| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by
no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was
excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views.
He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry
VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the
originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the
common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is
the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any
notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as
Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not
quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: run. The half-breed stood looking after him. He
muttered:
"If he's as much stunned with the lick and fud-
dled with the rum as he had the look of being, he
won't think of the knife till he's gone so far he'll be
afraid to come back after it to such a place by him-
self -- chicken-heart!"
Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the
blanketed corpse, the lidless coffin, and the open grave
were under no inspection but the moon's. The still-
ness was complete again, too.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: with aqua vitae, gunpowder, and such other materials as we could
get; and having a good quantity of tar in a little pot, about an
hour after night we set out upon our expedition.
We came to the place about eleven o'clock at night, and found that
the people had not the least suspicion of danger attending their
idol. The night was cloudy: yet the moon gave us light enough to
see that the idol stood just in the same posture and place that it
did before. The people seemed to be all at their rest; only that
in the great hut, where we saw the three priests, we saw a light,
and going up close to the door, we heard people talking as if there
were five or six of them; we concluded, therefore, that if we set
Robinson Crusoe |
