Under-Written

     In the same year also Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, by divine inspiration began, on one and the same day, to read and to interpret ... [On the sacred solemnity of St. Martin] we were both of us sitting in the king's chamber, talking on all kinds of subjects, as usual, and it happened that I read to him a quotation out of a certain book. He heard it attentively with both his ears, and addressing me with a thoughtful mind, showing me at the same moment a book which he carried in his bosom, wherein the daily courses and psalms, and prayers which he had read in his youth, were written, and he commanded me to write the same quotation in that book. Hearing this, and perceiving his ingenuous benevolence, and devout desire of studying the words of divine wisdom, I gave, though in secret, boundless thanks to the Almighty God, who had implanted such a love of wisdom in the king's heart. But I could not find any empty space in that book wherein to write the quotation, for it was already full of various matters; wherefore I made a little delay, principally that I might stir up the bright intellect of the king to a higher acquaintance with the divine testimonies. Upon his urging me to make haste and write it quickly, I said to him, 'Are you willing that I should write the quotation on some leaf apart? For it is not certain whether we shall find one or more other such extracts which will please you; and if that should so happen, we shall be glad that we have kept them apart.' 'Your plan is good', said he, and I gladly made haste to get ready a sheet, in the beginning of which I wrote what he bade me; and on the same day, I wrote therein, as I had anticipated, no less than three other quotations which pleased him; and from that time we daily talked together, and found out other quotations which pleased him, so that the sheet became full, and deservedly so; according as it is written, 'The just man builds upon a moderate foundation, and by degrees passes to greater things.' Thus, like a most productive bee, he flew here and there[*] asking questions as he went, until he had eagerly and unceasingly collected many various flowers of divine Scriptures, with which he thickly stored the cells of his mind.
     Now when the first quotation was copied, he was eager at once to read, and to interpret in Saxon, and then to teach others; ... and he continued to learn the flowers collected by certain masters, and to reduce them into the form of one book, as he was then able, although mixed one with another, until it became almost as large as a psalter. This book he called his ENCHIRIDION or MANUAL, because he carefully kept it at hand day and night and found, as he told me, no small consolation therein.
[*I prefer "hither and thither"]
— A.D. 887, Asser began to teach King Alfred to translate from Latin.

When I saw a stage version of 'Pilgrim's Progress' announced for production, I shook my head, knowing that Bunyan is far too great a dramatist for our theatre which has never been enough resolute even in its lewdness and venality to win the respect and interest which positive, powerful wickedness always engages, much less the services of men of heroic conviction. Its greatest catch, Shakespeare, wrote for the theatre because, with extraordinary artistic powers, he understood nothing and believed nothing. Thirty-six big plays in five blank acts, and (as Mr. Ruskin, I think, once pointed out) not a single hero! Only one man in them all who believes in life, enjoys life, thinks life worth living, and has a sincere, unrhetorical tear dropped over his deathbed, and that man — Falstaff!
     All that you miss in Shakespeare you find in Bunyan, to whom the true heroic came quite obviously and naturally. The world was to him a more terrible place than it was to Shakespeare; but he saw through it a path at the end of which a man might look not only forward to the Celestial City, but back to his life and say: 'Tho' with great difficulty I am got hither, yet I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it.' The heart vibrates like a bell to such utterances as this: to turn from it to 'Out, out, brief candle', and 'The rest is silence', and 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on', and 'our little life is rounded with a sleep' is to turn from life, strength, resolution, morning air and eternal youth to the terrors of a drunken nightmare.
     Let us descend now to the lower ground where  Shakespeare is not disabled by this inferiority in energy and elevation of spirit. Take one of his big fighting scenes, and compare its blank verse, in point of mere rhetorical strenuousness, with Bunyon's prose. Macbeth's famous cue for the fight with Macduff runs thus:
                     Yet will I try the last: before my body
                     I throw my warlike shield. Lay on Macduff,
                     And damned be he that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
Turn from this jingle, dramatically right in feeling, but silly and resourceless in thought and expression, to Apolloyon's cue for the fight in the Valley of Humiliation: 'I am void of fear in this matter. Prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den thou shalt go no farther: here will I spill thy soul.' This is the same thing done masterly. Apart from its superior grandeur, force, and appropriateness, it is better clap-trap and infinitely better word-music.
— George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays.

....Mine I composed long since and am still pleased with it, totally pleased. My other writings are no sooner dry than they revolt me, but my epitaph still meets with my approval. There is little chance unfortunately of its ever being reared above the skull that conceived it, unless the State takes up the matter. But to be unearthed I must first be found, and I greatly fear those gentleman will have as much trouble finding me dead as alive. So I hasten to record it here and now, while there is yet time:

          Hereunder lies the above who up below
          So hourly died that he lived on till now.

— Samuel Beckett, Four Novellas, First Love, p. 10.