Mistral wrote:
>ObB7: I'm not a bit certain that Blake was advocating anything
>approaching equality or democracy. After all, 'not until free men can
>think and speak' doesn't necessarily imply that all men should be free.
I think it does, actually it simply denotes the basic actions which (in
Blake's opinion) make one free - that one is allowed to think and speak.
However, to show Blake's excitement and determination, Terry Nation has
given him a phrase consisting of short, monosyllabic words, practically each
of which is stressed ('free 'men can 'think and 'speak). It even may have
been 'free man' in the original script, which Gareth replaced with plural
unawares because the vowel is short there. This sentence is meant to be
shouted out. The real meaning is, 'not until men (i.e., everybody) can think
and speak freely' or 'not until men are free to think and speak', but that
probably would have been less forceful, and also clumsy for the actor to
declaim. What Blake said is a sort of elliptic, 'poetic' version of the same
thing.
N.