Latest / Characters of Shakespeare's Plays / Characters of Shakespeare's Plays - part 2
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Wit. The character was also a grotesque ornament of the
- 0:03Speaker 1: barbarous times, and which alone the tragic groundwork of the
- 0:07Speaker 1: story could be laid. In another point of view, it
- 0:11Speaker 1: is indispensable inasmuch as while it is a diversion to
- 0:15Speaker 1: the too great intensity of our disgust, it carries the
- 0:18Speaker 1: pathos to the highest pitch of which it is capable,
- 0:22Speaker 1: by showing the pitiable weakness of the old king's conduct
- 0:26Speaker 1: on its irretrievable consequences. In the most familiar point of view,
- 0:30Speaker 1: Lear may well beat at the gate which led his
- 0:33Speaker 1: folly in after as the fool says, he has made
- 0:37Speaker 1: his daughters his mother's. The characters dropped in the third
- 0:41Speaker 1: act to make room for the entrance of Edgar's mad tom,
- 0:44Speaker 1: which well accords with the increasing bustle and wildness of
- 0:48Speaker 1: the incidents. And nothing can be more complete than the
- 0:52Speaker 1: distinction between Lear's reel in Edgar's assumed madness, while the
- 0:57Speaker 1: resemblance and the cause of their distresses from the severing
- 1:01Speaker 1: of the nearest ties of natural affection keeps up a
- 1:04Speaker 1: unity of interest. Shakespeare's mastery over his subject, if it
- 1:09Speaker 1: was not art, was owing to a knowledge of the
- 1:12Speaker 1: connecting links of the passions and their effect upon the mind,
- 1:16Speaker 1: still more wonderful than any systematic adherence to rules, and
- 1:20Speaker 1: that anticipated and outdid all the efforts of the most
- 1:24Speaker 1: refined art, not inspired and rendered instinctive by genius. One
- 1:30Speaker 1: of the most perfect displays of dramatic power is the
- 1:33Speaker 1: first interview between Lear and his daughter, after the designed
- 1:38Speaker 1: affronts upon him, which till one of his knights reminds
- 1:41Speaker 1: him of them, his sanguine temperament had led him to overlook.
- 1:45Speaker 1: He returns with his train from hunting, and his usual
- 1:49Speaker 1: impatience breaks out in his first words, let me not
- 1:53Speaker 1: stay at jot for dinner, go get it ready. He
- 1:57Speaker 1: then encounters the faithful Kent in disguis eyes and retains
- 2:01Speaker 1: him in his service, and the first trial of his
- 2:04Speaker 1: honest duty is to trip up the heels of the
- 2:07Speaker 1: officious Steward, who makes so prominent and despicable a figure
- 2:11Speaker 1: through the piece on the entrance of Goneril. The following
- 2:15Speaker 1: dialogue takes place Lear, how now, daughter, what makes that front?
- 2:23Speaker 1: Letton methinks you are too much of late in the
- 2:27Speaker 1: frown fool thoust a pretty fellow, when thou hast no
- 2:33Speaker 1: need to care for her frowning. Now thou art, and
- 2:36Speaker 1: oh without the figure, I am better than thou art.
- 2:40Speaker 1: Now I am a fool, thou art, and nothing Yes forsooth,
- 2:45Speaker 1: I will hold my tongue to Goneril, so your face
- 2:48Speaker 1: bids me, though you say nothing, Mum, mum. He that
- 2:53Speaker 1: keeps nor crust nor crumb, weary of all shall want some.
- 2:58Speaker 1: That's a shield peace, pointing to lear.
- 3:03Speaker 2: Goneril, not only sir this year all licensed fool, but
- 3:09Speaker 2: other of your insolent retinue to hourly carp and quarrel,
- 3:14Speaker 2: breaking forth in rank, and not to be endured riots.
- 3:18Speaker 2: I had thought, by making this well known unto you,
- 3:21Speaker 2: to have found a safe for dress, But now grow
- 3:23Speaker 2: fearful by what yourself, too late have spoken done. That
- 3:27Speaker 2: you protect this course and put it on by your allowance,
- 3:31Speaker 2: which if you should, the fault would not escape censure,
- 3:33Speaker 2: nor the redresses sleep, which in the tender of a
- 3:36Speaker 2: wholesome wheel might in their working. Do you that offense,
- 3:39Speaker 2: which else for shame, that then necessity would call discreet proceeding.
- 3:45Speaker 1: Fool For you trow n uncle, the hedge sparrow fed
- 3:50Speaker 1: the cuckoo so long that it had its head bit
- 3:53Speaker 1: off by young so out point the candle, and we
- 3:57Speaker 1: were left darkling. Are you are, daughter, Goneril.
- 4:06Speaker 2: Come sir, I world you would make use of that
- 4:09Speaker 2: good wisdom, whereof I know you are fraud, and put
- 4:12Speaker 2: away these dispositions which have late transform you from what
- 4:16Speaker 2: you rightly are.
- 4:18Speaker 1: Fool may not to ask no. When the cart draws
- 4:21Speaker 1: the horse, whoop, jug, I love thee Lear? Does any
- 4:28Speaker 1: here know me? Why this is not Lear? Does Lear walk? Thus? Speak? Thus?
- 4:37Speaker 1: Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakness or his
- 4:42Speaker 1: discernings are lethargy hah waking? This is not so? Who
- 4:48Speaker 1: is it the cantummy? Who I am Lear's shadow? I
- 4:52Speaker 1: would learn that, for by the marks of sovereignty, of
- 4:56Speaker 1: knowledge and of reason I should be false persuaded. I
- 5:01Speaker 1: had daughters your name, fair gentlewoman, Goneril, Come sir.
- 5:10Speaker 2: This admiration is much of the favor of other your
- 5:13Speaker 2: new pranks. I do beseech you to understand my purposes. Aright,
- 5:17Speaker 2: as you are old and reverend, you should be wise.
- 5:21Speaker 2: Here you do keep a hundred knights and squires, men
- 5:24Speaker 2: so disordered, so debauched and bold, that this our court
- 5:28Speaker 2: infected with their manners shows like a riots in epicurism,
- 5:33Speaker 2: and less to make it more like a tavern or
- 5:34Speaker 2: a brothel than a graced palace. The shame itself to
- 5:38Speaker 2: speak for instant remedy be then desired by her, that
- 5:41Speaker 2: else will take the thing she begs A little to
- 5:44Speaker 2: disquantity your train and the remainder that shall still depend
- 5:48Speaker 2: to be such men as maybe sort your age and
- 5:51Speaker 2: know themselves. And you.
- 5:54Speaker 1: Leir darkness and devils saddle my horses, call my train together,
- 6:03Speaker 1: degenerate bastard. I'll not trouble thee yet have I left
- 6:09Speaker 1: a daughter? Goneril?
- 6:13Speaker 2: You strike my people, and your disordered rebel makes servants
- 6:17Speaker 2: of their betters.
- 6:19Speaker 1: Enter Albany Leir, whoa that too late? Repents? Oh sir,
- 6:28Speaker 1: are you come? Is it your will? Speak? Sir? Prepare
- 6:34Speaker 1: my horses. Albany in gratitude. Thou marble hearted fiend, more
- 6:43Speaker 1: hideous when thou ShoWest THEE in a child than the
- 6:48Speaker 1: sea monster. Albany. Pray, sir, be patient, lear detested kite
- 7:00Speaker 1: highest to Goneril, my train are men of choice and
- 7:05Speaker 1: rarest parts that all particulars of duty know and in
- 7:10Speaker 1: the most exact regards support the worships of their name. Oh,
- 7:16Speaker 1: most small fault, How ugly didst thou in Cordelia's show,
- 7:22Speaker 1: which like an engine wrenched my frame of nature from
- 7:27Speaker 1: the fixed place, drew from my heart all love and
- 7:32Speaker 1: added to the gall Oh lear, lear, lear, beat at
- 7:40Speaker 1: the gate, that let thy folly in striking his head,
- 7:46Speaker 1: and thy dear judgment, out go go my people Albany,
- 7:55Speaker 1: My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant of
- 7:59Speaker 1: what hath moved you. Lear it may be so, my lord,
- 8:06Speaker 1: Here nature, here, dear goddess, here says spend thy purpose.
- 8:13Speaker 1: If thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful, and
- 8:17Speaker 1: to her womb convey sterrillity, try up in her the
- 8:22Speaker 1: organs of increase, and from her derogate body never spring
- 8:27Speaker 1: a babe to honor her. If she must team create
- 8:32Speaker 1: her child of spleen, that it may live to be
- 8:36Speaker 1: a thwart di natured torment to her, Let it stamp
- 8:41Speaker 1: wrinkles in her brow of youth with caden tears, fret
- 8:45Speaker 1: channels in her cheeks, turn all her mother's pains and
- 8:50Speaker 1: benefits to laughter and contempt, that she may feel, how
- 8:55Speaker 1: sharper than a serpent's tooth. It is to have a
- 8:59Speaker 1: thankless child a way away exit Albany. Now, gods that
- 9:09Speaker 1: we adore, whereof comes this goneril.
- 9:14Speaker 2: Never afflict yourself to know the cause. But let his
- 9:17Speaker 2: disposition have that scope that dotage gives it.
- 9:22Speaker 1: Re enter Lear, Lear, what fifty of my followers at
- 9:29Speaker 1: a clap within a fortnight, Albany. What's the matter, sir Lear,
- 9:39Speaker 1: I'll tell thee life and death. I am ashamed that
- 9:44Speaker 1: thou hast power to shake my manner. Thus the Goneril,
- 9:50Speaker 1: that these hot tears which break from me perforce shouldn't
- 9:54Speaker 1: make THEE worth them. Blast and fox upon thee. The
- 9:59Speaker 1: unt woundings of a father's curse pierce every sense about thee.
- 10:05Speaker 1: Old fond eyes between this cause again, I'll pluck you
- 10:11Speaker 1: out and cast you with the waters that you lose
- 10:15Speaker 1: to temper clay, ha, ha, is it come to this?
- 10:21Speaker 1: Let it be so? Yet? Have I left a daughter
- 10:25Speaker 1: who I am sure is kind and comfortable. When she
- 10:29Speaker 1: shall hear this of thee with her nails shall flay
- 10:34Speaker 1: thy wolfish visage. Thou shalt find that I'll resume the
- 10:39Speaker 1: shape which thou dost think I have cast off forever
- 10:45Speaker 1: exit Lear, Kent and attendants. This is certainly fine, no
- 10:52Speaker 1: wonder that Lear says after it. Oh, let me be
- 10:55Speaker 1: not mad, Not mad, sweet heavens, feeling its effects by anticipation.
- 11:02Speaker 1: But fine as is this burst of rage and indignation
- 11:06Speaker 1: at the first blow aimed at his hopes and expectations.
- 11:10Speaker 1: It is nothing near so fine as what follows from
- 11:12Speaker 1: his double disappointment and his lingering efforts to see which
- 11:16Speaker 1: of them he shall lean upon for support and find
- 11:19Speaker 1: comfort in, when both his daughters turn against his age
- 11:22Speaker 1: and weakness. It is with some difficulty that Leir gets
- 11:26Speaker 1: to speak with his daughter Reagan and her husband at
- 11:29Speaker 1: Gloucester's castle. In concert with Goneril, they have left their
- 11:33Speaker 1: own home on purpose to avoid him. His apprehensions are
- 11:38Speaker 1: fast alarmed by this circumstance, and when Gloucester, whose guest
- 11:42Speaker 1: they are, urges the fiery temper of the Duke of
- 11:45Speaker 1: Cornwall as an excuse for not importuning him a second time,
- 11:49Speaker 1: Leir breaks out vengeance, plague, death, confusion, fiery, what fiery quality?
- 12:00Speaker 1: Why Gloucester. I'll speak with the Duke of Cornwall and
- 12:04Speaker 1: his wife afterwards feeling perhaps not well himself. He is
- 12:10Speaker 1: inclined to admit their excuse from illness, but then recollecting
- 12:15Speaker 1: that they have set his messenger Kent in the stocks,
- 12:19Speaker 1: all suspicions are roused again, and he insists on seeing
- 12:23Speaker 1: them enter Cornwall. Reagan, Gloucester and servants. Lear, good morrow
- 12:31Speaker 1: to you both, Cornwall, Hail to your grace. Kent is
- 12:38Speaker 1: set at liberty, Reagan.
- 12:42Speaker 2: I am glad to see your highness, Lear Reagan.
- 12:47Speaker 1: I think you are. I know what reason I have
- 12:51Speaker 1: to think so if thou shouldst not be glad, I
- 12:54Speaker 1: would divorce me from thy mother's tomb suppler king an adulteress.
- 13:00Speaker 1: Oh are you free to Kent some other time for that,
- 13:06Speaker 1: beloved Reagan? Thy sister's not, O Reagan, she hath tied,
- 13:12Speaker 1: sharp toothed unkindness like a vulture. Here points to his heart.
- 13:19Speaker 1: I can scarce speak to thee thou'lt not believe of
- 13:23Speaker 1: how depraved a quality, O Reagan.
- 13:28Speaker 2: Reagan, I pray you, sir, take patience. I have hope
- 13:32Speaker 2: you less know how to value her dessert than she
- 13:35Speaker 2: discant her duty.
- 13:37Speaker 1: Lear say, how is that? Reagan?
- 13:44Speaker 2: I cannot think my sister in the least would fail
- 13:46Speaker 2: her obligation. If Sir, perchance she has restrained the riots
- 13:51Speaker 2: of your followers, tis on such ground and to such
- 13:54Speaker 2: wholesome end as clears her from all blame.
- 13:58Speaker 1: Lear my curses on her.
- 14:02Speaker 2: Reagan, Oh, sir, you are old nature, and you stands
- 14:07Speaker 2: on the very verge of her confine. You should be
- 14:10Speaker 2: ruled and led by some discretion that discerns your state
- 14:14Speaker 2: better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you, but to
- 14:19Speaker 2: our sister, you do make return. Say you have wronged.
- 14:22Speaker 1: Her, Sir, Leir, ask her forgiveness? Do you but mark
- 14:29Speaker 1: how this becomes the use? Dear daughter, I confess that
- 14:34Speaker 1: I am old. Age is unnecessary on my knees. I
- 14:39Speaker 1: beg that you'll vouchsafe me raiment bed and food.
- 14:44Speaker 2: Reagan, good, Sir, No more, these are insightly tricks. Return
- 14:49Speaker 2: you to my sister, Leir.
- 14:53Speaker 1: Never Reagan, she hath abated me of half my train,
- 14:59Speaker 1: look bank upon me, struck me with her tongue, most
- 15:04Speaker 1: serpent upon the very heart. All the stored vengeances of
- 15:09Speaker 1: heaven fall on her ungrateful top strike her young bones,
- 15:16Speaker 1: you taking airs with lameness cornwall Fi, Sir Fi Leir,
- 15:26Speaker 1: you nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames into her scornful eyes,
- 15:33Speaker 1: infect her beauty, You fan sucked fogs drawn by the
- 15:39Speaker 1: powerful sun to fall and blast her pride.
- 15:45Speaker 2: Reagan, oh the blessed gods, so you wish on me
- 15:49Speaker 2: when the rash mood is on.
- 15:51Speaker 1: Lear, No, Reagan, thouch shall never have my curse. Thy
- 15:58Speaker 1: tender hefted nature shall not give thee or to harshness.
- 16:02Speaker 1: Her eyes are fierce, But thine do comfort to not burn.
- 16:07Speaker 1: Tis not in THEE to grudge my pleasures, to cut
- 16:10Speaker 1: off my train, to bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes,
- 16:16Speaker 1: and in conclusion, to oppose the bolt against my coming in.
- 16:21Speaker 1: Thou better knowest the offices of nature, bond of childhood,
- 16:26Speaker 1: effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude, Thy half of the kingdom,
- 16:32Speaker 1: thou hast not forgot wherein I THEE endowed Reagan, good Sir,
- 16:38Speaker 1: to the purpose trumpets within? Lear, who put my man
- 16:45Speaker 1: in the stocks cornwall? What trumpet's that? Enter, Steward, Reagan,
- 16:54Speaker 1: I know it.
- 16:55Speaker 2: My sisters disapproves her letter that she would soon be
- 16:58Speaker 2: here is your late come, Lear.
- 17:03Speaker 1: This is a slave whose easy borrowed pride dwells in
- 17:07Speaker 1: the fickle grace of her. He follows out, varlet from
- 17:12Speaker 1: my sight Cornwall? What means your grace? Leir? Who stopped
- 17:21Speaker 1: my servant, Reagan? I have good hope thou didst not know?
- 17:26Speaker 1: Aunt who comes here? Oh heavens, enter Goneril. If you
- 17:35Speaker 1: do love old men, if your sweet sway, allow obedience,
- 17:41Speaker 1: if yourselves are old, make it your cause. Send down
- 17:46Speaker 1: and take my part. Art not ashamed to look upon
- 17:51Speaker 1: this beard to Goneril, Oh, Reagan, wilt thou take her
- 17:57Speaker 1: by the hand, Goneril?
- 18:02Speaker 2: Why not by the answer? How have I offended? All's
- 18:05Speaker 2: not offense? That indiscretion finds and dotage terms.
- 18:09Speaker 1: So, Leir of sights, you are too tough? Will you
- 18:17Speaker 1: yet hold? How came my man in the stocks? Cornwall?
- 18:24Speaker 1: I set him there, Sir, But his own disorders deserved
- 18:28Speaker 1: much less advancement, Leir, You did you? Reagan?
- 18:38Speaker 2: I pray you, father, being weak, seem so if till
- 18:44Speaker 2: the expiration of your month you will return, and sojourn
- 18:47Speaker 2: with my sister, dismissing half your train. Come then to me.
- 18:52Speaker 2: I am now from home and out of that provision
- 18:54Speaker 2: which shall be needful for your entertainment.
- 18:58Speaker 1: Leir, return to her and fifty men dismissed. No, Rather,
- 19:07Speaker 1: I abjure all roofs and choose to be a comrade
- 19:10Speaker 1: with a wolf and owl, to wait against the nimity
- 19:14Speaker 1: of the air, necessity, sharp pinch. Return with her. Why
- 19:22Speaker 1: the hot blooded France that dowerless took our youngest born,
- 19:27Speaker 1: I could as well be brought to me his throne
- 19:31Speaker 1: and squire like pension beg to keep base life afoot.
- 19:37Speaker 1: Return with her, persuade me rather to be slave and
- 19:41Speaker 1: sumter to this detested groom. Looking on the steward goneril.
- 19:49Speaker 2: At your choice, sir lear.
- 19:53Speaker 1: Now I pray THEE daughter, do not make me mad.
- 19:58Speaker 1: I will not trouble thee my child farewell, will no
- 20:02Speaker 1: more meet, no more see one another. But yet thou
- 20:08Speaker 1: art my flesh, my blood, my daughter, or rather a
- 20:15Speaker 1: disease that's in my flesh, which I must needs call mine.
- 20:19Speaker 1: Thou art a bile, a plague, sore, an embossed carbuncle
- 20:24Speaker 1: in my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee. Let
- 20:29Speaker 1: shame come when it will. I do not call it.
- 20:32Speaker 1: Did not bid the thunderbear shoot, nor tell tales of
- 20:36Speaker 1: thee to hide judging Jove, men, when thou canst be
- 20:41Speaker 1: better at thy leisure, I can be patient. I can
- 20:44Speaker 1: stay with Reagan I and my hundred knights.
- 20:49Speaker 2: Reagan, I'm not altogether so, Sir, I looked not for
- 20:54Speaker 2: you yet, nor unprovided for your fit. Welcome, give ear, sir,
- 20:58Speaker 2: to my sister. For those that mingle reason with your
- 21:01Speaker 2: passion must be content to think you old and so.
- 21:05Speaker 2: But she knows what she does.
- 21:08Speaker 1: Lear is this well spoken?
- 21:11Speaker 2: Now, Reagan, I dare a vouch it, Sir? What fifty followers?
- 21:19Speaker 1: Is it not? Well?
- 21:20Speaker 2: What should you need more? Yea or so many? Set them?
- 21:23Speaker 2: Both Charge and Danger speak against so great a number?
- 21:27Speaker 2: How in one house should many people under two commands
- 21:30Speaker 2: hold amity? Tis hard almost impossible, Goneril. Why might you not,
- 21:37Speaker 2: my lord, receive attendance from those that she calls servants
- 21:40Speaker 2: or for mine?
- 21:42Speaker 1: Reagan?
- 21:44Speaker 2: Why not, my Lord? If then they chanced to slack you,
- 21:47Speaker 2: we would control them. If you will come to me
- 21:50Speaker 2: for an hour, spy Danger, I entreat you to bring
- 21:53Speaker 2: but five and twenty to no more will I give
- 21:56Speaker 2: place or notice?
- 21:58Speaker 1: Lear. I gave you all, Reagan.
- 22:05Speaker 2: And in good time you gave it.
- 22:07Speaker 1: Lear made you my guardians, my depositors, but kept her
- 22:14Speaker 1: reservation to be followed with such a number. What must
- 22:19Speaker 1: I come to you with five and twenty? Reagan said
- 22:23Speaker 1: you so, Reagan.
- 22:27Speaker 2: And speak it again, my lord, no more with me, Lear.
- 22:32Speaker 1: Those wicked creatures yet to look well favored when others
- 22:37Speaker 1: are more wicked, not being the worst, stands in some
- 22:41Speaker 1: rank of praise. I'll go with thee to Goneril, thy
- 22:47Speaker 1: fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art
- 22:52Speaker 1: twice her love? Goneril, hear me, my lord?
- 22:57Speaker 2: What needs you five and twenty ten or five to
- 23:01Speaker 2: follow in a house where twice so many have a
- 23:03Speaker 2: command to attend you?
- 23:06Speaker 1: Reagan?
- 23:07Speaker 2: What need one?
- 23:09Speaker 1: Lear? Oh? Reason? Not the need? Our basest beggars are
- 23:15Speaker 1: in the poorest things superfluous allow not to nature more
- 23:20Speaker 1: than nature needs. Man's life is cheap as beast. Thou
- 23:26Speaker 1: art a lady, if only to go warm we're gorgeous.
- 23:30Speaker 1: Why nature needs not what thou gorgeous west, which scarcely
- 23:36Speaker 1: keeps THEE warm? But for true need you heavens, give
- 23:42Speaker 1: me that patience which I need. You see me, hear you.
- 23:46Speaker 1: God's a poor old man, as full of grief as
- 23:51Speaker 1: age wretched in both. If it be you that stir
- 23:56Speaker 1: these daughter's hearts against their father, fool me not so
- 24:01Speaker 1: much to bear it. Tamely touch me with noble anger. Oh,
- 24:07Speaker 1: let no woman's weapons water drops stain my man's cheeks. No, you,
- 24:15Speaker 1: unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both
- 24:20Speaker 1: that all the world shall I will do such things.
- 24:26Speaker 1: What they are yet I know not, but they shall
- 24:29Speaker 1: be the terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep, No,
- 24:36Speaker 1: I'll not weep. I have full cause of weeping. But
- 24:41Speaker 1: this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, or
- 24:46Speaker 1: e'er i'll weep, Oh, fool, I shall go mad, exit
- 24:53Speaker 1: lear Gloucester, tent and fool. If there is anything in
- 24:59Speaker 1: any author like this yearning of the heart, these throes
- 25:02Speaker 1: of tenderness, this profound expression of all that can be
- 25:05Speaker 1: thought and felt in the most heartrending situations, we are
- 25:09Speaker 1: glad of it. But it is in some author that
- 25:12Speaker 1: we have not yet read. The scene in the Storm
- 25:16Speaker 1: where he is exposed to all the fury of the elements,
- 25:19Speaker 1: though grand and terrible, is not so fine. But the
- 25:23Speaker 1: moralizing scenes with mad tom Kent and Gloucester are upon
- 25:27Speaker 1: a par with the former. His exclamation in the supposed
- 25:31Speaker 1: trial scene of his daughters, see the little dogs and
- 25:34Speaker 1: all tray Blanche and Sweetheart, See they bark at me,
- 25:39Speaker 1: his issuing his orders, Let them anatomize Reagan, see what
- 25:44Speaker 1: breeds a better heart? And his reflection when he sees
- 25:48Speaker 1: the misery of Edgar. Nothing but his unkind daughters could
- 25:53Speaker 1: have brought him to this are in a style of
- 25:56Speaker 1: pathos where the extremest resources of the imagination are called
- 26:01Speaker 1: in to lay open the deepest movements of the heart,
- 26:04Speaker 1: which was peculiar to Shakespeare, and the same stylen spirit
- 26:09Speaker 1: is as interrupting the fool who ask whether a madman
- 26:13Speaker 1: be a gentleman or a yeoman, by answering a king
- 26:18Speaker 1: a king. The indirect part the Gloucester takes in these scenes,
- 26:23Speaker 1: where his generosity leads him to relieve Leir and resent
- 26:27Speaker 1: the cruelty of his daughters at the very time that
- 26:30Speaker 1: he is himself instigated to seek the life of his
- 26:33Speaker 1: son and suffering under the sting of his supposed ingratitude,
- 26:38Speaker 1: is a striking accompaniment to the situation of Lear. Indeed,
- 26:43Speaker 1: the manner in which the threads of the story are
- 26:45Speaker 1: woven together is almost as wonderful in the way of
- 26:49Speaker 1: art as the carrying on the tide of passion, still
- 26:52Speaker 1: varying and unimpaired, is on the score of nature. Among
- 26:56Speaker 1: the remarkable instances of this kind are edgard meeting with
- 27:00Speaker 1: his old blind father, the deception he practices upon him
- 27:05Speaker 1: when he pretends to lead him to the top of
- 27:07Speaker 1: Dover Cliff. Come on, sir, here's the place to prevent
- 27:12Speaker 1: his ending his life and miseries together, his encounter with
- 27:16Speaker 1: a perfidious steward whom he kills, and is finding the
- 27:19Speaker 1: letter from Goneril to his brother upon him, which leads
- 27:23Speaker 1: to the final catastrophe and brings the weal of justice
- 27:26Speaker 1: full circle home to the guilty parties. The bustle and
- 27:31Speaker 1: rapid succession of events in the last scene is surprising,
- 27:35Speaker 1: but the meeting between Leir and Cordelia is by far
- 27:38Speaker 1: the most affecting part of them. It has all the
- 27:41Speaker 1: wildness of poetry and all the heartfelt truth of nature.
- 27:46Speaker 1: The previous account of her reception of the news of
- 27:48Speaker 1: his unkind treatment, hurt involuntary reproaches to her sisters, shame.
- 27:54Speaker 1: Lady's shame leers backwardness to see his daughter. The picture
- 27:59Speaker 1: of the desolate state to which he is reduced a
- 28:02Speaker 1: lack tis he why he was met? Even now as
- 28:05Speaker 1: mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud, only prepare the
- 28:10Speaker 1: way for Anne. Heighten our expectation of what follows, And
- 28:14Speaker 1: assuredly this expectation is not disappointed when, through the tender
- 28:20Speaker 1: care of Cordelia, he revives in recollects her. Cordelia, how
- 28:26Speaker 1: does my wiy Lord?
- 28:29Speaker 2: How fares your majesty?
- 28:32Speaker 1: Lear? You to me wrong to take me out of
- 28:36Speaker 1: the grave. Thou art a soul and bliss? But I
- 28:41Speaker 1: am bound upon a wheel of fire that mine own
- 28:43Speaker 1: tears do scald like molten lead. Cordelia, Sir, do you
- 28:51Speaker 1: know me? Lear? You are a spirit? I know? When
- 28:57Speaker 1: did you die? Cordelia?
- 29:01Speaker 2: Still still far wide.
- 29:04Speaker 1: Physician, he's scarce awake. Let him alone a while? Lear,
- 29:12Speaker 1: Where have I been? Where am I? Fair? Daylight? I
- 29:18Speaker 1: mightly abused? I should even die with pity to see another. Thus,
- 29:23Speaker 1: I know not what to say. I will not swear.
- 29:27Speaker 1: These are my hands. Let's see I feel this pin prick?
- 29:32Speaker 1: Would I were assured of my condition. Cordelia.
- 29:37Speaker 2: Oh, look upon me, sir, and hold your hands in
- 29:41Speaker 2: benediction or me. No, sir, you must not kneel.
- 29:47Speaker 1: Lear pray, do not mock me. I'm a very foolish,
- 29:53Speaker 1: fond old man for scoring upward, not an hour more
- 29:58Speaker 1: nor less. And to you, plainly, I fear I am
- 30:01Speaker 1: not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you
- 30:06Speaker 1: and know this man. Yet I am doubtful, for I'm
- 30:10Speaker 1: mainly ignorant to what place this is, and all the
- 30:14Speaker 1: skill I have remembers not these germents, nor I know
- 30:18Speaker 1: not where I did launch last night. Do not laugh
- 30:22Speaker 1: at me, for as I'm a man, I think this
- 30:26Speaker 1: lady to be my child, Cordelia.
- 30:30Speaker 2: Cordelia, and so I am.
- 30:33Speaker 1: I am almost equal to this, and awful beauty is
- 30:39Speaker 1: their consolation of each other when after the triumph of
- 30:42Speaker 1: their enemies they are led to prison.
- 30:46Speaker 2: Cordelia, we are not the first who, with best meaning,
- 30:52Speaker 2: have incurred the worst. For thee oppressor king, and my
- 30:56Speaker 2: cast down myself can also up frown. All fortunes frown.
- 31:01Speaker 2: Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
- 31:06Speaker 1: Lear, no, no, no, no, come let's away to prison.
- 31:18Speaker 1: We two alone will sing like birds in the cage.
- 31:21Speaker 1: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down and
- 31:25Speaker 1: ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live and pray and sing,
- 31:31Speaker 1: and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and
- 31:35Speaker 1: hear poor rogues talk of court news, and we'll talk
- 31:40Speaker 1: with them too, who loses and who wins, who's in,
- 31:44Speaker 1: who's out? And take upon us the mystery of things,
- 31:48Speaker 1: as if we were God's spies, and we'll wear out
- 31:52Speaker 1: in a walled prison. Packs and sects of great ones
- 31:56Speaker 1: that ebb and flow by the moon Edmond, take them away.
- 32:04Speaker 1: Lear upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense.
- 32:13Speaker 1: The concluding events are sad, painfully sad, but the pathos
- 32:18Speaker 1: is extreme. The oppression of the feelings is relieved by
- 32:22Speaker 1: the very interest we take in the misfortunes of others,
- 32:25Speaker 1: and by the reflections to which they give birth. Cordelia's
- 32:30Speaker 1: hanged in prison by the orders of the bastard Edmund,
- 32:33Speaker 1: which are known too late to be countermanded and leared,
- 32:37Speaker 1: eyes broken hearted, lamenting over her Lear, and my poor
- 32:45Speaker 1: fool is hanged. No, no, no life Why should a dog,
- 32:53Speaker 1: a horse, a rat have life? Thou no breath at all?
- 32:59Speaker 1: Oh wilt come no more? Never, never, never, never, never,
- 33:09Speaker 1: pray you undo this button, Thank you, sir. He dies,
- 33:18Speaker 1: and indeed we feel the truth of what Kent says
- 33:21Speaker 1: on the occasion vex not his ghost. Oh let him pass.
- 33:26Speaker 1: He hates him, that would, upon the rack of the
- 33:29Speaker 1: rough world, stretch him out longer. Yet a happy ending
- 33:34Speaker 1: has been contrived for this play, which is approved of
- 33:38Speaker 1: by doctor Johnson and condemned by Schlegel. A better authority
- 33:42Speaker 1: than either, on any subject in which poetry and feeling
- 33:46Speaker 1: are concerned, has given it in favor of Shakespeare. In
- 33:50Speaker 1: some remarks on the acting of Lear with which we
- 33:53Speaker 1: shall conclude this account. The Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted.
- 34:00Speaker 1: The contemptible machinery with which they mimic the storm which
- 34:04Speaker 1: he goes out in is not more inadequate to represent
- 34:07Speaker 1: the horrors of the real elements than any actor can
- 34:11Speaker 1: be to represent Lear. The greatness of Lear is not
- 34:15Speaker 1: in corporal dimension, but an intellectual. The explosion of his
- 34:19Speaker 1: passions are terrible as of volcano. They are storms turning
- 34:23Speaker 1: up and disclosing to the bottom. That rich see his
- 34:26Speaker 1: mind with all its vast riches. It is his mind
- 34:30Speaker 1: which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood
- 34:34Speaker 1: seems too insignificant to be thought on, even as he
- 34:38Speaker 1: himself neglects it. On the stage, we see nothing but
- 34:42Speaker 1: corporal infirmities and weaknesses, the impotence of rage. While we
- 34:47Speaker 1: read it, we see not lear, But we are lear.
- 34:51Speaker 1: We are in his mind. We are sustained by a
- 34:54Speaker 1: grangeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms, and
- 34:58Speaker 1: the aberrations of his reason. We discover a mighty irregular
- 35:02Speaker 1: power of reasoning in methodized from the ordinary purposes of life,
- 35:07Speaker 1: but exerting its powers as the wind blows where it
- 35:10Speaker 1: listeth at will on the corruptions and abuses of mankind.
- 35:15Speaker 1: What have looks or tones to do with the sublime
- 35:18Speaker 1: identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves?
- 35:24Speaker 1: When in his reproaches to them for conniving at the
- 35:27Speaker 1: injustice of his children, he reminds them that they themselves
- 35:31Speaker 1: are old. What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What
- 35:36Speaker 1: has the voice or the eye to do with such things?
- 35:40Speaker 1: But the play is beyond all art, As the tamperings
- 35:44Speaker 1: with its show. It is too hard and stony. It
- 35:48Speaker 1: must have love scenes and happy ending. It is not
- 35:51Speaker 1: enough that Cordelia is a daughter. She must shine as
- 35:54Speaker 1: a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the
- 35:57Speaker 1: nostrils of his levitan for Garrick and his followers, the
- 36:01Speaker 1: showmen of the scene, to draw it out more easily
- 36:04Speaker 1: a happy ending. As if the living martyrdom that Lear
- 36:08Speaker 1: had gone through the flaying of his feelings alive did
- 36:12Speaker 1: not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life,
- 36:15Speaker 1: the only decorous thing for him, if he is to
- 36:19Speaker 1: live and be happy after, if he could sustain this
- 36:22Speaker 1: world's burden. After Why all this putter and preparation, Why
- 36:26Speaker 1: torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy, As if the
- 36:31Speaker 1: childish pleasure of getting his guilt robes and scepter again
- 36:36Speaker 1: could tempt him to act over again his misused station,
- 36:40Speaker 1: As if, at his years and with his experience, anything
- 36:44Speaker 1: was left but to die. Footnote see an article called
- 36:49Speaker 1: Theatrialia in the second volume of The Reflector by Charles Lamb.
- 36:56Speaker 1: Four things have struck us in reading Leir One that
- 37:02Speaker 1: poetry is an interesting study for this reason that it
- 37:06Speaker 1: relates to whatever is most interesting in human life. Whoever
- 37:10Speaker 1: therefore has a contempt for poetry has a contempt for
- 37:14Speaker 1: himself and humanity. Two that the language of poetry is
- 37:21Speaker 1: superior to the language of painting, because the strongest of
- 37:24Speaker 1: our recollections relate to feelings, not to faces. Three that
- 37:32Speaker 1: the greatest strength of genius is shown in describing the
- 37:35Speaker 1: strongest passions, for the power of the imagination in works
- 37:40Speaker 1: of invention must be in proportion to the force of
- 37:44Speaker 1: the natural impressions which are the subject of them. Four
- 37:50Speaker 1: That the circumstance which balances the pleasure against the pain
- 37:54Speaker 1: and tragedy is that, in proportion to the greatness of
- 37:58Speaker 1: the evil, is our sense and desire of the opposite
- 38:02Speaker 1: good excited. And that our sympathy with actual suffering is
- 38:06Speaker 1: lost in the strong impulse given to our natural affections,
- 38:11Speaker 1: and carried away with a swelling tide of passion that
- 38:15Speaker 1: gushes from and relieves the heart end of lear Richard
- 38:23Speaker 1: the Second. Richard the Second is a play little known
- 38:28Speaker 1: compared with Richard the Third, which last is a play
- 38:32Speaker 1: that every unfledged candidate for theatrical fame chooses to strut
- 38:37Speaker 1: and fret his hour upon the station. Yet we confess
- 38:41Speaker 1: that we prefer the nature and feeling of the one
- 38:44Speaker 1: to the noise and bustle of the other, at least
- 38:48Speaker 1: as we are so often forced to see it acted.
- 38:51Speaker 1: In Richard the Second. The weakness of the king leaves
- 38:54Speaker 1: us leisure to take a greater interest in the misfortunes
- 38:57Speaker 1: of the man. After the first act, in which the
- 39:01Speaker 1: arbitrariness of his behaviour only proves his want of resolution,
- 39:06Speaker 1: we see him staggering under the unlooked for blows of fortune,
- 39:10Speaker 1: bewailing his loss of kingly power, not preventing it, sinking
- 39:15Speaker 1: under the aspiring genius of bollingbroke his authority, trampled on
- 39:20Speaker 1: his hopes, failing him and his pride crushed and broken
- 39:23Speaker 1: down under insults and injuries which his own misconduct had provoked,
- 39:29Speaker 1: but which he is not courage or manliness to resent
- 39:34Speaker 1: the change of tone and behavior in the two competitors
- 39:37Speaker 1: for the throne, according to their change of fortune. From
- 39:41Speaker 1: the capricious sentence of banishment passed by Richard upon Bohlingberg,
- 39:46Speaker 1: the suppliant offers and modest pretensions of the latter on
- 39:49Speaker 1: his return to the high and haughty tone with which
- 39:53Speaker 1: he accepts Richard's resignation of the crown after the loss
- 39:57Speaker 1: of all his power, the use which he makes of
- 40:00Speaker 1: the deposed king to grace his triumphal progress through the
- 40:03Speaker 1: streets of London, and the final intimation of his wish
- 40:07Speaker 1: for his death, which immediately finds a servile executioner, is
- 40:12Speaker 1: marked throughout with complete effect and without the slightest appearance
- 40:16Speaker 1: of effort. The steps by which Bolingbroke mounts the throne
- 40:21Speaker 1: are those by which Richard sinks into the grave. We
- 40:25Speaker 1: feel neither respect nor love for the deposed monarch, for
- 40:29Speaker 1: he is as wanting an energy as in principle. But
- 40:33Speaker 1: we pity him, for he pities himself. His heart is
- 40:37Speaker 1: by no means hardened against himself, but bleeds afresh at
- 40:41Speaker 1: every new stroke of mischance, and his sensibility, absorbed in
- 40:45Speaker 1: his own person and unused to misfortune, is not only
- 40:50Speaker 1: tenderly alive to its own sufferings, but without the fortitude
- 40:54Speaker 1: to bear them. He is, however, human in his distresses.
- 41:00Speaker 1: To feel pain and sorrow, weakness, disappointment, remorse, and anguish
- 41:05Speaker 1: is the lot of humanity, and we sympathize with him accordingly.
- 41:10Speaker 1: The sufferings of the man make us forget that he
- 41:13Speaker 1: ever was a king. The right assumed by sovereign power
- 41:17Speaker 1: to trifle at its will with the happiness of others
- 41:20Speaker 1: as a matter of course, or to remit its exercise
- 41:24Speaker 1: as a matter of favor, is strikingly shown in the
- 41:28Speaker 1: sentence of banishment so unjustly pronounced on Bolingbrooke and Mowbray.
- 41:34Speaker 1: And and what Bolingbroke says, when four years of his
- 41:38Speaker 1: banishment are taken off with his little reason, how long
- 41:42Speaker 1: a time lies in one little word, Four legging winters
- 41:48Speaker 1: and four wanton springs end in a word such is
- 41:53Speaker 1: the breath of kings. A more affecting image of the
- 41:58Speaker 1: loneliness of a state of vas sile can hardly be
- 42:01Speaker 1: given than by what Bolingbrook afterwards observes of his having
- 42:06Speaker 1: sighed his English breadth and foreign clouds, or then that
- 42:10Speaker 1: conveyed in Milbury's complaint a being banished for life the
- 42:15Speaker 1: language I've learned these forty years, my native English, now
- 42:20Speaker 1: I must forego. And now my tongue's use is to
- 42:24Speaker 1: me no more than an unstringed vile, or a harp,
- 42:28Speaker 1: or like a cunning instrument cased up, or being open
- 42:33Speaker 1: put into his hands that knows no touch to tune
- 42:36Speaker 1: the harmony. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
- 42:41Speaker 1: too foreign years to be a pupil. Now, how very
- 42:46Speaker 1: beautiful is all this, and at the same time, how
- 42:50Speaker 1: very English too. Richard the second may be considered as
- 42:55Speaker 1: the first of that series of English historical plays, in
- 42:59Speaker 1: which is armor of the invincible knights of old, in
- 43:03Speaker 1: which their hearts seem to strike against the coats of mail,
- 43:07Speaker 1: where their blood tingles. For the fight and words are
- 43:10Speaker 1: but the harbingers of blows of this state of accomplished barbarism.
