Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11
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Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11
Literature -- Collections
One day that the insurgents had been beaten, he wandered through a
village that had just been taken by the Dutch, and was therefore in
flames. Saidjah knew that the troop that had been destroyed there
consisted for the most part of Badoer men. He wandered like a ghost
among the houses which were not yet burned down, and found the corpse of
Adinda's father with a bayonet wound in the breast. Near him Saidjah saw
the three murdered brothers of Adinda, still only children, and a little
further lay the corpse of Adinda, naked and horribly mutilated.
* * * * *
Then Saidjah went to meet some soldiers who were driving, at the point
of the bayonet, the surviving insurgents into the fire of the burning
houses; he embraced the broad bayonets, pressed forward with all his
might, and still repulsed the soldiers with a last exertion, until their
weapons were buried to the sockets in his breast.
THOMAS DEKKER
(1570?-1637?)
Thomas Dekker, the genial realist, the Dickens of Jacobean London, has
left in his works the impress of a most lovable personality, but the
facts with which to surround that personality are of the scantiest. He
was born about 1570 in London; at least in 1637 he speaks of himself as
over threescore years of age. This is the only clue we have to the date
of his birth. He came probably of a tradesman's family, for he describes
better than any of his fellows in art the life of the lower middle
class, and enters into the thoughts and feelings of that class with a
heartiness which is possible only after long and familiar association.
He was not a university man, but absorbed his classical knowledge as
Shakespeare did, through association with the wits of his time.
He is first mentioned in Henslowe's diary in 1597, and after that his
name appears frequently. He was evidently a dramatic hack, working for
that manager, adapting and making over old plays and writing new ones.
He must have been popular too, for his name appears oftener than that of
any of his associates. Yet his industry and popularity could not always
keep him above water. Henslowe was not a generous paymaster, and the
unlucky dramatist knew the inside of the debtor's prison cell; more than
once the manager advanced sums to bail him out. Oldys says he was in
prison from 1613 to 1616. After 1637 we find his name no more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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