Latest / Comedy Library / Characters of Shakespeare's Plays Part 1 - William Hazlitt

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Characters of Shakespeare's Plays Part 1 - William Hazlitt · Comedy Library

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  Speaker 1: Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett, with an introduction
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  Speaker 1: by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch Introduction. The book, here included
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  Speaker 1: among the World's Classics, made its first appearance as an
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  Speaker 1: octavo volume of twenty four plus three hundred fifty two pages,
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  Speaker 1: with the title page Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett, London,
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  Speaker 1: printed by C. H. Raynell, twenty one Piccadilly, eighteen seventeen.
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  Speaker 1: William Haslett seventeen seventy eight to eighteen thirty came of
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  Speaker 1: an Irish Protestant stock, and of a branch of it
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  Speaker 1: transplanted in the reign of George the First from the
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  Speaker 1: County of Antrim to Tipperary. His father migrated at nineteen
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  Speaker 1: to the University of Glasgow, where he was contemporary with
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  Speaker 1: Adam Smith. Graduated in seventeen sixty one or thereabouts, embraced
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  Speaker 1: the principles of the Unitarians, joined their ministry, and crossed
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  Speaker 1: over to England, being successively pastor at Wisbeck in Cambridgeshire,
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  Speaker 1: at Marshfield in Gloucestershire, and at Maidstone. At Wisbech. He
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  Speaker 1: married Grace Loftus, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. Of
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  Speaker 1: the many children granted to them, but three survived infancy. William,
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  Speaker 1: the youngest of these, was born in miter Lane, Maidstone,
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  Speaker 1: on April tenth, seventeen seventy eight. From Maidstone, the family
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  Speaker 1: moved in seventeen eighty to Bandon, County, Cork, and from
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  Speaker 1: Bandon in seventeen eighty three to America, where mister Hazlitt
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  Speaker 1: preached before the New Assembly of the States General of
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  Speaker 1: New Jersey, lectured at Philadelphia on the Evidences of Christianity,
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  Speaker 1: founded the first Unitarian Church of Boston, and declined a
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  Speaker 1: proffered diploma of d d. In seventeen eighty six eighty seven,
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  Speaker 1: he returned to England and took up his bode at
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  Speaker 1: wem in Shropshire. His elder son, John, was now old
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  Speaker 1: enough to choose a vocation, and chose that of a
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  Speaker 1: miniature painter. The second child, Peggy, had begun to paint,
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  Speaker 1: also amateurishly in oils. William h eight, a child out
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  Speaker 1: of whose recollection all memories of abandon and of America,
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  Speaker 1: save the taste of barbaries, soon faded. Took his education
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  Speaker 1: at home and at a local school. His father designed
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  Speaker 1: him for the Unitarian ministry. The above dry recital contains
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  Speaker 1: a number of facts not to be overlooked as predisposing
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  Speaker 1: causes in Young Hazlit's latter career, as that he was
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  Speaker 1: Irish by blood, intellectual by geniture, born into descent, and
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  Speaker 1: a minority of descent, taught at home to value the
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  Speaker 1: things of the mind in early childhood, a nomad in
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  Speaker 1: later childhood, privately educated, a process which, whatever its merits,
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  Speaker 1: is apt to develop the freak as against the citizen,
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  Speaker 1: the eccentric and lopsided, as against what is proportionate and disciplined.
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  Speaker 1: Young Hazlet's cleverness and his passion for individual liberty were
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  Speaker 1: alike precocious. In seventeen ninety one, at the age of thirteen,
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  Speaker 1: he composed and published in the Shrewsbury Chronicle a letter
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  Speaker 1: of protest against the calumniators of Doctor Priestley, a performance which,
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  Speaker 1: for the gravity of its thought, as for the balance
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  Speaker 1: of its expression, would do credit to ninety nine grown
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  Speaker 1: men in a hundred. At fifteen, his father designing that
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  Speaker 1: he should enter the ministry, he proceeded to the Unitarian College, Hackney,
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  Speaker 1: or his master, a mister Corey found him rather backward
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  Speaker 1: in many the ordinary points of learning, and in general
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  Speaker 1: of a dry, intractable understanding, the truth being that the
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  Speaker 1: lad had set his heart against the ministry, aspiring rather
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  Speaker 1: to be a philosopher, in particular a political philosopher. At fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: he had conceived, in consequence of a dispute one day
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  Speaker 1: after coming out of meeting between my father and an
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  Speaker 1: old lady of the congregation respecting the repeal of the
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  Speaker 1: Corporation and Test Acts and the limits of a religious toleration,
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  Speaker 1: the germ of his project for a new theory of
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  Speaker 1: civil and criminal legislation, published in his maturer years eighteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty eight, but drafted and scribbled upon constantly in these
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  Speaker 1: days to the neglect of his theological studies. His father,
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  Speaker 1: hearing of the project, forbade him to pursue it. Thus
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  Speaker 1: four or five years at the Unitarian College were wasted,
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  Speaker 1: or at least had been spent without apparent prophet, And
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  Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety eight, young Hazlet, aged close upon twenty,
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  Speaker 1: unsettled in his plans, as in his prospects, was at
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  Speaker 1: home again, And as the saying is, at a loose end,
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  Speaker 1: when of a sudden his life found its spiritual apocalypse.
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  Speaker 1: It came with the descent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge upon
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  Speaker 1: Shrewsbury to take over the charge of a Unitarian congregation there.
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  Speaker 1: He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon
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  Speaker 1: before he was to preach, and mister Rowe, the abdicating minister,
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  Speaker 1: who himself went down to the coach in a state
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  Speaker 1: of anxiety and expectation to look for the arrival of
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  Speaker 1: his successor, could find no one at all answering the description,
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  Speaker 1: but a round faced man in his short black coat
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  Speaker 1: like a shooting jacket, which hardly seemed to have been
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  Speaker 1: made for him, but who seemed to be talking at
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  Speaker 1: a great rate to his fellow passengers. Mister Rowe had
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  Speaker 1: scarce returned to give an account of his disappointment when
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  Speaker 1: the round faced man in black entered and dissipated all
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  Speaker 1: doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. He did
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  Speaker 1: not cease while he stayed, nor has he since. Of
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  Speaker 1: his meeting with Coleridge, and of the soul's awakening that followed.
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  Speaker 1: Haslett has left an account my first acquaintance with poets
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  Speaker 1: that will fascinate so long as English prose is read.
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  Speaker 1: Somehow that period, the time was just after the French Revolution,
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  Speaker 1: was not a time when nothing was given for nothing.
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  Speaker 1: The mind opened and a softness might be perceived coming
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  Speaker 1: over the heart of individuals beneath the scales that fence
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  Speaker 1: are self interest. As Wordsworth wrote, bliss was in that
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  Speaker 1: dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.
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  Speaker 1: It was in January seventeen ninety eight that I was,
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  Speaker 1: one morning, before daylight, to walk ten miles in the
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  Speaker 1: mud to hear the celebrated person preach, Never the longest
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  Speaker 1: day I have to live, Shall I have such another
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  Speaker 1: walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one in the winter
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  Speaker 1: of seventeen ninety eight. Ellie de cypression que niel tom
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  Speaker 1: nile se con saints peveu effessee diu je vivre de
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  Speaker 1: secliente le due tames dimigenis nes pourreetre pout mois nie
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  Speaker 1: fesse geme den me memoir. When I got there, the
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  Speaker 1: organ was playing the hundredth Psalms, and when it was done,
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  Speaker 1: mister Colewridge rose and gave out his text, and he
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  Speaker 1: went up into the mountain to pray himself alone, as
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  Speaker 1: he gave out this text, his voice rose like a
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  Speaker 1: stream of distilled perfumes. And when he came to the
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  Speaker 1: two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep and distinct,
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  Speaker 1: it seemed to me, who was then young, as if
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  Speaker 1: the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart,
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  Speaker 1: and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn
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  Speaker 1: silence through the universe. The preacher then launched into a subject,
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  Speaker 1: like an eagle dallying with the wind. Coleridge visited wem
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  Speaker 1: walked and talked with young Hazlet, and wound up by
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  Speaker 1: inviting the disciple to visit him at nether Stouly in Quantox.
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  Speaker 1: Hazlik went made acquaintance with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and
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  Speaker 1: was drawn more deeply under the spell. In later years,
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  Speaker 1: as the younger man grew cantankerous and the elder declined
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  Speaker 1: through opium into a battered seraph, there was an estrangement.
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  Speaker 1: But Haslet never forgot his obligation. My soul has indeed
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  Speaker 1: remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite,
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  Speaker 1: and unsatisfied. My heart shut up in the prison house
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  Speaker 1: of this rude clay is never found nor will it
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  Speaker 1: ever find a heart to speak to, But that my
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  Speaker 1: understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at
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  Speaker 1: length found a language that expresses itself. I owe to Coleridge. Coleridge,
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  Speaker 1: sympathizing with the young man's taste for philosophy and abetting it,
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  Speaker 1: encouraged him to work upon a treatise which saw the
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  Speaker 1: light in eighteen o five, an Essay on the Principles
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  Speaker 1: of Human Action, being an argument in favor of the
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  Speaker 1: natural disinterestedness of the human mind. Meantime, however, the ministry
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  Speaker 1: having been renounced, the question of a vocation became more
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  Speaker 1: and more urgent, and after long indecision, Haslett packed his
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  Speaker 1: portmanteau for London, resolved to learn painting under his brother John,
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  Speaker 1: who had begun to do prosperously. John taught him some
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  Speaker 1: rudiments and packed him off to Paris, where he studied
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  Speaker 1: for some four months in the Louver and learned to
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  Speaker 1: idolize Bonaparte. This sojourn in Paris, writes his grandson and biographer,
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  Speaker 1: was one long bougeuur to him. His allusions to it
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  Speaker 1: are constant. He returned to England in eighteen o three
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  Speaker 1: with formed taste and predilections, very few of which he
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  Speaker 1: afterwards modified much less forsook. We find him making a
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  Speaker 1: tour as a portrait painter through the north of England,
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  Speaker 1: where as was to be expected, he attempted a portrait
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  Speaker 1: of Wordsworth, among others. At his desire, says Wordsworth, I
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  Speaker 1: sat to him, but as he did not satisfy himself
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  Speaker 1: or my friends, the unfinished work was destroyed. He was
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  Speaker 1: more successful with Charles Lamb, whom he painted for a
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  Speaker 1: whim in the dress of a Venetian senator. As a
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  Speaker 1: friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth, he had inevitably made acquaintance
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  Speaker 1: with the Lambs. He first met Lamb at one of
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  Speaker 1: the Godwin's Strange evening parties, and the two became intimate
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  Speaker 1: friends and fellow theater goers. Haslick's touching, difficult temper suspended
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  Speaker 1: this intimacy in later years, though to the last Lamb
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  Speaker 1: regarded him as one of the finest and wisest spirits breathing,
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  Speaker 1: But for a while it was unclouded at the Lambs. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: Haslick made acquaintance with the doctor stoddarch owner of some
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  Speaker 1: property at Winterslough, near Salisbury and his sister Sarah, a
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  Speaker 1: lady wearing passed her first youth but yet addicted to
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  Speaker 1: keeping a number of bow to her string. Haslett attracted
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  Speaker 1: to her From the first he made a gloomy lover,
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  Speaker 1: and his subsequent performances in that part were unedifying. For
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  Speaker 1: some years played walking gentlemen behind the leading suitors, with
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  Speaker 1: whom his daughter, from time to time diversified her comedy.
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  Speaker 1: But Mary Lamb was on his side. The rivals, on
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  Speaker 1: one excuse or another, went their ways or were dismissed,
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  Speaker 1: and on May one, eighteen o eight, the marriage took
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  Speaker 1: place at Saint Andrew's Church, Holborn. Lamb attended, foreboding little
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  Speaker 1: happiness to the couple from his knowledge of their temperaments.
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  Speaker 1: Seven years after August ninth, eighteen fifteen, he wrote to Southey,
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  Speaker 1: I was at Hazlit's marriage and had liked to have
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  Speaker 1: been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful
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  Speaker 1: makes me laugh. The marriage was not a happy one.
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  Speaker 1: Portrait painting had been abandoned long before this. The Essay
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  Speaker 1: on the Principles of Human Action eighteen oh five had
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  Speaker 1: fallen as the saying is stillborn from the press. Free
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  Speaker 1: thoughts on public affairs eighteen o six had earned for
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  Speaker 1: the author many enemies but few readers, and a treatise
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  Speaker 1: attacking Malthus's theory of population eighteen o seven had allured
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  Speaker 1: the public as little a piece of hackwork. The eloquence
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  Speaker 1: of the British Senate also belongs to eighteen o seven,
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  Speaker 1: a new and improved grammar the English tongue for the
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  Speaker 1: use of schools to eighteen ten. The nutriment to be
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  Speaker 1: derived from these works again was not of the sort
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  Speaker 1: that replenishes the family table, and in eighteen twelve Hazlitt
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  Speaker 1: left Winterslow, where he had been quarreling with his brother
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  Speaker 1: in law, settled in London in nineteen York Street, Westminster,
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  Speaker 1: once the home of John Milton, and applied himself strenuously
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  Speaker 1: to lecturing in journalism. His lectures on the English philosophers
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  Speaker 1: were delivered at the Russell Institution. His most notable journalistic
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  Speaker 1: work on politics and the Drama, was done for The
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  Speaker 1: Morning Chronicle, then edited by mister p From an obituary
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  Speaker 1: notice of Haslet contributed many years later October eighteen thirty
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  Speaker 1: to an old magazine I called the following He obtained
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  Speaker 1: an introduction about eighteen o nine eighteen ten to the
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  Speaker 1: late mister Perry of the Morning Chronicle, by whom he
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  Speaker 1: was engaged to report to parliamentary debates, write original articles, etc.
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  Speaker 1: He also furnished a number of theatrical articles on the
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  Speaker 1: acting of king. As a political writer, he was apt
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  Speaker 1: to be too violent, though in general he was not
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  Speaker 1: a man of violent temper. He was also apt to
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  Speaker 1: conceive strong and rooted prejudices against individuals on verious slight grounds,
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  Speaker 1: but he was a good hearted man. Private circumstances, it
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  Speaker 1: is said, contributed to sour his temper and to produce
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  Speaker 1: a peculiar excitement which too frequently held its way over him.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Haslett and mister Perry did not agree. Upon one occasion,
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  Speaker 1: to the great annoyance of some of his colleagues, he
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  Speaker 1: preferred his wine with a few friends to taking his
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  Speaker 1: share and reporting an important discussion in the House of Commons.
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  Speaker 1: Added to this, he either did not understand the art
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  Speaker 1: of reporting or would not take the trouble to master it.
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  Speaker 1: His original articles required to be carefully looked after to
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  Speaker 1: weed them of strong expression. Haslitt's reputation grew notwithstanding, in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen fourteen Geoffrey enlisted him to write for the Edinburgh Review,
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  Speaker 1: and in eighteen fifteen he began to contribute to le
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  Speaker 1: Hunt's paper, The Examiner. In February eighteen sixteen he reviewed
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  Speaker 1: Schlegel's lectures on Dramatic Literature for the Edinburgh and this
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  Speaker 1: would seem to have started him on his characters of
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  Speaker 1: Shakespeare's plays. Throughout eighteen sixteen he wrote at it sedulously.
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  Speaker 1: The manuscript, when completed, was accepted by mister c. H
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  Speaker 1: Reno of twenty one Piccadilly, the head of a printing
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  Speaker 1: establishment of old and high standing, and it was agreed
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  Speaker 1: that a hundred pounds should be paid to the author
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  Speaker 1: for the entire copyright. The volume was published by mister
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  Speaker 1: Hunter Saint Paul's Churchyard, and the author was gratified by
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  Speaker 1: the prompt assertion of a complimentary notice in the Edinburgh Review.
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  Speaker 1: The whole edition went off in six weeks, and yet
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  Speaker 1: it was a half guinea book. The reader who comes
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  Speaker 1: to it through this introduction will note two points to
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  Speaker 1: qualify his appreciation of the book as a specimen of
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  Speaker 1: Hazlitt's critical writing, and a third that helps to account
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  Speaker 1: for its fortune in eighteen seventeen. It was the work
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  Speaker 1: of a man in his thirty eighth year, and to
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  Speaker 1: that extent has maturity. But it was also his first
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  Speaker 1: serious essay, after many false starts in an art and
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  Speaker 1: a file, which later on he brilliantly mastered. The subject
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  Speaker 1: is most pleasantly handled and with an infectious enthusiasm. The
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  Speaker 1: reader feels all the while that his sympathy with Shakespeare
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  Speaker 1: is being stimulated and his understanding promoted. But it scarcely
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  Speaker 1: yields either the light or the music which Hazlick communicates
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  Speaker 1: in his latter and more famous essays. For the third point,
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  Speaker 1: Hazlit had made enemies, nor had ever been cautious of
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  Speaker 1: making them, And these enemies were now the upper dog.
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  Speaker 1: Indeed they always had been, but the fall of Napoleon,
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  Speaker 1: which almost broke his heart, had set them in full cry,
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  Speaker 1: and they were not to clement in their triumph. It
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  Speaker 1: is not easy, even on the evidence before us, to
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  Speaker 1: realize that a number of the finest spirits in this country,
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  Speaker 1: nursed in the hopes of the French Revolution, kept their
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  Speaker 1: admiration of Napoleon, the hammer of old bad monarchies down
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  Speaker 1: to the uk end and beyond it that Napier, for example,
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  Speaker 1: historian of the war in the Peninsula and his gallant
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  Speaker 1: to soldiers ever fought under Wellington. When late in his life,
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  Speaker 1: as he lay on his sofa, tortured by an old wound,
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  Speaker 1: news was brought him of Napoleon's death, burst into a
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  Speaker 1: storm of weeping that would not be controlled. On Hazlet
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  Speaker 1: bound up heart and soul on what he regarded as
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  Speaker 1: the cause of the French and European liberty and enlightenment Waterloo,
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  Speaker 1: the fall of the Emperor, the restoration of the Bourbons
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  Speaker 1: fell as blows almost stupefying, and his indignant temper charged
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  Speaker 1: heaven with them as wrongs not only public but personal
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  Speaker 1: to himself. In the writing of the characters, he had
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  Speaker 1: found a partial drug for despair. But his enemies, as
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  Speaker 1: soon as might be, took hold of the anodyne. Like
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  Speaker 1: the Bourbons, they had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The
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  Speaker 1: Quarterly Review moved for a quarterly with something like agility.
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  Speaker 1: A second edition of the book had been prepared and
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  Speaker 1: was selling briskly when this review launched one of its
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  Speaker 1: diatribes against the work and its author. Taylor and Hesse
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  Speaker 1: The booksellers told him subsequently that they had sold nearly
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  Speaker 1: two editions in about three months, but after the Quarterly
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  Speaker 1: review of them came out, they never sold another copy.
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  Speaker 1: My book, he said, sold well. The first edition had
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  Speaker 1: gone off in six weeks till that review came out.
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  Speaker 1: I had just prepared a second edition such was called for.
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  Speaker 1: But then the Quarterly told the public that I was
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  Speaker 1: a fool and a dunce, and more that I was
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  Speaker 1: an evil disposed person, and the public, supposing Gifford to
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  Speaker 1: know best, confessed that it had been a great ass
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  Speaker 1: to be pleased where it ought not to be. Then
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  Speaker 1: the sale completely stopped. The review, when examined, is seen
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  Speaker 1: to be a smart essay and detraction, with its arguments
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  Speaker 1: add in vidium very deftly inserted. But as a piece
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  Speaker 1: of criticism it misses even such points as might fairly
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  Speaker 1: have been made against the book, as for example, that
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  Speaker 1: it harps too monotonously upon the tense string of enthusiasm.
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  Speaker 1: Hazlitt could not have applied to this work the motto
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  Speaker 1: for I am nothing if not critical, which he chose
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  Speaker 1: for his view of the English stage in eighteen eighteen.
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  Speaker 1: The characters being anything but critical in the sense there
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  Speaker 1: con noted. Jeffrey noted this in the forefront of a
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  Speaker 1: sympathetic article in the Edinburgh. It is, in truth rather
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  Speaker 1: an a comium on Shakespeare than a commentary or a
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  Speaker 1: critique of him, and it is written more to show
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  Speaker 1: extraordinary love than extraordinary knowledge of his productions. The author
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  Speaker 1: is not merely an admirer of our great dramatists, but
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  Speaker 1: an idolter of him, and openly professes his idolatry. We
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  Speaker 1: have ourselves too great a learning to the same superstition
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  Speaker 1: to blame him very much for his error. And though
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  Speaker 1: we think, of course that our own admiration is on
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  Speaker 1: the whole more discriminating and judicious, there are not many
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  Speaker 1: points on which, specially after reading his eloquent exposition of them,
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  Speaker 1: we should be much inclined to disagree with him. The book,
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  Speaker 1: as we have already intimated, is written less to tell
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  Speaker 1: the reader what mister h knows about Shakespeare or his writings,
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  Speaker 1: than what he feels about them, and why he feels so,
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  Speaker 1: and thinks that all who profess to love poetry should
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  Speaker 1: feel so. Likewise, he seems pretty generally indeed, in a
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  Speaker 1: state of happy intoxication, and has borrowed from his great original,
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  Speaker 1: not indeed the force of brilliancy of his fancy, but
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  Speaker 1: something of its playfulness, and a large share of his
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  Speaker 1: apparent joyousness and self indulgence in its exercise. It is
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  Speaker 1: evidently a great pleasure to him to be fully possessed
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  Speaker 1: with the beauties of his author, and to follow the
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  Speaker 1: impulse of his unrestrained eagerness to impress them upon his readers.
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  Speaker 1: Upon this, Hazlet, no doubt would have commented, well, and
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  Speaker 1: why not I choose to understand drama through my feelings?
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: To surrender to great art was for him and definitely
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a part of the critic's function. A genuine criticism should,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: as I take it, repeat the colors, the light and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: shade the solemn body of a work. This contention for
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: which Hazlett fought all his life and fought brilliantly, is
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: familiar to us by this time, as the gauge flung
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: to diadactic criticism by the Impressionists, and in our day,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: in the generation just closed or closing with a Walter
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Pater or Jules Lemtaire for challenger, the betting has run
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: on the Impressionists, but in eighteen seventeen, Hazlet had all
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the odds against him when he stood up and accused
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the great Doctor Johnson of having made criticism a kind
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: of Procrusty's bed of genius, where he might cut down
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: imagination to matter of fact, regulate the passions according to reason,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and translate the whole into logical diagrams in rhetorical declamation.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Thus he says to Shakespeare's characters, in contradiction to what
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Pope had observed and to what everyone else feels, that
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: each character is a species instead of being an individual.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: In fact, found the general species or didactic form in
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare's characters, which was all he sought or cared for.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: He did not find the individual traits or the dramatic
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: distinctions which Shakespeare has engrafted on this general nature, because
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: he felt no interest in them. Nothing is easier to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: prove than that in this world nobody ever invented anything.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: So it may be proved that Johnson, having written, great thoughts,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: are always general. Blake had countered him by affirming, long
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: before Hazlitt that to generalize is to be an idiot.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: To particularize is the great distinction of merit. Even as
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: it may be demonstratable that Charles Lamb, in his charming
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: personal chat about the Elizabethan dramatists and his predilections among them,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: was already putting into practice what he did not trouble
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to theorize. But when it comes to setting out the theory,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: grasping the worth of the principle, stating it, and fighting
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: for it, I think Hazlitt may fairly claim first share
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: in the credit. He did not, when he wrote the
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: following pages, know very much even about his subject. As
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: his biographer says, my grandfather came to town with very
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: little book knowledge. He had a fair stock of ideas,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: but of the volumes which formed the furniture of a
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: gentleman's library, he was gree regiously ignorant. Mister Hazlitt's resources
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: were emphatically internal from his own mind. He drew sufficient
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: for himself. Now, while it may be argued with plausibility
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and even with truth, that the first qualification of a critic,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: at any rate, of a critic of poetry is, as
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey puts, the antithesis, to feel rather than to know,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: while to be delicately sensitive and sympathetic counts more than
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: to be well informed. Nevertheless, learning remains respectable. He who
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: consimilated without pedantry, which is another word for intellectual indigestion,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: actually improves and refines his feelings while enlarging their scope
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and at the same time enlarging his resources of comparison
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and illustration. Hazlitt, who had something like a genius for
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: felicious opposit quotation and steadily bettered it as he grew older,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: would certainly have said yes to this. At all events,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: learning impresses carries weight, and therefore it has always seemed
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: to me that he showed small tact, if some modesty,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: by heaping whole pages of Schlegel into his own preface.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: For Schlegel was not only a learned critic, but a
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: great one. And this mass of him, cast with seeming carelessness,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: just here into the scales, does give the reader, as
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: with a jerk, the sensation that haslet has of his
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: rashness invited, that which suddenly throws him up in the
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: air to kick the beam that he has provoked, a
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: comparison which exhibits his own performance as clever but flimsy.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Nor is this impression removed by his admirer. The late
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: mister Ireland, who claims for the characters that although it
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: professes to be dramatic criticism, it is in reality a
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: discourse on the philosophy of life and human nature, more
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: suggestive than many approved treatises expressly devoted to that subject. Well,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: for the second half of this pronouncement constant you see,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: my friend writes Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. There is
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: nothing so ridiculous that it has not at some time
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: been said by some philosopher. But for the first part,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: while a priori, mister Arlend ought to be right. Since Hazlet,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: as we have seen, came to literary criticism by the
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: road of philosophical writing, I confess to finding very little
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: philosophy in this book, over and above the gusto of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the writing, which is infectious enough in the music of
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: certain passages in which we foretaste the mastery prose of
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Hazlit's later essays. I find in the book three merits, which,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: as I study it more and more efface the first
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: impression of flimsiness one to begin with Hazlitt head hold
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: of the right end of the stick. He really understood
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: that Shakespeare was a dramatic craftsman, studied him as such,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: worshiped him for his incomparable skill in doing what he
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: tried all his life and all the time to do.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: In these days, much merit must be allowed to a
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Shakespearean critic who takes his author steadily as a dramatist,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: and not as a philosopher or a propagandist, or a
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: lawyer's clerk, or a disappointed lover, or for his acquaintance
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: with Botany politics, Cipher's Christian science, any of the thousand
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and one things that, with their rival degrees of intrinsic importance,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: agree in being for Shakespeare nihil adram Two. Secondly, Haslett
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: always treats Shakespeare as, in my opinion, he deserves to
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: be treated, that is, absolutely, and as patrone, and not
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: to compare among the Elizabethans. I harbor an ungracious doubt
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that he may have done so in eighteen sixteen eighteen seventeen,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: for the simple and sufficient reason that he had less
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: than a bowing acquaintance with the other Elizabethan dramatists. But
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: he made their acquaintance in due course and discussed them.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Yet never so far as I recall, committed the error
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: of ranking them alongside Shakespeare. With all love for the
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: memory of Lamb, and with all respect for the memory
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: of Swinburne, I hold that these two, in their generations,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: both soaked in enjoyment of the Elizabethan style, an enjoyment
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: derivative from Shakespeare, did some disservice to criticism by classing
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: them with him in the light they borrow one, as
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: truly he differs from them in kind, and beyond any
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: reach of degrees, One can no more estimate Shakespeare's genius
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: in comparison with this that or the other man's of
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, than Milton's in comparison with any ones
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: of the seventeenth. Some few men are absolute, and can
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: only be judged absolutely. Three For the third merit, If
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the characters be considered historically, what seems flimsy in them
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: is often a promise of what has since been substantiated.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: What seems light and almost juvenile in the composition of
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: this man aged thirty nine gives the scent on which
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: nowadays the main pack of students is pursuing. No one,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: not a fool, can read Johnson's notes on Shakespeare without respect,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: or fail to turn to them again with an increased
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: trust in his common sense. And no one, not a fool,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: can read Hazlet without an equal sense that he has
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the root of the matter, or of the spirit, which
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: is the matter. Arthur Quiller Couch, nineteen sixteen, end of introduction,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: preface to Charles Lamb Esquire. This volume is inscribed as
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: a mark of old friendship and lasting esteem by the author.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: It is observed by mister Pope that if ever any
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: author deserved the name of an original, it was Shakespeare.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: fountains of nature. It proceeded through Egyptian strainers and channels,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: and came to him not without some tincture, the learning,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: or some caste of the models of those before him.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: The poetry of Shakespeare was inspiration. Indeed, he is not
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: so much an imitator as an instrument of nature. And
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: it is not so just to say that he speaks
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: from her, as that she speaks through him. His characters
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: are so much nature herself that it is a sort
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of injury to call them by so distant a name.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: As copies of her those of other poets have a
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: constant resemblance, which shows that they received them from one another,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and were but multipliers of the same image. Each picture,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: like a mock rainbow, is but the reflection of our reflection.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: But every single character in Shakespeare is as much an
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: individual as those in life itself. It tis as impossible
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: to find any too alike, And such as from their
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: relation or affinity in any respect, appear most to be twins, will,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: upon comparison, be found remarkably distinct. To this life and
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: variety of character. We must add the wonderful preservation of it,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: which is such throughout as plays, that had all the
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: speeches been printed without the very names of the persons,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I believe one might have applied them with certainty to
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: every speaker. The object of the volume here offered to
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the public is to illustrate these remarks in a more
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: particular manner by a reference to each play. A gentleman
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: of the name of Mason, the author of a treatise
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: on ornamental gardening, not Mason, the poet, began a work
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: of a similar kind about forty years ago, but he
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: only lived to finish a parallel between the characters of
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Macbeth and Richard the Third, which is an exceedingly ingenious
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: piece of analytical criticism. Richardson's essays include but a few
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's principal characters. The only work which seemed to
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: supersede the necessity of an attempt like the present was
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Schlegel's very admirable Lectures on the Drama, which give by
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: far the best account of the plays of Shakespeare that
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: has hitherto appeared. The only circumstances in which it was
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: thought not impossible to improve on the manner in which
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the German critic has executed this part of his design
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: were in avoiding an appearance of mysticism in his style
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: not very attractive to the English reader, and in bringing
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: illustrations from particular passages of the place themselves, of which
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Schlegel's work, from the extensiveness of his plan, did not admit.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: We will, at the same time confess that some little
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: jealousy of the character of the national understanding was not
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: without its share in producing the following undertaking, For we
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: were piqued that it should be reserved for a foreign
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: critic to give reasons for the faith which we English
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: have in Shakespeare. Certainly, no writer among ourselves has shown
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: either the same enthusiastic admiration of his genius, or the
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: same philosophical acuteness in pointing out his characteristic excellences. As
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: we have pretty well exhausted all we had to say
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: upon this subject in the body of the work, we
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: shall here transcribe Schlegel's general account of Shakespeare, which is
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: in the following words quote. Never perhaps was there so
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: comprehensive a talent for the delineation of character as Shakespeare's.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Not only grasp the diversities of rank, sex and age
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: down to the dawnings of infancy. Not only do the
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: sage and the idiot speak and act with equal truth.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Not only does he transport himself to distant ages and
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: foreign nations, and portray, in the most accurate manner, with
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: only a few apparent violations of costume, the spirit of
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the ancient Romans of the French in their wars with
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the English, of the English themselves during a great part
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: of their history of this Southern Europeans, in the serious
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: part of many comedies, the cultivated society of that time,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: and the former rude and barbarous state of the North.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: His human characters have not only such depth and precision
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: that they cannot be arranged under classes, and are inexhaustible
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: even in conception. No, this Prometheus not merely forms men.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: He opens the gate of the magical world of spirits,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us his witches,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: admits their unhallowed mysteries, peoples the air with sportive theories
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and sylphs, and these beings, existing only in imagination, possess
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: such truth and consistency that even when deformed monsters like Caliban,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: he extorts the conviction that if there should be such beings,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: carries with him the most fruitful and daring fancy into
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: the kingdom of nature. On the other hand, he carries
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: nature into the regions of fancy lying beyond the confines
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: of reality. We are lost in astonishment at seeing the extraordinary,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: the wonderful, and the unheard of in such intimate nearness.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: If Shakespeare deserves our admiration for his characters, he is
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: equally deserving of it for his exhibition of passion, taking
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: this word in its widest signification, as including every mental condition,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: every tone, from indifference, or familiar mirth, to the wildest
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: He lays open to us, in a single word, a
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: whole series of preceding conditions. His passions do not at
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: first stand displayed to us in all their height, as
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: is the case with so many tragic poets, who, in
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: the language of Blessing are thorough masters of the legal
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: style of love. He paints in a most inimitable manner,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the gradual progress from the first origin. He gives, as
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Lessing says, a living picture of all the most minute
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: of all the imperceptible advantages which it their gains, of
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: all the stratagems by which every other passion is made
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant of
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: our desires and our aversions. Of all poets, perhaps he
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: alone has portrayed the mental diseases melancholy, delirium, lunacy with
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: such inexpressible and in every respect definite truth that the
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: physician may enrich his observations from them in the same
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: manner is from real cases. And yet Johnson has objected
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: to Shakespeare. That is, pathos is not always natural and
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: free from affectation. There are, it is, true passages, though
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: comparatively speaking, very few, whereas poetry exceeds the bounds of
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: true dialog, where a too soaring imagination, a too luxuriant
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: wit rendered the complete dramatic forgetfulness of himself impossible. With
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: this exception, the censure originates only in a fanciless way
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: of thinking, to which everything appears unnatural that does not
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: suit its own tame insipity. Hence, an idea has been
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: formed of simple natural pathos, which consist in exclamations destitute
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: of imagery, in no wise elevated above everyday life. But
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: energetical passions electrify the whole of the mental powers, and
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: will consequently and highly favored natures expressed themselves in an
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: ingenious and figurative manner. It has been often remarked that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: indignation gives wit, and as despair occasionally breaks out into laughter,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: it may sometimes also give vent to itself in antithetical comparisons. Besides,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: the rights of the poetical form have not been duly weighed. Shakespeare,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: who was always sure of his object to move in
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: a sufficiently powerful manner when he wished to do so,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: as occasionally by indulging in a freer play, purposely moderated
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the impressions when too painful, and immediately introduced a musical
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: alleviation of our sympathy. He had not those rude ideas
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: of his art which many moderns seem to have, as
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetoricician delivered
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: a caution against dwelling too long on the excitation of
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: pity for nothing, he said, dry so soon as tears,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: and Shakespeare acted conformably to this ingenious maxim without knowing it.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: The objection that Shakespeare wounds our feelings by the open
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: display of the most disgusting moral odiousness, harrows up the
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: mind unmercifully, and tortures even our senses by the exhibition
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: of the most insupportable and hateful spectacles, is one of
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: much greater importance. He has, never, in fact varnished over
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: wild and bloodthirsty passions with a pleasing exterior, never clothed
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: crime and want of principle with a false show of greatness,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: of soul, and in that respect he is every way
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: deserving of praise. Twice he has portrayed downright villains. In
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the masterly way in which he has contrived to allude
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: in impressions of too painful a nature may be seen
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: in Iago and Richard. The third the constant reference to
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespeare lived in an
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, which had
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: still enough of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: time not to shrink back with dismay from every strong
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: and violent picture. We have lived to see, tragedies of
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: which the catastrophe consist in the swoon of an enamoured princess.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: If Shakespeare falls occasionally into the opposite extreme, it is
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: a noble error originating in the fullness of a gigantic strength.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: And yet this tragical titan, who storms the heavens and
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: threatens to tear the world from off its hinges, who
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: more terrible than as, makes our hair stand on end
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: and congeals our blood with horror, possessed at the same time,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poetry. He plays with
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: love like a child, and his songs are breathed out
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: like melting sighs. He unites in his genius the utmost
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: elevation and the utmost depth, and the most foreign and
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: even apparently irreconcilable properties subsist in him peacefully. Together the
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: world of spirits and nature have laid all their treasures
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: at his feet and strength. A demigod in profundity of view,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: a prophet in all seeing wisdom, a protecting spirit of
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: a higher order. He lowers himself to mortals as if
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: unconscious of his superiority, and is as open and unassuming
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: as a child. Ekexpire's comic talent is equally wonderful with
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: that which he has shown in the Pathetic and Tragic.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: It stands on an equal elevation and possesses equal extent
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and profundity. All that I before wished was not to
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: admit that the former preponderated. He is highly inventive in
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: comic situations and motives. It will be hardly possible to
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: show whence he has taken any of them. Whereas in
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: the serious part of his drama, he is generally laid
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: hold of something already known. His comic characters are equally true, various,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: and profound with his serious So little is he disposed
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: to caricature, that we may rather say many of his
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: traits are almost too nice and delicate for the stage,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: that they can only be properly seized by a great
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: actor and fully understood by very acute audience. Not only
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: has he delineated many kinds of fire dolly, he has
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: also contrived to exhibit mere stupidity in a most diverting
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: and entertaining manner. En Volume two, page one, forty five.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: We have the rather availed ourselves of this testimony of
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: a foreign critic in behalf of Shakespeare, because our own countryman,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: doctor Johnson, has not been so favorable to him. It
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: may be said of Shakespeare that those who are not
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: for him are against him. For indifference is here the
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: height of injustice. We may, sometimes, in order to do
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: a great right, do a little wrong. An overstrained enthusiasm
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: is more pardonable with respect to Shakespeare than the want
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: of it, For our admiration cannot easily surpass his genius.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: We have a high respect for doctor Johnson's character and
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: understanding mixed with something like personal attachment. But he was
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: neither a poet nor a judge of poetry. He might,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: in one sense be a judge of poetry as it
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: falls within the limits and rules of prose, but not
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: as it is poetry. Least of all was he qualified
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: to be a judge of Shakespeare, who alone is high fantastical.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Let those who have a prejudice against Johnson read Boswell's
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: life of him, as those whom he has prejudiced against
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare should read his irene. We do not say that
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: a man to be a critic must necessarily be a poet.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: But to be a good critic, he ought not to
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: be a bad poet such poetry as a man deliberately
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: writes such and such, only will he like doctor Johnson's
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: preface to his addition, Shakespeare looks like a laborious attempt
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: to bury the characteristic merits of his author under a
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: load of cumbrous phraseology, and to weigh his excellences and
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: defects in the scales stuffed full of swelling figures and
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: sonorous epithets. Nor could it well be otherwise, Doctor Johnson's
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: general powers of reasoning overlaid his critical suscessibility. All his
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: ideas were cast in a given mold, in a set form.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: They were made out by rule and system, by climax,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: inference and antithesis. Shakespeare's were the reverse Johnson's understanding, dealt
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: only in round numbers. The fractions were lost upon him.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: He reduced everything to the common standard of conventional propriety,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: and the most exquisite refinement or sublimity produced an effect
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: on his mind only as they could be translated into
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: the language of measured prose. To him, an excess of
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: beauty was a fault, for it appeared to him like
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: an ascrescence, and his imagination was dazzled by the blaze
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: of light. His writings neither shown with the beams of
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: native genius, nor reflected them. The shifting shapes of fancy,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: the rainbow hues of things made no impression on him.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: He seized only on the permanent and tangible. He had
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: no idea of natural objects, but such as he could
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: measure with a two foot rule or tell upon ten fingers.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: He judged of human nature in the same way by
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: mood and figure. He saw only the definite, the positive,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: and the practical, the average forms of things, not their
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: striking differences, their classes, not their degrees. He was a
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: man of strong common sense and practical wisdom, rather than
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: of genius or feeling. He retained the regular, habitual impressions
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: of actual objects, but he could not follow the rapid
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: flights of fancy or the strong movements of passion. That is,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: he was to the poet what the painter of still
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: life is to the painter of history. Common sense empathizes
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: with the impressions of things on ordinary minds in ordinary circumstances.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Genius catches the glancing combinations presented to the eye of
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: fancy under the influence of passion. It is the province
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: of the didactic reasoner to take cognances of those results
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: of human nature, which are constantly repeated and always the same,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: which follow one another in regular succession, which are acted
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: upon by large classes of men, and embodied in received customs, laws, language,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: and institutions. And it was in arranging, comparing, and arguing
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: on these kinds of general results the Johnson's excellence lay.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: But he could not quit his hold on the commonplace
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: and mechanical and apply the general rule to the particular exception,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: or show how the nature of man was modified by
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the workings of passion or the infinite fluctuations of th
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: an accident. Hence he could judge neither the heights nor
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: depths of poetry. Nor is this all for being conscious
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: of great powers in himself, and those powers of an
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: adverse tendency to those of his author. He would be
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: for setting up a foreign jurisdiction over poetry, and making
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: criticism a kind of procrustes bed of genius, where he
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: might cut down imagination to matter of fact, regulate the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: passions according to reason, and translate the whole into logical
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: diagrams and rhetorical declamation. Thus, he says of Shakespeare's characters,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: in contradiction to what Pope had observed and to what
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: everyone else feels, that each character is a species instead
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: of being an individual. He in fact found the general
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: species or didactic form in Shakespeare's characters, which was all
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: he sought or cared for. He did not find the
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: individual traits or the dramatic distinctions which Shakespeare has engrafted
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: on this general nature, because he felt no interest in them.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare's bold and happy flights of imagination were equally thrown
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: away upon our author. He was not only without any
