| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: won't quite approve of your being here.
JACK. May I ask why?
ALGERNON. My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is
perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolen
flirts with you.
JACK. I am in love with Gwendolen. I have come up to town
expressly to propose to her.
ALGERNON. I thought you had come up for pleasure? . . . I call
that business.
JACK. How utterly unromantic you are!
ALGERNON. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: accident killed his patron and benefactor during a hunting
excursion, fled in terror and despair into the deep recesses
of the forest. All the afternoon and evening he wandered
through the thick dark woods, until at midnight he came upon a
strange scene. All at once "the boughs of the trees became
less interlaced, and the trunks fewer; next moment his horse,
crashing through the shrubs, brought him out on a pleasant
glade, white with rime, and illumined by the new moon; in the
midst bubbled up a limpid fountain, and flowed away over a
pebbly-floor with a soothing murmur. Near the fountain-head
sat three maidens in glimmering white dresses, with long
Myths and Myth-Makers |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: cried the President.
"I know Gerard and David and Gros and Griodet, and M. de Forbin and M.
Turpin de Crisse--"
"You ought--"
"Ought what, sir?" demanded the lady, gazing at her husband with the
air of a Queen of Sheba.
"To know a Watteau when you see it, my dear. Watteau is very much in
fashion," answered the President with meekness, that told plainly how
much he owed to his wife.
This conversation took place a few days before that night of first
performance of /The Devil's Betrothed/, when the whole orchestra
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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 La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: of the door, and we never sat up for him. He lived in a house
belonging to us in the Rue des Casernes. Well, then, one of our
stable-boys told us one evening that, going down to wash the horses in
the river, he fancied he had seen the Spanish Grandee swimming some
little way off, just like a fish. When he came in, I told him to be
careful of the weeds, and he seemed put out at having been seen in the
water.
" 'At last, monsieur, one day, or rather one morning, we did not find
him in his room; he had not come back. By hunting through his things,
I found a written paper in the drawer of his table, with fifty pieces
of Spanish gold of the kind they call doubloons, worth about five
La Grande Breteche |