- 43:15Speaker 1: The appeal of Bolingbroke and Mowbray is an admirable specimen.
- 43:20Speaker 1: Another of these keen encounters of their wits, which serve
- 43:24Speaker 1: to wet the talker's swords, is where Almurle answers, in
- 43:29Speaker 1: the presence of Bolingbroke, to the charge which Bagott brings
- 43:32Speaker 1: against him, of being an accessory in Gloucester's death. Fitzwater,
- 43:40Speaker 1: if that thy valor stand on sympathies, there is my gauge, Almorle,
- 43:45Speaker 1: engaged to thine by that fair son, that shows me
- 43:49Speaker 1: where thou stand'st I hear thee say, and vauntingly thou
- 43:53Speaker 1: spakest it that thou wert cause of Noble Gloucester's death.
- 43:58Speaker 1: If thou deniest it twenty times thou liest, and I
- 44:02Speaker 1: will turn thy falsehood to thy heart where it was forged.
- 44:07Speaker 1: With my rape yer's point, allmorrow, thou darest not coward
- 44:14Speaker 1: live to see the day Fitzwater. Now by my soul,
- 44:21Speaker 1: I would it were this hour amorrow, Fitzwater, thou art
- 44:28Speaker 1: damn to hell for this percy amoral thou Liest, His
- 44:35Speaker 1: honor is as true in this appeal as thou art
- 44:39Speaker 1: all unjust, and that thou art so there. I throw
- 44:43Speaker 1: my gage to prove it on thee to the extremest
- 44:47Speaker 1: point of mortal breathing. Seize it. If thou darst allmorrow,
- 44:55Speaker 1: and if I do not, may my hands wrought off
- 44:59Speaker 1: and never brandish more revengeful steel over the glittering helmet
- 45:03Speaker 1: of my foe who sets me out by heaven. I'll
- 45:08Speaker 1: throw it all. I have a thousand spirits in my
- 45:11Speaker 1: breast to answer twenty thousands, such as you, Surrey, my
- 45:19Speaker 1: lord Fitzwater. I remember well the very time all Marrow,
- 45:23Speaker 1: and you to talk, Fitzwater, my lord tis true. You
- 45:29Speaker 1: are in presence then, and you can witness with me.
- 45:32Speaker 1: This is true, Surrey, as false by heaven, as Heaven
- 45:38Speaker 1: itself is true. Fitzwater, Sorry, thou liest, Surrey, dishonorable boy,
- 45:49Speaker 1: that lie shall lie so heavy on my sword, that
- 45:53Speaker 1: it shall render vengeance and revenge till thou the lie giver,
- 45:58Speaker 1: and that lie rest and earth as quiet as thy
- 46:01Speaker 1: father's skull, and proof whereof there is mine honors, pond
- 46:07Speaker 1: engage it to the trial. If thou darest, fitz Water,
- 46:13Speaker 1: how fondly dost thou spur a forward horse? If I
- 46:17Speaker 1: dare eat, or drink, or breathe or live, I dare
- 46:21Speaker 1: meet Surrey in a wilderness and spit upon him, whilst
- 46:25Speaker 1: I say ye, lies and lies and lies. There is
- 46:30Speaker 1: my bond of faith to tie thee to thy strong correction.
- 46:35Speaker 1: As I do hope to thrive in this new world.
- 46:38Speaker 1: All merle is guilty of my true appeal. The truth
- 46:43Speaker 1: is that there is neither truth nor honor in all
- 46:46Speaker 1: these noble persons. They answer words with words, as they
- 46:50Speaker 1: do blows with blows in mere self defense. Nor have
- 46:54Speaker 1: they any principle whatever, but that of courage in maintaining
- 46:58Speaker 1: any wrong they dare commit, or any falsehood which they
- 47:02Speaker 1: find it useful to assert. How different were these noble
- 47:06Speaker 1: knights and barons bold from their more refined descendants in
- 47:10Speaker 1: the present day, who, instead of deciding questions of right
- 47:14Speaker 1: by brute force, refer everything to convenience, fashion, and good
- 47:19Speaker 1: breeding in point of any abstract love of truth or justice.
- 47:24Speaker 1: They are just the same now that they were then.
- 47:28Speaker 1: The characters of old John of Gaunt and his brother
- 47:31Speaker 1: yorke uncles to the King, the one stern and foreboding,
- 47:36Speaker 1: the other honest, good natured, doing all for the best,
- 47:40Speaker 1: and therefore doing nothing, are well kept up. The speech
- 47:44Speaker 1: of the former in praise of England is one of
- 47:47Speaker 1: the most eloquent that ever was penned. We should perhaps
- 47:51Speaker 1: hardly be disposed to feed the pampered egotism of our
- 47:55Speaker 1: countrymen by quoting this description, were it to not that
- 48:00Speaker 1: the conclusion of it, which looks prophetic, may qualify any
- 48:05Speaker 1: improper degree of exultation. This royal throne of kings, this
- 48:12Speaker 1: sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
- 48:18Speaker 1: this other Eden demi paradise, this fortress built by nature
- 48:23Speaker 1: for herself against infection in the hand of war, This
- 48:28Speaker 1: happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone
- 48:32Speaker 1: set in the silver sea, which serves it in the
- 48:35Speaker 1: office of a wall, or as a moat, defensive to
- 48:39Speaker 1: a house, against the envy of less happy lands. This nurse,
- 48:44Speaker 1: this teeming womb of royal kings, feared for their breed
- 48:48Speaker 1: and famous for their birth, renowned for their deeds, as
- 48:52Speaker 1: far from home, for Christian service and true chivalry as
- 48:56Speaker 1: in the suppulcher and stubborn Jewry, the world's ransom blessed
- 49:02Speaker 1: mary Son, This land of such dear souls, this dear
- 49:07Speaker 1: dear land, dear for her reputation through the world, is
- 49:12Speaker 1: now leased out. I die, pronouncing it like to a
- 49:16Speaker 1: tenement or pelting farm. England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
- 49:22Speaker 1: whose rocky shore beats back the envious surge of watery Neptune,
- 49:27Speaker 1: is bound in with shame, with inky blots and wrought
- 49:31Speaker 1: and parchment bonds. That England that was wont to conquer
- 49:36Speaker 1: others hath made a shameful conquest of itself. The character
- 49:42Speaker 1: of bolingbroke. Afterwards, Henry the fourth is drawn with a
- 49:47Speaker 1: masterly hand patient for occasion, and then steadily availing himself
- 49:52Speaker 1: of it, seeing his advantage afar off, but only seizing
- 49:56Speaker 1: on it when he has it within his reach. Humble, crafty,
- 50:01Speaker 1: bold and aspiring, encroaching by regular but slow degrees, building
- 50:07Speaker 1: power on opinion, and cementing opinion by power. His disposition
- 50:12Speaker 1: is first unfolded by Richard himself, who, however, is too
- 50:17Speaker 1: self willed and secure to make a proper use of
- 50:20Speaker 1: his knowledge. Ourself in bushy bagatar and green observed his
- 50:27Speaker 1: courtship of the common people. How he did seem to
- 50:31Speaker 1: dive into their hearts with humble and familiar courtesy. What
- 50:36Speaker 1: reverence he did throw away on slaves, wooing poor craftsmen
- 50:41Speaker 1: with a craft of smiles, and impatient underbearing of his fortune,
- 50:46Speaker 1: as tware to banish their affections with him, off goes
- 50:50Speaker 1: his bondet to an oyster wench, a brace of draymen.
- 50:54Speaker 1: Bid God speat him well, and had the tribute of
- 50:57Speaker 1: his supple knee, with thanks my countryman, my loving friends,
- 51:02Speaker 1: as were our England. In reversion his and he our
- 51:07Speaker 1: subjects next degree and hope. Afterwards, he gives his own
- 51:12Speaker 1: character to Percy. In these words, I thank thee gentle Percy,
- 51:18Speaker 1: and be sure I count myself and nothing else, so
- 51:21Speaker 1: happy as in a soul remembering my good friends. And
- 51:26Speaker 1: as my fortune ripens with thy love, it shall be
- 51:29Speaker 1: still thy true love's recompense. We know how he afterwards
- 51:35Speaker 1: kept his promise. His bold ascertation of his own rights,
- 51:39Speaker 1: his pretended submission to the king, and the ascendancy which
- 51:43Speaker 1: he tactically assumes over him without openly claiming it as
- 51:47Speaker 1: soon as he has him in his power are characteristic
- 51:50Speaker 1: traits of this ambitious and politic azurper. But the part
- 51:55Speaker 1: of Richard himself gives the chief interest to the play Dolly.
- 52:00Speaker 1: His vices, his misfortunes, his reluctance to part with a crown,
- 52:05Speaker 1: his fear to keep it, his weak and womanish regrets,
- 52:10Speaker 1: his starting tears, his fits of hectic passion, his smothered majesty,
- 52:16Speaker 1: pass and succession before us, and make a picture as
- 52:19Speaker 1: natural as it is affecting. Among the most striking touches
- 52:24Speaker 1: of Pathos are his wish, oh, that I were a
- 52:28Speaker 1: mockery king of snow, to melt away before the sun
- 52:32Speaker 1: of bolingbroke, and the incident of the poor groom who
- 52:37Speaker 1: comes to visit him in prison and tells him how
- 52:40Speaker 1: it yearned his heart that Bolingbroke, upon his coronation day,
- 52:45Speaker 1: rode on the Rhone Barbary. We shall have occasion to
- 52:49Speaker 1: return hereafter to the character of Richard the second. In
- 52:53Speaker 1: speaking of Henry the sixth, there is only one passage more,
- 52:58Speaker 1: the description of his entrance in to London with Bolingbroke,
- 53:01Speaker 1: which we should like to quote here if it had
- 53:04Speaker 1: not been so used and worn out, so thumbed and
- 53:08Speaker 1: got by, wrote, so praised and painted. But its beauty
- 53:12Speaker 1: surmounts all these considerations. Duchess, my Lord, you told me
- 53:20Speaker 1: you would tell the rest when weeping made you break
- 53:23Speaker 1: the story off of our two cousins coming into London York.
- 53:29Speaker 1: Whirre did I leave, Duchess at that sad stop, my Lord,
- 53:35Speaker 1: where rude misgoverned hands from windowtops threw dust and rubbish
- 53:40Speaker 1: on King Richard's head York? Then, as I said, the
- 53:46Speaker 1: Duke Great Bolingbroke, mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,
- 53:52Speaker 1: which his aspiring writer seemed to know, with slow but
- 53:56Speaker 1: stately pace, kept on his course, while all tongues cried
- 54:01Speaker 1: God save thee bolingbroke. You would have thought the very
- 54:05Speaker 1: windows spake so many greedy looks of young and old,
- 54:08Speaker 1: through casements darted their desiring eyes upon his visage, and
- 54:13Speaker 1: that all the walls with painted imagery had set at
- 54:17Speaker 1: once Jesus preserved thee welcome bolingbroke, whilst he from one
- 54:24Speaker 1: side to the other, turning bareheaded, lower than his proud
- 54:28Speaker 1: steed's neck, bespaked them. Thus I thank you, countrymen, And
- 54:33Speaker 1: thus still doing thus he passed along duchess alas poor Richard,
- 54:42Speaker 1: where rides he the while yorke. As in a theater,
- 54:48Speaker 1: the eyes of men, after a well graced actor leaves
- 54:51Speaker 1: the stage are idly bent on him that enters next,
- 54:56Speaker 1: thinking his prattle to be tedious, even so, or with
- 55:01Speaker 1: much contempt, men's eyes did scowl on Richard. No man
- 55:05Speaker 1: cried God save him, No joyful tongue gave him his
- 55:10Speaker 1: welcome home. But dust was thrown upon his sacred head,
- 55:15Speaker 1: which with such gentle sorrow he shook off his face,
- 55:20Speaker 1: still combating with tears and smiles, the badges of his
- 55:24Speaker 1: grief and patience, that had not God for some strong
- 55:29Speaker 1: purpose steeled the hearts of men, They must perforce have melted,
- 55:34Speaker 1: and barbarism itself have pitied him. And of Richard the
- 55:41Speaker 1: second Henry the fourth in two parts. If Shakespeare's fondness
- 55:49Speaker 1: for the ludicrous sometimes led to faults in his tragedies,
- 55:53Speaker 1: which was not often the case, he is made of
- 55:55Speaker 1: amends by the character of Falstaff. This is perhaps the
- 56:00Speaker 1: substantial comic character that ever was invented. Sir John carries
- 56:05Speaker 1: a most portly presence in the mind's eye, and in him,
- 56:09Speaker 1: not to speak it profanely, we behold the fullness of
- 56:12Speaker 1: the spirit of wit and humor bodily we are as
- 56:16Speaker 1: well acquainted with his person as his mine. And his
- 56:19Speaker 1: jokes come upon us of double force, and relish from
- 56:23Speaker 1: the quantity of flesh through which they make their way.
- 56:26Speaker 1: As he shakes his fat sides of laughter, or lards
- 56:30Speaker 1: the lean earth as he walks along. Other comic characters seem,
- 56:34Speaker 1: if we approach and handle them, to resolve themselves into air,
- 56:38Speaker 1: and to then air. But this is embodied, impalpable to
- 56:42Speaker 1: the grossest apprehension. It lies three fingers deep upon the ribs,
- 56:47Speaker 1: It plays about the lungs and the diaphragm. Of all
- 56:51Speaker 1: the force of animal enjoyment. His body is like a
- 56:54Speaker 1: good estate to his mind, from which he receives rents
- 56:57Speaker 1: and revenues of profit and pleasure and kind according to
- 57:01Speaker 1: its extent and the richness of the soil. Wit is
- 57:05Speaker 1: often a meager substitute for pleasurable sensation, an effusion of
- 57:10Speaker 1: spleen and petty spite at the comforts of other from
- 57:13Speaker 1: feeling none in itself. Falstaff's wit is an emanation of
- 57:18Speaker 1: a fine constitution, an exuberance of good humor and good nature,
- 57:23Speaker 1: an overflowing of his love of laughter and good fellowship,
- 57:27Speaker 1: a giving vent to his heart's ease, and over contentment
- 57:31Speaker 1: with himself and others. He would not be in character
- 57:34Speaker 1: if he are not so fat as he is, For
- 57:37Speaker 1: there is the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of
- 57:40Speaker 1: his imagination and the pampered self indulgence of his physical appetites.
- 57:46Speaker 1: He manures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he
- 57:50Speaker 1: does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out
- 57:53Speaker 1: his jokes as he would a capon or a haunch
- 57:56Speaker 1: of ennison, where there is cut and come again, and
- 57:59Speaker 1: pours out upon them the oil of gladness. His tongue
- 58:03Speaker 1: drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain it
- 58:07Speaker 1: snows of meat and drink. He keeps up perpetual holiday
- 58:12Speaker 1: and open house, and we live with him in a
- 58:15Speaker 1: round of invitations to a rump and dozen. Yet we
- 58:20Speaker 1: are not to suppose that he was a mere sensualist.
- 58:24Speaker 1: All this is as much in imagination as in reality.
- 58:28Speaker 1: His sensuality does not engross and stupefies other faculties, but
- 58:33Speaker 1: ascends me into the brain, clears away all the dull,
- 58:36Speaker 1: crude vapors that environ it, and makes it full of nimble, fiery,
- 58:41Speaker 1: and delectable shapes. His imagination keeps up the ball after
- 58:46Speaker 1: his senses have done with it. He seems to have
- 58:49Speaker 1: even a greater enjoyment of the freedom from restraint, of good,
- 58:53Speaker 1: cheer of disease, of his vanity in the ideal exaggerated
- 58:58Speaker 1: descriptions which he gives them them. Then, in fact, he
- 59:02Speaker 1: never fails to enrich his discourses with allusions to eating
- 59:06Speaker 1: and drinking. But we never see him at table. He
- 59:10Speaker 1: carries his own larder about with him, and he is
- 59:13Speaker 1: himself a ton of man. His pulling out the bottle
- 59:17Speaker 1: in the field of battle is a joke to show's
- 59:20Speaker 1: contempt for glory, accompanied with danger his systematic adherents to
- 59:25Speaker 1: his epicurean philosophy in the most trying circumstances. Again, such
- 59:31Speaker 1: is his deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, that it
- 59:35Speaker 1: does not seem quite certain whether the account of his
- 59:38Speaker 1: hostess's bill found in his pocket with such an out
- 59:42Speaker 1: of the way charge for capons and sack with only
- 59:45Speaker 1: one halfpennyworth of bread, was not put there by himself
- 59:49Speaker 1: as a trick to hum with a jest upon his
- 59:51Speaker 1: favorite propensities, and as a conscious characterature of himself. He
- 59:57Speaker 1: is represented as a liar, a coward, a glutton, et cetera.
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: And yet we are not defended but delighted with him,
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: for he is all these as much to amuse others
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: to show the humorous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither malice
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: actor in himself, almost as much as upon the stage.
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: We no more object to the character of Falstaff in
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: a moral point of view, than we should think of
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: bringing an excellent comedian who should represent him to the
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: life before one of the police officers. We only consider
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: the number of pleasant lights in which he puts certain foiables,
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: the more pleasant as they are opposed to the received
- 1:00:54Speaker 1: rules and necessary restraints of society, and do not trouble ourselves,
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: but the consequences resulting from them, for no mischievous consequences
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: to result. Sir John is old as well as fat,
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: which gives a melancholy retrospective tinge to the character, and
- 1:01:12Speaker 1: by the disparity between his inclinations and his capacity for enjoyment,
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: makes it still more ludicrous and fantastical. The secret to
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: Falstaff's wit is, for the most part a masterly presence
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: of mind, an absolute self possession which nothing can disturb.
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: His repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self love, instinctive
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: evasions of everything that threatens to interrupt the career of
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: his triumphant jollity, and self complacency. His very size floats
- 1:01:48Speaker 1: him out of all his difficulties in a sea of
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: rich conceits, and he turns round on the pivot of
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: his convenience. With every occasion, and at a moment's warning,
- 1:01:59Speaker 1: hiss natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or circumstance of itself,
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: makes light of objections and provokes the most extravagant and
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: licentious answers in his own justification. His indifference to truth
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: puts no check upon his invention, and the more improbable
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: and unexpected his contrivances are the more happily because he
- 1:02:24Speaker 1: seemed to be delivered them, the anticipation of their effect
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: acting as a stimulus to the gaiety of his fancy.
- 1:02:33Speaker 1: The success of one adventurous sally gives him spirits to
- 1:02:36Speaker 1: undertake another. He deals always in round numbers, and his
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: exaggeration excuses are open palpable monstrous, as the father that
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: begets them. His dissolute carelessness of what he says discovers
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: itself in the first dialog with the Prince Falstaff, by
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: the Lord, if thou sayest true lad, and is not
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: mine hostess of the tavern, a most sweet wench, Prince Henry,
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: as the honey of Hibbla, my old lad of the castle,
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: and is not a buff jerkin, a most sweet robe
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: of Durrance Falstaff. How now, how now, mad wag what
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: in thy quips and thy quidities. What a plague have
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: I to do with a buff jerkin, Prince Henry, Why
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: what a pox have I to do with mine, hostess
- 1:03:33Speaker 1: of the tavern. In the same scene, he afterwards affects
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: melancholy from pure satisfaction of heart, and professes reform because
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: it is the farthest thing in the world from his thoughts.
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: He is no qualms of conscience, and therefore would as
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: soon talk of them as of anything else when the
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: humor takes him. Falstaff, But how I prithee, there will
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: be no more vanity, I would to God thou. And
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: I knew where a commodity of good names were to
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: be bought. And an old lord of counsel rated me
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: the other day in the street about you, sir. But
- 1:04:13Speaker 1: I marked him not, And yet he talked very wisely,
- 1:04:16Speaker 1: and in the street too, Prince Henry, thou didst well,
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: for wisdom cries out in the street, and no man
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: regards it. Falstaff, Oh, thou hast damnable iteration and art,
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: harm unto me. How God forgive THEE for it. Before
- 1:04:42Speaker 1: I knew thee, how I knew nothing? And now I
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: am if a man should speak truly little better than
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: one of the wicked, I must give over this life,
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: and I will give it over by the Lord. And
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: I do not I am a villain. I'll be damned
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: for never a king, son and Christendom, Prince Henry, Where
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: shall we take a purse tomorrow? Jack Falstaff? Where thou
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: wilt lad, I'll make one. And I do not call
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: me villainum baffle me, Prince Henry. I see a good
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: amendment of life in thee, from praying to purse taking falstaff?
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: Why how tis my vocation? Hal tis no sin for
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: a man to labor in his vocation. Of the other
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: prominent passages, his account of his pretended resistance to the
- 1:05:41Speaker 1: robbers who grew from four men in Buckram into eleven,
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: as the imagination of his own valor increased with his
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: relating it, his getting off when the truth is discovered
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: by pretending he knew the Prince. The scene in which
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: in the person of the old king he rutchures the
- 1:06:00Speaker 1: prince and gives himself a good character. The Soliloquy on
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: Honor and description of his new raised recruits, his meeting
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: with the Chief Justice, his abuse of the Prince and
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: poins who overhear him to doll tearsheet, his reconciliation of
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: Missus Quickly, who has arrested him for an old debt,
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: in whom he persuades to pawn her plate to lend
- 1:06:24Speaker 1: him ten pounds. More in the scenes which shallow and
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: silence are all inimitable. Of all of them, the scene
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: in which Falstaff plays the part first of the king
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: and then of Prince Henry is the one that has
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: been the most often quoted. We must quote it once
- 1:06:44Speaker 1: more in illustration of our remarks. Falstaff, Harry, I do
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: how thou art accompanied. For thou o the calomel. The
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: more it is trodden on, the faster it grows yet youth,
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That
- 1:07:09Speaker 1: thou art my son. I have partly thy mother's word,
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villainous trick of
- 1:07:18Speaker 1: thine eye and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: that doth warnt me. If then thou be ye son
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: to me here lies the point why being son to
- 1:07:31Speaker 1: me art thou so pointed at Shaft, the blessed son
- 1:07:36Speaker 1: of Heaven prove a miker in each Blackberr's a question
- 1:07:41Speaker 1: not to be asked. Shall the son of England prove
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: thief and take purses? A question not to be asked.
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of,
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: and it is known to many in our land by
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: the name of Pitch. This pitch, as ancient writers do report,
- 1:08:04Speaker 1: doth defile, so doth the company thou keepest for Harry.
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: Now I do not speak to thee in drink, but
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: words only, but in woes also. And yet there is
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy company,
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: but I know not his name, Prince Henry, what manner
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: of man? An it like your majesty Falsnaff, a good
- 1:08:41Speaker 1: portly man in faith, and a cordulent of a cheerful look,
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage. And as
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: I think, is age some fifty or by your lady
- 1:08:57Speaker 1: inclining to threescore. And now I do remember me his
- 1:09:02Speaker 1: name is Falstaff. If that man should be ludely given,
- 1:09:07Speaker 1: he deceiveth me. For Harry, I see virtue in his looks.
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: If then the fruit may be known by the tree
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: as the tree by the fruit, then peremptorily I speak it.
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: There is virtue in that Falstaff him. Keep with the
- 1:09:24Speaker 1: rest Spanish and tell me now thou not Varlet tell
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: me where hast thou been this month? Prince Henry, dost
- 1:09:37Speaker 1: thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me?
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: And I'll play my father Falstaff. Depose me if thou
- 1:09:48Speaker 1: dost at half so gravely, so majestically, both in word
- 1:09:53Speaker 1: and matter, hang me up by the heels for a
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: rabbit sucker or a poulterer's hair. Prince Henry. Well, here
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: I am set, Falstaff, and here I stand judge my masters,
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: Prince Henry. Now Harry, whence come you, Falstaff, my noble
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: lord from east cheap, Prince Henry. The complaints I hear
- 1:10:26Speaker 1: of thee are grievous, Falstaff. It's the blood, my lord,
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: they are false. Nay, I'll tickle ye for a young
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: prince in faith. Prince Henry, swearest thou, ungracious boy. Henceforth,
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace.
- 1:10:49Speaker 1: There's a devil haunts thee in the likeness of a
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: fat old man. A ton of man is thy companion?
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humor, that
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: bolting hutch of beastliness, that swong parcel of dropsies, that
- 1:11:06Speaker 1: huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak, bag of guts,
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: that roasted manning tree ox with a pudding in his belly,
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: That reverend Vice, that gray iniquity, that father ruffian, that
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: vanity in years, wherein is he good? But to taste
- 1:11:25Speaker 1: sack and drink it, wear in neat and cleanly, But
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: to carve a capon and he eat it. Were in cunning,
- 1:11:33Speaker 1: but in craft, were in crafty, but in villainy, were
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: in villainous, But in all things wearin worthy, but in nothing. Falstaff,
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: I would your grace would take me with you? Who
- 1:11:49Speaker 1: means your grace, Prince Henry, that villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff,
- 1:11:58Speaker 1: that old white did satan Falstaff, my lord the man
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: I know, Prince Henry, I know thou dost Falstaff. But
- 1:12:14Speaker 1: to say I know more harm in him than in myself.
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: Were to say more than I know that he is old,
- 1:12:24Speaker 1: the more the pity his white hairs do witness it.
- 1:12:28Speaker 1: But that he is saving your reference a horror master
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: that I utterly deny. If sac and sugar be a fault,
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: God help the wicked. If to be old and Mary
- 1:12:42Speaker 1: be a sin, then many an old host that I
- 1:12:46Speaker 1: know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated,
- 1:12:50Speaker 1: than Pharaoh's lean kind are to be loved. No, my
- 1:12:55Speaker 1: good lord, banish Pito, Banish bardovh banish points, but for
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being as he is
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: old Jack Falstaff, Banish not him thy Harry's company, Banish
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: plump Jack, and banish all the world. Prince Henry, I do,
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: I will knocking and hostess and Bardoff go out re
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: enter Baldoff running Bardolf. Oh, my lord, my lord, the
- 1:13:42Speaker 1: sheriff with a most monstrous watch is at the door. Falstaff,
- 1:13:49Speaker 1: out you robe, play out the play. I have much
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: to say in the behalf of that Falstaff. One of
- 1:13:57Speaker 1: the most characteristic descriptions of Sir John is that which
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: missus quickly gives of him when he asks her, what
- 1:14:05Speaker 1: is the gross sum that I owe thee.
- 1:14:09Speaker 2: Hostess I marry if thou wert an honest man, and
- 1:14:15Speaker 2: thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me
- 1:14:18Speaker 2: upon a parcel gilt garplet, sitting in my dolphin chamber
- 1:14:23Speaker 2: at the round table by sea coal fire, on Wednesday
- 1:14:26Speaker 2: in the wits in week, when the Prince broke thy
- 1:14:28Speaker 2: head for likening his father to a singing man of
- 1:14:31Speaker 2: Windsor thou didst swear to me then, as I was
- 1:14:34Speaker 2: washing thy wound, to marry me and to make me
- 1:14:37Speaker 2: my lady? Thy wife can so deny it? Did my
- 1:14:41Speaker 2: good wife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and
- 1:14:44Speaker 2: call me gossip, quickly coming into our a messer vinegar,
- 1:14:48Speaker 2: telling us she had a good dish of prance. Whereby
- 1:14:51Speaker 2: thou didst desire to eat some? Whereby I told thee
- 1:14:54Speaker 2: they were ill for a green wound. And didst thou not,
- 1:14:58Speaker 2: when she was gone downstairs, desire me to be no
- 1:15:01Speaker 2: more so familiarity with such poor people, saying that ere
- 1:15:05Speaker 2: long they should call me madam? And didst thou not
- 1:15:08Speaker 2: kiss me? And bid me fetch thee thirty shillings. I
- 1:15:12Speaker 2: put thee now to my book, growth deny it if
- 1:15:15Speaker 2: thou canst.
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: This scene is to us the most convincing proof of
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: Falseph's power of gaining over the good will of those
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: he was familiar with, except indeed Bardolph's somewhat profane exclamation
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: and hearing the account of his death, would I were
- 1:15:33Speaker 1: with him worsoever he is, whether in heaven or in hell.
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: One of the topics of exulting superiority over others most
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: common in Sir John's mouth is his coipelence and the
- 1:15:48Speaker 1: exterior marks of good living which he carries about him,
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: thus turning his vices into commodity. He accounts for the
- 1:15:57Speaker 1: friendship between the Prince and points from their legs, being
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: both of bigness, and compares justice shallow too a man
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: made after supper of a cheese pairing. There cannot be
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: a more striking gradation of character than that between falstaff
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: and shallow and shallow in silence. It seems difficult at
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: first to fall lower than the Squire, But this fool,
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: great as he is, finds an admirer in humble foil,
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: in his cousin's Silence vain of his acquaintance with Sir John,
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: who makes abut of him. He exclaims, would cousin Silence,
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: that thou hast seen that which this knight and I
- 1:16:40Speaker 1: have seen. Ay, Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: at midnight, says Sir John to Falstaff's observation, I do
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: not think master Silence had been a man of this
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: metal silence answers who I? I have been married twice
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: and once ere Now what an idea is here conveyed
- 1:17:01Speaker 1: of a prodigality of living, What good husbandry and economical
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: self denial in his pleasures? What a stock of lively recollections?
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: It is curious that Shakespeare has ridiculed in justice Shallow,
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: who was in some authority under the King, that disposition
- 1:17:22Speaker 1: to unmeaning tautology, which is the regal infirmity of later times,
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: and which it may be supposed, he acquired from talking
- 1:17:31Speaker 1: to his cousin's silence and receiving no answers, Falstaff, you
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: have here a goodly dwelling and a rich shallow baron
- 1:17:46Speaker 1: baron baron beggars, all beggars all, Sir John, marry good air,
- 1:17:52Speaker 1: spread davy, spread davy, well, said Davy Falstaff. This day
- 1:18:00Speaker 1: he serves you for good uses shallow, A good varlet
- 1:18:05Speaker 1: a good varlet, a very good Varlet by the mass,
- 1:18:08Speaker 1: I have drink too much suckets supper, a good Varlet
- 1:18:12Speaker 1: now sit down, Now sit down, come cousin the true
- 1:18:17Speaker 1: spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the stuff we
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: are made of, the practical wisdom. With the seeming fooleries
- 1:18:25Speaker 1: in the whole of the garden scene at Shallow's country seat,
- 1:18:29Speaker 1: and just before in the exquisite dialog between him and
- 1:18:32Speaker 1: Silence on the death of Old Double have no parallel
- 1:18:36Speaker 1: anywhere else. In one point of view, they are laughable
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: in the extreme. In another, they are equally affecting, if
- 1:18:45Speaker 1: it is affecting to show what a little thing is
- 1:18:48Speaker 1: human life, what a poor forked creature man is. The
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: heroic and serious part of these two plays, founded on
- 1:18:57Speaker 1: the story of Henry the fourth, is not to inferior
- 1:19:00Speaker 1: to the comic and farcical. The characters of Hotspur and
- 1:19:04Speaker 1: Prince Henry are two of the most beautiful and dramatic,
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: both in themselves and from contrast that ever were drawn.
- 1:19:12Speaker 1: They are the essence of chivalry. We like Hotspur the
- 1:19:15Speaker 1: best upon the whole, perhaps because he was unfortunate. The
- 1:19:20Speaker 1: characters of their fathers, Henry the Fourth and Old Northumberland
- 1:19:25Speaker 1: are kept up equally well. Henry naturally succeeds by his
- 1:19:29Speaker 1: prudence and caution in keeping what he has got. Northumberland
- 1:19:33Speaker 1: fails in his enterprise from an excess of the same quality,
- 1:19:37Speaker 1: and is caught in the web of his own cold
- 1:19:40Speaker 1: dilatory policy. Owen Glendower is a masterly character. It is
- 1:19:45Speaker 1: as bold and original as it is intelligible and thoroughly natural.
- 1:19:51Speaker 1: The disputes between him and Hotspur are managed with infinite
- 1:19:55Speaker 1: address and insight into nature. We cannot help pointing out
- 1:19:59Speaker 1: here some very beautiful lines where Hotspur describes the fight
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: between Glendower and Mortimer, when on the gentle sovereign sedgy Bank,
- 1:20:10Speaker 1: in single opposition, hand to hand, he did confound the
- 1:20:14Speaker 1: best part of an hour in changing parliament to a
- 1:20:17Speaker 1: great Glendower. Three times they breathed, and three times did
- 1:20:21Speaker 1: they drink. Upon agreement of swift Severan's flood, who then
- 1:20:26Speaker 1: affrighted with their bloody looks, ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
- 1:20:31Speaker 1: and hid his crisp head in the hollow bank blood
- 1:20:35Speaker 1: stained with these valiant combatants. The peculiarity and the excellence
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's poetry is that it seems as if he
- 1:20:46Speaker 1: made his imagination the hand made of nature, and nature
- 1:20:50Speaker 1: the plaything of his imagination. He appears to have been
- 1:20:54Speaker 1: all the characters, and in all the situations he describes.
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: It is as if either he had had all their
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: feelings or had lent them all his genius to express themselves.
- 1:21:06Speaker 1: There cannot be stronger instances of this than Hotspur's rage
- 1:21:11Speaker 1: when Henry the fourth forbids him to speak of Mortimer,
- 1:21:14Speaker 1: his insensibility to all that his father and uncle urged
- 1:21:17Speaker 1: to calm him, and his fine abstracted apostrophe to honor
- 1:21:22Speaker 1: by heaven, methinks they were an easy leap to pluck
- 1:21:26Speaker 1: bright honor from the moon, et cetera. After all, notwithstanding
- 1:21:31Speaker 1: the gallantry, generosity, good temper in idle freaks of the
- 1:21:36Speaker 1: mad cap Prince of Wales, we should not have been
- 1:21:39Speaker 1: sorry if Northumberland's force had come up in time to
- 1:21:44Speaker 1: decide the fate of the battle at Shrewsbury. At least
- 1:21:48Speaker 1: we always heartily sympathize with Lady Percy's grief when she exclaims,
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers? Today,
- 1:21:59Speaker 1: might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck have talked of Monmouth's grave.
- 1:22:07Speaker 1: The truth is that we never could forgive the Prince's
- 1:22:10Speaker 1: treatment of Falstaff, though perhaps Shakespeare knew what was best.
- 1:22:15Speaker 1: According to the history, the nature of the times, and
- 1:22:19Speaker 1: of the man. We speak only as dramatic critics. Whatever
- 1:22:24Speaker 1: terror the French in those days might have of Henry
- 1:22:28Speaker 1: the Fifth, yet to the readers of poetry at present,
- 1:22:32Speaker 1: Falstaff is the better man of the two. We think
- 1:22:35Speaker 1: of him him oftener. End of Henry the Fourth in
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: two parts, Henry the Fifth. Henry the Fifth is a
- 1:22:49Speaker 1: very favorite monarch with the English nation, and he appears
- 1:22:53Speaker 1: to have been also a favorite with Shakespeare, who labors
- 1:22:57Speaker 1: hard to apologize for the actions of the case by
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: showing us the character of the man as the king
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: of good fellows. He scarcely deserves this honor. He was
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: fond of war and low company. We know little else
- 1:23:13Speaker 1: of him. He was careless, dissolute and ambitious, idle or
- 1:23:18Speaker 1: doing mischief in private. He seemed to have no idea
- 1:23:23Speaker 1: of the common decencies of life, which he subjected to
- 1:23:27Speaker 1: a kind of regal license and public affairs. He seemed
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: to have no idea of any rule of right or wrong,
- 1:23:35Speaker 1: but brute force glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: and archepiscopal advice. His principles did not change with the
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: situation and professions. His adventure on Gadzill was a prelude
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: to the affair of Angincourt, only a bloodless one. Falstaff
- 1:23:57Speaker 1: was a puny prompter of violence and outrage, compared with
- 1:24:01Speaker 1: a pious and politic Archbishop of Canterbury who gave the
- 1:24:06Speaker 1: king carte blanc in a genealogical tree of his family
- 1:24:10Speaker 1: to rob and murder in circles of latitude and longitude
- 1:24:13Speaker 1: abroad to save the possessions of the church at home.
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: This appears in the speeches in Shakespeare, where the hidden
- 1:24:21Speaker 1: motives that actuate princes and their advisers in Warren policy
- 1:24:27Speaker 1: are better laid open than in speeches from the Throne
- 1:24:30Speaker 1: or Wolsack Henry. Because he did not know how to
- 1:24:34Speaker 1: govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his neighbors.
- 1:24:38Speaker 1: Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he
- 1:24:41Speaker 1: laid claim to that of France. Because he did not
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: know how to exercise the enormous power which had just
- 1:24:47Speaker 1: dropped into his hands to any one good purpose. He
- 1:24:51Speaker 1: immediately undertook a cheap and obvious resource of sovereigntity to
- 1:24:56Speaker 1: do all the mischief he could. Even absolute monarchs had
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: the wit to find out objects of laudable ambition, they
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: could only plume up their wills in adhering to the
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: more sacred formula of the royal prerogative. The right divine
- 1:25:13Speaker 1: of kings to govern wrong, because will is only then
- 1:25:17Speaker 1: triumphant when it is opposed to the will of others.
- 1:25:21Speaker 1: Because the pride of power is only then shown not
- 1:25:25Speaker 1: when it consults the rights and interest for others, but
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: when it insults and tramples on all justice and all humanity.
- 1:25:33Speaker 1: Henry declares his resolution, when France is his, to bend
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: it to his awe or break it all to pieces,
- 1:25:41Speaker 1: a resolution worthy of a conqueror, to destroy all that
- 1:25:45Speaker 1: he cannot enslave. And what adds to the joke, he
- 1:25:49Speaker 1: lays all the blame of the consequences of his ambition
- 1:25:53Speaker 1: on those who will not submit tamely to his tyranny.
- 1:25:56Speaker 1: Such is the history of kingly power from the beginning
- 1:26:00Speaker 1: to the end of the world. With this difference that
- 1:26:04Speaker 1: the object of war formerly, when the people adhered to
- 1:26:07Speaker 1: their allegiance, was to depose kings. The object latterly, since
- 1:26:12Speaker 1: the people swerved from their allegiance, has been to restore
- 1:26:16Speaker 1: kings and to make common cause against mankind. The object
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: of our late invasion and conquest of France was to
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: restore the legitimate monarch, the descendant of Hugh Capet, to
- 1:26:29Speaker 1: the throne. Henry the Fifth, in his time made war
- 1:26:33Speaker 1: on and deposed the descendant of this very Hugh Capet,
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: on the plea that he was a usurper and illegitimate.
- 1:26:43Speaker 1: What would the great modern catspaw of legitimacy and restore
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: of divine right have said to the claim of Henry
- 1:26:51Speaker 1: and the title of the descendants of Hugh Capet. Henry
- 1:26:55Speaker 1: the Fifth, it is true, was a hero, a king
- 1:26:58Speaker 1: of England and the conqueror of the King of France.
- 1:27:01Speaker 1: Yet we feel little love or admiration for him. He
- 1:27:05Speaker 1: was a hero, that is, he was ready to sacrifice
- 1:27:08Speaker 1: his own life for the pleasure of destroying thousands of
- 1:27:10Speaker 1: other lives. He is a king of England, but not
- 1:27:14Speaker 1: a constitutional one, and we only like kings according to
- 1:27:17Speaker 1: the law. Lastly, he is a conqueror of the French king,
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: and for this we dislike him less than if he
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: had conquered the French people. How then, do we like him?
- 1:27:29Speaker 1: We like him in the play there he is a
- 1:27:31Speaker 1: very amiable monster, a very splendid pageant, as we like
- 1:27:36Speaker 1: to gaze at a panther or a young lion in
- 1:27:38Speaker 1: their cages in the tower, and catch a pleasing horror
- 1:27:41Speaker 1: from their glistening eyes, their velvet pause and dreadless roar.
