Word: englishman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Saint Joan. Bernard Shaw has aged greatly since his death. His plays are beginning to settle like old houses. More and more cracks show in the dramatic structure. The carpeting of ideas is faded, overfamiliar and, in spots, threadbare. Even the wit is surprisingly creaky: "Oh! You are an Englishman, are you?" "Certainly not, my lord: I am a gentleman." The ghost of Shaw haunts all the rooms, but his voice sounds more garrulous than eloquent, and he speaks with pedantry rather than passion...
Questionable Paragon. Not every 19th century Englishman kept a yacht at Cowes, a hunting lodge at Abergeldie, stables at Ascot and a villa at Marienbad. But they admired the man who did, and cheerfully forgave him what the Times of London called his "round of questionable pleasures." He pursued those pleasures with particular vigor, thinks Biographer Magnus, precisely because Victoria and Albert had determined to make him a paragon of English virtues. As a result of that determination, his upbringing was appalling. He was not allowed to mix or play with other boys. He was given six hours of instruction...
...must have roared approval. And again when Shylock, an alien, is shown to be subject to another Venetian law: that an alien attempting a citizen's life must forfeit half his goods to the state, half to the victim. The play was boffo in a day when every Englishman had to be his own lawyer to survive, and if it seems dated now, it is still perhaps the most concise summary of justice triumphant over dry legalism that English literature has yet produced...
...ENGLISHMAN, by Kingsley Amis. This year's liveliest comic novel dissects the endless ploys of a rich and artful British self-seeker to discomfit the U.S. colonials and get the girl...
...ENGLISHMAN, by Kingsley Amis. The author's best novel since Lucky Jim tells of a self-satisfied English libertine, and how some unawed Americans let the air out of his ballooning...