Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: With an Account of His Reputation at Various Periods

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C. Scribner's Sons, 1901 - 449 pages
 

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Page 308 - In sooth, I know not why I am so sad : It wearies me ; you say it wearies you ; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn ; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me. That I have much ado to know myself.
Page 299 - It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale ; look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east. Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops; I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Page 108 - THE stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies ; but in life it doth much mischief — sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury.
Page 47 - The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
Page 141 - But besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion, so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained.
Page 243 - Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage ; two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Jonson's...
Page 23 - First, if it be objected, that what I publish is no true poem, in the strict laws of time, I confess it : as also in the want of a proper chorus ; whose habit and moods are such and so difficult, as not any, whom I have seen, since the ancients, no, not they who have most presently affected laws, have yet come in the way of.
Page 20 - As he dare serve th' ill customs of the age, Or purchase your delight at such a rate, As for it he himself must justly hate; — To make a child, now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and...
Page 397 - Some Reflections on Mr Rymer's Short View of Tragedy, and an Attempt at a Vindication of Shakespear, in an Essay directed to John Dryden, Esq.

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