ABSTRACT
Readiness for death, Hamlet is talking about. But readiness for death and readiness for life are exactly the same thing. At least so the authors had taken this phrase when he first learned the play by heart, and then he was about twelve years old. In the meantime these words had become so much a part of me that there was no longer any conscious volition in acting on them; it was simply the only thing to do, and my only conscious excuse in going ahead and writing music for no purpose whatever was that in that way he would acquire greater facility in writing, and that seemed to be enough. The theatre, this kind of theatre the author was dreaming about, is the thing, if greatly used, which can "liberate simultaneously all the faculties of man," and also direct them to noble uses.
