 Chapter 27 of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Love's Labors Lost If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it should be this. Yet we should be loath to part with Don Adriano de Armato, that mighty potentate of nonsense, or his page, that handful of wit, with Nathaniel the Curit, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute after dinner on the golden cadences of Posey, with Custer the Clown or Dull the Constable. Bironis too accomplished a character to be lost to the world, and yet he could not appear without his fellow courtiers and the king. And if we were to leave out the ladies, the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So that we believe we may let the whole play stand as it is, and we shall hardly venture to, quote, set a mark of reprobation on it. Still we have some objections to the style, which we think savers more of the pedantic spirit of Shakespeare's time than of his own genius, more of controversial divinity, and the logic of Peter Lombard, than of the inspiration of the muse. It transports us quite as much to the manners of the court, and the quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes of nature or the fairyland of his own imagination. Shakespeare has set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation, then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned, and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It is if the hand of Titian had been employed to give grace to the curls of a full-bottomed parawig, or Raphael had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. Shakespeare has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical Holofernes as too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. And nothing can be more marked than the difference when he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed on himself, as light is burred from break and speaks in his own person. We think, for instance, that in the following soliloquy the poet has fairly got the start of Queen Elizabeth and her maids of honour. Baran, oh, and I, forsooth, in love, I, that have been love's whip, a very beadle to an amorous sigh, a critic, nay, a night watch constable, a domineering pedant or the boy, than whom no mortal more magnificent. This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, the senior junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms, the anointed sovereign of size and groans, liege of all loiters and malcontents, dread prince of placets, king of card pieces, solemn peritor and great general of trotting peritors. Oh, my little heart, and I, to be a corporal of his field, and wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop, what I love, I sue, I seek a wife, a woman, that is like a German clock, still a repairing, ever out of frame, and never going awright being a watch, and being watched that it may still go right, nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all, and among three to love the worst of all, a weightly wanton with a velvet brow, with two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes. I, and by heaven, one that will do the deed, though argus were her eunuch and her guard, and I to sigh for her, to watch for her, to pray for her, go to, it is a plague, that Cupid will impose for my neglect of his almighty drudful little might. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan. Some men must love my lady, and some Joan. The character of Baran, drawn by Rosaline, and that which Baran gives of Boyet, are equally happy. The observations on the use and abuse of study, and on the power of beauty to quicken the understanding as well as the senses, are excellent. The scene which has the greatest dramatic effect, is that in which Baran, the king, Longaville, and Domaine, successively detect each other, and are detected in their breach of their vow, and in their profession of attachment to their several mistresses, in which they suppose themselves to be overheard by no one. The reconciliation between these lovers and their sweethearts is also very good. And the penance which Rosaline imposes on Baran, before he can expect to gain her consent to marry him, full of propriety and beauty. Rosaline, aft have I heard of you, my Lord Baran, before I saw you, and the world's large tongue proclaims you for a man replete with marks, full of comparisons and wounding flouts, which you in all estates will execute, that lie within the mercy of your wit, to weed this warm wood from your faithful brain, and therewithal to win me, if you please, without the witch I am not to be won. You shall this twelve-month term from day to day visit the speechless sick, and still converse with groaning wretches, and your task shall be, with all the fierce endeavour of your wit, to enforce the painted impotent to smile. Baran, to move a wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be. It is impossible. North cannot move a soul in agony. Rosaline, why, that's the way to choke a jibing spirit, whose influence is begot of that loose grace, which shallow laughing hearers give to fools. A jest prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it. Then, if sickly ears, deft with the clamours of their own dear groans, will hear your idle scorns continue then, and I will have you and that fault with all. But if they will not, throw away that spirit and I shall find you empty of that fault, right joyful of your reformation. Baran, a twelve-month. Well, befall what will befall, I'll just a twelve-month in an hospital. The famous cuckoo song closes the play, but we shall add no more criticisms, quote, the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. End of Love's Labour's Lost. Chapter 28 Of Characters of Shakespeare's Place by William Haslett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Machadoo, about nothing. This admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till of late years. Mr. Garrick's Benedict was one of his most celebrated characters, and Mrs. Jordan, we have understood, played Beatrice very delightfully. The serious part is still the most prominent here, as in other instances that we have noticed. Hero is the principal figure in the piece and leaves an indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her tenderness, and the hard trial of her love. The