Word: priggishness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (NBC). In the semi-modern classic that for years was regarded as a ringing plea for woman's emancipation, she was superb as the child-wife who is treated as a mindless, soulless plaything by a priggish husband (Christopher Plummer). But while Actress Harris-kittenish, hectically gay and finally rebellious-could break out of Nora's plush Victorian prison, she could not wholly shake off the stilted language and obtrusive 19th century stagecraft which Adaptor James Costigan took over from Ibsen...
Agony & Ambition. In Wolfe at Quebec, Historian Hibbert penetrates the fog of hero worship to describe the soldier as he really was-a gangly, slack-chinned, irascible young man in constant pain from a kidney disease. Commissioned at 14, James Wolfe had earned a reputation as a priggish martinet who scorned wining and wenching but relished the meanest chores in his scramble for rank. He had fought well in Flanders against the French, and William Pitt the Elder recommended the stiff-necked young major general to run the siege of Quebec, France's major stronghold in America...
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (Spoken Word, 3 LPs) gets a fine new production by the players of the Dublin Gate Theatre, with Michael MacLiammoir as Malvolio, "sick of self-love," posturing his priggish way with timeless vulgarity. London is also out with a spate of Shakespeare-Coriolamis, Othello, Julius Caesar, Richard II-in a series of journeyman readings by the Marlowe Society players, who eventually will press all the plays. One of the most majestically read of the talking books is MGM's Joseph Conrad, in which Sir Ralph Richardson whittles Youth and Heart of Darkness to half...
...expert at suggesting the blend of revival-meeting urgency, circus gaiety, and kith-and-kin intimacy that flavors rural Southern politics. But the serpentine twists and turns of logic in his novel would tax Laocoön on a good wrestling day. There is a baffling subplot about a priggish schoolteacher and his nymphomaniac wife, who farms out her favors on a faded billiard table. Though the teacher is unnerved by a hint of scandal, he spends most of his time goading his wife into the arms of her lovers. One is Ol' Gene, and by the time...
...whose 1957 analysis of "The Monarchy Today" thoughtfully explored the Crown's position in a world where "republics are the rule," but earned him inglorious publicity for his choice of phrases about the Queen's speaking style ("a pain in the neck") and manner ("that of a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team"); and Marian Campbell, 27, editor of a youth magazine published by Altrincham; in Tormarton, England...