| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: chant the verses of Tasso (a practice which was suspended for some
reason during my stay in Venice: at least no gondolier ever did it in
my hearing). Shakespear is no more a popular author than Rodin is a
popular sculptor or Richard Strauss a popular composer. But
Shakespear was certainly not such a fool as to expect the Toms, Dicks,
and Harrys of his time to be any more interested in dramatic poetry
than Newton, later on, expected them to be interested in fluxions.
And when we come to the question whether Shakespear missed that
assurance which all great men have had from the more capable and
susceptible members of their generation that they were great men, Ben
Jonson's evidence disposes of so improbable a notion at once and for
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: We took up a volume on The Analysis of Humor
one winter -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
you know and read it completely through, and
before the winter ws over it got so there wasn't
a one of us that dared NOT to laugh at anything
any other one said and -- well, it got rather ghastly
before spring. Because even if someone wanted to
know if a person needed an umbrella someone else
would laugh.
Well, I must be going now. I have a committee
meeting at three this afternoon. We're going in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: Perovskaia, who perished on the scaffold for blowing Alexander II to
fragments, may perhaps have echoed Hamlet's
Oh God, Horatio, what a wounded name--
Things standing thus unknown--I leave behind!
but Frank Harris, in his Sonia, has rescued her from that injustice,
and enshrined her among the saints. He has lifted the Chicago
anarchists out of their infamy, and shewn that, compared with the
Capitalism that killed them, they were heroes and martyrs. He has
done this with the most unusual power of conviction. The story, as he
tells it, inevitably and irresistibly displaces all the vulgar, mean,
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