| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: shewn that Shakespear's sonnets exasperated Mary Fitton into dyeing
her hair and getting painted in false colors, I must give up all
pretence that my play is historical. The later suggestion of Mr
Acheson that the Dark Lady, far from being a maid of honor, kept a
tavern in Oxford and was the mother of Davenant the poet, is the one I
should have adopted had I wished to be up to date. Why, then, did I
introduce the Dark Lady as Mistress Fitton?
Well, I had two reasons. The play was not to have been written by me
at all, but by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton; and it was she who suggested a
scene of jealousy between Queen Elizabeth and the Dark Lady at the
expense of the unfortunate Bard. Now this, if the Dark Lady was a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every
place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may
take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once
entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by
your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent
aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you
strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as
to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you
desire to take in this company of the Dead.
"The place you desire," and the place you FIT YOURSELF FOR, I must
also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: whom you shot at?" said his travelling companion.
"Hout, Earnscliff, ye keep a record of a' men's misdoings
--Dick's head's healed again, and we're to fight out the quarrel
at Jeddart, on the Rood-day, so that's like a thing settled in a
peaceable way; and then I am friends wi' Willie again, puir
chield--it was but twa or three hail draps after a'. I wad let
onybody do the like o't to me for a pint o' brandy. But Willie's
lowland bred, poor fallow, and soon frighted for himsell--And,
for the worricows, were we to meet ane on this very bit--"
"As is not unlikely," said young Earnscliff, "for there stands
your old witch, Hobbie."
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