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: particular fineness of organic sensibility, alive to all the mighty
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: world of ear and eye, which is necessary to the
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: painter or a musician, but without the intenseness of passion, which,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: seeking to exaggerate whatever excites the feelings of pleasures or
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: power in the mind, and molding the impressions of natural
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: objects according to the impulses of imagination, produces a genius
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: and a taste for poetry. According to doctor Johnson, a
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: mountain is sublime, or a rose is beautiful, for that
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: their name and definition imply. But he would no more
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: be able to give the description of dover cliff and lear,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: or the description of flowers in the winter's tail, then
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: to describe the objects of a sixth sense, Nor do
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: we think he would have any very profound feeling of
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: the beauty of the passages here referred to. A stately commonplace,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: such as Congre's description of a roun in the morning bride,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: would have answered Johnson's purpose just as well or better
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: than the first, and an indiscriminate profusion of scents and
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: hues would have interfered less with the ordinary routine of
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: his imagination than Perdita's lines, which seem enamored of their
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: own sweetness. Daffodils that come before the swallow dares and
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: take the winds of march with beauty, violets dim but
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes or Cythariea's breath.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: No one who does not feel the passion which these
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: objects inspire can go go along with the imagination which
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: seeks to express that passion, and the uneasy sense of
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: delight accompanying it by something still more beautiful. And no
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: one can feel this passionate love of nature without quick
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: natural sensibility to a mere literal and formal apprehension, the
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: inimitably characteristic epithet violets dim must seem to imply a
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: defect rather than a beauty. And to anyone not feeling
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: the full force of that epithet, which suggests an image
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: like the sleepy eye of love, the allusion to the
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: lids of Juno's eyes must appear extravagant and unmeaning. Shakespeare's
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: fancy lent words and images to the most refined sensibility
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: to nature struggling for expression. His descriptions are identical with
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: the things themselves seen through the fine medium of passion.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Strip of that connection, and try them by ordinary conceptions,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: in ordinary rules, and they are as grotesque and barbarous
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: as you please. By thus lowering Shakespeare's genius to the
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: standard of commonplace invention, it was easy to show that
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: his false or as great as his beauties, For the
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: excellence which consists merely in a conformity to rule, is
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: counterbalance by the technical violation of them. Another circumstance which
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: led to doctor Johnson's indiscriminate praise or censure of Shakespeare
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: is the very structure of his style. Johnson wrote a
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: kind of rhyming prose in which he was as much
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: compelled to finish the different clauses of his sentences and
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: to balance one period against another as the writer of
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: heroic verses to keep lines of ten syllables with similar terminations.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: He no sooner acknowledges the merits of his author in
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: one line than the periodical revolution in his style carries
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: the weight of his opinion completely over to the side
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: of objection, thus keeping up a perpetual alternation of perfections
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: and absurdities. We do not otherwise know how to account
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: for such assertations as the following quote. In his tragic scenes,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by the thoughts in
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: the language, and his tragedy for the greater part, by
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: comedy to be instinct. End quote. Yet after saying that
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: his tragedy with skill, he affirms in the next page
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: quote his declamations are set. Speeches are commonly cold and weak.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: For his power was the power of nature. When he endeavored,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: like other tragic writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: instead of inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: much his stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: without the pity or resentment of his reader. Poor Shakespeare,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: between the charges here brought against him of want of
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: nature in the first instance, and of want of skill
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: in the second, he could hardly escape being condemned. And
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: again quote, but the admirers of this great poet have
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: most reason to complain when he approaches nearest to his
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: highest excellence, and seems fully resolved to sink them in
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: dejection or mollify them with tender emotions, by the fall
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: What he does best, he soon ceases to do. He
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: no sooner begins to move than he can counteracts himself,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: and terror and pity, as they are rising in the
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: mind are checked and blasted by a sudden frigidity. In
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: all of this, our critics seems more bent on maintaining
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: the equilibrium of his style than the consistency or truth
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: of his opinions. If doctor Johnson's opinion was right, the
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: following observations on Shakespeare's plays must be greatly exaggerated, if
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: not ridiculous. If he was wrong, what has been said
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: may perhaps account for his being so. Without detracting from
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: his ability and judgment to other things, it is proper
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: to add that the account of the Midsummer Night's Dream
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: has appeared in another work. April fifteenth, eighteen seventeen, end
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: of preface.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Symboling is one of the most delightful of Shakespeare's historical plays.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: It may be considered as a dramatic romance in which
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: the most striking parts of the story are thrown into
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: the form of a dialogue, and the intermediate circumstances are
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: explained by the different speakers as occasion renders it necessary.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: The action is less concentrated in consequence, but the interest
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: becomes more aerial and refined from the principle of perspective
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: introduced into the subject by the imaginary changes of scene,
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: as well as by the length of time it occupies.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: The reading of this play is like going on a
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: journey with some uncertain object at the end of it,
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: and in which the suspense is kept up and heightened
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: by the long intervals between each action. Though the events
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: are scattered over such an extent of surface and relate
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: to such a variety of characters, yet the links which
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: bind the different interests of the story together are never
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: entirely broken. The most straggling and seemingly casual incidents are
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: contrived in such a manner as to lead at last
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: to the most complete development of the catastrophe. The ease
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: and unconscious unconcern with which this is effected only makes
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: the skill more wonderful. The business of the plot evidently
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: thickens in the last act. The story moves forward with
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: increasing rapidity. At every step, its various ramifications are drawn
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: from the most distant points to the same center. The
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: principal characters are brought together and placed in very critical situations,
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: and the fate of almost every person in the drama
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: is made to depend on the solution of a single circumstance.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: The answer of Yakimo to the question of Imagen, respecting
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: the obtaining of the ring from Posthumous, Doctor Johnson is
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: of opinion that Shakespeare was generally inattentive to the winding
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: up of his plots. We think the contrary is true,
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: and we might cite in pro roof of this remark
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: not only the present play, but the conclusion of Leer,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: of Romeo and Juliet, of Macbeth, of Othello, even of Hamlet,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: and of other plays of less moment, in which the
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: last act is crowded with decisive events brought about by
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: natural and striking means. The pathos in Cymbeline is not
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: violent or tragical, but of the most pleasing and amiable kind.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: A certain tender gloom o'erspreads the whole. Posthumists is the
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: ostensible hero of the piece, but its greatest charm is
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: in the character of Imagen. Posthumis is only interesting from
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: the interest she takes in him, and she is only
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: interesting herself from her tenderness and constancy to her husband.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakespeare's heroines that they
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: seem to exist only in their attachment to others. They
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: are pure abstractions of the affections. We think as little
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: of their persons as they do themselves, because we are
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: We are too much interested in their affairs to top
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: and look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: affections for support, so well as Shakespeare. No one ever
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: so well painted natural tenderness, free from affectation and disguise.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: No one ever else so well showed how delicacy and timidity,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant. For the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: romance of his heroines in which they abound is only
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex. Scrupulous
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: of being false to their vows, truant to their affections,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: and taught by the force of feeling. When to forego
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: women were in this respect exquisite legition, For there is
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: nothing so logical as passion. They knew their own minds exactly,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: and only followed up a favorite idea which they had
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: sworn to with their tongues, and which was engraven on
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: their hearts into its untoward consequences. They were the prettiest
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: little set of martyrs and confessors on record. Siber In,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: speaking of the early English stage, accounts for the want
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: of prominence and theatrical display in Shakespeare's female characters from
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: the circumstance that women in those days were not allowed
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: to play the parts of women, which made it necessary
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: to keep them a good deal in the background. Does
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: not the state of manners itself, which prevented their exhibiting
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: themselves in public, and confined to them to the relations
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: and charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: the matter. His women are certainly very unlike stage heroines
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: the reverse of tragedy queens. We have almost as great
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: an affection for imagen as for posthumous, and she deserves
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: it better of all Shakespeare's women she has perhaps the
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: most tender and the most artless. Her incredulity in the
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: opening scene with Yakimo as to her husband's infidelity is
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: much the same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othellow's jealousy.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: is only my lord, I fear as forgot Britain. Her
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: readiness to pardon Yakamo's false imputations and his designs against
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: herself is a good lesson to prudes, and may show
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: that where there is real attachment to virtue, it has
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: affected antipathy to vice. The scene in which Pisano gives
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: Imagen his master's letter accusing her of incontinency on the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: treacherous suggestions of Yakimo is as touching as it is
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: possible for anything to be pausangyo, What cheer Madam Imogen?
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: False to his bed? What is it to be false?
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: To lie and watch there and to think on him,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: to weep TwixT clock and clock? If sleep, charge nature
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: to break it with a fearful dream of him, and
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: cry myself awake? That's false? Whose bed, is it, Pasanno,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: alas good, lady, Imogen I false thy conscience witness yacamo
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: thou didst accuse him of incontinency. Thou then lookst like
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: a villain. Now methinks thy favors good enough. Some jay
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: of Italy, whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him poor.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: I am stale a garment out of fashion, And for
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: I am richer than to hang by the walls. I
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: must be ripped to pieces with me. Oh, men's vows
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: are women's traitors. All good seeming by thy revolt o
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: husband shall be thought to put on for villainy, not
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: born where it grows, but worn a bait for ladies. Pasanno, good, madam,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: hear me, imogen talk, thy tongue, weary speak. I have heard.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: I am a strumpet, and mine ear therein false struck
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: can take no greater wound, nor tent to bottom.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: That.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: When Pasangno, who had been charged to kill his mistress,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: puts her in a way to live, she says, why,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: good fellow, what shall I do the while? Where byde
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: how live? Or in my life? What comfort? When I
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: am dead? To my husband? Yet when he advises her
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: to disguise herself in boy's clothes, and suggests a coarse,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: pretty and full in view by which she may happily
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: be near the residence of Hostumous. She exclaims, oh, for
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: such means, though peril to my modesty, not death, aunt,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: I would adventure, And when Pasanno, enlarging on the consequences,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: tells her she must change fear and niceness the handmaids
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: of all women, or more truly woman, its pretty self
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: into a waggish courage ready and jibes quick answered, saucy
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: and as querulous as the weasel, She interrupts him hastily, nay,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: be brief, I see into thy end, and am almost
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: a man already in her journey. Thus disguised to Milford Haven,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: she loses her guide and her way, and unbosoming her
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: complaints as beautifully, my dear lord, thou art one of
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: the false ones. Now I think on thee my hunger's gone.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: But even before I was a point to sink for food.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumous,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: and engages herself as a footboy to serve a Roman officer.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: When she has done all due obsequies to him whom
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: she calls her former master. And when with wild wood
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: leaves and weeds, I have strewed his grave, and on
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: it said a century of prayers such as I can
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: twice o're, I'll weep and sigh and leaving so his
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: service follow you, So please you entertain me. Now this
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: is the very religion of love. She all along relies
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: little on her personal charms, which she fears may have
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy. She relies
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: on her merit, and her merit is in the depth
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: of her love, her truth, and constancy. Our admiration of
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: her beauty is excited with as little consciousness as possible
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: one when she is asleep and one when she is
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: supposed dead. Arvaragis thus addresses her with fairest flowers while
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: summer lasts an I live here for daily. I'll sweeten
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack the flower that's
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: like thy face, pale primrose, nor the azured hair bell
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: like thy veins. No, nor the leaf of eglantine, which
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: not to slander outsweetened, not thy breath the yellow yacamo
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: gives another. Thus, when he steals into her bedchamber, cytherea
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: how bravely thou becomest thy bed, fresh lily, and whiter
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: than the sheets that I might touch. A kiss. One
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: kiss tis her breathing that perfumes the chamber. Thus the
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: flame of the taper bows toward her, and would underpeep
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: her lids to see the enclosed lights now canopied under
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: the windows, white and azure, laced with blue of Heaven's
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: own tinked on her left breast a mole sink spotted
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: like the crimson drops in the bottom of a cowslip.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy. As
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: that well known passage beginning me of my lawful pleasure,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: she restrained and prayed me oft forbearance, sets a keener
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: self denial. The character of Cloton, the conceited booby lord
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: and rejected lover of Imagen, though not very agreeable in
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: itself and at present obsolete, is drawn with great humor
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: and knowledge of character. The description which Imagen gives of
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: his unwelcome addresses to her, whose love suit hath been
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: to me as fearful as a siege, is enough to
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: cure the most ridiculous lover of his folly. It is
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: remarkable that though Cloughton makes so poor a figure and love,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: he is described as assuming an air of consequence as
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: the Queen's son in the Council of State, and with
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: all the absurdity of his person and manners, is not
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: without shrewdness in his observations. So true is it that
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: folly is as often owing to a want of proper
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: sentiments as to a want of understanding. The exclamation of
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: the ancient critic, oh Menander and nature, which of you
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: copied from the other, would not be misapplied to Shakespeare.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: The other characters in this play are represented with great
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: truth and accuracy, and, as it happens in most of
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: the authour's works, there is not only the utmost keeping
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: in each separate character, but in the casting of the
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: different parts and their relation to one another. There is
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: an affinity and harmony, like what we may observe in
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: the gradations of color in a picture, the striking and
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: powerful contrasts in which Shakespeare abounds could not escape observation.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: But the use he makes of the principle of analogy
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: to reconcile the greatest diversities of character and to maintain
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: a continuity of feeling throughout has not been sufficiently attended to.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: In Symboline, for instance, the principal interest arises out of
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: the unalterable fidelity of Image into her husband under the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: most trying circumstances. Now the other parts of the picture
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: are filled up with subordinates, examples of the same feeling,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: variously modified by different situations, and applied to the purposes
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: of virtue or vice. The plot is aided by the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: amorous importunities of Cloton, by the tragical determination of Yacimo
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: to conceal the defeat of his project by a daring imposture.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: The faithful attachment of Pisanio to his mistress is an
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: affecting accompaniment to the whole. The obstinate adherence to his purpose.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: In Valarius, who keeps the fate of the young princes
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: so long a secret and resentment for the ungrateful return
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: to his former services, the incorrigible wickedness of the Queen,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: and even the blind uxorious confidence of Cymbeline. Are all
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: so many lines of the same story tending to the
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: same point. The effect of this coincidence is rather felt
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: than observed, And as the impression exists unconsciously in the
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: mind of the reader, so it probably arose in the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: same manner in the mind of the author, not from design,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: but from the force of natural association, a particular train
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: of feelings, suggesting different inflections of the same predominant principle,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: melting into and strengthening one another, like chords in music.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius and Avaragus, and the romantic
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: scenes in which they appear, are a fine relief to
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: the intrigues and artificial refinements of the court from which
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: they are banished. Nothing can surpass the wildness and simplicity
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: of the descriptions of the mountain life they lead. They
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: follow the business of huntsmen, not of shepherds, and this
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: is in keeping with the spirit of adventure and uncertainty
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: in the rest of the story, and with the scenes
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: in which they are afterward called on to act. How
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: admirably the youthful fire and impatience to emerge from their
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: obscurity in the young princes is opposed to the cooler
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: calculations than prudent resignation of their more experienced counselor, how
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: well the advantages of knowledge and of ignorance, of solitude
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: and society are placed against each other, Gadarius, out of
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: your proof you speak, we poor, unfledged, have never winged
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: from view of the nest, nor know not what airs
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: from home. Haply this life is best, if quiet life
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: is best, sweeter to you that have sharper known while
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: corresponding with your stiff age. But unto us it is
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: a sull of ignorance, traveling a bed, a prison for
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: a debtor that not dares to stride a limit Averagus,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: What should we speak of when we are as old
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: as you, when we shall hear the rain and wind
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: be dark December? How in this art pinching cave shall
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: we discourse the freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: We are beastly subtle as the fox for prey, like
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: warlike as the wolf, for what we eat. Our valor
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: is to chase what flies our cage. We make a
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: choir as doth the prisoned bird, and sing our bondage freely.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: The answer of Belarius, to this expostulation is hardly satisfactory,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: for nothing can be an answer to hope or the
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: passion of the mind for unknown good. But experience the
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: forest of Arden, and as you like it can alone
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: compare with the mountain scenes and Cymbeline. Yet how different
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: the contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising boldness
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: and the precarious mode of subsistence in the other. Shakespeare
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: not only lets us into the minds of his characters,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: but gives a tone and color to the scenes he
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: describes from the feelings of their imaginary inhabitants. He at
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: the same time preserves the utmost propriety of action and passion,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was equal
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: to the greatest things, he was not above an attention
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: to the smallest. Thus the gallant sportsmen and Cymbeline have
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: to encounter the abrupt declivities of hill and valley, Touchstone
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: and Audrey jog along a level path. The dear and
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: Symboline are only regarded as objects of prey the games
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: Afoot et cetera. With Jacques, they are fine subjects to
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: moralize upon at leisure. Under the shade of melancholy bows.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: We cannot take leave of this play, which is a
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: favorite with us, without noticing some occasional touches of natural
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: piety and morality. We may allude here to the opening
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: of the scene in which Belarius instructs the young princes
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: to pay their orisons to Heaven. Belarius, Sea boys, this
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: gate instructs you how to adore the heavens, and bows
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: you to morning's holy office. Gauderius, Hail Heaven, Avagus, Hail Heaven, Belarius.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: Now for our mountain sport up to yon Hill. What
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: a grace an unaffected spirit of piety breathes in this passage.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: In like manner, one of the brothers says to the other,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: when about to perform the funeral rites to Fidili Neay Cadwall,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: we must lay his head to the east. My father
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: hath a reason for it. Shakespeare's morality is introduced in
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: the same simple and obtrusive manner. Imogen will not let
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: her companions stay away from the chase to attender when sick,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: and gives her reason for it. Stick to your journal, course.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: The breach of custom is breach of all. When the
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: queen attempts to disguise her motives for procuring the poison
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: from Cornelius by saying, she means to try its effects
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: on creatures not worth the hanging. His answer conveys at
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: once a tacit reproof of her hypocrisy, and a useful
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: lesson of humanity. Your Highness shall from this practice, but
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: macard your heart. End of symboline.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: Macbeth, the poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling doth
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: glance from heaven to earth, from Earth to heaven. And
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: as imagination bodies forth the forems of things unknown, the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: a local habitation and a name. Macbeth and Lear, Othello,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: and Hamlet are usually reckoned Shakespeare's four principal tragedies. Lear
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: stands first for the profound intensity of the passion, Macbeth
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: for the wildness of the imagination and the rapidity of
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: the action, Othello for the progressive interest and powerful alternations
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: of feeling. Hamlet for the refined development of thought and sentiment.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: If the force of genius shown in each of these
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: works is astonishing, their variety is not less.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: So.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: They're like different creations of the same mind, not one
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: of which has the slightest reference to the rest. This
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: distinctness and originality is indeed the necessary concept points of
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: truth and nature. Shakespeare's genius alone appeared to possess the
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: resource of nature. He is your only tragedy maker. His
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: plays have the force of things upon the mind. What
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: he represents is brought home to the bosom as a
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: part of our experience, implanted in the memory, as if
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: we had known the places, persons, and things of which
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: he treats. Macbeth is like a record of a preternatural
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: and tragical event. It has the rugged severity of an
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: old chronicle, with all that the imagination of the poet
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: can engraft upon traditional belief. The castle of Macbeth, round
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: which the air smells wooingly, and where the temple haunting
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: Marklet builds, has a real subsistence in the mind. The
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: weird sisters meet us in person on the blasted heath.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: The air drawn dagger moves slowly before our eyes. The
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: gracious duncan the blood boltered banquet stand before us. All
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: that pass through the mind of Macbeth passes without the
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: loss of a tittle through ours. All that could actually
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: take place in all that is only possible to be
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: conceived what was said in what was done. The workings
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: of passion, the spells of magic are brought before us
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: with the same absolute truth and vividness Shakespeare excelled in
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: the openings of his plays, That of Macbeth is the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: most striking of any. The wildness of the scenery, the
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: sudden shifting of the situations and characters, the bustle, the
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: expectations excited are equally extraordinary. From the first entrance of
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: the witches and the description of them when they meet Macbeth.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: What are these so withered and so w wild in
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: their attire, that look not like the inhabitants of the earth,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: and yet are aunt? The mind is prepared for all
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: that follows. This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: imagination it displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: And the one is made the moving principle of the other.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: The overwhelming pressure of preternatural agency urges on the tide
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: of human passion with redoubled force. Macbeth himself appears driven
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: along by the violence of his fate like a vessel
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: drifting before a storm. He reels to and fro like
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: a drunken man. He staggers under the weight of his
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: own purposes and the suggestions of others. He stands at
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: bay with his situation, and from the superstitious awe and
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: the breathless suspense into which the communications of the weird
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: sisters throw him. Is hurried on with daring impatience to
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: verify their predictions, and with impious and bloody hand to
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: tear aside the veil which hides the uncertainty of the future.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: He is not equal to the struggle with fate and conscience.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: He now bends up each corporal instrument to the terrible feet.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: At other times his heart misgives him, and he is
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: cowed and abashed by his success. The deed no less
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: than the attempt confounds him. His mind is assailed by
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: the stings of remorse and full of preternatural solicitings. His
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: speeches and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life, baffling
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: solution and entangling him in their labyrinths. In thought, he
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: is absent and perplexed, sudden and desperate in act from
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: a distrust of his own resolution. His energy springs from
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His blindly rushing
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: forward on the objects of his ambition and revenge, or
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: his recoiling from them, equally betrays the harassed state of
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: his feelings. This part of his character is admirably set
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: off by being brought in connection with that of Lady Macbeth,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: whose obdurate strength of will and masculine firmness give her
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: the ascendancy over her husband's faltering virtue. She at once
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: seizes on the opportunity that offers for the accomplishment of
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: all their wished for greatness, and never flinches from her
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: object till all is over. The magnitude of her resolution
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: almost covers the magnitude of her guilt. She is a great,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: than we hate. She does not excite our loathing in abhorrence,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: like Reagan and Goneril. She is only wicked to gain
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: a great end, as perhaps more distinguished by her commanding
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: presence of mind and inexorable self will, which do not
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: suffer her to be diverted from a bad purpose when
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: once formed by weak and womanly regrets, than by the
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: hardness of her heart or want of natural affections. The
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: impression which her lofty determination of character makes on the
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: mind of Macbeth is well described where he exclaims, bring
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: forth men, children only, for thy undaunted metal should compose
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: nothing but males. Nor do the pains she is at
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: to screw his courage to the sticking place. The reproach
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: to him not to be lost so poorly in himself,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the assurance that a little water clears them of this steed,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: show anything but her greater consistency and depravity. Wrong nerved
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: ambition furnishes ribs of steel to the sides of his intent,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: and she is herself wound up to the execution of
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: her baneful project with the same unshrinking fortitude and crime
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: that in other circumstances she would probably have shown patience
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: in suffering the deliberate sacrifice of all other considerations to
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: the gaining for their future days and nights. Soul sovereign
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: sway and masterdom by the murder of Duncan is gorgeously
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: expressed in her invocation on hearing of his fatal entrance
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: under her battlements.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: Come, all you spirits the tend on mortal thoughts, unsex
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: me here and fill me from the crown to the
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: toe top full of direst cruelty, make thick my blood.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Stop up the access and passage of remorse, that no
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: compunctuous visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: peace between the effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: and take my milk for gal, you murthering ministers, wherever
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief, Come
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: thick knight, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: that my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: cry hold Hold.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: When she first hears that Duncan comes there to sleep,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: she is so overcome by the news, which is beyond
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: her utmost expectations, that she answers the messenger thou art
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: mad to say it, And, on receiving her husband's account
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: of the predictions of the witches, conscious of his instability
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: of purpose, and that her presence is necessary to goat
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: him on to the consummation of his promised greatness, she exclaims.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: Hie thee hither, that I am all my spirits in
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: thine ear, and chastised with the valor of my tongue,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: all that impedes thee from the golden round which fate
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: and metaphysical aid doth seem to have be crowned withal.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph, this uncontrollable
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: eagerness of anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: take possession of all her faculties. The solid, substantial, flesh
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: and blood display of passion exhibit a striking contrast to
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: the cold, abstracted, gratuitous, servile malignity of the witches, who
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: the mere love of mischief and from a disinterested delight
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: panderas to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of enjoyment, enamored
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: of destruction because they are themselves unreal, abortive half existences,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: and who become sublime from their exemption from all human
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: sympathies and contempt for all human affairs. As Lady Macbeth
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: does by the force of passion. Her fault seems to
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: have been in excess of that strong principle of self
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: interest and family aggrandizement, not amenable to the common feelings
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: of compassion and justice, which is so marked a feature
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: in barbarous nations and times. A passing reflection of this
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: kind on the resemblance of the Sleeping King to her
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: father alone prevents her from slaying Duncan with her own hand.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: not to pass over Missus Siddons's manner of acting that part.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: We can conceive of nothing grander. It was something above nature.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: It seemed almost as if a being of superior order
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: her brow, Passion emanated from her breast, is from a shrine.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: She was tragedy personified and coming on in the sleeping scene.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: Her eyes were open, but their sense was shut. She
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: was like a person bewildered and unconscious of what she did.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: Her lips moved involuntarily. All her gestures were involuntary and mechanical.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: She glided on and off the stage like an apparition.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: To have seen her in that character was an event
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: in everyone's life not to be forgotten. The dramatic beauty
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: of the character of Duncan, which excites the respect and
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: pity even of his murderers, has been often pointed out.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: It forms a picture of itself. An instance of the
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: author's power of giving a striking effect to a common
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: reflection by the manner of introducing it occurs in a
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: speech of Duncan complaining of his having been deceived in
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: his opinion of the Fane of Cawdor, at the very
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: moment that he is expressing the most unbounded confidence in
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: the loyalty and services of Macbeth. There is no art
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: to find the mind's construction in the face. He was
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust, O
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: worthiest cousin addressing himself to Macbeth. The sin of my
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: ingratitude even now was great upon me, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: Another passage to show that Shakespeare lost sight of nothing
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: that could in any way give relief or heightening to
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: a subject is the conversation which takes place between Banco
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: and Flet immediately before the murder scene of Duncan. Banquo,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: how goes the night boy fleance. The moon is down.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: I've not heard the clock Banquo, and she goes down
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: at twelve fliance. I take it tis later, sir Bankwo
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: hold take my sword. There's husbandry in heaven. Their candles
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: are all out. A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: and yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers restrain in
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way too in repose.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: In like manner, a fine idea is given of the
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: gloomy coming on of evening. Just as Banquo is going
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: to be assassinated, light thickens and the crow makes wing
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: to the rooky wood. Now spurs the lated traveler apace
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: to gain the timely end. Macbeth, generally speaking, is done
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: any other Shakespeare's plays. It moves upon the verge of
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: an abyss and is a constant struggle between life and death.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: opposite natures, which of them shall destroy the other. There
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: is nothing but what has a violent end or violent
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: beginnings the lights and shades are laid on with a
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: determined hand. The transitions from triumph to despair, from the
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: and startling. Every passion brings in its fellow contrary, and
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other, as in
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare's genius here took its full swing and trod upon
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: the furthest bounds of nature and passion. This circumstance will
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: account for the abruptness and violent antitheses of this style.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: The throes and labour which run through the expression, and
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: from defects, will turn them into beauties so fair and
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: foul a day I've not seen, et cetera, such welcome
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: and unwelcome news. Together. Men's lives are like the flowers
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: in their caps, dying or ere they sicken, look like
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it. The
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: scene before the castle Gate follows the appearance of the
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: witches on the heath, and is followed by a midnight murder.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: Duncan is cut off Betimes by treason league with witchcraft,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: and macduff is ripped untimely from his mother's womb to
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: avenge his death. Macbeth, after the death of Banquell, wishes
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: for his presence in extravagant terms to him in all
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: we thirst, and when his ghost appears, cries out a
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: vaunt and quit my sight, and being gone he is
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: himself again. Macbeth resolves to get rid of McDuff, that
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: he may sleep in spite of thunder, and cheers his
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: wife on the doubtful intelligence a banque was taking off
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: with the encouragement. Then be thou jucant ere. The bat
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: has flown his cloistered flight. Heir to black, hecates, summons,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: the shard born beadle has rung knights yawning peal. There
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: shall be done a deed of dreadful note in Lady
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Macbeth's speech, had he not resembled my father as he slept,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: I had done it, there is murder and filial piety together,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: And in urging him to fulfill his vengeance against the
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: defenseless king, her thoughts spare the blood neither of infants
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: nor old age. The description of the witches is full
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: of the same contradictory principle, they rejoice when good kings bleed.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: They are neither of the earth nor the air, but both.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: They should be women, but their beards forbid it. They
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: take all the pains possible to lead Macbeth on to
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: the heights of his ambition, only to betray him in
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: deeper consequence, and, after showing him all the pomp of
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: their art, discover their malignant delight in his disappointed hopes
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: by that bitter taunt. Why stands Macbeth thus amazedly? We
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: might multiply such instances everywhere. The leading features in the
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: character Macbeth are striking enough, and they form what may
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: be thought at first only a bold, rude Gothic outline.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: By comparing it with other characters of the same author,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: we shall perceive the absolute truth and identity which is
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: career of events. Macbeth and Shakespeare no more loses his
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: identity of character in the fluctuations of fortune or the
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: storm of passion than Macbeth in himself would have lost
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: the identity of his person. Thus he is as distinct
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: a being from Richard the third, as it is possible
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: to imagine, though these two characters in common hands, and
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: indeed in the hands of any other poet, would have
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: been a repetition of the same general idea, more or
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: less exaggerated. For both are tyrants, azurpers, murderers, both aspiring
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: and ambitious, both courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: from nature and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is full of the
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: milk of human kindness, is frank, sociable, generous. He is
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: tempted to the commission of guilt by golden opportunities, by
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: and metaphysical aid conspire against his virtue, and is loyalty. Richard,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: on the contrary, needs no prompter, but wades through his
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: series of crimes to the height of his ambition from
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless love
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: of mischief. He is never gay, but in the prospect
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: or in the success of his villainies Macbeth is full
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: which he is, with difficulty prevailed on to commit, and
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: of remorse after its perpetration. Richard has no mixture of
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: common humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred or posterity.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: He owns no fellowship with others. He is himself alone.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of sympathy, is accessible
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: to pity, is even made in some measure the dupe
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: of his uxoriousness ranks the loss of friends, of the
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: cordial love of his followers, and of his good name
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: among the causes which have made him weary of life,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: and regrets that he has ever seized the crown by
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his own posterity.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: For Banquo's issue, Have I filled my mind for them
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: the gracious Duncan? Have I murthered to make them kings,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: the seed of Banquet kings. In the agitation of his thoughts,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: he envies those whom he is sent to peace. Duncan
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: is in his grave, after life's fitful fever. He sleeps well.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: It is true he becomes more callous as he plunges
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: deeper in guilt. Direness is thus rendered familiar to his
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: slaughterous thoughts, and he, in the end anticipates his wife
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: in the boldness and bloodiness of his enterprises, while she,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: for want of the same stimulus of action, is troubled
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: with thick coming fancies that rob her of her rest,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: goes mad and dies. Macbeth endeavors to escape from reflections
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: on his crimes by repelling their consequences, and banishes remorse
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: for the past by the meditation of future mischief. This
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: is not the principle of Richard's cruelty, which resembles the
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: wanton malice of a fiend as much as the fraility
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: of human passion. Macbeth is goaded on to acts of
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: violence and retaliation by necessity. To Richard, blood is a pastime.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: There are other decisive differences inherent in the two characters.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: Richard may be regarded as a man of the world,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: a plodding, hardened knave, wholly regardless of everything but his
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: own ends, whom a means to secure them. Not so Macbeth.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: The superstitions of the age, the rude state of society,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: the local scenery and customs all give a wildness and
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: imaginary grandeur to his character. From the strangeness of the
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: events that surround him. He is full of amazement and fear,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: and stands in doubt between the world of reality and
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: the world of fancy. He sees sights not shown to
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: mortal eyes, and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: disorder within and without his mind. His purposes recoil upon
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: himself are broken and disjointed. He is the double thrall
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: of his passions and his evil destiny. Richard is not
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: not a character either of imagination or pathos, but of
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: pure self will. There is no conflict of opposite feelings
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: in his breast. The apparitions which he sees only haunt
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: him in his sleep. Nor does he live like Macbeth
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: in a waking dream. Macbeth has considerable energy and manliness
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: of character, but then he is subject to all the
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: skyey influences. He is sure of nothing but the present moment. Richard,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: in the busy turbulence of his projects, never loses his
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: self possession, and makes use of every circumstance that happens
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: as an instrument of his long reaching designs. In his
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: last extremity, we can only regard him as a wild
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: beast taken in the toils. We never entirely lose our
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: concern for Macbeth, and he calls back all our sympathy
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: by that fine close of thoughtful melancholy. My way of
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: life has fallen into the sear, the yell leaf, and
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: that which should accompany old age. As honor troops of
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: friends I must not look to have, but in their
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: stead curses not loud, but deep mouth, honor breath which
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. We
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: can conceive a common actor to play Richard tolerably well.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: We can conceive no one to play Macbeth properly, or
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: to look like a man that had encountered the weird sisters.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: All the actors we've ever seen appear as if they
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: had encountered them on the boards of Covent Garden or
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: Jury Lane, but not on the heath at force, and
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: as if they did not believe what they had seen.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: The witches of Macbeth, indeed, are ridiculous on the modern stage,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: and we doubt if the furies of Eschylus would be
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: more respected the progress of manners and knowledge has an
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: influence on the stage, while and time perhaps destroy both
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: tragedy and comedy. Filch's picking pockets in The Beggar's Opera
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: is not so good a jest as it used to be.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: By the force of the police and of philosophy, Leelo's
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: murderers and the ghosts in Shakespeare will become obsolete. At last.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: There will be nothing left good nor bad to be
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: desired or dreaded on the theater or in real life.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: A question has been started with respect to the originality
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's witches, which had been well answered by mister
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: Lamb in his Notes to the Specimens of Early Dramatic Poetry.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: Macbeth and the incantations in this play the Witch of Middleton,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: not detract much from the originality of Shakespeare. His witches
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: are distinguished from the witches of Middleton by essential differences.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: These are creatures to whom men or women plotting some
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: dire mischief might resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: of blood and begin bad impulses to men from the
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: moment that their eyes first meet with macbeths he is spellbound.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: These witches can hurt the body. Those have power over
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: the soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: The hags of Shakespeare have neither child of their own,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: nor seem to be descended from any parent. Their foul anomalies,
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: human passions, so they seem to be without human relations.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to erry music.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: This is all we know of them, except Hecate. They
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: have no names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The names and
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: some of the properties which Middleton is given to his
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: hags excite smiles. The weird sisters are serious things. Their
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: presence cannot coexist with mirth. But in a lesser degree,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: the witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power, too,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: is in some measure over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies,
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: strifes like a thick scurf or Life, End of Macbeth
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was one of three principal plays
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: by different authors pitched upon by the celebrated Earl of Halifax,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: to be brought out in a splendid manner by subscription
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: in the year seventeen o seven. The other two were
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: The King and No King of Fletcher in Dryden's Maiden Queen.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: There perhaps might be political reasons for this selection as
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: far as regards our author. Otherwise, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: not equal as a whole to either of his other plays.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: Taken from the Roman history. It is inferior in interest
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: to Coriolanus, and both in interest and power to Antony
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: and Cleopatra. It, however, abounds in admirable and affecting passages,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: as remarkable for the profound knowledge of character in which
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare could scarcely fail. If there is any exception to
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: this remark, it is in the hero of the piece himself.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: We do not much admire the representation here given of
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: Julius Caesar, nor do we think it answers to the
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: portrait given of him in his commentaries. He makes several
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: vaporing and rather pedantic speeches, and does nothing. Indeed, he
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do. So far. The fault of the
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: character might be the fault of the plot. The spirit
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: with which the poet has entered at once into the
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: manners of the common people, and the jealousies and heart
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: burnings the different factions, is shown in the first scene,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: when Flavius and Maralis, tribunes of the people, and some
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: citizens of Rome, appear upon the stage. Flavius, thou art
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: to Cobbler, Art thou, Cobbler, truly, sir, All that I
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: live by is the all I meddle, with no tradesmen's matters,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: nor woman's matters, but with all I am, indeed, Sir,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: a surgeon. To old shoes, when they are in great danger,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: I recover them, flavious. But wherefore art not in thy
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: shop today? Why dost thou lead these men about the streets, Cobbler, truly, sir,
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: But indeed, Sir, we may holiday to see Caesar and
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: rejoice in his triumph. To this specimen of quaint low
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: humor immediately follows that unexpected, in animated burst of indignant
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: eloquence put into the mouth of one of the angry
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: tribunes Morelus, wherefore, rejoice what conquest brings he home? What
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: tributaries follow him to Rome to grace in captive bonds
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: as chariot wheels. Oh you hard hearts, you cruel men
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: of Rome. Knew you not? Pompey many a time and
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: off have you climbed up to walls and battlements, to
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops, your infants in
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: your arms. And there have sat the livelong day with
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: patient expectation to see Great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: And when you saw his chariot appear, have you not
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: made a universal shout that Tiber trembled underneath his banks
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: to hear their replication of your sounds made in his
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: concave shores? And do you now put on your best attire?
