Word: victorian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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DONALD SOULE's sets and Linda Martin's costumes were Victorian par excellence. In a rather unique design idea, Soule elected to extend a small terrace across the entire rear of the set, and in its contrasting to the high, vaulted ceiling, it built an atmosphere of expansiveness (It would be worthwhile, however, for the Loeb to paint the back wall of the stage, or at least remove the smudges, if they intend to go on using any more sets without a final drop or curtain in back...
...MANY historians, the over sixty year reign of Queen Victoria represents the zenith of the British Empire. Yet, as all too many Englishmen discovered, the Victorian era was perhaps also one of the cruelest periods of British history--cruel not in the sense of physical abuse such as the English had been forced to suffer under the Tudors, but cruel in its absolute lack of tolerance for those who refused to strictly follow the "prim and proper" moral dictates of society. Those prominent Victorians whose lifestyle deviated from society's norms lived in the fear of finding Scotland Yard daily...
...course, divorce was severely frowned upon by Victorian society, and any partner to adultery could count on permanent ostracization. Such is the situation of Margaret Erlynne in Lady Windermere's Fan, the first successful play written by Oscar Wilde. After just a few months of married life, she left her husband and baby daughter in favor of another man. Once he abandoned her, she was left alone in the world--a pariah from the social circles she had once frequented. Twenty years later she reads that her daughter has married a rich peer, Lord Windermere. Adopting the pseudonym 'Erlynne...
ROBERT David MacDonald's production of Lady Windermere's Fan for the Harvard Summer School Repertory Theater is a finely polished presentation of Wilde's often bitter satirical commentary on Victorian mores. Although imperfect, MacDonald's careful staging and special efforts to leave Wilde's acid humor message intact make a highly entertaining performance that might even have amused Lady Windermere's eccentric author...
...Victorian children, the author writes, were widely regarded as "little defective adults, sodden with original sin," which could only be squeezed out of them by cramping disciplines. One of nanny's first jobs was to institute rules and punishments regulating eating and elimination. All food on the plate had to be eaten, or it would appear at the next meal. Failure to perform potty at the proper hour (training began at six weeks) brought the certain retribution of laxative powder. Nannying appears to have provided parents with some peculiar satisfactions. As proof that the popularity of the system spread...