- 1:27:46Speaker 1: So we take a very romantic, heroic, patriotic, and poetical
- 1:27:51Speaker 1: delight in the boasting feats of our younger harry as
- 1:27:55Speaker 1: they appear on the stage and are confined to lines
- 1:27:58Speaker 1: of ten syllables. Where no blood follows the stroke that
- 1:28:02Speaker 1: wounds our ears, Where no harvest bends beneath horses hoofs,
- 1:28:07Speaker 1: no city flames, no little child is butchered, no dead
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: men's bodies are found piled on heaps and festering the
- 1:28:15Speaker 1: next morning in the orchestra. So much for the politics
- 1:28:20Speaker 1: of this play, now for the poetry. Perhaps one of
- 1:28:23Speaker 1: the most striking images in all Shakespeare is that given
- 1:28:28Speaker 1: of war in the first lines of the prolog o
- 1:28:33Speaker 1: for muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven
- 1:28:37Speaker 1: of invention a kingdom, first age, princes to act, and
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Then should the warlike Harry,
- 1:28:48Speaker 1: like himself, assume the port of Mars, and at his
- 1:28:53Speaker 1: heels leashed in like hounds, should famine sword and fire
- 1:29:00Speaker 1: rouch for employment reubens. If he had painted, it would
- 1:29:06Speaker 1: not have improved upon the simile. The conversation between the
- 1:29:10Speaker 1: Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely relating to
- 1:29:15Speaker 1: the sudden change in the manners of Henry the fifth
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: is among the well known beauties of Shakespeare. It is
- 1:29:21Speaker 1: indeed admirable, both for strength and grace. It has sometimes
- 1:29:26Speaker 1: occurred to us that Shakespeare, in describing the reformation of
- 1:29:30Speaker 1: the Prince, might have had an eye to himself, which
- 1:29:36Speaker 1: is a wonder how his grace should glean it, since
- 1:29:38Speaker 1: his addiction was to courses vain, his companies unlettered, rude,
- 1:29:43Speaker 1: and shallow, his hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports,
- 1:29:48Speaker 1: and never noted in him any study, any retirement, any
- 1:29:52Speaker 1: sequestration from open haunts and popularity. Eli the strawberry grows
- 1:29:59Speaker 1: underneath the nettle, and wholesome berries thrive and ripen, best
- 1:30:03Speaker 1: enabored by fruit of baser quality. And so the Prince
- 1:30:07Speaker 1: obscured his contemplation under the veil of wildness, which no
- 1:30:12Speaker 1: doubt grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, unseen
- 1:30:17Speaker 1: yet cressive in his faculty. This at least is as
- 1:30:22Speaker 1: probable an account of the progress of the poet's mind
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: as we have met with in any of the essays
- 1:30:28Speaker 1: on the Learning of Shakespeare. Nothing can be better managed
- 1:30:33Speaker 1: than the caution which the King gives the meddling archbishop
- 1:30:38Speaker 1: not to advise him rashly to engage in the war
- 1:30:40Speaker 1: with France, his scrupulous dread of the consequences of that advice,
- 1:30:45Speaker 1: and his eager desire to hear and follow it. And
- 1:30:51Speaker 1: God forbid, my dear and faithful Lord, that you should
- 1:30:55Speaker 1: fashion rest or bow your reading, or nicely charge your
- 1:30:58Speaker 1: understanding soul with opening titles miscreant whose right suits not
- 1:31:04Speaker 1: a native colors with a truth, For God doth know
- 1:31:09Speaker 1: how many now in health shall drop their blood an
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: approbation of what your reverence shall incite us to. Therefore
- 1:31:17Speaker 1: take heed, how you impawn your person, how you awake
- 1:31:21Speaker 1: our sleeping sword of war. We charge you in the
- 1:31:24Speaker 1: name of God, take heed, For never two such kingdoms
- 1:31:28Speaker 1: did contend without much fall of blood. Whose guiltless drops
- 1:31:33Speaker 1: are every one a woe, a sore complaint against him
- 1:31:39Speaker 1: whose wrong gives edge unto the swords that make such
- 1:31:43Speaker 1: waste in brief mortality. Under this conjuration, speak my Lord,
- 1:31:49Speaker 1: for we will hear. Note and believe in heart that
- 1:31:53Speaker 1: what you speak is in your conscious washed as pure
- 1:31:57Speaker 1: as sin with baptism. Another characteristic instance of the blindness
- 1:32:03Speaker 1: of human nature to everything but its own interests is
- 1:32:07Speaker 1: the complaint made by the king of the ill neighbourhood
- 1:32:11Speaker 1: of the scot in attacking England when she was attacking France.
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: For once the eagle England being in prey to her
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: unguarded nest, the weasel Scot comes sneaking and so sucks
- 1:32:28Speaker 1: her princely eggs. It is worth observing that in all
- 1:32:33Speaker 1: these plays, which give an admirable picture of the spirit
- 1:32:36Speaker 1: of the good old times, the moral inference does not
- 1:32:40Speaker 1: at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but
- 1:32:43Speaker 1: on the dignity or meanness of the persons committing them.
- 1:32:48Speaker 1: The eagle England has a right to be in prey,
- 1:32:52Speaker 1: but the weasel Scot has none to come sneaking to
- 1:32:56Speaker 1: her nest, which she has left to pounce upon others.
- 1:33:00Speaker 1: Might was right without equivocation or disguise, And that heroic
- 1:33:06Speaker 1: and chivalrous age, the substitution of right for might, even
- 1:33:10Speaker 1: in theory, is among the refinements and abuses of modern philosophy.
- 1:33:17Speaker 1: A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the effects of subordination
- 1:33:21Speaker 1: in a commonwealth can hardly be conceived than the following.
- 1:33:27Speaker 1: For government, though high and low and lower put into parts,
- 1:33:33Speaker 1: doth keep in one consent, congruing in a full and
- 1:33:37Speaker 1: natural close like music. Therefore Heaven doth divide the state
- 1:33:43Speaker 1: of man in diverse functions, setting endeavour in continual motion,
- 1:33:49Speaker 1: to which is fixed as an aim, or but obedience
- 1:33:53Speaker 1: for so work. The honeybees creatures that by a rule
- 1:33:57Speaker 1: and nature teach the art of order to a peopled kingdom.
- 1:34:02Speaker 1: They have a king and officers of sorts, where some
- 1:34:06Speaker 1: like magistrates, correct at home, others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, others,
- 1:34:14Speaker 1: like soldiers armed in their stings, make boot upon the
- 1:34:18Speaker 1: summer's velvet buds, which pillage they with mery march bring
- 1:34:22Speaker 1: home to the tent royal of their emperor, who busied
- 1:34:27Speaker 1: in his majesty surveys the singing mason building roofs of gold,
- 1:34:33Speaker 1: the civil citizens kneading up the honey, the poor mechanic
- 1:34:37Speaker 1: porters crowding in their heavy burthens at his narrow gate,
- 1:34:42Speaker 1: the sad eyed Justice, with his surly hum delivering oar
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: to executors, pale the lazy, yawning drone. I this infer
- 1:34:53Speaker 1: that many things having full reference to one consent may
- 1:34:57Speaker 1: work contrariously. As many arrows loosened several ways fly to
- 1:35:03Speaker 1: one mark, as many several ways meet in one town,
- 1:35:08Speaker 1: as many fresh streams meet in one salt sea, as
- 1:35:11Speaker 1: many lines close in the dial center, So may a
- 1:35:16Speaker 1: thousand actions once afoot and in one purpose, and be
- 1:35:21Speaker 1: all well born without defeat. Henry the Fifth is but
- 1:35:27Speaker 1: one of Shakespeare's second rate plays. Yet by quoting passages
- 1:35:32Speaker 1: like this from his second rate plays alone, we might
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: make a volume rich with his praise, as is The
- 1:35:40Speaker 1: ouzy Bottom of the Sea, with sunken rack and sumless.
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: Treasuries of this sort are the King's remonstrance to scroop
- 1:35:51Speaker 1: Gray and Cambridge on the detection of their treason. His
- 1:35:55Speaker 1: address to the soldiers at the Siege of Harfleur, and
- 1:35:59Speaker 1: the still finer one before the Battle of Agincourt, the
- 1:36:03Speaker 1: description of the night before the battle, and the reflections
- 1:36:07Speaker 1: on ceremony put into the mouth of the king. O
- 1:36:13Speaker 1: hard condition twin born with greatness, subjected to the breath
- 1:36:17Speaker 1: of every fool who scents no more can feel but
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: his own ringing? What infinite hearts? Ease? Must kings neglect
- 1:36:27Speaker 1: that private men enjoy? And what have kings that privates
- 1:36:32Speaker 1: have not too? Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what
- 1:36:37Speaker 1: art thou thou idle ceremony? What kind of god art
- 1:36:42Speaker 1: thou that suffere'st more of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
- 1:36:47Speaker 1: What are thy rents? What are thy comings? In O ceremony?
- 1:36:52Speaker 1: Show me but thy worth? What is thy soul? O? Adoration?
- 1:36:58Speaker 1: Art thou aught else but place, degree and form? Creating
- 1:37:04Speaker 1: awe in fear in other men? Wherein thou art less
- 1:37:09Speaker 1: happy being feared than they in fearing? What drinkest thou
- 1:37:14Speaker 1: oft instead of homage? Sweet but poisoned flattery. Oh be sick,
- 1:37:21Speaker 1: great greatness, and bid thy ceremony, give thee cure. Thinkest
- 1:37:26Speaker 1: thou the fiery fever will go out with titles blown
- 1:37:30Speaker 1: from adulation. Will it give place to flecture and low bending?
- 1:37:36Speaker 1: Canst thou, when thou commandest the beggar's knee, command the
- 1:37:40Speaker 1: health of it. No, thou proud dream that playest so
- 1:37:45Speaker 1: subtly with the king's repose. I am a king that
- 1:37:50Speaker 1: find thee, and I know tis not the balm, the scepter,
- 1:37:54Speaker 1: and the ball, the sword, the mace, the crown, imperial
- 1:37:59Speaker 1: en tissued robe of golden pearl, the farcet tidal running
- 1:38:04Speaker 1: for the king, the throny sits on, nor the tide
- 1:38:07Speaker 1: of pomp that beats upon the high shore of this world. No,
- 1:38:12Speaker 1: not all these thrice gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid
- 1:38:17Speaker 1: in bed, majesticle can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, who,
- 1:38:24Speaker 1: with a body filled and vacant mind gets him to
- 1:38:28Speaker 1: rest crammed with distressful bread, never sees horrid night the
- 1:38:33Speaker 1: child of hell, but like a lackey, from rise to set,
- 1:38:38Speaker 1: sweats and the eye of Phoebus, and all night sleeps
- 1:38:42Speaker 1: in elysium. Next day, after dawn, doth rise and help
- 1:38:46Speaker 1: Hyperion to his horse, and follows so the ever running year,
- 1:38:51Speaker 1: with profitable labor, to his grave. And but for ceremony,
- 1:38:56Speaker 1: such a wretch winding up days with toil in knights,
- 1:39:00Speaker 1: with sleep as the forehand and vantage of a king.
- 1:39:04Speaker 1: The slave, a member of the country's peace, enjoys it.
- 1:39:09Speaker 1: But to gross brain, little watts. What watch the king
- 1:39:13Speaker 1: keeps to maintain the peace? Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
- 1:39:20Speaker 1: Most of these passages are well known. There is one
- 1:39:24Speaker 1: which we do not remember to have seen noticed, and
- 1:39:27Speaker 1: yet it is no wit inferior to the rest in
- 1:39:30Speaker 1: heroic beauty. It is the account of the deaths of
- 1:39:34Speaker 1: York and Suffolk. Exeter, the Duke of York commends him
- 1:39:40Speaker 1: to your Majesty, King Henry, lives here, good uncle Thrice.
- 1:39:46Speaker 1: Within this hour I saw him down, thrice up again
- 1:39:50Speaker 1: and fighting from helmet to the spur, all blood he
- 1:39:53Speaker 1: was Exeter, in which array, brave soldier does he lie,
- 1:40:00Speaker 1: larding the plain, and by his bloody side yoke fellow
- 1:40:04Speaker 1: to his honor, owning wounds. The noble Earl of Suffolk
- 1:40:08Speaker 1: also lies Suffolk first died, and yorke all haggld Ore
- 1:40:14Speaker 1: comes to him, wherein gore he lay and steeped, and
- 1:40:17Speaker 1: takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes that bloodily
- 1:40:21Speaker 1: did yawn upon his face, and cries aloud, Tarry, dear cousin, Suffolk,
- 1:40:28Speaker 1: my soul shall thine keep company to heaven. Tarry sweet
- 1:40:32Speaker 1: soul from mine. Then fly abreast, as in this glorious
- 1:40:37Speaker 1: and well foughten field we kept together in our chivalry.
- 1:40:43Speaker 1: Upon these words I came and cheered him up. He
- 1:40:46Speaker 1: smiled me in the face, wrought me his hand, and
- 1:40:50Speaker 1: with a feeble gripe, says, dear my lord, commend my
- 1:40:54Speaker 1: service to my sovereign. So did he turn, and over
- 1:40:58Speaker 1: Suffolk's neck, he threw his wounded arm, and kissed his lips,
- 1:41:02Speaker 1: and so espoused to death with blood. He sealed a
- 1:41:06Speaker 1: testament of noble ending love. But we must have done
- 1:41:12Speaker 1: with splendid quotations. Behavior of the King in the difficult
- 1:41:17Speaker 1: and doubtful circumstances in which he is placed is as
- 1:41:21Speaker 1: patient and modest as it is spirited lofty in his
- 1:41:25Speaker 1: prosperous fortune. The character of the French nobles is also
- 1:41:30Speaker 1: very admirably depicted, and the Dauphin's praise of his horse
- 1:41:34Speaker 1: shows the vanity of that class of persons in a
- 1:41:37Speaker 1: very striking point of view. Shakespeare always accompanies a foolish
- 1:41:42Speaker 1: prince with a satirical courtier, as we see in this instance,
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: the comic parts of Henry the Fifth are very inferior
- 1:41:50Speaker 1: to those of Henry the Fourth. Falstaff is dead, and
- 1:41:54Speaker 1: without him, Pistol, Nim and Bardolph are satellites without a son. Fluellen,
- 1:42:01Speaker 1: the Welshman, is the most entertaining character in the piece.
- 1:42:05Speaker 1: He is good natured, brave, collarc and pedantic. His parallel
- 1:42:10Speaker 1: between Alexander and Harry of Monmouth and his desire to
- 1:42:15Speaker 1: have some disputations with Captain mac Morris on the discipline
- 1:42:20Speaker 1: of the Roman wars in the heat of the battle
- 1:42:22Speaker 1: are never to be forgotten. His treatment of Pistol is
- 1:42:27Speaker 1: as good as Pistol's treatment of his French prisoner. There
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: are two other remarkable prose passages in this play, the
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: conversation of Henry in disguise with the three Sentinels on
- 1:42:39Speaker 1: the duties of a soldier, and his courtship of Catharine
- 1:42:43Speaker 1: in broken French we like them both exceedingly, though the
- 1:42:47Speaker 1: first savors perhaps too much of the king, and the
- 1:42:51Speaker 1: last too little of the lover and of Henry the Fifth.
- 1:42:59Speaker 1: Henry the sixth, in three parts, during the time of
- 1:43:04Speaker 1: the civil wars of York and Lancaster England, was a
- 1:43:08Speaker 1: perfect bear garden, and Shakespeare has given us a very
- 1:43:12Speaker 1: lively picture the scene. The three parts of Henry the
- 1:43:16Speaker 1: Sixth convey a picture of very little else and are
- 1:43:19Speaker 1: inferior to the other historical plays. They have brilliant passages,
- 1:43:24Speaker 1: but the general groundwork is comparatively poor and meager, the
- 1:43:28Speaker 1: style flat and unraised. There are few lines like the following.
- 1:43:34Speaker 1: Glory is like a circle in the water, which never
- 1:43:37Speaker 1: ceaseth to enlarge itself, till by broad spreading it disperses
- 1:43:41Speaker 1: to nought. The first part relates to the wars in
- 1:43:46Speaker 1: France after the death of Henry the Fifth, and the
- 1:43:49Speaker 1: story of the Maid of Orleans. She is here almost
- 1:43:53Speaker 1: as scurvily treated as in Voltaire's Pucelles. Talbot is a
- 1:43:58Speaker 1: very magnificent sketch. There is something as formidable in this
- 1:44:02Speaker 1: portrait of him as there would be in a monumental
- 1:44:05Speaker 1: figure of him or in the sight of the armor
- 1:44:08Speaker 1: which he wore. The scene in which he visits the
- 1:44:12Speaker 1: Countess of Auverne, who seeks to entrap him, is a
- 1:44:16Speaker 1: very spirited one, and his description of his own treatment
- 1:44:20Speaker 1: while a prisoner to the French not less remarkable. Salisbury,
- 1:44:26Speaker 1: yet tell'st thou not how thou wert entertained. Talbot with
- 1:44:33Speaker 1: scoffs and scorns and contemptuous taunts in open market place,
- 1:44:38Speaker 1: produced thame to be a public spectacle to all. Here
- 1:44:42Speaker 1: said they is the terror of the French, the scarecrow
- 1:44:46Speaker 1: that affrights our children. So then broke I from the
- 1:44:50Speaker 1: officers that led me, and with my nails dig stones
- 1:44:53Speaker 1: out of the ground to hurl at the beholders of
- 1:44:56Speaker 1: my shame. My grisly countenance made others fly non durst
- 1:45:01Speaker 1: come nearer, for fear of sudden death in iron walls.
- 1:45:06Speaker 1: They deemed to me not secure, so great a fear
- 1:45:10Speaker 1: my name amongst them spread that they supposed I could
- 1:45:13Speaker 1: rend bars of steel and spurn in pieces post of adamant.
- 1:45:19Speaker 1: Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had. They walked
- 1:45:23Speaker 1: about me every minute while, and if I did but
- 1:45:26Speaker 1: stir out of my bed, ready they were to shoot
- 1:45:30Speaker 1: me to the heart. The second part relates chiefly to
- 1:45:35Speaker 1: the contest between the nobles during the minority of Henry
- 1:45:39Speaker 1: and the death of Gloucester. The good Duke Comfrey, the
- 1:45:43Speaker 1: character of Cardinal Beaufort is the most prominent in the group.
- 1:45:47Speaker 1: The count of his death is one of our author's masterpieces.
- 1:45:51Speaker 1: So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles on
- 1:45:54Speaker 1: the loss of the provinces of France by the king's
- 1:45:57Speaker 1: marriage with Margaret of Anjou. The pretensions and growing ambition
- 1:46:02Speaker 1: of the Duke of York, the father of Richard the Third,
- 1:46:06Speaker 1: are also very ably developed. Among the episodes, the tragic
- 1:46:10Speaker 1: comedy of jack Cade and the detection of the impostor
- 1:46:14Speaker 1: Simcox are truly edifyed. The third part describes Henry's loss
- 1:46:21Speaker 1: of his crown. His death takes place in the last act,
- 1:46:25Speaker 1: which is usually thrust into the common acting play of
- 1:46:28Speaker 1: Richard the Third. The character of Gloucester afterwards, King Richard
- 1:46:33Speaker 1: is here very powerfully commenced, and his dangerous designs and
- 1:46:37Speaker 1: long reaching ambition are fully described in a soliloquy in
- 1:46:41Speaker 1: the third act beginning ay Edward will use woman honorably.
- 1:46:48Speaker 1: Henry the sixth is drawn as distinctly as his high
- 1:46:52Speaker 1: spirited queen, And notwithstanding the very mean figure which Henry
- 1:46:56Speaker 1: makes as a king, we still feel more respectful him
- 1:47:00Speaker 1: than for his wife. We have already observed that Shakespeare
- 1:47:05Speaker 1: was scarcely more remarkable for the force and marked contrast
- 1:47:08Speaker 1: of his characters than for the truth and subtlety which
- 1:47:11Speaker 1: he has distinguished those which approach the nearest to each other.
- 1:47:15Speaker 1: For instance, the soul of Othello is hardly more distinct
- 1:47:20Speaker 1: from that of Iago than that of Desdemona is shown
- 1:47:23Speaker 1: to be from Emilias. The ambition of Macbeth is as
- 1:47:27Speaker 1: distinct from the ambition to the third as it is
- 1:47:31Speaker 1: from the meekness of Duncan. The real madness of Lear
- 1:47:36Speaker 1: is as different from the feign madness of Edgar as
- 1:47:39Speaker 1: from the babbling of the fool. Footnote. There is another
- 1:47:45Speaker 1: instance of the name distinction in Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet's
- 1:47:49Speaker 1: pretended madness would make a very good real madness in
- 1:47:53Speaker 1: any other author. End footnote. The contrast between wit and
- 1:47:59Speaker 1: folly and false deaf in Shallow is not more characteristic,
- 1:48:03Speaker 1: though more obvious, than the gradations of folly loquaciousness, or
- 1:48:08Speaker 1: reserved in shallow in silence. And again, the gallantry of
- 1:48:12Speaker 1: Prince Henry is as little confounded with that of Hotspur,
- 1:48:17Speaker 1: as with the cowardice of Falstaff, or as the sensual
- 1:48:21Speaker 1: and philosophic cowardice of the Night is with the pitiful,
- 1:48:24Speaker 1: in cringing cowardice of Paroles. All these several personages were
- 1:48:30Speaker 1: as different in Shakespeare as they would have been in themselves.
- 1:48:34Speaker 1: His imagination borrowed from the life. In every circumstance, object,
- 1:48:38Speaker 1: motive passion operated there as it would in reality, and
- 1:48:43Speaker 1: produce a world of men and women as distinct, as true,
- 1:48:47Speaker 1: and as various as those that exist in nature. The
- 1:48:51Speaker 1: peculiar property of Shakespeare's imagination was this truth, accompanied with
- 1:48:56Speaker 1: the unconsciousness of nature. Indeed, imagining, to be perfect, must
- 1:49:01Speaker 1: be unconscious, at least in production, for nature is so.
- 1:49:06Speaker 1: We shall attempt one example more in the characters of
- 1:49:10Speaker 1: Richard the Second and Henry the sixth. The characters and
- 1:49:14Speaker 1: situations of both these persons were so nearly alike that
- 1:49:18Speaker 1: they would have been completely confounded by a commonplace poet.
- 1:49:22Speaker 1: Yet they are kept quite distinct in Shakespeare. Both were kings,
- 1:49:26Speaker 1: and both unfortunate both lost to the crowns owing to
- 1:49:30Speaker 1: their mismanagement and imbecility, the one from a thoughtless, wilful
- 1:49:35Speaker 1: abuse of power, the other from an indifference to it.
- 1:49:39Speaker 1: The manner in which they bear their misfortunes corresponds exactly
- 1:49:43Speaker 1: to the causes which led to them. The one is
- 1:49:46Speaker 1: always lamenting the loss of his power, which he is
- 1:49:49Speaker 1: not the spirit to regain. The other seems only to
- 1:49:53Speaker 1: regret that he had ever been king, and is glad
- 1:49:56Speaker 1: to be rid of the power with the trouble. The
- 1:49:59Speaker 1: effeminacy of the one as that of a vultuary, proud, revengeful,
- 1:50:04Speaker 1: impatient of contradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes. The effeminacy
- 1:50:10Speaker 1: of the other is that of an indolent, good natured mind,
- 1:50:14Speaker 1: naturally averse to the turmoils of ambition and the cares
- 1:50:17Speaker 1: of greatness, and who wishes to pass his time in
- 1:50:21Speaker 1: monkish indolence and contemplation. Richard bewails the loss of the
- 1:50:26Speaker 1: kingly power only as it was the means of gratifying
- 1:50:30Speaker 1: his pride and luxury. Henry regards it only as a
- 1:50:33Speaker 1: means of doing right, and is less desirous of the
- 1:50:36Speaker 1: advantages to be derived from possessing it, than afraid of
- 1:50:40Speaker 1: exercising it wrong and uniting a young soldier, he gives
- 1:50:44Speaker 1: him ghostly advice Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight, and learned
- 1:50:51Speaker 1: this lesson, draw thy sword and right. Richard the Second,
- 1:50:57Speaker 1: in the first speeches of the play, portrays his rous
- 1:51:00Speaker 1: character in the first alarm of his pride. On hearing
- 1:51:04Speaker 1: of Bolombroke's rebellion, before his presumption has met with any check,
- 1:51:08Speaker 1: he exclaims, mock not my senseless conjuration lords, this earth
- 1:51:14Speaker 1: shall have a feeling, and these stones prove armed soldiers
- 1:51:18Speaker 1: ere her native king shall falter under proud rebellious arms.
- 1:51:24Speaker 1: Not all the water in the rough rude sea can
- 1:51:27Speaker 1: wash the balm from an anointed king. The breath of
- 1:51:30Speaker 1: worldly man cannot oppose the deputy elected by the Lord.
- 1:51:34Speaker 1: For every man, the Bolingbroke hath pressed to lift sharp
- 1:51:38Speaker 1: steel against our golden crown. Heaven for his Richard hath
- 1:51:42Speaker 1: in heavenly pay a glorious angel. Then if angels fight,
- 1:51:47Speaker 1: weak men must fall, for Heaven still guards the right. Yet,
- 1:51:53Speaker 1: notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on the very first
- 1:51:56Speaker 1: news of actual disaster, all his conceit of himself as
- 1:52:00Speaker 1: the peculiar favorite of providence vanishes into air. But now
- 1:52:06Speaker 1: the blood of twenty thousand men did triumph in my face,
- 1:52:10Speaker 1: and they are fled. All souls that will be saved
- 1:52:14Speaker 1: fly from my side for time. Hath settle blot upon
- 1:52:18Speaker 1: my pride. Immediately after, however, recollecting that cheap defense of
- 1:52:25Speaker 1: the divinity of kings which is to be found in opinion,
- 1:52:29Speaker 1: he is for arming his name against his enemies. Oh
- 1:52:34Speaker 1: wake thou coward, majesty, thou sleepest, is not the king's name.
- 1:52:38Speaker 1: Forty thousand names arm arm my name. A puny subject
- 1:52:43Speaker 1: strikes at thy great glory. King Henry does not make
- 1:52:48Speaker 1: any such vapering resistance to the loss of his crown,
- 1:52:52Speaker 1: but lets it slip from off his head as a
- 1:52:54Speaker 1: weight which he is neither able nor willing to bear.
- 1:52:58Speaker 1: Stands quietly by, to say, see the issue of the
- 1:53:01Speaker 1: contest for his kingdom as if it were a game
- 1:53:03Speaker 1: at pushpin, and is pleased when the odds prove against him.
- 1:53:08Speaker 1: When Richard first hears of the death of his favorites, Bushy,
- 1:53:12Speaker 1: Baggott and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea of
- 1:53:16Speaker 1: any further efforts, and only indulges in the extravagant impatience
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: of his grief and his despair, in that fine speech
- 1:53:24Speaker 1: which has been so often quoted. All mule, where's the Duke,
- 1:53:31Speaker 1: my father with his power, King Richard, no matter where
- 1:53:36Speaker 1: of comfort, no man speak. Let's talk of graves of
- 1:53:40Speaker 1: worms and epithets, make dust our paper, and with rainy
- 1:53:45Speaker 1: eyes right sorrow in the bosom of the earth. Let's
- 1:53:48Speaker 1: choose executors and talk of wills. And yet not so,
- 1:53:53Speaker 1: for what can we bequeath save our deposed bodies to
- 1:53:56Speaker 1: the ground, Our lands, our lives in awe are bowling brooks,
- 1:54:01Speaker 1: And nothing can we call our own but death, and
- 1:54:05Speaker 1: that small model of the barren earth, which serves as
- 1:54:09Speaker 1: paste and covered to our bones. For Heaven's sake, let
- 1:54:13Speaker 1: us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of
- 1:54:16Speaker 1: the death of kings. How some have been deposed, some
- 1:54:21Speaker 1: slain in war, some haunted by the ghost they dispossessed,
- 1:54:25Speaker 1: some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping, killed, all murdered.
- 1:54:31Speaker 1: For within the holy crown that rounds the mortal temples
- 1:54:34Speaker 1: of a king keeps death as court, And there the
- 1:54:38Speaker 1: antic sits, scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp,
- 1:54:44Speaker 1: allowing him a breath, a little scene to monarchise, be
- 1:54:48Speaker 1: feared and kill with looks, infusing him with self and
- 1:54:53Speaker 1: vain conceit, as if this flesh which walls about our
- 1:54:58Speaker 1: life were bred, impregnable and humored. Thus comes at the last,
- 1:55:04Speaker 1: and with a little pin bores through his castle wall,
- 1:55:10Speaker 1: and farewell King, Cover your heads and mock not flesh
- 1:55:16Speaker 1: and blood, with solemn reverence, throw away respect, tradition, form,
- 1:55:22Speaker 1: and ceremonious duty, For you have but mistook me all
- 1:55:25Speaker 1: this while I live on bread like you, feel, want
- 1:55:29Speaker 1: taste grief, need friends like you. Subjected? Thus, how can
- 1:55:35Speaker 1: you say to me I am King? There is as
- 1:55:40Speaker 1: little sincerity afterwards in his affected resignation to his fate
- 1:55:44Speaker 1: as there is fortitude in this exaggerated picture of his
- 1:55:47Speaker 1: misfortunes before they have happened. When Northumberland comes back with
- 1:55:52Speaker 1: a message from Bolingbroke, he exclaims, anticipating the result, What
- 1:55:59Speaker 1: must the king do? Now? Must he submit? The king
- 1:56:03Speaker 1: shall do it? Must he be deposed? The King shall
- 1:56:07Speaker 1: be contented? Must he lose the name of King? Oh?
- 1:56:11Speaker 1: God's name, Let it go. I'll give my jewels for
- 1:56:14Speaker 1: a set of beads, my gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
- 1:56:18Speaker 1: my gay apparel for an almsman's gown, I figured goblets
- 1:56:23Speaker 1: for a dish of wood, my scepter for palmer's walking staff,
- 1:56:27Speaker 1: my subjects for a pair of carved saints, and my
- 1:56:31Speaker 1: large kingdom for a little grave, a little little grave,
- 1:56:36Speaker 1: and an obscure grave. How differently is all this expressed
- 1:56:42Speaker 1: in King Henry's soliloquy during the battle with Edward's party.
- 1:56:48Speaker 1: This battle fares like to the morning's war, when dying
- 1:56:52Speaker 1: clouds contend with growing light. What time the shepherd, blowing
- 1:56:57Speaker 1: of his nails, can either call it perfect day or night?
- 1:57:00Speaker 1: Here on this mole hill, Will I sit me down
- 1:57:04Speaker 1: to whom God will there be victory? There be the
- 1:57:09Speaker 1: victory for Margaret, my queen, and Clifford too, have chid
- 1:57:13Speaker 1: me from the battle, swearing both they prosper best of all.
- 1:57:17Speaker 1: When I am, thence what I were dead? If God's
- 1:57:20Speaker 1: good will were so? For what is in this world
- 1:57:24Speaker 1: but grief and woe? O God methinks it were a
- 1:57:28Speaker 1: happy life to be no better than a homely swain
- 1:57:32Speaker 1: to sit upon a hills, I do now to carve
- 1:57:35Speaker 1: out dials quaintly, point by point thereby to see the minutes,
- 1:57:40Speaker 1: how they run, How many make the hour full complete?
- 1:57:44Speaker 1: How many hours bring about the day? How many days
- 1:57:47Speaker 1: will finish up the year? How many years a mortal
- 1:57:51Speaker 1: man may live? When this is known, then to divide
- 1:57:56Speaker 1: the times. So many hours must I tend my flock.
- 1:58:00Speaker 1: So many hours must I take my rest? So many
- 1:58:03Speaker 1: hours must I contemplate. So many hours must I sport
- 1:58:07Speaker 1: to myself? So many days my ewes have been with young,
- 1:58:11Speaker 1: so many weeks e'er the poor fools will yeen so
- 1:58:15Speaker 1: many months Ere I shall shear the fleece. So many minutes, hours, weeks, months,
- 1:58:22Speaker 1: and years passed over to the end they were created,
- 1:58:27Speaker 1: would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. Ah, what
- 1:58:32Speaker 1: a life were this? How sweet? How lovely? Gives not
- 1:58:37Speaker 1: the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade to shepherds looking on
- 1:58:41Speaker 1: their silly sheep, than doth a rich embroidered canopy to
- 1:58:45Speaker 1: kings that fear their subject's treachery. Oh yes, it doth
- 1:58:50Speaker 1: a thousandfold it doth. And to conclude the shepherd's homely kourds,
- 1:58:56Speaker 1: his cold, thin drink out of his little leather bottle,
- 1:58:59Speaker 1: his wonted sleep under a fresh tree shade, all which
- 1:59:04Speaker 1: secure and sweetly he enjoys as far beyond a prince's delicates,
- 1:59:09Speaker 1: his viand sparkling in a golden cup, his body couched
- 1:59:13Speaker 1: in a curious bed when care, mistrust, and treasons weigh
- 1:59:19Speaker 1: on him. This is a true and beautiful description of
- 1:59:24Speaker 1: a naturally quiet and contented disposition, and not like the
- 1:59:30Speaker 1: former the splenetic effusion of disappointed ambition. In the last
- 1:59:36Speaker 1: scene of Richard Second, his despair lends him courage. He
- 1:59:40Speaker 1: beats the keeper, slays two of his assassins, and dies
- 1:59:44Speaker 1: with imprecations in his mouth against Sir Pierce Exton, who
- 1:59:49Speaker 1: has staggered his royal person Henry, when he is seized
- 1:59:54Speaker 1: by the deer stealers, only reads them a moral lecture
- 1:59:57Speaker 1: on the duty of allegiance and the sanctuar of an oath,
- 2:00:01Speaker 1: And when stabbed by Gloucester in the tower, reproaches him
- 2:00:05Speaker 1: with his crimes, but pardons him his own death and
- 2:00:11Speaker 1: dev Henry the sixth. Richard the Third Richard the Third
- 2:00:17Speaker 1: may be considered as properly a stage play. It belongs
- 2:00:21Speaker 1: to the theater rather than to the closet. We shall
- 2:00:25Speaker 1: therefore criticize it chiefly with a reference to the manner
- 2:00:29Speaker 1: in which we have seen it performed. It is the
- 2:00:32Speaker 1: character in which Garrick came out. It was the second
- 2:00:35Speaker 1: character in which mister Keene appeared, and in which he
- 2:00:39Speaker 1: acquired his fame. Shakespeare, we have always with us actors
- 2:00:44Speaker 1: we have only for a few seasons, and therefore some
- 2:00:48Speaker 1: account of them may be acceptable, if not to our contemporaries,
- 2:00:52Speaker 1: to those who come after us, if that rich and
- 2:00:56Speaker 1: idle personage posterity should deign to look in to our writings.
- 2:01:02Speaker 1: It is possible to form a higher conception of the
- 2:01:05Speaker 1: character of Richard than that given by mister Keane. But
- 2:01:09Speaker 1: we cannot imagine any character represented with greater distinctness and precision,
- 2:01:14Speaker 1: more perfectly articulated in every part. Perhaps, indeed, there is
- 2:01:19Speaker 1: too much of what is technically called execution. When we
- 2:01:24Speaker 1: first saw the celebrated actor in the part, we thought
- 2:01:27Speaker 1: he sometimes failed from an exuberance of manner, and dissipated
- 2:01:31Speaker 1: the impression of the general character by the variety of
- 2:01:34Speaker 1: his resources. To be complete, his delineation of it should
- 2:01:39Speaker 1: have more solidity, depth, sustained and impassioned feeling, with somewhat
- 2:01:45Speaker 1: less brilliancy, with fewer glancing lights, pointed transitions and pantomimic evolutions.
- 2:01:53Speaker 1: The Richard of Shakespeare is towering and lofty, equally impetuous
- 2:01:58Speaker 1: and commanding, haughty, violent and subtle, bold and treacherous, confident
- 2:02:05Speaker 1: in his strength as well as in his cunning, raised
- 2:02:09Speaker 1: high by his birth and higher by his talents and
- 2:02:12Speaker 1: his crimes. A royal usurper, a princely hypocrite, a tyrant,
- 2:02:18Speaker 1: and a murderer of the house, a plantagenet. But I
- 2:02:23Speaker 1: was born so high, our airy buildeth in the cedar's top,
- 2:02:29Speaker 1: and dallies with the wind and scorns the sun. The
- 2:02:34Speaker 1: idea conveyed in these lines, which are indeed omitted in
- 2:02:38Speaker 1: the Miserable Medley acted for Richard third, is never lost
- 2:02:41Speaker 1: sight of by Shakespeare, and should not be out of
- 2:02:44Speaker 1: the actor's mind for a moment. The restless and sanguinary
- 2:02:48Speaker 1: Richard is not a man striving to be great, but
- 2:02:51Speaker 1: to be greater than he is. Conscious of his strength
- 2:02:54Speaker 1: of will, his power of intellect, his daring courage, his
- 2:02:58Speaker 1: elevated station, and making use of these advantages to commit
- 2:03:03Speaker 1: unheard of crimes and to shield himself from remorse and infamy.
- 2:03:09Speaker 1: If mister Keene does not entirely succeed in concentrating all
- 2:03:13Speaker 1: the lines of the character as drawn by Shakespeare, he
- 2:03:16Speaker 1: gives an animation, vigor, and relief to the part which
- 2:03:19Speaker 1: we have not seen equaled. He is more refined than Cook,
- 2:03:23Speaker 1: more bold, varied and original than Kemble in the same character.
- 2:03:28Speaker 1: In some parts he is deficient in dignity, and particularly
- 2:03:32Speaker 1: in the scenes of state business, he has by no
- 2:03:35Speaker 1: means an air of artificial authority. There is at times
- 2:03:40Speaker 1: an aspiring elevation, an enthusiastic rapture in his expectations of
- 2:03:45Speaker 1: attaining the crown, and at others a gloating expression of
- 2:03:49Speaker 1: sullen delight, as if he already clenched the bauble and
- 2:03:53Speaker 1: held it in his grasp. The courtship scene with Lady
- 2:03:57Speaker 1: Anne is an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling villainy.
- 2:04:02Speaker 1: The progress of wily adulation of encroaching humility is finally
- 2:04:08Speaker 1: marked by his action, voice and eye. He seems like
- 2:04:12Speaker 1: the first tempter to approach his prey secure the event
- 2:04:17Speaker 1: and as if success had smoothed his way before him.
- 2:04:22Speaker 1: The late mister Cook's manner of representing the scene was
- 2:04:25Speaker 1: more vehement, hurried, and full of anxious uncertainty. This, though
- 2:04:30Speaker 1: more natural in general, was less in character. In this
- 2:04:33Speaker 1: particular instance. Richard should woo less as a lover than
- 2:04:38Speaker 1: as an actor, to show his mental superiority and power
- 2:04:42Speaker 1: of making others the playthings of his purposes. Mister Keyne's
- 2:04:46Speaker 1: attitude in leaning against the side of the stage before
- 2:04:50Speaker 1: he comes forward to address Lady Anne, is one of
- 2:04:52Speaker 1: the most graceful and striking ever witnessed on the stage.
- 2:04:56Speaker 1: It would do Fertitian to paint the freaqu quint in
- 2:05:00Speaker 1: rapid transition of his voice from the expression of the
- 2:05:03Speaker 1: fiercest passion to the most familiar tones of conversation was
- 2:05:08Speaker 1: that which gave a peculiar grace of novelty to his
- 2:05:11Speaker 1: acting on his first appearance. This has been since imitated
- 2:05:15Speaker 1: and caricatured by others, and he himself uses the artifice
- 2:05:19Speaker 1: more sparingly than he did his by play is excellent.
- 2:05:24Speaker 1: His manner of bidding his friends good night, after pausing,
- 2:05:27Speaker 1: with a point of his sword drawn slowly backward and
- 2:05:30Speaker 1: forward on the ground, as if considering the plan of
- 2:05:33Speaker 1: the battle next day is a particularly happy and natural thought.
- 2:05:38Speaker 1: He gives to the two last acts of the play
- 2:05:40Speaker 1: the greatest animation and effect. He fills every part of
- 2:05:44Speaker 1: the stage and makes up for the deficiency of his
- 2:05:47Speaker 1: person by what he has been sometimes objected to as
- 2:05:51Speaker 1: an excess of action. The concluding scene in which he
- 2:05:55Speaker 1: is killed by Richmond is the most brilliant of the whole.
- 2:05:59Speaker 1: He fight at last like one drunk with wounds, and
- 2:06:02Speaker 1: the attitude in which he stands with his hands stretched
- 2:06:05Speaker 1: out after his sword is wrested from him has a
- 2:06:09Speaker 1: preternatural and terrific grandeur, as if his will could not
- 2:06:13Speaker 1: be disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had
- 2:06:17Speaker 1: power to kill. Mister Keene has since, in a great measure,
- 2:06:21Speaker 1: effaced the impression of his Richard the Third by the
- 2:06:25Speaker 1: superior efforts of his genius and Othello his masterpiece in
- 2:06:29Speaker 1: the murder scene in Macbeth, in Richard the Second and
- 2:06:33Speaker 1: Sir Giles's Overreach, and lastly in Arunica. But we still
- 2:06:39Speaker 1: like to look back to his first performance of this part,
- 2:06:41Speaker 1: both because at first assured his admirers of his future success,
- 2:06:46Speaker 1: and because we bore our feeble butt at that time
- 2:06:50Speaker 1: not useless testimony to the merits of this very original actor,
- 2:06:55Speaker 1: on which the town was considerably divided for no other
- 2:06:59Speaker 1: reason than because they were original. The manner in which
- 2:07:03Speaker 1: Shakespeare's plays have been generally altered or rather mangled by
- 2:07:07Speaker 1: modern mechanists is a disgrace to the English stage. The
- 2:07:12Speaker 1: patchwork Richard the Third, which is acted under the sanction
- 2:07:15Speaker 1: of his name, and which was manufactured by Kibber, is
- 2:07:19Speaker 1: a striking example of this remark. The play itself is
- 2:07:23Speaker 1: undoubtedly a very powerful effusion of Shakespeare's genius. The groundwork
- 2:07:28Speaker 1: of the character of Richard, the mixture of intellectual vigor
- 2:07:32Speaker 1: with moral depravity, in which Shakespeare delighted to show his strength,
- 2:07:36Speaker 1: gave full scope as well as temptation, to the exercise
- 2:07:40Speaker 1: of his imagination. The character of his hero is almost
- 2:07:45Speaker 1: everywhere predominant and marks its lurid track throughout. The original
- 2:07:50Speaker 1: play is, however, too long for representation, and there are
- 2:07:54Speaker 1: some few scenes which might be better spared than preserved,
- 2:07:57Speaker 1: and by omitting which it would remain a complete whole.
