Word: cowards
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...ignores the implications suggested by the community's opinion that Francis came home from the war, not because he was ill, but because he was a coward. His hero wanders silently and rather idiotically from his turreted home to a dye-works in the depths of the slums, and leads the Oppressed Workers out into the sunshine, "because we all should be free like the birds." He throws his father's entire stock of materials out the window into the streets, explaining to his infuriated parent that "all our treaures are in heaven," oblivious to the fact that the impoverished...
...family lived on terms of "feudal familiarity" with their servants. "Come on, one of you's got to go," said the footman, trying to persuade Edith or her reluctant brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, to go upstairs to visit their mother. After lunching at the Ritz with Noel Coward, Waugh commented: "He has a simple, friendly nature. No brains and a theatrical manner...
...plays and musicals ranged over Coward's entire spectrum of talent and taste from the faintly wicked ménage à trois of Design for Living to the spectral fantasy of Blithe Spirit, from whipped cream operettas like Bitter-Sweet to music hall antics like Tonight at 8:30 (with Gertrude Lawrence) from Kiplingesque tunes of glory in Cavalcade to the hilarious battle royal of the sexes, Private Lives. In the film Brief Encounter, Coward even dropped his customary mask of urbane detachment to record a tenderly poignant tale of middle-aged love...
...shaper of the flippant, disenchanted '20s, Coward was wary of the deeper emotions, guardedly dispassionate, compulsively irreverent. He turned the era's alienated mood into a frenetic jazz beat of syncopated escapism. The message: Live for the moment, dance your troubles away, play madder music, drink stronger wine...
...technical counterpart of this in Coward's plays is that he vastly speeded up the tempo of comedy. Relying on single lines of dialogue, he produced instant repartee in which talk became a blindingly fast game of inflective one-upmanship rather than a declaration of meaning or a display of passion. Even within individual lines, he inserted a word or phrase that mockingly deflated the emotion it expressed. Thus Elyot says to Amanda in Private Lives: "You're looking very lovely in this damned moonlight, Amanda." Repeated time and again, this approach almost makes Coward the granddaddy...