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: And do you now call out an holiday? And do
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: you not stew flowers in his way that comes in
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: triumph over Pompey's blood? Be gone, Run to your houses,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: fall upon your knees, pray to the gods to intermit
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: the plague that needs must light on this ingratitude. The
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: well known dialog between Brutus and Cassius, in which the
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: latter breaks the design of the conspiracy to the former
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: and partly gains him over to it, is a noble
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: piece of high minded declamation. Cassius is insisting on the
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: pretended effemacy of Caesar's character, and his description of their
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: swimming across the Tiber together once upon on a raw,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: gusty day are among the finest strokes in it. But
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: perhaps the whole is not equal to the short scene
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: which follows, when Caesar enters with his train Brutus. The
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: games are done, and Caesar is returning. Cassius as they
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: pass by, pluck Caska by the sleeve, and he will,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: after his sour fashion, tell you what has preceded worthy
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: note to day, Brutus, I will do so. But look you, Cassius.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow, and all
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: the rest look like a chidden train. Caliperina's cheek is pale,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: and Cicero looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: as we have seen him in the Capitol, being crossed
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: in conference by some senators. Cassius, Caska will tell us
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: what the matter is, Caesar Antonius, Antony, Caesar, Caesar, let
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: me have men about me that are fat, sleek headed men,
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: and such as sleep a nights Yon. Cassius has a
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: are dangerous. Antony fear him, not Caesar. He's not dangerous.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: He is a noble Roman and well given. Caesar, would
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: he were fatter. But I fear him not. Yet if
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: my name were liable to fear, I do not know
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: the man I should avoid so soon as that spaa Cassius.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: He reads much. He is a great observer, and he
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: looks quite through the deeds of men. He loves, no plays,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: as thou dost Anthony. He hears no music seldom. He smiles,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: and smiles in such a sort as if he mocked
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: smile at anything. Such men as he be never at
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: heart's ease, whilst they behold a greater than themselves, and
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: therefore are they very dangerous. I rather tell thee what
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: is to be feared than what I fear, for always
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: I am Caesar. Come on my right hand, for this
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: ear is deaf, and tell me truly what you thinks
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: of him. We know hardly any passage more expressive of
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: the genius of Shakespeare than this. It is as if
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: he had been actually present, had known the different characters
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: in what they thought of one another, and had taken
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: down what he heard and saw their looks, words and
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: gestures just as they happened. The character of mark Antony
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: is further speculated upon, where the conspirators deliberate whether he
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: shall fall with Caesar. Brutus is against it, And for
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: mark Antony, think not of him, for he can do
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: no more than Caesar's arm when Caesar's head is off Cassius,
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: yet do I fear him for the ingrafted love he
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: bears to Caesar. Brutus alas good. Cassius, do not think
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: of him. If he loved Caesar. All that he can
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: do is to himself, take thought, and die for Caesar,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: and that were much he should, for he is given
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: to sports, to wildness, and much company. Trebonius, there is
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: no fear in him. Let him not die, for he
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: will live and laugh at this hereafter they were in
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: the wrong, and Cassius was right. The honest manliness of Brutus's, however,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: sufficient to find out the unfitness of Cicero to be
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: included in their enterprise, from his affected egotism in literary vanity.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: Oh name him not, let us not break with him,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: for he will never follow anything that other men begin
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: his skepticism as to prodigies, and is moralizing on the weather.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: This disturbed sky is not to walk in. Are in
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: the same spirit of refined imbecility. Shakespeare has in this
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: play and elsewhere shown the same penetration into political character
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: in the springs of public events as into those of
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: everyday life. For instance, the whole design to liberate their
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: country fails from the generous temper and overweening confidence of brutus,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: and the goodness of their cause and the assistance of others.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: Thus it has always been those who meanwhile themselves think
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: well of others and fall a prey to their security.
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: and tyranny, render them unfit to cope with the cunning
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: and power of those who are opposed to them. The
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: they are themselves sincere, and endeavor to secure the public
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: and stick it nothing to accomplish them. Cassius was better
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: cut out for a conspirator. His heart prompted his head,
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: His habitual jealousy made him fear the worst that might happen,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: and his irrebility of temper added to his inveteracy of
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: purpose and sharpened his patriotism. The mixed nature of his
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: motives made him fitter to contend with bad men. The
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: vices are never so well employed as in combating one another.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: Tyranny and servility are to be dealt with after their
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: own fashion, otherwise they will triumph over those who spare them,
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: and finally pronounce their funeral panegyric as Antony did that
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: of Brutus, All the conspirators save only he did that.
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: They did an envy of great Caesar. He only, in
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: a general, honest thought and common good to all, made
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: one of them. The quarrel between Brutus and Cassius is
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: managed in a masterly way. The dramatic fluctuation of passion,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: the calmness of Brutus the heat of Cassius are admirably
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: described in the exclamation of Cassius on hearing of the
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: death of Portia, which he does not learn till after
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: the reconciliation. How scaped I killing when I crust you?
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: So gives double force to all that has gone before.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: The scene between Brutus and Portia, where she endeavors to
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: extort the secret of the conspiration from him, is conceived
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: in the most heroical spirit, and the burst of tenderness
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: and Brutus, you are my true and honorable wife, is
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: dear to me, as are the ruddy drops that visit
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: my sad heart, is justified by her whole behavior. Porsia's
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: breathless impatience to learn the event of the conspiracy in
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: the dialogue with Lucius is full of passion. The interest
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: which Porsia takes in Brutus and that which Calphurnia takes
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: in the fate of Caesar are discriminated with the nicest precision.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: Mark Antony's speech over the dead body of Caesar has
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: been justly admired, for the mixture of pathos and artifice
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: in it. That of Brutus certainly is not so good.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: The entrance of the conspirators to the house of Brutus
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: at midnight is rendered very impressive. In the midst of
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: this scene, we meet with one of those careless and
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: natural digressions which occur so frequently and beautifully in Shakespeare.
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: After Cassius has introduced his friends one by one, Brutus says,
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: they are all welcome. What watchful cares do interpose themselves
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: betwixt your eyes and night, Cassius, Shall I entreat a word?
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: They whisper, Decius, Here lies the east doth not the
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: day break? Here? Caska no sinna, oh, pardon sir, it
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: doth and yon gray lines that fret the clouds are
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: messengers of day. Caska, you shall confess that you are
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: both deceived. Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: which is a great way growing on the south, weighing
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: the youthful season of the year some two months hence
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: up higher towards the north, he first presents his fire,
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: and the high east stands as the capital directly Here
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: we cannot help thinking this graceful familiarity better than all
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: the formality in the world. The truth of history in
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: Julius Caesar is very ably worked up with dramatic effect.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: The councils of generals. The doubtful turns of battles are
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: represented to the life. The death of Brutus is worthy
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: of him. It has the dignity of the Roman senator,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: with the firmness of the Stoic philosopher. But what is
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: perhaps better than either is the little incident of his
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: boy Lucius falling asleep over his instrument as he is
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: playing to his master in his tent the night before
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: the battle. Nature had played him the same forgetful trick
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: once before on the night of the conspiracy. The humanity
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: of Brutus is the same on both occasions. It is
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: no matter enjoy the honey heavy dew of slumber. Thou
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: hast no figures, nor no fantasies, which busy care draws
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: in the brains of men. Therefore thou sleepest so sound.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: End of Julius Caesar Othello. It has been said that
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity. That is,
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere selfishness. It gives us
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: a high and permanent interest beyond ourselves in humanity. As such,
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: it raises the great, the remote, and the possible to
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: an equality with the real, the little, and the near.
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: It makes man a partaker with his kind. It subdues
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: and softens the stubbornness of his will. It teaches him
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: that there are and have been others like himself, by
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: showing him, as in a glass, what they have felt,
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: thought and done. It opens the chambers of the human heart.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: It leaves nothing indifferent to us that can affect our
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: imagination or the temptation of circumstances, and corrects their fatal
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: excesses in ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: sufferings and of crimes to which they have led others.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: Tragedy creates a balance of the affections. It makes us
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: thoughtful spectators in the list of life. It is the
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: refiner of the species. A discipline of humanity, The habitual
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: study of poetry and works of imagination is one chief
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: part of a well grounded education. A taste for liberal
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman.
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: Signs alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: unemployed or engrossed with our own immediate narrow interests. Othello
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: furnishes an illustration of these remarks. It excites our sympathy
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: in an extraordinary degree. The moral It conveys as a
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: closer application to the concerns of human life than any
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: other of Shakespeare's plays. It comes directly home to the
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: bosoms in business of men. The pathos and lear is
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: indeed more dreadful and overpowering, but it is less natural
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: and less of every day's occurrence. We have not the
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: same degree of sympathy with the passions described in Macbeth.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: The interest in Hamlet is more remote and reflex that
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: of Othello is at once equally profound and affecting. The
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: picturesque contrast of character in this play are almost as
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: remarkable as the depth of the passion. The more Othello,
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: the gentle Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good natured Cassio,
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: the fool Rodrigo present a range of variety of character
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: as striking and palpable as that produced by the opposition
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: of costume in a picture. Their distinguishing qualities stand out
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: to the mind's eye, so that even when we are
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: not thinking of their actions or sentiments, the idea of
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: their persons is still as present to us as ever,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: these characters and the images they stamp upon the mind
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: are the farthest asunder possible. The distance between them is immense.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: Yet the compass of knowledge and invention which the poet
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: has shown in Embodied Dying, these extreme creations of his genius,
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: is only greater than the truth and felicity with which
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: he has identified each character with itself, or blended their
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: different qualities together in the same story. What a contrast
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: the character of Othello forms to that of Iago. At
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: the same time, the force of conception with which these
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: more intense, as a complete consistency with which the traits
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: of each character are brought out in a state of
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: the highest finishing. The making one black and the other white,
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: the one unprincipled the other unfortunate, in the extreme, would
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: have answered the common purpose of effect and satisfied the
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: ambition of an ordinary painter of character. Shakespeare has labored
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: the finer shades of difference in both with as much
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: care and skill as if he had had to depend
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: upon the execution alone for the success of his design.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, Desdemona and Emilia are not meant
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: to be opposed with anything like strong contrast to each other.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: Both are, to outward appearance, characters of common life, not
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: more distinguish than women usually are by difference of rank
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: and situation. The difference of their thoughts and sentiments is, however,
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: laid as open. Their minds are separated from each other
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: by signs as plain and as little to be mistaken
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: as the complexions of their husbands. The movement of the
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: passion in Othello is exceedingly different from that of Macbeth.
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: In Macbeth, there is a violent struggle between opposite feelings,
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: between ambition and the stings of conscience, almost from first
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: to last. In Othello, the doubtful conflict between contrary passions,
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: though dreadful, continues only for a short time, and the
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: chief interest is excited by the alternate ascendency of different passions,
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: the entire and unforeseen change from the fondest love and
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: the most unbounded confidence to the tortures of jealousy and
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: the madness of hatred, the revenge of othello. After it
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: has once taken thorough possession of his mind, never quits it,
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: but grows stronger and stronger every moment of its delay.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: The nature of the more is noble, confiding, tender, and generous,
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: but his blood is of the most inflammable kind, And
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: being once roused by a sense of his wrongs, he
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: is stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity till
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: he is given a loose to all the dictates of
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: his rage and his despair. It is in working his
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: noble nature up to his extremity through rapid but gradual transitions,
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: in raising passion to its height from the smallest beginnings,
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: and in spite of all obstacles, in painting the expiring
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: conflict between love and hatred, tenderness and resentment, jealousy and remorse,
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: and unfolding the strength and the weaknesses of our nature,
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: in uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish of the
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: keenest woe, In putting in motion the various impulses that
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: agitate this our mortal being, and at last blending them
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: in that noble tide of deep and sustained passion, impetuous
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: but majestic, that flows on to the propontic and knows
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: no ebb that Shakespeare has shown the mastery of his
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: genius and of his power over the human heart. The
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: third act of Othello is his masterpiece, not of knowledge
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: or passion separately, but of the too combined, of the
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: knowledge of character with the expression of passion, of consummate art,
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: in the keeping up of appearances, with the profound workings
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: of nature, and the convulsive movements of uncontrollable agony, of
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: the power of inflicting torture and of suffering. It not
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: only is the tumult of passion heaved up from the
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: very bottom of the soul, but every the slightest undulation
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: of feeling is seen on the surface, as it arises
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: from the impulses of imagination or the different probabilities maliciously
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: suggested by Iaga. The progressive preparation for the catastrophe is
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: wonderfully managed from the Moor's first gallant recital of the
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: story of his love of the spells and witchcraft he
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: had used from his unlooked for and romantic success, the
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: fond satisfaction with which he doates on his own happiness,
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: the unreservedness of Desdemona, and her innocent importunities in favor
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: of Cassio, irritating the suspicions instilled into her husband's mind
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: by the perfidity of Iago, and rankling there to poison
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: till he loses all command of himself, and his rage
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: can only be appeased by blood. She is introduced just
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: before Iago begins to put his scheme in practice, pleading
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: for Cassio with all the thoughtless gayety of friendship and
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: winning confidence in the love of Othello.
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: What Michael Cassio, that came a wooing with you, and
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 2: so many a time when I have spoke of you
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: dispraisingly attain your part to have so much to do
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: to bring him in? What this is not a boom?
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: 'tis as I should entreat you where your gloves, or
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 2: feed on nourishing meats, or keep you warm, or sue
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: to you to do a peculiar prophet to your person. Nay,
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: when I have a suit, when I mean to touch
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: your love. Indeed it shall be full of poise and
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: fearful to be granted.
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: Othellow's confidence, at first, only staggered by broken hints and insinuations,
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: recovers itself at sight of Desdemona, and he exclaims, if
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: she be false, oh, then Heaven mocks itself. I'll not
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: believe it. But presently, after I'm brooding over his suspicions
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: by himself and yielding to his apprehensions of the worst,
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: his smothered jealousy breaks out into open fury, and he
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: returns to demand satisfaction of Iago like a wild beast
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: stung with the envemented shaft of the hunters. Look where
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: he comes, et cetera. And this state of exasperation and violence,
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: after the first roxysms of his grief and tenderness have
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: had their vent in that passionate apostrophe, I felt not
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: Cassio's kisses on her lips. Iago, by false aspersions and
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: by presenting the most revolting images to his mind, easily
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: turns the storm of passion from himself against Desdemona and
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: works him up into a trembling agony of doubt and fear,
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: in which he abandons all his love and hopes and
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: a breath. Now do I see tis true? Look here Iago,
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: all my fond love. Thus do I blow to heaven?
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: Tis gone? Arise black vengeance from the hollow hell yield up,
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: Oh love, thy crown and hearted throne, to ternus hate,
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: swell bosom with thy fraught for tis of Aspect's tongues.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: From this time his raging thoughts never look back ne'er
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: ab to humble love, till his revenge is sure of
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: its object. The painful regrets and involuntary recollections of past
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: circumstances which cross his mind amidst the dim trances of passion,
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: aggravating the sense of his wrongs, but not shaking his
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: purpose once. Indeed, where Iago shows him Cassio with a
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: handkerchief in his hand and making sport as he thinks
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: of his misfortunes, the intolerable bitterness of his feelings, the
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to praising her
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of weakness. Yet, Oh,
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it. This
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: returning fondness, however, only serves as it is managed by
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: Iago to wet his revenge and set his heart more
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: against her. In his conversations with Desdemona, the persuasion of
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: her guilt and the immediate proofs of her duplicity seem
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: to irritate his resentment and aversion to her. But in
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: the scene immediately preceding her death, the recollection of his
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: love returns upon him in all its tenderness and force,
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: And after her death he all at once forgets his
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: wrongs in the sudden, inrreparable sense of his loss. My wife,
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: my wife, What wife? I have no wife? Oh insupportable,
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: Oh heavy hour. This happens before he is assured of
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: her innocence. But afterwards his remorse is as dreadful as
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: his revenge has been, and yields only to fixed and
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: death like despair. His farewell speech before he kills himself,
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: in which he conveys his reason to the Senate for
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: the murder of his wife, is equal to the first
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: speech in which he gave them an account of his
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: courtship of her and his whole course of love. Such
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: an ending was alone worthy of such a commencement. If
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: anything could add to the force of our sympathy with
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: othello or compassion for his fate, it would be the
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: frankness and generosity of his nature, which so little deserve it.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: When Iago first begins to practice upon his unsuspecting friendship,
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: he answers tis not to make me jealous to say
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: my wife is fair, feeds well, love's company is free
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: of speech, sings, plays and dances well. Where virtue is,
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: these are most virtuous. Nor from my own weak merits
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: will I draw the smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: For she had eyes and chows me. This character is
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: beautifully and with affecting simplicity, confirmed by what Desdemona herself
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: says of him to Amelia, after she has lost the handkerchief,
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: the first pledge of his love to her.
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 2: Believe me, I had rather lost my purse full of crusadoes.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 2: And but my noble more is true of mind, and
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 2: made of no such baseness as jealous creatures are. It
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 2: were enough to put him to ill.
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: Thinking Amelia, is he not jealous? Does Demona?
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 2: Who he? I think the son where he was born
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 2: drew all such humors from him?
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: In a short speech of Emilius, there occurs one of
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: those side intimations of the fluctuations of passion which we
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: seldom meet with. But in Shakespeare, after Othello has resolved
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: upon the death of his wife and bids her dismiss
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: her attendant for the night, she answers, I will my
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: Lord Amelia, how goes it? Now? He looks gently than
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: he did. Shakespeare has here put into half a line
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: what some authors would have spun out into ten set speeches.
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: The character of Desdemona herself is inimitable, both in itself
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: and as a contrast with Othello's groundless jealousy and with
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: a foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim.
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: Her beauty and external graces are only indirectly glanced at.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: We see her visage in her mind. Her character everywhere
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: predominates over her person, a maiden, never bold of spirits,
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: so still and quiet that her motion blushed at itself.
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: There is one fine compliment paid to her by Cassio,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: who exclaims triumphantly when she comes ashort Cypress after the
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: storm tempests themselves high seas and howling winds, as having
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: sense of beauty, do omit their mortal natures, letting safe
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: go by the divine Desdemona. In general, as is the
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: case with most of Shakespeare's females, we lose sight of
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: her personal charms and her attachment and devotedness to her husband.
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: She is subdued even to the very quality of her lord,
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: and to Othello's honors and his valiant parts, her soul
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: and fortunes consecrates. The lady protests so much herself, and
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: she is as good as a word. The truth of conception,
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character,
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: is marvelous. The extravagance of her resolutions, the pertinacity of
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: her affections, may be said to arise out of the
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: gentleness of her own nature. They imply an unreserved reliance
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: on the purity of her own intentions, an entire surrender
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself,
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: heart and soul to the fate of another, bating the
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong,
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: though even that may perhaps be consistently accounted for from
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: her inability to resist a rising inclination. Her whole character
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: consists in having no will of her own, no prompter
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: of the domestic and practical part of her disposition, and
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: instead of following Othellow to the wars, she would gladly
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: have remained at home a moth of peace. If her
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: husband could have stayed with her. Her resignation and angelic
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last.
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: The scenes in which she laments and tries to account
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: for Othello's estrangement from her are exquisitely beautiful. After he
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: has struck her and called her names, she says.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: Alas I I go, What shall I do to win
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 2: my lord again? Good friend?
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 4: To go to him?
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: For by this light of heaven, I know not how
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 2: I lost him. Here I kneel if e'er my will
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 2: to trespass against his love, either in discourse or thought
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 2: or actual deed, or that mine eyes, mine ears, are
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 2: any sense delighted them on any other form, or that
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 2: I do not, and ever did, and ever will. Though
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 2: he do shake me off to beggarly divorcement, love him
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: dearly comfort forswear me. Unkindness may do much, and his
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 2: unkindness may defeat my life, but never taint my love.
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: Iago, I pray you be content tis But his humor
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: the business of the state does him offense, does d'emona.
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 2: If it were no other.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: The scene which follows with Amelia and the Song of
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: the Willow are equally beautiful and show the author's extreme
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 1: power of varying the expression of passion in all its
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: moods and in all its circumstances. Amelia, would you had
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: never seen him? Does d'emona?
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 3: So?
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 2: Would not? I? My love does so approve him, that
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 2: even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns, have grace and
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 2: favor in them.
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago's treachery, place
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: Doesdemona in a more amiable or interesting light than the
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: casual conversation half earnest, half jass between her and Amelia
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: on the common behavior of women to their husbands. This
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: dialogue takes place just before the last fatal scene. If
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: Othello had overheard it, it would have prevented the whole catastrophe,
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: But then it would have spoiled the play. The character
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: of Iago is one of the supererogations of Shakespeare's genius.
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: Some persons, more nice than wise have thought this whole
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: character unnatural, because his villainy is without a sufficient motive. Shakespeare,
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: who was as good a philosopher as he was a poet,
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: is another name for the love of mischief, is natural
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: to man. He would know this as well or better
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: then if it had been demonstrated to him by a
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: logical diagram, merely from seeing children paddle in the dirt
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: or kill flies for a sport. Iago, in fact belongs
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: to a class of characters common to Shakespeare and at
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: the same time peculiar to him, whose heads are as
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: acute and active as their hearts are hard and callous.
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: Iago is, to be sure, an extreme instance of the kind,
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity, with an
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: with a decided preference of the latter, because it falls
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: more readily in with his favorite propensity, gives greater zest
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: to that of others. He runs all risk for a
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: trifling and doubtful advantage, and is himself the dupe and
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: victim of his ruling passion. An insatiable craving after action
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: of the most difficult and dangerous kind. Our ancient is
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: a philosopher who fancies that alie that kills has more
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis. Who
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: thinks a fatal experiment on the piece of a family
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: of a flea in a microscope. Who plots the ruin
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: stabs men in the dark to prevent anoui. His gaiety,
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery,
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others.
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: He is an amateur of tragedy in real life, and
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters or long
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: parts among his nearest friends and connections, and rehearses it
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: in downright earnest who steady nens, nerves and unabated resolution.
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: We will just give an illustration or two. One of
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: his most characteristic speeches is that, immediately after the marriage
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: of Othello Rodrigo, what a full fortune does the thick
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: lips oh if he can carry her? Thus Iago, call
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: up her father, rouse him, make after him, poison his
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: delight proclaim him in the streets and sense her kinsman,
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: and though he in a fertile climate, twell plague him
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 1: with flies, though that his joy be joy to throw
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: such changes of vexation on it, as it may lose
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: some color. In the next passage, his imagination runs riot
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: in the mischief he is plotting, and breaks out into
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: the wildness and impetuosity of real enthusiasm. Rodrigo years her
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: father's house. I'll call aloud, Iago do with like timorous
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: accent and dire yell as when by night, in negligence
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: the fire is spied in populous cities. One of his
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: most favorite topics, on which he is rich, indeed, and
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: in discanting on which his spleen serves and for a muse,
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 1: is a disproportionate match between Desdemona and the more. This
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: is a clue to the character of the lady, which
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: she is by no means ready to part with. It
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: to it when, in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona,
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: Rodrigo says, I cannot believe that in her she's full
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: of most blessed conditions. Iago blessed figs and the wine
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: she drinks is made of grapes. If she had had
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: been blessed, she would never have married the more, and
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 1: again of still more spirit and fatal effect afterwards, when
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: he turns this very suggestion arising in Othello's own breast,
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: to her prejudice, Othello, And yet how nature erring from itself? Iago, Ahi,
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: there's the point as to be bold with you, not
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: to affect many proposed matches of her own climb, complexion
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: and degree, et cetera. This is probing to the quick,
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: Iago Heir turns the character of poor Desdemona as it
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: were inside out. It is certain that nothing but the
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 1: genius of Shakespeare could have preserved the entire interest and
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: delicacy of the part, and have even drawn an additional
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: elegance and dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 1: is placed. The habitual sensuousness of Iago's conversation is not
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: to be traced to the pleasure he takes in gross
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: or lascivious images, but to his desire of finding out
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: the worst side of everything, and of proving himself an overmatch.
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: For appearances, he has none of the milk of human kindness.
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: In his composition, his imagination rejects everything that is not
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: a strong infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients. His mind
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: digests only poisons virtue or goodness, or whatever has the
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: least relish of salvation in It is to his depraved appetite,
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: sickly and insipid, and he even resents the good opinion
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: entertained of his own integrity as if it were an
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: affront cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character. Thus,
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: at the meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he exclaims, Oh,
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 1: you are well tuned now, but I'll set down the
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: pegs that make this music as honest as I am.
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: His character of Bonami not sitting at all easily upon him.
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: In the scenes where he tries to work Othello to
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: his purpose, he is proportionately guarded, insidious, dark, and deliberate.
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: We believe nothing ever came up to the profound dissimulation
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: and dexterious artifice of the well known dialogue and the
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: third act where her first enters upon the execution of
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: his design, Iago, my noble lord, Athello, What dost thou say, Iago, Iago?
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: Did Michael Cassio when you wooed, my lady know of
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: your love? Athello? He did from first to last. Why
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: dost thou ask, Iago? But for a satisfaction of my thought?
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: No further harm? Athello? Why of thy thought? Yaga? Oh? Iago?
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: I did not think he had been acquainted with it? Athello?
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, and went between us very off Iaga, indeed Athello,
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: indeed I indeed discernest thou aught of that? Is he
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: not honest? Iago? Honest? My lord Athello? Honest? I honest Iago,
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: my lord for aught? I know? Athello? What dost thou think? Iago? Think?
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: My lord? Athello? Think my lord? Alas thou echoest me,
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: as if there were some monster in thy thought too
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: hideous to be shown. The stops and breaks, the deep
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: workings of treachery under the mask of love and honest,
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: the anxious watchfulness, the cool, earnestness, and, if we may
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: so say, the passion of hypocrisy marked in every line
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: received their last finishing, and that inconceivable burst of pretended
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: indignation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity. Oh Grace, oh Heaven,
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: forgive me. Are you a man? Have you a soul?
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: Or sense? God be with you? Take mine office, O
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: wretched fool that loves to make thine honesty of vice, Oh,
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: monstrous world, take note, Take note, O world. To be
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: direct and honest is not safe. I thank you for
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: this prophet, and from hence I'll love no friend, since
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: love breeds such offense. If Iago is detestable enough when
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: he has business on his hands and all his engines
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: at work, he's still worse when he has nothing to do,
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 1: and we only see into the hollowness of his heart.
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 1: His indifference when Othellow falls into a swoon is perfectly diabolical. Iago,
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: how is it general? Have you not hurt your head? Othello?
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: Dost thou mock me? Iago? I mock you not by heaven,
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: et cetera. The part, indeed, would hardly be tolerated, even
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: as a foil to the virtue and generosity of the
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 1: other characters in the play, but for its indefatigable industry
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: and inexhaustible resources, which divert the attention of the spectator
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: as well as his own from the end he has
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: in view to the means by which it must be accomplished.
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: Edmund the bastard and leer, is something of the same
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: character placed in less prominent circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: characterature of it. End of Othello.
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 2: Timon of Athens. Timon of Athens always appeared to us
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 2: to be written with as intense a feeling of his
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 2: subject as anyone play of Shakespeare. It is one of
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 2: the few in which he seems to be in earnest throughout,
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 2: never to trifle nor go out of his way. He
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 2: does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight of
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: the unity of his design. It is the only play
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 2: of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 2: of the mind. It is as much a satire as
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 2: a play, and contains some of the finest pieces of
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 2: invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 2: answers of the cynic Apamantus and in the impassioned and
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 2: more terrible imprecations of Timan. The latter remind the classical
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 2: reader of the force and swelling and spetuosity of the
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 2: moral declamations in Juvenile, while the former have all the
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 2: keenness and caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. The
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 2: soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 2: lips of Apamantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy and the
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 2: cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timin,
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 2: and also with the soldier like and determined resentment of
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 2: Alcibiades against his countrymen who have banished him. Though this
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 2: forms only an incidental episode in the tragedy, the fable
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 2: consists of a single event, of the transition from the
• 2:32:38
  Speaker 2: highest pomp and profusion of artificial refinement to the most
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 2: abject state of savage life and the privation of all
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 2: social intercourse. The changes as rapid as it is complete,
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 2: Nor is the description of the rich and generous Timen
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 2: banqueting in gilded palaces, pampered by every luxury, prodigal of hospitality,
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 2: courted by crowds of flatterers, poets, painters, lords, ladies, who
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 2: follow his strides his lobbies, fill with tendons, rain sacrificial
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 2: whisperings in his ear and through him during the free
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 2: air more striking than that of the sudden falling off
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 2: of his friend's and fortune, and his naked exposure in
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 2: a wild forest, digging roots from the earth for his
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 2: sustenance with a lofty spirit of self denial and bitter
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 2: scorn of the world which raised him higher in our
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 2: esteem than the dazzling gloss of prosperity could do. He
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 2: grudges himself the means of life, and is only busy
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 2: in preparing his grave. How forcibly is the difference between
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 2: what he was and what he is described in Apamantus's
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 2: taunting questions when he comes to reproach him with the
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 2: change in his way of life. What thinkest thou that
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 2: the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain will put thy shirlof
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 2: warm Will these moist trees that have outlived the eagle
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 2: page thy heels and skip when thou point stout, Will
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 2: a cold brook candied with ice coddle thy mourning taste
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 2: to cure thy over night's surfeit? Call the creatures whose
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 2: naked natures live in all the spite of reakful heaven,
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 2: whose Barenhauser trunks to the conflicting elements exposed answer mere nature,
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 2: bid them flatter thee The manners are everywhere preserved with
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 2: distinct truth. The poet and painter are very skillfully played
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 2: off against one another, both affecting great attention to the other,
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 2: and each taken up with his own vanity and the
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 2: superiority of his own art. Shakespeare has put into the
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 2: mouth of the former a very lively description of the
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 2: genius of poetry and of his own In particular, a
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 2: thing slip id lee from me. Our posey is as
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 2: a gum which issues from whence it is nourished. The
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 2: fire in the flint shows not till it be struck.
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 2: Our gentle flame provokes itself, and like the current flies
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 2: each bound. It chafes the hollow friendship and shuffling evasions
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 2: of the Athenian lords. Their smooth professions and pitiful ingratitude
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 2: are very satisfactorily exposed, as well as the different disguises
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 2: to which the meanness of self love resorts in such
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 2: cases to hide a want of generosity and good faith.
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 2: The lurking selfishness of Apemantus does not pass undetected amidst
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 2: the grossness of his sarcasms and his contempt for the
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 2: pretensions of others. Even the two courtesans who accompany Alcibiades
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 2: to the Cave of Timen are very characteristically sketched, and
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 2: the thieves who come to visit him are also true
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 2: men in their way. An exception to this general picture
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 2: of selfish depravity is found in the old and honest
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 2: Steward Flavius, to whom Timand pays a full tribune of tenderness.
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 2: Shakespeare was unwilling to draw a picture all over ugly
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 2: with hypocrisy. He owed this character to the good natured
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 2: solicitations of his muse. His mind was well said by
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 2: ben Jonson to be the sphere of humanity. The moral
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 2: sententiousness of this play equals that of Lord Bacon's Treatise
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 2: on the Wisdom of the Ancients, and is indeed seasoned
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 2: with greater variety. Every topic of contempt or indignation is
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 2: here exhausted. But while the sordid licentiousness of Epimantus, which
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 2: turns everything to gall and bitterness, shows only the natural
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 2: virulence of his temper and antipathy to good or evil alike,
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 2: Timond does not utter an implication without betraying the extravagant
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 2: workings of disappointed passion of love altered to hate. Epimantus
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 2: sees nothing good in any object, and exaggerates whatever is disgusting.
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 2: Timon is tormented with a perpetual contrast between things and appearances,
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 2: between the fresh, tempting outside and the rottenness within, and
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 2: evokes mischiefs on the heads of mankind proportion to the
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 2: sense of his wrongs and of their treacheries. He impatiently
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 2: cries out when he finds the gold, this yellow slave
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 2: will knit and break religions, Bless the accursed, make the
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 2: whole leprosy adored place thieves, and give them title, knee
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 2: and approbation with senators on the bench. This is it
• 2:37:28
  Speaker 2: that makes the warp and widow wed again, She whom
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 2: the spittle house would cast the gorge at this symbalms
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 2: and spices to the April day again. One of his
• 2:37:40
  Speaker 2: most dreadful imprecations is that which occurs immediately on his
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 2: leaving Athens. Let me look back upon thee oh thou,
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 2: all the girdlest in those wolves dive in the earth
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 2: and fence, not Athens. Matrons turn incontinent, obedience fail in
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 2: children and slaves, and fools, pluck the grave wrinkled senate
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 2: from the bench and minister in their steads to general filths.
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 2: Convert are the instant green virginity do it in your
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 2: parents' eyes, bankrupts. Hold fast rather than render back out
• 2:38:17
  Speaker 2: with your knives and cut your truster's throats. Bound servants, steal,
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 2: large handed robbers, your grave masters are, and pill by
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 2: law made to thy master's bed, Thy mistresses of the
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 2: brothel son of sixteen, pluck the lined crutch from thy
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 2: old limping sire, and with it beat his brains out.
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 2: Fear and piety, religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, domestica, night, rest,
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 2: and neighborhood instructions, manners, mysteries and trades, degrees, observances, customs,
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: and laws. Decline to your confounding contraries, and let confusion
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 2: live legs incident to men, Your potents and infectious fevers
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 2: heap on athens ripe for stroke. The cold Sciatica cripple
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 2: our senators, that their limbs may halt as lamely as
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 2: their manners, lust and liberty creep in the minds and
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 2: manners of our youth that gains the stream of virtue,
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 2: they mistrive and drown themselves in riot itches plains. So
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 2: all the Athenian bosooms and their crop be general leprosy
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 2: breath infect breath, that their society, as their friendship may
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 2: be merely poison. Timon is here just as ideal in
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 2: his passion for ill as he had before been in
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 2: his belief of good. Apomantus was satisfied with the mischief
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 2: existing in the world and with his own ill nature.
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 2: One of the most decisive intimations of Timan's morbid jealousy
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 2: of appearances is in his answer to Apomantis, who asks him,
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 2: what things in the world can some nearest compare with
• 2:40:01
  Speaker 2: eye flatterers? Timon, women nearest, but men men of the
• 2:40:06
  Speaker 2: things themselves. Apimantis had has said, loved few things better
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 2: than to abhor himself. This is not the case with Tymon,
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 2: who neither loves to abhor himself nor others. All his
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 2: vehement misanthropy is forced up hill work, from the slippery
• 2:40:24
  Speaker 2: turns of fortune, from the turmoils of passion and adversity.
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 2: He wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave.
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 2: On that subject, his thoughts are intent on that he
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 2: finds time and place to grow romantic. He digs his
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 2: own grave by the sea shore, contrives his funeral ceremonies
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 2: amidst the pomp of desolation and builds his mausoleum of
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 2: the elements. Come not to me again, but say to Athens.
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 2: Timon hath made his everlasting mansion upon the beached verge
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 2: of the salt flood, which once a day, with his
• 2:40:59
  Speaker 2: embossed forth the turbulent surge shall cover thither. Come and
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 2: let my gravestone be your oracle. And again Alcibiades, after
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 2: reading his epitaph, says of him, these well express in
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 2: THEE thy latter spirits. Though thou abhorst in us our
• 2:41:18
  Speaker 2: human griefs scornst our, brains flow, and those are droplets
• 2:41:23
  Speaker 2: which from niggard nature fall, Yet rich conceit taught THEE
• 2:41:27
  Speaker 2: to make vast neptune weep for aye on thy low grave,
• 2:41:32
  Speaker 2: thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner, the
• 2:41:37
  Speaker 2: murmuring ocean, and seeking in the everlasting solemnities of nature,
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 2: oblivion of the transitory splendor of his lifetime. End of
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 2: Timon of Athens.
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: Coriolanus. Shakespeare has in this play shown himself well versed
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: in history and state affairs. Coriolanus is a storehouse of
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: political commonplaces. Anyone who studies it may save himself the
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: trouble of reading Burke's Reflections or Pains Rights of Man,
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: or the debates in both houses of Parliament since the
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: French Revolution, or our own, the arguments for and against
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few, in
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 1: the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: in the abuse of it, peace and war are here
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: very ably handled with the spirit of a poet, in
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespeare himself seems to have
• 2:42:44
  Speaker 1: had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question,
• 2:42:47
  Speaker 1: perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin,
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 1: and to have spared no occasion of bating the rabble.
• 2:42:55
  Speaker 1: What he says of them is very true. What he
• 2:42:58
  Speaker 1: says of their betters is also very true, though he
• 2:43:02
  Speaker 1: dwells less upon it. The cause of the people is
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: indeed but little calculated as a subject for poetry. It
• 2:43:10
  Speaker 1: admits of rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation, but
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: it presents no immediate or distinct images to the mind,
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: no jutting freeze, buttress, or coign of vantage. For poetry
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 1: to make its pendent bed and procreant cradle. In the
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 1: language of poetry naturally falls in with the language of power.
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 1: The imagination is an exaggerating and exclusive faculty. It takes
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 1: from one thing to add to another. It accumulates circumstances
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: together to give the greatest possible effect to a favorite object.
• 2:43:49
  Speaker 1: The understanding is a dividing and measuring faculty. It judges
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: of things not according to their immediate impression on the mind,
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: but according to their relations to one another. The one
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 1: is a monopolizing faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: present excitement by inequality and disproportion. The other is a
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 1: distributive faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate good
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 1: by justice and proportion. The one is an aristocratical the
• 2:44:23
  Speaker 1: other a republican faculty. The principle of poetry is a
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 1: very anti leveling principle. It aims at effect. It exists
• 2:44:33
  Speaker 1: by contrast. It admits of no medium. It is everything
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: by excess. It rises above the ordinary standard of suffering
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 1: and crimes. It presents a dazzling appearance. It shows its
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 1: head turreted, crowned and crested. Its front is guilt and
• 2:44:51
  Speaker 1: blood stain. Before it, it carries noise, and behind it tears.
• 2:44:57
  Speaker 1: It has its altars and its victims, sacrifices, human sacrifices, kings, priests, nobles, arts,
• 2:45:05
  Speaker 1: train bearers, tyrants and slaves, its executioners. Carnage is its daughter.
• 2:45:12
  Speaker 1: Poetry is right royal. It puts the individual for the species,
• 2:45:17
  Speaker 1: the one above the infinite many mite before right. A
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: lion hunting a flock of sheep, or a herd of
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 1: wild asses is a more poetical object than they. And
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 1: we even take part with the lordly beast because our
• 2:45:32
  Speaker 1: vanity of some other feeling makes us dispose to place
• 2:45:36
  Speaker 1: ourselves in the situation of the strongest party. So we
• 2:45:40
  Speaker 1: feel some concern for the poor citizens of Rome when
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 1: they meet together to compare their wants and grievances, till
• 2:45:47
  Speaker 1: Coriolanus comes in, and with blows and big words, drives
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 1: this set of poor rats, this rascal scum, to their
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 1: homes and beggary before him. There is nothing heroical in
• 2:46:00
  Speaker 1: a multitude of miserable rogues, not wishing to be starved,
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 1: or complaining that they are like to be. So when
• 2:46:08
  Speaker 1: a single man comes forward to brave their cries and
• 2:46:11
  Speaker 1: to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 1: pride and self will, our admiration of his prowess is
• 2:46:19
  Speaker 1: immediately converted into contempt for their pulsillanimity. The insolence of
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: submission to exerpt authority, or even the natural resistance to it,
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination. It is
• 2:46:38
  Speaker 1: the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others
• 2:46:42
  Speaker 1: that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We
• 2:46:46
  Speaker 1: had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 1: of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in
• 2:46:52
  Speaker 1: others are both natural to man. The one makes him
• 2:46:56
  Speaker 1: a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out and pride,
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 1: pomp and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right. Coriolanus
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 1: complains of the fickleness of the people, Yet the instant
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 1: he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at their expense,
• 2:47:15
  Speaker 1: he turns his arms against his country. If his country
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 1: he was not worth defending, why did he build his
• 2:47:21
  Speaker 1: pride on its defense. He is a conqueror and a hero.
• 2:47:26
  Speaker 1: He conquers other countries, and he makes this plea for
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: enslaving his own. And when he is prevented from doing so,
• 2:47:34
  Speaker 1: he leagues with its enemies to destroy his country. He
• 2:47:38
  Speaker 1: rates the people as if he were a god to punish,
• 2:47:42
  Speaker 1: and not a man of their infirmity. He scoffs at
• 2:47:46
  Speaker 1: one of their tribunes for maintaining their rights and franchises.
• 2:47:51
  Speaker 1: Mark you his absolute shall, not marking his own absolute
• 2:47:56
  Speaker 1: will to take everything from them. Is patience of the
• 2:48:00
  Speaker 1: slightest opposition to his own pretensions, being in proportion to
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: their arrogance and absurdity. If the great and powerful had
• 2:48:10
  Speaker 1: the beneficence and wisdom of gods, than all this would
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 1: have been well. If with a greater knowledge of what
• 2:48:17
  Speaker 1: is good for the people, they had as great a
• 2:48:19
  Speaker 1: care for their interest as they have for themselves. If
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 1: they were seated above the world, sympathizing with the welfare
• 2:48:28
  Speaker 1: but not feeling the passions of men, receiving neither good
• 2:48:31
  Speaker 1: nor hurt from them, but bestowing their benefits as free
• 2:48:35
  Speaker 1: gifts on them, they might then rule over them like
• 2:48:39
  Speaker 1: another providence. But this is not the case. Coriolanus is
• 2:48:44
  Speaker 1: unwilling that the Senate should show their cares for the people,
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 1: lest their cares should be construed into fears to the
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 1: subversion of all due authority, And he is no sooner
• 2:48:57
  Speaker 1: disappointed in his schemes to deprive the people not only
• 2:49:01
  Speaker 1: of the cares of the state, but of all power
• 2:49:04
  Speaker 1: to address themselves. Then Volumnia is made madly to exclaim.
• 2:49:10
  Speaker 2: Now of the red pestilens strike all trades in Roman
• 2:49:13
  Speaker 2: occupations perish.
• 2:49:16
  Speaker 1: This is but natural. It is but natural for her
• 2:49:19
  Speaker 1: mother to have more regard for her son than for
• 2:49:22
  Speaker 1: a whole city. But then the city should be left
• 2:49:25
  Speaker 1: to take some care of itself. The care of the
• 2:49:28
  Speaker 1: state cannot we here see, be safely entrusted to maternal
• 2:49:33
  Speaker 1: affection or to the domestic charities of high life. The
• 2:49:37
  Speaker 1: great have private feelings of their own to which the
• 2:49:40
  Speaker 1: interest of humanity and justice must curtsey. Their interests are
• 2:49:46
  Speaker 1: so far from being the same as those of the
• 2:49:48
  Speaker 1: community that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them.
• 2:49:53
  Speaker 1: Their power is at the expense of our weakness, their
• 2:49:58
  Speaker 1: riches of our poverty, their pride of our degradation, their
• 2:50:04
  Speaker 1: splendor of our wretchedness, their tyranny of our servitude. If
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 1: they had the superior knowledge abscribed to them, which they
• 2:50:14
  Speaker 1: have not, it would only render them so much more formidable,
• 2:50:19
  Speaker 1: and from gods would convert them into devils. The whole
• 2:50:22
  Speaker 1: dramatic moral of Coriolanus is that those who have little
• 2:50:27
  Speaker 1: shall have less, and those who have much shall take
• 2:50:30
  Speaker 1: all that others have left. The people are poor, therefore
• 2:50:35
  Speaker 1: they ought to be starved. They are slaves, therefore they
• 2:50:39
  Speaker 1: ought to be beaten. They work hard, therefore they ought
• 2:50:43
  Speaker 1: to be treated like beasts of burden. They are ignorant.
• 2:50:46
  Speaker 1: Therefore they ought not to be allowed to feel that
• 2:50:49
  Speaker 1: they want food or clothing or rest. That they are enslaved, oppressed,
• 2:50:54
  Speaker 1: and miserable. This is the logic of the imagination and
• 2:50:58
  Speaker 1: the passions, which seek to aggrandize what excites admiration, and
• 2:51:04
  Speaker 1: to heap contempt on misery, to raise power into tyranny,
• 2:51:08
  Speaker 1: and to make tyranny absolute, to thrust down that which
• 2:51:13
  Speaker 1: is low still lower, and to make wretches desperate, to
• 2:51:17
  Speaker 1: exalt magistrates into kings, kings into gods, to degrade subjects
• 2:51:23
  Speaker 1: to the rank of slaves and slaves to the condition
• 2:51:26
  Speaker 1: of brutes. The history of mankind is a romance, a mask,
• 2:51:31
  Speaker 1: a tragedy constructed upon the principles of poetical justice. It
• 2:51:37
  Speaker 1: is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is
• 2:51:40
  Speaker 1: sport to the few is death to the many, and
• 2:51:44
  Speaker 1: in which the spectators halloou and encourage the strong to
• 2:51:48
  Speaker 1: set upon the weak and cry havoc in the chase.
• 2:51:51
  Speaker 1: Though they do not share in the spoil. We may
• 2:51:55
  Speaker 1: depend upon it that what men delight to read in
• 2:51:57
  Speaker 1: books they will put in practice in reality. One of
• 2:52:02
  Speaker 1: the most natural traits in this play is the difference
• 2:52:05
  Speaker 1: of the interest taken in the success of Coriolanus by
• 2:52:08
  Speaker 1: his wife and mother. The one is only anxious for
• 2:52:12
  Speaker 1: his honor, the other is fearful for his life.
• 2:52:17
  Speaker 2: Volumnia, methinks I heard they're here, your husband's drum. I
• 2:52:23
  Speaker 2: see him pluck a phidious down by the hair. Methinks
• 2:52:26
  Speaker 2: I see him stamp thus and call thus, come on,
• 2:52:29
  Speaker 2: you cowards. You were got in fear, though you were
• 2:52:32
  Speaker 2: born in Rome. His bloody brow with his mailed hand,
• 2:52:35
  Speaker 2: then wiping forth, he goes like to a harvest man
• 2:52:39
  Speaker 2: that's tasked to mow or all or lose his.
• 2:52:42
  Speaker 1: Hire Vergilla, his bloody brow. Oh Jupiter, no blood, Volumnia.
• 2:52:54
  Speaker 2: Howay are you fool?
• 2:52:56
  Speaker 3: It?
• 2:52:56
  Speaker 2: More becomes a man than guilt. His trophy. The breast
• 2:52:59
  Speaker 2: of Hecuba, and she did suckle. Hector looked not lovelier
• 2:53:02
  Speaker 2: than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood at Grecian
• 2:53:06
  Speaker 2: swords contending.
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: When she hears the trumpets that proclaim her son's return,
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 1: she says, in the true spirit of a Roman matron.
• 2:53:18
  Speaker 2: These are the ushers of Marcius. Before him, he carries noise,
• 2:53:23
  Speaker 2: and behind him he leaves tears death. That dark spirit
• 2:53:28
  Speaker 2: in his nervy arm doth lie, which, being advanced, declines,
• 2:53:33
  Speaker 2: and then men die.
• 2:53:37
  Speaker 1: Coriolanus himself is a complete character. His love of reputation,
• 2:53:42
  Speaker 1: his contempt of popular opinion. His pride and modesty are
• 2:53:46
  Speaker 1: consequences of each other. His pride consists in the inflexible
• 2:53:51
  Speaker 1: sternness of his will. His love of glory is a
• 2:53:54
  Speaker 1: determined desire to bear down all opposition and to extort
• 2:53:58
  Speaker 1: the admiration, both of friends and foes. His contempt for
• 2:54:02
  Speaker 1: popular favor, his unwillingness to hear his own praises, spring
• 2:54:07
  Speaker 1: from the same source. He cannot contradict the praises that
• 2:54:11
  Speaker 1: are bestowed upon him. Therefore he is impatient in hearing them.
• 2:54:16
  Speaker 1: He would enforce the good opinion of others by his actions,
• 2:54:19
  Speaker 1: but does not want their acknowledgments and words. Pray now
• 2:54:24
  Speaker 1: no more. My mother, who has a charter to extol
• 2:54:27
  Speaker 1: her blood, when she does praise me, grieves me. His
• 2:54:33
  Speaker 1: magnanimity is of the same kind. He admires in an
• 2:54:36
  Speaker 1: enemy that courage which he honors in himself. He places
• 2:54:41
  Speaker 1: himself on the hearth of Aphidius with the same confidence
• 2:54:45
  Speaker 1: that he would have met him in the field, and
• 2:54:47
  Speaker 1: feels that by putting himself in his power, he takes
• 2:54:50
  Speaker 1: from him all temptation for using it against him. In
• 2:54:55
  Speaker 1: the title page of Coriolanus, it is said, at the
• 2:54:58
  Speaker 1: bottom of the Dramatis persona, the whole history exactly followed,
• 2:55:03
  Speaker 1: and many of the principal speeches copied from the life
• 2:55:06
  Speaker 1: of Coriolanus and Plutarch. It will be interesting to our
• 2:55:10
  Speaker 1: readers to see how far this is the case. Two
• 2:55:13
  Speaker 1: of the principal scenes, those between Coriolanus and Aphidius and
• 2:55:18
  Speaker 1: between Coriolanus and his mother, are thus given in Sir
• 2:55:22
  Speaker 1: Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth fifteen
• 2:55:27
  Speaker 1: seventy nine. The first is as follows. It was even
• 2:55:34
  Speaker 1: twilight when he entered the city of Antium, and many
• 2:55:38
  Speaker 1: people met him in the streets, but no man knew him.
• 2:55:42
  Speaker 1: So he went directly to Tullus of Phidius's house, and
• 2:55:45
  Speaker 1: when he came thither, he got him up straight to
• 2:55:48
  Speaker 1: the chimney hearth, and sat him down, and spake not
• 2:55:51
  Speaker 1: a word to any man, his face all muffled over.
• 2:55:56
  Speaker 1: They of the house, spying him, wondered what he should be.
• 2:56:00
  Speaker 1: Yet they durst not bid him rise, for ill favorably
• 2:56:03
  Speaker 1: muffled and disguised as he was, Yet there appeared a
• 2:56:07
  Speaker 1: certain majesty in his countenance and in his silence. Whereupon
• 2:56:13
  Speaker 1: they went to Tullus, who is at supper, to tell
• 2:56:16
  Speaker 1: him of the strange disguising of this man. Tullus rose
• 2:56:20
  Speaker 1: presently from the board, and, coming towards him, asked him
• 2:56:24
  Speaker 1: what he was, and wherefore he came. Then Marcius unmuffled himself,
• 2:56:30
  Speaker 1: and after he had paused, awhile, making no answer, he said,
• 2:56:33
  Speaker 1: unto himself, if thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and
• 2:56:38
  Speaker 1: seeing me, dost not perhaps believe me to be the
• 2:56:41
  Speaker 1: man I am. Indeed, I must of necessity discover myself
• 2:56:45
  Speaker 1: to be that I am. I am Caius Marcius, who
• 2:56:51
  Speaker 1: hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the vulsices generally,
• 2:56:56
  Speaker 1: great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny. For my
• 2:56:59
  Speaker 1: surname of Coriolanus, that I bear, for I never had
• 2:57:03
  Speaker 1: other benefits nor recompense of the true and painful service
• 2:57:08
  Speaker 1: I have done, and the extreme dangers I have been in.
• 2:57:11
  Speaker 1: But this only surname a good memory and witness of
• 2:57:14
  Speaker 1: the malice and displeasure thou shouldst bear me. Indeed, the
• 2:57:19
  Speaker 1: name only remaineth with me, for the rest the envy
• 2:57:23
  Speaker 1: and cruelty of the people of Rome have taken from
• 2:57:26
  Speaker 1: me by the sufferance of the dastardly nobility and magistrates,
• 2:57:30
  Speaker 1: who have forsaken me and let me banished by the people.
• 2:57:34
  Speaker 1: This extremity hath now driven me to come, as a
• 2:57:37
  Speaker 1: poor suitor to take thy chimney hearth, not of any
• 2:57:41
  Speaker 1: hope I have to save my life thereby, For if
• 2:57:44
  Speaker 1: I had feared death, I would not have come hither
• 2:57:47
  Speaker 1: to put myself in hazard, but pricked forward with desire
• 2:57:51
  Speaker 1: to be revenge of them that thus have banished me,
• 2:57:54
  Speaker 1: which now I do begin in putting my person into
• 2:57:58
  Speaker 1: the hands of their enemies. Wherefore, if thou hast any
• 2:58:03
  Speaker 1: heart to be wrecked of the injuries thy enemies have done, THEE,
• 2:58:07
  Speaker 1: speed THEE now, and let my miseries serve thy turn,
• 2:58:11
  Speaker 1: and so use it as my services may be a
• 2:58:14
  Speaker 1: benefit to the vulses, promising THEE that I will fight
• 2:58:18
  Speaker 1: with better good will for all you than I did
• 2:58:21
  Speaker 1: when I was against you, knowing that they fight more
• 2:58:25
  Speaker 1: valiantly who know the force of the enemy, than such
• 2:58:28
  Speaker 1: as have never proved it. And if it be so
• 2:58:32
  Speaker 1: that thou dare not, and have thou art weary to
• 2:58:35
  Speaker 1: prove fortune any more, then am I also weary to
• 2:58:39
  Speaker 1: live any longer? And it were no wisdom in THEE
• 2:58:42
  Speaker 1: to save the life of him who hath been heretofore
• 2:58:45
  Speaker 1: thy mortal enemy, and whose service now can nothing help
• 2:58:49
  Speaker 1: nor pleasure THEE. Tullus, hearing what he said, was a
• 2:58:53
  Speaker 1: marvelous glad man, and taking him by the hand, he said,
• 2:58:57
  Speaker 1: unto him, stand up, o Marcius, and be of good cheer,
• 2:59:03
  Speaker 1: for in proffering thyself unto us, thou dost us great honor.
• 2:59:07
  Speaker 1: And by this means thou mayest hope also of greater
• 2:59:11
  Speaker 1: things at all the Volsies hands. So he feasted him
• 2:59:15
  Speaker 1: for that time, and entertained him in the honorablest manner
• 2:59:19
  Speaker 1: he could, talking with him of no other matter at
• 2:59:22
  Speaker 1: that present. But within a few days after they fell
• 2:59:25
  Speaker 1: to consultation together in what sort they should begin their wars.
• 2:59:31
  Speaker 1: The meeting between Coriolanus and his mother is also nearly
• 2:59:35
  Speaker 1: the same as in the play. Now was Marcius set
• 2:59:41
  Speaker 1: then in the chair of state, with all the honors
• 2:59:44
  Speaker 1: of a general, And when he had spied the women
• 2:59:47
  Speaker 1: coming afar off, he marveled what the matter meant. But afterwards,
• 2:59:52
  Speaker 1: knowing his wife, which came foremost, he determined at the
• 2:59:55
  Speaker 1: first to persist in his obstinate and inflexible rancor. But
• 3:00:00
  Speaker 1: overcome the end of natural affection, and being altogether altered
• 3:00:04
  Speaker 1: to see them, his heart would not serve him to
• 3:00:06
  Speaker 1: tarry their coming to his chair, But coming down in haste,
• 3:00:10
  Speaker 1: he went to meet them. And first he kissed his
• 3:00:13
  Speaker 1: mother and embraced her a pretty while, then his wife
• 3:00:16
  Speaker 1: and little children, and nature so wrought with him that
• 3:00:20
  Speaker 1: the tears fell from his eyes, and he could not
• 3:00:23
  Speaker 1: keep himself from making much of them, but yielded to
• 3:00:26
  Speaker 1: the affection of his blood, as if he had been
• 3:00:29
  Speaker 1: violently carried with the fury of a most swift running stream.
• 3:00:34
  Speaker 1: After he had thus lovingly received them, and perceiving that
• 3:00:38
  Speaker 1: his mother Volumnia would begin to speak to him, he
• 3:00:41
  Speaker 1: called the Chiefness of the Council of the Vulses to
• 3:00:44
  Speaker 1: hear what she would say. Then she spake in this sort.
• 3:00:49
  Speaker 1: If we held our peace, my son, and determined not
• 3:00:52
  Speaker 1: to speak, the state of our poor bodies and present
• 3:00:56
  Speaker 1: sight of our raiment would easily betray to thee what
• 3:00:59
  Speaker 1: life we have led in home since thy exile and
• 3:01:03
  Speaker 1: abode abroad. But think now with thyself, how much more
• 3:01:08
  Speaker 1: unfortunate than all the women living we are come hither,
• 3:01:12
  Speaker 1: considering that the sight which should be most pleasant to
• 3:01:15
  Speaker 1: all others to behold spiteful fortune, had made most fearful
• 3:01:20
  Speaker 1: to us, making myself to see my son and my
• 3:01:24
  Speaker 1: daughter here her husband besieging the walls of his native country.
• 3:01:28
  Speaker 1: So as that which is the only comfort to all
• 3:01:30
  Speaker 1: others in their adversity and misery, to pray unto the
• 3:01:34
  Speaker 1: gods and to call them for aid, is the only
• 3:01:37
  Speaker 1: thing which plunges us into the most deep perplexity. For
• 3:01:42
  Speaker 1: we cannot alas together pray both for victory to our
• 3:01:46
  Speaker 1: country and for the safety of thy life also. But
• 3:01:50
  Speaker 1: a world of grievous curses, yea, more than any mortal
• 3:01:54
  Speaker 1: enemy can heap upon us, are forcibly wrapped up in
• 3:01:58
  Speaker 1: our prayers. For the bitter sop of most hard choice
• 3:02:02
  Speaker 1: is offered thy wife and children to forego one of
• 3:02:05
  Speaker 1: the two, either to lose the person of thyself or
• 3:02:09
  Speaker 1: the nurse of their native country. For myself, my son,
• 3:02:13
  Speaker 1: I am determined not to tarry till fortune in my
• 3:02:16
  Speaker 1: lifetime do make an end of this war. For if
• 3:02:19
  Speaker 1: I cannot persuade the rather to do good unto both parties,
• 3:02:23
  Speaker 1: then to overthrown destroy the one preferring love in nature
• 3:02:28
  Speaker 1: before the malice and calamity of wars, Thou shalt see,
• 3:02:32
  Speaker 1: my son and trust unto it. Thou shalt no sooner
• 3:02:35
  Speaker 1: march forward to assault thy country, but thy foot shall
• 3:02:38
  Speaker 1: tread upon thy mother's womb that brought thee first into
• 3:02:42
  Speaker 1: this world. And I may not refer to see the
• 3:02:45
  Speaker 1: day either that my son be led prisoner in triumph
• 3:02:48
  Speaker 1: by his natural countrymen, or that he himself do triumph
• 3:02:52
  Speaker 1: of them and of his natural country. For if it
• 3:02:56
  Speaker 1: were so that my requests tended to save thy country
• 3:03:00
  Speaker 1: in destroying the Valses, I must confess thou wouldst hardly
• 3:03:04
  Speaker 1: and doubtfully resolve on that, For as to destroy thy
• 3:03:08
  Speaker 1: natural country, it is altogether un meet and unlawful, so
• 3:03:12
  Speaker 1: were it not just and less honorable to betray those
• 3:03:16
  Speaker 1: that put their trust in thee. But my only demand
• 3:03:20
  Speaker 1: consisteth to make a jailed delivery of all evils, which
• 3:03:24
  Speaker 1: delivereth the equal benefit and safety both the one and
• 3:03:28
  Speaker 1: the other, but most honorable for the Valses, for it
• 3:03:32
  Speaker 1: shall appear that having victory in their hands, they have
• 3:03:35
  Speaker 1: a special favor granted us singular graces, peace and enmity,
• 3:03:40
  Speaker 1: albeit themselves have no less part of both than we,
• 3:03:44
  Speaker 1: of which good if so it came to pass, thyself
• 3:03:48
  Speaker 1: is the only author, and so hast thou the only honor.
• 3:03:52
  Speaker 1: But if it fail and fall out contrary, thyself alone
• 3:03:56
  Speaker 1: deservedly shalt carry the shameful reproach and burthen of either party.
