“What is the setting of The Front Page? The 1928 play about newspapers by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur is set in Chicago’s Criminal Courts Building.”
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
Tagged drama/theater
“What Shakespeare character says ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’? Dick the Butcher says it in Henry the Sixth, Part 2 (c. 1590), act 4, scene 2, line 84. His proposal is made in support of Jack Cade’s plans for a revolution in England.”
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
Tagged drama/theater
“Pure melodrama. There is not a touch of characterization that goes below the skin.”
George Bernard Shaw, Saturday Review 1897
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
“A play (1934) by US playwright Lillian Hellman (1905-84) about the scandal that erupts after a teacher is accused of lesbianism by a vengeful pupil. Filmed in 1936, the play was based on a real case that was reported in Scotland in the 19th century and pointed out to the author by her close friend, the crime novelist Dashiell Hammett. The title itself comes from the first verse of a poem by Longfellow:
‘Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.’
H.W. Longfellow: Birds of Passage, Flight the Second, ‘The Children’s Hour’ (1860)”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, fiction/literature, poetry, women's history
“Who were the Angry Young Men? A group of British playwrights and novelists in the 1950s, including John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, and Alan Sillitoe. Their politics were left-wing; their favorite theme was alienation.”
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
Tagged drama/theater, fiction/literature
“A play (1979) by the US dramatist Mark Medoff (b. 1940) about the efforts of a hearing therapist to develop a relationship with a profoundly deaf young woman who refuses all offers of help. Written especially for the deaf actress Phyllis Frelich, it was filmed with Marlee Matlin, also deaf, in 1986. The title refers to the tendency of people with good hearing to dismiss the hearing impaired as inferior beings.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“‘Massey won’t be satisfied until he’s assassinated.’ Kaufman remarked about actor Raymond Massey’s heralded performance in Abe Lincoln in Illinois.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
“A critical term, the first recorded definition of which comes from Dr. Samuel Johnson: ‘a sentence in which the last part expresses something lower than the first.’ It is often used deliberately for comic effect to create an ironical letdown by descending from a noble tone or image to a trivial or ludicrous one. For example, in Henry Fielding’s burlesque The Tragedy of Tragedies (1931), Lord Grizzle addresses Huncamunca: ‘Oh! Huncamunca, Huncamunca, Oh!/ Thy pouting breasts, like Kettle-Drums of Brass,/Beat everlasting loud Alarms of joy….’ Bathos is an unintentional anticlimax.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, fiction/literature, term of art
“A term used to distinguish anything out of its proper time. Shakespeare’s references to cannons in King John, a play which takes place before cannons came into use, to clocks in Julius Caesar, and to billiards in Antony and Cleopatra, are examples of anachronisms. In literature, anachronisms are sometimes used deliberately as comic devices to emphasized universal timelessness.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
[This squib refers to the performance of Henrik Ibsen’s play in London in 1891.]
“The play performed last night is ‘simple’ enough in plan and purpose, but simple only in the sense of an open drain; of a loathsome sore unbandaged; of a dirty act done publicly.”
Daily Telegram
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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, literary oddities
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.