Word: sirs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Sir Ralph Richardson, British actor, on being in a hit play: "You've got to perform the role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator...
...know Arok's master is putting words in his mouth from across the room through a microphone in an attache´ case-sized control panel, but you find yourself interviewing him with stiff formality. You know his name is Arok, but you want to call him sir. Your palms grow moist, and the room suddenly seems very small. When you point out with exaggerated amiability that his digital watch is an hour slow, he snaps, "That's Mars time, dummy." He does not suffer mortals gladly...
People in earlier civilizations and some primitive tribes up to modern times did dream-and believe-that personal names held mortal power. In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer tells how the ancient Egyptians and aboriginal Australians alike took pains to protect their secret true names-and the vital power they contained-from falling into the possession of outsiders. Aging Eskimos, Frazer also records, sometimes take new names in the belief they thus get a fresh start in life. Such superstitions have waned in today's civilizations. Still, as Noah Jacobs points out in Naming-Day in Eden, people...
...better writers from this period, and The Country Wife is one of his better plays, some say the best. The plot revolves around a professional rake named Horner, who with the help of his doctor, Quack, convinces the men of London society that he is impotent. Led by Sir Jaspar Fidget, these men of court eagerly dump their wives on Horner in the hopes that his "harmless" company will keep them away from young swains who would sooner cuckold a husband than look at one. Naturally, Horner spends the rest of the play leaping in and out of bed after...
...greed, made vulga by the artificial gentility which tries to hide them from view. What makes the country wife so refreshing is her total lack of artifice and her good-hearted gusto for sex and fun. Yet she too is a fool, just as Pinchwife and Sir Fidget are fools, just as the Ladies Fidget and Squeamish are hypocrites. There is no one at all who is admirable in the play, unless it be Alithea, but she is no innocent herself, deftly playing one suitor against another...