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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde
was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none
the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter
between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no
genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity
for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more
unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes
almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man
announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken
heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's
gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment
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