Word: pompously
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Twelfth Night (by William Shakespeare; produced by Roger Stevens) has its immortal virtues-speeches filled with fragrance, bewitching songs. In Viola it has a charming heroine; in Malvolio, "sick of self-love," a monumental pompous ass. To him, as a huffing spoilsport, is addressed one of Shakespeare's crispest queries: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" To him, by a frisking clown, is tossed some of Shakespeare's tersest wisdom: "There is no darkness but ignorance." And nowhere more than in Twelfth Night can a lovely moment suddenly leap...
...spice up the sin or gloss over the grimness of Emma's life. Instead, at a leisurely and often-lagging pace they have pried into every nook & cranny of Emma's avid, neurotic soul and the drab existence that nourished it. The handling of bumbling peasants and pompous tradesmen has an acid authority. One memorable scene-a whirling, overheated ball at a local château-is a wonderfully skillful projection of Emma's half-swooning sense of her own seductiveness...
...Italian Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti. Over half its 10,000 people (many of them unemployed, some dwelling in caves) support the Communists. Yet they are married in the church, have their children baptized, and are buried with a priest blessing the grave and a banner-bearing Communist official paying pompous graveside respects. Last Sunday an old woman peddling the Communist paper L'Unitá was surprised when asked what she and her fellow Communists would do about the church. "Why, I've already been this morning," she said...
...rowdy etchings of James Gillray; he and his bibulous contemporary Thomas Rowlandson had fathered English cartooning. Working above Mistress Humphrey's print shop in Piccadilly where his etchings sold for 18 pence, Gillray had scorched the court of George III with his acid portrayals of spendthrift profligates and pompous politicians. Rowlandson's needle-sharp stylus had deflated many a Regency swell and belle...
Last week Margaret's few close friends flocked by to hear about her trip and perhaps persuade her to do a really sharp imitation of some pompous continental dignitary. But before the girlish giggles began, they still remembered to call her "ma'am," for Margaret is the daughter of the King. No matter how seductively the moon may shine as she drives home from a party, there can be no stolen kisses; a Scotland Yard man is always present to see her indoors; often a lady-in-waiting is at the door, too. As one young Briton remarked...