Word: wench
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What is a woman? A "petticoat, skirt, moll, broad," according to one recent U.S. edition of Roget's Thesaurus. Also "the fair sex, girlie, distaff side, Venus, nymph, wench, grisette and bit of fluff." Such archaisms have a kind of antique charm for veteran Rogetophiles, but new times demand new stereotypes. Accordingly, the British publishing firm of Longman advertised in the London Times Educational Supplement for an editor to update its standard 1962 version of Roget's. The result, out last month after more than three years of work, brought some shocked reviews. Cried the London Sunday Times...
...sense of relaxation, in fact, pervades the performance. Most of the comic leads--Feste, Olivia's drunken uncle Toby Belch, (Keith Rogal) his wimpy cohort Andrew Aguecheek, (Peter Howard), and the wench Maria (Dolly Wiggins)--stick to understatement, letting the situations and the lines do the work. This tendency results in several nearly inaudible scenes, like those ones between Sebastian (Jeremy Black) and his follower Antonio--but often it works to the play's advantage, making the occasional broad comedy doubly comic. Rogal as Toby Belch may swallow a line or two, but his grimaces in otherwise underplayed scenes spark...
Even for his son, it is hard to say what separated B.P. from his more illustrious peers. Certainly his ghetto credentials were as impeccable as theirs, his cigars as long and omnipresent. And he shared their legendary capacity to booze, wench and gamble the nonstop nights away-and to appear at the studio next morning with a clear eye for the main chance...
Similar opinions are held by some of the patrons of Mat's Wine-ing Wench Pub, a friendly saloon with a pool table, pinball machines and a clientele that consists almost entirely of ironworkers employed at T.M.I. "Much ado about nothing," said Charles Hummel, a foreman, as he discussed people's worries about radiation. "The situation was never as bad as the press claimed it was," said a tall, mustachioed man whose T shirt bore an indelicate reference to Iran. "Nobody was killed. Nobody was even hurt...