WC: Stoppard Quote

From Lord Malquist and Mr Moon, by Tom Stoppard, 1966

"I am reminded," said the ninth earl from the top of the steps, "of a certain critic who struggled throughout his career to commit himself to one unqualified judgment on the arts, and who after a lifetime in the cause of ambivalence, steeled himself to the assertion that in his opinion Sarah Bernhardt was the greatest one-legged female Hamlet of the age." He puffed delicately on Turkish tobacco papered in a heliotrope cylinder, and blew a perfumed wreath for the fading light. "I am reminded of him because subsequently he was reprimanded for this rash prejudice by Frank Harris who had witness a performance of Hamlet by a surpassingly gifted lady-uniped in Denver, Colorado." He tapped the ash off his cigarette onto the donkey's head. "The unfortunate man had to be carried on a litter to an asylum for the cruelly disappointed, where he died without uttering another word . . ."