Word: playwrights
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...author, has with consummate skill placed opposites side by side. Inherited and acquired refinement meet, and struggle with vulgarity and worse. Carelessness vies with efficiency; temperaments clash. Here and in the beauty of some of the lines (too often marred by imperfect diction) lies the achievement of the playwright...
...without an audience, and held to a direct answer of "Yes" or "No" to every question put to him. These two semi-truisms are by no means the be all and end all of Shaviainism; but they go a long way in helping most of us to understand the playwright. "Getting Married," playing this week at the Copley, is no exception to Shaw's rules. It is witty, intellectual and enjoyable; it tears down without building up; it makes mince-meat of "class" and "respectability"; and it leaves the mind in a whirl. We should like to believe that Shaw...
...complaint, for some sad specimens of acting are only too frequently inflicted upon us. But the jocularity is not confined to "ham" actors, struggling stock companies, or situations so forced as to be suitable for sarcasm, for the most luminous of our stage stars and the efforts of our playwright most applauded elsewhere, have here repeatedly met with a sportive reception...
...other words, the "dear public" does not want to pay to see a drama depicting life as analyzed by a philosophical playwright whose uniqueness has made his name and memory immortal. We study his plays in college, but seldom see them produced because "the public does not want that sort of thing." It would be interesting to make this experiment; obtain the best of Shakspearean actors for the production of the immortal's plays with the money sunk into the elaborate Broadway revue as a working capital for scenery costumes and modern theatrical appliances, and tour the country as frequently...
...Woods overlooks the fact that the playwright, the author, the poet, the newspaper, the musician--all shape public taste, thought and opinion. No one would begrudge any playwright for making a living by writing bedroom farces, if that be his ambitions, but there are many who object to hear the declaration that these are what they, a goodly part of the public, want. The American theatre-goer has had no real opportunity to choose between the Shakespearean drama and the modern farcical acrobatics. It is inaccurate to say that one thing is preferred to another unless both have been equally...