Word: pamela
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When Samuel Richardson wrote the first modern English novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, a 1740 tearjerker about an innocent serving maid and her lecherous master, most of London enjoyed a good cry. But the plight of Pamela Andrews, often fighting with her back to the bedroom wall, seems to have given Richardson's friend and fellow-novelist, Henry Fielding (Tom Jones), a hearty laugh instead, or at least the idea for a bawdy satire. Within six months, he pseudonymously penned An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, a short but exact parody* written, like Pamela...
...advice to heart, Shamela is soon playing the untouchable so prettily that she sends the squire's temper as well as his temperature up, and he goes around raging, "Hussy, Slut, Saucebox, Boldface-come hither!" Shamela takes to her bedroom instead, but carefully leaves the door unlatched (Pamela always locked hers). When Pamela's door was forced, she would faint dead away, but when the squire comes "pit a pat into [Shamela's] Room in his Shirt," Sham flashes some impromptu but effective jujitsu...
...moment of doubt. She still nurses a soft spot in her heart for a certain "jolly Parson" to whom she had borne an illegitimate child. But she consoles herself with another of mamma's maxims: "A married Woman injures only her Husband, but a single Woman herself." Like Pamela, she goes through with the marriage...
...Theater (Sun. 4 p.m., NBC). Two hours of Macbeth, starring Alec Guinness and Pamela Brown...
Divorced. By Pamela Brown, 35, auburn-haired British actress of stage (The Lady's Not for Burning) and screen (Tales of Hoffmann): Peter Copley, 37, British character actor; after eleven years of marriage, no children; in London...