| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: the strongest claim to be the Dark Lady. And so, unless it can be
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
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: "It's over," said another voice.
At a touch, all the electric lights were turned on, and revealed
a crowd of people all standing, all looking with rather strained faces
up at the skylight, but when they saw each other in the artificial
light they turned at once and began to move away. For some minutes
the rain continued to rattle upon the skylight, and the thunder
gave another shake or two; but it was evident from the clearing
of the darkness and the light drumming of the rain upon the roof,
that the great confused ocean of air was travelling away from them,
and passing high over head with its clouds and its rods of fire,
out to sea. The building, which had seemed so small in the tumult
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: face, gave her that painful shock which follows a sudden recall of the
senses when the soul has sent them forth into the world of dreams.
"What is it?" she cried, as if some stab had pierced to her heart.
"All is lost!" said Chesnel. "M. le Comte will bring dishonor upon the
house if we do not set it in order." He held out the bills, and
described the agony of the last few days in a few simple but vigorous
and touching words.
"He is deceiving us! The miserable boy!" cried Mlle. Armande, her
heart swelling as the blood surged back to it in heavy throbs.
"Let us both say mea culpa, mademoiselle," the old lawyer said
stoutly; "we have always allowed him to have his own way; he needed
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