| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: Street. Further, it is not true that the Censorship, though it
certainly suppresses Ibsen and Tolstoy, and would suppress
Shakespear but for the absurd rule that a play once licensed is
always licensed (so that Wycherly is permitted and Shelley
prohibited), also suppresses unscrupulous playwrights. I
challenge Mr Redford to mention any extremity of sexual
misconduct which any manager in his senses would risk presenting
on the London stage that has not been presented under his license
and that of his predecessor. The compromise, in fact, works out
in practice in favor of loose plays as against earnest ones.
To carry conviction on this point, I will take the extreme course
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: had won victories in Sicily, whither they had gone over the seas to fight
for the liberties of the Leontines, to whom they were bound by oaths; but,
owing to the distance, the city was unable to help them, and they lost
heart and came to misfortune, their very enemies and opponents winning more
renown for valour and temperance than the friends of others. Many also
fell in naval engagements at the Hellespont, after having in one day taken
all the ships of the enemy, and defeated them in other naval engagements.
And what I call the terrible and desperate nature of the war, is that the
other Hellenes, in their extreme animosity towards the city, should have
entered into negotiations with their bitterest enemy, the king of Persia,
whom they, together with us, had expelled;--him, without us, they again
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: Sophists.
YOUNG SOCRATES: The name of Sophist after many windings in the argument
appears to have been most justly fixed upon the politicians, as they are
termed.
STRANGER: And so our satyric drama has been played out; and the troop of
Centaurs and Satyrs, however unwilling to leave the stage, have at last
been separated from the political science.
YOUNG SOCRATES: So I perceive.
STRANGER: There remain, however, natures still more troublesome, because
they are more nearly akin to the king, and more difficult to discern; the
examination of them may be compared to the process of refining gold.
Statesman |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: the promise of his own verses, that soon he too would be at
rest. Indeed, when we think of what it is that we most seek
and cherish, and find most pride and pleasure in calling ours,
it will sometimes seem to us as if our friends, at our
decease, would suffer loss more truly than ourselves. As a
monarch who should care more for the outlying colonies he
knows on the map or through the report of his vicegerents,
than for the trunk of his empire under his eyes at home, are
we not more concerned about the shadowy life that we have in
the hearts of others, and that portion in their thoughts and
fancies which, in a certain far-away sense, belongs to us,
|
