Word: deviling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Shotover is a crazy old man of eighty-eight, drunken and self-confessedly futile, yet hedged about, like one of Yeats' Lear-like old men, with an almost sinister magnificence. His crews believe that "he sold himself to the devil in Zanzibar, and can divine water, spot gold, explode a cartridge in your pocket with a glance of his eye, and see the truth hidden in the heart of men." Made up with a white beard in a wretchedly unsuccessful attempt to look like G.B.S., "Mr. Evans' Captain," as A. E. Watts acutely notices in the Traveler, "is a cute...
...outcome would be incredible and disastrous. Algeria being what it is at the present time, and the world what we know it to be, secession would carry in its wake the most appalling poverty, frightful political chaos, and, soon after, the warlike dictatorship of the Communists. But this devil must be exorcised, and by the Algerians themselves...
Critics were less amused than the audience. "Some of these composers," said Corriere della Sera severely, "falsified their music to please the children. That means they have sold their souls to the devil, which disqualifies them to write for the innocent." The final word was left to elegant, 62-year-old Composer-Critic Virgil Thomson. "I have no opinion on this performance," said he, "because I think Venice is not for children anyway and can only be appreciated when one is over 70 years...
Barry Morse, who is regarded as Canada's leading actor, gave a sparklingly burnished performance as Jack TannerDon Juan, and Rosemary Harris was his delightful pursuer and ensnarer. Kilty was fine in the double role of the brigand Mendoza and the Devil. His production constituted the high point of the Weslesley season, as it had two years previously...
...other Parmelee Cove women pursuing the adulterers like a chorus of Eumenides has the rasp of accurate reporting. But if Reese's predicament is real, he himself is sometimes the sort of hero scissored by children from the backs of cereal boxes. His incessant wrestling with the devil is a little sophomoric, and his escape from Parmelee Cove shows the limits of even the best genre writing: Auchincloss can think of nothing better for him to do than marry a penniless fashion magazine editor and barricade himself in a Manhattan town house...