Page 228 sur 490

"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."