Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
There is so much softness and beauty in Italian that I expect to gain new ideas from hearing the play robed in more flowing phrases. Shakspeare certainly is for all the world." "But Shakspeare's words are so strongly chosen that they are a great element in his great plays.
As to the Tragedy, when I consider it in reference to Shakspeare's, and to one other Tragedy, it seems a poor thing, and I care little what becomes of it. When I consider it in comparison with modern dramatists, it rises: and I think it too bad to be published, too good to be squandered. I think of breaking it up; the planks are sound, and I will build a new ship of the old materials.
This poor Jack of the Nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one. Hynde Etin, and still more decisively Red Etin of Ireland, in the Scottish Ballads, these are both derived from Norseland; Etin is evidently a Jotun. Nay, Shakspeare's Hamlet is a twig too of this same world-tree; there seems no doubt of that.
. . . cana legam tenera lanugine mala Castaneasque nuces . . . then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in Shakspeare's I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, again in his:
So, read the love-scenes of any dramatist during Shakspeare's period or the heroic passages of any poetaster copying his manner; isn't that Bedlam, my dear Smith? isn't that Hanwell? What do you see in him more indicative of insanity than in any play of Shakspeare you like to name? Not, understand me, that Shakspeare was mad according to the standard of sanity in his own day.
Is any lament of Shakspeare's heroes more touching than his apostrophe to the scull of Yorick, the King's jester, the mad fellow that poured a flagon of Rhenish on the clown's head: "a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent fancy. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
What would my fair hostess say to me if I suffered it?" "Rather, what would she say to me if I neglected such a courtesy? Why, sir, when I meet one who knows Shakspeare's sonnets, to say nothing of the lights of the lesser stars, as well as you, only once in eight years, do you not think I would make the most of him?
Consider, too, the age and locality in which she lived, Elizabethan, Shakspeare's; the great contemporary characters that might be casually introduced; the mysterious suicide, in that dim dreadful pool at the end of the terraced walk among the cropped yews, of her poor only sister, Margaret; equalled only in the miserable interest by that of Charlotte herself.
Peter's; its grim Tower, where the brave and loyal had shed their blood, from Wallace down to Balmerino and Kilmarnock, pitied by gentle hearts; before the awful window of Whitehall, whence the martyr Charles had issued, to kneel once more, and then ascend to Heaven; before Playhouses, Parks, and Palaces, wondrous resorts of wit, pleasure, and splendour; before Shakspeare's Resting-place under the tall spire which rises by Avon, amidst the sweet Warwickshire pastures; before Derby, and Falkirk, and Culloden, where the cause of honour and loyalty had fallen, it might be to rise no more: before all these points of their pilgrimage there was one which the young Virginian brothers held even more sacred, and that was the home of their family, that old Castlewood in Hampshire, about which their parents had talked so fondly.
Let us hope that when next Heaven sends England a man like Johnson, a companion and listener like Boswell will be provided. The Literary Club sits forever. What if the Mermaid were in like eternal session, with Shakspeare's laughter ringing through the fire and hail of wit!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking