He said of the Bible: It is the most betrashed book in the world. Coming to it through commentaries, is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows o'er which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs.

[I]ts main character, Henry (Mr. [Ewan] McGregor), is a successful, intellectual dramatist who seems quite capable of churning out fizzy, challenging works about brilliant but ambivalent revolutionaries, philosophers, etc.

The wise queen, however she might seem to have a fair opportunity offered to her suit, finds it not good to apprehend it too suddenly; as desiring by this small dilation to prepare the ear and heart of the king for so important a request

[…] identifications with birds, fish, trees, and flowers (and occasionally as relief, with the stillness of rocks, clam shells, driftwood, and nature's minimals); […]