Tag Archives: drama/theater

Guys and Dolls

Posted on October 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

“A collection of stories (1931) by the US writer Damon Runyon (1884-1946), comprising amusing tales of gangster life, told in Runyon’s colorful version of New York underworld patois. The first collection was followed by several others, and the stories feature characters such as Joe the Joker, Nicely-Nicely, Apple Annie, and Regret the Horseplayer. The musical comedy entitled Guys and Dolls (1950), based on Runyon’s stories and with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser (1910-69) and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, focuses on the romance that develops between a Salvation Army worker (representing the ‘dolls’) and gambler Sky Masterson (representing the ‘guys’). It was filmed in 1955 starring Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, and Jean Simmons.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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The Trial by Franz Kafka

Posted on October 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

“The Trial (German title: Der Prozess): A posthumously published novel (1925; English translation 1937) by Franz Kafka (1883-1924). Set in a nightmarish, proto-totalitarian world, it concerns the tribulations of Josef K., who is arrested and brought before a court, but the charges against him are never stated. He is driven to find out what he is supposed to have done wrong, and to seek acquittal–which he never succeeds in doing, but is taken to the edge of the city and killed ‘like a dog.’

Orson Welles directed a haunting film version (1963). In the opera The Visitation (1966), the US composer Gunther Schuller (1925-2015) transfers Kafka’s The Trial to the Southern states of the USA and Josef K. becomes a black student called Carter Jones.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Euripides on Learning and Youth

Posted on September 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead to the future.”

Euripides (480-406 B.C.)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Actor

Posted on September 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“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. 

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Noel Coward on Hit Songs

Posted on August 9, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”

Noel Coward

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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The Algonquin Wits: Alexander Woollcott on Our Town

Posted on August 6, 2019 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Term of Art: Affective Fallacy

Posted on July 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

“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.

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West Side Story

Posted on July 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Book of Answers: Plutarch’s Lives

Posted on July 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Term of Art: Anachronism

Posted on July 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

“(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.

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