Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Love's Comedy is Ibsen's first major achievement (1862). This production is its New England and, apparently, its American premiere. In this rhymed-verse drama Ibsen, forsaking all his chauvinistic trumpeting, deals for the first time with "social problems," a concern on which his reputation largely rests. Specifically, it is a satire on love, courtship and marriage. It supports the thesis that a happy marriage demands the absence of love and that a lasting love exists only extramaritally; and it presents, through the mouth of the merchant Guldstad, a strong argument for mariages de convenance...
...much of Ibsen's self-doubt. If Kierkegaard was right, then Ibsen as an aesthetic artist was destined to stay in the inferior class. I daresay that his auspicious shift to the "problem play" owed a great deal to his conviction that in this way he would be performing social and ethical acts, which would raise him on Kierkegaard's ladder of human worth...
...leave Boston this weekend, but they will be back next week for any Summer School students who are interested in seeing social relations at their lowest ebb in years. And don't go to the park alone; bring your girl friend, your wife, or all the kiddies. After all, last night was "Family Night" at Fenway Park...
...graveyard, the blind girl finds social security. She also meets two human beings who, alone among New Hoosicers, seem wise and considerate: Old Repent, the tombstone cutter, and young Robber Jim, an illegitimate half-breed who inhabits the nearby city dump. When Lovey finds she can see again, and loves Jim at first sight, Jim knows instantly. With grandma's death, Lovey regains the capacity for grief. Outraged by her parents' glee during the sterile funeral service, Lovey tauntingly tells them she can see again ("Father, your hair is horrible"). Lovey's parents hardly listen...
...Marble Orchard is a deliberately zany book, and Novelist Boylen's bizarre theme is as difficult to sustain as Lovey's pretense of blindness; at times, the writing is as stiffly convoluted as a plastic funeral wreath. It is, nevertheless, a sprightly blend of social satire and comedy -and an engaging record of a Tomboy Sawyer's struggle to find her bearings in the nincompoop latitudes...