Word: shakespeareanisms
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...play is one of Saroyan's simplest, even though the third act centers around a live man in a casket. Saroyan is going classic: he introduces clowns in the Elizabethan manner and their lines are downright Shakespearean, especially in their tortuous humor. He also uses the device, familiar to students of early drama, of punning in the choice of names for his characters. The true Saroyan touch appears here in the simple revelation that the five characters named Hughman (five Josephs, one Mary, one Ernest, and one August) are not related. In fact, none of them even knew...
...times had first-class hot-jazz players (Muggsy Spanier, Benny Goodman, Jimmy Dorsey, George Brunies*). But usually the musicians are purely a supporting cast to Lewis himself. He is a one-man synthesis of U.S. show business at its showiest. Under full steam, Ted Lewis embodies the Shakespearean ham, the minstrel strutter, the carnival drum major, the medicine barker, the vaudeville tearjerker, the circus buffoon, the ragtime sport-all among the most fondly regarded figures in U.S. life...
...Welty is not writing stories. She is using words to create works of art which lie somewhere between lyric poetry, painting, the still untouchable possibilities of color photography, and dancing. A young Negro dandy in a zoot suit becomes, in Miss Welty's perception, an image of almost Shakespearean loveliness...
Most recent hunter of the Shakespeare snark is Alden Brooks, born in Cleveland, Ohio. His 700-page Will Shakspere and the Dyer's Hand is his second try at unmasking Shakespeare, and the result of 20 years' sniffing among Shakespearean data. Stern, relentless Alden Brooks takes a poor view of the accused. He depicts Shakespeare as a butcher's son in Stratford, "a country youth who has to leave school early in order to assist his father in the killing of cattle . . . one who sows his wild oats so liberally that he must, first, marry against...
Shaw's first plays were received without enthusiasm, but soon he was battling with the dramatic leaders of his day. Invited to Westminster Abbey for Shakespearean Actor Sir Henry Irving's funeral, he retorted: "Literature, alas, has no place at his death as it had no place in his life. Irving would turn in his coffin if I came, just as Shakespeare will turn in his coffin when Irving comes...