Born Yesterday: Dramaturgy Guide
Prepared by Madison Delk
Billie's Reading List
Charles Dickens
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens – Poor orphan boy makes good with help from some virtuous well-placed wealthy people who feel they must do good.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Napolean, Robert G. Ingersoll – Radical nineteenth-century author, lecturer, and confessed atheist rejects Napoleon’s glory, insisting instead that a simple, untroubled life is best.
Jane Addams
Twenty Years at Hull House, Jane Addams – “Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited.” This sentiment led Addams to establish Hull House in Chicago, where recent immigrants and other members of the lowest class could receive instruction, assistance, and reassurance that they could prosper. It was Addams’ contention that this work should be done with public funds.
Tom Paine
The Age of Reason, The Rights of Man, Tom Paine – In these treatises, Paine set forth many democratic ideals that his fellow early Americans incorporated into government either overtly or though inference.
Alexander Pope
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711, part II. The essayist is also the source of the quote, “The proper study of mankind is man.” An Essay on Man, Epistle II, 1.2, 1733-1734.
Abraham Lincoln
“This country with its institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it.” Abraham Lincoln, “Inaugural address,” March 4, 1861. He continued: “Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrown it.”
John F. Kennedy
“It’s a new world… Knowledge is power.” Francis Bacon originally wrote the latter remark in his Holy Meditations (1597); it was notably quoted by JFK in a 1962 speech he made honoring Novel Prize winners.