• 3:04:02
  Speaker 1: So though the end of war be uncertain, yet this notwithstanding,
• 3:04:06
  Speaker 1: is most certain, that if it be thy chance to
• 3:04:09
  Speaker 1: conquer this benefit, shalt thou reap of thy goodly conquest
• 3:04:14
  Speaker 1: to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy country.
• 3:04:18
  Speaker 1: And if fortune overthrow THEE, then the world will say that,
• 3:04:21
  Speaker 1: through desire to revenge thy private injuries, thou hast forever
• 3:04:26
  Speaker 1: undone thy good friends, who did most lovingly and courteously
• 3:04:30
  Speaker 1: receive thee. Marcius gave good ear unto his mother's words,
• 3:04:35
  Speaker 1: without interrupting her speech at all, And after she had
• 3:04:39
  Speaker 1: said what she would, he held his peace a pretty
• 3:04:41
  Speaker 1: while and answered not a word. Hereupon she began again
• 3:04:46
  Speaker 1: to speak unto him, and said, my son, why dost
• 3:04:50
  Speaker 1: thou not answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether
• 3:04:53
  Speaker 1: to give place unto thy collar and desire of revenge.
• 3:04:58
  Speaker 1: And thinkest thou, if not on honor for THEE to
• 3:05:00
  Speaker 1: grant thy mother's request in so weighty a cause, dost
• 3:05:05
  Speaker 1: thou take it honorable for a nobleman to remember the
• 3:05:08
  Speaker 1: wrongs and injuries done him, And dost not, in like
• 3:05:11
  Speaker 1: case think it an honest noblewoman's part to be thankful
• 3:05:15
  Speaker 1: for the goodness the parents do show to their children,
• 3:05:19
  Speaker 1: acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear unto them.
• 3:05:23
  Speaker 1: No man living is more bound to show himself thankful
• 3:05:26
  Speaker 1: in all parts and respects than thyself, who so universally
• 3:05:31
  Speaker 1: ShoWest all ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken
• 3:05:36
  Speaker 1: of thy country, exacting grievous payments upon them in revenge
• 3:05:41
  Speaker 1: of the injuries offered THEE. Besides, thou hast not hitherto
• 3:05:46
  Speaker 1: showed thy poor mother any courtesy. And therefore it is
• 3:05:50
  Speaker 1: not only honest, but do unto me that without compulsion
• 3:05:54
  Speaker 1: I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of THEE.
• 3:05:59
  Speaker 1: But since my reason I cannot persuade THEE to it,
• 3:06:02
  Speaker 1: to what purpose do I defer my last hope? And
• 3:06:06
  Speaker 1: with these words herself, his wife and children fell down
• 3:06:10
  Speaker 1: upon their knees before him. Marcius, seeing that, could refrain
• 3:06:15
  Speaker 1: no longer. But when straight and lifted her up, crying out,
• 3:06:20
  Speaker 1: oh mother, what have you done to me? And holding
• 3:06:24
  Speaker 1: her hard by the right hand, Oh mother, said he.
• 3:06:28
  Speaker 1: You have won a happy victory for your country, but
• 3:06:31
  Speaker 1: mortal and unhappy for your son. For I see myself
• 3:06:35
  Speaker 1: vanquished by you alone. These words being spoken openly, he
• 3:06:40
  Speaker 1: spake a little apart with his mother and wife, and
• 3:06:43
  Speaker 1: then let them return again to Rome, For so they
• 3:06:46
  Speaker 1: did request him and so remaining in the camp that night.
• 3:06:50
  Speaker 1: The next morning he dislodged and marched homeward onto the
• 3:06:55
  Speaker 1: Volsi's country. Again. Shakespeare has, in giving a dramatic form
• 3:07:01
  Speaker 1: to this passage, adhered very closely and properly to the text.
• 3:07:06
  Speaker 1: He did not think it necessary to improve upon the
• 3:07:08
  Speaker 1: truth of nature. Several of the scenes in Julius Caesar,
• 3:07:13
  Speaker 1: particularly Porsche's appeal to the confidence of her husband by
• 3:07:17
  Speaker 1: showing him the wound she had given herself, and the
• 3:07:19
  Speaker 1: appearance of the ghost of Caesar to Brutus, are in
• 3:07:23
  Speaker 1: like manner taken from the history and of Coriolanus.
• 3:07:31
  Speaker 2: Troilus and Cresida. This is one of the most loose
• 3:07:35
  Speaker 2: and desultory of our author's plays. It rambles on just
• 3:07:39
  Speaker 2: as it happens, but it overtakes, together with some indifferent matter,
• 3:07:43
  Speaker 2: a prodigious number of fine things in its way. Troilus
• 3:07:47
  Speaker 2: himself is no character, he is merely a common lover.
• 3:07:51
  Speaker 2: But Cressida and her uncle Panderas are hit off with
• 3:07:54
  Speaker 2: proverbial truth by the speeches given to the leaders of
• 3:07:57
  Speaker 2: the Grecian host, Nestor, Agamemnon and Achilles. Shakespeare seems to
• 3:08:03
  Speaker 2: have known them as well as if he had been
• 3:08:04
  Speaker 2: a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp,
• 3:08:08
  Speaker 2: to say nothing of there being very lofty examples of
• 3:08:11
  Speaker 2: didactic eloquence. The following is a very stately and spirited declamation,
• 3:08:16
  Speaker 2: ulysses Troy. Yet upon her basis had been down, and
• 3:08:21
  Speaker 2: the great Hector's sword had liked a master. But for
• 3:08:24
  Speaker 2: these instances the specialty of rule hath been neglected. The
• 3:08:28
  Speaker 2: heavens themselves, the planets, and this center observe degree, priority
• 3:08:34
  Speaker 2: and place, and sister coarse proportion, season, form, office, and
• 3:08:40
  Speaker 2: custom in all line of order. And therefore is the
• 3:08:43
  Speaker 2: glorious planet's soul in noble eminence, enthroned and speared amidst
• 3:08:48
  Speaker 2: the other, whose medicinable eye corrects the ill aspects of planets,
• 3:08:52
  Speaker 2: evil and posts, like the commandment of a king, sands
• 3:08:56
  Speaker 2: check to good and bad. But when the planets in
• 3:09:00
  Speaker 2: evil mixture to disorder, wander what plagues and what portents,
• 3:09:04
  Speaker 2: what mutinies, what raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
• 3:09:08
  Speaker 2: commotion in the winds, frights, changes, hoars, divert and crack,
• 3:09:14
  Speaker 2: rend and deracinate the unity and married calm of states.
• 3:09:18
  Speaker 2: Quite from their fixture. Oh, when degree is shaken, which
• 3:09:22
  Speaker 2: is the latter to all high designs, the enterprise is sick.
• 3:09:26
  Speaker 2: How good communities degrees in schools and brotherhoods and cities,
• 3:09:30
  Speaker 2: peaceful commerce from dividible shores, the primogenitive and de of birth,
• 3:09:35
  Speaker 2: prerogative of age, crown scepters laws. But by degree stand
• 3:09:40
  Speaker 2: in authentic place. Take but degree away untune that string
• 3:09:45
  Speaker 2: and harkwood discord follows each thing meets in mere pugnancy.
• 3:09:50
  Speaker 2: The bounded waters would lift their bosoms higher than the
• 3:09:52
  Speaker 2: shores and make a sop of all this solid globe
• 3:09:55
  Speaker 2: strength would be lord of imbecility, and the rude sun
• 3:09:58
  Speaker 2: would strike his father den force would be right, or
• 3:10:02
  Speaker 2: rather right and wrong, between whose endless jar justice resides
• 3:10:07
  Speaker 2: would lose their names, and so a justice too. Then
• 3:10:10
  Speaker 2: everything includes itself in power, power into will, will into appetite,
• 3:10:16
  Speaker 2: an appetite. An universal wolf, so doubly seconded with will
• 3:10:21
  Speaker 2: and power, must make perforce a universal prey, unleast eat
• 3:10:26
  Speaker 2: up himself great Agamemnon. This chaos when degree is suffocate
• 3:10:32
  Speaker 2: follows the choking and this neglection of degree. It is
• 3:10:36
  Speaker 2: that by a pace goes backward in a purpose it
• 3:10:39
  Speaker 2: hath to climb the generals disdained by him, one step
• 3:10:43
  Speaker 2: below he, by the next, that next by him beneath.
• 3:10:47
  Speaker 2: So every step exampled by the first pace that is
• 3:10:50
  Speaker 2: sick of his superior grows to an envious fever of
• 3:10:54
  Speaker 2: pale and bloodless emulation. And tis this fever that keeps
• 3:10:58
  Speaker 2: try on foot, not our own sinews to end ataale
• 3:11:02
  Speaker 2: of length Troy, and our weakness lives not in her strength.
• 3:11:07
  Speaker 2: It cannot be said of Shakespeare, as was said of someone,
• 3:11:10
  Speaker 2: that he was quote without overflowing full. He was full
• 3:11:14
  Speaker 2: even to overflowing. He gave heap to measure running over.
• 3:11:18
  Speaker 2: This was his greatest fault. He was only in danger
• 3:11:21
  Speaker 2: of quote losing distinction in his thoughts, to borrow his
• 3:11:25
  Speaker 2: own expression. As to the battle, when they charge on
• 3:11:28
  Speaker 2: heaps the enemy flying. There is another passage, the speech
• 3:11:33
  Speaker 2: of Ulysses to Achilles, showing him the thankless nature of popularity,
• 3:11:38
  Speaker 2: which has a still greater depth of moral observation and
• 3:11:40
  Speaker 2: richness of illustration than the former. It is long, but
• 3:11:44
  Speaker 2: worth the quoting. The sometimes giving an entire extract from
• 3:11:48
  Speaker 2: the unacted plays of our author, may with one class
• 3:11:51
  Speaker 2: of readers have almost the use of restoring a lost passage,
• 3:11:55
  Speaker 2: and may serve to convince another class of critics that
• 3:11:58
  Speaker 2: the poet's genius was not confined to the production of
• 3:12:01
  Speaker 2: stage effect by preternatural means ulysses time. Hath my lord
• 3:12:07
  Speaker 2: a wallet at his back, wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
• 3:12:12
  Speaker 2: the great sized monster of ingratitudes. These scraps are good
• 3:12:16
  Speaker 2: deeds past, which are devoured as fast as they are made,
• 3:12:20
  Speaker 2: forgot as soon as done perseverance, Dear, my Lord, keeps
• 3:12:24
  Speaker 2: honor bright. To have done is to hang quite out
• 3:12:28
  Speaker 2: of fashion, like a rusty mail in monumental mockery. Take
• 3:12:33
  Speaker 2: the instant way for honor travels in a strait so
• 3:12:36
  Speaker 2: narrow where one but goes oppressed. Keep then the path
• 3:12:40
  Speaker 2: for emulation. Hath a thousand sons, one by one pursue.
• 3:12:45
  Speaker 2: If you give way or hedge aside from the direct
• 3:12:47
  Speaker 2: forth right, like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
• 3:12:52
  Speaker 2: leave you hindmost, or like a gallant horse fallen in
• 3:12:56
  Speaker 2: first rank, or run and trampled on. Then what they
• 3:12:59
  Speaker 2: do in present, though less than yours in past, must
• 3:13:02
  Speaker 2: overtop yours. For time is like a fashionable host that
• 3:13:08
  Speaker 2: slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, and with
• 3:13:11
  Speaker 2: his arm outstretched as he would fly grasps in the commer.
• 3:13:15
  Speaker 2: The welcome ever smiles and farewell goes out sighing. Though
• 3:13:19
  Speaker 2: let not virtue seek remuneration for the thing it was
• 3:13:24
  Speaker 2: for beauty, wit, high birth, vigor of bone, dessert and service, love, friendship, charity,
• 3:13:31
  Speaker 2: or subjects all to envious and calumniating time. One touch
• 3:13:36
  Speaker 2: of nature makes the whole world. Kin, that all, with
• 3:13:39
  Speaker 2: one consent praise new born gods, though they are made
• 3:13:43
  Speaker 2: and molded of things past. The present eye praises the
• 3:13:46
  Speaker 2: present object. Then marvel not thou, great and complete man,
• 3:13:52
  Speaker 2: that all the Greeks began to worship Ajax. Since things
• 3:13:55
  Speaker 2: in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs
• 3:13:59
  Speaker 2: the cry out on thee. And still it might, and
• 3:14:02
  Speaker 2: yet it may again, if thou wouldst not entomb thyself
• 3:14:05
  Speaker 2: alive in case thy reputation in thy tent. The throng
• 3:14:11
  Speaker 2: of images in the above lines is prodigious, and though
• 3:14:14
  Speaker 2: they sometimes jostle against one another, they everywhere raise and
• 3:14:18
  Speaker 2: carry on the feeling which is metaphysically true and profound
• 3:14:22
  Speaker 2: The debates between the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of
• 3:14:25
  Speaker 2: Helen are full of knowledge of human motives and character.
• 3:14:28
  Speaker 2: Troylis enters well into the philosophy of war when he
• 3:14:31
  Speaker 2: says an answer to something that falls from Hector. While
• 3:14:35
  Speaker 2: there you touch the life of our design? Were it
• 3:14:38
  Speaker 2: not glory that we more affected than the performance of
• 3:14:41
  Speaker 2: our heaving spleens, I would not wish a drop of
• 3:14:44
  Speaker 2: Trojan blood spent more in her defense. But worthy actor,
• 3:14:49
  Speaker 2: she is a theme of honor and renown, a spur
• 3:14:52
  Speaker 2: to valiant and magnanimous deeds. The character of Hector, in
• 3:14:58
  Speaker 2: the few slight indications shapeer of it, is made very amiable.
• 3:15:02
  Speaker 2: His death is sublime and shows in a striking light
• 3:15:06
  Speaker 2: the mixture of barbarity and heroism of the age. The
• 3:15:10
  Speaker 2: threats of Achilles are fatal. They carry their own means
• 3:15:13
  Speaker 2: of execution with them. Come here about me, you, my mermidons,
• 3:15:17
  Speaker 2: mark what I say. Attend me where a wheel strike,
• 3:15:21
  Speaker 2: not a stroke? But keep yourselves in breath. And when
• 3:15:25
  Speaker 2: I have the bloody Hector found, impale him with your
• 3:15:28
  Speaker 2: weapons round about and fellest manner, execute your arms. Follow me, sirs,
• 3:15:35
  Speaker 2: and my preceding eye He then finds Hector and slays
• 3:15:39
  Speaker 2: him as if he had been hunting down a wild beast.
• 3:15:43
  Speaker 2: There is something revolting as well as terrific, in the
• 3:15:46
  Speaker 2: ferocious coolness with which he singles out his prey. Nor
• 3:15:50
  Speaker 2: does the splendor of the achievement reconcile us to the
• 3:15:53
  Speaker 2: cruelty of the means. The characters of Cressida and Panderas
• 3:15:57
  Speaker 2: are very amusing and instructive, disinterested. Willingness of Panderas to
• 3:16:02
  Speaker 2: serve his friend in an affair which lies next to
• 3:16:05
  Speaker 2: his heart is immediately brought forward. Go thy way, choyless,
• 3:16:09
  Speaker 2: go thy way. Had I a sister, where a grace
• 3:16:12
  Speaker 2: or a daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice, Ugh,
• 3:16:16
  Speaker 2: admirable man Paris. Paris is dirt to him, and I
• 3:16:20
  Speaker 2: warrant helen to change, would give money to boot. This
• 3:16:24
  Speaker 2: is the language he addresses to his niece. Nor is
• 3:16:26
  Speaker 2: she much behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head
• 3:16:30
  Speaker 2: is as light and fluttering as her heart. It is
• 3:16:33
  Speaker 2: the prettiest villain. She fetches her breath so short as
• 3:16:37
  Speaker 2: a new Tayan sparrow. Both characters are originals and quite
• 3:16:41
  Speaker 2: different from what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida
• 3:16:45
  Speaker 2: is represented as a grave, sober, considerate personage, a widow
• 3:16:50
  Speaker 2: he cannot tell her age, nor whether she has children
• 3:16:53
  Speaker 2: or no, who has an alternate eye to her character,
• 3:16:56
  Speaker 2: her interest, and her pleasure. Shakespeare's Cresida is a giddy girl,
• 3:17:01
  Speaker 2: an unpracticed jilt who falls in love with Troylis, as
• 3:17:05
  Speaker 2: she afterwards deserts him from mere levity and thoughtlessness of temper.
• 3:17:10
  Speaker 2: She may be wooed and one to anything and from
• 3:17:12
  Speaker 2: anything at a moment's warning. The other knows very well
• 3:17:16
  Speaker 2: what she would be at, and sticks to it, and
• 3:17:18
  Speaker 2: is more governed by substantial reasons than by caprice or vanity. Panderis, again,
• 3:17:24
  Speaker 2: in Chaucer's story, is a friendly sort of go between,
• 3:17:27
  Speaker 2: tolerably busy, officious, and forward in bringing matters to bear.
• 3:17:32
  Speaker 2: But in Shakespeare he has quote a stamp, exclusive and professional.
• 3:17:36
  Speaker 2: He wears the badge of his trade. He is a
• 3:17:39
  Speaker 2: regular knight of the game. The difference of the manner
• 3:17:43
  Speaker 2: in which the subject is treated arises perhaps less from
• 3:17:46
  Speaker 2: intention than from the different genius of the two poets.
• 3:17:50
  Speaker 2: There is no double entendre in the characters of Chaucer,
• 3:17:53
  Speaker 2: they are either quite serious or quite comic. In Shakespeare,
• 3:17:57
  Speaker 2: the ludicrous and the ironical are constantly lended with the
• 3:18:00
  Speaker 2: stately and the impassioned. We see Chaucer's characters as they
• 3:18:05
  Speaker 2: saw themselves, not as they appeared to others, or might
• 3:18:08
  Speaker 2: have appeared to the poet. He is as deeply implicated
• 3:18:11
  Speaker 2: in the affairs of his personages as they could be themselves.
• 3:18:15
  Speaker 2: He had to go a long journey with each of them,
• 3:18:18
  Speaker 2: and became a kind of necessary confidante. There is a
• 3:18:21
  Speaker 2: little relief or light and shade in his pictures. The
• 3:18:24
  Speaker 2: conscious smile is not seen lurking under the brow of
• 3:18:28
  Speaker 2: grief or in patience. Everything with him is intense and continuous,
• 3:18:32
  Speaker 2: a working out of what went before. Shakespeare never committed
• 3:18:37
  Speaker 2: himself to his characters. He trifled, laughed, or wept with
• 3:18:41
  Speaker 2: them as he chose. He has no prejudices for or
• 3:18:44
  Speaker 2: against them, and it seems a matter of perfect indifference
• 3:18:47
  Speaker 2: whether he shall be in jest or earnest. According to
• 3:18:51
  Speaker 2: him quote, the web of our lives is of a
• 3:18:54
  Speaker 2: mingled yarn, good and ill together. His genius was dramatic,
• 3:18:58
  Speaker 2: as Chaucer's was history oracle. He saw both sides of
• 3:19:02
  Speaker 2: a question, the different views taken of it, according to
• 3:19:04
  Speaker 2: the different interests of the parties concerned, And he was
• 3:19:08
  Speaker 2: at once an actor and spectator in the scene. If anything,
• 3:19:12
  Speaker 2: he is too various and flexible, too full of transitions,
• 3:19:16
  Speaker 2: of glancing lights, of salient points. If Chaucer followed up
• 3:19:20
  Speaker 2: his subject too doggedly, perhaps Shakespeare was too volatile and heedless.
• 3:19:25
  Speaker 2: The muses wing too often lifted him off his feet.
• 3:19:28
  Speaker 2: He made infinite excursions to the right and the left.
• 3:19:32
  Speaker 2: He hath done mad and fantastic execution, engaging and redeeming
• 3:19:36
  Speaker 2: of himself with such careless force and forceless care, as
• 3:19:41
  Speaker 2: if that luck, in very spite of cunning, bade him
• 3:19:43
  Speaker 2: win all. Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and natural,
• 3:19:48
  Speaker 2: that is, to the involuntary and inevitable impressions on the
• 3:19:51
  Speaker 2: mind in given circumstances. Shakespeare exhibited also the possible and
• 3:19:57
  Speaker 2: the fantastical, not only what things are in them, but
• 3:20:01
  Speaker 2: whatever they might seem to be, their different reflections, their
• 3:20:04
  Speaker 2: endless combinations. He lent his fancy wit invention to others
• 3:20:10
  Speaker 2: and borrowed their feelings. In return. Chaucer excelled in the
• 3:20:13
  Speaker 2: force of habitual sentiment. Shakespeare added to it every variety
• 3:20:18
  Speaker 2: of passion, every suggestion of thought or accident. Chaucer described
• 3:20:23
  Speaker 2: external objects with the eye of a painter, or he
• 3:20:25
  Speaker 2: might be said to have embodied them with the hand
• 3:20:28
  Speaker 2: of a sculptor. Every part is so thoroughly made out
• 3:20:31
  Speaker 2: and tangible, Shakespeare's imagination threw over them a luster prouder
• 3:20:36
  Speaker 2: than when blue iris bends. Everything in Chaucer has a
• 3:20:41
  Speaker 2: downright reality assimile, or a sentiment is as if it
• 3:20:45
  Speaker 2: were given in upon evidence. In Shakespeare, the commonest matter
• 3:20:49
  Speaker 2: of fact has a romantic grace about it, or seems
• 3:20:52
  Speaker 2: to float with the breath of imagination and a freer element.
• 3:20:57
  Speaker 2: No one could have more depth of feeling or observation
• 3:21:00
  Speaker 2: than Chaucer, but he wanted resources of invention to lay
• 3:21:04
  Speaker 2: open the stores of nature or the human heart with
• 3:21:07
  Speaker 2: the same radiant light that Shakespeare has done. However fine
• 3:21:10
  Speaker 2: or profound the thought we know what was coming. Whereas
• 3:21:14
  Speaker 2: the effect of reading Shakespeare is quote like the eye
• 3:21:17
  Speaker 2: of vassalage encountering majesty, Chaucer's mind was consecutive rather than discursive.
• 3:21:24
  Speaker 2: He arrived at truth through a certain process Shakespeare saw
• 3:21:28
  Speaker 2: everything by intuition. Chaucer had great variety of power, but
• 3:21:33
  Speaker 2: he could only do one thing at once. He set
• 3:21:36
  Speaker 2: himself to work on a particular subject. His ideas were
• 3:21:39
  Speaker 2: kept separate, labeled, ticketed, and parceled out in a set form,
• 3:21:43
  Speaker 2: impeuse and compartments by themselves. They did not play into
• 3:21:48
  Speaker 2: one another's hands. They did not react upon one another.
• 3:21:52
  Speaker 2: As the blower's breath molds the yielding glass. There is
• 3:21:56
  Speaker 2: something hard and dry in them. What is the most
• 3:21:59
  Speaker 2: wonderful thing in Shakespeare's faculties is their excessive sociability, and
• 3:22:04
  Speaker 2: how they gossiped and compare notes together. We must conclude
• 3:22:08
  Speaker 2: this criticism, and we will do it with a quotation
• 3:22:11
  Speaker 2: or two. One of the most beautiful passages in Chaucer's
• 3:22:14
  Speaker 2: tale is the description of Cressaday's first avowal of her love.
• 3:22:20
  Speaker 2: And as the new abashed nightingale that stinteth first when
• 3:22:25
  Speaker 2: she begins sing, when that she hereth any her distail,
• 3:22:29
  Speaker 2: or in the hedges any white stirring, and after sicker
• 3:22:34
  Speaker 2: doth her voice outring, write so crossidi, when that her
• 3:22:38
  Speaker 2: dread stent opened her heart and told him her intent.
• 3:22:43
  Speaker 2: See also the next two stanzas, and particularly that divine
• 3:22:47
  Speaker 2: one beginning her arm miss small, her back, both straight
• 3:22:50
  Speaker 2: and soft, and so on. Compare this with the following
• 3:22:54
  Speaker 2: speech of Troylists to Creusida in the play Ugh, that
• 3:22:59
  Speaker 2: I thought it could be in a woman, and if
• 3:23:01
  Speaker 2: it can, I will presume in you to feed for
• 3:23:05
  Speaker 2: aye her lamp and flame of love, to keep her
• 3:23:08
  Speaker 2: constancy in plight and youth outliving beauties outward, with a
• 3:23:13
  Speaker 2: mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays. Or that
• 3:23:17
  Speaker 2: persuasion could but thus convince me that my integrity and
• 3:23:21
  Speaker 2: truth to you might be affronted with the match and
• 3:23:25
  Speaker 2: weight of such a winnowed purity in love? How were
• 3:23:29
  Speaker 2: I then uplifted? But alas I am as true as truth,
• 3:23:33
  Speaker 2: simplicity and simpler than the infancy of truth. These passages
• 3:23:39
  Speaker 2: may not seem very characteristic at first sight, though we
• 3:23:42
  Speaker 2: think they are. So we will give two that cannot
• 3:23:45
  Speaker 2: be mistaken. Patroclus says to Achilles, rouse yourself, and the weak,
• 3:23:52
  Speaker 2: wanton Cupid shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
• 3:23:56
  Speaker 2: and like a dew drop from the lion's mane, be
• 3:23:59
  Speaker 2: show to air. Troilis addressing the god of Day, on
• 3:24:04
  Speaker 2: the approach of the morning that parts him from Chrysidae, says,
• 3:24:07
  Speaker 2: with much scorn, what profferest thou thy light? Herefore to sell?
• 3:24:12
  Speaker 2: Go sell it them that smaller cellar's grave. If nobody
• 3:24:17
  Speaker 2: but Shakespeare could have written the former, nobody but Chaucer
• 3:24:20
  Speaker 2: would have thought of the latter. Chaucer was the most
• 3:24:24
  Speaker 2: literal of poets, as Richardson was of prose writers. End
• 3:24:29
  Speaker 2: of Troilis and Crisida, Antony and Cleopatra. This is a
• 3:24:34
  Speaker 2: very noble play. Though not in the first class of
• 3:24:37
  Speaker 2: Shakespeare's productions, it stands next to them, and is, we think,
• 3:24:42
  Speaker 2: the finest of his historical plays, that is, of those
• 3:24:46
  Speaker 2: in which he made poetry the organ of history, and
• 3:24:48
  Speaker 2: assumed a certain tone of character and sentiment in conformity
• 3:24:53
  Speaker 2: to known facts, instead of trusting to his observations of
• 3:24:57
  Speaker 2: general nature or to the unlimited indulgence of his own fancy.
• 3:25:02
  Speaker 2: What he has added to the history is upon a
• 3:25:04
  Speaker 2: par with it. His genius was, as it were, a
• 3:25:08
  Speaker 2: match for history as well as nature, and could grapple
• 3:25:11
  Speaker 2: at will with either. This play is full of that pervading,
• 3:25:16
  Speaker 2: comprehensive power by which the poet could always make himself
• 3:25:19
  Speaker 2: the master of time and circumstances. It presents a fine
• 3:25:23
  Speaker 2: picture of Roman pride and Eastern magnificence, and in the
• 3:25:28
  Speaker 2: struggle between the two, the empire of the world seems suspended.
• 3:25:32
  Speaker 2: Quote like the swan's down feather that stands upon the
• 3:25:37
  Speaker 2: swell at full lovetide, and neither way in clients. The
• 3:25:42
  Speaker 2: characters breathe, move, and live. Shakespeare does not stand reasoning
• 3:25:48
  Speaker 2: on what his characters would do or say, but it
• 3:25:50
  Speaker 2: once becomes them and speaks and acts for them. He
• 3:25:55
  Speaker 2: does not present us with groups of stage puppets or
• 3:25:58
  Speaker 2: poetical machines, making sets beaches on human life and acting
• 3:26:02
  Speaker 2: from a calculation of ostensible motives, but he brings living
• 3:26:06
  Speaker 2: men and women on the scene, who speak and act
• 3:26:09
  Speaker 2: from real feelings according to the ebbs and flows of passion,
• 3:26:14
  Speaker 2: without the least tincture of the pedantry of logic or rhetoric.
• 3:26:18
  Speaker 2: Nothing is made out by inference and analogy, by climax
• 3:26:22
  Speaker 2: and antithesis, but everything takes place just as it would
• 3:26:25
  Speaker 2: have done in reality, according to the occasion. The character
• 3:26:29
  Speaker 2: of Cleopatra is a masterpiece. What an extreme contrast. It
• 3:26:33
  Speaker 2: affords to imagen, one would think it almost impossible for
• 3:26:37
  Speaker 2: the same person to have drawn both. She is voluptuous, ostentatious, conscious,
• 3:26:43
  Speaker 2: boastful of her charms, haughty, tyrannical, fickle. The luxurious, pomp
• 3:26:49
  Speaker 2: and gorgeous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are displayed in
• 3:26:52
  Speaker 2: all their force and luster, as well as the irregular
• 3:26:55
  Speaker 2: grandeur of the soul of marc Antony. Take only the
• 3:26:59
  Speaker 2: first four line that they speak as an example of
• 3:27:02
  Speaker 2: the regal style of love making. Cleopatra, if it be love, indeed,
• 3:27:08
  Speaker 2: tell me how much antony.
• 3:27:11
  Speaker 1: There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned.
• 3:27:14
  Speaker 2: I'll said a born how far to be beloved?
• 3:27:17
  Speaker 1: Then must thou needs find out? New Heaven, New Earth.
• 3:27:22
  Speaker 2: The rich and poetical description of her person beginning the
• 3:27:26
  Speaker 2: barge she sat in like a burnished throne, burnt on
• 3:27:31
  Speaker 2: the water. The poop was beaten gold, purple, the sails
• 3:27:35
  Speaker 2: and so perfumed that the winds were love sick seems
• 3:27:40
  Speaker 2: to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the
• 3:27:43
  Speaker 2: subsequent infatuation of Antony. When in the sea fight at Actium,
• 3:27:48
  Speaker 2: he leaves the battle and quote like a doting mallard
• 3:27:51
  Speaker 2: follows her flying sails. Few things in Shakespeare, and we
• 3:27:57
  Speaker 2: know of nothing in any other author like them, have
• 3:28:00
  Speaker 2: more of that local truth of imagination and character than
• 3:28:04
  Speaker 2: the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were
• 3:28:09
  Speaker 2: the employments of Antony in his absence? Quote he's speaking now,
• 3:28:13
  Speaker 2: or murmuring where's my serpent of old Nile? Or again
• 3:28:18
  Speaker 2: when she says to Antony after the defeat at Actium
• 3:28:22
  Speaker 2: and his summoning up resolution to risk another fight, it
• 3:28:25
  Speaker 2: is my birthday. I had thought to have held it poor.
• 3:28:29
  Speaker 2: But since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.
• 3:28:34
  Speaker 2: Perhaps the finest burst of all is Antony's rage after
• 3:28:38
  Speaker 2: his final defeat, when he comes in and surprises the
• 3:28:41
  Speaker 2: messenger of Caesar, kissing her hand.
• 3:28:44
  Speaker 3: To let a fellow that will take rewards, and say,
• 3:28:48
  Speaker 3: God quit, you be familiar with my playfellow, your hand,
• 3:28:53
  Speaker 3: this kingly seal and pliter of high hearts.
• 3:28:59
  Speaker 2: It is no one that he orders him to be whipped.
• 3:29:02
  Speaker 2: But his low condition is not the true reason. There
• 3:29:05
  Speaker 2: is another feeling which lies deeper, though Antony's pride would
• 3:29:09
  Speaker 2: not let him show it except by his rage. He
• 3:29:12
  Speaker 2: suspects the fellow to be Caesar's proxy. Cleopatra's whole character
• 3:29:18
  Speaker 2: is the triumph of the voluptuous, of the love of
• 3:29:21
  Speaker 2: pleasure and the power of giving it over every other consideration.
• 3:29:25
  Speaker 2: Octavia is a dull foil to her and fulvia, a
• 3:29:29
  Speaker 2: shrewd and shrill tongued. What a picture do these lines
• 3:29:32
  Speaker 2: give of her age? Cannot wither her, nor customed stale
• 3:29:37
  Speaker 2: her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed,
• 3:29:43
  Speaker 2: but she makes hungry where most she satisfies. What a
• 3:29:47
  Speaker 2: spirit and fire. In her conversation with Antony's messenger, who
• 3:29:51
  Speaker 2: brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia,
• 3:29:56
  Speaker 2: how all the pride of beauty and of high rank
• 3:29:58
  Speaker 2: breaks out in her promised reward to him. There's gold,
• 3:30:02
  Speaker 2: and here my bluest veins to kiss. She had great
• 3:30:07
  Speaker 2: and unpardonable faults, but the beauty of her death almost
• 3:30:11
  Speaker 2: redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the
• 3:30:15
  Speaker 2: strength of her affections. She keeps her queen like state
• 3:30:19
  Speaker 2: in the last disgrace, and her sense of the pleasurable.
• 3:30:22
  Speaker 2: In the last moments of her life. She tastes a
• 3:30:25
  Speaker 2: luxury and death. After applying the asp she says, with fondness,
• 3:30:30
  Speaker 2: dost thou not see my baby at my breast that
• 3:30:32
  Speaker 2: sucks the nurse asleep, as sweet as balm, as soft
• 3:30:37
  Speaker 2: as air, as gentle, oh, Antony. It is worth while
• 3:30:43
  Speaker 2: to observe that Shakespeare has contrasted the extreme magnificence of
• 3:30:47
  Speaker 2: the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme suffering
• 3:30:51
  Speaker 2: and physical horror not less striking, partly perhaps to excuse
• 3:30:56
  Speaker 2: the effeminacy of Mark Antony, to whom they are related
• 3:30:59
  Speaker 2: as having had, but more to preserve a certain balance
• 3:31:02
  Speaker 2: of feeling in the mind. Caesar says, hearing of his
• 3:31:05
  Speaker 2: conduct at the court of Cleopatra, Antony, leave thy lascivious vossles,
• 3:31:12
  Speaker 2: when thou once wert beaten from mutina, where thou slewest,
• 3:31:15
  Speaker 2: hershes and pansa consols at thy healed, and famine follow
• 3:31:21
  Speaker 2: whom thou fought'st against, Though daintily brought up with patience
• 3:31:25
  Speaker 2: more than savages could suffer, Thou didst drink the stale
• 3:31:29
  Speaker 2: of horses and the gilded puddle, which beast would cough
• 3:31:33
  Speaker 2: at thy pallot. Then did Dane, the roughest berry on
• 3:31:36
  Speaker 2: the rudest hedge, yea like the stag when snow the
• 3:31:41
  Speaker 2: pasture sheets, the barks of trees, the browsers on the Alps.