- 2:08:01Speaker 1: The only rule, indeed, for alter in Shakespeare is to
- 2:08:04Speaker 1: retrench certain passages which may be considered either superfluous or obsolete,
- 2:08:10Speaker 1: but not to add or transpose anything. The arrangement and
- 2:08:15Speaker 1: development of this story, and the mutual contrast and combination
- 2:08:20Speaker 1: of the dramatis personae are, in general is finally managed
- 2:08:24Speaker 1: as the development of the characters or the expression of
- 2:08:28Speaker 1: the passions. This rule has not been adhered to in
- 2:08:33Speaker 1: the present instance. Some of the most important and striking
- 2:08:36Speaker 1: passages in the principal character have been omitted to make
- 2:08:40Speaker 1: room for idle and misplaced extracts from other plays, the
- 2:08:44Speaker 1: only intention of which seems to have been to make
- 2:08:46Speaker 1: the character of Richard as odious and disgusting as possible.
- 2:08:51Speaker 1: It is, apparently for no other purpose than to make
- 2:08:53Speaker 1: Gloucester's debt King Henry on the stage that the fine,
- 2:08:57Speaker 1: abrupt introduction of the character in the opening of the
- 2:08:59Speaker 1: place is lost in the tedious, whining morality of the
- 2:09:04Speaker 1: uxorious King taken from another play. We say tedious because
- 2:09:09Speaker 1: it interrupts the business of the scene and loses its
- 2:09:12Speaker 1: beauty and effect by having no intelligible connection with the
- 2:09:16Speaker 1: previous character of the mild, well meaning monarch. The passages
- 2:09:21Speaker 1: which the unfortunate Henry has to recite our beautiful and
- 2:09:25Speaker 1: pathetic in themselves, but they have nothing to do with
- 2:09:28Speaker 1: the world that Richard has to bustling. And the same
- 2:09:33Speaker 1: spirit of vulgar caricature is the scene between Richard and
- 2:09:36Speaker 1: Lady Anne, when his wife interpolated without any authority, merely
- 2:09:41Speaker 1: to gratify this favorite propensity to discust and loathing with
- 2:09:46Speaker 1: the sane, perverse consistency. Richard, after his last fatal struggle,
- 2:09:50Speaker 1: is raised up by some galvanic process to utter the
- 2:09:54Speaker 1: imprecation without any motive but pure malignity, which Shakespeare has
- 2:09:59Speaker 1: so properly put into the mouth of Northumberland on hearing
- 2:10:03Speaker 1: of Percy's death. To make room for these worse than
- 2:10:07Speaker 1: needless editions, many of the most striking passages in the
- 2:10:10Speaker 1: real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance
- 2:10:14Speaker 1: of the prompt book critics. We do not mean to
- 2:10:17Speaker 1: insist merely on passages which are fine as poetry and
- 2:10:21Speaker 1: to the reader, such as Clarence's Dream et cetera, but
- 2:10:25Speaker 1: on those which are important to the understanding of the
- 2:10:27Speaker 1: character and peculiarly adapted for stage effect. We will give
- 2:10:32Speaker 1: the following as instances, among several others. The first is
- 2:10:36Speaker 1: the scene where Richard enters abruptly to the Queen and
- 2:10:40Speaker 1: her friends to defend himself. Gloucester, they do me wrong,
- 2:10:47Speaker 1: and I will not endure it. Who are they that
- 2:10:50Speaker 1: complain unto the King that I forsooth am stern and
- 2:10:54Speaker 1: love them not by Holy Paul thy love his grace,
- 2:10:58Speaker 1: but lightly that fill his ears with such dissensuous rumors.
- 2:11:04Speaker 1: Because I cannot flatter and look fair, smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive,
- 2:11:10Speaker 1: and cog duck with French nods in apish courtesy, I
- 2:11:15Speaker 1: must be held a rancorous enemy. Cannot a plain man
- 2:11:19Speaker 1: live and think no harm? But thus his simple truth
- 2:11:23Speaker 1: must be abused with silken sly insinuating Jack's gray, to
- 2:11:32Speaker 1: whom in all this present speaks your grace, Gloucester, to
- 2:11:37Speaker 1: THEE that hast nor honesty nor grace. When have I
- 2:11:42Speaker 1: injured thee? When done THEE wrong? Or THEE or THEE
- 2:11:46Speaker 1: or any of your faction, a plague upon you all.
- 2:11:51Speaker 1: Nothing can be more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to
- 2:11:55Speaker 1: meekness and simplicity in this address. Again, the versatility and
- 2:12:00Speaker 1: adroitness of Richard is admirably described in the following ironical
- 2:12:05Speaker 1: conversation with Break and Berry. Break and Berry, I beseech
- 2:12:11Speaker 1: your graces both to pardon me. His majesty hath straightly
- 2:12:15Speaker 1: given in charge that no man shall have private conference
- 2:12:19Speaker 1: of what degrees soever with your brother Gloucester Ean so an,
- 2:12:27Speaker 1: please your worship, Break and Berry, you may partake of
- 2:12:30Speaker 1: anything we say. We speak no treason man. We say
- 2:12:33Speaker 1: the king is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen
- 2:12:37Speaker 1: well struck in years, fair and not jealous. We say
- 2:12:41Speaker 1: that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot, a cherry lip,
- 2:12:45Speaker 1: a bonnie eye, a passing, pleasing tongue, that the Queen's
- 2:12:50Speaker 1: kindred are made. Gentlefolks, how say you, sir? Can you
- 2:12:54Speaker 1: deny all this? Break and Bury? With this? My lord
- 2:13:00Speaker 1: myself have naught to do Gloucester what fellow nought to
- 2:13:07Speaker 1: do with Mistress Shore? I tell you, sir, he that
- 2:13:11Speaker 1: doth not with her, excepting one were best to do
- 2:13:15Speaker 1: it secretly alone, Brakenbury, what one, my Lord Gloucester her
- 2:13:24Speaker 1: husband knave, wouldst thou betray me? The feigned reconciliation of
- 2:13:30Speaker 1: Gloucester with the Queen's Kinsman is also a masterpiece. One
- 2:13:35Speaker 1: of the finest strokes in the play, and which serves
- 2:13:37Speaker 1: to show, as much as anything, the deep plausible manners
- 2:13:41Speaker 1: of Richard is the unsuspecting security of Hastings at the
- 2:13:45Speaker 1: very time when the former is plotting his death, and
- 2:13:49Speaker 1: when the very appearance of cordiality and good humor on
- 2:13:53Speaker 1: which Hastings builds his confidence arises from Richard's consciousness of
- 2:13:58Speaker 1: having betrayed him to his room. This, with the whole
- 2:14:02Speaker 1: character of Hastings, is omitted. Perhaps the two most beautiful
- 2:14:08Speaker 1: passages in the original play are the farewell apostrophe of
- 2:14:11Speaker 1: the Queen to the tower, where the children are shut
- 2:14:14Speaker 1: up from her. In Tyrrell's description of their death, we
- 2:14:18Speaker 1: will finish our quotations with them, Queen, stay yet look
- 2:14:25Speaker 1: back with me unto the tower. Pity you ancient stones,
- 2:14:29Speaker 1: those tender babes whom Envy hath immured within your walls.
- 2:14:35Speaker 1: Rough cradle for such little pretty ones, rude, rugged, nurse,
- 2:14:39Speaker 1: old sullen playfellow for tender princes. The other passage is
- 2:14:46Speaker 1: the account of their death by Terrell Dtinen Forrest, whom
- 2:14:51Speaker 1: I did suborn to do this piece of ruthless butchery.
- 2:14:56Speaker 1: Albeit there were flushed villains, bloody dogs wept like to
- 2:15:01Speaker 1: children in their death's sad story. Oh, thus quoth Dighton
- 2:15:06Speaker 1: lay the gentle babes, Thus thus quoth force, girdling one
- 2:15:12Speaker 1: another within their innocent alabaster arms. Their lips were four
- 2:15:17Speaker 1: red roses on a stalk, and in that summer beauty
- 2:15:21Speaker 1: kissed each other a book of prayers on their pillow lay,
- 2:15:25Speaker 1: which one quoth Forest almost changed my mind. But oh
- 2:15:30Speaker 1: the devil there the villains stopped when Dighton thus told
- 2:15:34Speaker 1: on we smothered the most replenished, sweet work of nature
- 2:15:40Speaker 1: that from the prime creation air she framed. These are
- 2:15:44Speaker 1: some of those wonderful bursts of feeling done to the life,
- 2:15:48Speaker 1: to the very height of fancy and nature, which our
- 2:15:51Speaker 1: Shakespeare alone could give. We do not insist on the
- 2:15:55Speaker 1: repetition of these last passages as proper for the stage.
- 2:16:00Speaker 1: We should indeed be loath to trust them in the
- 2:16:02Speaker 1: mouth of almost any actor. But we should wish them
- 2:16:05Speaker 1: to be retained in preference at least to the Fanticini
- 2:16:09Speaker 1: exhibition of the young Princess Edward New York, bandying childish
- 2:16:14Speaker 1: wit with her uncle and of Richard I Henry the Eighth.
- 2:16:23Speaker 1: This play contains little action or violence of passion, yet
- 2:16:28Speaker 1: it has considerable interest of a more mild and thoughtful caste,
- 2:16:33Speaker 1: and some of the most striking passages in the author's works.
- 2:16:37Speaker 1: The character of Queen Catherine is the most perfect delineation
- 2:16:42Speaker 1: of matronly dignity, sweetness, and resignation that can be conceived.
- 2:16:47Speaker 1: Her appeals to the protection of the King, her remonstrances
- 2:16:52Speaker 1: to the Cardinal, her conversations with her women show a
- 2:16:56Speaker 1: noble and generous spirit accompanied with the ut most gentleness
- 2:17:01Speaker 1: of nature. What can be more affecting than her answer
- 2:17:05Speaker 1: to Campius and Wolsey, who come to visit her as
- 2:17:09Speaker 1: pretended friends. Nay, forsooth my friends, they that must weigh
- 2:17:16Speaker 1: out my afflictions, They that my trust must grow to live.
- 2:17:21Speaker 1: Not here they are, as all my comforts are far
- 2:17:26Speaker 1: hence in mine own country. Lords. Doctor Johnson observes of
- 2:17:33Speaker 1: this play that the meek sorrows and virtuous distress of
- 2:17:37Speaker 1: Catherine have furnished some scenes which may be justly numbered
- 2:17:42Speaker 1: among the greatest efforts of tragedy. But the genius of
- 2:17:46Speaker 1: Shakespeare comes in and goes out with Catherine. Every other
- 2:17:51Speaker 1: part may be easily conceived and easily written. This is
- 2:17:55Speaker 1: easily said, but with all due deference to so great
- 2:17:59Speaker 1: a repute authority as that of Johnson, it is not true.
- 2:18:04Speaker 1: For instance, the scene of Buckingham led to execution is
- 2:18:09Speaker 1: one of the most affecting and natural in Shakespeare, and
- 2:18:12Speaker 1: one to which there is hardly an approach in any
- 2:18:15Speaker 1: other author. Again, the character of Wolsey, the description of
- 2:18:21Speaker 1: his pride and of his fall, are inevitable, and have,
- 2:18:26Speaker 1: besides their gorgeousness of effect, a pathos which only the
- 2:18:30Speaker 1: genius of Shakespeare could lend. To the distresses of a
- 2:18:34Speaker 1: proud bad man like Wolsey. There is a sort of
- 2:18:38Speaker 1: childlike simplicity in the very helplessness of his situation, arising
- 2:18:44Speaker 1: from the recollection of his past overbearing ambition. After the
- 2:18:49Speaker 1: cutting sarcasms of his enemies on his disgrace, against which
- 2:18:54Speaker 1: he bears up with a spirit conscious of his own superiority,
- 2:18:58Speaker 1: he breaks out into that fine apostrophe farewell, a long
- 2:19:05Speaker 1: farewell to all my greatness. This is the state of
- 2:19:10Speaker 1: man to day. He puts forth the tender leaves of hope.
- 2:19:15Speaker 1: Tomorrow blossoms and bears his blushing honors thick upon him.
- 2:19:21Speaker 1: The third day comes afrost, a killing frost, and when
- 2:19:26Speaker 1: he thinks good, easy man full surely his greatness is
- 2:19:31Speaker 1: a ripening nips his root, and then he falls as
- 2:19:35Speaker 1: I do. I have ventured like little wanton boys that
- 2:19:40Speaker 1: swim on bladders these many summers in a sea of glory,
- 2:19:45Speaker 1: but far beyond my depth. My high blown pride at
- 2:19:50Speaker 1: length broke under me, and now has left me weary
- 2:19:54Speaker 1: and old, with service to the mercy of a rude
- 2:19:58Speaker 1: stream that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory
- 2:20:04Speaker 1: of the world. I hate ye, I feel my heart
- 2:20:08Speaker 1: new opened. Oh how wretched is that poor man that
- 2:20:13Speaker 1: hangs on prince's favors. There's betwixt that smile. We would
- 2:20:19Speaker 1: aspire to that sweet aspect of princes and our ruin
- 2:20:25Speaker 1: more pangs and fears than warn women have. And when
- 2:20:29Speaker 1: he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.
- 2:20:37Speaker 1: There is in this passage, as well as in the
- 2:20:39Speaker 1: well known dialogue of Cromwell, which follows, something which stretches beyondcommonplace.
- 2:20:46Speaker 1: Nor is the account which Griffiths gives of Wolsey's death
- 2:20:50Speaker 1: less Shakespearean, and the candor with which Queen Catherine listens
- 2:20:55Speaker 1: to the praise of Him whom, of all men, while
- 2:20:59Speaker 1: living she hated most adds the last graceful finishing to
- 2:21:03Speaker 1: her character. Among other images of great individual beauty might
- 2:21:09Speaker 1: be mentioned the description of the effect of Anne Boleyn's
- 2:21:13Speaker 1: presenting herself to the crowd at her coronation, while her
- 2:21:19Speaker 1: Grace sat down to rest a while, some half an
- 2:21:22Speaker 1: hour or so in a rich chair of state, opposing
- 2:21:26Speaker 1: freely the beauty of her person to the people. Believe me, sir,
- 2:21:31Speaker 1: she's the goodliest of women that ever lay by man, which,
- 2:21:37Speaker 1: when the people had the full view of such a
- 2:21:40Speaker 1: noise arose as the shrouds make it see in a
- 2:21:44Speaker 1: stiff tempest, as loud, and as many tunes. The character
- 2:21:51Speaker 1: of Henry the eighth is drawn with great truth and spirit.
- 2:21:56Speaker 1: It is like a very disagreeable portrait sketched by the
- 2:21:59Speaker 1: hand of a mass. His gross appearance, his blustering demeanor,
- 2:22:04Speaker 1: his vulgarity, his ignorance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy,
- 2:22:10Speaker 1: his want of common decency and common humanity are marked
- 2:22:15Speaker 1: in strong lines. His traditional peculiarities of expression complete the
- 2:22:20Speaker 1: reality of the picture. The authoritative, explative ha with which
- 2:22:27Speaker 1: he intimates his indignation or surprise has an effect like
- 2:22:32Speaker 1: the first startling sound that breaks from a thundercloud. He is,
- 2:22:37Speaker 1: of all the monarchs in our history, the most disgusting,
- 2:22:40Speaker 1: for he unites in himself all the vices of barbarism
- 2:22:44Speaker 1: and refinement, without their virtues. Other kings before him, such
- 2:22:49Speaker 1: as Richard the Third, were tyrants and murderers out of
- 2:22:53Speaker 1: ambition or necessity. They gained or established on just power
- 2:22:58Speaker 1: by violent means. They destroyed there or made its tenure insecure.
- 2:23:04Speaker 1: But Henry the Yates power is most fatal to those
- 2:23:07Speaker 1: whom he loves. He is cruel and remorseless to pamper
- 2:23:11Speaker 1: his luxurious appetites, bloody and voluptuous, an amorous murderer and
- 2:23:18Speaker 1: uxorious debauchi. His hardened insensibility to the feelings of others
- 2:23:23Speaker 1: is strengthened by the most profligate self indulgence. The religious
- 2:23:28Speaker 1: hypocrisy under which he masks cruelty and his lust is
- 2:23:33Speaker 1: admirably displayed in the speech in which he describes the
- 2:23:37Speaker 1: first misgivings of his conscience and its increasing throes and
- 2:23:41Speaker 1: terrors which have induced him to divorce his queen. The
- 2:23:46Speaker 1: only thing in his favor in this play is his
- 2:23:48Speaker 1: treatment of Cranmer. There is also another circumstance in his favor,
- 2:23:53Speaker 1: which is his patronage of Hans Holblen. It has been
- 2:23:57Speaker 1: said of Shakespeare, no maid could live near such a man.
- 2:24:01Speaker 1: It might, with his good reason, be said no king
- 2:24:05Speaker 1: could live near such a man. His eye would have
- 2:24:08Speaker 1: penetrated through the pomp of circumstance in the veil of opinion.
- 2:24:12Speaker 1: As it is, he has represented such persons to the life.
- 2:24:16Speaker 1: His plays are in this respect the glass of history.
- 2:24:20Speaker 1: He has done them the same justice as if he
- 2:24:23Speaker 1: had been a privy councilor as life and in each
- 2:24:27Speaker 1: successive reign. Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage.
- 2:24:32Speaker 1: In the abstract they are very disagreeable characters. It is
- 2:24:37Speaker 1: only while living that they are the best of kings.
- 2:24:41Speaker 1: It is their power, their splendor. It is the apprehension
- 2:24:45Speaker 1: of the personal consequences of their favor or their hatred
- 2:24:49Speaker 1: that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgment of their
- 2:24:53Speaker 1: favorites or their vassals. But death cancels the bond of
- 2:24:58Speaker 1: allegiance and of injury. In seen as they were, their
- 2:25:03Speaker 1: power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous. The charge
- 2:25:09Speaker 1: brought against modern philosophy as inimical to loyalty is unjust,
- 2:25:15Speaker 1: because it might as well be brought lover of kings.
- 2:25:20Speaker 1: We have often wondered that Henry the Eighth, as he
- 2:25:23Speaker 1: is drawn by Shakespeare, and as we have seen him
- 2:25:26Speaker 1: represented in all the bloated deformity of mind and person,
- 2:25:31Speaker 1: is not hooted from the English stage. End of Henry
- 2:25:38Speaker 1: the Eighth, King John King John is the last of
- 2:25:43Speaker 1: the historical plays we shall have to speak of, and
- 2:25:47Speaker 1: we are not sorry that it is. If we are
- 2:25:50Speaker 1: to indulge our imaginations, we had rather do it upon
- 2:25:54Speaker 1: an imaginary theme. If we are to find subjects for
- 2:25:58Speaker 1: the exercise of our pity in terror, we prefer seeking
- 2:26:02Speaker 1: them in fictitious danger and fictitious distress. It gives a
- 2:26:09Speaker 1: soreness to our feelings of indignation or sympathy when we
- 2:26:13Speaker 1: know that in tracing the progress of sufferings and crimes
- 2:26:17Speaker 1: we are treading upon real ground, and recollect that the
- 2:26:21Speaker 1: poet's dream denoted a foregone conclusion, their revocable ills not
- 2:26:28Speaker 1: conjured up by fancy, but placed beyond the reach of
- 2:26:32Speaker 1: poetical justice. That the treachery of King John, the death
- 2:26:37Speaker 1: of Arthur, the grief of Constance at a real truth
- 2:26:40Speaker 1: in history sharpens the sense of pain while it hangs
- 2:26:45Speaker 1: a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination. Something
- 2:26:49Speaker 1: whispers us that we have no right to make a
- 2:26:52Speaker 1: mock of calamities like these, or to turn the truth
- 2:26:56Speaker 1: of things into the puppet and plaything of our fancies.
- 2:27:00Speaker 1: To consider thus may be to consider too curiously. But
- 2:27:06Speaker 1: still we think that the actual truth of the particular events,
- 2:27:10Speaker 1: in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a
- 2:27:14Speaker 1: drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy.
- 2:27:20Speaker 1: King John has all the beauties of language and all
- 2:27:23Speaker 1: the richness of the imagination to relieve the painfulness of
- 2:27:27Speaker 1: the subject. The character of King John himself is kept
- 2:27:32Speaker 1: pretty much in the background. It is only marked in
- 2:27:35Speaker 1: by comparatively slight indications. The crimes he is tempted to
- 2:27:39Speaker 1: commit are such as are thrust upon him, rather by
- 2:27:43Speaker 1: circumstances and opportunity, than of his own seeking. He is
- 2:27:50Speaker 1: here represented as more cowardly than cruel, and is more
- 2:27:54Speaker 1: contemptible than odious. The play embraces only a part of
- 2:27:58Speaker 1: his history. There are, however, few characters on the stage
- 2:28:03Speaker 1: that excite more disgust and loathing. He has no intellectual
- 2:28:08Speaker 1: grandeur or strength of character to shield him from the
- 2:28:12Speaker 1: indignation which his immediate conduct provokes. He stands naked and
- 2:28:18Speaker 1: defenseless in that respect to the worst we can think
- 2:28:21Speaker 1: of him. And besides, we are impelled to put the
- 2:28:25Speaker 1: very worst construction on his meanness and cruelty by the
- 2:28:29Speaker 1: tender picture of the beauty and helplessness of the object
- 2:28:33Speaker 1: of it, as well as by the frantic and heart
- 2:28:36Speaker 1: rending pleadings of maternal despair. We do not forgive him
- 2:28:42Speaker 1: the death of Arthur. Because he had too late revoked
- 2:28:45Speaker 1: his doom and tried to prevent it, and perhaps because
- 2:28:49Speaker 1: he has himself repented of his black design, our moral
- 2:28:55Speaker 1: sense gains courage to hate him the more for it.
- 2:29:00Speaker 1: We take him at his word and think his purposes
- 2:29:03Speaker 1: must be odious, indeed, when he himself shrinks back from them.
- 2:29:09Speaker 1: The scene in which King John suggests to Hubert the
- 2:29:13Speaker 1: design of murdering his nephew is a masterpiece of dramatic skill.
- 2:29:18Speaker 1: But it is still inferior, very inferior, to the scene
- 2:29:23Speaker 1: between Hubert and Arthur, when the latter learns the orders
- 2:29:28Speaker 1: to put out his eyes. If anything ever was penned
- 2:29:32Speaker 1: heart piercing, mixing the extremes of terror and pity, of
- 2:29:37Speaker 1: that which shocks and that which soothes the mind, it
- 2:29:42Speaker 1: is this scene. We will give it entire, though perhaps
- 2:29:47Speaker 1: it is tasking the reader's sympathy too much. Enter Hubert
- 2:29:53Speaker 1: an executioner, Hubert, hate me those irons hot, and look
- 2:29:59Speaker 1: you stand and within the arrass when I strike my
- 2:30:02Speaker 1: foot upon the bosom of the ground, Rush forth and
- 2:30:06Speaker 1: bind the boy which you shall find with me, fast
- 2:30:10Speaker 1: to the chair. Be heedful, hence and watch, Executioner. I
- 2:30:17Speaker 1: hope your warrant will bear out the deed. Hubert, uncleanly scruples.
- 2:30:25Speaker 1: Fear not you look to it, young lad, Come forth,
- 2:30:30Speaker 1: I have to say with you, Enter Arthur Arthur, good morrow, Hubert,
- 2:30:39Speaker 1: Hubert Morrow, little Prince Arthur, as little prince, having so
- 2:30:47Speaker 1: great a title, to be more prince as may be.
- 2:30:51Speaker 1: You are sad, Hubert, Indeed I have been merrier Arthur
- 2:31:00Speaker 1: mercy on me. Methinks nobody should be sad, but I
- 2:31:04Speaker 1: yet I remember when I was in France, young gentleman,
- 2:31:08Speaker 1: would be as sad as knight, only for wantonness by
- 2:31:12Speaker 1: my christiendom. So were I out of prison and kept sheep,
- 2:31:17Speaker 1: I should be merry as a day is long, and
- 2:31:20Speaker 1: so I would be here. But that I doubt my
- 2:31:23Speaker 1: uncle practice is more harm to me. He is afraid
- 2:31:26Speaker 1: of me and I of him. Is it my fault
- 2:31:30Speaker 1: that I was Geoffrey's son? Indeed it is not, And
- 2:31:34Speaker 1: I would to heaven I were your son, so you
- 2:31:38Speaker 1: would love me, Hubert, Hubert, if I talked to him
- 2:31:44Speaker 1: with his innocent prate, he will await my mercy, which
- 2:31:48Speaker 1: lies dead. Therefore I will be sudden and despatch aside, Arthur,
- 2:31:57Speaker 1: are you said, Hubert, you look pale to day in sooth?
- 2:32:02Speaker 1: I would you were a little sick, that I might
- 2:32:04Speaker 1: sit all night and watch with you, alas I love
- 2:32:08Speaker 1: you more than you do me. Hubert, his words do
- 2:32:14Speaker 1: take possession of my bosom. Read here, young Arthur, showing
- 2:32:19Speaker 1: a paper, how now foolish room aside, turning this bideous
- 2:32:26Speaker 1: torture out of door. I must be brief lest resolution
- 2:32:31Speaker 1: drop out at mine eyes and tender womanish tears. Can
- 2:32:37Speaker 1: you not read it? Is it not fair? Writ Arthur?
- 2:32:44Speaker 1: Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul a fact? Must you
- 2:32:49Speaker 1: with irons burn out both mine eyes, Hubert, young boy,
- 2:32:55Speaker 1: I must Arthur, and will you, Hubert? And I will
- 2:33:07Speaker 1: Arthur have you the heart? When your head did but
- 2:33:12Speaker 1: to ache, I knit my handkerchief about your brows, the
- 2:33:16Speaker 1: best I had. A princess wrought it to me, and
- 2:33:19Speaker 1: I did never ask at you again, and with my
- 2:33:23Speaker 1: hand at midnight held your head, and like the watchful
- 2:33:28Speaker 1: minutes to the hour, still at Anon, cheered up the
- 2:33:31Speaker 1: heavy time, saying, won't lack you? And where lies your grief?
- 2:33:37Speaker 1: Or what good love may I perform for you? Many
- 2:33:42Speaker 1: a poor man's son would have lain still, and ne'er
- 2:33:45Speaker 1: have spoke a loving word to you, But you, at
- 2:33:48Speaker 1: your sick service, had a prince. Nay, you may think
- 2:33:52Speaker 1: my love was a crafty love and call it to
- 2:33:54Speaker 1: cunning do And if you will, if Heaven be pleased,
- 2:33:58Speaker 1: that you must use me ill, why then you must?
- 2:34:03Speaker 1: Will you put out mine eyes, these eyes that never
- 2:34:07Speaker 1: did and never shall so much as frown on you, Hubert?
- 2:34:13Speaker 1: I've sworn to do it, and with hot irons, must
- 2:34:16Speaker 1: I burn them out? Arthur. Oh, If an angel should
- 2:34:22Speaker 1: have come to me and told me Hubert should put
- 2:34:25Speaker 1: out mine eyes, I would not have believed the tongue.
- 2:34:28Speaker 1: But Hubert's. Hubert, come forth, do as I bid you,
- 2:34:35Speaker 1: Stamps and the men enter. Arthur, Oh, save me, Hubert,
- 2:34:41Speaker 1: save me. My eyes are out. Even with the fierce
- 2:34:46Speaker 1: looks of these bloody men. Hubert, give me the iron,
- 2:34:52Speaker 1: I say, and bind him here. Arthur, Alas, what need
- 2:34:57Speaker 1: you be so boisterous? Rough? I will not struggle. I
- 2:35:01Speaker 1: will stand stone still for heaven. Say Hubert, let me
- 2:35:06Speaker 1: not be bound. Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away,
- 2:35:11Speaker 1: and I will sit as quiet as a lamb. I
- 2:35:14Speaker 1: will not stir, nor WinCE, nor speak a word, nor
- 2:35:17Speaker 1: look upon iron angrily. Thrust but these men away, and
- 2:35:22Speaker 1: I'll forgive you whatever torment you do put me to. Hubert,
- 2:35:29Speaker 1: go stand within and let me alone with him, Executioner.
- 2:35:35Speaker 1: I am best pleased to be from such a deed. Exit, Arthur, Alas,
- 2:35:44Speaker 1: I then have chid away. My friend. He hath a
- 2:35:47Speaker 1: stern look, but a gentle heart. Let him come back
- 2:35:51Speaker 1: that his compassion may give life to yours. Hubert, come, boy,
- 2:35:59Speaker 1: prepare yourself, Arthur. Is there no remedy, Hubert, none but
- 2:36:09Speaker 1: to lose your eyes Arthur, Oh Heaven, that there were
- 2:36:16Speaker 1: but a moat in yours, a grain, a dust, a gnat,
- 2:36:21Speaker 1: a wandering hair, any annoyance in that precious sense, then
- 2:36:27Speaker 1: feeling what small things are boisterous? There? Your vile intent
- 2:36:32Speaker 1: must needs seem horrible, Hubert. Is this your promise? Go
- 2:36:40Speaker 1: to hold your tongue, Arthur. Let me not hold my tongue.
- 2:36:46Speaker 1: Let me not, Hubert or Hubert, if you will cut
- 2:36:50Speaker 1: out my tongue so I may keep mine eyes. Oh,
- 2:36:54Speaker 1: spare mine eyes, though to no use, but still to
- 2:36:59Speaker 1: look on you lo by my troth. The instrument is
- 2:37:04Speaker 1: cold and would not harm me, Hubert. I can heed it, boy, Arthur. No,
- 2:37:15Speaker 1: in good sooth, the fire is dead, with grief being
- 2:37:20Speaker 1: create for comfort to be used in undeserved extremes. See
- 2:37:25Speaker 1: else yourself. There is no malice in this burning coal.
- 2:37:30Speaker 1: The breath of heaven hath blown its spirit out and
- 2:37:34Speaker 1: strewed repentant ashes on its head, Hubert. But with my
- 2:37:41Speaker 1: breath I can revive at the boy, Arthur, all things
- 2:37:47Speaker 1: that you shall use to do me wrong, deny their office.
- 2:37:51Speaker 1: Only you do lack that mercy which fierce fire and
- 2:37:55Speaker 1: iron extend creatures of note. For mercy lacking uses Hubert,
- 2:38:02Speaker 1: well see to live. I will not touch thine eyes
- 2:38:06Speaker 1: for all the treasure that thine uncle owns. Yet I
- 2:38:10Speaker 1: am sworn, and I did purpose boy with the same
- 2:38:14Speaker 1: very iron to burn them out. Arthur, Oh, now you
- 2:38:21Speaker 1: look like Hubert all this while you were disguised. Hubert, peace,
- 2:38:29Speaker 1: no more adieu. Your uncle must not know, but you
- 2:38:33Speaker 1: are dead. I'll fill these dogs spies with false reports
- 2:38:38Speaker 1: and pretty child sleep doubtless and secure that Hubert, for
- 2:38:43Speaker 1: the wealth of all the world will not defend thee. Arthur,
- 2:38:48Speaker 1: Oh heaven, I thank you, Hubert. Hubert, silence, no more
- 2:38:56Speaker 1: go closely in with me? Much danger do I undergo?
- 2:39:01Speaker 1: For thee excit his death afterwards when he throws himself
- 2:39:08Speaker 1: from his prison walls, excites the utmost pity for his
- 2:39:12Speaker 1: innocence and friendless situation, and while justifies the exaggerated denunciations
- 2:39:18Speaker 1: of Falconbridge to Hubert, whom he suspects wrongfully of the deed.
- 2:39:25Speaker 1: There's not yet so ugly a fiend of hell as
- 2:39:27Speaker 1: thou shalt be. If thou didst kill this child. If
- 2:39:32Speaker 1: thou didst but consent to this most cruel act, do
- 2:39:37Speaker 1: but despare. And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest
- 2:39:41Speaker 1: thread that ever spider twisted from her womb will strangle thee.
- 2:39:46Speaker 1: A rush will be a beam to hang thee on.
- 2:39:49Speaker 1: Or wouldst thou drown thyself? But put a little water
- 2:39:53Speaker 1: in a spoon, and it shall be as all the
- 2:39:56Speaker 1: ocean enough the stifle such a villain up. The excess
- 2:40:03Speaker 1: of maternal tenderness, rendered desperate by the fickleness of friends
- 2:40:08Speaker 1: and the injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will
- 2:40:12Speaker 1: in proportion to the want of all other power, was
- 2:40:15Speaker 1: never more finely expressed than in constance the dignity of
- 2:40:20Speaker 1: her answer to King Philip, when she refuses to accompany
- 2:40:23Speaker 1: his messenger to me and to the state of my
- 2:40:27Speaker 1: great grief. Let kings assemble her indignant reproach to Austria
- 2:40:33Speaker 1: for deserting her cause, her invocation to death. That love
- 2:40:37Speaker 1: of misery, however fine and spirited, all yield to the
- 2:40:42Speaker 1: beauty of the passage, where her passion subsiding into tenderness.
- 2:40:47Speaker 1: She addresses the Cardinal in these words Oh.
- 2:40:51Speaker 2: Father Cardinal, I have heard you say that we shall
- 2:40:56Speaker 2: see and know our friends in heaven. If that be true,
- 2:41:01Speaker 2: I shall see my boy again. For since the birth
- 2:41:05Speaker 2: of Cain, the first male child to him that did,
- 2:41:09Speaker 2: but yesterday suspire, there was not such a gracious creature born.
- 2:41:15Speaker 2: But now will canker sorrow eat my bud and chase
- 2:41:20Speaker 2: the native beauty from his cheek, and he will look
- 2:41:24Speaker 2: as hollow as a ghost, as dim and meager as
- 2:41:28Speaker 2: an egg is fit, And so he'll die and rising
- 2:41:33Speaker 2: so again when I shall meet him in the court
- 2:41:35Speaker 2: of heaven, I shall not know him. Therefore, never, never
- 2:41:40Speaker 2: must I behold my pretty are the more.
- 2:41:44Speaker 1: King, Philip, you are as fond of grief as of
- 2:41:49Speaker 1: your child Constance.
- 2:41:54Speaker 2: Grief fills the room up of my absent child lies
- 2:42:01Speaker 2: in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts
- 2:42:04Speaker 2: on his pretty looks, repeats his words, remembers me of
- 2:42:09Speaker 2: all his gracious parts, stuffs out his vacant garments with
- 2:42:13Speaker 2: his form. Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
- 2:42:20Speaker 1: The contrasts between the mild resignation of Queen Catherine to
- 2:42:24Speaker 1: her own wrongs and the wild, uncontrollable affliction of constance,
- 2:42:29Speaker 1: for the wrongs which she sustains as a mother is
- 2:42:32Speaker 1: no less naturally conceived than it is ably sustained throughout
- 2:42:37Speaker 1: these two wonderful characters. The accompaniment of the comic character
- 2:42:43Speaker 1: of the Bastard was well chosen to relieve the poignant
- 2:42:46Speaker 1: agony of suffering and the cold, cowardly policy of behavior,
- 2:42:51Speaker 1: and the principal characters of this play, its spirit, invention,
- 2:42:56Speaker 1: volubility of tongue, and forwardness and action are unbound. Aleakwando,
- 2:43:02Speaker 1: sepphaliminandez errat, says Ben Johnson of Shakespeare. But we should
- 2:43:07Speaker 1: be sorry if Ben Johnson had been his licenser. We
- 2:43:11Speaker 1: prefer the heedless magnanimity of his wit infinitely to all
- 2:43:15Speaker 1: Johnson's laborious caution. The character of the Bastard's comic humor
- 2:43:21Speaker 1: is the same in essence as that of other comic
- 2:43:23Speaker 1: characters in Shakespeare. They always run on with good things
- 2:43:27Speaker 1: and are never exhausted. They are always daring and successful.
- 2:43:32Speaker 1: They have words at will, and a flow of wit
- 2:43:35Speaker 1: like a flow of animal spirits. The difference between Falconbridge
- 2:43:40Speaker 1: and the others is that he is a soldier and
- 2:43:43Speaker 1: brings his wit to bear upon action, is courageous with
- 2:43:47Speaker 1: his sword as well as tongue, and stimulates his gallantry
- 2:43:51Speaker 1: by his jokes, his enemies feeling the sharpness of his
- 2:43:54Speaker 1: blows and the sting of his sarcasms. At the same time.
- 2:43:59Speaker 1: Among his happiest sallies are as discanting on the composition
- 2:44:03Speaker 1: of his own person, is invective against commodity, tickling commodity,
- 2:44:09Speaker 1: and his expression of contempt for the Archduke of Austria
- 2:44:13Speaker 1: who had killed his father, which begins in jest but
- 2:44:16Speaker 1: ends in serious eyarnest. His conduct at the siege of
- 2:44:20Speaker 1: Aangiers shows that his resources were not confined to verbal retorts.
- 2:44:26Speaker 1: The same exposure of the policy of courts and camps
- 2:44:29Speaker 1: of kings, nobles, priests and cardinals takes place here, as
- 2:44:34Speaker 1: in the other plays. We have gone through, and we
- 2:44:36Speaker 1: shall not go into a disgusting repetition. This, like the
- 2:44:42Speaker 1: other plays taken from English history, is written in a
- 2:44:45Speaker 1: remarkably smooth and flowing style, very different from some of
- 2:44:50Speaker 1: the tragedies Macbeth. For instance, the passages consist of a
- 2:44:55Speaker 1: series of single lines, not running into one another. This
- 2:45:00Speaker 1: peculiarity in the versification, which is most common in the
- 2:45:04Speaker 1: three parts of Henry the sixth has been assigned as
- 2:45:07Speaker 1: a reason why those plays were not written by Shakespeare,
- 2:45:11Speaker 1: But the same structure verse occurs in his other undoubted plays,
- 2:45:15Speaker 1: as in Rich of the second nd and in King John.
- 2:45:19Speaker 1: The following are instances that daughter there of Spain, the
- 2:45:25Speaker 1: lady Blanche, is near to England, look upon the years
- 2:45:29Speaker 1: of lewis to the Dauphin, and that lovely maid. If
- 2:45:33Speaker 1: lusty love should go in quest of beauty, where should
- 2:45:36Speaker 1: he find it fairer than in Blanche. If zealous love
- 2:45:40Speaker 1: should go in search of virtue, where should he find
- 2:45:43Speaker 1: it purer than in Blanche? If love ambitious sought a
- 2:45:47Speaker 1: match of birth whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanche,
- 2:45:52Speaker 1: such as she is in beauty, virtue, birth is the
- 2:45:56Speaker 1: young dolphin every way complete, if not complete, of say,
- 2:46:01Speaker 1: he is not she, and she again wants nothing to
- 2:46:05Speaker 1: name want if want it be not that she is
- 2:46:09Speaker 1: not he. He is the half part of a blessed
- 2:46:12Speaker 1: man left to be finished by such as she, and
- 2:46:16Speaker 1: she a fair divided excellence, whose fullness of perfection lies
- 2:46:19Speaker 1: in him. Oh, two such silver currents, when they join
- 2:46:24Speaker 1: do glorify the banks that bound them in, and two
- 2:46:27Speaker 1: such shores to two such streams, made one two such
- 2:46:32Speaker 1: controlling bounds. Shall you be kings to these two princes
- 2:46:37Speaker 1: if you marry them. Another instance, which is certainly very
- 2:46:42Speaker 1: happy as an example of the simple enumeration of a
- 2:46:46Speaker 1: number of particulars, is Salisbury's remonstrance against the second crowning
- 2:46:51Speaker 1: of the king. Therefore to be possessed with double pomp,
- 2:46:56Speaker 1: to guard a title that was rich before, to guild reffes,
- 2:47:00Speaker 1: find gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume
- 2:47:03Speaker 1: on the violet, to smooth the ice, to add another
- 2:47:06Speaker 1: hue onto the rainbow, or with taper light, to seek
- 2:47:10Speaker 1: the beauteous eye of heaven. To garnish is wasteful and
- 2:47:15Speaker 1: ridiculous excess. End of King.
- 2:47:21Speaker 2: John Twelfth Night, or what you will. This is justly
- 2:47:27Speaker 2: considered as one of the most delightful of Shakespeare's comedies.
- 2:47:30Speaker 2: It is full of sweetness and pleasantry. It is perhaps
- 2:47:34Speaker 2: too good natured for comedy. It has little satire and
- 2:47:37Speaker 2: no spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather than the ridiculous.
- 2:47:42Speaker 2: It makes us laugh at the follies of mankind not
- 2:47:45Speaker 2: despise them, and still less bear any ill will towards them.
