United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And it was this faith, too, in a still nobler and clearer form, which at the Reformation inspired the age which could produce a Ridley, a Latimer, an Elizabeth, a Shakspeare, a Spenser, a Raleigh, a Bacon, and a Milton; which knit together, in spite of religious feuds and social wrongs, the nation of England with a bond which all the powers of hell endeavoured in vain to break.
Driven from the town-house, literature found a table with forms round it in a tavern hard by, where the club, lopped of its most respectable members, kept the blinds down and talked openly of Shakspeare. It was a low-roofed room, with pieces of lime hanging from the ceiling and peeling walls.
Do you see what I mean? Do you agree with me that it was a misfortune to the British drama that the summit of its glory was reached by Shakspeare so long ago; a Shakspeare that knew the whole secrets of the human heart, as the human heart existed before his time or at least as it was supposed in his time to exist; a Shakspeare who was ignorant of the Great Rebellion of the Restoration of the Revolution of the glorious First of June of the Guillotine of Napoleon of Trafalgar of Waterloo; a Shakspeare who had never seen a telegraph a mail-coach a steam-boat a railway.
If the assertion be well founded, all that distinguishes the works of the greatest English and Spanish dramatists, a Shakspeare and a Calderon, must rank them far below the ancients; they could in no wise be of importance for theory, and would at most appear remarkable, on the assumption that the obstinacy of these nations in refusing to comply with the rules, may have afforded a more ample field to the poets, to display their native originality, though at the expense of art.
The poet's bust is affixed to the northern wall of the church, the base of it being about a man's height, or rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The features of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike any portrait of Shakspeare that I have ever seen, and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait-gallery.
This theatre I had been dying to visit, while it stood, for as yet I had never witnessed a theatrical performance; but my mother's injunctions prevented me from entering it while at college. "When you are old enough, Corny," she used to say, "you shall have my permission to go as often as is proper; but you are now of an age, when Shakspeare and Rowe might unsettle your Latin and Greek."
Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one of the Directors of the South-Sea company the same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. It was not his fault that I did not profit more.
Even the retiring party of the women and children were scattered by the conquerors; and the sun had long sunk behind the rolling outline of the western horizon, before the fell business of that disastrous defeat was entirely ended. Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew? Shakspeare. The day dawned, the following morning, on a more, tranquil scene.
"A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch, Uncapable of pity, void and empty From any dram of mercy." Shakspeare. " there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me three thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell on our nation till now." Idem. "O sailor boy, sailor boy, peace to thy soul!" Dibdin.
As every thing turned out exactly as uncle Richard promised and predicted, we have no occasion to enlarge on the fortunate subsiding of this "sea of troubles." But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. SHAKSPEARE, Much Ado about Nothing.
Word Of The Day