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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: plots, Shakespeare constantly draws them either from authentic
history, or from the old ballads and traditions which served as
history to the Elizabethan public, and which even now no scientific
historian would dismiss as absolutely untrue. And not merely did
he select fact instead of fancy as the basis of much of his
imaginative work, but he always gives to each play the general
character, the social atmosphere in a word, of the age in question.
Stupidity he recognises as being one of the permanent
characteristics of all European civilisations; so he sees no
difference between a London mob of his own day and a Roman mob of
pagan days, between a silly watchman in Messina and a silly Justice
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