“Actor, n. One who peddles ready-made emotion, and who, despising us for the qualities on which he feeds, is by us despised for the unwholesome character of his diet.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, humor, literary oddities
“Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, humor, literary oddities, music
“After the first stage performance of Our Town, the producers reportedly found Woollcott—a true sentimentalist—sobbing openly on a fire escape in the theater alley. ‘Pardon me Mr. Woollcott,’ one of them asked, ‘will you be endorsing the play?’
Rising, Aleck replied, ‘Certainly not! It doesn’t need it. I’d as soon think of endorsing the Twenty-third Psalm.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
“affective fallacy: A critical term denoting the confusion between what a literary work is and what it does. That is, a work should be judged solely on its literary components, not by its emotional (or affective) impact on the reader. It was first identified as a critical ‘error’ by Monroe Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt in The Verbal Icon (1954). It is related to intentional fallacy, in which a work is judged according to what the author presumably intended to say or in relation to the author’s biography.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“A much-performed American musical by Leonard Bernstein (1918-90), with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930). It was first staged in 1957. The story is an updated version of Romeo and Juliet set in New York’s West Side dockland area, with the Montagues and the Capulets being replaced by rival teenage gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. The rivalry erupts into violence as a result of the love between Tony, one of the Jets, and Maria, the sister of the leader of the Sharks. The 1961 film version won an Oscar for best picture.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Who is featured in Plutarch’s Lives? The Parallel Lives (first century A.D.) pairs biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, such as the orators Demosthenes and Cicero. The book provided background for some of Shakespeare’s plays, including Julius Caesar.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“(Greek ‘back-timing’) In literature anachronisms may be used deliberately to distance events and to underline a universal sense of verisimilitude and timelessness—to prevent something being ‘dated.’ Shakespeare adopted this device several times. Two classic examples are the references to the clock in Julius Caesar and to billiards in Antony and Cleopatra. Shaw also does it Androcles and the Lion when the Emperor is referred to as ‘The Defender of the Faith.’”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“During the influenza epidemic of 1918, just after his first play had opened in New York, Kaufman reportedly went around advising people to ‘avoid crowds–see Someone in the House.'”
“After the flop of his first play, Someone in the House, Kaufman remarked, ‘there wasn’t.'”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
“The most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.”
Samuel Pepys, Diary
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, humor, literary oddities
“Magnum Opus: A great work of art or literature, especially a writer’s culminating and greatest achievement; masterpiece. Plural: magna opera, magnum opuses,
‘It was the magnum opus of a fat spoiled rich boy who could write like an angel about landscape and like an adolescent about people.’ Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
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