Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
All men, of whatever time of life and for whatsoever reason, admired her the mean and earthy if only for her mould, the morally discerning for her beautiful quality that pitied, caressed, encouraged, or elevated all who came within her sphere. "Preachers of the Gospel ought to have such wives," said the Rev. Silas Van de Lear, looking at his son Calvin, "as Agnes Wilt.
He had been ever loyal to Lear, whom he had honoured as a king, loved as a father, followed as a master; and he had never esteemed his life further than as a pawn to wage against his royal master's enemies, nor feared to lose it when Lear's safety was the motive; nor now that Lear was most his own enemy, did this faithful servant of the king forget his old principles, but manfully opposed Lear, to do Lear good; and was unmannerly only because Lear was mad.
He always entertained in the most liberal manner, both as general and President, and in a style which he thought befitted the station he occupied. But apart from all this, his table, whether at home or abroad, was never without its guest. "Dine with us," he wrote to Lear on July 31, 1797, "or we shall do what we have not done for twenty years, dine alone."
He had been ever loyal to Lear, whom he had honoured as a king, loved as a father, followed as a master; and he had never esteemed his life further than as a pawn to wage against his royal master's enemies, nor feared to lose it when Lear's safety was the motive; nor now that Lear was most his own enemy, did this faithful servant of the king forget his old principles, but manfully opposed Lear, to do Lear good; and was unmannerly only because Lear was mad.
The first building passed by the westerly road as it descends into Tregarrick is a sombre pile of some eminence, having a gateway and lodge before it, and a high encircling wall. The sun lay warm on its long roof, and the slates flashed gaily there, as Farmer Lear came over the knap of the hill and looked down on it. He withdrew his eyes nervously to glance at the old couple beside him.
It is this: that, while he was able to go down to the simple and grand realities of human nature, which are all tragic; and while, therefore, he must rejoice most in such contemplations of human nature as find fit outlet in a "Hamlet," a "Lear," a "Timon," or an "Othello," the tragedies of Doubt, Ingratitude, and Love, he can yet, when he chooses, float on the very surface of human nature, as in "Love's Labour's Lost," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "The Comedy of Errors," "The Taming of the Shrew;" or he can descend half way as it were, and there remain suspended in the characters and feelings of ordinary nice people, who, interesting enough to meet in society, have neither received that development, nor are placed in those circumstances, which admit of the highest and simplest poetic treatment.
A great work of art may be tragic in the view of life which it presents, but it must show no sign of the succumbing of the spirit to the appalling facts with which it deals; even in those cases in which, as in the tragedy of "King Lear," blind fate seems relentlessly sovereign over human affairs, the artist must disclose in his attitude and method a sustained energy of spirit.
Voltaire, in his study of Shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our interest in the dramas of Voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest. At the present moment, a literal translation of King Lear is drawing full houses at the Théâtre Antoine.
He then vouchsafed his opinions and entered into a physical and mechanical discussion of the matter, indicating that he had spent hours in getting the whole subject straightened out in his mind. This same man, a German, knew whole cantos of the Inferno by heart, and could repeat long scenes from King Lear with a very creditable English accent.
As to their loud bursts of laughter at the theatre, they may very well be excused, when they are excited by any lively strokes in a comedy: but I have seen our ladies titter at the most distressful scenes in Romeo and Juliet, grin over the anguish of a Monimia, or Belvidera, and fairly laugh king Lear off the stage.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking