Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© Tony Hisgett, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
William Shakespeare recalls how the love of his life once teased him to the brink of despair.
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© Tanya Dedyukhina, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Literary rumour in the time of Queen Anne said that William Shakespeare owed his extraordinary career to a scurrilous ballad.
© Aaron Burden, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
A benevolent lecturer has to persuade a class of restless girls to stay inside on a rainy day.
© shikibane taro, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
An Elizabethan mariner reaches Japan under terrible hardships, only to find himself under sentence of death at the hands of his fellow Europeans.
© Shobha Elizabeth John, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A street urchin of Lahore takes it on himself to provide a naive Tibetan monk with a hot meal.
From Wikimedia Commons.
Four knights thought they were helping their King, but they could not have made a greater mistake.