но жалок тот, кто смерти ждет, не смея умереть!©
"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part.
But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room
simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy,
as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur.
The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.
To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted
through Shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier for its presence,
a reed through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and more
full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it,
and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia,
if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled.
Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died.
But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they
are."
(c)
But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room
simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy,
as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur.
The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.
To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted
through Shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier for its presence,
a reed through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and more
full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it,
and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia,
if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled.
Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died.
But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they
are."
(c)