Botanists tell us that the blossom is an evolution of the leaf–but they cannot say just why that particular bud should take from the same air and sunshine a fairer substance, a deeper color, a more permanent existence, and become something at which each passerby pauses, and goes on his way happier for the sight. Why on the sturdy stem of farmers and merchants should one girl blossom into a story-teller in pencil and in words?

Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner

William Shakespeare’s works, not yet ‘kidnapped’ by polite society into the realm of ‘higher culture’, were popular and well known among working-class audiences. […] Many saloongoers acquainted with Shakespearean verse were fond of parodies, such as Hamlet’s lamenting ‘the slings and dregs of outrageous whisky’, or telling Ophelia, “Get thee to a brewery!. Another example spoofed As You Like It:

‘All the world’s a bar, and all the men and women merely drinkers
They have their hiccups and their staggerings..

Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in Workingmen’s Saloons