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Quote by John Gay

Work

The Beggar's Opera

First performed in the 18th century, this work is celebrated for its blend of opera and ballad, featuring memorable songs and a storyline that satirizes the social and political norms of its time. more

Author

John Gay
John Gay

John Gay, born on June 30, 1685 and died on December 4, 1732, was an outstanding English poet. He is best known for his satirical comedy, 'The Beggar's Opera,' which had a profound impact on the development of musical theater. more

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“Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.”

“Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, before I learned, did I wonder whence came the multitudes of pictures that thronged my dreams; for they were pictures the like of which I had never seen in real wake-a-day life. They tormented my childhood, making of my dreams a procession of nightmares and a little later convincing me that I was different from my kind, a creature unnatural and accursed.”

“All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. I have been aware of other persons in me. Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be. Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of childhood. You were then not fixed, not crystallized. You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an identity in the process of forming--ay, of forming and forgetting.”