- 2:47:50Speaker 2: Shakespeare's comic Genius resembles the bee rather in its power
- 2:47:54Speaker 2: of extracting sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving
- 2:47:57Speaker 2: a sting behind it. He gives the most amusing exaggeration
- 2:48:01Speaker 2: of the prevailing foibles of his characters, but in a
- 2:48:04Speaker 2: way that they themselves, instead of being offended at, would
- 2:48:08Speaker 2: almost join in to humor. He rather contrives opportunities for
- 2:48:12Speaker 2: them to show themselves off in the happiest lights, than
- 2:48:15Speaker 2: renders them contemptible in the perverse construction of the wit
- 2:48:19Speaker 2: or malice of others. There is a certain stage of
- 2:48:22Speaker 2: society in which people become conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities,
- 2:48:28Speaker 2: effect to disguise what they are and set up pretensions
- 2:48:31Speaker 2: to what they are not. This gives rise to a
- 2:48:34Speaker 2: corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to
- 2:48:38Speaker 2: detect the disguises of self love and to make reprisals
- 2:48:42Speaker 2: on those preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast
- 2:48:46Speaker 2: between the real and the affected character as severely as possible,
- 2:48:51Speaker 2: and denying to those who would impose on us for
- 2:48:53Speaker 2: what they are, not even the merit which they have.
- 2:48:57Speaker 2: This is the comedy of artificial life, of ways, wit
- 2:49:00Speaker 2: and satire, such as we see it in Congrave, Witterly,
- 2:49:04Speaker 2: Vaan Brois, et cetera. To this succeeds a state of
- 2:49:08Speaker 2: society from which the same sort of affectation and pretense
- 2:49:11Speaker 2: are banished by a greater knowledge of the world, or
- 2:49:14Speaker 2: by their successful exposure on the stage, and which, by
- 2:49:17Speaker 2: neutralizing the materials of comic character, both natural and artificial,
- 2:49:22Speaker 2: leaves no comedy at all, but the sentimental, such as
- 2:49:26Speaker 2: are modern comedy. There is a period in the progress
- 2:49:29Speaker 2: of manners anterior to both these, in which the foibles
- 2:49:33Speaker 2: and follies of individuals are of nature's planting, not the
- 2:49:36Speaker 2: growth of art or study, in which they are therefore
- 2:49:39Speaker 2: unconscious of them themselves, or care not who knows them
- 2:49:43Speaker 2: if they can have their whim out, and in which,
- 2:49:46Speaker 2: as there is no attempt at imposition, the spectators rather
- 2:49:50Speaker 2: receive pleasure from humoring the inclinations of the persons. They
- 2:49:53Speaker 2: laugh at them, wish to give them pain by exposing
- 2:49:56Speaker 2: their absurdity. This may be called the comedy of nature,
- 2:50:01Speaker 2: and it is the comedy which we generally find in Shakespeare.
- 2:50:05Speaker 2: Whether the analysis here given be just or not, the
- 2:50:08Speaker 2: spirit of his comedies is evidently quite distinct from that
- 2:50:11Speaker 2: of the author's above mentioned, as it is in its
- 2:50:14Speaker 2: essence the same with that of Cervantes, and also very
- 2:50:18Speaker 2: frequently of Moliere, though he was more systematic in his
- 2:50:21Speaker 2: extravagance than Shakespeare. Shakespeare's comedy is of a pastoral and
- 2:50:25Speaker 2: poetical caste. Folly is indigenous to the soil and shoots
- 2:50:30Speaker 2: out with native happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encouragement
- 2:50:36Speaker 2: afforded it, and nonsense has room to flourish in. Nothing
- 2:50:40Speaker 2: is stunted by the churlish, icy hand of indifference or severity.
- 2:50:45Speaker 2: The poet runs a riot in the conceit and idolizes
- 2:50:48Speaker 2: a quibble. His whole object is to turn the meanest
- 2:50:51Speaker 2: or rudest objects to a pleasurable account. The relish which
- 2:50:55Speaker 2: he has of a pun or the quaint humor of
- 2:50:57Speaker 2: a low character, does not interfere with the delight with
- 2:51:01Speaker 2: which he describes a beautiful image or the most refined love.
- 2:51:05Speaker 2: The clown's forced jests do not spoil the sweetness of
- 2:51:09Speaker 2: the character.
- 2:51:09Speaker 1: Of viola.
- 2:51:10Speaker 2: The same house is big enough to hold Malvolio, the
- 2:51:13Speaker 2: Countess Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew egg Ye cheek,
- 2:51:18Speaker 2: for instance. Nothing can fall much lower than this last
- 2:51:21Speaker 2: character in intellect or morals. Yet, how are his weaknesses
- 2:51:26Speaker 2: nursed and dandled by Sir Toby into something high fantastical?
- 2:51:30Speaker 2: When on Sir Andrew's commendation of himself for a dancing
- 2:51:33Speaker 2: and fencing Sir Toby answers, what doest thou mean where
- 2:51:38Speaker 2: far these things hit? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain
- 2:51:42Speaker 2: before them? Are they like to take dust like mister
- 2:51:45Speaker 2: Smole's picture? Why dost thou not go to church in
- 2:51:49Speaker 2: a caalliard and come home in a coranto? My very
- 2:51:53Speaker 2: walk should be a cheek. I would not so much
- 2:51:55Speaker 2: make water, but in a sank pace. What dost thou mean?
- 2:51:59Speaker 2: Is this a world died virtues? In? I did think
- 2:52:02Speaker 2: by the excellent constitution of the eye leg it was
- 2:52:06Speaker 2: framed under the star of a gal Yet how Sir Toby,
- 2:52:11Speaker 2: Sir Andrew, and the clown afterward chirp over their cups,
- 2:52:14Speaker 2: How they rouse the night owl in a catch able
- 2:52:17Speaker 2: to draw three souls out of one weaver, what can
- 2:52:20Speaker 2: be better than Sir Toby's unanswerable answer to Malvolio? Does
- 2:52:24Speaker 2: thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no
- 2:52:27Speaker 2: more cakes than ale? In a word, the best turn
- 2:52:31Speaker 2: is given to everything instead of the worst. There is
- 2:52:34Speaker 2: a constant infusion of the romantic and enthusiastic in proportion,
- 2:52:38Speaker 2: as the characters are natural and sincere, whereas in the
- 2:52:42Speaker 2: more artificial style of comedy, everything gives way to ridicule
- 2:52:46Speaker 2: and indifference, there being nothing left but affectation on one
- 2:52:50Speaker 2: side and incredulity on the other. Much as we like
- 2:52:55Speaker 2: Shakespeare's comedies, we cannot agree with doctor Johnson that they
- 2:52:58Speaker 2: are better than his tragedies, nor do we like them
- 2:53:01Speaker 2: half so well. If his inclination to comedy sometimes led
- 2:53:05Speaker 2: him to trifle with the seriousness of tragedy, the poetical
- 2:53:08Speaker 2: and impassioned passages are the best parts of his comedies.
- 2:53:12Speaker 2: The great and secret charm of Twelfth Night is the
- 2:53:15Speaker 2: character of Viola. Much as we like ketches and cakes
- 2:53:18Speaker 2: and Ale, there is something that we like better. We
- 2:53:21Speaker 2: have a friendship for Sir Toby. We patronize Sir Andrew.
- 2:53:26Speaker 2: We have an understanding with the clown, a sneaking kindness
- 2:53:29Speaker 2: for Maria and her rogueries. We feel a regard for Malvolio,
- 2:53:34Speaker 2: and sympathize with his gravity, his smiles, his cross garters,
- 2:53:38Speaker 2: his yellow stockings, and imprisonment in the stocks. But there
- 2:53:42Speaker 2: is something that excites in us a stronger feeling than
- 2:53:45Speaker 2: all this. It is Viola's confession of her love.
- 2:53:49Speaker 1: Duke, What's her history?
- 2:53:51Speaker 2: Viola a blank, my lord? She never told her love.
- 2:53:56Speaker 2: She la concealment like a worm in the bud on
- 2:54:00Speaker 2: our damask cheek. She pined in thought, and with a
- 2:54:05Speaker 2: green and yellow melancholy, she sat like patience on a monument,
- 2:54:10Speaker 2: smiling at grief. Was this not love? Indeed, we men
- 2:54:14Speaker 2: may say more, swear more, but indeed our shows are
- 2:54:18Speaker 2: more than will. For still we prove much in our vows,
- 2:54:21Speaker 2: but little in our love.
- 2:54:24Speaker 1: Died thy sister for love, my boy, I.
- 2:54:27Speaker 2: Am all the daughters of my father's house, and all
- 2:54:30Speaker 2: the brothers too, And yet I know not Shakespeare alone
- 2:54:35Speaker 2: could describe the effect of his own poetry. Oh, it
- 2:54:40Speaker 2: came over the ear like the sweet south that breathes
- 2:54:44Speaker 2: upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor. What
- 2:54:48Speaker 2: we so much admire. Here is not the image of
- 2:54:51Speaker 2: patience on a monument, which has been generally quoted, but
- 2:54:54Speaker 2: the lines before and after it. They give a very
- 2:54:57Speaker 2: echo to the seat where love is throned. How long
- 2:55:01Speaker 2: ago it is since we first learnt to repeat them,
- 2:55:04Speaker 2: and still still they vibrate on the heart, like the
- 2:55:07Speaker 2: sounds which the passing wind draws from the trembling strings
- 2:55:11Speaker 2: of a harp left on some desert shore. There are
- 2:55:14Speaker 2: other passages of not less impassioned sweetness, such is Olivia's
- 2:55:18Speaker 2: addressed to Sebastian, whom she supposes to have already deceived
- 2:55:23Speaker 2: her in a promise of marriage. Blame not this haste
- 2:55:26Speaker 2: of mine. If you mean well, now go with me
- 2:55:29Speaker 2: and with this holy Man, and to the chantry by
- 2:55:32Speaker 2: there before him and underneath that consecrated roof play me
- 2:55:36Speaker 2: the full assurance of your faith that my most jealous
- 2:55:39Speaker 2: and too doubtful soul may live at peace. We have
- 2:55:44Speaker 2: already said something of Shakespeare's songs, One of the most
- 2:55:47Speaker 2: beautiful of them occurs in this play, with a preface
- 2:55:50Speaker 2: of his own to it.
- 2:55:52Speaker 1: Duke, oh fellow, come the song we had last night,
- 2:55:56Speaker 1: market Sarah. It is old and plain, spinsters, and the
- 2:56:01Speaker 1: knitters in the sun, and the free maids that weave
- 2:56:03Speaker 1: their threat with bones. Do you used to chant it?
- 2:56:07Speaker 1: It is silly sooth and dollies with the innocence of love,
- 2:56:12Speaker 1: like the old age.
- 2:56:14Speaker 2: Song Come away, Come away death, And in sad cypris,
- 2:56:19Speaker 2: Let me be laid, fly away, fly away breath. I
- 2:56:24Speaker 2: am slain by a fair cool maid. My shroud of
- 2:56:29Speaker 2: white stuck on with you? Or prepare it my part
- 2:56:34Speaker 2: of death. No one so true did share it. Not
- 2:56:39Speaker 2: a flower, not a flower, sweet on my black coffin.
- 2:56:43Speaker 2: Let there be strown, not a friend, not a friend.
- 2:56:47Speaker 2: Greet my poor corpse. Where my bones shall be thrown
- 2:56:52Speaker 2: a thousand thousand size to save? Lay me, Oh, where
- 2:56:57Speaker 2: sad true love never find mine? Grave to weep there?
- 2:57:04Speaker 2: Who after this will say that Shakespeare's genius was only
- 2:57:07Speaker 2: fitted for comedy. Yet, after reading other parts of this play,
- 2:57:11Speaker 2: and particularly the garden scene where Malvolio picks up the letter,
- 2:57:15Speaker 2: if we were to say that his genius for comedy
- 2:57:17Speaker 2: was less than his genius for tragedy, it would perhaps
- 2:57:21Speaker 2: only prove that our own taste in such matters is
- 2:57:23Speaker 2: more saturnine than mercurial. Enter Maria, Sir Toby, here comes
- 2:57:29Speaker 2: a little villain. How now mine nettle of India, Maria,
- 2:57:34Speaker 2: get you all three into the box tree. Malfolio's coming
- 2:57:37Speaker 2: down this walk. He has been yonder in the sun,
- 2:57:40Speaker 2: practicing behavior to his own shadow this half hour. Observe
- 2:57:44Speaker 2: him for the love of mockery, for I know this
- 2:57:47Speaker 2: letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. Close in
- 2:57:51Speaker 2: the name of jesting, lie thou there, for here comes
- 2:57:54Speaker 2: the trout. They must be caught with tickling. They hide themselves.
- 2:57:58Speaker 2: Maria throws down a letter an.
- 2:58:00Speaker 1: Exit Melvolio tis but fortune all is fortune. Maria once
- 2:58:06Speaker 1: told me she did affect me, and I've heard herself
- 2:58:09Speaker 1: come thus near. That should she fancy it should be
- 2:58:13Speaker 1: one of my complexion. Besides, she uses me with a
- 2:58:17Speaker 1: more exalted respect than anyone else that follows her. What
- 2:58:22Speaker 1: should I think.
- 2:58:22Speaker 2: Of it, Sir Toby, Here's an overwinning rogue, Fabian, Oh, Peace,
- 2:58:28Speaker 2: contemplation makes a rare turkey cock of him. How he
- 2:58:32Speaker 2: jets under his advanced plumes, Sir Andrew Slight. I could
- 2:58:37Speaker 2: so be the rogue, Sir Toby Peace, I.
- 2:58:40Speaker 1: Say to be Count Melvolio.
- 2:58:44Speaker 2: Sir Toby ah rogue, Sir Andrew pistol m pistol M,
- 2:58:50Speaker 2: Sir Toby, peace, peace.
- 2:58:53Speaker 1: There is example for art, the lady of the start,
- 2:58:56Speaker 1: she married the yeoman of the wardrobe, Sir.
- 2:59:00Speaker 2: And drew fire on him. Jezebel Fabian, Oh peace. Now
- 2:59:04Speaker 2: he's deeply in look how imagination blows him.
- 2:59:08Speaker 1: Having been three months married to her, Sitting in my
- 2:59:13Speaker 1: chair of state.
- 2:59:15Speaker 2: Sir Toby, Oh for a stone bow to hit him in.
- 2:59:18Speaker 1: The eye, calling my officers about me in my branched
- 2:59:22Speaker 1: velvet gown, having come from a day bed where I've
- 2:59:27Speaker 1: left Olivia's sleeping, Sir.
- 2:59:29Speaker 2: Toby, fire and brimstone, Fabian, Oh, peace, Peace.
- 2:59:35Speaker 1: Then to have the humor of state, and after a
- 2:59:39Speaker 1: demure travel of regard, telling them I know my place
- 2:59:44Speaker 1: as I would, they should do theirs to ask for
- 2:59:47Speaker 1: my kinsman Toby.
- 2:59:49Speaker 2: Sir Toby, bulls and suckles, Fabian, Oh piece pace peace. No.
- 2:59:54Speaker 1: Now, seven of my people with an obedient start to
- 2:59:59Speaker 1: make out for him. I frowned the while, perchance wind
- 3:00:04Speaker 1: up my watch or play with some rich jewel. Toby
- 3:00:08Speaker 1: approaches curtsys there to me.
- 3:00:11Speaker 2: Sir Toby, shall this fellow live? Fabian, Though our silence
- 3:00:15Speaker 2: be drawn from us with cares yet peace.
- 3:00:19Speaker 1: I extend my hand to him, thus quenching my familiar
- 3:00:23Speaker 1: smile with an austere regard to control.
- 3:00:27Speaker 2: Sir Toby, and does not Toby take you a blow
- 3:00:30Speaker 2: of the lips, then.
- 3:00:32Speaker 1: Saying, Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your niece,
- 3:00:37Speaker 1: give me this prerogative of.
- 3:00:40Speaker 2: Speech, Sir Toby, what what.
- 3:00:44Speaker 1: You must amend your drunkenness, fabian.
- 3:00:48Speaker 2: Nay patience, We break this sinuse of our plot.
- 3:00:53Speaker 1: Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a
- 3:00:58Speaker 1: foolish night.
- 3:01:00Speaker 2: Sir Andrew. That's me.
- 3:01:01Speaker 1: I warrant you one, Sir Andrew.
- 3:01:05Speaker 2: Sir Andrew, I knew twas I for many to call
- 3:01:08Speaker 2: me fool?
- 3:01:10Speaker 1: What employment have we here?
- 3:01:13Speaker 2: Ticking up the letter. The letter and his comments on
- 3:01:17Speaker 2: it are equally good, if poor Malvolio's treatment afterwards is
- 3:01:22Speaker 2: a little hard. Poetical justice is done in the uneasiness
- 3:01:26Speaker 2: which Olivia suffers on account of her mistake and attachment
- 3:01:29Speaker 2: to Cesario, as her insensibility to the violence of the
- 3:01:33Speaker 2: Duke's passion is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's
- 3:01:36Speaker 2: concealed love of him end of Twelfth Night, the Two
- 3:01:42Speaker 2: Gentlemen of Verona. This is little more than the first
- 3:01:47Speaker 2: outlines of a comedy loosely sketched in It is the
- 3:01:50Speaker 2: story of a novel dramatized with very little labor or pretension.
- 3:01:55Speaker 2: Yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of
- 3:01:59Speaker 2: inimitable quaintness of humor, which are undoubtedly Shakespeare's. And there
- 3:02:04Speaker 2: is throughout the conduct of the fable a careless grace
- 3:02:07Speaker 2: and felicity which marks of her his one of the editors,
- 3:02:11Speaker 2: we believe, mister Pope remarks in a marginal note to
- 3:02:15Speaker 2: the Two Gentlemen of Verona, it is observable, I know
- 3:02:19Speaker 2: not for what cause, that the style of this comedy
- 3:02:21Speaker 2: is less figurative and more natural and unaffected than the
- 3:02:25Speaker 2: greater part of this authors that supposed to be one
- 3:02:28Speaker 2: of the first he wrote. Yet so little does the
- 3:02:31Speaker 2: editor appear to have made up his mind upon this subject,
- 3:02:34Speaker 2: that we find the following note to the very next
- 3:02:36Speaker 2: the second scene quote. This whole scene, like many others
- 3:02:41Speaker 2: in these plays, some of which I believe were written
- 3:02:43Speaker 2: by Shakespeare, and others interpolated by the players, is composed
- 3:02:47Speaker 2: of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted
- 3:02:51Speaker 2: for only by the gross taste of the age he
- 3:02:53Speaker 2: lived in, papulo ute placorant. I wish I had authority
- 3:02:57Speaker 2: to leave them out, but I have done all I could,
- 3:03:00Speaker 2: set a mark of reprobation upon them throughout this edition.
- 3:03:04Speaker 2: It is strange that our fastidious critic should fall so
- 3:03:07Speaker 2: soon from praising to reprobating. The style of the familiar
- 3:03:11Speaker 2: parts of this comedy is indeed made up of conceits.
- 3:03:14Speaker 2: Lo they may be for what we know, but then
- 3:03:17Speaker 2: they are not poor but rich ones. The scene of
- 3:03:20Speaker 2: Launce with his dog, not that in the second but
- 3:03:23Speaker 2: that in the fourth act, is a perfect treat in
- 3:03:26Speaker 2: the way of farcical, drollery and invention. Nor do we
- 3:03:29Speaker 2: think Speed's manner of proving his master to be in
- 3:03:32Speaker 2: love deficient in wit or sense, though the style may
- 3:03:36Speaker 2: be criticized as not simple enough for the modern taste. Valentine,
- 3:03:41Speaker 2: why how know you that I am in love Speed Mary?
- 3:03:46Speaker 2: By these special marks? First, you have learned, like sir Podius,
- 3:03:50Speaker 2: to wreathe your arms like a malcontent, to relish a
- 3:03:53Speaker 2: love song like a robin redbreast, to walk alone, like
- 3:03:57Speaker 2: when that had the pestilence, to sigh like a schoolboy
- 3:04:00Speaker 2: that I had lost his abc, to weep like a
- 3:04:04Speaker 2: young wench that had buried her grandam, to fast like
- 3:04:08Speaker 2: one that takes diet, to watch like one that fears robbing,
- 3:04:12Speaker 2: to speak puling like a beggar at Alamos, you were
- 3:04:15Speaker 2: wont when you laughed, to crow like a cock, when
- 3:04:18Speaker 2: you walked, to walk like one of the lions. When
- 3:04:21Speaker 2: you fasted, it was presently after dinner. When you looked sadly,
- 3:04:25Speaker 2: it was for want of money. And now you're a
- 3:04:28Speaker 2: metamorphosed with a mistress that when I look on you,
- 3:04:30Speaker 2: I can hardly thank you, my master. The tender scenes
- 3:04:34Speaker 2: in this play, though not so highly wrought as in
- 3:04:37Speaker 2: some others, have often much sweetness of sentiment and expression.
- 3:04:42Speaker 2: There is something pretty and playful in the conversation of
- 3:04:45Speaker 2: Julia with her maid when she shows such a disposition
- 3:04:48Speaker 2: to coquetry about receiving the letter from Proteus, and her
- 3:04:52Speaker 2: behavior afterwards and her disappointment when she finds him faithless
- 3:04:56Speaker 2: to his vows, remind us at a distance of Imagen's
- 3:05:00Speaker 2: tender constancy. Her answer to Lucetta, who advises her against
- 3:05:04Speaker 2: following her lover in disguise is a beautiful piece of poetry, Lucetta.
- 3:05:10Speaker 2: I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire,
- 3:05:13Speaker 2: but qualify the fire's extremest rage, lest it should burn
- 3:05:17Speaker 2: above the bounds of reason, Julia. The more that damp
- 3:05:21Speaker 2: stead up, the more it burns. The current that with
- 3:05:24Speaker 2: gentle murmur glides. Thou knowest being stopped impatiently doth rage.
- 3:05:29Speaker 2: But when his fair course is not hindered, he makes
- 3:05:33Speaker 2: sweet music with the enameled stones, giving a gentle kiss
- 3:05:37Speaker 2: to every sedge he overtaketh in his pilgrimage. And so
- 3:05:41Speaker 2: by many winding nooks he strays with willing sport to
- 3:05:45Speaker 2: the wild ocean. Footnote, the river wanders at its own
- 3:05:50Speaker 2: sweet will Wordsworth. Then let me go and hinder not
- 3:05:55Speaker 2: my course. I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
- 3:05:58Speaker 2: and make a pastime of its weary step, till the
- 3:06:02Speaker 2: last step have brought me to my love, and they
- 3:06:05Speaker 2: are all rest as after much turmoil, a blessed soul
- 3:06:08Speaker 2: doth in Elysium. If Shakespeare indeed had written only this
- 3:06:14Speaker 2: and other passages, and the two gentlemen of Verona, he
- 3:06:17Speaker 2: would almost have deserved Milton's praise of him and sweetest.
- 3:06:21Speaker 2: Shakespeare fancies child Warbles in his native wood notes wild,
- 3:06:27Speaker 2: But as it is, he deserves rather more praise than this,
- 3:06:31Speaker 2: and of the two gentlemen.
- 3:06:32Speaker 1: Of Verona, the Merchant of Venice. This is a play that,
- 3:06:39Speaker 1: in spite of the change of manners and of prejudices,
- 3:06:43Speaker 1: still holds undisputed possession of the stage. Shakespeare's malignant has
- 3:06:49Speaker 1: outlived mister Cumberland's benevolent jew in proportion. As Shylock has
- 3:06:54Speaker 1: ceased to be a popular bugbear baited with a rabble's curse,
- 3:06:59Speaker 1: he becomes a half with a philosophical part of the audience,
- 3:07:03Speaker 1: who are disposed to think that Jewish revenge is at
- 3:07:06Speaker 1: least as good as Christian injuries. Shylock is a good hater,
- 3:07:13Speaker 1: a man no less sinniganst than sinning if he carries
- 3:07:17Speaker 1: his revenge too far. Yet he has strong grounds for
- 3:07:21Speaker 1: the lodged hate he bears Antonio, which he explains with
- 3:07:26Speaker 1: equal force of eloquence and reason. He seems the depositary
- 3:07:31Speaker 1: of the vengeance of his race. And though the long
- 3:07:34Speaker 1: habit of brooding over daily insults and injuries has crusted
- 3:07:38Speaker 1: over his temper with inverterate misanthropy, and hardened him against
- 3:07:43Speaker 1: the contempt of mankind. This adds but little to the
- 3:07:47Speaker 1: triumphant pretensions of his enemies. There is a strong, quick
- 3:07:51Speaker 1: and deep sense of justice mixed up with the gall
- 3:07:55Speaker 1: and bitterness of his resentment. The constant apprehension of being
- 3:08:00Speaker 1: burnt alive, plundered, vanished, reviled, and trampled on might be
- 3:08:06Speaker 1: supposed to sour the most forbearing nature, and to take
- 3:08:10Speaker 1: something from that milk of human kindness with which his
- 3:08:14Speaker 1: persecutors contemplated his indignities. The desire of revenge is almost
- 3:08:21Speaker 1: inseparable from the sense of wrong, and we can hardly
- 3:08:24Speaker 1: help sympathizing with the proud spirit hid beneath his Jewish Gabardine,
- 3:08:30Speaker 1: stung to madness by repeated undeserved provocations, and laboring to
- 3:08:36Speaker 1: throw off the load of obloquy and oppression heaped upon
- 3:08:40Speaker 1: him in all his tribe by one desperate act of
- 3:08:43Speaker 1: lawful revenge, till the ferociousness of the means by which
- 3:08:47Speaker 1: he is to execute his purpose, and the pertinacity with
- 3:08:51Speaker 1: which he adheres to it, turn us against him. But
- 3:08:55Speaker 1: even at last, when disappointed of the sanguinary revenge with
- 3:08:59Speaker 1: which he had blooded his hopes, and exposed to beggary
- 3:09:02Speaker 1: and contempt by the letter of the law on which
- 3:09:05Speaker 1: he had insisted with so little remorse, we pity him
- 3:09:09Speaker 1: and think him hardly dealt with by his judges. In
- 3:09:13Speaker 1: all his answers and retorts upon his adversaries, he is
- 3:09:16Speaker 1: the best not only of the argument, but of the question,
- 3:09:20Speaker 1: reasoning on their own principle and practice, there so far
- 3:09:24Speaker 1: from allowing of any measure of equal dealing of common
- 3:09:27Speaker 1: justice or humanity between themselves and the jew that even
- 3:09:32Speaker 1: when they come to ask a favor of him, and
- 3:09:34Speaker 1: Shylock reminds them that on such a day they spit
- 3:09:37Speaker 1: upon him, another spurned him, another called him dog. And
- 3:09:42Speaker 1: for these courtesies request, he'll lend them so much monies. Antonio,
- 3:09:47Speaker 1: his old enemy, instead of any acknowledgment of the shrewdness
- 3:09:51Speaker 1: and justice of his remonstrance, which would have been preposterous
- 3:09:55Speaker 1: in a respectable Catholic merchant in those times, threatens him
- 3:09:59Speaker 1: with a repetition of the same treatment. I am as
- 3:10:03Speaker 1: like to call thee so again, to spit on thee
- 3:10:06Speaker 1: again to spurn thee too. After this, the appeal to
- 3:10:11Speaker 1: the Jew's mercy, as if there were any common principle
- 3:10:15Speaker 1: of right and wrong between them, is the rankest hypocrisy
- 3:10:19Speaker 1: or the blindest prejudice. And the Jew's answer to one
- 3:10:23Speaker 1: of Antonio's friends who ask him, what is pound of forfeit?
- 3:10:27Speaker 1: Flesh is good for is irresistible to bait fish withal
- 3:10:33Speaker 1: If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.
- 3:10:37Speaker 1: He hath disgraced me and hindered me of half a million,
- 3:10:42Speaker 1: laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation,
- 3:10:47Speaker 1: thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies. And
- 3:10:52Speaker 1: what's his reason? I'm a Jew? Hath not a jew? Eyes,
- 3:10:58Speaker 1: hath not a jew? Hands? Organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions
- 3:11:06Speaker 1: fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,
- 3:11:10Speaker 1: subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
- 3:11:15Speaker 1: warmed and cooled by the same winter in summer, that
- 3:11:18Speaker 1: a Christian is. If you prick us, do we not bleed?
- 3:11:24Speaker 1: If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
- 3:11:27Speaker 1: poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us,
- 3:11:32Speaker 1: shall we not revenge. If we are like you, and
- 3:11:36Speaker 1: the rest we will resemble you in that. If a
- 3:11:39Speaker 1: Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility revenge? If
- 3:11:44Speaker 1: a Christian wrong a Jew, why should his sufferance be
- 3:11:48Speaker 1: by Christian example? Why revenge? The villainy you teach me,
- 3:11:54Speaker 1: I will execute, and it shall go hard, but I
- 3:11:58Speaker 1: will better the instry diruction. The whole of the trial scene,
- 3:12:03Speaker 1: both before and after the entrance of Portia, is a
- 3:12:06Speaker 1: masterpiece of dramatic skill. The legal acuteness, the passionate declamations,
- 3:12:12Speaker 1: the sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit and irony interspersed
- 3:12:17Speaker 1: in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in the
- 3:12:20Speaker 1: different persons, and the completeness and suddenness of the catastrophe
- 3:12:25Speaker 1: cannot be surpassed. Shylock, who is his own counsel, defends
- 3:12:30Speaker 1: himself well and is triumphant on all the general topics
- 3:12:34Speaker 1: that are urged against him, and only fails through a
- 3:12:38Speaker 1: legal flaw. Take the following as an instance, Shylock, what
- 3:12:46Speaker 1: judgment shall I dread? Doing no wrong? You have among
- 3:12:49Speaker 1: you many a purchase slave, which, like your asses and
- 3:12:53Speaker 1: your dogs and mules, you use an abject and unslavish
- 3:12:56Speaker 1: part because you bought them. Shall I say to you,
- 3:13:01Speaker 1: let them be free, marry them to your heirs. Why
- 3:13:05Speaker 1: sweat they under burdens? Let their beds be made as
- 3:13:08Speaker 1: soft as yours, and let their palates be seasoned with
- 3:13:12Speaker 1: such viance. You will answer, the slaves are ours. So
- 3:13:17Speaker 1: do I answer you. The pound of flesh which I
- 3:13:20Speaker 1: demand of him is dearly bought, is mine, and I
- 3:13:23Speaker 1: will have it. If you deny me, fie upon your law.
- 3:13:28Speaker 1: There is no force in the decree of venice. I
- 3:13:31Speaker 1: stand for judgment. Answer, shall I have it? The keenness
- 3:13:37Speaker 1: of his revenge awakes all his faculties, and he beats
- 3:13:41Speaker 1: back all opposition to his purpose, whether grave or gay,
- 3:13:45Speaker 1: whether of wit or argument, with an equal degree of
- 3:13:48Speaker 1: earnestness and self possession. His characters displayed as distinctly and
- 3:13:53Speaker 1: other less prominent parts of the play, and we may
- 3:13:56Speaker 1: collect from a few sentences the history of his life,
- 3:13:58Speaker 1: his descent, his thrift and domestic economy, his affection for
- 3:14:04Speaker 1: his daughter, whom he loves next to his wealth, his courtship,
- 3:14:08Speaker 1: and his first present to Leah, his wife. I would
- 3:14:12Speaker 1: not have parted with it. The ring, which he first
- 3:14:15Speaker 1: gave her for a wilderness of monkeys. What a fine
- 3:14:20Speaker 1: Hebriism is implied in this expression. Portia is not a
- 3:14:25Speaker 1: very great favorite with us, neither are we in love
- 3:14:28Speaker 1: with her maid Nerissa. Portia has a certain degree of
- 3:14:31Speaker 1: affectation and pedantry about her, which is very unusual in
- 3:14:35Speaker 1: Shakespeare's women, but which perhaps was a proper qualification for
- 3:14:40Speaker 1: the office of a civil doctor, which she undertakes and
- 3:14:43Speaker 1: executes so successfully. The speech about mercy is very well,
- 3:14:48Speaker 1: but there are a thousand finer ones in Shakespeare. We
- 3:14:52Speaker 1: did not admire the scene of the caskets, and object
- 3:14:55Speaker 1: entirely to the black Prince Eurochius. We should like Jessica
- 3:14:59Speaker 1: better if she had not deceived and robbed her father,
- 3:15:02Speaker 1: and Lorenzo if he had not married a Jewess, though
- 3:15:06Speaker 1: he thinks he has a right to wrong a jew.
- 3:15:08Speaker 1: The dialog between this newly married couple by moonlight, beginning
- 3:15:12Speaker 1: on such a knight, et cetera, is a collection of
- 3:15:16Speaker 1: classical elegancies. Launcelot, the jews Man is an honest fellow.
- 3:15:21Speaker 1: The dilemma in which he describes himself placed between his
- 3:15:25Speaker 1: conscience and the fiend the one of which advises him
- 3:15:28Speaker 1: to run away from his master's service, and the other
- 3:15:31Speaker 1: to stay in It is exquisitely humorous. Graciano is a
- 3:15:36Speaker 1: very admirable subordinate character. He is the gesture of the piece.
- 3:15:41Speaker 1: Yet one speech of his in his own defense contains
- 3:15:45Speaker 1: a whole volume of wisdom. Antonio, I hold the world,
- 3:15:51Speaker 1: But is the world, Graciano, a stage where every one
- 3:15:55Speaker 1: must play his part, and mine a sad one Gaussia.
- 3:16:01Speaker 1: Let me play the fool with mirth and laughter, Let
- 3:16:05Speaker 1: old wrinkles come, and let my liver rather heat with
- 3:16:08Speaker 1: wine than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should
- 3:16:13Speaker 1: a man whose blood is warm within sit like his grandsire,
- 3:16:18Speaker 1: cut in alabaster sleep when he wakes, and creep into
- 3:16:22Speaker 1: the jaundice by being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio,
- 3:16:27Speaker 1: I love thee, and it is my love that speaks.
- 3:16:31Speaker 1: There are a sort of men whose visages do cream
- 3:16:34Speaker 1: and mantle like a standing pond, and do a woeful stillness,
- 3:16:38Speaker 1: entertain with purpose to be dressed in an opinion of wisdom,
- 3:16:43Speaker 1: gravity profound conceit as who should say, I am sir oracle,
- 3:16:50Speaker 1: And when I open my lips, let no dog bark no,
- 3:16:54Speaker 1: my Antonio, I do know of these that therefore only
- 3:16:58Speaker 1: are reputed wise for saying nothing. Who I'm very sure,
- 3:17:03Speaker 1: if they should speak, would almost damn those ears, which
- 3:17:07Speaker 1: hearing them, would call their brothers fools. I'll tell thee
- 3:17:11Speaker 1: more of this another time, but fish not with a
- 3:17:14Speaker 1: melancholy bait for this fool's gudgeon. This opinion, grusciano speech
- 3:17:21Speaker 1: on the philosophy of love and the effect of habit
- 3:17:24Speaker 1: in taking off the force of passion is as full
- 3:17:28Speaker 1: of spirit and good sense. The graceful winding up with
- 3:17:31Speaker 1: this play in the fifth act, after the tragic business
- 3:17:34Speaker 1: is dispatched, is one of the happiest instances of Shakespeare's
- 3:17:38Speaker 1: knowledge of the principles of the drama. We do not
- 3:17:42Speaker 1: mean the pretended quarrel between Porsha and Nerisa and their
- 3:17:45Speaker 1: husbands about the rings, which is amusing enough, but the
- 3:17:48Speaker 1: conversation just before and after the return of Portia to
- 3:17:52Speaker 1: her own house, beginning how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon
- 3:17:56Speaker 1: this bank, and ending peace, how the moon sleeps within
- 3:18:02Speaker 1: dominion and would not be awake. There is a number
- 3:18:06Speaker 1: of beautiful thoughts crowded into that short space and linked
- 3:18:10Speaker 1: together by the most natural transitions. When we first went
- 3:18:15Speaker 1: to see mister Keane and Shylock, we expected to see
- 3:18:19Speaker 1: what we had been used to see. A decrepit old man,
- 3:18:22Speaker 1: bent with age and ugly with mental deformity, grinning with
- 3:18:26Speaker 1: deadly malice, with a venom of his heart congealed in
- 3:18:30Speaker 1: the expression of his countenance, sullen, morose, gloomy and flexible,
- 3:18:35Speaker 1: brooding over one idea, that of his hatred, and fixed
- 3:18:39Speaker 1: on one unalterable purpose, that of his revenge. We were
- 3:18:44Speaker 1: disappointed because we had taken our idea from other actors,
- 3:18:48Speaker 1: not from the play. There is no proof there that
- 3:18:51Speaker 1: Shylock is old, but a single line Masonic and old
- 3:18:55Speaker 1: Shiloc both stand forth, which does not imply that he
- 3:18:59Speaker 1: is infirm age, and the circumstance that he has a
- 3:19:03Speaker 1: daughter marriageable, which does not imply that he is old
- 3:19:07Speaker 1: at all. Could be too much to say that his
- 3:19:10Speaker 1: body should be made crooked into form to answer to
- 3:19:13Speaker 1: his mind, which is bowed down and warped with prejudices
- 3:19:17Speaker 1: and passion, that he has but one idea. It is
- 3:19:20Speaker 1: not true he has more ideas than any other person
- 3:19:24Speaker 1: in the piece. And if he is intense and inveterate
- 3:19:28Speaker 1: in the pursuit of his purpose. He shows the utmost elasticity, vigor,
- 3:19:33Speaker 1: and presence of mind, and the means of attaining it.
- 3:19:37Speaker 1: But so rooted was our habitual impression of the part
- 3:19:40Speaker 1: from seeing it charactertured in the representation that it was
- 3:19:44Speaker 1: only from a careful perusal of the play itself, though
- 3:19:47Speaker 1: we saw our error. The stage is not, in general
- 3:19:50Speaker 1: the best place to study our author's characters, and it
- 3:19:54Speaker 1: is too often filled with traditional commonplace conceptions of the part,
- 3:19:59Speaker 1: handed down from sire to son, and suited to the
- 3:20:02Speaker 1: taste of the great vulgar and the small tis an
- 3:20:06Speaker 1: unweeded garden. Things rank and gross do merely gender in it.
- 3:20:13Speaker 1: If a man of genius comes once in an age
- 3:20:15Speaker 1: to clear away the rubbish, to make it fruitful and wholesome,
- 3:20:19Speaker 1: they cry, 'tis a bad school. It may be like nature,
- 3:20:24Speaker 1: it may be like Shakespeare, but it is not like us.
- 3:20:29Speaker 1: Admirable critics, And of the Merchant of Venice.
- 3:20:36Speaker 2: The Winter's Tail, we wonder that mister Pope should have
- 3:20:41Speaker 2: entertained doubts as to the genuineness of this play. He was,
- 3:20:45Speaker 2: we suppose, shocked, as a certain critic suggests at the
- 3:20:49Speaker 2: chorus time leaping over sixteen years with his crutch between
- 3:20:54Speaker 2: the third and fourth act, and at Antigonus is landing
- 3:20:58Speaker 2: with the infant Perdita on the sea coast of Bohemia.
- 3:21:02Speaker 2: These slips or blemishes, however, do not prove it not
- 3:21:05Speaker 2: to be Shakespeare's, for he was as likely to fall
- 3:21:08Speaker 2: into them as anybody. But we do not know anybody
- 3:21:11Speaker 2: but himself who could produce the beauties the stuff of
- 3:21:16Speaker 2: which the tragic passion is composed, The romantic sweetness, the
- 3:21:20Speaker 2: comic humor, are evidently his. Even the crabbed and tortuous
- 3:21:25Speaker 2: style of the speeches of Leant's reasoning on his own jealousy,
- 3:21:29Speaker 2: beset with doubts and fears, and entangled more and more
- 3:21:33Speaker 2: in the thorny Labyrinth, bears every mark of Shakespeare's peculiar
- 3:21:37Speaker 2: manner of conveying the painful struggle of different thoughts and feelings,
- 3:21:41Speaker 2: laboring for utterance, and almost strangled in the birth. For instance,
- 3:21:47Speaker 2: how you not seen the camillo, But that's past doubt
- 3:21:50Speaker 2: you have for your eyeglasses thicker on a cuckold's horn,
- 3:21:54Speaker 2: or heard for to a vision so apparent rumor cannot
- 3:21:58Speaker 2: be mute or thought, For cogitation resides not with a
- 3:22:02Speaker 2: man that does not think my wife is slippery, if
- 3:22:08Speaker 2: thou wilt confess, or else be impudently negative, to have
- 3:22:12Speaker 2: no eyes, nor ears nor thought. Here Leantes is confounded
- 3:22:19Speaker 2: with his passion and does not know which way to
- 3:22:21Speaker 2: turn himself to give words to the anguish, rage, and
- 3:22:24Speaker 2: apprehension which tug at his breast. It is only as
- 3:22:27Speaker 2: he is worked up into a clearer conviction of his
- 3:22:31Speaker 2: wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his unjust suspicions
- 3:22:34Speaker 2: to Camillo, who irritates him by his opposition, that he
- 3:22:38Speaker 2: bursts out into the following vehement strain of bitter indignation.
- 3:22:43Speaker 2: Yet even here his passion staggers and is, as it were,
- 3:22:47Speaker 2: oppressed with its own intensity is whispering, nothing is leaning cheeked.
- 3:22:53Speaker 2: Its cheek is meeting noses, kissing with inside lip, stopping
- 3:22:58Speaker 2: the career of life after with a sigh, a note
- 3:23:02Speaker 2: infallible of breaking honesty, horsing foot on foot, skulking in corners,
- 3:23:08Speaker 2: wishing clocks were swift hours, minutes, the noon midnight, and
- 3:23:13Speaker 2: all eyes blind with the pin and web, but theirs
- 3:23:16Speaker 2: there's only that would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing? What
- 3:23:22Speaker 2: in the world and all that's in it is nothing?
- 3:23:25Speaker 2: The covering sky is nothing. Bohemia is nothing. My wife
- 3:23:28Speaker 2: is nothing. The character of Hermione is as much distinguished
- 3:23:34Speaker 2: by its saint like resignation and patient forbearance as that
- 3:23:37Speaker 2: of Polina is by her zealous and spirited remonstrances against
- 3:23:42Speaker 2: the injustice done to the queen, and by her devoted
- 3:23:45Speaker 2: attachment to her misfortunes. Hermione's restoration to her husband and
- 3:23:50Speaker 2: her child after her long separation from them is as
- 3:23:54Speaker 2: affecting in itself as it is striking in the representation.
- 3:23:58Speaker 2: Camillo and the old Leuppard and his son are subordinate,
- 3:24:02Speaker 2: but not uninteresting instruments in the development of the plot,
- 3:24:06Speaker 2: And though last not least comes Autolicus, a very pleasant,
- 3:24:11Speaker 2: thriving rogue and what is the best feather in the
- 3:24:14Speaker 2: cap of all knavery, he escapes with impunity in the end.
- 3:24:19Speaker 2: The Winter's Tale is one of the best acting of
- 3:24:22Speaker 2: our author's plays. We remember seeing it with great pleasure
- 3:24:25Speaker 2: many years ago. It was on the night that King
- 3:24:28Speaker 2: took leave of the stage, when he and Missus Jordan
- 3:24:31Speaker 2: played together in the afterpiece of the wedding day. Nothing
- 3:24:35Speaker 2: could go off with more colaw, with more spirit and
- 3:24:38Speaker 2: grandeur of effect. Missus Siddons played Hermione and in the
- 3:24:43Speaker 2: last scene acted the painted statue to the life with
- 3:24:46Speaker 2: true monumental dignity and noble passion. Mister Kemble and Leuntes
- 3:24:52Speaker 2: worked himself up into a very fine classical frenzy and
- 3:24:56Speaker 2: banister as Autolocus roared as loud for pity as a
- 3:24:59Speaker 2: ste lady beggar could do who felt none of the
- 3:25:02Speaker 2: pain he counterfeited, and with sound of wind and limb.
- 3:25:06Speaker 2: We shall never see these parts so acted again, or
- 3:25:09Speaker 2: if we did, it would be in vain. Actors grow
- 3:25:12Speaker 2: old or no longer surprise us by their novelty. But
- 3:25:16Speaker 2: true poetry, like nature, is always young. And we still
- 3:25:19Speaker 2: read the courtship of Florizelle and Perdata as we welcome
- 3:25:23Speaker 2: the return of spring with the same feelings as ever
- 3:25:27Speaker 2: Florizell their dearest Perdator, with these forced thoughts, I prithee
- 3:25:33Speaker 2: darken not the mirth of the feast, or I'll be
- 3:25:36Speaker 2: thine my fair or not my father's. For I cannot
- 3:25:40Speaker 2: be mine own, nor anything to any if I be
- 3:25:42Speaker 2: not thine to this, I am most constant their destiny.
- 3:25:47Speaker 2: Say no, be merry, gentle, strangle such thoughts as these
- 3:25:51Speaker 2: with anything that you behold. The while your guests are coming.
- 3:25:55Speaker 2: Lift up your countenance, as it were the day of
- 3:25:58Speaker 2: celebration of that nuptial which we too have sworn. Will
- 3:26:01Speaker 2: come predator O, lady Fortune, stand you auspicious and her
- 3:26:07Speaker 2: shepherd clown mopsa Dolcas, servants with polyxenes, and camillo disguised Florizelle.
- 3:26:14Speaker 2: See your guests approach, address yourself to entertain them sprightly,
- 3:26:18Speaker 2: and must be read with mirth. Shepherd fight daughter. When
- 3:26:23Speaker 2: my old wife lived upon this day, she was both
- 3:26:25Speaker 2: pantler butler, cook, both dame and servant. Welcomed, all served,
- 3:26:30Speaker 2: all would sing her song and dance her turn now
- 3:26:34Speaker 2: here at the upper end of the table, now in
- 3:26:36Speaker 2: the middle, on his shoulder, and his her face afire
- 3:26:39Speaker 2: with the labor and the things she took to quenchance,
- 3:26:42Speaker 2: she would teach one's sip. You are retired, as if
- 3:26:45Speaker 2: you were a feasted one, and not the hostess of
- 3:26:48Speaker 2: the meeting. Pray you bid these unknown friends to us welcome,
- 3:26:52Speaker 2: for it is a way to make us better friends,
- 3:26:54Speaker 2: more known. Come quench your blushes and present yourself that
- 3:26:58Speaker 2: which you are. Mistress of the feast. Come on and
- 3:27:01Speaker 2: bid us welcome to your sheep sharing, as your good
- 3:27:03Speaker 2: flock shall prosper. Predator, Sir. Welcome to Polyxenes and Camillo.
- 3:27:10Speaker 2: It is my father's will I should take on me
- 3:27:12Speaker 2: the hostess ship of the day. You're welcome, sir. Give
- 3:27:16Speaker 2: me those flowers, Sir, Dorcas reverend Sirs. For you there's
- 3:27:20Speaker 2: rosemary and rue. These keep seeming and savor all the
- 3:27:24Speaker 2: winter long. Grace and remembrance be unto you both, and
- 3:27:28Speaker 2: welcome to our sharing, Polyxenes. Shepherdess, a fair one, are
- 3:27:33Speaker 2: you well? You fit our ages with flowers of winter? Predator, Sir,
- 3:27:39Speaker 2: the year growing ancient, not yet on summer's death, nor
- 3:27:43Speaker 2: on the birth of trembling winter. The fairest flowers of
- 3:27:46Speaker 2: the season are our carnations and streak at gilly flowers,
- 3:27:51Speaker 2: which some call nature's bastards. Of that kind our rested
- 3:27:55Speaker 2: garden's baron, and I care not to get slips of them, Polyxenes. Wherefore,
- 3:28:00Speaker 2: o gentle maiden, do you neglect them? Predator? For I
- 3:28:03Speaker 2: have heard it said there is an art which, in
- 3:28:05Speaker 2: their pidoness shares with great creating nature. Polyxenes say there be.
- 3:28:11Speaker 2: Yet nature is made better by no mean. But nature
- 3:28:14Speaker 2: makes that mean. So all that art which you say
- 3:28:17Speaker 2: adds to nature is an art that nature makes you cease.
- 3:28:21Speaker 2: We made we marry a gentler scion to the wild
- 3:28:25Speaker 2: as stock, and may conceive a bark of baser kind
- 3:28:28Speaker 2: by bud of nobler race. This is an art which
- 3:28:31Speaker 2: does men to nature change it rather, But the art
- 3:28:35Speaker 2: itself is nature predator. So it is footnote. The lady
- 3:28:40Speaker 2: we see here gives up the argument, but keeps her mind. Polyxenes,
- 3:28:45Speaker 2: they make your garden rich in gilly flowers, and do
- 3:28:48Speaker 2: not call them bastards predator. I'll not put the dibble
- 3:28:52Speaker 2: in earth to set one's slip of them, no more
- 3:28:55Speaker 2: than were I painted. I would wish this youth should
- 3:28:58Speaker 2: say it were well, and therefore desire to breede by me.
- 3:29:02Speaker 2: Here's flowers for you, hot lavender, mince, savory, marjoram the
- 3:29:08Speaker 2: marigle that goes to bed with the sun and with
- 3:29:10Speaker 2: him rises weeping. These are flowers of middle summer, and
- 3:29:15Speaker 2: I think they are given to men of middle age.
- 3:29:18Speaker 2: You are very welcome. Camillo. I should leave grazing where
- 3:29:22Speaker 2: I of your flock, and only live by gazing predator
- 3:29:26Speaker 2: out alast you'd be so lean that blasts of January
- 3:29:30Speaker 2: would blow you through and through. Now, my fairest friends,
- 3:29:34Speaker 2: I would I had some flowers of the spring that
- 3:29:36Speaker 2: might become your time of day, and yours, and yours
- 3:29:40Speaker 2: that whereupon your virgin branches, yet your maiden heads growing, Oh, Proserpina,
- 3:29:46Speaker 2: for the flowers now that frighted thou let'st fall from
- 3:29:50Speaker 2: Diss's wagon, daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and
- 3:29:54Speaker 2: take the winds of march with beauty, violets dim but
- 3:29:59Speaker 2: sweeter than the lid of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath,
- 3:30:03Speaker 2: Pale primroses that I unmarried. Ere they can behold bright
- 3:30:08Speaker 2: Phoebus in his strength, a malady most incident to maids,
- 3:30:13Speaker 2: bold ox lips, and the crown imperial lilies of all kinds,
- 3:30:17Speaker 2: the fleur de li being one. Oh these I lack
- 3:30:21Speaker 2: to make you garlands of and my sweet friend, to
- 3:30:24Speaker 2: strow him or and or Florizelle. What like a course perdator,
- 3:30:30Speaker 2: no like a bank for love? To lie and play on,
- 3:30:34Speaker 2: not like a course, or if not to be buried,
- 3:30:37Speaker 2: but quick and in mine arms, come take your flowers.
- 3:30:42Speaker 2: Methinks I play as I have seen them do in
- 3:30:45Speaker 2: whits and pastorals. Sure this robe of mind has changed
- 3:30:48Speaker 2: my disposition, Florizelle. What you do still betters what is done.
- 3:30:55Speaker 2: When you speak, sweet, i'd have you do it. Ever,
- 3:30:58Speaker 2: when you sing, i'd have you buy and sell so,
- 3:31:01Speaker 2: so give alms, pray so, and for the ordering your
- 3:31:05Speaker 2: affairs to sing them too. When you do dance, I
- 3:31:09Speaker 2: wish you a wave of the sea, that you might
- 3:31:11Speaker 2: ever do nothing but that move still still so, and
- 3:31:16Speaker 2: own no other function. Each Your doing, so singular in
- 3:31:20Speaker 2: each particular, crowns what you're doing in the present deeds.
- 3:31:24Speaker 2: That all your acts are queens predator, Oh torcles. Your
- 3:31:29Speaker 2: praises are too large, but that your youth and the
- 3:31:32Speaker 2: true blood which peeps forth fairly through it, to plainly
- 3:31:36Speaker 2: give you out an unstained shepherd with wisdom, I might
- 3:31:40Speaker 2: fear my dorocles. You woud me the false way, Florizelle.
- 3:31:44Speaker 2: I think you have as little skill to fear as
- 3:31:47Speaker 2: I have purpose to put you to it. But come
- 3:31:51Speaker 2: our dance I pray your hand my predator. So turtles
- 3:31:55Speaker 2: pair that never mean to part predator. I'll swear for him. Polyxones,
- 3:32:01Speaker 2: this is the prettiest low born lass that ever ran
- 3:32:04Speaker 2: on the greensword nothing she does or seems but smacks
- 3:32:09Speaker 2: of something greater than herself. Too noble for this place, Camillo,
- 3:32:14Speaker 2: he tells us something that makes her blood look out
- 3:32:16Speaker 2: good truth. She is the queen of curds and cream.
- 3:32:21Speaker 2: This delicious scene is interrupted by the father of the Prince,
- 3:32:25Speaker 2: discovering himself to Florizel and haughtily breaking off the intended
- 3:32:29Speaker 2: match between his son and Perdita. When Polyxones goes out,
- 3:32:33Speaker 2: Perdata says, even here undone, I was not much afraid,
- 3:32:39Speaker 2: for once or twice I was about to speak and
- 3:32:41Speaker 2: tell him plainly the self same sun that shines upon
- 3:32:45Speaker 2: his court hides not his visage from our cottage, but
- 3:32:48Speaker 2: looks on to like wilt. Please you, sir, begone to Florizel.
- 3:32:53Speaker 2: I told you what would come of this. Beseech you
- 3:32:56Speaker 2: of your own state. Take care this dream of being
- 3:33:00Speaker 2: now awake a queen at no inch further but milk
- 3:33:04Speaker 2: my use and weep as Prideta the supposed shepherdess turns
- 3:33:10Speaker 2: out to be the daughter of hermione and the princess
- 3:33:13Speaker 2: in disguise. Both feelings of the pride of birth and
- 3:33:16Speaker 2: the claims of nature are satisfied, but the fortunate event
- 3:33:19Speaker 2: of the story and the fine romance of poetry is
- 3:33:22Speaker 2: reconciled to the strictest court etiquette. End of the Winter's Tale,
- 3:33:28Speaker 2: all'swell that ends well, all'swell that ends Well, is one
- 3:33:33Speaker 2: of the most pleasing of our author's comedies. The interest is, however,
- 3:33:37Speaker 2: more of a serious than of a comic nature. The
- 3:33:40Speaker 2: character of Helen is one of great sweetness and delicacy.
- 3:33:44Speaker 2: She is placed in circumstances of the most critical kind,
- 3:33:48Speaker 2: and has to court her husband both as a virgin
- 3:33:50Speaker 2: and a wife. Yet the most scrupulous nicety of female
- 3:33:54Speaker 2: modesty is not once violated. There is not one thought
- 3:33:58Speaker 2: or action that ought to bring a blush into her cheeks,
- 3:34:01Speaker 2: or that for a moment lessens her in our esteem.
- 3:34:04Speaker 2: Perhaps the romantic attachment of a beautiful and virtuous girl
- 3:34:08Speaker 2: to one placed above her hopes by the circumstances of
- 3:34:10Speaker 2: birth and fortune was never so exquisitely expressed as in
- 3:34:15Speaker 2: the reflections which she utters when young Russilian leaves his
- 3:34:18Speaker 2: mother's house, under whose protection she has been brought up
- 3:34:21Speaker 2: with him to repair to the French king's court. Helena, Oh,
- 3:34:26Speaker 2: that were all I think, not on my father, And
- 3:34:30Speaker 2: these great tears grace his remembrance more than those I
- 3:34:33Speaker 2: shed for him.
- 3:34:35Speaker 1: What was he like?
- 3:34:37Speaker 2: I have forgot him. My imagination carries enough favor in it,
- 3:34:41Speaker 2: but Bertram's I am undone. There is no living none.
- 3:34:45Speaker 2: If Bertram be away, it were all one that I
- 3:34:48Speaker 2: should love a bright particular star and think to wed it.
- 3:34:52Speaker 2: He is so above me in his bright radiance and
- 3:34:56Speaker 2: collateral light. Must I be comforted? Not in his fe
- 3:35:01Speaker 2: The ambition in my love thus plagues itself. The hind
- 3:35:04Speaker 2: that would be mated by the lion must die for
- 3:35:07Speaker 2: love twas pretty though a plague to see him every hour,
- 3:35:12Speaker 2: to sit and draw his arched brows, his hawking eye,
- 3:35:16Speaker 2: his curls, and her heart's table heart too capable of
- 3:35:20Speaker 2: every line and trick of his sweet favor. But now
- 3:35:25Speaker 2: he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy must sanctify his relics.
- 3:35:31Speaker 2: The interest excited by this beautiful picture of a kind
- 3:35:34Speaker 2: and innocent heart is kept up afterwards by her resolution
- 3:35:37Speaker 2: to follow him to France, the success of her experiment
- 3:35:41Speaker 2: in restoring the King's health, her demanding Bertram in marriage's
- 3:35:44Speaker 2: recompense his leaving her in disdain, her interview with him
- 3:35:48Speaker 2: afterwards disguised as Diana, a young lady whom he importunes
- 3:35:53Speaker 2: with his secret addresses, and their final reconciliation when the
- 3:35:57Speaker 2: consequences of her stratagem and the proofs of her life
- 3:36:00Speaker 2: love are fully made known. The persevering gratitude of the
- 3:36:03Speaker 2: French king to his benefactress, who cures him of a
- 3:36:07Speaker 2: languishing distemper by a prescription hereditary in her family. The
- 3:36:11Speaker 2: indulgent kindness of the countess, whose pride of birth yields
- 3:36:16Speaker 2: almost without struggle to her affection for Helen. The honesty
- 3:36:19Speaker 2: and uprightness of the good old Lord Lefieux makes very
- 3:36:23Speaker 2: interesting parts of the picture. The wilful, stubbornness and youthful
- 3:36:28Speaker 2: petulance of Bertram are also very admirably described. The comic
- 3:36:32Speaker 2: part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and
- 3:36:35Speaker 2: cowardice of Paroles, a parasite and hanger on of Bertram's.
- 3:36:40Speaker 2: The detection of whose false pretenses to bravery and honor,
- 3:36:43Speaker 2: forms a very amusing episode. He is first found out
- 3:36:47Speaker 2: by the old Lord Lefieux, who says, the soul of
- 3:36:50Speaker 2: this man is in his clothes, and it is proved
- 3:36:53Speaker 2: afterwards that his heart is in his tongue, and that
- 3:36:55Speaker 2: both are false and hollow. The adventure of the bringing
- 3:37:00Speaker 2: off of his drum has become proverbial as a satire
- 3:37:03Speaker 2: on all ridiculous and blustering undertakings which the person never
- 3:37:08Speaker 2: means to perform. Nor can anything be more severe than
- 3:37:11Speaker 2: what one of the bystanders remarks upon what Paroles says
- 3:37:15Speaker 2: of himself. Is it possible he should know what he
- 3:37:18Speaker 2: is and be that he is? Yet Paroles himself gives
- 3:37:23Speaker 2: the best solution of the difficulty. Afterwards, when he is
- 3:37:25Speaker 2: thankful to escape with his life and the loss of
- 3:37:28Speaker 2: character for so that he can live on, he is
- 3:37:32Speaker 2: by no means squeamish about the loss of pretensions to
- 3:37:35Speaker 2: which he had sense enough to know that he had
- 3:37:37Speaker 2: no real claims, and which he had assumed only as
- 3:37:39Speaker 2: a means to live. Paroles, Yet, I am thankful. If
- 3:37:45Speaker 2: my heart were great twould burst at this captain, I'll
- 3:37:48Speaker 2: be no more, But I will eat and drink and
- 3:37:51Speaker 2: sleep as soft as captain shall simply the thing I
- 3:37:54Speaker 2: am shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,
- 3:37:58Speaker 2: let him fear this, for it shall come to pass
- 3:38:00Speaker 2: that every braggart shall be found in ass rusts, ord,
- 3:38:05Speaker 2: cool blushes, and paroles, live safest in shame, being fooled
- 3:38:10Speaker 2: by foolery, thrive this place, and means for every man
- 3:38:14Speaker 2: alive all after them. The story of Oswell That Ends Well,
- 3:38:19Speaker 2: and of several others of Shakespeare's plays, is taken from Boccaccio.
- 3:38:24Speaker 2: The poet has dramatized the original novel with great skill
- 3:38:27Speaker 2: and comic spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of
- 3:38:30Speaker 2: character and sentiment without improving upon it, which was impossible.
- 3:38:35Speaker 2: There is, indeed, in Boccaccio's serious pieces a truth, a pathos,
- 3:38:39Speaker 2: and an exquisite refinement of sentiment, which is hardly to
- 3:38:43Speaker 2: be met with in any other prose writer. Whatever justice
- 3:38:46Speaker 2: has not been done him by the world, he has
- 3:38:49Speaker 2: in general passed for a mere narrator of lucivious tales
- 3:38:53Speaker 2: or idle jests. This character probably originated in his obnoxious
- 3:38:57Speaker 2: attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by
- 3:39:00Speaker 2: the grossness of mankind, who revenged their own want of
- 3:39:04Speaker 2: refinement on Boccaggio, and only saw in his writings what
- 3:39:07Speaker 2: suited the coarseness of their own tastes. But the truth
- 3:39:10Speaker 2: is that he has carried sentiment of every kind to
- 3:39:13Speaker 2: its very highest purity and perfection. By sentiment, we would
- 3:39:17Speaker 2: here understand the habitual workings of some one powerful feeling,
- 3:39:22Speaker 2: where the heart reposes almost entirely upon itself, without the
- 3:39:26Speaker 2: violent excitement of opposing duties or untoward circumstances. In this way,
- 3:39:31Speaker 2: nothing ever came up to the story of Frederico Alberici
- 3:39:34Speaker 2: and his Falcon. The perseverance and attachment, the spirit of
- 3:39:38Speaker 2: gallantry and generosity displayed in it has no parallel in
- 3:39:42Speaker 2: the history of heroical sacrifices. The feeling is so unconscious
- 3:39:47Speaker 2: too and involuntary, is brought out in such small, unlooked for,
- 3:39:51Speaker 2: and unostentatious circumstances as to show it to have been
- 3:39:54Speaker 2: woven into the very nature and soul of the author.
- 3:39:58Speaker 2: The story of Isabella is scarcely less fine, and is
- 3:40:01Speaker 2: more affecting in the circumstances and the catastrophe. Dryden has
- 3:40:05Speaker 2: done justice to the impassioned eloquence of the Tankred and Sigismunda,
- 3:40:09Speaker 2: but has not given an adequate idea of the wild
- 3:40:12Speaker 2: preternatural interest of the story of Honoria, Kimon and Iphigenie
- 3:40:17Speaker 2: is by no means one of the best, notwithstanding the
- 3:40:20Speaker 2: popularity of the subject. The proof of unalterable affection given
- 3:40:25Speaker 2: in the story of Geronimo, and the simple touches of
- 3:40:28Speaker 2: nature and picturesque beauty in the story of the two
- 3:40:30Speaker 2: holiday lovers who were poisoned by tasting of belief in
- 3:40:34Speaker 2: the garden at Florence are perfect masterpieces. The epithet of
- 3:40:38Speaker 2: divine was well bestowed on this great painter of the
- 3:40:41Speaker 2: human heart. The invention implied in his different tales is immense,
- 3:40:45Speaker 2: but we are not to infer that it is all
- 3:40:47Speaker 2: his own. He probably availed himself of all the common
- 3:40:51Speaker 2: traditions which were floating in his time, and which he
- 3:40:54Speaker 2: was the first to appropriate. Homer appears the most original
- 3:40:58Speaker 2: of all authors, probably for no other reason than that
- 3:41:02Speaker 2: we can trace the plagiarism no further. Boccaccio has furnished
- 3:41:06Speaker 2: subjects to numberless writers since his time, both dramatic and narrative.
- 3:41:10Speaker 2: The story of Grisanda is borrowed from his Decameron by Chaucer,
- 3:41:14Speaker 2: as is the Knight's Tale Palamon, and arcity from his
- 3:41:18Speaker 2: poem of the theseid end of All's well that ends well,
- 3:41:23Speaker 2: Love's labors lost. If we were to part with any
- 3:41:28Speaker 2: of the author's comedies, it should be this. Yet we
- 3:41:31Speaker 2: should be loath to part with Don Adriano di Armado,
- 3:41:35Speaker 2: that mighty potentate of nonsense, or his page that handful
- 3:41:40Speaker 2: of wit, with Nathaniel the Curate, or Haliferni's the Schoolmaster,
- 3:41:44Speaker 2: and their dispute after dinner on the Golden Cadences of Poesy,
- 3:41:48Speaker 2: with Consted the Clown or dull the Constable. Baronus too
- 3:41:53Speaker 2: accomplished a character to be lost to the world. And
- 3:41:56Speaker 2: yet he could not appear without his fellow courtiers and
- 3:41:58Speaker 2: the king. And if we we're to leave out the ladies,
- 3:42:01Speaker 2: the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So that we believe,
- 3:42:05Speaker 2: we may let the whole place stand as it is,
- 3:42:08Speaker 2: and we shall hardly venture to quote set a mark
- 3:42:10Speaker 2: of reprobation on it. Still, we have some objections to
- 3:42:14Speaker 2: the style, which we think savors more of the pedantic
- 3:42:18Speaker 2: spirit of Shakespeare's time than of his own genius, more
- 3:42:22Speaker 2: of controversial divinity and the logic of Peter Lombard than
- 3:42:26Speaker 2: of the inspiration of the muse. It transports us quite
- 3:42:29Speaker 2: as much to the manners of the court and the
- 3:42:32Speaker 2: quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes of
- 3:42:35Speaker 2: nature or the fairyland of his own imagination. Shakespeare has
- 3:42:39Speaker 2: set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then
- 3:42:43Speaker 2: prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned, and
- 3:42:46Speaker 2: he has imitated it, but too faithfully. It is if
- 3:42:50Speaker 2: the hand of Titian had been employed to give grace
- 3:42:53Speaker 2: to the curls of a full bottomed periwig, or Raphael
- 3:42:56Speaker 2: had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in
- 3:42:59Speaker 2: the House of Lords. Shakespeare has put an excellent description
- 3:43:03Speaker 2: of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical
- 3:43:06Speaker 2: Holopherny says, too picked to spruce, too affected, too odd
- 3:43:12Speaker 2: as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.
- 3:43:16Speaker 2: And nothing can be more marked than the difference when
- 3:43:18Speaker 2: he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed on
- 3:43:21Speaker 2: himself as light as bird from break, and speaks in
- 3:43:25Speaker 2: his own person we think, for instance, that in the
- 3:43:28Speaker 2: following soliloquy, the poet has fairly got the start of
- 3:43:32Speaker 2: Queen Elizabeth and her maids of honor. Baron Oh, and
- 3:43:37Speaker 2: I forsooth in love, I that have been Love's whip,
- 3:43:43Speaker 2: a very beadle to an amorous sigh, A critic, nay,
- 3:43:47Speaker 2: a night watch constable, a domineering pedant, or a boy
- 3:43:52Speaker 2: than whom no mortal more magnificent, this wimpled, whining, purblind
- 3:43:58Speaker 2: wayward boy. The scene your junio, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
- 3:44:03Speaker 2: Regent of love rhymes, Lord of folded arms, the anointed,
- 3:44:07Speaker 2: Sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiters and malcontents,
- 3:44:13Speaker 2: dread Prince of plaquets, King of cod pieces, solemn peratore,
- 3:44:18Speaker 2: and great General of trotting parrotours ough my little heart,
- 3:44:25Speaker 2: and I to be a corporal of his field, and
- 3:44:28Speaker 2: wear his colors like a tumbler's hoop. What I love,
- 3:44:32Speaker 2: I sue, I seek a wife, A woman that is
- 3:44:36Speaker 2: like a German clock, still a repairing, ever out of
- 3:44:39Speaker 2: frame and never going art, being a watch and being watched,
- 3:44:44Speaker 2: that it may still go right. Nay, to be perjured,
- 3:44:48Speaker 2: which is worst of all, and among three to love
- 3:44:51Speaker 2: the worst of all, A weightly wanton with a velvet brow,
- 3:44:56Speaker 2: with two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes,
- 3:44:59Speaker 2: a and by heaven one that will do the deed,
- 3:45:03Speaker 2: though argus were her eunuch and her guard, and I
- 3:45:06Speaker 2: to sigh for her, to watch for her, to pray
- 3:45:09Speaker 2: for her co too. It is a plague that keep
- 3:45:13Speaker 2: it will impose from my neglect of his almighty, dreadful
- 3:45:17Speaker 2: little might Well. I will love right, sigh, pray, sue,
- 3:45:22Speaker 2: and groan. Some men must love my lady, and some joan.
- 3:45:28Speaker 2: The character of Baron drawn by Roseline, and that which
- 3:45:32Speaker 2: Baron gives of Boyett are equally happy. The observations on
- 3:45:36Speaker 2: the use and abuse of study, and on the power
- 3:45:38Speaker 2: of beauty to quicken the understanding, as well as the senses,
- 3:45:42Speaker 2: are excellent. The scene which has the greatest dramatic effect
- 3:45:45Speaker 2: is that in which Baron, the King, Longueville, and Domain
- 3:45:49Speaker 2: successively detect each other and are detected in their breach
- 3:45:53Speaker 2: of their vow and in their profession of attachment to
- 3:45:56Speaker 2: their several mistresses, in which they suppose themselves to be
- 3:46:00Speaker 2: overheard by no one. The reconciliation between these lovers and
- 3:46:04Speaker 2: their sweethearts is also very good. And the penance which
- 3:46:07Speaker 2: Roseline imposes on Baron before he can expect to gain
- 3:46:11Speaker 2: her consent to marry him full of propriety and beauty, Rosaline.
- 3:46:17Speaker 2: Oft have I heard of you, my lord Baron, before
- 3:46:20Speaker 2: I saw you, and the world's large tongue proclaims you
- 3:46:24Speaker 2: for a man replete with mocks, full of comparisons and
- 3:46:29Speaker 2: wounding flouts, which you, on all estates will execute that
- 3:46:33Speaker 2: lie within the mercy of your wit to weed this
- 3:46:37Speaker 2: warm wood from your faithful brain, and therewithal to win
- 3:46:41Speaker 2: me if you please, without the witch, I am not
- 3:46:43Speaker 2: to be won. You shall this twelve month term, from
- 3:46:47Speaker 2: day to day visit the speechless, sick, and still converse
- 3:46:51Speaker 2: with groaning wretches, and your tasks shall be with all
- 3:46:55Speaker 2: the fierce endeavor of your wit to enforce the painted
- 3:46:58Speaker 2: impotent to smile. Barone, to move wild laughter in the
- 3:47:04Speaker 2: throat of death. It cannot be. It is impossible. Mirth
- 3:47:08Speaker 2: cannot move a soul in agony, Rosaline. Why that's the
- 3:47:13Speaker 2: way to choke a jibing spirit whose influence is begot
- 3:47:17Speaker 2: of that loose grace which shallow laughing hearers give the
- 3:47:21Speaker 2: fools a jest. Prosperity lies in the ear of him
- 3:47:25Speaker 2: that hears it, never in the tongue of him that
- 3:47:28Speaker 2: makes it. Then if sickly ears deaft with the clamors
- 3:47:32Speaker 2: of their own dear groans, will hear your idle scorns continue? Then,
- 3:47:37Speaker 2: and I will have you and that fault withal. But
- 3:47:40Speaker 2: if they will not throw away that spirit, and I
- 3:47:43Speaker 2: shall find you empty of that fault, right joyful of
- 3:47:47Speaker 2: your reformation. Barone a twelvemonth, well befall? What will befall?
- 3:47:54Speaker 2: I'll just a twelvemonth in an hospitall the famous Cuckoosan
- 3:47:59Speaker 2: closes the play, but we shall add no more criticisms.
- 3:48:03Speaker 2: Quote the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs
- 3:48:06Speaker 2: of Apollo. End of Love's Labour's Lost Matadieux about nothing.
- 3:48:14Speaker 2: This admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till of
- 3:48:18Speaker 2: late years. Mister Garrick's Benedict was one of his most
- 3:48:22Speaker 2: celebrated characters, and Missus Jordan, we have understood, played Beatrice
- 3:48:26Speaker 2: very delightfully. The serious part is still the most prominent
- 3:48:30Speaker 2: here as in other instances that we have noticed. Hero
- 3:48:34Speaker 2: is the principal figure in the piece and leaves an
- 3:48:37Speaker 2: indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her tenderness,
- 3:48:42Speaker 2: and the hard trial of her love. The passage in
- 3:48:45Speaker 2: which Claudio first makes a confession of his affection towards
- 3:48:49Speaker 2: her conveys as pleasing an image of the entrance of
- 3:48:52Speaker 2: love into a youthful bosom, as can well be imagined. Oh,
- 3:48:57Speaker 2: my lord, when you went onward with this end action,
- 3:49:01Speaker 2: I looked upon her with a soldier's eye that liked,
- 3:49:05Speaker 2: but had a rougher task in hand, then to drive
- 3:49:08Speaker 2: liking in the name of love. But now I am returned,
- 3:49:12Speaker 2: and that war thoughts have left their places vacant in
- 3:49:16Speaker 2: their rooms come thronging, soft and delicate desires, all prompting
- 3:49:21Speaker 2: me how fair young Hero is saying I liked her,
- 3:49:25Speaker 2: ere I went to wars. In the scene at the altar,
- 3:49:29Speaker 2: when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings
- 3:49:32Speaker 2: the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were,
- 3:49:35Speaker 2: divorces her. In the very marriage ceremony, her appeals to
- 3:49:39Speaker 2: her own conscious innocence and honor are made with the
- 3:49:42Speaker 2: most affecting simplicity, Claudio, No, Leonato, I never tempted her
- 3:49:48Speaker 2: with word too large, but as a brother to his sister,
- 3:49:51Speaker 2: showed bashful sincerity and comely love Hero and seemed. I
- 3:49:56Speaker 2: ever otherwise to you, Claudio. Out on seeming, I will
- 3:50:01Speaker 2: write against it. You seem to me as Diane in
- 3:50:04Speaker 2: her orb, as chaste as the bud ere it is blown.
- 3:50:07Speaker 2: But you are more intemperate in your blood than Vealus
- 3:50:11Speaker 2: or those pampered animals that rage in savage sensuality. Hero
- 3:50:16Speaker 2: is my lord, well that he doth speak so wide, Leonato.
- 3:50:20Speaker 2: Are these things spoken? Or do I but dream? John Sir?
- 3:50:25Speaker 2: They are spoken? And these things are true, Benedict, this
- 3:50:29Speaker 2: looks not like a nuptial Hero true, Oh God. The
- 3:50:34Speaker 2: justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to
- 3:50:38Speaker 2: the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about
- 3:50:41Speaker 2: by one of those temporary consignments to the grave of
- 3:50:45Speaker 2: which Shakespeare seems to have been fond. He has perhaps
- 3:50:48Speaker 2: explained the theory of this predilection in the following lines, Friar,
- 3:50:54Speaker 2: she dying, as it must be so maintained upon the
- 3:50:58Speaker 2: instant that she was accused, shall be lamented, pitied, and
- 3:51:02Speaker 2: excused of every hearer, For it so falls out that
- 3:51:07Speaker 2: what we have we prize not to the worth while
- 3:51:10Speaker 2: we enjoy it, but being laxed and lost, Why then
- 3:51:13Speaker 2: we rack the value. Then we find the virtue that
- 3:51:17Speaker 2: possession would not show us whilst it was ours. So
- 3:51:20Speaker 2: it will fare with Claudio when he shall hear she
- 3:51:23Speaker 2: died upon his words, the idea of her love shall
- 3:51:26Speaker 2: sweetly creep into his study of imagination, and every lovely
- 3:51:31Speaker 2: organ of her life shall come apparelled in more precious habit,
- 3:51:35Speaker 2: more moving, delicate, and full of life, into the eye
- 3:51:40Speaker 2: and prospect of his soul than when she lived. Indeed,
- 3:51:45Speaker 2: the principal comic characters in Much Ado about Nothing, Benedict
- 3:51:49Speaker 2: and Beatrice, are both essences and their kind. His character
- 3:51:53Speaker 2: as a woman hater is admirably supported, and his conversion
- 3:51:57Speaker 2: to matrimony no less happily affected by the pretended story
- 3:52:01Speaker 2: of Beatrice's love for him. It is hard to say
- 3:52:04Speaker 2: which of the two scenes is the best, That of
- 3:52:07Speaker 2: the trick which is thus practiced on Benedict, or that
- 3:52:10Speaker 2: in which Beatrice is prevailed on to take pity on
- 3:52:13Speaker 2: him by overhearing her cousin and her maid declare, which
- 3:52:16Speaker 2: they do on purpose, that he is dying of love
- 3:52:19Speaker 2: for her. There is something delightfully picturesque in the manner
- 3:52:23Speaker 2: in which Beatrice is described as coming to hear the
- 3:52:26Speaker 2: plot which is contrived against herself. For look where Beatrice,
- 3:52:30Speaker 2: like a lapwing, runs close by the ground to hear
- 3:52:33Speaker 2: our conference. In consequence of what she hears, not a
- 3:52:37Speaker 2: word of which is true, she exclaims, when these good
- 3:52:41Speaker 2: natured informants are gone, what fire is in mine ears?
- 3:52:45Speaker 2: Can this be true? Stand I condemned for pride and
- 3:52:49Speaker 2: scorn so much contempt, farewell and made in pride, But
- 3:52:54Speaker 2: you no glory lives behind the back of such and
- 3:52:58Speaker 2: benedict love all. I will requite THEE taming my wild
- 3:53:03Speaker 2: heart to thy loving hand. If thou dost love my kindness,
- 3:53:07Speaker 2: shall incite THEE to bind our loves up in an
- 3:53:10Speaker 2: holy band for others say thou dost deserve, And I
- 3:53:14Speaker 2: believe it better than reportingly. And Benedeck, on his part,
- 3:53:19Speaker 2: is equally sincere in his repentance with equal reason. After
- 3:53:23Speaker 2: he has heard the graybeard Leonato and his friend Monsieur
- 3:53:27Speaker 2: love discourse of the desperate state of his supposed enamorata.
- 3:53:33Speaker 2: This can be no trick. The conference was sadly born.
- 3:53:37Speaker 2: They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem
- 3:53:39Speaker 2: to pity the lady. It seems her affections have the
- 3:53:42Speaker 2: full bent love me. Why it must be requited? I
- 3:53:48Speaker 2: hear how I am censured. They say, I will bear
- 3:53:51Speaker 2: myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her.
- 3:53:55Speaker 2: They say too, that she will rather die than give
- 3:53:58Speaker 2: any sign of affection. I never did think to marry.
- 3:54:02Speaker 2: I must not seem proud. Happy are they that hear
- 3:54:05Speaker 2: their distractions and can put them to mending. They say,
- 3:54:08Speaker 2: the lady is fair, tis a truth I can bear
- 3:54:11Speaker 2: them witness and virtuance tis so I cannot reprove it
- 3:54:16Speaker 2: and wise, But for loving me by my troth, it
- 3:54:20Speaker 2: is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument
- 3:54:24Speaker 2: of her folly. For I will be horribly in love
- 3:54:27Speaker 2: with her. I may chance to have some odd quirks
- 3:54:31Speaker 2: and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have
- 3:54:34Speaker 2: railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite altar.
- 3:54:38Speaker 2: A man loves the meat in his youth that he
- 3:54:40Speaker 2: cannot endure in his age. She'll quips and sentences and
- 3:54:44Speaker 2: these paper bullets of the brain are a man from
- 3:54:48Speaker 2: the career of his humor. No, the world must be peopled.
- 3:54:53Speaker 2: When I said I would die a bachelor, I did
- 3:54:56Speaker 2: not think I should live till I were married. Here
- 3:54:58Speaker 2: comes Beatrice by this day. She is a fair lady.
- 3:55:02Speaker 2: I do spy some marks of love in her. The
- 3:55:05Speaker 2: beauty of all this arises from the characters of the
- 3:55:08Speaker 2: persons so entrapped. Benedict is a professed and staunch enemy
- 3:55:13Speaker 2: to marriage, and gives very plausible reasons for the faith
- 3:55:16Speaker 2: that is in him. And as to Beatrice, she persecutes
- 3:55:20Speaker 2: him all day with her jests, so that he could
- 3:55:23Speaker 2: hardly think of being troubled with them. At night, she
- 3:55:25Speaker 2: not only turns him but all other things into jest,
- 3:55:29Speaker 2: and is proof against everything serious. Hero, Disdain and scorn
- 3:55:35Speaker 2: rides sparkling in her eyes, misprising what they look on,
- 3:55:39Speaker 2: and her wit values itself so highly that to her
- 3:55:42Speaker 2: all matter else seems weak. She cannot love, nor take
- 3:55:46Speaker 2: no shape nor project of affection. She is so self endeared. Ursula,
- 3:55:52Speaker 2: sure I think so, and therefore certainly it were not good.
- 3:55:56Speaker 2: She knew his love, lest she makes sport at it. Hero,
- 3:56:01Speaker 2: Why you speak truth. I never yet saw man, how wise,
- 3:56:05Speaker 2: how noble, young, how rarely featured, but she would spell
- 3:56:09Speaker 2: him backward. If their faced, she'd swear the gentlemen should
- 3:56:13Speaker 2: be her sister. If black, why nature drawing of an
- 3:56:16Speaker 2: antic made a foul blot? If tall a lance, ill headed?
