"Sheep's Eyes and the Lickerish Tooth?"

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

I just got cast in "Guys and Dolls" as Arvide (well, in our show, they changed it to Arvetta, because it's a girl), and I was teaching myself my song, "More I Cannot Wish You."

Well, one part of the song goes,

"Standing there, gazing at you
With the sheep's eyes and the lickerish tooth."

I've never heard such a weird lyric before. What does it even mean? Is 'lickerish' even a word at all, or some weird misspelling of 'liquorice?' And why would someone have liquorice teeth? Can anyone explain this, especially someone who's done the show before.

[Juliash]

Its licorice tooth, like a sweet tooth and then sheep's eyes is like wide eyed and youthful. In my score it says licorice. Lickerish is probably just antiquated...

basically he/she is saying that they've known sarah for a long time...

...does that help? :)

[Jon]

Google is your friend.

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

*Eyebrow raise* You resurrected the thread just to tell me this?

Haha, anyway, I searched the phrase on google, and the only result I got was this thread. My libretto spells the word 'lickerish' rather than 'liquorice,' which I guess is okay, because neither one makes much sense.

[Paul W. Thompson]

If Loesser spelled it that way, he must have wanted to be sure it was pronounced that way.

But yes, that is a very odd and obtuse lyric. Not one of his best. I would treat is as if the two of you knows what it means, like it's an inside joke or a reference to an earlier conversation. What else can you do, hand her some licorice and make baaing sounds?

[stagedoor09]

OH MY GODDDD!!! I was just Arvide at Stagedoor Manor!! It was a blast!! Go You for getting such a fun part. Anyway, I had the same question about those lyrics and my director provided the same definitions as the poster above and I also noticed they're examples of innocence, in a way. Idk, but its open for interpretation!

[thetheatrekook]

I always assumed it was part of the description of the guy Arvide would wish on Sarah - standing there, gazing at you, with a longing gaze (sheep's eye), and a sweet smile (licorice tooth), and strong arms (and a strong arm? i don't remember the exact lyric) to carry you away...

[Speed]

My husband is auditioning for the role next week. I can't believe no one checked the dictionary. Here is the definition of lickerish:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lickerish?s=t

[Sutton Ross]

[Jhmcmullen]

Sorry for the necro, but this bugged me too, and since the song was just on TV, I figure there will be more Googlers. From http://musicals.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44777:

In the original Frank Loesser score, the expression is "sheep's eye and the LICKERISH tooth." Loesser eplained how he arrived at it in a letter that's printed in his daughter's fine biography of him, A MOST REMARKABLE FELLA (page 109). The short of it is that he wanted a companion word that meant "covetous", fearing "sheep's eye" did not completely convey the exact thoughts of the guy who would be gazing at her. He went to Roget's and found that "lecherous" was a sort of synonym for covetous, but didn't quite like the way it sounded, so he consulted the Oxford English Dictionary and found that two archaic spellings of "lecherous" were "licorice" and "lickerish." He chose the latter.