• 3:31:45
  Speaker 2: It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh, which some
• 3:31:49
  Speaker 2: did die to look on. And all this it wounds
• 3:31:53
  Speaker 2: thine honor that I speak it now was borne so
• 3:31:56
  Speaker 2: like a soldier, that thy cheeks so much as Lancuord.
• 3:31:59
  Speaker 2: Not the passage after Antony's defeat by Augustus, where he
• 3:32:04
  Speaker 2: is made to say.
• 3:32:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he at PHILIPPI kept his sword even like
• 3:32:10
  Speaker 1: a dancer, while I struck the lean and wrinkled Cassius,
• 3:32:15
  Speaker 1: And twas I that the mad brutust ended.
• 3:32:19
  Speaker 2: Is one of those fine retrospections which show us the
• 3:32:22
  Speaker 2: winding and eventful march of human life. The jealous attention
• 3:32:27
  Speaker 2: which has been paid to the unities, both of time
• 3:32:29
  Speaker 2: and place, has taken away the principle of perspective in
• 3:32:32
  Speaker 2: the drama, and all the interest which objects derive from distance,
• 3:32:37
  Speaker 2: from contrast, from privation, from change of fortune, from long
• 3:32:41
  Speaker 2: churished passion and contracts, our view of life from a
• 3:32:44
  Speaker 2: strange and romantic dream, long obscure and infinite, into a
• 3:32:49
  Speaker 2: smartly contested three hours inaugural disputation on its merits by
• 3:32:54
  Speaker 2: the different candidates for theatrical applause. The latter scenes of
• 3:32:59
  Speaker 2: Antonia and Cleopatra are full of the changes of accident
• 3:33:03
  Speaker 2: and passion. Success and defeat follow one another with startling rapidity.
• 3:33:08
  Speaker 2: Fortune sits upon her wheel, more blind and giddy than usual.
• 3:33:12
  Speaker 2: This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness
• 3:33:16
  Speaker 2: are strikingly displayed in the dialogue between Antony and Aeros.
• 3:33:20
  Speaker 1: Antony, Aros, thou yet beholtst me Arrows, I know the Lord.
• 3:33:28
  Speaker 1: Sometime we see a cloud that's dragnish, a vapor, sometime
• 3:33:33
  Speaker 1: like a bear or lion, a towered citadel, a pendant rock,
• 3:33:38
  Speaker 1: a forked mountain, or blue promontory with trees upon it,
• 3:33:43
  Speaker 1: that nod into the world and mock our eyes with air.
• 3:33:48
  Speaker 1: Thou hast seen these signs. They're black, vesprous pageants ay,
• 3:33:53
  Speaker 1: my lord, that which is now a horse even with
• 3:33:57
  Speaker 1: a thought the ractu slimsy and makes it indistinct, as
• 3:34:02
  Speaker 1: water is in water. It does, my Lord, my good
• 3:34:08
  Speaker 1: knave arrows now, thy captain is even such a body.
• 3:34:14
  Speaker 2: This is without doubt one of the finest pieces of
• 3:34:17
  Speaker 2: poetry in Shakespeare. The splendor of the imagery, the semblance
• 3:34:21
  Speaker 2: of reality, the lofty range of picturesque objects hanging over
• 3:34:25
  Speaker 2: the world, their evanescent nature, the total uncertainty of what
• 3:34:29
  Speaker 2: is left behind, are just like the moldering schemes of
• 3:34:33
  Speaker 2: human greatness. It is finer than Cleopatra's passionate lamentation over
• 3:34:37
  Speaker 2: his fallen grandeur, because it is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial.
• 3:34:44
  Speaker 2: Antony's headstrong presumption and infatuated determination to yield to Cleopatra's
• 3:34:49
  Speaker 2: wishes to fight by sea instead of land meet a
• 3:34:53
  Speaker 2: merited punishment, and the extravagance of his resolutions increasing with
• 3:34:58
  Speaker 2: the desperateness of his circumstance answers, is well commented upon
• 3:35:02
  Speaker 2: by Enobarbis. I see men's judgments are a parcel of
• 3:35:06
  Speaker 2: their fortunes and things outward, to draw the inward quality
• 3:35:11
  Speaker 2: after them, to suffer all alike. The repentance of Enobarbus
• 3:35:16
  Speaker 2: after his treachery to his master is the most affecting
• 3:35:20
  Speaker 2: part of the play. He cannot recover from the below
• 3:35:23
  Speaker 2: which Antony's generosity gives him, and he dies broken hearted.
• 3:35:27
  Speaker 2: Quote a master Leaver and a fugitive. Shakespeare's genius has
• 3:35:33
  Speaker 2: spread over the whole play a richness like the overflowing
• 3:35:37
  Speaker 2: of the nile end of Antony and Cleopatra.
• 3:35:42
  Speaker 1: Hamlet. This is that Hamlet, the Dane whom we read
• 3:35:48
  Speaker 1: of in our youth, and whom we seem almost to
• 3:35:50
  Speaker 1: remember in our after years. He who made that famous
• 3:35:54
  Speaker 1: little Quean life, who gave the advice to the players,
• 3:35:58
  Speaker 1: who thought this goodly frame the earth a sterile promontory,
• 3:36:04
  Speaker 1: in this brave o'er hanging fermanent the air, this majestic
• 3:36:09
  Speaker 1: roof fretted with golden fire, A foul and pestilent congregation
• 3:36:14
  Speaker 1: of vapors, whom man delighted, not nor woman neither. He
• 3:36:21
  Speaker 1: who talked with the grave diggers and moralized on York's skull,
• 3:36:26
  Speaker 1: The schoolfellow of Rosencrouss and Guildenstern at Wittenberg, the friend
• 3:36:32
  Speaker 1: of Horatia, the lover of Ophelia, He that was mad
• 3:36:36
  Speaker 1: and sent to England, the slow avenger of his father's death,
• 3:36:41
  Speaker 1: who lived at the court of Horwendiles five hundred years
• 3:36:45
  Speaker 1: before we were born. But all whose thoughts we seem
• 3:36:49
  Speaker 1: to know as well as we do our own because
• 3:36:53
  Speaker 1: we have read them. In Shakespeare, Hamlet is a name,
• 3:36:58
  Speaker 1: his speeches and sayings, but the idle coinage of the
• 3:37:00
  Speaker 1: poet's brain. What then, are they not real? They are
• 3:37:06
  Speaker 1: as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in
• 3:37:09
  Speaker 1: the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This
• 3:37:14
  Speaker 1: play has a prophetic truth which is above that of history.
• 3:37:18
  Speaker 1: Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps
• 3:37:22
  Speaker 1: are those of others. Whoever has borne about with him
• 3:37:26
  Speaker 1: the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself too much
• 3:37:30
  Speaker 1: in the sun. Whoever has seen the golden lamp of day,
• 3:37:34
  Speaker 1: dimmed by envious mist rising in his own breast, and
• 3:37:38
  Speaker 1: could find in the world before him only a dull
• 3:37:41
  Speaker 1: blank with nothing left remarkable in it. Whoever is known
• 3:37:45
  Speaker 1: the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or
• 3:37:50
  Speaker 1: the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes. He
• 3:37:55
  Speaker 1: who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness
• 3:37:58
  Speaker 1: cling to his heart like a malady, who has had
• 3:38:01
  Speaker 1: his last hopes blighted, and his youth staggered by the
• 3:38:05
  Speaker 1: apparitions of strange things, Who cannot be well at ease
• 3:38:10
  Speaker 1: while he sees evil hovering near him, like a specter
• 3:38:13
  Speaker 1: whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought.
• 3:38:17
  Speaker 1: He to whom the universe seems infinite and himself nothing,
• 3:38:22
  Speaker 1: whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and
• 3:38:27
  Speaker 1: who goes to a play as his best resource to
• 3:38:30
  Speaker 1: shove off to a second remove the evils of life
• 3:38:34
  Speaker 1: by a mock presentation of them. This is the true Hamlet.
• 3:38:41
  Speaker 1: We have been so used to this tragedy, though we
• 3:38:44
  Speaker 1: hardly know how to criticize it, any more than we
• 3:38:47
  Speaker 1: should know how to describe our own faces. But we
• 3:38:50
  Speaker 1: must make such observations as we can. It is the
• 3:38:54
  Speaker 1: one of Shakespeare's plays that we think of oftenest because
• 3:38:59
  Speaker 1: it abounds most and striking reflections on human life, and
• 3:39:03
  Speaker 1: because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn
• 3:39:07
  Speaker 1: of his mind to the general account of humanity. Whatever
• 3:39:11
  Speaker 1: happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies
• 3:39:15
  Speaker 1: it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He
• 3:39:20
  Speaker 1: is a great moralizer, and what makes him worth attending
• 3:39:23
  Speaker 1: to is that he moralizes on his own feelings and experience.
• 3:39:29
  Speaker 1: He is not a commonplace pedant. If lear shows the
• 3:39:33
  Speaker 1: greatest depth of passion. Hamlet is the most remarkable for
• 3:39:38
  Speaker 1: the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development of character. Shakespeare had
• 3:39:45
  Speaker 1: more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shown
• 3:39:49
  Speaker 1: more of it in this play than in any other.
• 3:39:52
  Speaker 1: There is no attempt to force an interest. Everything is
• 3:39:56
  Speaker 1: left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is
• 3:40:00
  Speaker 1: excited without effort. The incidences succeed each other as matters
• 3:40:06
  Speaker 1: of course. The characters think and speak and act just
• 3:40:10
  Speaker 1: as they might do if left entirely to themselves. There
• 3:40:15
  Speaker 1: is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The
• 3:40:19
  Speaker 1: observations are suggested by the passing scene. The gust of
• 3:40:24
  Speaker 1: passion come and go like sounds of music born on
• 3:40:27
  Speaker 1: the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript of
• 3:40:31
  Speaker 1: what might be supposed to have taken place at the
• 3:40:33
  Speaker 1: Court of Denmark at the remote period of time fixed upon,
• 3:40:38
  Speaker 1: before the modern refinements and morals and manners were heard of.
• 3:40:42
  Speaker 1: It would have been interesting enough to have been admitted
• 3:40:45
  Speaker 1: as a bystander in such a scene at such a time,
• 3:40:48
  Speaker 1: to have heard and seen something of what was going on.
• 3:40:52
  Speaker 1: But here we are more than spectators. We have not
• 3:40:56
  Speaker 1: only the outward pageants and the signs of grief. But
• 3:41:01
  Speaker 1: we have that within which passes show. We read the
• 3:41:05
  Speaker 1: thoughts of the heart, We catch the passions living as
• 3:41:09
  Speaker 1: they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions
• 3:41:14
  Speaker 1: and paraphrases of nature. But Shakespeare, together with his own comments,
• 3:41:19
  Speaker 1: gives us the original text that we may judge for ourselves.
• 3:41:24
  Speaker 1: This is a very great advantage. The character of Hamlet
• 3:41:29
  Speaker 1: is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is not
• 3:41:33
  Speaker 1: a character marked by strength of will, or even of passion,
• 3:41:37
  Speaker 1: but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as
• 3:41:41
  Speaker 1: little of the hero as a man can well be.
• 3:41:45
  Speaker 1: But he is a young and princely novice, full of
• 3:41:48
  Speaker 1: high enthusiasm and quick sensibility, the sport of circumstances, questioning
• 3:41:54
  Speaker 1: with fortune and refining on his own feelings. Enforced from
• 3:41:58
  Speaker 1: the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of
• 3:42:02
  Speaker 1: his situation, he seems incapable of deliberate action, and is
• 3:42:07
  Speaker 1: only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion
• 3:42:11
  Speaker 1: when he has no time to reflect, as in the
• 3:42:13
  Speaker 1: scene where he kills Polonius, and again where he alters
• 3:42:18
  Speaker 1: the letters which Rosencrauss and Guildenstern are taking with them
• 3:42:21
  Speaker 1: to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he
• 3:42:26
  Speaker 1: is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and skeptical,
• 3:42:31
  Speaker 1: dallies with his purposes till the occasion is lost, and
• 3:42:35
  Speaker 1: always finds some pretense to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again.
• 3:42:41
  Speaker 1: For this reason he refuses to kill the king when
• 3:42:44
  Speaker 1: he is at his prayers, and by a refinement and malice,
• 3:42:48
  Speaker 1: which is in truth only the excuse for his own
• 3:42:51
  Speaker 1: want of resolution, defers his revenge to some more fatal opportunity.
• 3:42:56
  Speaker 1: When he shall be engaged in some act that has
• 3:43:00
  Speaker 1: no relish of salvation in it, he kneels and prays,
• 3:43:06
  Speaker 1: and now I'll do it, And so he goes to heaven.
• 3:43:10
  Speaker 1: And so am I revenged? That would be scanned? He
• 3:43:16
  Speaker 1: killed my father? And for that I, his sole son,
• 3:43:21
  Speaker 1: send him to heaven. Why this is reward not revenge? Upsord,
• 3:43:29
  Speaker 1: and know thou a more horrid time when he is drunk,
• 3:43:33
  Speaker 1: asleep or in a rage. He is the prince of
• 3:43:38
  Speaker 1: philosophical speculators. And because he cannot have his revenge perfect
• 3:43:43
  Speaker 1: according to the most refined idea his wish can form,
• 3:43:47
  Speaker 1: he misses it altogether. So he scruples to trust the
• 3:43:50
  Speaker 1: suggestion of the ghost, contrives the scene of the play
• 3:43:54
  Speaker 1: to have sure proof of his uncle's guilt, and then
• 3:43:57
  Speaker 1: rests satisfied with his comfort, cremation of his suspicions, and
• 3:44:02
  Speaker 1: the success of his experiment, instead of acting upon it.
• 3:44:06
  Speaker 1: Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself
• 3:44:10
  Speaker 1: with it, and tries to reason himself out of it.
• 3:44:15
  Speaker 1: How all occasions do inform against me and spur my
• 3:44:19
  Speaker 1: dull revenge. What is a man, if his chief good
• 3:44:24
  Speaker 1: and market of his time be but to sleep and
• 3:44:28
  Speaker 1: feed a beast? No more? Sure he that made us
• 3:44:33
  Speaker 1: with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us
• 3:44:37
  Speaker 1: not that capability in godlike reason to rust in us
• 3:44:40
  Speaker 1: unused now, whether it be bestial oblivion or some craven
• 3:44:46
  Speaker 1: scruple of thinking too precisely on the event a thought
• 3:44:51
  Speaker 1: which quarter hath put one part wisdom and over three
• 3:44:55
  Speaker 1: parts coward. I do not know why, yet I live
• 3:44:59
  Speaker 1: to say this things to do sith, I have cause
• 3:45:03
  Speaker 1: and will and strength and means to do it. Examples
• 3:45:07
  Speaker 1: grosses earth excite me, witness this army of such mass
• 3:45:13
  Speaker 1: in charge, led by a delicate and tender prince, whose spirit,
• 3:45:17
  Speaker 1: with divine ambition puft makes mouths at the invisible event,
• 3:45:24
  Speaker 1: exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune,
• 3:45:28
  Speaker 1: death and danger dare even for an ex shall it
• 3:45:34
  Speaker 1: is not to be great, never to stir without great argument,
• 3:45:39
  Speaker 1: but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honors
• 3:45:43
  Speaker 1: at the stake. How stand I, then, that have a
• 3:45:48
  Speaker 1: father killed a mother's stain, excitements of my reason and
• 3:45:53
  Speaker 1: my blood, and let all sleep, while to my shame
• 3:45:57
  Speaker 1: I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men, that,
• 3:46:02
  Speaker 1: for a fantasy and trick of fame go to their
• 3:46:05
  Speaker 1: graves like beds, fight for a plot, whereon the numbers
• 3:46:10
  Speaker 1: cannot try the cause, which is not toomb enough in
• 3:46:16
  Speaker 1: continence to hide the slain. From this time forth, my
• 3:46:23
  Speaker 1: thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth. Still he does nothing,
• 3:46:31
  Speaker 1: And this very speculation on his own infirmity only affords
• 3:46:35
  Speaker 1: him another occasion for indulging it. It is not for
• 3:46:39
  Speaker 1: any want of attachment to his father or abhorrence of
• 3:46:42
  Speaker 1: his murder, that Hamlet is thus dilatory. But it is
• 3:46:47
  Speaker 1: more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting
• 3:46:51
  Speaker 1: upon the enormity of the crime and refining on his
• 3:46:54
  Speaker 1: schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice.
• 3:46:59
  Speaker 1: His ruling passion is to think, not to act, and
• 3:47:03
  Speaker 1: any vague pretense that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him
• 3:47:08
  Speaker 1: from his previous purposes. The moral perfection of this character
• 3:47:13
  Speaker 1: has been called in question, we think, by those who
• 3:47:16
  Speaker 1: did not understand it. It is more interesting than according
• 3:47:20
  Speaker 1: to rules, amiable, though not thoughtless. The ethical delineation of
• 3:47:26
  Speaker 1: that noble and liberal casuists, as Shakespeare has been well called,
• 3:47:31
  Speaker 1: do not exhibit the drab, colored Quakerism of morality. His
• 3:47:36
  Speaker 1: plays are not copied either from the whole duty of
• 3:47:39
  Speaker 1: man or from the academy of compliments. We confess we
• 3:47:44
  Speaker 1: are a little shocked at the want of refinement, and
• 3:47:48
  Speaker 1: those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet,
• 3:47:52
  Speaker 1: the want of punctilious exactness in his behavior either partakes
• 3:47:57
  Speaker 1: of the license of the time, or belongs to the
• 3:48:01
  Speaker 1: very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes
• 3:48:05
  Speaker 1: the common rules of life as well as his own
• 3:48:08
  Speaker 1: purposes sit loose upon him. He may be said to
• 3:48:12
  Speaker 1: be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts,
• 3:48:16
  Speaker 1: and is too much taken up with the airy world
• 3:48:18
  Speaker 1: of contemplation to lay as much stress as he ought
• 3:48:22
  Speaker 1: on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of
• 3:48:26
  Speaker 1: action are unhinged and out of joint with the time.
• 3:48:30
  Speaker 1: His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances.
• 3:48:35
  Speaker 1: It is that of assumed severity. Only. It is the
• 3:48:38
  Speaker 1: effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection suspended,
• 3:48:43
  Speaker 1: not obliterated by the distractions of the scene around him.
• 3:48:48
  Speaker 1: Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation. He
• 3:48:52
  Speaker 1: might be excused in delicacy from carrying out a regular courtship.
• 3:48:57
  Speaker 1: When his father's spirit was in arms, it was not
• 3:49:01
  Speaker 1: a time for the son to make love. He could
• 3:49:04
  Speaker 1: neither marry Ophelia nor wound her mind by explaining the
• 3:49:08
  Speaker 1: cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself
• 3:49:11
  Speaker 1: to think of. It would have taken him years to
• 3:49:15
  Speaker 1: have come to a direct explanation on the point. In
• 3:49:18
  Speaker 1: the harassed state of his mind, he could not have
• 3:49:20
  Speaker 1: done otherwise than he did. His conduct does not contradict
• 3:49:25
  Speaker 1: what he says when he sees her funeral. I loved Ophelia.
• 3:49:31
  Speaker 1: Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love,
• 3:49:36
  Speaker 1: make up my sun. Nothing can be more affecting or
• 3:49:41
  Speaker 1: beautiful than the Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia, on throwing flowers
• 3:49:46
  Speaker 1: into the.
• 3:49:46
  Speaker 2: Grave sweets to the sweet farewell. I hope thou should
• 3:49:55
  Speaker 2: have been my Hamlet's wife. I thought by bride bed
• 3:49:59
  Speaker 2: to have death tiswee maide, and not of shrewd thy grave.
• 3:50:05
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of
• 3:50:08
  Speaker 1: human character, and he here shows us the queen who
• 3:50:12
  Speaker 1: is so criminal in some respects not without sensibility and
• 3:50:16
  Speaker 1: affection in other relations of life. Ophelia is a character
• 3:50:20
  Speaker 1: almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon, Oh Rose
• 3:50:24
  Speaker 1: of may O, flower too soon faded. Her love, her madness,
• 3:50:30
  Speaker 1: her death are described with the truest touches of tenderness
• 3:50:33
  Speaker 1: and pathos. It is a character which nobody but Shakespeare
• 3:50:37
  Speaker 1: could have drawn in the way that he has done,
• 3:50:40
  Speaker 1: and to the conception of which there is not even
• 3:50:42
  Speaker 1: the smallest approach, except in some of the old Romantic ballads.
• 3:50:47
  Speaker 1: Her brother Laertes is a character we do not like
• 3:50:50
  Speaker 1: so well. He is too hot in colar and somewhat rhodomitate.
• 3:50:56
  Speaker 1: Polonius is a perfect character in its kind. Nor is
• 3:51:00
  Speaker 1: there any foundation for the objections which have been made
• 3:51:03
  Speaker 1: to the consistency of this part. It is said that
• 3:51:06
  Speaker 1: he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is
• 3:51:10
  Speaker 1: no inconsistency in that, again, that he talks wisely at
• 3:51:15
  Speaker 1: one time and foolishly at another. That his advice delrities
• 3:51:19
  Speaker 1: is very sensible, and his advice to the King and
• 3:51:22
  Speaker 1: Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness very ridiculous. But
• 3:51:27
  Speaker 1: he gives the one as a father and is sincere
• 3:51:30
  Speaker 1: in it. He gives the other as a mere courtier,
• 3:51:33
  Speaker 1: a busy body, and is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent.
• 3:51:39
  Speaker 1: In short, Shakespeare has been accused of inconsistency in this
• 3:51:44
  Speaker 1: and other characters, only because he is kept up the
• 3:51:47
  Speaker 1: distinction which there is in nature between the understandings and
• 3:51:52
  Speaker 1: the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their
• 3:51:55
  Speaker 1: ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not
• 3:51:59
  Speaker 1: a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether
• 3:52:04
  Speaker 1: in his actions or speeches, comes under the head of
• 3:52:07
  Speaker 1: impropriety of intention. We do not like to see our
• 3:52:11
  Speaker 1: author's plays acted, and least of all Hamlet. There is
• 3:52:16
  Speaker 1: no play that suffers so much in being transferred to
• 3:52:19
  Speaker 1: the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted.
• 3:52:24
  Speaker 1: Mister Kemble unavoidably fails in this character from a want
• 3:52:28
  Speaker 1: of ease and variety. The character of Hamlet is made
• 3:52:31
  Speaker 1: up of undulating lines. It has the yielding flexibility of
• 3:52:36
  Speaker 1: a wave o'er the sea. Mister Kemball plays it like
• 3:52:40
  Speaker 1: a man in armor, with a determined inverteracy of purpose,
• 3:52:44
  Speaker 1: in one undeviating straight line, which is as remote from
• 3:52:49
  Speaker 1: the natural grace and refine succeptibility of the character as
• 3:52:53
  Speaker 1: the sharp angles and abrupt starts which mister Keene introduces
• 3:52:57
  Speaker 1: into the part. Mister Keane's Hamlet is as much too
• 3:53:01
  Speaker 1: splenatic and rash as mister Kemball's is too deliberate and formal.
• 3:53:06
  Speaker 1: His manner is too strong and pointed. He throws his severity,
• 3:53:10
  Speaker 1: approaching to virulence, into the common observations and answers. There
• 3:53:15
  Speaker 1: is nothing of this. In Hamlet. He is, as it were,
• 3:53:18
  Speaker 1: wrapped up in his reflections, and only thinks aloud. There
• 3:53:23
  Speaker 1: should therefore be no attempt to impress what he says
• 3:53:26
  Speaker 1: upon others by studied exaggeration of emphasis and manner, no
• 3:53:31
  Speaker 1: talking at his hearers. There should be as much of
• 3:53:35
  Speaker 1: the gentleman and scholar as possible infused into the part,
• 3:53:39
  Speaker 1: and as little of the actor. A pensive air of
• 3:53:42
  Speaker 1: sadness should sit reluctantly upon his brow, but no appearance
• 3:53:47
  Speaker 1: of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of weakness
• 3:53:51
  Speaker 1: and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature.
• 3:53:55
  Speaker 1: He is the most amiable of misanthropes, and of Hamlet
• 3:54:02
  Speaker 1: the tempest.
• 3:54:04
  Speaker 2: There can be little doubt that Shakespeare was the most
• 3:54:07
  Speaker 2: universal genius that ever lived. Quote either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral, comical,
• 3:54:14
  Speaker 2: historical pastoral, seen, indivitable, or poem unlimited. He is the
• 3:54:19
  Speaker 2: only man. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Ploutest too
• 3:54:23
  Speaker 2: light for him. He has not only the same absolute
• 3:54:27
  Speaker 2: command over our laughter and our tears, all the resources
• 3:54:30
  Speaker 2: of passion, of wit, of thought, of observation, but he
• 3:54:35
  Speaker 2: has the most unbounded range of fanciful invention, whether terrible
• 3:54:39
  Speaker 2: or playful, the same insight into the world of imagination
• 3:54:43
  Speaker 2: that he has into the world of reality, and overall
• 3:54:46
  Speaker 2: there presides the same truth of character and nature, and
• 3:54:50
  Speaker 2: the same spirit of humanity. His ideal beings are as
• 3:54:54
  Speaker 2: true and natural as his real characters, that is, as
• 3:54:57
  Speaker 2: consistent with themselves, or if we suppose such beings to
• 3:55:01
  Speaker 2: exist at all, they could not act, speak, or feel
• 3:55:04
  Speaker 2: otherwise than as he makes them. He has invented for
• 3:55:07
  Speaker 2: them a language, manners, and sentiments of their own. From
• 3:55:11
  Speaker 2: the tremendous imprecations of the witches in Macbeth when they
• 3:55:15
  Speaker 2: do a quote deed without a name, to the sulf
• 3:55:18
  Speaker 2: like expressions of Ariel, who does his spiriting gently, the
• 3:55:22
  Speaker 2: mischievous tricks and gossiping of Robin Goodfellow, or the uncouth
• 3:55:26
  Speaker 2: gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of Caliban in this play. The
• 3:55:32
  Speaker 2: Tempest is one of the most original and perfect of
• 3:55:35
  Speaker 2: Shakespeare's productions, and he has shown in it all the
• 3:55:38
  Speaker 2: variety of his powers. It is full of grace and grandeur.
• 3:55:43
  Speaker 2: The human and imaginary characters, the dramatic and the grotesque,
• 3:55:47
  Speaker 2: are blended together with the greatest art, and without any
• 3:55:50
  Speaker 2: appearance of it. Though he has here given to quote
• 3:55:53
  Speaker 2: airring nothing a local habitation and a name. Yet that part,
• 3:55:57
  Speaker 2: which is only the fantastic creation of his mind, has
• 3:56:01
  Speaker 2: the same palpable texture and coheres semblably with the rest,
• 3:56:06
  Speaker 2: as the preternatural part has the air of reality, and
• 3:56:10
  Speaker 2: almost haunts the imagination with the sense of truth. The
• 3:56:13
  Speaker 2: real characters and events partake of the wildness of a dream.
• 3:56:18
  Speaker 2: The stately magician Prospero, driven from his dukedom, but around
• 3:56:22
  Speaker 2: whom so potent is his art, every spirits throng numberless
• 3:56:27
  Speaker 2: to do his bidding. His daughter Miranda Quote worthy of
• 3:56:30
  Speaker 2: that name, to whom all the power of his art points,
• 3:56:34
  Speaker 2: and who seems the goddess of the isle. The princely Ferdinand,
• 3:56:38
  Speaker 2: cast by fate upon the haven of his happiness in
• 3:56:41
  Speaker 2: this idol of his love, the delicate Ariel, the savage Caliban,
• 3:56:46
  Speaker 2: half brute, half demon, the drunken ship's crew. All are
• 3:56:50
  Speaker 2: connected parts of the story, and can hardly be spared
• 3:56:53
  Speaker 2: from the place they fill. Even the local scenery is
• 3:56:56
  Speaker 2: of a piece and character with the subject Prosperose, this
• 3:57:00
  Speaker 2: enchanted island seems to have risen up out of the sea.
• 3:57:03
  Speaker 2: The airy music, the tempest tossed vessel, the turbulent waves
• 3:57:08
  Speaker 2: all have the effect of the landscape background of some
• 3:57:11
  Speaker 2: fine picture. Shakespeare's pencil is to use an illusion of
• 3:57:16
  Speaker 2: his own quote, like the dyer's hand, subdued to what
• 3:57:19
  Speaker 2: it works in. Everything in him, though it partakes of
• 3:57:23
  Speaker 2: the liberty of wit, is also subjected to the law
• 3:57:26
  Speaker 2: of the understanding. For instance, even the drunken sailors who
• 3:57:31
  Speaker 2: are made reeling ripe, share in the disorder of their
• 3:57:34
  Speaker 2: minds and bodies in the tumult of the elements, and
• 3:57:37
  Speaker 2: seem on shore to be as much at the mercy
• 3:57:39
  Speaker 2: of chance as they were before at the mercy of
• 3:57:42
  Speaker 2: the winds and waves. These fellows, with their sea wit,
• 3:57:46
  Speaker 2: are the least to our taste of any part of
• 3:57:48
  Speaker 2: the play. But they are as light drunken sailors as
• 3:57:51
  Speaker 2: they can be, and are an indirect foil to Caliban,
• 3:57:54
  Speaker 2: whose figure acquires a classical dignity in the comparison. The
• 3:57:59
  Speaker 2: character of Caliban is generally thought, and justly so, to
• 3:58:03
  Speaker 2: be one of the author's masterpieces. It is not indeed
• 3:58:06
  Speaker 2: pleasant to see this character on the stage any more
• 3:58:09
  Speaker 2: than it is to see the God pan personated there.
• 3:58:12
  Speaker 2: But in itself. It is one of the wildest and
• 3:58:15
  Speaker 2: most abstracted of all Shakespeare's characters, whose deformity, whether of
• 3:58:20
  Speaker 2: body or mind, is redeemed by the power and truth
• 3:58:23
  Speaker 2: of the imagination displayed in it. It is the essence
• 3:58:26
  Speaker 2: of grossness, but there is not a particle of vulgarity
• 3:58:30
  Speaker 2: in it. Shakespeare has described the brutal mind of Caliban
• 3:58:33
  Speaker 2: in contact with the pure and original forms of nature.
• 3:58:37
  Speaker 2: The character grows out of the soil, where it is rooted, uncontrolled,
• 3:58:41
  Speaker 2: uncouth and wild, uncramped by any of the meannesses of custom.
• 3:58:46
  Speaker 2: It is quote of the earth, earthy. It seems almost
• 3:58:50
  Speaker 2: to have been dug out of the ground, with a
• 3:58:53
  Speaker 2: soul instinctively super added to it. Answering to its wants
• 3:58:57
  Speaker 2: and origin. Vulgarity is not natural coarseness, but conventional coarseness
• 3:59:03
  Speaker 2: learnt from others, contrary to or without an entire conformity
• 3:59:08
  Speaker 2: of natural power and disposition. As fashion is the commonplace
• 3:59:12
  Speaker 2: affectation of what is elegant and refined, without any feeling
• 3:59:16
  Speaker 2: of the essence of it. Schlegel, the admirable German critic
• 3:59:20
  Speaker 2: on Shakespeare observes that Caliban is a poetical character. End
• 3:59:24
  Speaker 2: quote always speaks in blank verse. He first comes in.
• 3:59:28
  Speaker 5: Thus, Caliban as wicked dew as air, my mother brushed
• 3:59:34
  Speaker 5: with ravens, feather from unwholesome fen, drop on you both southwest,
• 3:59:41
  Speaker 5: blow on ye and blister you all.
• 3:59:44
  Speaker 2: Or prospero for this be sure tonight that shall have cramps,
• 3:59:49
  Speaker 2: side stitches that shall pen my breath up urchins shall
• 3:59:54
  Speaker 2: for that vest of night that they may work all
• 3:59:57
  Speaker 2: exercise on me, that shall be pitched as thick as honeycombs,
• 4:00:01
  Speaker 2: each pins more stinging than the bees that made them.
• 4:00:05
  Speaker 1: I must eat my dinner. This island's mine by cicaraxe,
• 4:00:10
  Speaker 1: my mother, which thou takest from me, When thou camest first,
• 4:00:15
  Speaker 1: thou strokest me, and madest much of me, wouldst give
• 4:00:19
  Speaker 1: me water with berries in it, and teach me how
• 4:00:22
  Speaker 1: to name the bigger light, and how the less that
• 4:00:26
  Speaker 1: burn by day and night. And then I love THEE
• 4:00:31
  Speaker 1: and showed THEE all the qualities of the isle, the
• 4:00:34
  Speaker 1: fresh springs, brine pits, barren place, and fertile curst be
• 4:00:40
  Speaker 1: that I did so all the charms of ciicaracs, toads, beetles, bats,
• 4:00:47
  Speaker 1: light on you, for I am all the subjects that
• 4:00:50
  Speaker 1: you have, who first was mine own king. And here
• 4:00:54
  Speaker 1: you sty me in this hard rock, whilst you do
• 4:00:57
  Speaker 1: keep from me the rest of the island.
• 4:01:00
  Speaker 2: And again he promises Trinculo his services. Thus, if you
• 4:01:04
  Speaker 2: will free him from his drudgery.
• 4:01:06
  Speaker 1: I'll show thee the best springs. I'll pluck thee berries,
• 4:01:11
  Speaker 1: I'll fish for thee. Get thee wood enough I prithee.
• 4:01:15
  Speaker 1: Let me bring thee where crabs grow, and I, with
• 4:01:19
  Speaker 1: my long nails, will dig thee pig knots, show thee
• 4:01:23
  Speaker 1: a jay's nest, and instruct thee how to snare the
• 4:01:28
  Speaker 1: nimble mometer. I'll bring thee to clustering filberds. And sometimes
• 4:01:35
  Speaker 1: I'll get the young scamels from the rock.
• 4:01:39
  Speaker 2: In conducting Stefano and Trinculo to Prospero cell Caliban shows
• 4:01:44
  Speaker 2: the superiority of natural capacity over greater knowledge and greater folly,
• 4:01:49
  Speaker 2: and in a former scene, when Ariel frightens them with
• 4:01:52
  Speaker 2: his music, Caliban to encourage them and counts for it.
• 4:01:55
  Speaker 2: In the eloquent poetry of the Senses.
• 4:01:58
  Speaker 1: Be not afraid. The hole is full of noises, sounds,
• 4:02:03
  Speaker 1: and sweet ass the gift to light and hurt not.
