The Plays of Benn Levy: Between Shaw and Coward

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Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1994 - 220 pagini
The theme of Levy's first stage play, This Woman Business (1925), is the Shavian battle of the sexes, an idea that threads its way through most of his plays and culminates in his Giraudoux-like comic adaptation of the Amazonian adventures of Theseus and Heracles (The Rape of the Belt, 1957) and his last play, a realistic problem play (The Member for Gaza, 1966) which, despite its seeming political topicality, echoes with eerie contemporaneity nearly thirty years later.

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Cuprins

Introduction Chronicler of an Age
21
19251928 Contemporary Attitudes
40
A Man with Red Hair 1928
46
Mud and Treacle or The Course of True Love 1928
50
A Piece of Pastiche in Three Acts 1928
56
19291931 Games of Truth
63
A Religious Comedy in Three Acts and a Prologue 1930
68
Topaze 1930
75
Cupid and Psyche 1952
132
The Rape of the Belt 1957
138
19461966 Tribalism and Myth
151
The Tumbler 1960
157
Public and Confidential 1966
163
A Miscellany
173
Conclusions Mirror to an Age
184
Anatomy of the Theatre
194

Hollywood Holiday 1931
82
Springtime for Henry 1931
87
19361940 Women and the Social Structure
101
A Life of Don Juan 1937
106
Madame Bovary 1937
113
The Jealous God 1939
119
19461966 Playful Philosophical Debates
126
The Position Stated
204
The Censorship
207
Notes
209
Bibliography
214
Index
218
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Pagina 114 - The moon shines bright : — In such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise ; in such a night, Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night.
Pagina 77 - Guido, with a burnt stick in his hand, demonstrating on the smooth paving-stones of the path, that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
Pagina 71 - ... Certainly not. He is not a person. What vanity is it that tempts you to invest him with your own little human attributes ? PAUL, [banging her fists madly against the desk she has been crying on] I tell you my heart is broken: broken, do you hear ? Does that mean nothing to you ? NICHOLAS. Nothing: less than nothing. Every little tinpot philosopher has been able to see that fame and money are blind alleys; but it took a Plato to discover that so also is beauty; and a Jesus of Nazareth to point...
Pagina 50 - I'll see that you keep that sleek, bushy tail glistening as it should, because you're a very beautiful squirrel, but you're none too bright either, so we've got to be careful. There are cruel steel traps lying about everywhere, just waiting for rather mad, slightly satanic, and very timid little animals.
Pagina 195 - ... followed from time immemorial, and any other way is wrong, is contrary to custom, to law. Law, for the Andaman Islander, means that there is an order of the universe, characterised by absolute uniformity; this order was established once for all in the time of the ancestors, and is not to be interfered with, the results of any such interference being evil, ranging from merely minor ills such as disappointment or discomfort to great calamities. The law of compensation is absolute. Any deviation...
Pagina 73 - I merely shewed you that you couldn't. That is my work. PAUL, [still sobbing bitterly] If there were a God, he wouldn't let you draw another breath. NICHOLAS, [continuing smoothly] When you are told that God is omnipotent, it merely means that in the long run he has you all on the end of a string. He may hold some on a longer, looser string than others, but the string is there, always there. It is a mistake to strain at it: it only hurts. That much I think I have been able to demonstrate. A circle...
Pagina 106 - Good-bye. (She takes his face in her hands; and as he divines her intention and bends his knee, she kisses his forehead. Then he flies out into the night. She turns to Morell, holding out her arms to him.) Ah, James! (They embrace. But they do not know the secret in the poet's heart...
Pagina 49 - Laughton has made so subtle, so revoltingly brilliant a study of his sadistic obsession that the man, and through him the play, is well-nigh intolerable. Mr. Laughton by face, by voice, above all, by imaginative bodily movement, compels suspension of disbelief.
Pagina 195 - ... good serviceable weapon, whereas the wrong way will give an inferior or useless one. The Andaman Islander tends to look at the matter from a different angle; the right way is right because it is the one that has been followed from time immemorial, and any other way is wrong, is contrary to custom, to law. Law, for the Andaman Islander, means that there is an order of the universe, characterised by absolute uniformity; this order was established once for all in the time of the ancestors, and is...

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