- 3:56:22Speaker 2: If low a n agate very vilely cut? If speaking,
- 3:56:26Speaker 2: why a vain blown with all winds? If silent, why
- 3:56:30Speaker 2: a block moved with a nun so turns she every
- 3:56:34Speaker 2: man the wrong side out, and never gives to truth
- 3:56:36Speaker 2: and virtue that which simpleness and merit purchaseth. These were
- 3:56:41Speaker 2: happy materials for Shakespeare to work on, and he has
- 3:56:44Speaker 2: made a happy use of them. Perhaps that middle point
- 3:56:47Speaker 2: of comedy was never more nicely hit, in which the
- 3:56:50Speaker 2: ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies turning round
- 3:56:54Speaker 2: against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but
- 3:56:58Speaker 2: their humanity. Dog Berry and Vergis in this play are
- 3:57:02Speaker 2: inimitable specimens of quaint, blundering and misprisions of meaning, and
- 3:57:07Speaker 2: our standing record of that formal gravity of pretension and
- 3:57:11Speaker 2: total want of common understanding, which Shakespeare no doubt copied
- 3:57:15Speaker 2: from real life. And which in the course of two
- 3:57:17Speaker 2: hundred years, appear to have ascended from the lowest to
- 3:57:20Speaker 2: the highest offices in the state end of much ado
- 3:57:24Speaker 2: about nothing as you like it. Shakespeare has here converted
- 3:57:30Speaker 2: the forest of Arden into another arcadia, where they quote
- 3:57:34Speaker 2: fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the Golden World.
- 3:57:38Speaker 2: It is the most ideal of any of this author's plays.
- 3:57:41Speaker 2: It is a pastoral drama in which the interest arises
- 3:57:45Speaker 2: more out of the sentiments and characters than out of
- 3:57:48Speaker 2: the actions or situations. It is not what is done,
- 3:57:51Speaker 2: but what is said, that claims our attention. Nursed in
- 3:57:55Speaker 2: solitude quote, under the shade of melancholy boughs, the match
- 3:58:00Speaker 2: nation grows soft and delicate, and the wit runs riot
- 3:58:03Speaker 2: and idleness, like a spoiled child that is never sent
- 3:58:07Speaker 2: to school. Caprice and fancy, rain and revel here and
- 3:58:11Speaker 2: stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild sentiments
- 3:58:15Speaker 2: of humanity are strengthened with thought and leisure. The echo
- 3:58:19Speaker 2: of the cares and noise of the world strikes upon
- 3:58:22Speaker 2: the ear of those quote who have felt them knowingly
- 3:58:25Speaker 2: softened by time and distance. Quote. They hear the tumult
- 3:58:30Speaker 2: and are still, the very air of the place seems
- 3:58:33Speaker 2: to breathe a spirit of philosophical poetry, disturb the thoughts,
- 3:58:37Speaker 2: to touch the heart with pity, as the drowsy forest
- 3:58:41Speaker 2: rustles to the sighing gale. Never was there such beautiful moralizing,
- 3:58:46Speaker 2: equally free from pedantry or petulance. And this their life,
- 3:58:51Speaker 2: exempt from public haunts, finds tongues in trees, books in
- 3:58:56Speaker 2: the running brooks, sermons and stones, and good in every thing.
- 3:59:01Speaker 2: Jacques is the only purely contemplative character in Shakespeare. He
- 3:59:06Speaker 2: thinks and does nothing. His whole occupation is to amuse
- 3:59:10Speaker 2: his mind, and he is totally regardless of his body
- 3:59:13Speaker 2: and his fortunes. He is the prince of philosophical idlers.
- 3:59:18Speaker 2: His only passion is thought. He sets no value upon
- 3:59:21Speaker 2: anything but as it serves as food for reflection. He
- 3:59:24Speaker 2: can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel
- 3:59:27Speaker 2: sucks eggs. The Motley fool, who morals on the time,
- 3:59:31Speaker 2: is the greatest prize he meets with in the forest.
- 3:59:34Speaker 2: He resents Orlando's passion for Rosalind as some disparagement of
- 3:59:38Speaker 2: his own passion for abstract truth, and leaves the Duke
- 3:59:42Speaker 2: as soon as he is restored to his sovereignty to
- 3:59:44Speaker 2: seek his brother out, who has quitted it and turned hermit.
- 3:59:48Speaker 2: Out of these convertites, there is much matter to be
- 3:59:51Speaker 2: heard and learnt. Within the sequestered and romantic glades of
- 3:59:56Speaker 2: the forest of Arden. They find leisure to be good
- 3:59:58Speaker 2: and wise, or to play the fool and fall in love.
- 4:00:02Speaker 2: Rosalind's character is made up of sportive, gayety, and natural tenderness.
- 4:00:07Speaker 2: Her tongue runs the faster to conceal the pressure at
- 4:00:09Speaker 2: her heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to
- 4:00:12Speaker 2: get deeper in love. The coquetry with which she plays
- 4:00:15Speaker 2: with her lover, and the double character which she has
- 4:00:18Speaker 2: to support, is managed with the nicest address. How full
- 4:00:22Speaker 2: of voluble, laughing grace is all her conversation with Orlando
- 4:00:27Speaker 2: in heedless mazes, running with wanton haste and giddy cunning.
- 4:00:32Speaker 2: How full of real fondness and pretended cruelty is her
- 4:00:36Speaker 2: answer to him when he promises to love her quote
- 4:00:38Speaker 2: forever and a day, say a day without the ever. No, No, Orlando.
- 4:00:44Speaker 2: Men are April when they woo, December when they wed.
- 4:00:48Speaker 2: Maids are May when they are maids. But the sky
- 4:00:50Speaker 2: changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous
- 4:00:54Speaker 2: of thee than a barbary cockpigeon over his hen, more
- 4:00:57Speaker 2: clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new fangled than
- 4:01:01Speaker 2: an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey.
- 4:01:04Speaker 2: I will weep for nothing like Diana and the fountain,
- 4:01:08Speaker 2: And I will do that when you are disposed to
- 4:01:10Speaker 2: be merry, I will laugh like a hyen, and that
- 4:01:13Speaker 2: when you are inclined to sleep, Orlando, But will my
- 4:01:17Speaker 2: Rosalind do so? Rosalind, by my life, she will do
- 4:01:21Speaker 2: as I do. The silent and retired character of Celia
- 4:01:26Speaker 2: is a necessary relief to the provoking loquacity of Rosalind.
- 4:01:30Speaker 2: Nor can anything be better conceived or more beautifully described
- 4:01:34Speaker 2: than the mutual affection between the two cousins. We still
- 4:01:38Speaker 2: have slept together, rose at an instant, learned, played eat together,
- 4:01:43Speaker 2: and wheresoere we went like Juno's swans. Still we went,
- 4:01:46Speaker 2: coupled and inseparable. The unrequited love of Sylvius for Phoebe
- 4:01:52Speaker 2: shows the perversity of this passion, and the commonest scenes
- 4:01:56Speaker 2: of life, and the rubs and stops which nature throws
- 4:01:59Speaker 2: in a where fortune has placed none Touchstone is not
- 4:02:04Speaker 2: in love, but he will have a mistress as a
- 4:02:06Speaker 2: subject for the exercise of his grotesque humor, and to
- 4:02:10Speaker 2: show his contempt for the passion. By his indifference about
- 4:02:13Speaker 2: the person. He is a rare fellow. He is a
- 4:02:16Speaker 2: mixture of the ancient cynic philosopher with a modern buffoon,
- 4:02:20Speaker 2: and turns folly into wit and wit into folly, just
- 4:02:23Speaker 2: as the fit takes him. His courtship of Audrey not
- 4:02:26Speaker 2: only throws a degree of ridicule on the state of
- 4:02:29Speaker 2: wedlock itself, but he is equally an enemy to the
- 4:02:32Speaker 2: prejudices of opinion in other respects. The lofty tone of
- 4:02:36Speaker 2: enthusiasm which the Duke and his companions in exiles spread
- 4:02:40Speaker 2: over the stillness and solitude of a country life receives
- 4:02:43Speaker 2: a pleasant shock from Touchstone's skeptical determination of the question.
- 4:02:49Speaker 2: Coryin and I like you this shepherd's life, mister Touchstone, clown,
- 4:02:54Speaker 2: truly shepherd. In respect of itself, it is a good life.
- 4:02:57Speaker 2: But in respect that it is a shepherd's life. It
- 4:03:00Speaker 2: is not in respect that it is solitary. I like
- 4:03:03Speaker 2: it very well, but in respect that it is private
- 4:03:07Speaker 2: and is a very vile life. Now in respect it
- 4:03:10Speaker 2: is in the fields it pleaseth me well. But in
- 4:03:13Speaker 2: respect it is not in the court. It is tedious
- 4:03:16Speaker 2: as it is a spare life. Look you, it fits
- 4:03:19Speaker 2: my humor, but as there is no more plenty in it,
- 4:03:23Speaker 2: it goes much against my stomach samn in celebrated work
- 4:03:27Speaker 2: on Solitude, discovers only half the sense of this passage.
- 4:03:31Speaker 2: There is hardly any of Fixper's plays that contain a
- 4:03:34Speaker 2: greater number of passages that have been quoted in books
- 4:03:37Speaker 2: of extracts, or a greater number of phrases that have
- 4:03:40Speaker 2: become in a manner proverbial. If we were to give
- 4:03:43Speaker 2: all the striking passages, we should give half the play.
- 4:03:46Speaker 2: We will only recall a few of the most delightful
- 4:03:49Speaker 2: to the reader's recollection. Such are the meeting between Orlando
- 4:03:53Speaker 2: and Adam, the exquisite appeal of Orlando to the humanity
- 4:03:57Speaker 2: of the Duke and his company to supply him with
- 4:03:59Speaker 2: food for the old man, and their answer, the Duke's
- 4:04:02Speaker 2: description of a country life, and the account of Jacques
- 4:04:05Speaker 2: moralizing on the wounded deer, his meeting with Touchstone in
- 4:04:09Speaker 2: the forest, his apology for his own melancholy, and his
- 4:04:13Speaker 2: satirical vein, and the well known speech on the stages
- 4:04:16Speaker 2: of human life, the old song of Blow Blow thou
- 4:04:20Speaker 2: Winter's wind, Rosalind's description of the marks of a lover
- 4:04:24Speaker 2: and of the progress of time with different persons, The
- 4:04:27Speaker 2: picture of the snake wreathed round Oliver's neck while the
- 4:04:30Speaker 2: lioness watches her sleeping prey, and Touchstone's lecture to the shepherd,
- 4:04:35Speaker 2: his defense of Cuckold's and pangyric on the virtues of an.
- 4:04:39Speaker 2: If all of these are familiar to the reader, there
- 4:04:43Speaker 2: is one passage of equal delicacy and beauty which may
- 4:04:46Speaker 2: have escaped him, And with it we shall close our
- 4:04:49Speaker 2: account of as you like it. It is Phoebe's description
- 4:04:53Speaker 2: of Ganymede at the end of the third act. Think
- 4:04:56Speaker 2: not I love him, though I ask for him. 'tis
- 4:04:59Speaker 2: but a peevish boy. Yet he talks well? But what
- 4:05:02Speaker 2: care I for words? Yet words do well? When he
- 4:05:05Speaker 2: that speaks em pleases those that hear. It is a
- 4:05:08Speaker 2: pretty youth, not very pretty, but sure he's proud, and
- 4:05:13Speaker 2: yet his pride becomes him. He'll make a proper man.
- 4:05:16Speaker 2: The best thing in him is his complexion, and faster
- 4:05:19Speaker 2: than his tongue didn't make offense his eye did heal
- 4:05:22Speaker 2: it up. He is not very tall, yet for his
- 4:05:25Speaker 2: years he's tall. His leg is but so so, and
- 4:05:29Speaker 2: yet tis well. There was a pretty redness in his lip,
- 4:05:33Speaker 2: a little riper and more lusty red than that mixed
- 4:05:37Speaker 2: in his cheek. Twas just the difference betwixt the constant
- 4:05:40Speaker 2: red and mingled damask there hope you some women Sylvia's,
- 4:05:44Speaker 2: had they marked him in parcels as I did, would
- 4:05:47Speaker 2: have gone near to fall in love with him. But
- 4:05:50Speaker 2: for my part, I love him not, nor hate him not.
- 4:05:54Speaker 2: And yet I have more cause to hate him than
- 4:05:56Speaker 2: to love him, for what had he to do to
- 4:05:58Speaker 2: try it at me? End of as you like it,
- 4:06:03Speaker 2: The Taming of the Shrew. The Taming of the Shrew
- 4:06:08Speaker 2: is almost the only one of Shakespeare's comedies that has
- 4:06:11Speaker 2: a regular plot, and downright more it is full of bustle,
- 4:06:16Speaker 2: animation and rapidity of action. It shows admirably how self
- 4:06:21Speaker 2: will is only to be got the better of by
- 4:06:23Speaker 2: stronger will, and how one degree of ridiculous perversity is
- 4:06:27Speaker 2: only to be driven out by another still greater. Petruchio
- 4:06:31Speaker 2: is a madman in his senses, a very honest fellow
- 4:06:35Speaker 2: who hardly speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in
- 4:06:38Speaker 2: all his tricks and impostures. He acts his assumed character
- 4:06:42Speaker 2: to the life with a most fantastical extravagance, with complete
- 4:06:46Speaker 2: presence of mind, with untired animal spirits, and without a
- 4:06:51Speaker 2: particle of ill humor. From beginning to end. The situation
- 4:06:55Speaker 2: of poor Catherine, worn out by his incessant persecutions, becomes
- 4:07:00Speaker 2: at last almost as pitiable as it is ludicrous, And
- 4:07:04Speaker 2: it is difficult to say which to admire most, the
- 4:07:07Speaker 2: unaccountableness of his actions or the unalterableness of his resolutions.
- 4:07:13Speaker 2: It is a character which most husbands ought to study,
- 4:07:16Speaker 2: unless perhaps the very audacity of Petruchio's attempt might alarm
- 4:07:20Speaker 2: them more than his success would encourage them. What a
- 4:07:24Speaker 2: sound must the following speech carry to some married ears?
- 4:07:28Speaker 1: Think you a little din can daunt my ears? Have
- 4:07:32Speaker 1: I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I
- 4:07:36Speaker 1: not heard the sea puffed up with winds, rage like
- 4:07:40Speaker 1: an angry boar, chafed with sweat? Have I not heard
- 4:07:45Speaker 1: great ordinance in the field, and Heaven's artillery thunder in
- 4:07:50Speaker 1: the skies? Have I not in a pitched battle, heard
- 4:07:55Speaker 1: loud alarms, name steeds and trumpets clang, And do you
- 4:08:00Speaker 1: tell me of a woman's tongue that gives not half
- 4:08:03Speaker 1: so great a blow to hear as will a chestnut
- 4:08:06Speaker 1: in a farmer's fire.
- 4:08:09Speaker 2: Not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade more than quote some
- 4:08:13Speaker 2: dozen followers to be of this heretical way of thinking.
- 4:08:17Speaker 2: He unfolds his scheme for the Taming of the Shoe
- 4:08:20Speaker 2: on a principle of contradiction.
- 4:08:22Speaker 1: That I'll woo her with some spirit. When she comes.
- 4:08:27Speaker 1: Say that she rail, Why, then I'll tell her plane
- 4:08:31Speaker 1: she sings as sweetly as a nightingale. Say that she frowned,
- 4:08:36Speaker 1: I'll say she looks as clear as morning roses newly
- 4:08:41Speaker 1: washed with dew. Say she be mute, will not speak
- 4:08:44Speaker 1: a word. Then I'll commend her volubility, and say she
- 4:08:49Speaker 1: uttereth piercing eloquence. If she do bid me pack, I'll
- 4:08:55Speaker 1: give her thanks, as though she bid me stay by
- 4:08:58Speaker 1: her a week. If she did not wed, I'll crave
- 4:09:01Speaker 1: the day when I shall ask the bands and when be.
- 4:09:06Speaker 2: Married according the games, for consent to the match by
- 4:09:10Speaker 2: telling her father that he has got it, disappoints her
- 4:09:13Speaker 2: by not returning at the time he has promised to
- 4:09:15Speaker 2: wed her, and when he returns, creates no small consternation
- 4:09:20Speaker 2: by the oddity of his dress and equibitch. This, however,
- 4:09:23Speaker 2: is nothing to the astonishment excited by his mad brained
- 4:09:27Speaker 2: behavior at the marriage. Here is the account of it
- 4:09:30Speaker 2: by an eyewitness.
- 4:09:31Speaker 1: Gremia tud she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him.
- 4:09:36Speaker 1: I'll tell you, Sir Lucancho, when the priest should ask
- 4:09:40Speaker 1: if Katerina should be his wife? Ah, by God's wounds,
- 4:09:45Speaker 1: quoth he, and swore so loud that all amazed. The
- 4:09:50Speaker 1: priest let fall the buck. And as they stooped again
- 4:09:54Speaker 1: to take it up, this mad brained bridegroom took him
- 4:09:58Speaker 1: such a cough that felt priest and book and book
- 4:10:02Speaker 1: and priest, now take them up, quoth he, If any.
- 4:10:06Speaker 2: List, Tunia, what set the wench? When he rose up again.
- 4:10:10Speaker 1: Gremia trembled and shook for why he stamped and swore
- 4:10:15Speaker 1: as if the vicar meant to cousin him. But after
- 4:10:18Speaker 1: many ceremonies done, he calls for wine a health, quoth he,
- 4:10:23Speaker 1: as if he'd been abroad carousing with his mates. After storm,
- 4:10:27Speaker 1: quaffed off the muscadel and threw the SOPs all in
- 4:10:31Speaker 1: the sexton's face, having no other cause but that his
- 4:10:35Speaker 1: beard grew thin and hungrily, and seemed to ask his SOPs.
- 4:10:39Speaker 1: As he was drinking. This done, he took the bride
- 4:10:42Speaker 1: about the neck and kissed her lips with such a
- 4:10:46Speaker 1: clamorous smack that at their parting all the church echoed.
- 4:10:51Speaker 1: And I, seeing this came thence for very shame, and
- 4:10:54Speaker 1: after me, I know the route is coming. Such a
- 4:10:57Speaker 1: mad marriage never was before.
- 4:11:01Speaker 2: The most striking and at the same time laughable feature
- 4:11:04Speaker 2: in the character of Petruchio throughout is the studied approximation
- 4:11:08Speaker 2: to the intractable character of real madness, his apparent and
- 4:11:12Speaker 2: sensibility to all external considerations, an utter indifference to everything
- 4:11:18Speaker 2: but the wild and extravagant freaks of his own self will.
- 4:11:23Speaker 2: There is no contending with the person on whom nothing
- 4:11:25Speaker 2: makes any impression but his own purposes, and who is
- 4:11:29Speaker 2: bent on his own whims, just in proportion as they
- 4:11:32Speaker 2: seem to want common sense with him. A thing's being
- 4:11:35Speaker 2: plain and reasonable is a reason against it. Theirs he
- 4:11:38Speaker 2: gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as
- 4:11:42Speaker 2: they are groundless. The whole of his treatment of his
- 4:11:46Speaker 2: wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical
- 4:11:49Speaker 2: attention and inverted gallantry. Everything flies before his will like
- 4:11:53Speaker 2: a conjuror's wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper
- 4:11:58Speaker 2: by metamorphising her self and all the objects she sees
- 4:12:02Speaker 2: at a word speaking, such are his insisting that it
- 4:12:05Speaker 2: is the moon and not the sun which they see,
- 4:12:08Speaker 2: et cetera. This extravagance reaches its most pleasant and poetical
- 4:12:12Speaker 2: height in the scene where, on their return to her
- 4:12:15Speaker 2: father's they meet old Vincentio, whom Petruchio immediately addresses as
- 4:12:20Speaker 2: a young.
- 4:12:21Speaker 1: Lady Petruchia, good mar gentle mistress. Wear away, Tell me,
- 4:12:28Speaker 1: sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, hast thou beheld
- 4:12:33Speaker 1: a fresher gentle woman, such war white and red within
- 4:12:38Speaker 1: her cheeks? What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty
- 4:12:43Speaker 1: as those two eyes become that heavenly face, fair lovely maid.
- 4:12:50Speaker 1: Once more, Good day to thee sweet Kate. Embrace her
- 4:12:54Speaker 1: for beauty's sake.
- 4:12:56Speaker 2: Portense you. He'll make the man mad to make a
- 4:12:59Speaker 2: woman of him, Catherine, young, budding, virgin, fair and fresh
- 4:13:06Speaker 2: and sweet? Whither away or where is thy abode?
- 4:13:11Speaker 1: Happy?
- 4:13:11Speaker 2: The parents of so fair a child happier, the man
- 4:13:15Speaker 2: whose favorable stars a lot thee for his lovely beton.
- 4:13:19Speaker 1: Fellow, Petruchia. Why how now, Kate, I hope thou art
- 4:13:25Speaker 1: not mad? This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, withered,
- 4:13:31Speaker 1: not a maiden. Dost thou sayest he is Catherine?
- 4:13:35Speaker 2: Pardon, old father. My mistaken eyes have been so bedazed
- 4:13:40Speaker 2: with the sun that everything I look on zamuth green.
- 4:13:45Speaker 2: Now I perceive thou art a reverend father. The hole
- 4:13:49Speaker 2: is carried on with equal spirit, as if the poet's
- 4:13:52Speaker 2: comic muse had wings of fire. It is strange how
- 4:13:55Speaker 2: one man could be so many things, But so it
- 4:13:57Speaker 2: is the concluding scene, and which trial is made of
- 4:14:02Speaker 2: the obedience of the new married wives, so triumphantly, for
- 4:14:05Speaker 2: Petruchio is a very happy one. In some parts of
- 4:14:09Speaker 2: this play there is a little too much about music
- 4:14:12Speaker 2: masters and masters of philosophy. They were things of greater
- 4:14:15Speaker 2: rarity in those days than they are now. Nothing, however,
- 4:14:18Speaker 2: can be better than the advice which Trannio gives his
- 4:14:21Speaker 2: master for the prosecution of his studies. The mathematics and
- 4:14:26Speaker 2: the metaphysics fall to them. As you find your stomach
- 4:14:30Speaker 2: serves you, No prophet grows where is no pleasure, tame
- 4:14:34Speaker 2: and brief, sir, study what you most affect. We have
- 4:14:38Speaker 2: heard the honeymoon called quote an elegant Catherine and Petruchio.
- 4:14:42Speaker 2: We suspect we do not understand this word elegant in
- 4:14:46Speaker 2: the sense that many people do. But in our sense
- 4:14:48Speaker 2: of the word, we should call Ucentcho's description of his
- 4:14:51Speaker 2: mistress elegant.
- 4:14:53Speaker 1: Tronio, I saw her core lips to move, and with
- 4:14:57Speaker 1: her breath she did perfume. The air sacred and sweet
- 4:15:02Speaker 1: was all I saw in her.
- 4:15:04Speaker 2: When Biondello tells the same lucentio for his encouragement, I
- 4:15:09Speaker 2: know a wench married in an afternoon as she went
- 4:15:11Speaker 2: to the garden for Parsley to stuff a rabbit, And
- 4:15:14Speaker 2: so may you, sir. There's nothing elegant in this, and
- 4:15:18Speaker 2: yet we hardly know which of the two passages is
- 4:15:20Speaker 2: the best. The Taming of the Shrew is a play
- 4:15:24Speaker 2: within a play. It is supposed to be a play
- 4:15:26Speaker 2: acted for the benefit of Slyde, the tinker, who is
- 4:15:29Speaker 2: made to believe himself a lord when he wakes after
- 4:15:32Speaker 2: a drunken brawl. The character of sly and the remarks
- 4:15:36Speaker 2: with which he accompanies the play are as good as
- 4:15:38Speaker 2: the play itself. His answer, when he has asked how
- 4:15:41Speaker 2: he likes it, ah indifferent. Well tis a good piece
- 4:15:44Speaker 2: of work. Wood tour done is in good keeping, as
- 4:15:49Speaker 2: if he were thinking of his Saturday night's job. Slye
- 4:15:52Speaker 2: does not change his taste with this new situation, but
- 4:15:55Speaker 2: in the midst of splendor and luxury, still calls out
- 4:15:58Speaker 2: lustily and repeatedly for a pot of the smallest dale.
- 4:16:03Speaker 2: He is very slow in giving up his personal identity
- 4:16:05Speaker 2: and his sudden advancement. I am christophero Sly call me
- 4:16:11Speaker 2: not honor nor lordship. I'm no drink sack of my life.
- 4:16:14Speaker 2: And if you give me any concerts, give me concerts
- 4:16:16Speaker 2: of beef. Never ask me what raiment or wear, For
- 4:16:20Speaker 2: I have no more doublets than packs, no more stockings
- 4:16:23Speaker 2: and legs, no more shoes than feet, nay sometimes more
- 4:16:28Speaker 2: feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes looks
- 4:16:30Speaker 2: through the overleather. Why would you make me mad am?
- 4:16:34Speaker 2: I not christophero Sly old Sly's son of Burton Heath
- 4:16:38Speaker 2: by birth, a peddler by education, a card maker by transmutation,
- 4:16:43Speaker 2: a bear herd, and now by present profession, a tinker.
- 4:16:47Speaker 2: Uh ask Marian Hackett, the fat ale wife of Wincott,
- 4:16:50Speaker 2: if she know me not, If she say I am not,
- 4:16:53Speaker 2: fourteenpence on score for sheer ale, score me up for
- 4:16:56Speaker 2: the lyingest knave in Christendom. This is honest. The Slies
- 4:17:02Speaker 2: are no rogues. As he says of himself, we have
- 4:17:05Speaker 2: a great predilection for this representative of the family. And
- 4:17:09Speaker 2: what makes us like him the better is that we
- 4:17:11Speaker 2: take him to be of kin, not many degrees removed
- 4:17:14Speaker 2: to Sancho Panza, end of Taming of the Shrew, measure
- 4:17:19Speaker 2: for measure. This is a play as full of genius
- 4:17:23Speaker 2: as it is of wisdom. Yet there is an original
- 4:17:27Speaker 2: sin in the nature of the subject which prevents us
- 4:17:30Speaker 2: from taking a cordial interest in it. The height of
- 4:17:33Speaker 2: moral argument, which the author has maintained in the intervals
- 4:17:37Speaker 2: of passion, or blended with the more powerful impulses of nature,
- 4:17:41Speaker 2: is hardly surpassed in any of his plays. But there
- 4:17:44Speaker 2: is in general a want of passion. The affections are
- 4:17:48Speaker 2: at a stand. Our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in
- 4:17:52Speaker 2: all directions. The only passion which influences the story is
- 4:17:56Speaker 2: that of Angelo, and yet he seems to have a
- 4:17:59Speaker 2: much greater passion for hypocrisy than for his mistress. Neither
- 4:18:03Speaker 2: are we greatly enamored of Isabella's rigid chastity. Though she
- 4:18:07Speaker 2: could not act to other wives than she did, we
- 4:18:10Speaker 2: do not feel the same confidence in the virtue that
- 4:18:13Speaker 2: is sublimely good at another's expense, as if it had
- 4:18:17Speaker 2: been out to some less disinterested trial. As to the Duke,
- 4:18:21Speaker 2: who makes a very imposing and mysterious stage character, he
- 4:18:26Speaker 2: is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than
- 4:18:29Speaker 2: anxious for the welfare of the state, more tenacious of
- 4:18:32Speaker 2: his own character than attentive to the feelings and apprehensions
- 4:18:36Speaker 2: of others. Claudio is the only person who feels naturally,
- 4:18:40Speaker 2: and yet he is placed in circumstances of distress which
- 4:18:44Speaker 2: almost preclude the wish for his deliverance. Marianna is also
- 4:18:48Speaker 2: in love with Angelo, whom we hate. In this respect,
- 4:18:52Speaker 2: there may be said to be a general system of
- 4:18:55Speaker 2: cross purposes between the feelings of the different characters and
- 4:18:58Speaker 2: the sympathy of the reader or the audience. This principle
- 4:19:02Speaker 2: of repugnance seems to have reached its height in the
- 4:19:05Speaker 2: character of Master Barnadine, who not only sets it defiance
- 4:19:09Speaker 2: the opinions of others, but has even thrown off all
- 4:19:12Speaker 2: self regard quote one that apprehends death no more dreadfully,
- 4:19:16Speaker 2: but as a drunken sleep, careless, reckless and fearless of
- 4:19:21Speaker 2: what's past present, and a gum unquote. He is a
- 4:19:24Speaker 2: fine antithesis to the morality and hypocrisy of the other
- 4:19:28Speaker 2: characters of the play. Barnadine is Caliban transported from Prospero's
- 4:19:33Speaker 2: Wizard Island to the force of Bohemia or the prisons
- 4:19:36Speaker 2: of Vienna. He is the creature of bad habits, as
- 4:19:39Speaker 2: Caliban is of gross instincts. He has, however, a strong
- 4:19:44Speaker 2: notion of the natural fitness of things according to his
- 4:19:47Speaker 2: own sensations. Quote. He has been drinking hard all night,
- 4:19:52Speaker 2: and he will not be hanged to that day unquote,
- 4:19:55Speaker 2: and Shakespeare has led him off at last. We do
- 4:19:59Speaker 2: not understand why the philosophical German critic Schlegel should be
- 4:20:02Speaker 2: so severe on these pleasant persons Luccio, Pompei, and Master
- 4:20:07Speaker 2: Froth as to call them wretches. They appear almighty, comfortable
- 4:20:11Speaker 2: in their occupations, and determined to pursue them as the
- 4:20:15Speaker 2: flesh and fortune should serve. A very good exposure of
- 4:20:18Speaker 2: the want of self knowledge and contempt for others, which
- 4:20:22Speaker 2: is so common in the world, is put into the
- 4:20:24Speaker 2: mouth of abhorse and the jailer. When the provost proposes
- 4:20:28Speaker 2: to associate Pompey with him in his office, quote, Abad, sir,
- 4:20:33Speaker 2: fie upon him, he will discredit our mystery unquote. And
- 4:20:37Speaker 2: the same answer would serve in nine instances out of
- 4:20:40Speaker 2: ten to the same kind of a remark, got, sir,
- 4:20:43Speaker 2: you weigh equally a feather will turn the scale. Shakespeare was,
- 4:20:47Speaker 2: in one sense the least moral of all writers, for morality,
- 4:20:52Speaker 2: commonly so called, is made up of antipathies, and his
- 4:20:56Speaker 2: talent consisted of sympathy with human nature in all its apes, degrees, depressions,
- 4:21:02Speaker 2: and elevations. The object of the pedantic moralist is to
- 4:21:06Speaker 2: find out the bad in everything. His was to show
- 4:21:10Speaker 2: that there is some soul of goodness in things evil.
- 4:21:14Speaker 2: Even Master Barnadine is not left to the mercy of
- 4:21:16Speaker 2: what others think of him, But when he comes in,
- 4:21:19Speaker 2: speaks for himself and pleads his own cause as well
- 4:21:23Speaker 2: as if counsel had been assigned him. In one sense,
- 4:21:26Speaker 2: Shakespeare was no moralist at all. In another, he was
- 4:21:29Speaker 2: the greatest of all moralists. He was a moralist in
- 4:21:33Speaker 2: the same sense in which nature is one. He taught
- 4:21:36Speaker 2: what he had learnt from her. He showed the greatest
- 4:21:39Speaker 2: knowledge of humanity, with the greatest fellow feeling for it.
- 4:21:43Speaker 2: One of the most dramatic passages in the present play
- 4:21:46Speaker 2: is the interview between Claudio and his sister, when she
- 4:21:49Speaker 2: comes to inform him of the conditions on which Angelo
- 4:21:52Speaker 2: will spare his life.
- 4:21:54Speaker 1: Claudio, let me know the point.
- 4:21:57Speaker 2: Isabella, Ah, I fear thee Claudio, and I quake. Lest
- 4:22:02Speaker 2: thou a feverish life shouldst entertain, and six or seven
- 4:22:06Speaker 2: winters more respect than a perpetual honor, Darest thou die.
- 4:22:11Speaker 2: The sense of death is most an apprehension, and the
- 4:22:14Speaker 2: poor beetle that we tread upon incorporal sufferance finds a
- 4:22:17Speaker 2: pang as great as when a giant dies.
- 4:22:20Speaker 1: Why give you me this shame? Think you I can
- 4:22:24Speaker 1: a resolution fetch from flowery tenderness. If I must die,
- 4:22:30Speaker 1: I will encounter darkness as a pride and hug at
- 4:22:34Speaker 1: mine arms.
- 4:22:35Speaker 2: There spect my brother, there, my father's graved at utter
- 4:22:39Speaker 2: forth a voice. Yes, thou must die. Thou art too
- 4:22:43Speaker 2: noble to conserve a life in base appliances. This outward
- 4:22:48Speaker 2: sainted deputy who settled visage and deliberate word, lips youth
- 4:22:53Speaker 2: in the head and follies death in me as falcon.
- 4:22:55Speaker 2: That the foul is yet.
- 4:22:57Speaker 1: A devil, the prince Leangelo, huh.
- 4:23:01Speaker 2: Tis the cunning livery of hell, the damnedest body to
- 4:23:06Speaker 2: invest in cover and princely guards. Dost thou think, Claudio?
- 4:23:11Speaker 2: If I would yield him my virginity, thou mightst be freed.
- 4:23:15Speaker 1: Oh, heavens it cannot be.
- 4:23:19Speaker 2: Yes, he would give it thee for this rank offense,
- 4:23:23Speaker 2: So to offend him. Still, this night's the time that
- 4:23:26Speaker 2: I should do what I abhor to name or else
- 4:23:30Speaker 2: Thou diest.
- 4:23:31Speaker 1: Tomorrow Thou shalt not do it, Oh, or.
- 4:23:36Speaker 2: It but my life. I'd throw it down for your deliverance,
- 4:23:40Speaker 2: as frankly as a pin. Thanks deer, Isabelle, be ready,
- 4:23:45Speaker 2: Claudio for your death tomorrow?
- 4:23:49Speaker 1: Yes, has he affections in him that thus can make
- 4:23:55Speaker 1: him bite the law by the nose when he would
- 4:23:58Speaker 1: force a sure it is no sin or the deadly seven.
- 4:24:02Speaker 2: It is the least, which is the least, if it.
- 4:24:05Speaker 1: Were damnable, he being so wise, why would he, for
- 4:24:09Speaker 1: the momentary trick be perchably fined?
- 4:24:13Speaker 2: Oh Isabelle, what says my brother?
- 4:24:17Speaker 1: Death is a fearful thing.
- 4:24:20Speaker 2: And shamed life a hateful ay.
- 4:24:25Speaker 1: But to die and go we know not where, To
- 4:24:29Speaker 1: lie in cold obstruction, and to rot this sensible warm motion,
- 4:24:34Speaker 1: to become a needed clod and the delighted spirit. To
- 4:24:38Speaker 1: bathe in fiery floods, or to reside in thrilling regions
- 4:24:44Speaker 1: of thick ribbed ice, to be imprisoned in the fewless
- 4:24:48Speaker 1: winds blown with restless violence round about the pendant world,
- 4:24:54Speaker 1: or to be worse than worse of those that lawless
- 4:24:57Speaker 1: and incertain thoughts. Imagine howling tis too horrible the weariest
- 4:25:05Speaker 1: and most loathed worldly life, that age, ache, penury, and
- 4:25:11Speaker 1: imprisonment can lay on nature as a paradise to what
- 4:25:16Speaker 1: we fear of death. Bless, bless, sweet sister, Let me
- 4:25:22Speaker 1: live what sin you do to save a brother's life
- 4:25:26Speaker 1: nature dispenses with a deed so far that it becomes
- 4:25:28Speaker 1: a virtue.
- 4:25:31Speaker 2: What adds to the dramatic beauty of the scene and
- 4:25:34Speaker 2: the effect of Claudio's passionate attachment to life, is that
- 4:25:38Speaker 2: it immediately follows the Duke's lecture to him on the
- 4:25:41Speaker 2: character of the friar, recommending an absolute indifference to it.
- 4:25:47Speaker 2: Reasonless with life. If I do lose thee, I do
- 4:25:51Speaker 2: lose a thing that none of fools would keep a breath.
- 4:25:54Speaker 2: Thou art sur vile to all the sky influences that
- 4:25:58Speaker 2: do this habitation. Thou keepest hourly afflict. Merely thou art
- 4:26:03Speaker 2: dest fool for him, Thou laborest by thy flight to shune,
- 4:26:07Speaker 2: and yet runst toward him. Still thou art not noble,
- 4:26:11Speaker 2: for all the accommodations that thou bearst are nursed by baseness.
- 4:26:16Speaker 2: Thou art by no means valiant, For thou didst fear
- 4:26:19Speaker 2: the soft and tender fork of a poor worm. Thy
- 4:26:23Speaker 2: best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provokest
- 4:26:27Speaker 2: yet grossly fierst thy death, which is no more Thou
- 4:26:31Speaker 2: art not thyself, For thou existst on many a thousand
- 4:26:35Speaker 2: grains that issue out of tust happy, thou art not
- 4:26:39Speaker 2: for what thou hast not still thou strivest to get,
- 4:26:43Speaker 2: And what thou hast forget'st thou art not certain, For
- 4:26:46Speaker 2: thy complexion shifts to strange effects after the moon. If
- 4:26:51Speaker 2: thou art rich, thou art poor. For like an ass
- 4:26:54Speaker 2: whose back with INGOs boughs, thou bearest thy heavy, richest,
- 4:26:57Speaker 2: but a journey and death unlowe thee friend, thou hast
- 4:27:02Speaker 2: none for thy own bowels which to call thee sire,
- 4:27:05Speaker 2: the mere effusion of thy proper loins to curse the gout,
- 4:27:10Speaker 2: sir pigo, and the room for ending thee. No sooner
- 4:27:14Speaker 2: thou hast nor youth nor age, but as it were
- 4:27:17Speaker 2: an Aftergenner's sleep, dreaming on both. For all thy blessed
- 4:27:21Speaker 2: youth becomes as aged and doth beg the alms of
- 4:27:24Speaker 2: palsied held. And when thou art old and rich, thou
- 4:27:28Speaker 2: hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty to make thy
- 4:27:32Speaker 2: riches pleasant. What's yet in this that bears the name
- 4:27:36Speaker 2: of life? Yet in this life I hid more thousand deaths.
- 4:27:40Speaker 2: Yet death we fear that makes these arts all even
- 4:27:45Speaker 2: end of measure for measure The Merry Wives of Windsor
- 4:27:49Speaker 2: is no doubt a very amusing play, with a great
- 4:27:52Speaker 2: deal of humor, character and nature in it, that we
- 4:27:55Speaker 2: should have liked it much better if any one else
- 4:27:58Speaker 2: had been the hero of it instead of Falstaff. We
- 4:28:01Speaker 2: could have been contented if Shakespeare had not been commanded
- 4:28:04Speaker 2: to show the Knight in love. Wits and philosophers, for
- 4:28:08Speaker 2: the most part, do not shine in that character, and
- 4:28:11Speaker 2: Sir John himself, by no means comes off with flying colors.
- 4:28:15Speaker 2: Many people complain of the degradation and insults to which
- 4:28:19Speaker 2: Don Quixote is so frequently exposed in his various adventures.
- 4:28:23Speaker 2: But what are the unconscious indignities which he suffers compared
- 4:28:27Speaker 2: with the sensible mortifications which Falstaff is made to bring
- 4:28:30Speaker 2: upon himself. What are the blows and buffetings which the
- 4:28:34Speaker 2: Dawn receives from the staves of the Yanghesian carriers or
- 4:28:38Speaker 2: from Sancho Panza's more hard hearted hands, compared with the
- 4:28:42Speaker 2: contamination of the buck basket, the disguise of the fat
- 4:28:46Speaker 2: woman of Brentford, and the horns of Herne the Hunter,
- 4:28:49Speaker 2: which are discovered on Sir John's head. In reading the play,
- 4:28:54Speaker 2: we indeed wish him well through all these discomfitures, but
- 4:28:57Speaker 2: it would have been as well as if he had
- 4:28:58Speaker 2: not got into them. Falstaff and the Merry Wives of
- 4:29:01Speaker 2: Windsor is not the man he was in the two
- 4:29:04Speaker 2: parts of Henry the Fourth. His wit and eloquence have
- 4:29:07Speaker 2: left him. Instead of making a butt of others, he
- 4:29:11Speaker 2: is made a butt of by them. Neither is there
- 4:29:13Speaker 2: a single particle of love in him to excuse his follies.
- 4:29:17Speaker 2: He is merely a designing, bare faced knave, and an
- 4:29:21Speaker 2: unsuccessful one. The scene with Ford is master book, and
- 4:29:25Speaker 2: that was simple Slender's man who comes to ask after
- 4:29:29Speaker 2: the wise woman are almost the only ones in which
- 4:29:32Speaker 2: his old intellectual ascendency appears. He is like a person
- 4:29:36Speaker 2: recalled to the stage to perform an unaccustomed and ungracious part,
- 4:29:40Speaker 2: and in which we perceive only some faint sparks of
- 4:29:43Speaker 2: those flashes of merriment that were wont to scent the
- 4:29:47Speaker 2: hearers in a roar. But the single scene with Dull
- 4:29:50Speaker 2: tear Sheet or Missus Quickley's account of his desiring Quote
- 4:29:54Speaker 2: to eat some of housewife Ketch's prawns and telling her
- 4:29:57Speaker 2: quote to be no more so familiar with such people
- 4:30:01Speaker 2: is worth the whole of the Merrywives of Windsor put together.