• 4:02:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments will hum about to mine ears,
• 4:02:14
  Speaker 1: and sometimes voices that if I then had waked after
• 4:02:18
  Speaker 1: long sleep, would make me sleep again, And then in
• 4:02:22
  Speaker 1: dreaming the clouds methought would open and show riches ready
• 4:02:28
  Speaker 1: to drop upon me. When I waked, I cried to
• 4:02:32
  Speaker 1: dream again.
• 4:02:34
  Speaker 2: This is not more beautiful than it is true. The
• 4:02:37
  Speaker 2: poet here shows us the savage with the simplicity of
• 4:02:40
  Speaker 2: a child, and makes the strange monster amiable. Shakespeare had
• 4:02:45
  Speaker 2: to paint the human animal rude and without choice, and
• 4:02:47
  Speaker 2: its pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure, or
• 4:02:51
  Speaker 2: some germ of the affections Master Barnadine. In measure for measure,
• 4:02:55
  Speaker 2: the savage of civilized life is an admirable philosophical counter
• 4:03:00
  Speaker 2: part to Caliban. Shakespeare has, as it were, by design,
• 4:03:05
  Speaker 2: drawn off from Caliban the elements of whatever is ethereal
• 4:03:09
  Speaker 2: and refined to compound them in the unearthly mold of Ariel.
• 4:03:14
  Speaker 2: Nothing was ever more finely conceived than this contrast between
• 4:03:18
  Speaker 2: the material and the spiritual, The gross and delicate Ariel
• 4:03:22
  Speaker 2: is imaginary power, the swiftness of thought personified. When told
• 4:03:27
  Speaker 2: to make good speed by Prospero, he says, I drink
• 4:03:31
  Speaker 2: the air before me. This is something like Puck's boast
• 4:03:34
  Speaker 2: on a similar occasion, I'll put a girdle round the
• 4:03:37
  Speaker 2: earth in forty minutes. But Ariel differs from Puck and
• 4:03:40
  Speaker 2: having a fellow feeling in the interests of those he
• 4:03:42
  Speaker 2: is employed about. How exquisite is the following dialog between
• 4:03:47
  Speaker 2: him and Prospero. Ariel, your charms so strongly worksome, that
• 4:03:52
  Speaker 2: if you now beheld them, your affections would become tender. Prospero,
• 4:03:57
  Speaker 2: dost thou think so spirit? Mine would it, sir, were
• 4:04:02
  Speaker 2: a human? Prospero and mine shall hast thou which art
• 4:04:07
  Speaker 2: but air a touch, a feeling of their afflictions? And
• 4:04:11
  Speaker 2: shall not myself one of their kind that relish all
• 4:04:14
  Speaker 2: as sharply passened, as they be kindlier movid than thou art.
• 4:04:20
  Speaker 2: It has been observed that there is a peculiar charm
• 4:04:23
  Speaker 2: in the songs introduced in Shakespeare, which, without conveying any
• 4:04:27
  Speaker 2: distinct images, seemed to recall all the feelings connected with them,
• 4:04:32
  Speaker 2: like snatches of half forgotten music heard indistinctly and at intervals.
• 4:04:37
  Speaker 2: There is this effect produced by Aeriel's songs, which, as
• 4:04:41
  Speaker 2: we are told, seemed to sound in the air, and
• 4:04:44
  Speaker 2: as if the person playing them were invisible. We should
• 4:04:47
  Speaker 2: give one instance out of many of this general power. Enter, Ferdinand,
• 4:04:51
  Speaker 2: an aerial invisible, playing and singing Ariel's song.
• 4:04:56
  Speaker 6: Come unto THESEI eo hands, and then deck hands could
• 4:05:04
  Speaker 6: seed when you have and kissed the wild wave's waste footed.
• 4:05:10
  Speaker 4: Feetly here and there, and sweet sprites the bird and.
• 4:05:17
  Speaker 7: Bear wow hark hark bow wow tho watch dot spark
• 4:05:26
  Speaker 7: aerial hark hark. I hear the strain ob strutting chant,
• 4:05:32
  Speaker 7: a clear cry, cock a little do.
• 4:05:36
  Speaker 1: Ferdinand, where should this music be an error or earth?
• 4:05:42
  Speaker 1: It sounds no more? And sure it waits upon some
• 4:05:46
  Speaker 1: god of the island, sitting on a bank, weeping against
• 4:05:49
  Speaker 1: the king my father's wreck. This music crept by me
• 4:05:53
  Speaker 1: upon the waters, allaying both their fury and my passion
• 4:05:57
  Speaker 1: with its sweet air. Thence I have followed it, or
• 4:06:02
  Speaker 1: it hath drawn me rather? But tis gone? No, it
• 4:06:07
  Speaker 1: begins again.
• 4:06:08
  Speaker 4: O fathom five five father lies of his bones are
• 4:06:16
  Speaker 4: cold made. Those are pools that were his eyes. Nothing
• 4:06:24
  Speaker 4: of him that doth fade, but doth.
• 4:06:28
  Speaker 2: Sufferer see change into something rich and strange, seeing them
• 4:06:38
  Speaker 2: sourly ring his knell, dung bang, dong bang, dung bean,
• 4:06:45
  Speaker 2: dung bell hark Now I hear them ding dong bell,
• 4:06:50
  Speaker 2: that did.
• 4:06:51
  Speaker 1: He does remember my drowned father. This is no mortal business,
• 4:06:55
  Speaker 1: nor no sound that the earth owns. I hear it
• 4:06:59
  Speaker 1: now above me.
• 4:07:01
  Speaker 2: The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the
• 4:07:04
  Speaker 2: chief beauties of this play. It is the very purity
• 4:07:08
  Speaker 2: of love. The pretended interference of Prospero with it heightens
• 4:07:12
  Speaker 2: its interest, and is in character with the magician, whose
• 4:07:16
  Speaker 2: sense of preternatural power makes him arbitrary, touchy, and impatient
• 4:07:20
  Speaker 2: of opposition. The Tempest is a finer play than The
• 4:07:24
  Speaker 2: Midsummer Night's Dream, which has sometimes been compared with it,
• 4:07:28
  Speaker 2: but it is not so fine a poem. There are
• 4:07:31
  Speaker 2: a greater number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two
• 4:07:34
  Speaker 2: of the most striking in The Tempest are spoken by Prospero.
• 4:07:37
  Speaker 2: The one is that admirable one when the vision which
• 4:07:40
  Speaker 2: he is conjured up disappears. Beginning the cloud cap towers
• 4:07:45
  Speaker 2: the gorgeous palaces, and et cetera, which has so often
• 4:07:49
  Speaker 2: been quoted that every schoolboy knows it by heart. The
• 4:07:52
  Speaker 2: other is that which Prospero makes in abjuring his art,
• 4:07:56
  Speaker 2: the elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, and
• 4:08:02
  Speaker 2: ye that on the sands with printless foot, to chase
• 4:08:05
  Speaker 2: the ebbing Neptune, and to fly him when he comes back.
• 4:08:09
  Speaker 2: You demi puppets that by moonshine do the green sour
• 4:08:13
  Speaker 2: ringlets make whereof the eunot bites. And you, whose pastime
• 4:08:17
  Speaker 2: is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice to hear the
• 4:08:21
  Speaker 2: solemn curfew, by whose aid weak masters of ye be
• 4:08:26
  Speaker 2: I have bedimmed the noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
• 4:08:31
  Speaker 2: and TwixT the green sea and the azured vaults set
• 4:08:34
  Speaker 2: roaring war to the dread rattling thunder. Have I given
• 4:08:39
  Speaker 2: fire and rifted Jove's stout oak with his own bolt.
• 4:08:43
  Speaker 2: The strong based promontory have I made shake, and by
• 4:08:47
  Speaker 2: the spurs plucked up the pine and cedar graves at
• 4:08:51
  Speaker 2: my command have waked their sleepers OpEd, and let them
• 4:08:54
  Speaker 2: forth by my so potent art. But this rough magic
• 4:08:59
  Speaker 2: I hear abjure, and when I have required some heavenly music,
• 4:09:04
  Speaker 2: which even now I do to work mine end upon
• 4:09:07
  Speaker 2: their senses that this airy charm is for, I'll break
• 4:09:11
  Speaker 2: my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and
• 4:09:16
  Speaker 2: deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book.
• 4:09:21
  Speaker 2: We must not forget to mention, among other things in
• 4:09:24
  Speaker 2: this play, that Shakespeare has anticipated nearly all the arguments
• 4:09:28
  Speaker 2: on the utopian schemes of modern philosophy.
• 4:09:32
  Speaker 1: Gonzalo had I the plantation of this isle, my Lord Antonio,
• 4:09:38
  Speaker 1: he'd sew it with nettle seed.
• 4:09:41
  Speaker 2: Sebastian, or talks or mallows, Gonzalo.
• 4:09:46
  Speaker 1: And er the king aunt. What would I.
• 4:09:48
  Speaker 2: Do, Sebastian escaping drunk or want of whine? Gonzalo.
• 4:09:54
  Speaker 1: In the commonwealth, I would, by contraries execute all things,
• 4:09:59
  Speaker 1: for no kind of traffic would I admit? No name
• 4:10:02
  Speaker 1: of magistrate, letters should not be known. Wealth, poverty and
• 4:10:07
  Speaker 1: use of service none, contract succession, born bound of land,
• 4:10:12
  Speaker 1: tilth vineyard none, no use of metal, corn or wine
• 4:10:17
  Speaker 1: or oil. No occupation, All men idle, all and women too,
• 4:10:22
  Speaker 1: but innocent and pure. No sovereignty, Sebastian.
• 4:10:27
  Speaker 2: And yet he would be king on it.
• 4:10:29
  Speaker 1: Antonio, the latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. Gonzalo,
• 4:10:36
  Speaker 1: all things in common nature should produce without sweat or endeavor, treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun,
• 4:10:43
  Speaker 1: or need of any engine would I not have? But
• 4:10:47
  Speaker 1: nature should bring forth of its own kind, all poison,
• 4:10:51
  Speaker 1: all abundance to feed my innocent people.
• 4:10:55
  Speaker 2: Sebastian. No marrying among his subjects, Antonio.
• 4:11:00
  Speaker 1: Man all idle whares and knaves. Gonzalo I would with
• 4:11:05
  Speaker 1: such perfection, governs Sir, excel the golden.
• 4:11:09
  Speaker 2: Age, Sebastian, save his majesty. End of Chapter.
• 4:11:14
  Speaker 1: Eleven, The Midsummer Night's Dream. Bottom the Weaver is a
• 4:11:21
  Speaker 1: character that has not had justice done him. He is
• 4:11:25
  Speaker 1: the most romantic of mechanics. In what a list of
• 4:11:29
  Speaker 1: companions he has quints, the carpenter, snug, the joiner, flute,
• 4:11:34
  Speaker 1: the bellows, mender, snout, the tinker, starveling, the tailor, And
• 4:11:39
  Speaker 1: then again, what a group of fairy attendants puck, peace, blossom, cobweb, moth,
• 4:11:47
  Speaker 1: and mustard seed. It has been observed that Shakespeare's characters
• 4:11:51
  Speaker 1: are constructed upon deep physiological principles, and there is something
• 4:11:56
  Speaker 1: in this play which looks very like it. Bottom. The weaver,
• 4:12:01
  Speaker 1: who takes the lead of this crew of patches rude
• 4:12:06
  Speaker 1: mechanicals that work for bread upon Athenian stalls, follows a
• 4:12:11
  Speaker 1: sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented as conceited, serious
• 4:12:18
  Speaker 1: and fantastical. He is ready to undertake anything and everything,
• 4:12:23
  Speaker 1: as if it was as much a matter of course
• 4:12:26
  Speaker 1: as the motion of his loom and shuttle. He is
• 4:12:29
  Speaker 1: pro playing the tyrant, the lover, the lady, the lion.
• 4:12:33
  Speaker 1: He will roar that it shall do any man's heart
• 4:12:36
  Speaker 1: good to hear him, and miss being objected to as improper.
• 4:12:41
  Speaker 1: He still has a resource in his good opinion of himself,
• 4:12:45
  Speaker 1: and will roar you and toward any nightingale snug the
• 4:12:51
  Speaker 1: joiner as the moral man of the peace, who precedes
• 4:12:53
  Speaker 1: by measurement and discretion in all things. You see him
• 4:12:58
  Speaker 1: with his rule compass in his hand. Have you the
• 4:13:01
  Speaker 1: lion's part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me,
• 4:13:05
  Speaker 1: for I am slow of study. You may do it, extemporary,
• 4:13:09
  Speaker 1: says Quince, for it is nothing but roaring starvling. The
• 4:13:15
  Speaker 1: tailor keeps the peace and objects to the lion and
• 4:13:18
  Speaker 1: the drawn sword. I believe we must leave the killing
• 4:13:22
  Speaker 1: out when all is done. Starveling, however, does not start
• 4:13:26
  Speaker 1: the objections himself, but seconds them when made by others,
• 4:13:30
  Speaker 1: as if he had not spirit to express his fears
• 4:13:32
  Speaker 1: without encouragement. Is too much to suppose all this intentional,
• 4:13:38
  Speaker 1: but it very luckily falls out. So nature includes all
• 4:13:42
  Speaker 1: that is implied in the most subtle analytical distinctions. And
• 4:13:46
  Speaker 1: the same distinctions be found in Shakespeare. Bottom, who is
• 4:13:50
  Speaker 1: not only chief actor but stage manager for the occasion,
• 4:13:54
  Speaker 1: has a device to obviate the danger of frightening the ladies.
• 4:13:58
  Speaker 1: Write me a prolog, and let the prolog seem to say,
• 4:14:02
  Speaker 1: we will do no harm with our swords, and that
• 4:14:05
  Speaker 1: Pyramis is not killed. Indeed, and for better assurance, tell
• 4:14:09
  Speaker 1: them that I Pyramus am not Paramius, but Bottom the weaver.
• 4:14:14
  Speaker 1: This will put them out of fear. Bottom seems to
• 4:14:18
  Speaker 1: have understood the subject of dramatic illusion at least as
• 4:14:21
  Speaker 1: well as any modern essayists. If our holiday mechanic rules
• 4:14:25
  Speaker 1: the roast among his fellows, he is no less at
• 4:14:28
  Speaker 1: home in his new character of an ass with amiable
• 4:14:31
  Speaker 1: cheeks and fair, large ears. He instinctively acquires a most
• 4:14:37
  Speaker 1: learned taste and grows fasidious and the choice of dried
• 4:14:40
  Speaker 1: peas and bottled hay. He is quite familiar with his
• 4:14:44
  Speaker 1: new attendants and assigns them their parts with all due gravity.
• 4:14:49
  Speaker 1: Monsieur cobweb, Good monsieur, get your weapon in your hand
• 4:14:53
  Speaker 1: and kill me a red hipped humble bee on the
• 4:14:56
  Speaker 1: top of a thistle. And good, monsieur, bring me the
• 4:15:00
  Speaker 1: honey bag. What an exact knowledge is here shown of
• 4:15:04
  Speaker 1: natural history? Puck a Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of
• 4:15:10
  Speaker 1: the fairy Band. He is the Ariel of the Midsummer's
• 4:15:14
  Speaker 1: Night Dream, and yet, as unlike as can be to
• 4:15:17
  Speaker 1: the Ariel and the Tempest, no other poet could have
• 4:15:21
  Speaker 1: made two such different characters out of the same fanciful
• 4:15:24
  Speaker 1: materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution who
• 4:15:29
  Speaker 1: is touched with a sense of pity at the woes
• 4:15:32
  Speaker 1: he inflicts. Puck is a mad cap sprite full of
• 4:15:37
  Speaker 1: wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads, Lord,
• 4:15:43
  Speaker 1: what fools these mortals be? Ariel cleaves the air and
• 4:15:49
  Speaker 1: executes his mission with his zeal of a winged messenger.
• 4:15:53
  Speaker 1: Puck is borne along on his fairy errand like the
• 4:15:57
  Speaker 1: light and glittering gossamer before the breeze. He is indeed
• 4:16:00
  Speaker 1: a most epicurean little gentleman, dealing in quaint devices and
• 4:16:05
  Speaker 1: faring in dainty delights. Prospero and his world of spirits
• 4:16:10
  Speaker 1: are a set of moralists. But with Oberon and his
• 4:16:13
  Speaker 1: fairies we are launched at once into the empire the butterflies.
• 4:16:18
  Speaker 1: How beautifully is this race of beings contrasted with the
• 4:16:22
  Speaker 1: men and women actors in the scene by a single epithet,
• 4:16:26
  Speaker 1: which Titania gives to the latter, the human mortals. It
• 4:16:31
  Speaker 1: is astonishing that Shakespeare should be considered, not only by
• 4:16:35
  Speaker 1: foreigners but by many of our own critics as a
• 4:16:38
  Speaker 1: gloomy and heavy writer who painted nothing but gorgons and
• 4:16:42
  Speaker 1: hydras and chimeras dire. His subtlety exceeds that of all
• 4:16:47
  Speaker 1: other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated person of the
• 4:16:51
  Speaker 1: present day said that he regarded him rather as a
• 4:16:55
  Speaker 1: metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy in sporting gaiety are infinite.
• 4:17:01
  Speaker 1: In the Midsummer's Night Dream alone, we should imagine there
• 4:17:05
  Speaker 1: is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the
• 4:17:08
  Speaker 1: whole range of French poetry put together. What we mean
• 4:17:12
  Speaker 1: is this that we will produce out of that single
• 4:17:15
  Speaker 1: play ten passages to which we do not think any
• 4:17:18
  Speaker 1: ten passages in the works of the French poets can
• 4:17:21
  Speaker 1: be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention
• 4:17:27
  Speaker 1: the remonstrance of Helena to hermia, or Titania's description of
• 4:17:31
  Speaker 1: her fairy train, or her disputes of Oberon about the
• 4:17:35
  Speaker 1: Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments,
• 4:17:39
  Speaker 1: or the fairy queen's exhortation to the elves to pay
• 4:17:43
  Speaker 1: due attendance upon her favorite bottom, or hippolytus description of
• 4:17:47
  Speaker 1: a chase, or Theseus's answer. The two last are as
• 4:17:52
  Speaker 1: heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness.
• 4:17:57
  Speaker 1: The reading of this play is like wandering in a
• 4:18:00
  Speaker 1: grove by moonlight. The descriptions breathe a sweetness, like odors
• 4:18:04
  Speaker 1: thrown from beds of flowers. Titania's exhortation to the fairies
• 4:18:10
  Speaker 1: to wait upon bottom, which is remarkable for a certain
• 4:18:13
  Speaker 1: plowing sweetness, and the repetition of the rhymes is as follows.
• 4:18:19
  Speaker 2: Be kind and courteous to this gentleman, hop in his
• 4:18:23
  Speaker 2: walks and gambol in his eyes. Feed him with apricocks
• 4:18:28
  Speaker 2: and dewberries, with purple grapes, green figs, and pullberries. The
• 4:18:33
  Speaker 2: honeybags steal from the humble bees, and four night tapers
• 4:18:37
  Speaker 2: crop their waxen thighs and light them at the fiery
• 4:18:41
  Speaker 2: glow worm's eyes. To have my love to bed and
• 4:18:44
  Speaker 2: to arise, and pluck the wings from painted butterflies, to
• 4:18:50
  Speaker 2: fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Nod to him elves,
• 4:18:55
  Speaker 2: and do him courtesies.
• 4:18:58
  Speaker 1: The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are
• 4:19:01
  Speaker 1: not more distinct than the poetry the foregoing passage, and
• 4:19:06
  Speaker 1: of the conversation between theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus go, one
• 4:19:13
  Speaker 1: of you find out the forester. For now our observation
• 4:19:18
  Speaker 1: is performed, And since we have the voward of the day,
• 4:19:22
  Speaker 1: my love shall hear the music of my hounds and
• 4:19:25
  Speaker 1: couple in the western valley. Go dispatch, I say, and
• 4:19:29
  Speaker 1: find the forester. We will fair queen up to the
• 4:19:34
  Speaker 1: mountain's top and mark the musical confusion of hounds and
• 4:19:39
  Speaker 1: echo in conjunction.
• 4:19:41
  Speaker 2: Hippolyta, I was with Hercules and Cadmus months when in
• 4:19:46
  Speaker 2: a wood of crete they bathe the bear with hounds
• 4:19:49
  Speaker 2: of Sparta. Never did I hear such gallant chiding for
• 4:19:53
  Speaker 2: beside the groves, the skies, the fountains, every region near
• 4:19:58
  Speaker 2: seemed all one mutual cris. I never heard so musical
• 4:20:02
  Speaker 2: a discord, such sweet thunder.
• 4:20:06
  Speaker 1: Theseus my hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
• 4:20:10
  Speaker 1: so fluid, so sanded, and their heads are hung with
• 4:20:14
  Speaker 1: ears that sweep away the morning dew, cook kneed and
• 4:20:19
  Speaker 1: dew lapped like Thessalian bulls, slow in pursuit, but matched
• 4:20:24
  Speaker 1: in mouth like bells, each under each a cry more tuneable.
• 4:20:30
  Speaker 1: Was never hallooed to, nor cheered with horn encrete and Sparta,
• 4:20:36
  Speaker 1: nor in Thessaly. Judge when you hear even Titian never
• 4:20:42
  Speaker 1: made a hunting piece of Augustus so fresh and lusty,
• 4:20:45
  Speaker 1: and so near the first ages of the world. Is this?
• 4:20:50
  Speaker 1: It has been suggested to us that the Midsummer's Night
• 4:20:53
  Speaker 1: Dream would do admirably to get up as a Christmas
• 4:20:57
  Speaker 1: after piece, And our prompter posed that mister Keane should
• 4:21:01
  Speaker 1: play the part of Bottom, as worthy of his great talents.
• 4:21:05
  Speaker 1: He might in the discharge of his duty, offer to
• 4:21:09
  Speaker 1: play the lady like any of our actresses that he pleased,
• 4:21:12
  Speaker 1: the lover of the tyrant like any of our actors
• 4:21:15
  Speaker 1: that he pleased, and the lion like the most fearful
• 4:21:18
  Speaker 1: wild fowl living. The carpenter, the tailor and joiner, it
• 4:21:23
  Speaker 1: was thought, would hit the galleries, the young ladies in love,
• 4:21:27
  Speaker 1: would interest the side boxes, and Robin Goodfellow and his
• 4:21:31
  Speaker 1: companions excite a lively fellow feeling in the children from school.
• 4:21:36
  Speaker 1: There would be two courts, an empire within an empire,
• 4:21:39
  Speaker 1: the Athenian and the fairy King and Queen, with their
• 4:21:41
  Speaker 1: attendants and with all their finery. What an opportunity for processions,
• 4:21:47
  Speaker 1: for the sound of trumpets and glittering of spears, What
• 4:21:52
  Speaker 1: a fluttering of urchins painted wings, What a delightful profusion
• 4:21:56
  Speaker 1: of gauze clouds and airy spirits loading on them. Alas,
• 4:22:03
  Speaker 1: the experiment has been tried and has failed, not through
• 4:22:06
  Speaker 1: the fault of mister Keene, who did not play the
• 4:22:09
  Speaker 1: part of Bottom, nor of mister Liston, who did and
• 4:22:13
  Speaker 1: who played it well, but from the nature of things.
• 4:22:16
  Speaker 1: The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is converted from a
• 4:22:20
  Speaker 1: delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest
• 4:22:24
  Speaker 1: in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle
• 4:22:29
  Speaker 1: was grand, but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled.
• 4:22:34
  Speaker 1: Poetry in the stage do not agree well together. The
• 4:22:38
  Speaker 1: attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only
• 4:22:41
  Speaker 1: of effect but of decorum. The ideal can have no
• 4:22:45
  Speaker 1: place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective.
• 4:22:50
  Speaker 1: Everything there is in the foreground, That which was merely
• 4:22:54
  Speaker 1: an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately becomes
• 4:22:59
  Speaker 1: an manageable reality. Where all is left to the imagination,
• 4:23:05
  Speaker 1: As is the case in reading, every circumstance near or remote,
• 4:23:10
  Speaker 1: as an equal chance of being kept in mind, and
• 4:23:12
  Speaker 1: tells according to the mixed impression of all that has
• 4:23:15
  Speaker 1: been suggested. But the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual
• 4:23:20
  Speaker 1: impressions of the senses. Any offense given to the eye
• 4:23:25
  Speaker 1: is not to be got rid of by explanation. Thus
• 4:23:28
  Speaker 1: Bottom's head in the play is a fantastic illusion produced
• 4:23:32
  Speaker 1: by magic spells on the stage. It is an ass's head,
• 4:23:37
  Speaker 1: and nothing more. Certainly a very strange costume for a
• 4:23:41
  Speaker 1: gentleman to appear in fancy cannot be embodied any more
• 4:23:46
  Speaker 1: than a simile can be painted, and it is as
• 4:23:49
  Speaker 1: idle to attempt it as to personate wall or Moonshine.
• 4:23:54
  Speaker 1: Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are
• 4:23:58
  Speaker 1: sons are not shocking if they are seen at a
• 4:24:02
  Speaker 1: proper distance. When ghosts appear at midday, when apparitions stalk
• 4:24:07
  Speaker 1: along cheapside, then may the Midsummer's Night dream be represented
• 4:24:12
  Speaker 1: without injury at Covent Garden or at Drury Lane. The
• 4:24:17
  Speaker 1: boards of a theater and the regions of fancy are
• 4:24:21
  Speaker 1: not the same thing. End of the Midsummer Night's Dream.
• 4:24:28
  Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is the only tragedy
• 4:24:35
  Speaker 1: which Shakespeare's written entirely on a love story. It is
• 4:24:40
  Speaker 1: supposed to have been his first play, and it deserves
• 4:24:43
  Speaker 1: to stand in that proud rank. There's the buoyant spirit
• 4:24:47
  Speaker 1: of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope,
• 4:24:52
  Speaker 1: and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said
• 4:24:55
  Speaker 1: of Romeo and Juliet by a great critic that whatever
• 4:24:59
  Speaker 1: is most intoxicating in the odor of a southern spring,
• 4:25:04
  Speaker 1: languishing in the song of the nightingale or voluptuous, and
• 4:25:08
  Speaker 1: the first opening of the rose is to be found
• 4:25:11
  Speaker 1: in this poem. The description is true, and yet it
• 4:25:16
  Speaker 1: does not answer to our idea of the play. For
• 4:25:19
  Speaker 1: if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has
• 4:25:22
  Speaker 1: its freshness too. If it has the languor of the
• 4:25:25
  Speaker 1: nightingale's song, it also has its giddy transport. If it
• 4:25:30
  Speaker 1: has the softness of a southern spring, it is as
• 4:25:33
  Speaker 1: glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly
• 4:25:37
  Speaker 1: and sentimental caste. Romeo and Juliet are in love, but
• 4:25:41
  Speaker 1: they are not love sick. Everything speaks the very soul
• 4:25:45
  Speaker 1: of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions,
• 4:25:49
  Speaker 1: the heart beats, the blood circulates and mantles. Throughout their
• 4:25:54
  Speaker 1: courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments. Lip deep
• 4:25:58
  Speaker 1: learnt at secondhand from poems and plays made up of beauties,
• 4:26:03
  Speaker 1: of the most shadowy kind of fancies wan that hang
• 4:26:07
  Speaker 1: the pensive head of evanesce, and smiles and sighs, that
• 4:26:12
  Speaker 1: breathe not of delicacy, that shirks from the touch and
• 4:26:16
  Speaker 1: feebleness that scarce supports itself an elaborate vacuity of thought,
• 4:26:21
  Speaker 1: and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature.
• 4:26:27
  Speaker 1: It is the reverse of all this. It is Shakespeare
• 4:26:31
  Speaker 1: all over, and Shakespeare when he was young. We have
• 4:26:36
  Speaker 1: heard it objected to Romeo and Juliet that it is
• 4:26:40
  Speaker 1: founded on an idle passion between a boy and a
• 4:26:43
  Speaker 1: girl who have scarcely seen and can have but little
• 4:26:46
  Speaker 1: sympathy or rational esteem from one another, who have had
• 4:26:50
  Speaker 1: no experience of the good or ills of life, and
• 4:26:54
  Speaker 1: whose raptures or despair must be therefore equally groundless and fantastic.
• 4:27:01
  Speaker 1: Whoever objects to the youth of the parties in this
• 4:27:03
  Speaker 1: play as too unripened crude to pluck the sweets of
• 4:27:08
  Speaker 1: love and wishes to see a first love carried on
• 4:27:12
  Speaker 1: into good old age, and the passions taken at the
• 4:27:15
  Speaker 1: rebound when their forces spent, may find all this done
• 4:27:20
  Speaker 1: in The Stranger and in other German plays, where they
• 4:27:24
  Speaker 1: do things by contraries and transpose nature to inspire sentiment
• 4:27:29
  Speaker 1: and create philosophy. Shakespeare proceeded in a more straightforward and
• 4:27:35
  Speaker 1: we think effectual way. He did not endeavor to extract
• 4:27:39
  Speaker 1: beauty from wrinkles or the wild throb of passion from
• 4:27:43
  Speaker 1: the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not gather
• 4:27:49
  Speaker 1: grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. It was not
• 4:27:53
  Speaker 1: his way. But he is given a picture of human life,
• 4:27:57
  Speaker 1: such as it is in the order of nature. He
• 4:28:00
  Speaker 1: has founded the passion of the two lovers not on
• 4:28:04
  Speaker 1: the pleasures they had experienced, but on all the pleasures
• 4:28:07
  Speaker 1: they had not experienced. All that was to come of
• 4:28:11
  Speaker 1: life was theirs. At that untried source of promised happiness,
• 4:28:15
  Speaker 1: they slaked their thirst, and the first eager draft made
• 4:28:19
  Speaker 1: them drunk with love and joy. They were in full
• 4:28:22
  Speaker 1: possession of their senses and their affections. Their hopes were
• 4:28:26
  Speaker 1: of air, their desires of fire. Youth is the season
• 4:28:31
  Speaker 1: of love, because the heart is then first melted in
• 4:28:35
  Speaker 1: tenderness from the touch of novelty, and kindled to rapture,
• 4:28:40
  Speaker 1: for it knows no end of its enjoyments or its wishes.
• 4:28:44
  Speaker 1: Desire has no limit but itself passion. The love and
• 4:28:49
  Speaker 1: expectation of pleasure is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till experience comes
• 4:28:56
  Speaker 1: to check and kill it. Juliet exclaims, on a first
• 4:29:00
  Speaker 1: interview with Romeo.
• 4:29:03
  Speaker 2: My bounty as boundless as the sea.
• 4:29:06
  Speaker 1: My love is deep, and why should it not? What
• 4:29:10
  Speaker 1: was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure which had
• 4:29:14
  Speaker 1: just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stinct
• 4:29:17
  Speaker 1: or measure, but experience, which she was yet without. What
• 4:29:22
  Speaker 1: was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense
• 4:29:26
  Speaker 1: of pleasure, which her heart and her senses had just tasted.
• 4:29:30
  Speaker 1: But indifference, which she was yet a stranger to. What
• 4:29:35
  Speaker 1: was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith,
• 4:29:38
  Speaker 1: of constancy just rising in her breast, But disappointment, which
• 4:29:43
  Speaker 1: she had not yet felt. As are the desires and
• 4:29:47
  Speaker 1: the hopes of youthful passion, Such is the keenness of
• 4:29:51
  Speaker 1: its disappointments and their baleful effect. Such is the transition
• 4:29:57
  Speaker 1: in this play from the highest bliss to the lowest despair,
• 4:30:02
  Speaker 1: from the nuptial couch to an untimely grave. The only
• 4:30:06
  Speaker 1: evil that even an apprehension befalls the two lovers is
• 4:30:10
  Speaker 1: the loss of the greatest possible felicity. Yet this loss
• 4:30:14
  Speaker 1: is fatal to both, for they had rather part with
• 4:30:17
  Speaker 1: life than bear the thought of surviving all that had
• 4:30:21
  Speaker 1: made life dear to them. In all this, Shakespeare has
• 4:30:25
  Speaker 1: but followed nature which existed in his time as well
• 4:30:29
  Speaker 1: as now. The modern philosophy, which reduces the whole theory
• 4:30:34
  Speaker 1: of the mind to habitual impressions and leaves the natural
• 4:30:38
  Speaker 1: impulses of passion and imagination out of the account had
• 4:30:42
  Speaker 1: not then been discovered, or if it had, would have
• 4:30:46
  Speaker 1: been little calculated for the uses of poetry. It is
• 4:30:51
  Speaker 1: the inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to
• 4:30:55
  Speaker 1: account for the strength of our earliest attachments which has
• 4:30:59
  Speaker 1: led mister Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism,
• 4:31:05
  Speaker 1: and is owed on the progress of life. He is
• 4:31:09
  Speaker 1: very admirably described the vividness of our impressions in youth
• 4:31:13
  Speaker 1: and childhood, and how they fade by degrees into the
• 4:31:17
  Speaker 1: light of common day, And he ascribes the change to
• 4:31:21
  Speaker 1: the supposition of a pre existent state, as if our
• 4:31:26
  Speaker 1: early thoughts were nearer heaven, reflections of former trails of glory,
• 4:31:31
  Speaker 1: shadows of our past being. This is idle. It is
• 4:31:36
  Speaker 1: not from the knowledge of the past that the first
• 4:31:39
  Speaker 1: impressions of things derive their gloss and splendor, but from
• 4:31:43
  Speaker 1: our ignorance of the future, which fills the void to
• 4:31:46
  Speaker 1: come with the warmth of our desires, with our gayest
• 4:31:49
  Speaker 1: hopes and brightest fancies. It is the obscurity spread before
• 4:31:54
  Speaker 1: it that colors the prospect of life with hope, as
• 4:31:59
  Speaker 1: it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow. There is
• 4:32:02
  Speaker 1: no occasion to resort to any mystical union in transmission
• 4:32:07
  Speaker 1: of feeling through different states of being to account for
• 4:32:10
  Speaker 1: the romantic enthusiasm of youth, nor to plant the root
• 4:32:14
  Speaker 1: of hope in the grave, nor to derive it from
• 4:32:17
  Speaker 1: the skies. Its root is in the heart of man.
• 4:32:21
  Speaker 1: It lifts its head above the stars. Desire and imagination
• 4:32:26
  Speaker 1: are inmates of the human breast. The heaven that lies
• 4:32:31
  Speaker 1: about us in our infancy is only a new world
• 4:32:35
  Speaker 1: of which we know nothing but what we wish it
• 4:32:38
  Speaker 1: to be, and believe all that we wish. In youth
• 4:32:42
  Speaker 1: and boyhood, the world we live in is the world
• 4:32:45
  Speaker 1: of desire and of fancy. It is experience that brings
• 4:32:50
  Speaker 1: us down to the world of reality. What is it
• 4:32:54
  Speaker 1: that in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening star?
• 4:32:58
  Speaker 1: It makes the daisy looks so bright that perfumes the hyacinth,
• 4:33:03
  Speaker 1: that embalms the first kiss of love. It is the
• 4:33:07
  Speaker 1: delight of novelty, and the seeing no end to the
• 4:33:10
  Speaker 1: pleasure that we fondly believe is still in store for us.
• 4:33:15
  Speaker 1: The heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts
• 4:33:18
  Speaker 1: and is unable to sustain the weight of hope and
• 4:33:21
  Speaker 1: love that presses upon it. The effects of the passion
• 4:33:26
  Speaker 1: of love alone might have dissipated mister wordsworth theory, if
• 4:33:31
  Speaker 1: he means anything more by it than an ingenious and
• 4:33:34
  Speaker 1: poetical allegory that at least is not a link in
• 4:33:39
  Speaker 1: the chain let down from other worlds. The purple light
• 4:33:42
  Speaker 1: of love is not a dim reflection of the smiles
• 4:33:46
  Speaker 1: of celestial bliss. It does not appear till the middle
• 4:33:50
  Speaker 1: of life, and then seems like another morn risen on
• 4:33:54
  Speaker 1: mid day. In this respect, the soul comes into the
• 4:33:58
  Speaker 1: world in utterness nakedness. Love waits for the ripening of
• 4:34:03
  Speaker 1: the youthful blood. The sense of pleasure precedes the love
• 4:34:07
  Speaker 1: of pleasure. But with a sense of pleasure, as soon
• 4:34:11
  Speaker 1: as it is felt come thronging infinite desires and hopes
• 4:34:15
  Speaker 1: of pleasure, and love is mature as soon as born,
• 4:34:21
  Speaker 1: It withers, and it dies almost as soon This play
• 4:34:27
  Speaker 1: presents a beautiful coudea of the progress of human life
• 4:34:32
  Speaker 1: in thought. It occupies years and embraces the circle of
• 4:34:36
  Speaker 1: the affections from childhood to old age. Juliet has become
• 4:34:40
  Speaker 1: a great girl, a young woman since we first remember her,
• 4:34:44
  Speaker 1: a little thing in the idle prattle of the nurse
• 4:34:48
  Speaker 1: Lady Capulot was about her age when she became a mother.
• 4:34:52
  Speaker 1: An old Capulate somewhat impatiently tells his younger visitors in
• 4:35:00
  Speaker 1: the day that I have worn a visor and could
• 4:35:03
  Speaker 1: tell a whispering tale in a fair lady's ear, such
• 4:35:08
  Speaker 1: as would please tis gone, Tis gone, tis gone. Thus
• 4:35:16
  Speaker 1: one period of life makes way for the following, and
• 4:35:19
  Speaker 1: one generation pushes another off the stage. One of the
• 4:35:23
  Speaker 1: most striking passages to show the intense feeling of youth
• 4:35:27
  Speaker 1: in this play is Capulot's invitation to Paris to visit
• 4:35:32
  Speaker 1: his entertainment at my poor house. Look to behold this
• 4:35:37
  Speaker 1: night earth treading stars that make dark heaven light such
• 4:35:43
  Speaker 1: comfort as do lusty young men feel when well apparelled
• 4:35:48
  Speaker 1: April on the heel of limping winter treads even such
• 4:35:53
  Speaker 1: delight among fresh female buds. Shall you this night inherit
• 4:36:00
  Speaker 1: my house. The feelings of youth and of the spring
• 4:36:05
  Speaker 1: are here blended together, like the breath of opening flowers.
• 4:36:09
  Speaker 1: Images of vernal beauty appear to have floated before the
• 4:36:13
  Speaker 1: authour's mind in writing this poem. In profusion. Here is
• 4:36:17
  Speaker 1: another of exquisite beauty, brought in more by accident than
• 4:36:22
  Speaker 1: by necessity. Montague declares of his son Smit with a
• 4:36:27
  Speaker 1: hopeless passion which he will not reveal. But he his
• 4:36:33
  Speaker 1: own affections counselor is to himself so secret and so close,
• 4:36:38
  Speaker 1: so far from sounding and discovery, as is the bud
• 4:36:42
  Speaker 1: bit with an envious worm. Ere he can spread his
• 4:36:46
  Speaker 1: sweet leaves to the air, or dedicate his beauty to
• 4:36:50
  Speaker 1: the sun. This casual description is as full of passionate
• 4:36:55
  Speaker 1: beauty as when Romeo dwells in frantic fondness on the
• 4:37:00
  Speaker 1: white wonder of his Juliet's hand. The reader may, if
• 4:37:04
  Speaker 1: he pleases, contrast the exquisite, pastoral simplicity of the above
• 4:37:09
  Speaker 1: lines with a gorgeous description of Juliet when Romeo first
• 4:37:14
  Speaker 1: sees her at her father's house, surrounded by company and
• 4:37:18
  Speaker 1: artificial splendor. What lady's that which doth enrich the hand
• 4:37:24
  Speaker 1: of yonder knight, Ah, she doth teach the torches to
• 4:37:28
  Speaker 1: burn bright. Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of Night,
• 4:37:33
  Speaker 1: like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear. It would
• 4:37:38
  Speaker 1: be hard to say which of the two garden scenes
• 4:37:41
  Speaker 1: is the finest. That where he first converses with his
• 4:37:44
  Speaker 1: love or takes leave of her the morning after their marriage.
• 4:37:49
  Speaker 1: Both are like a heaven upon earth, the blissful bowers
• 4:37:53
  Speaker 1: of paradise let down upon this lower world. We will
• 4:37:57
  Speaker 1: give only one passage of these well known scenes to
• 4:38:00
  Speaker 1: show the perfect refinement and delicacy of Shakespeare's conception of
• 4:38:04
  Speaker 1: the female character. It is wonderful how Collins, who is
• 4:38:09
  Speaker 1: a critic and a poet of great sensibility, should have
• 4:38:12
  Speaker 1: encouraged the common error on the subject by saying, but
• 4:38:17
  Speaker 1: stronger Shakespeare felt for man alone. The passage we mean
• 4:38:22
  Speaker 1: is Juliet's apology for her maiden boldness.
• 4:38:27
  Speaker 2: Thou knowst the mask of Night is on my face.
• 4:38:31
  Speaker 2: Thus would a maiden blush be pain to my cheek
• 4:38:34
  Speaker 2: for that which thou hast earned me? Speak to Night?
• 4:38:37
  Speaker 1: Fain?
• 4:38:38
  Speaker 2: Would I dwell unform?
• 4:38:40
  Speaker 1: Fain?
• 4:38:41
  Speaker 2: Feign denygh would I have spoke but farewell compliment. Dost
• 4:38:45
  Speaker 2: thou love me? I know thou wilt say ay, and
• 4:38:49
  Speaker 2: I will take thee at thy word. Yet if thou swearest,
• 4:38:54
  Speaker 2: thou mayst prove false that lover's perjuries they say jove
• 4:38:58
  Speaker 2: lapse of gentle Romeo, if thou didst love pronounce it faithfully,
• 4:39:05
  Speaker 2: Or if thou think I am too quickly won, I'll
• 4:39:08
  Speaker 2: frown and be perverse and say thee nay. So thou
• 4:39:11
  Speaker 2: wilt woo. But else not for the world. In truth,
• 4:39:16
  Speaker 2: fair Montague, I am too fond, and therefore thou mayst
• 4:39:20
  Speaker 2: think myhavior light. But trust me, gentlemen, I'll prove more
• 4:39:24
  Speaker 2: true than those that have more cunning to be strange.
• 4:39:28
  Speaker 2: I should have been more strange, I must confess, but
• 4:39:31
  Speaker 2: that thou overhearst there I was ware my true love's passion. Therefore,
• 4:39:37
  Speaker 2: pardon me and not impute this yielding to light love
• 4:39:41
  Speaker 2: which the dark Knight has so discovered.
• 4:39:46
  Speaker 1: In this and all the rest, her heart, fluttering between pleasure, hope,
• 4:39:50
  Speaker 1: and fear, seems to have dictated to her tongue and
• 4:39:54
  Speaker 1: calls true love spoken simple modesty of the same sort
• 4:39:58
  Speaker 1: what bolder and virtue and innocence as her soliloquy after
• 4:40:03
  Speaker 1: her marriage with Romeo.
• 4:40:06
  Speaker 2: Gallop at pace ye fiery footed steeds towards Phoebus's mansion.
• 4:40:11
  Speaker 2: Such a wagoner as Phaeton, would whip you to the
• 4:40:14
  Speaker 2: west and bring in cloudy Knight, immediately spread thy close
• 4:40:20
  Speaker 2: curtain love performing night, that runaway's eyes may wink, and
• 4:40:25
  Speaker 2: Romeo leaped to these arms, hunt talked of and unseen
• 4:40:30
  Speaker 2: lovers can see to do their amorous rights by their
• 4:40:33
  Speaker 2: own beauties. Or if love be blind, it best agrees
• 4:40:37
  Speaker 2: with Knight. Come civil, Knight, Thou sober suited matron, all
• 4:40:42
  Speaker 2: in black, and learn me how to lose a winning
• 4:40:45
  Speaker 2: match played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. Put my
• 4:40:49
  Speaker 2: unmanned blood bathing in thy cheeks with thy black mantle,
• 4:40:53
  Speaker 2: till strange love grown bold thinks true love acted simple modesty.
• 4:40:59
  Speaker 2: Come night, Come Romeo, Come thou day and night, for
• 4:41:04
  Speaker 2: thou wilt lie upon the wings of night, whiter than
• 4:41:06
  Speaker 2: new snow on a raven's back. Come gentle night, Come loving,
• 4:41:12
  Speaker 2: black browed night. Give me my Romeo, And when he
• 4:41:17
  Speaker 2: shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars,
• 4:41:20
  Speaker 2: and he will make the face of heaven so fine
• 4:41:23
  Speaker 2: that all the world shall be in love with night,
• 4:41:26
  Speaker 2: and pay no worship to the garish sun. Now I
• 4:41:29
  Speaker 2: have bought the mansion of a love, but not possessed it.
• 4:41:32
  Speaker 2: And though I am sould not yet enjoyed. So tedious
• 4:41:35
  Speaker 2: is this day, as is the night before some festival,
• 4:41:39
  Speaker 2: to an impatient child that hath new robes and may
• 4:41:42
  Speaker 2: not wear them.
• 4:41:45
  Speaker 1: We the rather insert this passage here, inasmuch as we
• 4:41:49
  Speaker 1: have no doubt it has been expunged from the family Shakespeare.
• 4:41:54
  Speaker 1: Such critics do not perceive that the feelings of the
• 4:41:57
  Speaker 1: heart sanctify without dissing the impulses of nature, without refinement themselves.
• 4:42:05
  Speaker 1: They confound modesty with hypocrisy. Not so the German critic Schlegel,
• 4:42:10
  Speaker 1: speaking of Romeo and Juliet, he says it was a
• 4:42:14
  Speaker 1: reserve for Shakespeare to unite purity of heart in the
• 4:42:18
  Speaker 1: glow of imagination, sweetness and dignity of manners, and passionate
• 4:42:23
  Speaker 1: violence in one ideal picture. The character is indeed one
• 4:42:28
  Speaker 1: of perfect truth and sweetness. It is nothing forward, nothing coi,
• 4:42:32
  Speaker 1: nothing affected or coquettish about it. It is a pure
• 4:42:36
  Speaker 1: effusion of nature. It is, as Frank as it is modest,
• 4:42:41
  Speaker 1: for it has no thought that it wishes to conceal.
• 4:42:45
  Speaker 1: It reposes in conscious innocence on the strength of its affections.
• 4:42:50
  Speaker 1: Its delicacy does not consist in coldness and reserve, but
• 4:42:55
  Speaker 1: in combining warmth of imagination and tenderness of heart with
• 4:42:59
  Speaker 1: the most fully uptuous sensibility. Love is a gentle flame
• 4:43:04
  Speaker 1: that rarefies and expands her whole being. What an idea
• 4:43:08
  Speaker 1: of trembling haste and airy grace borne upon the thoughts
• 4:43:12
  Speaker 1: of love does the Friar's exclamation give of her as
• 4:43:16
  Speaker 1: she approaches his cell to be married. Here comes the lady.
• 4:43:22
  Speaker 1: Oh so light a foot will ne'er wear out the
• 4:43:26
  Speaker 1: everlasting flint. A lover may bestride the gossamer that idles
• 4:43:32
  Speaker 1: in the wanton summer air, and yet not fall So
• 4:43:36
  Speaker 1: light is vanity. The tragic part of this character is
• 4:43:41
  Speaker 1: of a peace with the rest. It is the heroic
• 4:43:44
  Speaker 1: founded on tenderness and delicacy of this kind are her
• 4:43:48
  Speaker 1: resolution to follow the Friar's advice, and the conflict in
• 4:43:52
  Speaker 1: her bosom between apprehension and love when she comes to
• 4:43:56
  Speaker 1: take the sleeping poison. Shakespeare is blamed for the mixture
• 4:44:00
  Speaker 1: of low characters. If this is a deformity, it is
• 4:44:04
  Speaker 1: the source of a thousand beauties. One instance is the
• 4:44:08
  Speaker 1: contrast between the guileless simplicity of Juliet's attachment to her
• 4:44:12
  Speaker 1: first love and the convenient policy of the nurse in
• 4:44:16
  Speaker 1: advising her to marry Paris, which excites such indignation in
• 4:44:21
  Speaker 1: her mistress ancient damnation, Oh most wicked fiend, et cetera.
• 4:44:28
  Speaker 1: Romeo is Hamlet and Love. There is the same rich
• 4:44:32
  Speaker 1: exuberance of passion and sentiment in the one that there
• 4:44:35
  Speaker 1: is a thought and sentiment in the other. Both are
• 4:44:39
  Speaker 1: absent and self involved. Both live out of themselves in
• 4:44:43
  Speaker 1: a world of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from everything. Romeo
• 4:44:50
  Speaker 1: is abstracted from everything, but is love and lost in it.
• 4:44:55
  Speaker 1: His frail thoughts dally with faint surmise, and are fashion
• 4:45:00
  Speaker 1: out of the suggestion of hope, the flatters of sleep.
• 4:45:04
  Speaker 1: He is himself only in his Juliet. She is his
• 4:45:09
  Speaker 1: only reality, his heart's true home, and idle. The rest
• 4:45:14
  Speaker 1: of the world is to him a passing dream. How
• 4:45:18
  Speaker 1: finely is this character betrayed, where he recollects himself on
• 4:45:22
  Speaker 1: seeing Paris slain at the tomb of Juliet. What said
• 4:45:28
  Speaker 1: my man when my betossed soul did not attend him
• 4:45:32
  Speaker 1: as we rode? I think he told me Paris should
• 4:45:36
  Speaker 1: have married Juliet, and again just before he hears the
• 4:45:42
  Speaker 1: sudden tidings of her death. If I may trust the
• 4:45:46
  Speaker 1: flattery of sleep, my dreams per sage some joyful news
• 4:45:51
  Speaker 1: in hand. My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne,
• 4:45:56
  Speaker 1: and all this day an unaccustomed spirit lifts me above
• 4:46:01
  Speaker 1: the ground with cheerful thoughts. I dreamt my lady Cayman
• 4:46:05
  Speaker 1: found me dead, strange dream that gives a dead man
• 4:46:08
  Speaker 1: leave to think, and breathed such life with kisses on
• 4:46:12
  Speaker 1: my lips, that I revived and was an emperor. Ah me,
• 4:46:19
  Speaker 1: how sweet is love itself possessed? When but love's shadows
• 4:46:25
  Speaker 1: are so rich in joy. Romeo's passion for Juliet is
• 4:46:31
  Speaker 1: not a first love. It succeeds and drives out his
• 4:46:34
  Speaker 1: passion for another mistress, Rosalind, as the sun hides the stars.
• 4:46:40
  Speaker 1: This is perhaps an artifice not absolute, necessary to give
• 4:46:44
  Speaker 1: us a higher opinion of the lady. While the first
• 4:46:47
  Speaker 1: absolute surrender of her heart to him enhances the richness
• 4:46:51
  Speaker 1: of the prize. The commencement, progress and ending of his
• 4:46:56
  Speaker 1: second passion, however complete in themselves, not injured if they
• 4:47:01
  Speaker 1: are not bettered by the first. The outline of the
• 4:47:04
  Speaker 1: play is taken from an Italian novel, but the dramatic
• 4:47:08
  Speaker 1: arrangement of the different scenes between the lovers, the more
• 4:47:13
  Speaker 1: than dramatic interest in the progress of the story, the
• 4:47:16
  Speaker 1: development of the characters with time and circumstances, just according
• 4:47:21
  Speaker 1: to the degree and kind of interest excited, are not
• 4:47:25
  Speaker 1: inferior to the expression of passion in nature. It has
• 4:47:29
  Speaker 1: been ingenuously remarked, among other proofs of skill in the
• 4:47:33
  Speaker 1: contrivance of the fable, that the improbability of the main
• 4:47:37
  Speaker 1: incident in the piece, the administering of the sleeping potion,
• 4:47:42
  Speaker 1: is softened and obviated from the beginning by the introduction
• 4:47:46
  Speaker 1: of the Friar on his first appearance, calling simples and
• 4:47:50
  Speaker 1: discanting on their virtues. Of the passionate scenes in this tragedy,
• 4:47:55
  Speaker 1: that between the Friar and Romeo when he is told
• 4:47:58
  Speaker 1: of his sentence of banishment, that between Juliet and the
• 4:48:01
  Speaker 1: nurse when she hears of it, and of the death
• 4:48:05
  Speaker 1: of her cousin Tibault, which bear no proportion in her mind.
• 4:48:09
  Speaker 1: When passion, after the first shock of surprise, throws its
• 4:48:13
  Speaker 1: weight into the scale of her affections, and the last
• 4:48:16
  Speaker 1: scene of the tomb are among the most natural and overpowering.
• 4:48:21
  Speaker 1: In all of these, it is not merely the force
• 4:48:23
  Speaker 1: of any one passion that is given, but the slightest
• 4:48:26
  Speaker 1: and most unlooked for transitions from one to another, the
• 4:48:31
  Speaker 1: mingling currents of every different feeling rising up and prevailing
• 4:48:35
  Speaker 1: in turn, swayed by the master mind of the poet,
• 4:48:39
  Speaker 1: as the waves undulate beneath the gliding storm. Thus, when
• 4:48:44
  Speaker 1: Juliet has, by her complaints encouraged thin Nurse to say,
• 4:48:49
  Speaker 1: shame come to Romeo, she instantly repels the wish, which
• 4:48:54
  Speaker 1: she has herself occasioned by answer.
• 4:48:59
  Speaker 2: Blistered bet tongue. For such a wish he was not
• 4:49:02
  Speaker 2: born to shame upon his brow. Shame is a shame
• 4:49:05
  Speaker 2: to sit. For tis a throne where honor may be crowned,
• 4:49:09
  Speaker 2: soul monarch of the universal earth. But what a beast
• 4:49:13
  Speaker 2: was I to chide him? So, nurse, will you speak
• 4:49:17
  Speaker 2: well of him that killed your cousin, Juliet? Shall I
• 4:49:22
  Speaker 2: speak ill of him that is my husband, ah, my
• 4:49:25
  Speaker 2: poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name? When I
• 4:49:29
  Speaker 2: thy three hours wife have mangled it?
• 4:49:32
  Speaker 1: And then follows on the neck of her remorse and
• 4:49:35
  Speaker 1: returning fondness that wish, treading almost on the brink of impiety,
• 4:49:40
  Speaker 1: but still held back by the strength of her devotion
• 4:49:42
  Speaker 1: to her lord that father, mother, nay or both were
• 4:49:47
  Speaker 1: dead rather than Romeo vanished. If she requires any other excuse,
• 4:49:53
  Speaker 1: it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her
• 4:49:56
  Speaker 1: frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being
• 4:50:00
  Speaker 1: banished from her. Perhaps one of the finest pieces of
• 4:50:03
  Speaker 1: acting that ever was witnessed on the stage is mister
• 4:50:07
  Speaker 1: Kene's manner of doing this scene and his repetition of
• 4:50:11
  Speaker 1: the word banished. He treads close, indeed, upon the genius
• 4:50:16
  Speaker 1: of his author. A passage which the celebrated actor in
• 4:50:22
  Speaker 1: able commentator, and shakespeare actors are the best commentators on
• 4:50:26
  Speaker 1: the poets did not give with equal truth or force
• 4:50:29
  Speaker 1: of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the
• 4:50:32
  Speaker 1: tomb of Juliet before he drinks the poison. Let me
• 4:50:38
  Speaker 1: peruse this face, Mercutio's kinsman, noble Count Paris, what set
• 4:50:46
  Speaker 1: my man when my buttassed soul did not attend him
• 4:50:48
  Speaker 1: as we wrote. I think he told me Paris should
• 4:50:53
  Speaker 1: have married Juliet, said he not so? Why did I
• 4:50:58
  Speaker 1: dream it so? Or? Am I mad hearing him talk
• 4:51:02
  Speaker 1: of Juliet to think it was so? Oh? Give me
• 4:51:08
  Speaker 1: thy hand, one writ with me in sour Misfortune's book.
• 4:51:14
  Speaker 1: I'll bury THEE in a triumphant grave, for here lies Juliet.
• 4:51:21
  Speaker 8: Oh, my love, my wife. Death that has sucked the
• 4:51:27
  Speaker 8: honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon
• 4:51:32
  Speaker 8: thy beauty. Thou art not conquered beauty's enseignyet is crimson
• 4:51:38
  Speaker 8: in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And Death's pale
• 4:51:42
  Speaker 8: flag has not advanced there tippalt liest thou there in
• 4:51:47
  Speaker 8: thy bloody sheet. Oh what more favor can I do
• 4:51:51
  Speaker 8: THEE than with that hand that cut thy youth in
• 4:51:55
  Speaker 8: twain to sunder his that was thine enemy. Forgive me cousin. Huh,
• 4:52:03
  Speaker 8: dear Juliet, why art thou so yet fair? I will
• 4:52:09
  Speaker 8: believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and that the lean,
• 4:52:13
  Speaker 8: abhorred monster keeps the air and dark to be his paramour.
• 4:52:18
  Speaker 8: For fear of that I will stay still with thee,
• 4:52:23
  Speaker 8: and never from this palace of dim night depart again.
• 4:52:27
  Speaker 8: Here here will I remain with worms that are thy chambermaids. Oh,
• 4:52:35
  Speaker 8: here will I set up my everlasting rest, and shake
• 4:52:40
  Speaker 8: the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world, wearied flesh eyes,
• 4:52:48
  Speaker 8: look your last arms, take your last embrace, and lips
• 4:52:54
  Speaker 8: oho you the doors of breath sealed with a righteous kiss,
• 4:52:58
  Speaker 8: a dateless bargain to engrossing death. Come bitter conduct, Come
• 4:53:05
  Speaker 8: unsavory guide, thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
• 4:53:10
  Speaker 8: the dashing rocks, may see sick, weary bark. Here's to
• 4:53:16
  Speaker 8: my love. Drinks true apothecary drugs are quick.
• 4:53:27
  Speaker 1: Thus with it kiss I die. The lines in this
• 4:53:36
  Speaker 1: speech describing the loveliness of Juliet, who is supposed to
• 4:53:39
  Speaker 1: be dead, have been compared to those in which it
• 4:53:42
  Speaker 1: is said of Cleopatra after her death that she looked
• 4:53:46
  Speaker 1: as she would take another antony, and her strong toil
• 4:53:50
  Speaker 1: of grace. And a question has been started, which is
• 4:53:54
  Speaker 1: the finest that we do not pretend to decide. We
• 4:53:58
  Speaker 1: can more easily decide between Shakespeare and any other author
• 4:54:03
  Speaker 1: than between him and himself. Shall we quote any more
• 4:54:07
  Speaker 1: passages to show his genius or the beauty of Romeo
• 4:54:11
  Speaker 1: and Juliet. At that rate we might quote the whole.
• 4:54:16
  Speaker 1: The late mister Sheridan, on being shown a volume of
• 4:54:19
  Speaker 1: the Beauties of Shakespeare, very properly asked, but where are
• 4:54:24
  Speaker 1: the other eleven? The character of Mercutio in this play
• 4:54:28
  Speaker 1: is one of the most mercurial and spirited of the
• 4:54:31
  Speaker 1: productions of Shakespeare's comic muse endev Romeo and Juliet lear
• 4:54:42
  Speaker 1: We wish that we could pass this play over and
• 4:54:45
  Speaker 1: say nothing about it. All that we can say must
• 4:54:48
  Speaker 1: fall short to the subject, or even of what we
• 4:54:51
  Speaker 1: ourselves conceive of it. To attempt to give a description
• 4:54:54
  Speaker 1: of the play itself, or of its effect upon the
• 4:54:57
  Speaker 1: mind is mere impertinence. Yet we must say something. It is, then,
• 4:55:03
  Speaker 1: the best of all Shakespeare's plays, for it is the
• 4:55:06
  Speaker 1: one in which he was the most in earnest. He
• 4:55:09
  Speaker 1: was here fairly caught in the web of his own imagination.
• 4:55:14
  Speaker 1: The passion which he has taken as his subject is
• 4:55:17
  Speaker 1: that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart,
• 4:55:22
  Speaker 1: of which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed,
• 4:55:25
  Speaker 1: and the canceling and tearing to pieces of which gives
• 4:55:28
  Speaker 1: the greatest revulsion to the frame, this depth of nature,
• 4:55:32
  Speaker 1: this force of passion, this tug and war of the
• 4:55:35
  Speaker 1: elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety,
• 4:55:40
  Speaker 1: and the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts
• 4:55:44
  Speaker 1: at finding this prop failing it. The contrast between the fixed,
• 4:55:48
  Speaker 1: immovable basis of natural affection and the rapid, irregular starts
• 4:55:52
  Speaker 1: of imagination, suddenly wrenched from all its accustomed holds and
• 4:55:57
  Speaker 1: resting places in the soul. This is what Shakespeare has given,
• 4:56:01
  Speaker 1: and what nobody else but he could give. So we
• 4:56:04
  Speaker 1: believe the mind of Lear staggering between the weight of
• 4:56:08
  Speaker 1: attachment and the hurried movements of passion, is like a
• 4:56:12
  Speaker 1: tall ship driven about by the winds, buffeted by the
• 4:56:16
  Speaker 1: furious waves, but that still rides above the storm, having
• 4:56:20
  Speaker 1: its anchor fixed to the bottom of the sea. Or
• 4:56:24
  Speaker 1: it is like the sharp rock circled by the eddying
• 4:56:27
  Speaker 1: wharpool that foams and beats against it, or like the
• 4:56:30
  Speaker 1: solid promontory pushed from its basis by the force of
• 4:56:34
  Speaker 1: an earthquake. The character of Leer itself is very finely
• 4:56:39
  Speaker 1: conceived for the purpose It is the only ground on
• 4:56:42
  Speaker 1: which such a story could be built with the greatest
• 4:56:46
  Speaker 1: truth and effect. It is his rash haste, his violent impetuosity,
• 4:56:51
  Speaker 1: his blindness to everything but the dictates of his passions
• 4:56:55
  Speaker 1: or affections, that produces all his misfortunes, that agrivates, his
• 4:57:00
  Speaker 1: impatience of them, that enforces are pity for him. The
• 4:57:05
  Speaker 1: part which Cordelia bears in the scene is extremely beautiful.
• 4:57:10
  Speaker 1: The story is almost told in the first words she utters.
• 4:57:13
  Speaker 1: We see at once the precipice on which the poor
• 4:57:17
  Speaker 1: old king stands from his own extravagant and credulous importunity,
• 4:57:23
  Speaker 1: the indiscreet simplicity of her love, which to be sure,
• 4:57:27
  Speaker 1: has a little of her father's obstinacy in it, and
• 4:57:30
  Speaker 1: the hollowness of her sister's pretensions. Almost the first burst
• 4:57:35
  Speaker 1: of that noble tide of passion which runs through the
• 4:57:38
  Speaker 1: play is the remonstrance of Kent to his royal master
• 4:57:42
  Speaker 1: on the injustice of his sentence against his youngest daughter
• 4:57:46
  Speaker 1: b Kent unmannerly when Leir is mad. This manly, plainless
• 4:57:52
  Speaker 1: which draws down at him the displeasure of the unadvised king,
• 4:57:55
  Speaker 1: is worthy of the fidelity with which he adheres to
• 4:57:59
  Speaker 1: his fallen fortune. The true character of the two eldest daughters,
• 4:58:03
  Speaker 1: Reagan and Goneril, they are so thoroughly hateful that we
• 4:58:07
  Speaker 1: do not even like to repeat their names, breaks out
• 4:58:10
  Speaker 1: in their answer to Cordelia, who desires them to treat
• 4:58:14
  Speaker 1: their father well, prescribe us not our duties. Their hatred
• 4:58:19
  Speaker 1: of advice being proportion to their determination to do wrong
• 4:58:24
  Speaker 1: and to their hypocritical pretensions to do right. Their deliberate
• 4:58:29
  Speaker 1: hypocrisy adds the last finishing to the odiousness of their characters.
• 4:58:34
  Speaker 1: It is the absence of this detestable quality that is
• 4:58:38
  Speaker 1: the only relief in the character of Edmund the Bastard,
• 4:58:41
  Speaker 1: and that at times reconciles us to him. We are
• 4:58:45
  Speaker 1: not tempted to exaggerate the guilt of his conduct. When
• 4:58:48
  Speaker 1: he himself gives it up as a bad business and
• 4:58:52
  Speaker 1: writes himself down plain villain, nothing more can be said
• 4:58:56
  Speaker 1: about it. His religious honesty in this this respect is admirable.
• 4:59:02
  Speaker 1: One speech of his is worth a million. His father Gloucester,
• 4:59:06
  Speaker 1: whom he has just deluded with the forged story of
• 4:59:09
  Speaker 1: his brother Edgar's designs against his life, accounts for his
• 4:59:12
  Speaker 1: unnatural behavior and the strange depravity of the times from
• 4:59:16
  Speaker 1: the late eclipses in the sun in the moon, Edmund,
• 4:59:20
  Speaker 1: who is in the secret, says when he is gone,
• 4:59:24
  Speaker 1: this is the excellent floppery of the world, that, when
• 4:59:27
  Speaker 1: we are sick in fortune, often the surfights of our
• 4:59:30
  Speaker 1: own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun,
• 4:59:34
  Speaker 1: the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity,
• 4:59:38
  Speaker 1: fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves and treacherous by spherical predominance, drunkards,
• 4:59:46
  Speaker 1: liars and adulters by an enforced obedience of planetary influence,
• 4:59:53
  Speaker 1: and all that we are evil in by divine thrusting
• 4:59:55
  Speaker 1: on an admirable evasion of hor master man to lay
• 5:00:00
  Speaker 1: his coatish disposition on the charge of a star. My
• 5:00:04
  Speaker 1: father compounded my mother under the dragon's tale, and my
• 5:00:08
  Speaker 1: nativity was under ursa major, so that it follows I
• 5:00:13
  Speaker 1: am rough and lecherous. I should have been what I
• 5:00:15
  Speaker 1: am had the maidenly a star in the firmanent twinkled
• 5:00:19
  Speaker 1: on my bastardizing the whole character its careless, light hearted
• 5:00:24
  Speaker 1: villainy contrasted with a sullen, rancorous malignity of Reagan and Goneril,
• 5:00:30
  Speaker 1: its connection with the conduct of the underplot, in which
• 5:00:34
  Speaker 1: Gloucester's persecution of one of his sons and the ingratitude
• 5:00:38
  Speaker 1: of another form a counterpart to the mistakes and misfortunes
• 5:00:42
  Speaker 1: of Leir. His double amour with two sisters, and the
• 5:00:46
  Speaker 1: share which he has in bringing about the fatal catastrophe,
• 5:00:51
  Speaker 1: are all managed with an uncommon degree of skill and power.
• 5:00:56
  Speaker 1: It has been said, and we think justly that the
• 5:00:59
  Speaker 1: third act of Othello and the three first acts of
• 5:01:02
  Speaker 1: Leer are Shakespeare's great masterpieces in the logic of passion,
• 5:01:07
  Speaker 1: that they contain the highest examples not only of the
• 5:01:10
  Speaker 1: force of individual passion, but of its dramatic vicisitudes and
• 5:01:14
  Speaker 1: striking effects arising from the different circumstances and characters of
• 5:01:18
  Speaker 1: the person speaking. We see the ebb and flow of
• 5:01:21
  Speaker 1: the feeling, its pauses and feverish starts, its impatience of opposition,
• 5:01:26
  Speaker 1: its accumulating force when it has time to recollect itself,
• 5:01:31
  Speaker 1: the manner in which it avails itself of every passing
• 5:01:33
  Speaker 1: word or gesture, its haste to repel insinuation, the alternate
• 5:01:39
  Speaker 1: contraction and dilation of the soul in all the dazzling
• 5:01:44
  Speaker 1: fence of controversy in this mortal combat with poisoned weapons
• 5:01:49
  Speaker 1: aimed at the heart, where each wound is fatal. We
• 5:01:53
  Speaker 1: have seen in Othello, how the unsuspecting frankness and impetuous
• 5:01:58
  Speaker 1: passions of the Moor are played upon and exasperated by
• 5:02:02
  Speaker 1: the artful dexterity of Yaga. When the present play, that
• 5:02:07
  Speaker 1: which aggravates the sense of sympathy and the reader, and
• 5:02:10
  Speaker 1: of uncontrollable anguish in the swollen hearted Leer, is the
• 5:02:13
  Speaker 1: petrifying indifference, the cold, calculating, obdurate selfishness of his daughters,
• 5:02:20
  Speaker 1: his keen passions seem wetted on their stony hearts. The
• 5:02:23
  Speaker 1: contrast would be too painful, the shock too great, but
• 5:02:27
  Speaker 1: for the intervention of the fool, whose well timed levity
• 5:02:31
  Speaker 1: comes in to break the continuity of feeling when it
• 5:02:34
  Speaker 1: can no longer be borne, and to bring into play
• 5:02:37
  Speaker 1: again the fibers of the heart, just as they are
• 5:02:40
  Speaker 1: growing rigid from overstrained excitement. The imagination is glad to
• 5:02:45
  Speaker 1: take refuge in the half comic, half serious comments of
• 5:02:49
  Speaker 1: the fool, Just as the mind, under the extreme anguish
• 5:02:52
  Speaker 1: of a surgical operation vents itself in sallies of