How time works the quote

It sounds cliched I know but it's worth remembering the phrase 'There was a time.' Just as necessary as it is to bear in mind that 'The times they are a-changing.' There was a time, indeed, when it was politic to know the lines of well-known poems and plays. Often, a person would be heard opening a quote - tossing it in the social wind, as it were - and somebody standing adjacent would hasten to complete it and cite the origin of the quote. Shakespeare. Or, Alexander Pope. Or, Thomas Gray.

Bookish knowledge ruled with a vengeance. A veneer of cold - but proud - sweat would be discerned on the brows of underpaid and overworked schoolmasters when it was reported to them that their wards had been overheard quoting with such felicity and accuracy, and at such length.

Usually the report would originate from a PE master who, just as deft at trapping a hockey pass, would anticipate a quote tossed from the top of the hockey D from one player to another who completely fluffed the pass. This is roughly how it would go:

Passer 1 (the accurate one): Brett, I am constant as the northern star/Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality/There is no fellow in the firmament. But ..O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Especially when I make a pass?'

Player 2 (the one that missed the pass): To err is human, to forgive divine. Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, David, and never you forget that. We all take our turn upon the carousel of life.

And so it went....There was a time. But with each passing day, the proud schoolmasters's 'moment in the sun' was drawing to a close. One or two pupils threw up in English class. This was promptly attributed the prolonged exposure to too rich a literary fare which was bound to bring about enormous indigestion.

Two or three other pupils fell asleep in class, as in a trance. Again, this was diagnosed as intellectual fatigue that was starting to creep in. And so Shakespeare's moment of reckoning arrived, as did that of Pope, Gray, Donne, Milton, Byron and company.

Collective wisdom

Sagacious educators of that time in their collective wisdom felt that pupils ought to be trained in greater originality, and not be mere mouthpieces of the great men that preceded them. And so the hapless and constantly harried schoolmaster was introduced to a fresh level of stress because he had to figure out a fresh approach to English - minus the staunch underpinning of the greats.

This, in a way, gave birth to a form of literary comedy because the remodelled schoolmaster showed how one could filch half a thought from a great quote, amalgamate said filched thought with something new and presto, a mongrel was born. That's how the mongrel quote saw the light of day and continued for a long time to wreak havoc on humanity.

For example, 'To err is human, to blame it on the computer is even more so...' has become standard. Or, 'My love is like a red, red rose/While I look pale and sickly/The difference in our status shows/But I will change that quickly.' But I hear that even this mutated genre is having to give way.

People are being too clever by half, is the general feeling. Too many smart alecs around with amazing talent for mutilating the pristine sayings of the greats. So once the curtain falls on the mongrel quote, it will leave us for a while - and this scares me even as I struggle to remain constant, fixed and unshakeable as the bard's Northern star - with rap and hip hop of which, if history is anything to go by, we will also in the not too distant future be saying: There was a time... Because as I said, even before Bob Dylan pointed it out we should have seen that that's the nature of time. It's clothed in a sequined garment labelled 'Change'.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.