“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
“What is the riddle of the Sphinx? What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?” the sphinx asks Oedipus, the hero of Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex (426 B.C.). Oedipus answers that it is man (crawling as an infant, walking erect as an adult, and walking with a staff or cane in old age).”
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
“It [Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House] was as though someone dramatized the cooking of a Sunday dinner.”
Clement Scott, Sporting and Dramatic News, 1889
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
“Broadly speaking, the recasting of a work to fit another, such as the recasting of novels and plays as film or television scripts. For example, Stephen Hero, A Passage to India, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Les Liaisons dangereuses as stage plays; The Forsythe Saga, Daniel Deronda, War and Peace, Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown as television dramas. Sometimes a cycle or sequence is adapted: for instance, the dramatization of some of the Canterbury Tales as a musical comedy (1967). Short stories and poems are often equally suitable.
As an extension there are works like the Peyton Place and Colditz of which episodes continued to be presented long after the original stories had been used up.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, film/television/photography, term of art
“In prosody, unrhymed verse. In English, the term usually means unrhymed iambic pentameter. In classical prosody, rhyme was not used at all; with the introduction of rhyme in the Middle Ages, blank verse disappeared. It was reintroduced in the 16th century and in England became the standard medium of dramatic poetry and frequently of epic poetry. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are written mostly in blank verse.”
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, poetry, term of art
“(Latin ‘god out of the machine’) In Greek drama a god was lowered out onto the stage by a mechane so that he could get the hero out of difficulties and untangle the plot. Euripides used it a good deal. Sophocles and Aeschylus avoided it. Bertolt Brecht parodied the abuse of the device at the end of his Threepenny Opera. Today this phrase is applied to any unanticipated intervener who resolves a difficult situation, in any literary genre.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992
“A cliche anthologist…and maker of ragamuffin manikins.”
Aristophanes, The Thesmophoriazusae, 411 B.C.
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
“This drama is chargeable with considerable imperfections,”
Joseph Warton, The Adventurer 1754
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
“To me the sole hope of human salvation lied in teaching.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
 | 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 |
You must be logged in to post a comment.