
Your readers may wish to be reminded of the enchanting theory, advanced by E.V. Knox, that Conan Doyle's famous story The Hound of the Baskervilles was originally written as a libretto. In support of his claim, he quoted the following stanza :
I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol
To the dreadful, shimmering head,
But it was useless to press the trigger,
The giant hound was dead.
No wonder that on another occasion Holmes remarked : "Cut out the poetry, Watson".
Evoe's original piece A Ramble in Dartmoor published in Punch 21/1/1948 also quotes these lines of 'found poetry' from The Hound of the Baskervilles:
The night was clear and fine above us
The stars shone cold and bright,
While a half moon bathed the whole scene
In a soft uncertain light..
He concludes 'I can only hope that we may one-day discover the manuscript of the original poem, ballad, or libretto from which the story has been reduced down into workaday prose.'
*Editor of Seventeen Steps to 221B: A Sherlockian Collection by English Writers and Baker Street By-Ways.
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