To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. Dec. 9, 1945
Mr. Wheelock is very pressing on the subject of my two plays, but I have decided (and begun) to rewrite the Marriage of Venus, and that will be an excuse for not sending the MS of Philosophers at Court, which in fact is not quite ready. . . . There is besides a serious reason for following our original plan of leaving these plays to be published (if at all) after my death. When one is dead one has passed into eternity, and is no longer either young or old. To print a man’s early work then does not cast any slur on his later mind; but to print two rather licencious or at least non-moral plays after The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, by an octogenarian, seems decidedly in bad taste.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY