLTON MUST GO!" The tabloid Daily Mirror attacked the Government by sending its columnist Cassandra out with a full wallet to gorge himself in London restaurants where rationing does not apply. Wrote replete Cassandra peevishly: "Within five days I have eaten at least seven times my weekly meat ration, five times my butter ration. . . . Not content with this debauch I have swallowed saddle of hare in wine sauce, lobster Thermidor, the inevitable (if you live that way) caviar, Hungarian pork goulash, quails...
...warnings grew louder. He was met by cries of "Warmonger!", "Cassandra!"; sometimes a supercilious "Good old Winnie!" When in 1934 he warned the country that Hitler was arming fast, that England must double its air force at once, Sir Herbert Samuel cried in the House of Commons: "This is rather the language of a Malay running amuck than of a responsible British statesman...