It was a historic summer at the Farm. A new baby arrived in June; a new study was built for Mark Twain by Mrs. Crane, on the hillside near the old quarry; a new book was begun in it--The Adventures of Tom Sawyer--and a play, the first that Mark Twain had really attempted, was completed--the dramatization of The Gilded Age.英文原著 · 《Letters Vol. 2》
Raymond, in a letter to the Sun, stated that not "one line" of the California dramatization had been used by Mark Twain, "except that which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age." Clemens himself, in a statement that he wrote for the Hartford Post, but suppressed, probably at the request of his wife, gave a full history of the play's origin, a matter of slight interest to-day.英文原著 · 《Letters Vol. 2》
Howells wrote that he had no time for the dramatization and urged Clemens to undertake it himself. He was ready to read the story, whenever it should arrive. Clemens did not hurry, however, The publication of Tom Sawyer could wait. He already had a book in press--the volume of Sketches New and Old, which he had prepared for Bliss several years before.英文原著 · 《Letters Vol. 2》
In the fall of this year Barnum produced at his Museum a dramatization of Dickens's "Great Expectations." On the opening night of the play, before the curtain rose, the great showman himself went upon the stage and made this poetical address of welcome to the audience:英文原著 · 《Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum》
In connection with the dramatization of Dickens' novel, it seems surprising that the Great Showman had little intercourse with the Great Novelist. He was on intimate terms with Thackeray and gave him useful hints for his lecturing tour in the United States, by which the humorist duly profited. But Dickens, who reached the popular heart as Barnum did their senses, seems to have held aloof from one whose knowledge of men rivalled his own.英文原著 · 《Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum》
The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's pathos. Even Keats's epitaph--Here lies one whose namewas writ in water--finds an echo in David Gray's Below lies one whose name was traced in sand. Poor Gray was at least the better prophet.英文原著 · 《Ponkapog Papers》