580514b None but the brave deserves the fair
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None but the brave deserves the
fair
(Dryden, Alexander's Feast)
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I won't have it that anybody but
John Dryden did originate this. I don't think it's fair, because I did Dryden
in my matric, and I feel from my results it is up to me to make amends now.
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John Dryden is a very interesting character, a poet, but
he couldn't make any money out of poetry to start with.? In those days there was very little for a man
with enormous intellectual background and imagination but no common sense to
do. The BBC hadn't been invented.? So
there was no place. And he conceived the idea that he might support himself by
purchasing a sedan chair and plying for hire with it.
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And by the greatest good luck
there was a pantomime playing at the local theater where there were two red
Indians playing the part of a pantomime horse.
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And the red Indian who was
playing the rear end of the pantomime horse had been ordered to give up the job
by his doctor. And he'd had a bit of an argument with the chap who played the
front end of the horse about it.? They
didn't see eye to eye.
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And so this red Indian took the
part of rear end of the sedan chair which was a nice outdoor life for him.
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And Dryden thought he was in the
chips now.? But unfortunately this red
Indian was not the very nicest type of red Indian. And after the first fare had
been carried and they'd received a fee of two shillings, which is those days
you remember was worth what a floren probably was.
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And Dryden asked the red Indian
to fork over the florin and he just said, "No."? He was going to keep it.
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And he said, "Why?"
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And he said, "None but the
brave deserve the fare."
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Denis Norden 580514b
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