Word: ophelia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...years ago did not think much of actors, on the quaint ground that they tended to have loose morals. Poe's mother had been playing Boston when Edgar was born in 1809. By all accounts she was a fair Lady Teazle and a wistful Ophelia, but Poe's father David was no Prince Hamlet but an attendant, and an intemperate lord. He deserted his wife when she was pregnant, and before he was three, Poe was an orphan...
...Ophelia, Barbara Jefford goes mad quite prettily, in the most fetching rags you ever saw. One wonders why Laertes insists on ranting and shouting and making such a fuss, just as if something serious had happened to her. (It can be argued, however, that this incongruity exists to some extent in the text...
...hero of this novel ferries forth on the river Styx as matter-of-factly as if he were boating at a church social. Floyd Walker is a handsome, 32-year-old bank teller-and sparetime choirmaster-who has leukemia. With apologetic hems and haws, the town doctor of Ophelia, Mo. announces the sentence: three months, more or less, to live. In sleepy little Ophelia (pronounced "afailure") the drama of life has no acts, only intermissions, and Floyd is scarcely prepared for center stage in the town's morbidly engaged affections. He makes only one promise to himself: "From...
...most forlorn is Floyd, until he improbably makes it up with his wife and Ophelia, ready to live happily ever after on his borrowed time. This is like preparing the reader's palate for hemlock and serving him Postum. Author Hauser has symbollixed up her main character so thoroughly that it is never clear whether he is the old Adam, the fool-in-Christ, or just plain fool. Author Hauser has a sharp eye and sure words for the homeliest of scenes, e.g., "an empty clothesline strung with rain pearls." Her novel is best when her people are worst...
...king and court of Shakespeare's Elsinore, argues Author West, represent all governments, all men. Nobody has clean hands. Ophelia is usually presented on the stage as a convent-type sweetie who has a nervous breakdown; in fact she is just "a disreputable young woman," a docile pawn in her father's plot to match her with Eligible Bachelor Hamlet. "No line in the play suggests that she felt either passion or affection for him." Even the ghost of Hamlet's father is tainted, as Author West sees it: he is the voice of the past...