Word: leda
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...awkwardness and profuseness of gestures. Jane Hanle was generally apathetic as Alkmena but conveyed Alkmena's conquetry and supicious insight. She deserves credit for stepping into her role on one day's notice. Paul Fithian's fatuous Amphitryon, Henry Franck's priggish Trumpeter, Ellen Whitman's inappropriately uncosmopolitan Queen Leda contribute to the carnival of characters who romp through the play. Giraudoux's classico-modern play is typical of many twentieth century French plays that use classical myths to reveal unexpected truths about contemporary social or political conditions. Contemporary problems treated as versions of Greek myths not only retain...
Although your editorial entitled Leda and the Schwald has been explained to us as a humorous appraisal of two legislative approaches to Harvard dramatics, I'd like to correct some impressions it may have made on those who did not get the joke...
Mother & Mankind. Walter Pater tried to pierce her veils with a poetic sigh: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times . . . and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands...
...canvas. She is weighted with sleep, yet every line betrays a dreamer's restlessness. Her thick legs press together and her feet lock like hands; her head twists sideways as if to avoid the lute that lies across her. The painting clearly suggests the old Greek theme of Leda, with the lute serving as a dark swan. But Beckmann was not the man to labor his expressionism with handy tags and explanations...
What follows is predictable, yet always moving. As Silvio loses himself in his literary obsession, Leda becomes bored, is seduced by a commonplace Casanova, Silvio's barber. In a climax of selfdiscovery, Silvio realizes that his wife has been unfaithful, that he is a failure as a writer, and that most of their troubles are his own fault. Humbled, he hopes to patch up his marriage: "To accept my status as a human being ... a decent fellow . . . modestly conscious of his own limitations ... the lover, and the beloved, of a young and beautiful wife...