- 4:30:05Speaker 2: Ford's jealousy, which is the mainspring of the comic incidents,
- 4:30:09Speaker 2: is certainly very well managed. Page, on the contrary, appears
- 4:30:13Speaker 2: to be somewhat exorious in his disposition, and we have
- 4:30:16Speaker 2: pretty plain indications of the effect of the characters of
- 4:30:19Speaker 2: the husbands on the different degrees of fidelity in their wives.
- 4:30:24Speaker 2: Missus Quickley makes a very lively go between both between
- 4:30:28Speaker 2: Falstaff and his dulcineas and Anne Page and her lovers,
- 4:30:32Speaker 2: and seems, in the latter case so intent on her
- 4:30:34Speaker 2: own interest as totally to overlook the intentions of her employers.
- 4:30:39Speaker 2: Her master, doctor Caius the Frenchman, and her fellow servant,
- 4:30:42Speaker 2: Jack Rugby are very completely described. This last mentioned person
- 4:30:47Speaker 2: is rather quaintly commended by Missus Quickley as an honest, willing,
- 4:30:52Speaker 2: kind fellow as ever servant shall come in house withal,
- 4:30:55Speaker 2: and I warrant you no tell tale nor no breed bait.
- 4:30:59Speaker 2: His worst fault is that he is given to prayer.
- 4:31:02Speaker 2: He is something peevish in that way, but nobody but
- 4:31:05Speaker 2: has his fault. The Welsh parson, Sir Hugh Evans, a
- 4:31:09Speaker 2: title which in those days was given to the clergy.
- 4:31:11Speaker 2: Is an excellent character in all respects. He is as
- 4:31:15Speaker 2: respectable as he is laughable. He has quote, very good
- 4:31:18Speaker 2: discretions and very odd humors. The duel scene with Chaus
- 4:31:23Speaker 2: gives him an opportunity to show his callers and his
- 4:31:26Speaker 2: tremblings of mind, his valor and his melancholy in an
- 4:31:30Speaker 2: irresistible manner. In the dialogue, which at his mother's request
- 4:31:34Speaker 2: he holds with his pupil William Page, to show his
- 4:31:37Speaker 2: progress in learning. It is hard to say whether the
- 4:31:39Speaker 2: simplicity of the master or the scholars the greatest. Nim
- 4:31:44Speaker 2: Bardolph and Pistol are but the shadows of what they were,
- 4:31:48Speaker 2: and Justice Shallow himself has little of his consequence left.
- 4:31:52Speaker 2: But his cousin Slender makes up for the deficiency. He
- 4:31:55Speaker 2: is a very potent piece of imbecility.
- 4:31:58Speaker 1: In him.
- 4:31:59Speaker 2: The pretensions of the worthy Gloucestershire family are well kept
- 4:32:02Speaker 2: up and immortalized. He and his friend Sackerson, and his
- 4:32:06Speaker 2: book of songs, and his love of Anne Page and
- 4:32:09Speaker 2: is having nothing to say to her, can never be forgotten.
- 4:32:13Speaker 2: It is the only first trait character in the play.
- 4:32:15Speaker 2: But it is in that class. Shakespeare is the only
- 4:32:18Speaker 2: writer who was as great at describing weakness as strength.
- 4:32:23Speaker 2: End of the Merry Wives of windsor the Comedy of Errors.
- 4:32:29Speaker 2: This comedy is taken very much from the monacamy of Platus,
- 4:32:33Speaker 2: and is not an improvement on it. Shakespeare appears to
- 4:32:36Speaker 2: have bestowed no great pains on it, and there are
- 4:32:39Speaker 2: but a few passages which bear the decided stamp of
- 4:32:42Speaker 2: his genius. He seems to have relied on his author
- 4:32:45Speaker 2: and on the interest arising out of the intricacy of
- 4:32:47Speaker 2: the plot. The curiosity excited is certainly very considerable, though
- 4:32:52Speaker 2: not of the most pleasing kind. We are teased, as
- 4:32:56Speaker 2: with the riddle, which, notwithstanding, we try to solve in
- 4:33:00Speaker 2: reading the play. From the sameness of the names of
- 4:33:03Speaker 2: the two Antipholises and the two Dromios, as well as
- 4:33:07Speaker 2: from their being constantly taken for each other by those
- 4:33:09Speaker 2: who see them, it is difficult, without a painful effort
- 4:33:13Speaker 2: of attention, to keep the characters distinct in the mind
- 4:33:17Speaker 2: and again on the stage. Either the complete similarity of
- 4:33:21Speaker 2: their persons in dress must produce the same perplexity whenever
- 4:33:24Speaker 2: they first enter, or the identity of appearance, which the
- 4:33:28Speaker 2: story supposes will be destroyed. We still, however, having a
- 4:33:32Speaker 2: clue to the difficulty, can tell which is which, merely
- 4:33:35Speaker 2: from the practical contradictions which arise as soon as the
- 4:33:38Speaker 2: different parties begin to speak, and we are indemnified for
- 4:33:42Speaker 2: the perplexity and blunders into which we are thrown by
- 4:33:45Speaker 2: seeing others thrown into greater and almost inextricable ones. This play,
- 4:33:50Speaker 2: among other considerations, leads us not to feel much regret
- 4:33:54Speaker 2: that Shakespeare was not what is called a classical scholar.
- 4:33:57Speaker 2: We do not think his fort would have ever lain
- 4:33:59Speaker 2: in an image or improving on what others invented, so
- 4:34:03Speaker 2: much as inventing for himself and perfecting what he invented,
- 4:34:07Speaker 2: not perhaps by the omission of faults, but by the
- 4:34:09Speaker 2: addition of the highest excellences. His own genius was strong
- 4:34:13Speaker 2: enough to bear him up, and he soared longest and
- 4:34:16Speaker 2: best on unborrowed plumes. The only passage of a very
- 4:34:20Speaker 2: Shakespearean cast in this comedy is the one in which
- 4:34:23Speaker 2: the abbess, with admirable characteristic artifice, makes Adriana confess her
- 4:34:27Speaker 2: own misconduct in driving her husband mad abbys how long
- 4:34:32Speaker 2: hath this possession held the man Adriana. This week he
- 4:34:36Speaker 2: hath been heavy, sour, sad, and much much different from
- 4:34:40Speaker 2: the man he was. But till this afternoon his passion
- 4:34:44Speaker 2: never break into extremity of rage. Abys hath he not
- 4:34:48Speaker 2: lost much wealth that wreck by sea buried some dear friend.
- 4:34:52Speaker 2: Hath not else's eyes strayed his affection in an unlawful love,
- 4:34:57Speaker 2: a sin prevailing much an youthful man who give their
- 4:34:59Speaker 2: eyes a lit liberty of gazing. Which of these sorrows
- 4:35:02Speaker 2: is he subject too to none of these, except it
- 4:35:06Speaker 2: be the last, namely, some love that drew him off
- 4:35:09Speaker 2: from home. You should, for that have reprehended him. Why
- 4:35:13Speaker 2: so it did, but not rough enough, as roughly as
- 4:35:16Speaker 2: my modesty would let me happily in private, and in
- 4:35:20Speaker 2: assemblies too. I but not enough. It was the copy
- 4:35:25Speaker 2: of our conference in bed. He slept, not for my
- 4:35:28Speaker 2: urging it aboard he fed, not for my urging it alone.
- 4:35:32Speaker 2: It was the subject of my theme and company. I
- 4:35:35Speaker 2: often glanced at it. Still did I tell him it
- 4:35:38Speaker 2: was vile and bad abyss? And therefore came it that
- 4:35:43Speaker 2: the man was mad. The venomed clamors of a jealous
- 4:35:46Speaker 2: woman poisoned more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. Seems
- 4:35:50Speaker 2: his sleeps were hindered by thy railing, and therefore comes
- 4:35:54Speaker 2: it that his head is light. Thou sayst his meat
- 4:35:57Speaker 2: was sauced with eye upbraidings. Emials make ill digestions. Therefore
- 4:36:02Speaker 2: the raging fire of fever bread. And what's a fever
- 4:36:06Speaker 2: but a fit of madness, thou sayst, to sports were
- 4:36:09Speaker 2: hindered by their brawls, sweet recreation barred. What doth ensue
- 4:36:13Speaker 2: but moody and dull melancholy kinsmen to grim and comfortless despair,
- 4:36:19Speaker 2: and at her heels a huge infectious troop of pale
- 4:36:23Speaker 2: distemperatures and foes to life in food and sport and
- 4:36:28Speaker 2: life preserving rest. To be disturbed would man or manner beast?
- 4:36:32Speaker 2: The consequences end by jealous fits have scared thy husband
- 4:36:36Speaker 2: from the use of wits. Luciana, she never reprehended him,
- 4:36:41Speaker 2: but mildly when he demeaned himself, rough, rude and mildly, Oh,
- 4:36:46Speaker 2: why bear you these rebukes and answer not, Atriana, she
- 4:36:50Speaker 2: did betray me to my own reproof. Pinch. The conjuror
- 4:36:55Speaker 2: is also an excrescence not to be found in Platus.
- 4:36:58Speaker 2: He is indeed a very firm, amidable anachronism. They brought
- 4:37:02Speaker 2: one pinch, a hungry, lean faced villain, a mernatomy, a montebank,
- 4:37:09Speaker 2: a threadbare juggler, and a fortune teller, a needy, hollow eyed,
- 4:37:13Speaker 2: sharp looking wretch, a living dead man. This is exactly
- 4:37:19Speaker 2: like some of the puritanical portraits to be met with
- 4:37:22Speaker 2: in Hogarth. End of the comedy of errors doubtful plays
- 4:37:28Speaker 2: of Shakespeare. We forgive for the satisfaction of the reader
- 4:37:32Speaker 2: what the celebrated German critic Schlegel says on this subject,
- 4:37:36Speaker 2: and then add a very few remarks of our own quote.
- 4:37:41Speaker 2: All the editors, with the exception of Capel, are unanimous
- 4:37:44Speaker 2: in rejecting Titus Andronicus is unworthy of Shakespeare, though they
- 4:37:48Speaker 2: always allow it to be printed with other pieces, as
- 4:37:51Speaker 2: the scapegoat, as it were, of their abusive criticism. The
- 4:37:55Speaker 2: correct method in such an investigation is first to examine
- 4:37:59Speaker 2: into the ex external grounds evidences, et cetera, and to
- 4:38:02Speaker 2: weigh their worth, and then to reduce the internal reasons
- 4:38:06Speaker 2: derived from the quality of the work. The critics of
- 4:38:09Speaker 2: Shakespeare follow a course directly the reverse of this, they
- 4:38:13Speaker 2: set out with a preconceived opinion against a peace, and
- 4:38:17Speaker 2: seek and justification of this opinion, to render the historical
- 4:38:21Speaker 2: grounds suspicious and to set them aside. Titus Andronicus is
- 4:38:25Speaker 2: to be found in the first folio edition of Shakespeare's works,
- 4:38:29Speaker 2: which it was known, was conducted by Heminge and Condell
- 4:38:33Speaker 2: for many years, his friends and fellow managers of the
- 4:38:35Speaker 2: same theater. Is it possible to persuade ourselves that they
- 4:38:39Speaker 2: would not have known if a piece in their repertory
- 4:38:41Speaker 2: did or did not actually belong to Shakespeare? And are
- 4:38:45Speaker 2: we to lay to the charge of these honorable men
- 4:38:47Speaker 2: a designed to fraud in this single case, when we
- 4:38:50Speaker 2: know that they did not show themselves so very desirous
- 4:38:54Speaker 2: of scraping everything together which went by the name of Shakespeare,
- 4:38:57Speaker 2: but as it appears, merely gave those plays of which
- 4:39:01Speaker 2: they had manuscripts in hand. Yet the following circumstance is
- 4:39:05Speaker 2: still stronger. George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of Shakespeare,
- 4:39:10Speaker 2: mentions Titus Andronicus in an enumeration of his works in
- 4:39:13Speaker 2: the year fifteen ninety eight. Mears was personally acquainted with
- 4:39:18Speaker 2: a poet and so very intimately that the latter read
- 4:39:21Speaker 2: over to him his sonnets before they were printed. I
- 4:39:24Speaker 2: cannot conceive that all the critical skepticism in the world
- 4:39:27Speaker 2: would be sufficient to get over such a testimony. This tragedy,
- 4:39:32Speaker 2: it is true, is framed according to a false idea
- 4:39:35Speaker 2: of the tragic, which, by an accumulation of cruelties and enormities,
- 4:39:39Speaker 2: degenerates into the horrible, and yet leaves no deep impression behind.
- 4:39:44Speaker 2: The story of Tirius and Philomila is heightened and overcharged
- 4:39:47Speaker 2: under other names, and mixed up with the repast of
- 4:39:50Speaker 2: Atreus and Theistes, and many other incidents. In detail, there
- 4:39:55Speaker 2: is no want of beautiful lines, bold images, nay even
- 4:39:59Speaker 2: features which betray the peculiar conception of Shakespeare. Among these
- 4:40:04Speaker 2: we may reckon the joy of the treacherous more at
- 4:40:06Speaker 2: the blackness and ugliness of his child forgotten adultery, and
- 4:40:11Speaker 2: in the compassion of Titus Andronicus grown childish through grief
- 4:40:15Speaker 2: for a fly which had been struck dead, and his
- 4:40:18Speaker 2: rage afterwards when he imagines he discovers in it his
- 4:40:21Speaker 2: black enemy, we recognize the future poet of leir. Our critics,
- 4:40:26Speaker 2: afraid that Shakespeare's fame would be injured. Were it established
- 4:40:29Speaker 2: that in his early youth he ushered into the world
- 4:40:32Speaker 2: of feeble and immature work, was Rome the less the
- 4:40:36Speaker 2: conqueror of the world, because Remus could leap over its
- 4:40:39Speaker 2: first walls. Let any one place himself in Shakespeare's situation.
- 4:40:43Speaker 2: At the commencement of his career. He found only a
- 4:40:46Speaker 2: few indifferent models, and yet these met with the most
- 4:40:50Speaker 2: favorable reception. Because men are never difficult to please in
- 4:40:54Speaker 2: the novelty of an art, before their taste is become
- 4:40:56Speaker 2: fastidious from choice and abundance. Must not this situation have
- 4:41:01Speaker 2: had its influence on him before he learned to make
- 4:41:04Speaker 2: higher demands on himself, and by digging deeper in his
- 4:41:07Speaker 2: own mind, discovered the richest veins of a noble metal.
- 4:41:12Speaker 2: It is even highly probable that he must have made
- 4:41:14Speaker 2: several failures before getting into the right path. Genius is
- 4:41:18Speaker 2: in a certain sense infallible and has nothing to learn,
- 4:41:22Speaker 2: but art is to be learned, and must be acquired
- 4:41:24Speaker 2: by practice and experience. In Shakespeare's acknowledged works we find
- 4:41:29Speaker 2: hardly any traces of his apprenticeship, and yet an apprenticeship
- 4:41:33Speaker 2: he certainly had. This every artist must have, and especially
- 4:41:37Speaker 2: in a period where he has not before him the
- 4:41:40Speaker 2: example of a school already formed. I consider it as
- 4:41:44Speaker 2: extremely probable that Shakespeare began to write for the theater
- 4:41:47Speaker 2: at a much earlier period than the one which is
- 4:41:50Speaker 2: generally stated, namely, not till after the year fifteen ninety.
- 4:41:55Speaker 2: It appears that as early as the year fifteen eighty four,
- 4:41:58Speaker 2: when only twenty years of age, he had left his
- 4:42:01Speaker 2: paternal home and repaired to London. Can we imagine that
- 4:42:04Speaker 2: such an active head would remain idle for six whole
- 4:42:07Speaker 2: years without making any attempt to emerge by his talents
- 4:42:10Speaker 2: From an uncongenial situation that in the dedication of the
- 4:42:15Speaker 2: poem of Venus and Adonis he calls it the first
- 4:42:18Speaker 2: heir of his invention proves nothing against the supposition it
- 4:42:23Speaker 2: was the first which he printed. He might have composed
- 4:42:25Speaker 2: it at an earlier period. Perhaps also, he did not
- 4:42:29Speaker 2: include theatrical labors as they then possessed, but little literary
- 4:42:33Speaker 2: dignity the earlier Shakespeare began to compose for the theatre.
- 4:42:37Speaker 2: Though less we are enabled to consider the immaturity and
- 4:42:41Speaker 2: imperfection of a work as a proof of its spuriousness.
- 4:42:44Speaker 2: In opposition to historical evidence, if we only find in
- 4:42:48Speaker 2: it prominent features of his mind. Several of the works
- 4:42:52Speaker 2: rejected as spurious may still have been produced in the
- 4:42:55Speaker 2: period betwixt Titus Andronicus and the earliest of the acknowledged
- 4:42:59Speaker 2: pieces Quote. At last. Stephens published seven pieces ascribed to
- 4:43:04Speaker 2: Shakespeare in two supplementary volumes. It is to be remarked
- 4:43:09Speaker 2: that they all appeared in print in Shakespeare's lifetime, with
- 4:43:12Speaker 2: his name prefixed to full length. There the following quote
- 4:43:16Speaker 2: one Lacuny. The proofs of the genuineness of this piece
- 4:43:21Speaker 2: are not altogether unambiguous. The grounds for doubt, on the
- 4:43:25Speaker 2: other hand, are entitled to attention. However, this question is
- 4:43:29Speaker 2: immediately connected with that respecting Titus Andronicus, and must be
- 4:43:33Speaker 2: at the same time resolved in the affirmative or negative
- 4:43:37Speaker 2: quote two Pericles, Prince of Tire. This piece was acknowledged
- 4:43:41Speaker 2: by Dryden, but as a youthful work of Shakespeare, it
- 4:43:45Speaker 2: is most undoubtedly his, and has been admitted into several
- 4:43:48Speaker 2: of the late editions. The supposed imperfections originate in the
- 4:43:52Speaker 2: circumstance that Shakespeare here handled a childish and extravagant romance
- 4:43:57Speaker 2: of the old poet Gower, and was willing to drag
- 4:44:00Speaker 2: the subject out of its proper sphere. Hence he even
- 4:44:03Speaker 2: introduces Gower himself and makes him deliver a prologue entirely
- 4:44:08Speaker 2: in his antiquated language and versification. This power of assuming
- 4:44:12Speaker 2: so for in a manner is at least no proof
- 4:44:15Speaker 2: of helplessness. Quote three The London Prodigal. If we are
- 4:44:20Speaker 2: not mistaken, Lessing pronounced this piece to be Shakespeare's and
- 4:44:24Speaker 2: wished to bring it on the German stage. Quote four
- 4:44:28Speaker 2: The Puritan or the Widow of Watling Street. One of
- 4:44:32Speaker 2: my literary friends, intimately acquainted with Shakespeare, was of opinion
- 4:44:36Speaker 2: that the poet must have wished to write a play
- 4:44:38Speaker 2: for once in the style of ben Jonson, and that
- 4:44:41Speaker 2: in this way we must account for the difference between
- 4:44:43Speaker 2: the present piece and his usual manner. To follow out
- 4:44:46Speaker 2: this idea, however, would lead to a very nice critical investigation.
- 4:44:51Speaker 2: Quote five Thomas Lord Cromwell, Quote six Sir John Oldcastle,
- 4:44:56Speaker 2: First Part Quote seven a Yorkshire tre quote. The three
- 4:45:02Speaker 2: last pieces are not only unquestionably Shakespeare's, but in my
- 4:45:06Speaker 2: opinion they deserve to be classed among his best and
- 4:45:09Speaker 2: maturest works. Stephens admits at last, in some degree that
- 4:45:13Speaker 2: they are Shakespeare's as well as the others, accepting Lochrenay,
- 4:45:18Speaker 2: but he speaks of all of them with great contempt
- 4:45:20Speaker 2: as quite worthless productions. This condemnatory sentence is not, however,
- 4:45:25Speaker 2: in the slightest degree, convincing, nor is it supported by
- 4:45:28Speaker 2: critical acumen. I should like to see how such a
- 4:45:31Speaker 2: critic would, of his own natural suggestion, have decided on
- 4:45:35Speaker 2: Shakespeare's acknowledged masterpieces, and what he would have thought of
- 4:45:38Speaker 2: praising in them, had the public opinion imposed on him
- 4:45:41Speaker 2: the duty of admiration. Thomas, Lord Cromwell and Sir John
- 4:45:47Speaker 2: Oldcastle are biographical dramas and models in this species. The
- 4:45:52Speaker 2: first is linked from its subject to Henry the eighth,
- 4:45:55Speaker 2: and the second to Henry the fifth. The second part
- 4:45:58Speaker 2: of Oldcastle is wanting. I know not whether a copy
- 4:46:01Speaker 2: of the old edition has been discovered in England or
- 4:46:05Speaker 2: whether it is lost. The Yorkshire Tragedy is a tragedy
- 4:46:08Speaker 2: in one act, a dramatized tale of murder. The tragical
- 4:46:12Speaker 2: effect is overpowering, and it is extremely important to see
- 4:46:15Speaker 2: how poetically Shakespeare could handle such a subject. Quote There
- 4:46:19Speaker 2: have been still farther ascribed to him. First The Merry
- 4:46:23Speaker 2: Devil of Edmonton, a comedy in one act printed in
- 4:46:27Speaker 2: Dodsley's Old Plays. This has certainly some appearances in its favor.
- 4:46:32Speaker 2: It contains a merry landlord who bears a great similarity
- 4:46:35Speaker 2: to the one in The Merry Wives of Windsor. However,
- 4:46:39Speaker 2: at all events, though an ingenious it is but a
- 4:46:41Speaker 2: hasty sketch. Second, The Accusation of Paris, Third, The Birth
- 4:46:47Speaker 2: of Merlin, Fourth Edward the Third, fifth, The Fair Emma, sixth, Mutudors,
- 4:46:55Speaker 2: seventh Arden of Feversham. I have never seen any of these,
- 4:47:00Speaker 2: and cannot therefore say anything respecting them. From the passages sided,
- 4:47:04Speaker 2: I am led to conjecture that the subject of Mucadorus
- 4:47:07Speaker 2: is the popular story of Valentine and orson a beautiful
- 4:47:11Speaker 2: subject which Lope de Vega has also taken for a play.
- 4:47:15Speaker 2: Arden of Feversham is said to be a tragedy on
- 4:47:18Speaker 2: the story of a man from whom the poet was
- 4:47:20Speaker 2: descended by on the mother's side. If the quality of
- 4:47:23Speaker 2: the piece is not too directly at variance with this claim,
- 4:47:27Speaker 2: the circumstance would afford an additional probability in its favor,
- 4:47:31Speaker 2: for such motives were not foreign to Shakespeare. He treated
- 4:47:34Speaker 2: Henry the Seventh, who bestowed lands on his forefathers for
- 4:47:37Speaker 2: services performed by them, with a visible partiality. Whoever takes
- 4:47:43Speaker 2: from Shakespeare a play or early ascribed to him and
- 4:47:46Speaker 2: confessedly belonging to his time, is unquestionably bound to answer
- 4:47:51Speaker 2: with some degree of probability this question, who has then
- 4:47:55Speaker 2: written it? Shakespeare's competitors in the dramatic walk are pretty
- 4:47:59Speaker 2: well known, and if those of them who have even
- 4:48:01Speaker 2: acquired a considerable name, a Lily, a Marlowe, a Heywood,
- 4:48:06Speaker 2: are still so very far below him, we can hardly
- 4:48:09Speaker 2: imagine that the author of a work which rises so
- 4:48:11Speaker 2: high beyond theirs would have remained unknown. End quote, Lectures
- 4:48:17Speaker 2: on Dramatic Literature, Volume two, page two hundred fifty two.
- 4:48:22Speaker 2: We agree to the truth of this last observation, but
- 4:48:26Speaker 2: not to the justice of its application to some of
- 4:48:28Speaker 2: the plays here mentioned. It is true that Shakespeare's best
- 4:48:32Speaker 2: works are very superior to those of Marlowe or Heywood.
- 4:48:35Speaker 2: But it is not true that the best of the
- 4:48:38Speaker 2: doubtful plays above enumerated are superior or even equal to
- 4:48:42Speaker 2: the best of theirs. The Yorkshire Tragedy, in which Legal
- 4:48:46Speaker 2: speaks of as an undoubted production of our authors, is
- 4:48:50Speaker 2: much more in the manner of Haywood than of Shakespeare.
- 4:48:53Speaker 2: The effect is indeed overpowering, but the mode of producing
- 4:48:56Speaker 2: it is by no means poetical. The praise which Legal
- 4:48:59Speaker 2: gives to Thomas, Lord Cromwell and to Sir John Oldcastle
- 4:49:03Speaker 2: is altogether exaggerated. They are very indifferent compositions, which have
- 4:49:08Speaker 2: not the slightest pretensions to rank with Henry the Fifth
- 4:49:11Speaker 2: or Henry the eighth. We suspect that the German critic
- 4:49:14Speaker 2: was not very well acquainted with the dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare,
- 4:49:18Speaker 2: or aware of their general merits, and that he accordingly
- 4:49:22Speaker 2: mistakes a resemblance in style and manner for an equal
- 4:49:25Speaker 2: degree of excellence. Shakespeare differed from the other writers of
- 4:49:29Speaker 2: his age not in the mode of treating his subjects,
- 4:49:33Speaker 2: but in the graceome power which he displayed in them.
- 4:49:36Speaker 2: The reason assigned by a literary friend of Schleiegel's for
- 4:49:39Speaker 2: supposing the Puritan or the Widow of Watling Street to
- 4:49:42Speaker 2: be Shakespeare's, namely that it is in the style of
- 4:49:46Speaker 2: ben Jonson, that is to say, in a style just
- 4:49:49Speaker 2: the reverse of his own is not very satisfactory to
- 4:49:53Speaker 2: a plain English understanding. Locriney and the London Prodigal, if
- 4:49:58Speaker 2: they were Shakespeare's at all, must have been among the
- 4:50:01Speaker 2: sins of his youth. Arden of Feversham contains several striking passages,
- 4:50:06Speaker 2: but the passion which they express is rather that of
- 4:50:09Speaker 2: a sanguine temperament than of a lofty imagination, and in
- 4:50:13Speaker 2: this respect they approximate more nearly to the style of
- 4:50:16Speaker 2: other writers of the time than to Shakespeare's. Titus Andronicus
- 4:50:21Speaker 2: is certainly as unlike Shakespeare's usual style as it is possible.
- 4:50:26Speaker 2: It is an accumulation of vulgar physical horrors, in which
- 4:50:30Speaker 2: the power exercised by the poet bears no proportion to
- 4:50:33Speaker 2: the repugnance excited by the subject. The character of Erron
- 4:50:37Speaker 2: the Moor is the only thing which shows any originality
- 4:50:40Speaker 2: of conception, and the scene in which he expresses his
- 4:50:43Speaker 2: joy quote at the blackness and ugliness of his child
- 4:50:46Speaker 2: begotten adultery, the only one worthy of Shakespeare. Even this
- 4:50:51Speaker 2: is worthy of him only in the display of power,
- 4:50:53Speaker 2: for it gives no pleasure. Shakespeare managed these things differently,
- 4:50:58Speaker 2: Nor do we think it is sufficient answer to say
- 4:51:01Speaker 2: that this was an embryo or crude production of the author.
- 4:51:04Speaker 2: In its kind, it is full grown and its features
- 4:51:08Speaker 2: decided and overcharged. It is not like a first imperfect essay,
- 4:51:12Speaker 2: but shows a confirmed habit, a systematic preference of violent
- 4:51:16Speaker 2: effect to everything else. There are occasional detached images of
- 4:51:20Speaker 2: great beauty and delicacy, but these were not beyond the
- 4:51:23Speaker 2: powers of other writers than living. The circumstance which inclines
- 4:51:28Speaker 2: us to reject the external evidence in favor of this
- 4:51:31Speaker 2: play being Shakespeare's is that the grammatical construction is constantly
- 4:51:35Speaker 2: false and mixed up with vulgar abbreviations, a fault that
- 4:51:39Speaker 2: never occurs in any of his genuine plays. A similar
- 4:51:43Speaker 2: defect and the halting measure of the verse are the
- 4:51:46Speaker 2: chief objections to Pericles of Tire. If we accept the
- 4:51:49Speaker 2: far fetched and complicated absurdity of the story, the movement
- 4:51:54Speaker 2: of the thoughts and passions has something in it not
- 4:51:57Speaker 2: unlike Shakespeare, and several of the discriptions are either the
- 4:52:01Speaker 2: original hints of passages which Shakespeare has engrafted on his
- 4:52:04Speaker 2: other plays, or our imitations of them by some contemporary poet.
- 4:52:09Speaker 2: The most memorable idea in it is in Marina's speech,
- 4:52:13Speaker 2: where she compares the world to quote a lasting storm
- 4:52:17Speaker 2: hurrying her from her friends. End of doubtful plays of Shakespeare.
- 4:52:24Speaker 2: Our idolatry of Shakespeare, not to say our admiration ceases
- 4:52:29Speaker 2: with his plays. In his other productions, he was a
- 4:52:32Speaker 2: mere author, though not a common author. It was only
- 4:52:36Speaker 2: by representing others that he became himself. He could go
- 4:52:40Speaker 2: out of himself and express the soul of Cleopatra. But
- 4:52:44Speaker 2: in his own person he appeared to be always waiting
- 4:52:47Speaker 2: for the prompter's cue. In expressing the thoughts of others,
- 4:52:50Speaker 2: he seemed inspired. In expressing his own, he was a mechanic.
- 4:52:55Speaker 2: The license of an assumed character was necessary to restore
- 4:52:59Speaker 2: his genius to the privileges of nature, and to give
- 4:53:02Speaker 2: him courage to break through the tyranny of fashion the
- 4:53:05Speaker 2: trammels of custom. In his plays, he was quote as
- 4:53:10Speaker 2: broad and casing as the general Heir. In his poems,
- 4:53:13Speaker 2: on the contrary, he appears to be quote cooped and
- 4:53:17Speaker 2: cabined in by all the technicalities of art, by all
- 4:53:21Speaker 2: the petty intricacies of thought and language which poetry had
- 4:53:24Speaker 2: learned from the controversial jargon of the schools, where words
- 4:53:28Speaker 2: had been made a substitute for things. There was, if
- 4:53:32Speaker 2: we mistake not, something of modesty and a painful sense
- 4:53:36Speaker 2: of personal propriety at the bottom of this. Shakespeare's imagination,
- 4:53:41Speaker 2: by identifying itself with the strongest characters and the most
- 4:53:44Speaker 2: trying circumstances, grappled at once with nature and trampled the
- 4:53:49Speaker 2: littleness of art under his feet. The rapid changes of situation,
- 4:53:54Speaker 2: the wide range of the universe gave him life and spirit,
- 4:53:58Speaker 2: and afforded full scope to his genius. But returned into
- 4:54:02Speaker 2: his closet again, and having assumed the badge of his profession,
- 4:54:06Speaker 2: he could only labor in his vocation and conform himself
- 4:54:10Speaker 2: to existing models. The thoughts, the passions, the words which
- 4:54:14Speaker 2: the poet's pen, glancing from heaven to earth, from earth
- 4:54:17Speaker 2: to heaven, lent to others, shook off the fetters of
- 4:54:21Speaker 2: pedantry and affectation, while his own thoughts and feelings, standing
- 4:54:25Speaker 2: by themselves, were seized upon as lawful prey and tortured
- 4:54:31Speaker 2: to death according to the established rules and practice of
- 4:54:34Speaker 2: the day. In a word, we do not like Shakespeare's poems,
- 4:54:37Speaker 2: because we like his plays. The one and all their
- 4:54:41Speaker 2: excellences are just the reverse of the other. It has
- 4:54:45Speaker 2: been the fashion of late to cry up our author's
- 4:54:47Speaker 2: poems as equal to his plays. This is the desperate
- 4:54:51Speaker 2: cant of modern criticism. We would ask, was there the
- 4:54:55Speaker 2: slightest comparison between Shakespeare and either Chaucer or Spencer as
- 4:55:00Speaker 2: mere poets? Not any The two poems of Venus and
- 4:55:04Speaker 2: Adonis and of Tarquin and Lucrease appear to us like
- 4:55:07Speaker 2: a couple of ice houses. They're about as hard as
- 4:55:11Speaker 2: glittering and as cold. The author seems all the time
- 4:55:15Speaker 2: to be thinking of his verses, and not of his subject,
- 4:55:18Speaker 2: not of what his characters would feel, but of what
- 4:55:20Speaker 2: he shall say, And, as it must happen in all
- 4:55:23Speaker 2: such cases, he always puts into their mouths those things
- 4:55:26Speaker 2: which they would be the last to think of, and
- 4:55:29Speaker 2: which it shows the greatest ingenuity in him to find out.
- 4:55:32Speaker 2: The whole is labored uphill work. The poet is perpetually
- 4:55:37Speaker 2: singling out the difficulties of the art to make an
- 4:55:40Speaker 2: exhibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them.
- 4:55:44Speaker 2: He is making perpetual trials of them, as if his
- 4:55:46Speaker 2: mastery over them were doubted. The images which are often striking,
- 4:55:51Speaker 2: are generally applied to things which they are the least like,
- 4:55:55Speaker 2: so that they do not blend with the poem, but
- 4:55:57Speaker 2: seem stuck upon it like a splendid patchwork work, or
- 4:56:00Speaker 2: remain quite distinct from it, like detached substances. Painted and
- 4:56:05Speaker 2: varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure to be lost
- 4:56:08Speaker 2: in an endless commentary upon it. The speakers are like
- 4:56:12Speaker 2: persons who have both leisure and inclination to make riddles
- 4:56:16Speaker 2: on their own situation, and to twist and turn every
- 4:56:19Speaker 2: object or incident into acrostics and anagrams. Everything is spun
- 4:56:24Speaker 2: out into allegory, and a digression is always preferred to
- 4:56:27Speaker 2: the main story. Sentiment is built up upon plays of words.
- 4:56:32Speaker 2: The hero or heroine feels not from the impulse of passion,
- 4:56:36Speaker 2: but from the force of dialectics. There is besides a
- 4:56:40Speaker 2: strange attempt to substitute the language of painting for that
- 4:56:44Speaker 2: of poetry, to make us see their feelings in the
- 4:56:47Speaker 2: faces of the persons, And again consistently with this in
- 4:56:51Speaker 2: the description of the picture and Tarquin and Lucrease, though
- 4:56:55Speaker 2: circumstances are chiefly insisted on which it would be impossible
- 4:56:58Speaker 2: to convey except by words. The invocation to opportunity in
- 4:57:03Speaker 2: the Tarquin and Lucrease is full of thoughts and images,
- 4:57:07Speaker 2: but at the same time it is overloaded by them.
- 4:57:10Speaker 2: The concluding stanza expresses all our objections to this kind
- 4:57:13Speaker 2: of poetry. Oh idle words servants to shallow fools, unprofitable sounds,
- 4:57:20Speaker 2: weak arbitrators, busy yourselves in skill Contending schools debate when
- 4:57:25Speaker 2: leisure serves with dull debaters to trembling clients, be their mediators.
- 4:57:31Speaker 2: For me, I forced not argument a straw, since that
- 4:57:34Speaker 2: my case has passed all help of law. The description
- 4:57:39Speaker 2: of the horse in Venus and Adonis has been particularly admired,
- 4:57:43Speaker 2: and not without reason. Round houft, short jointed, fetlock, shag
- 4:57:48Speaker 2: and long, broad breast, full eyes, small head and nostril,
- 4:57:52Speaker 2: wide high crests, short ears, straight legs, and passing, strong
- 4:57:57Speaker 2: thin maine, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide. Look what
- 4:58:02Speaker 2: a horse should have he did not lack, save a
- 4:58:04Speaker 2: proud rider on so proud a back. Now this inventory
- 4:58:08Speaker 2: of perfection shows great knowledge of the horse and is
- 4:58:12Speaker 2: good matter of fact poetry let the reader, but compare
- 4:58:16Speaker 2: it with a speech in the Midsummer Nice Dream, where
- 4:58:18Speaker 2: theseus describes his hounds, and their heads are hung with
- 4:58:22Speaker 2: ears that sweep away the morning dew. And he will
- 4:58:25Speaker 2: perceive at once what we mean by the difference between
- 4:58:28Speaker 2: Shakespeare's own poetry and that of his plays. We prefer
- 4:58:32Speaker 2: the passionate pilgrim very much to the lover's complaint. It
- 4:58:36Speaker 2: has been doubted whether the latter poem is Shakespeare's. Of
- 4:58:40Speaker 2: the sonnets, we do not well know what to say.
- 4:58:43Speaker 2: The subject of them seems to be somewhat equivocal, But
- 4:58:46Speaker 2: many of them are highly beautiful in themselves, and interesting
- 4:58:51Speaker 2: as they relate to the state of the personal feelings
- 4:58:53Speaker 2: of the author. The following are some of the most
- 4:58:56Speaker 2: striking constancy. Let those who are in favor with their
- 4:59:02Speaker 2: stars of public honor and proud titles, boast whilst ie
- 4:59:06Speaker 2: whom fortune of such triumph bars un looked for joy
- 4:59:10Speaker 2: in that I honor most great princes favorites their fairly spread.
- 4:59:15Speaker 2: But as the marigold in the son's eye and in themselves,
- 4:59:19Speaker 2: their pride lies buried, for at a frown, they, in
- 4:59:22Speaker 2: their glory die the painful warrior, famous it for fight
- 4:59:27Speaker 2: after a thousand victories. Once foiled is from the book
- 4:59:30Speaker 2: of honor. Raise it quite, and all the rest forgot
- 4:59:34Speaker 2: for which he toiled. Then happy I that love and
- 4:59:38Speaker 2: am beloved, where I may not remove nor be removed
- 4:59:44Speaker 2: Love's consolation. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
- 4:59:50Speaker 2: I all alone beweep my outcastate and trouble death heaven
- 4:59:55Speaker 2: with my bootless cries, and look upon myself and curse
- 5:00:00Speaker 2: my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
- 5:00:04Speaker 2: featured like him, like him, with friends possessed, desiring this
- 5:00:09Speaker 2: man's art and that man's scope, with what I most enjoy,
- 5:00:13Speaker 2: contented least. Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising haply,
- 5:00:20Speaker 2: I think on thee and then my state, like to
- 5:00:23Speaker 2: the lark at break of day, arising from sullen earth,
- 5:00:27Speaker 2: sings hymns at Heaven's gate, for thy sweet love remembered
- 5:00:33Speaker 2: such wealth brings that. Then I scorn to change my
- 5:00:36Speaker 2: state with King's novelty. My love is strengthened, though more
- 5:00:45Speaker 2: weak and seeming. I love not less, though less The
- 5:00:48Speaker 2: show appear that love is merchandised whose rich esteeming the
- 5:00:54Speaker 2: owner's tongue, doth publish everywhere our love was new, and then,
- 5:01:00Speaker 2: but in the spring, when I was wont to greet
- 5:01:02Speaker 2: it with my lace, as phylamel in summer's front doth
- 5:01:06Speaker 2: sing and stops his pipe in growth of riper days.
- 5:01:11Speaker 2: Not that the summer is less pleasant now than when
- 5:01:14Speaker 2: her mournful hymns did hush the night, but that wild
- 5:01:18Speaker 2: music burthens every bough, and sweets grown common lose their
- 5:01:24Speaker 2: dear delight. Therefore, like her, I sometimes hold my tongue,
- 5:01:30Speaker 2: because I would not dull you with my song life's decay.
- 5:01:37Speaker 2: That time of year, thou mayest in me. Behold when
- 5:01:41Speaker 2: yellow leaves, or none or few do hang upon these boughs,
- 5:01:46Speaker 2: which shake against the cold, bare ruined choirs, where late
- 5:01:52Speaker 2: the sweet birds sang. In me, thou seest the twilight
- 5:01:56Speaker 2: of such day, as after sunset fadeth in the west,
- 5:02:01Speaker 2: which by and by black knight doth take away Death's
- 5:02:05Speaker 2: second self, as seals up all in rest. In me,
- 5:02:10Speaker 2: thou seest the glowing of such fire that on the
- 5:02:14Speaker 2: ashes of his youth doth lie as the death bed,
- 5:02:18Speaker 2: whereon it must expire consumed with that which it was
- 5:02:22Speaker 2: nourished by This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
- 5:02:29Speaker 2: to love that well which thou must leave ere long.
- 5:02:34Speaker 2: In all these, as well as many others, there is
- 5:02:37Speaker 2: a mild tone of sentiment, deep mellow and sustained, very
- 5:02:42Speaker 2: different from the crudeness of his earlier poems. End of
- 5:02:47Speaker 2: Poems and Sonnets. End of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by
- 5:02:52Speaker 2: William Haslett, with an introduction by Sir Arthur Kullercouch,