United States or Svalbard and Jan Mayen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Shakespeare's genius is so immense that it overpowers us, and we must be on our guard lest it should twist our instinct for what is true and right. The errors of a fool are not dangerous, but those of a Shakespeare, Goethe, or Byron it is almost impossible to resist. Twelfth Night. The play is two plays in one without much connection. The Viola play is improbable.
'Do as you think best. Amy was in her most practical mood, and would not linger for purposeless talk. A few minutes, and Reardon was left alone. He stood before his bookshelves and began to pick out the volumes which he would take away with him. Just a few, the indispensable companions of a bookish man who still clings to life his Homer, his Shakespeare The rest must be sold.
In the face of this one may ask: Why does the great and universal fame of classical authors continue? The answer is that the fame of classical authors is entirely independent of the majority. Do you suppose that if the fame of Shakespeare depended on the man in the street it would survive a fortnight? The fame of classical authors is originally made, and it is maintained, by a passionate few.
I had been familiar with the scene from my childhood I had studied it; I had heard from my father how Macready acted in it, and now I found that I had a fool of an idea of it! That's the advantage of study, good people, who go to see Shakespeare acted. It makes you know sometimes what is being done, and what you never dreamed would be done when you read the scene at home.
"The female Shakespeare," as she was sometimes called in those days, was at home and tripped into the room with the elastic step of a girl, although she was considerably over three score years and ten. She was very petite and fair, with a sweet benignant countenance that inspired at once admiration and affection.
She found the novel they were reading insufferably stupid, and took up a volume of Shakespeare for refreshment, but it opened naturally to the 'Merchant of Venice, and, to the page where Portia says:
He must see everywhere the good that is mixed with evil, the evil that is mixed with good. And this he will not do, unless his heart is right. It is in Scott's historical novels that his impartiality is most severely tried and is most apparent; though it is apparent in all his works. Shakespeare was a pure dramatist; nothing but art found a home in that lofty, smooth, idealistic brow.
Shakespeare was born and brought up in one of the richest and most stimulating environments, natural and social, in the world; and this, no doubt, had much to do with his matchless ability to express himself on all phases of nature and of mind.
As to Shakespeare, it has time out of mind been an article of faith with the insolent insulars that he is quite above any Frenchman's reach. One by one they are driven from their foolish prejudices, and made to confess that Frenchmen may equal them in some serious things, as well as beat them in all the lighter accomplishments.
Here presumptuous arrogance and haughtiness of spirit are specified as the root and source of the great transgression. Shakespeare takes up this thought: "Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels: how can man, then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by't?" And Milton repeats it in the magnificent lines:
Word Of The Day