| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: an artist's head!
At the moment when this history begins, a brilliant July sun was
illuminating the studio, and two rays striking athwart it lengthwise,
traced diaphanous gold lines in which the dust was shimmering. A dozen
easels raised their sharp points like masts in a port. Several young
girls were animating the scene by the variety of their expressions,
their attitudes, and the differences in their toilets. The strong
shadows cast by the green serge curtains, arranged according to the
needs of each easel, produced a multitude of contrasts, and the
piquant effects of light and shade. This group was the prettiest of
all the pictures in the studio.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: That is the slave of dim Persephone,
Wheel through the sombre air on wandering wing!
Tear up the shrieking mandrakes from the earth
And bid them make us music, and tell the mole
To dig deep down thy cold and narrow bed,
For I shall lie within thine arms to-night.
END OF ACT II.
ACT III
SCENE
A large corridor in the Ducal Palace: a window (L.C.) looks out on
a view of Padua by moonlight: a staircase (R.C.) leads up to a
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always
seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still
unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship
delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be
outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the
language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence
that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his
revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing
neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that
she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator.
In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke,
|
