| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland-
His curses then from bitterness of soul
Denounc'd against thee are all fall'n upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH. So just is God to right the innocent.
HASTINGS. O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
And the most merciless that e'er was heard of!
RIVERS. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.
DORSET. No man but prophesied revenge for it.
BUCKINGHAM. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.
QUEEN MARGARET. What, were you snarling all before I came,
Richard III |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves
these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to
regard them is the question--for they are so discontinuous with
ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though
they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail
to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of
our
accounts with reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they
all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help
ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is
invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: and third, the dramatic novel, which deals with the same stuff as
the serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature and moral
judgment.
And first for the novel of adventure. Mr. James refers, with
singular generosity of praise, to a little book about a quest for
hidden treasure; but he lets fall, by the way, some rather
startling words. In this book he misses what he calls the "immense
luxury" of being able to quarrel with his author. The luxury, to
most of us, is to lay by our judgment, to be submerged by the tale
as by a billow, and only to awake, and begin to distinguish and
find fault, when the piece is over and the volume laid aside.
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