passage in which Claudio first makes a confession of his affection towards her conveys as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can well be imagined. Oh, my lord! When you went onward, with this ended action, I looked upon her with a soldier's eye that liked but had a rougher task in hand than to drive liking in the name of love. But now I am returned, and that war thoughts have left their places vacant in their rooms come thronging soft and delicate desires. All prompting me how fair young Hero is, saying, I liked her ere I went to wars. In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity. Claudio, no Leonardo, I never tempted her with word too large, but as a brother to his sister showed bashful sincerity and comely love. Hero, and seemed I ever otherwise to you. Claudio, out on thy seeming, I will write against it. You seem to me as Diane in her orb as chased as the bud ere it is blown. But you are more intemperate in your blood than vales, for those pampered animals have rage and savage sensuality. Hero, is my Lord well, that he doth speak so wide? Leonardo, are these things spoken, or do I but dream? John, sir, they are spoken, and these things are true. Benedict, this looks not like a nuptial. Hero, true, oh God! The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about by one of those temporary consignments to the grave. Of which Shakespeare seems to have been fond. He has perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in the following lines. Friar, she, Diane, as it must be so maintained, upon the instant that she was accused, shall be lamented, pitied, and excused, of every error, for it so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth while we enjoy it. But being lax and lost, why then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whilst it was ours. So it will fare with Claudio. When he shall hear she died upon his words, the idea of her love shall sweetly creep into his study of imagination, and every lovely organ of her life shall come appareled in more precious habit, more moving, delicate, and full of life into the eye and prospect of his soul than when she lived indeed. The principal comic characters in Much Ado About Nothing, Benedict and Beatrice, are both essences in their kind. His character as a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony no less happily affected by the pretended story of Beatrice's love for him. It is hard to say which of the two scenes is the best, that of the trick, which is thus practised on Benedict, or that in which Beatrice is prevailed on to take pity on him by overhearing her cousin and her maid declare, which they do on purpose, that he is dying of love for her. There is something delightfully picturesque in the manner in which Beatrice is described as coming to hear the plot which is contrived against herself. For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs close by the ground to hear our conference. In consequence of what she hears, not a word of which is true, she exclaims when these good-natured informants are gone. What fire is in my nears? Can this be true? Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much? Contempt farewell and maiden pride at you. No glory lives behind the back of such. Am Benedict, love on, I will requite thee, taming my wild heart to thy loving hand. If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee to bind our loves up in an holy band. For others say thou dost deserve, and I believe it better than reportingly. Am Benedict, on his part, is equally sincere in his repentance with equal reason, after he has heard the greybeard Leonato and his friend Monsieur Love, discourse of the desperate state of his supposed enamorata. This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have the full bent. Love me. Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say, too, that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I never did think to marry. I must not seem proud. Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair. It is a truth I can bear them witness, and in virtuance. To so I cannot reprove it, and wise. But for loving me, by my truth it is no addition to her wit. Nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance to have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage, but t'ath not the appetite alter. A man loves the meat and his youth that he cannot endure in his age. She'll quips in sentences and these paper bullets of the brain. Ah, a man from the career of his humor. No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice. By this day she's a fair lady. I do spy some marks of love in her. The beauty of all this arises from the characters of the person so entrapped. Benedict is a professed and staunch enemy to marriage, and gives very plausible reasons for the faith that is in him. And as to Beatrice, she persecutes him all day with her jests, so that he could hardly think of being troubled with them at night. She not only turns him but all other things into jest, and is proof against everything serious. Hero, disdain and scorn rides sparkling in her eyes, surprising what they look on, and her wit values itself so highly that to her all matter else seems weak. She cannot love, nor take no shape nor project of affection. She is so self-endeared. Ursula, sure I think so. And therefore certainly it were not good she knew his love, lest she makes sport at it. Hero, why you speak truth. Never yet saw man how wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured, but she would spell him backward. If fair faced, she'd swear the gentleman should be her sister. If black, why nature drawing of an antique made a foul blot. If tall, a lance ill-headed. If low, an agate very vilely cut. If speaking, why a vein blown with all winds. If silent, why a block moved with none. So turned she every man the wrong side out and never gives to truth and virtue that which simpleness and merit purchase it. These were happy materials for Shakespeare to work on and he has made a happy use of them. Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender and our follies turning round against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity. Dogberry and verges in this play are inimitable specimens of quaint, blundering and misprisions of meaning and our standing record of that formal gravity of pretension and total want of common understanding which Shakespeare no doubt copied from real life and which in the course of two hundred years appear to have ascended from the lowest to the highest offices in the state. End of Much Ado About Nothing Chapter 29 Of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. As You Like It Shakespeare has here converted the forest of Arden into another Arcadia where they quote fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world. It is the most ideal of any of this author's plays. It is a pastoral drama in which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and characters than out of the actions or situations. It is not what is done but what is said that claims our attention. Nursed in solitude quote under the shade of melancholy boughs the imagination grows soft and delicate and the wit runs riot and idleness like a spoiled child that is never sent to school. Caprice and fancy reign and revel here and stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild sentiments of humanity are strengthened with thought and leisure. The echo of the cares and noise of the world strikes upon the ear of those quote who have felt them knowingly softened by time and distance quote they hear the tumult and are still. The very air of the play seems to breathe the spirit of philosophical poetry disturb the thoughts to touch the heart with pity as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. Here was there such beautiful moralizing equally free from pedantry or petulance and this their life exempt from public haunts finds tongues and trees books in the running brooks sermons and stones and good in everything. Jacques is the only purely contemplative character in Shakespeare he thinks and does nothing his whole occupation is to amuse his mind is totally regardless of his body and his fortunes. He is the prince of philosophical idlers his only passion is thought he sets no value upon anything but as it serves as food for reflection he can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs the motley fool who morals on the time is the greatest prize he meets within the forest he resents Orlando's passion for Rosalind as some disparagement of his own passion and leaves the Duke as soon as he is restored to a sovereignty to seek his brother out who has quitted it and turned hermit. Out of these convertites there is much matter to be heard and learnt. Within the sequestered and romantic glades of the forest of Arden they find leisure to be good and wise or to play the fool and fall in love. Rosalind's character is made up of sport of gaiety and natural tenderness. She runs the faster to conceal the pressure at her heart she talks herself out of breath only to get deeper in love the coquetry with which she plays with her lover and the double character which she has to support is managed with the nicest address how full of voluble laughing grace is all her conversation with Orlando in heedless mazes running with wanton haste and giddy cunning how full of real fondness and pretended cruelty is her answer to him when he promises to love her quote forever and a day say a day without the ever no no Orlando men are April when they were December when they wed maids are May when they are maids but the sky changes when they are wives I will be more jealous of the then barbaric cock pigeon over his hen more clamorous than a parrot against rain more newfangled than an ape more giddy in my desires than a monkey I will weep for nothing like Diana in the fountain and I will do that when you are disposed to be Mary I will laugh like a hyena and that when you are inclined to sleep Orlando but will my Rosalind do so? Rosalind by my life she will do as I do the silent and retired character of Celia is a necessary relief to the provoking laquacity of Rosalind nor can anything be better conceived or more beautifully described than the mutual affection between the two cousins we still have slept together rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together and where so where we went like Juno Swans still we went coupled and inseparable the unrequited love of Sylveus for Phoebe shows the perversity of this passion and the commonest scenes of life and the rubs and stops which nature throws in its way where fortune has placed none touchstone is not in love but he will have a mistress as a subject for the exercise of his grotesque humor and to show his contempt for the passion by his indifference about the person he is a rare fellow he is a mixture of the ancient cynic philosopher with a modern buffoon and turns folly into wit and wit into folly just as the fit takes him his courtship of Audrey not only throws a degree of ridicule on the state of wedlock itself but he is equally an enemy to the prejudices of opinion in other respects the lofty tone of enthusiasm which the Duke and his companions in exile spread over the stillness and solitude of a country life receives a pleasant shock from touchstone's skeptical determination of the question Corrin and how like you this shepherd's life Mr. Touchstone clown truly shepherd in respect of itself it is a good life but in respect that it is a shepherd's life it is not in respect that it is solitary I like it very well but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life now in respect it is in the fields it pleases me well but in respect it is not in the court it is tedious as it is a spare life look you it fits my humor but as there is no more plenty in it it goes much against my stomach Zamen and celebrated work on solitude discovers only half the sense of this passage there's hardly any of Shakespeare's plays that contain a greater number of passages that have been quoted in books of extracts or a greater number of phrases that have become in a manner proverbial if we were to give all the striking passages we should give half the play we will only recall a few of the most delightful to the reader's recollection such are the meeting between Orlando and Adam the exquisite appeal of Orlando to the humanity of the Duke and his company to supply him with food for the old man and their answer the Duke's description of a country life and the account of Jacques moralizing on the wounded deer his meeting with Touchstone in the forest his apology for his own melancholy and his satirical vein and the well-known speech on the stages of human life the old song of blow below thou winter's wind Rosalind's description of the marks of a lover and of the progress of time with different persons the picture of the snake wreathed round Oliver's neck while the lioness watches her sleeping prey and Touchstone's lecture to the shepherd his defense of cuckolds and Pangeirac on the virtues of an if all of these are familiar to the reader there is one passage of equal delicacy and beauty which may have escaped him and with it we shall close our account of as you like it it is Phoebe's description of Ganymede at the end of the third act think not I love him though I ask for him it is but a peevish boy yet he talks well but what care I for words yet words do well when he that speaks them pleases those that hear it is a pretty youth not very pretty but sure he's proud and yet his pride becomes him he'll make a proper man the best thing in him is his complexion and faster than his tongue did make a fence his eye did heal it up he's not very tall yet for his years he's tall his leg is but so so and yet as well there was a pretty redness in his lip a little riper and more lusty red than that mixed in his cheek which was just the difference between the constant red and mingledamask there be some women Sylveus had they marked him and parcels as I did would have gone near to fall in love with him but for my part I love him not nor hate him not and yet I have more cause to hate him than to love him for what had he to do to try it at me end of as you like it Chapter 30 of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain The Taming of the Shrew The Taming of the Shrew is almost the only one of Shakespeare's comedies that has a regular plot and downright more it is full of bustle, animation and rapidity of action it shows admirably how self-will is only to be got the better of by stronger will and how one degree of ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out by another still greater Petruchio is a madman in his senses a very honest fellow who hardly speaks a word of truth and succeeds in all his tricks and imposters he acts his assumed character to the life with a most fantastical extravagance with complete presence of mind with untired animal spirits and without a particle of ill humor from beginning to end the situation of poor Catherine worn out by his incessant persecutions becomes at last almost as pitiable as it is ludicrous and it is difficult to say which to admire most the unaccountableness of his actions or the unalterableness of his resolutions it is a character which most husbands ought to study unless perhaps the very audacity of Petruchio's attempt might alarm them more than his success would encourage them what a sound must the following speech carry to some married ears think you a little din can daunt my ears have I not in my time heard lions roar have I not heard the sea puffed up with winds rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat have I not heard great ordinance in the field and heavens artillery thunder in the skies have I not in a pitched battle heard loud larms name steeds and trumpets clang and do you tell me of a woman's tongue that gives not half so great a blow to hear as will a chestnut in a farmer's fire not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade more than quote some dozen followers to be of this heretical way of thinking he unfolds his scheme for the taming of the shrew on a principle of contradiction thus I'll woo her with some spirit when she comes say that she rail why then I'll tell her plain she sings as sweetly as a nightingale say that she frown I'll say she looks as clear as morning roses newly washed with dew say she be mute will not speak a word then I'll commend her volubility and say she uttereth piercing eloquence if she do bid me pack I'll give her thanks as though she bid me stay by her week if she denied a wed I'll crave the day when I shall ask the bands and when be married he accordingly gains her consent to the match by telling her father that he has got it disappoints her by not returning at the time he has promised to wed her and when he returns creates no small consternation by the oddity of his dress and equipage this however is nothing to the astonishment excited by his mad-brained behavior at the marriage here is the account of it by an eyewitness Gremio, Tat, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him I'll tell you sir Lucencio when the priest should ask if Catarina should be his wife I, by God's wounds, quote he and swore so loud that all amazed the priest let fall the buck and as they stooped again to take it up this mad-brained bridegroom took him such a cough that down fell priest and book and book and priest now take them up, quote he if any list Gremio, what's at the wench when he rose up again? Gremio, trembled and shook for why he stamped and swore as if the vicar meant to cousin him but after many ceremonies done he calls for wine a health, quote he as if he'd been a broad carousing with his mates after storm quaffed off the muskadel and threw the sops all in the sexin's face having no other cause but that his beard grew thin and hungrily and seemed to ask his sops as he was drinking this done he took the bride about the neck and kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack that at their parting all the church echoed and I seen this came thence for very shame and after me I know the route is coming such a mad marriage never was before the most striking and at the same time laughable feature in the character of Petrucchio throughout is the studied approximation to the intractable character of real madness his apparent insensibility to all external considerations an utter indifference to everything but the wild and extravagant freaks of his own self-will there's no contending with the person on whom nothing makes any impression but his own purposes and who is bent on his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want common sense with him a things being plain and reasonable is a reason against it the heirs he gives himself are infinite and his caprices as sudden as they are groundless the whole of his treatment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry everything flies before his will like a conjurer's wand and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects she sees at a word speaking such are his insisting that it is the moon not the sun which they see etc this extravagance reaches its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene where on their return to her father's they meet old Vincentio whom Petruchio immediately addresses as a young lady Petruchio good marro gentle mistress where away tell me sweet Kate and tell me truly too has thou beheld a fresher gentle woman such war white and red within her cheeks what stars do spangle heaven with such beauty does those two eyes become that heavenly face fair lovely maid once more good day to thee sweet Kate embrace her for beauty's sake Petruchio he'll make the man mad to make a woman of him Catherine young budding virgin fair and fresh and sweet wither away or where is I abode happy the parents of so fair a child happier the man whose favorable stars a lot thee for his lovely bed fellow Petruchio why how now Kate I hope thou art not mad this is a man old wrinkled faded withered not a maiden is thou sayest he is Catherine pardon old father my mistaken eyes have been so bedased with the the son that everything I look on seemeth green now I perceive thou art a reverent father the whole is carried on with equal spirit as if the poet's comic muse had wings of fire it is strange how one man could be so many things but so it is the concluding scene in which trial is made of the obedience of the new married wives so triumphantly for Petruchio is a very happy one in some parts of this play there is a little too much about music masters and masters of philosophy they were things of greater rarity in those days than they are now nothing however can be better than the advice which Tranio gives his master for the prosecution of his studies the mathematics and the metaphysics fall to them as you find your stomach serves you no profit grows where is no pleasure tain embrace sir study what your most effect we have heard the honeymoon called quote an elegant Catherine in Petruchio we suspect we do not understand this word elegant in the sense that many people do but in our sense of the word we should call Lucentio's description of his mistress elegant Tranio I saw her coral lips to move and with her breath she did perfume the air sacred and sweet was all I saw in her when Biendello tells the same Lucentio for his encouragement I know a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit and so may you sir there's nothing elegant in this and yet we hardly know which of the two passages is the best the taming of the shrew is a play within a play it is supposed to be a play acted for the benefit of Slide the tinker who is made to believe himself a lord when he wakes after a drunken brawl the character of Slide and the remarks with which he accompanies the play are as good as the play itself his answer when he is asked how he likes it and different well it is a good piece of work wood tour done is in good keeping as if you were thinking of a Saturday night's job Slide does not change his taste with this new situation but in the midst of splendor and luxury he still calls out lustily and repeatedly for a pot of the smallest ale he is very slow in giving up his personal identity in his sudden advancement I am Christopher O. Slide call me not honor nor lordship honor drinksack of my life and if you give me any conserves give me conserves of beef never ask me what raiment I'll wear no more doublets than packs no more stockings than legs no no more shoes than feet nay sometimes more feet than shoes or such shoes as my toes look through the over leather what would you make me mad am I not Christopher O. Slide old Slide's son of Burton Heath by birth a peddler by education a card maker by transmutation a bear herd and now by present profession a tinker pfft ask Marion Hackett that ale wife of Wincott if she know me not if she say I am not 14 pence on score for sheer ale score me up for the liangest nave in Christendom this is honest the Slides are no rogues as he says of himself we have a great predilection for this representative of the family and what makes us like him the better is that we take him to be of kin not many degrees removed to Sancho Panza naming of the shrew chapter 31 of characters of Shakespeare's plays by William Haslett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain measure for measure this is a play as full of genius as it is of wisdom yet there is an original sin in the nature of the subject which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it the height of moral argument which the author has maintained in the intervals of passion or blended with the more powerful impulses of nature is hardly surpassed in any of his plays but there is in general a want of passion the affections are at a stand our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions the only passion which influences the story is that of Angelo and yet he seems to have a much greater passion for hypocrisy than for his mistress neither are we greatly enamored of Isabella's rigid chastity though she could not act to other wives than she did we do not feel the same confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at another's expense as if it had been out to some less disinterested trial as to the Duke who makes a very imposing and mysterious stage character he is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state more tenacious of his own character than attentive to the feelings and apprehensions of others Claudio is the only person who feels naturally and yet he is placed in circumstances of distress which almost preclude the wish for his deliverance Marianna is also in love with Angelo whom we hate in this respect there may be said to be a general system of cross purposes between the feelings of the different characters and the sympathy of the reader or the audience the example of repugnance seems to have reached its height in the character of master Barnadine who not only sets at defiance the opinions of others but has even thrown off all self-regard quote one that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep careless reckless and fearless of what's past present and to come unquote he is a fine antithesis to the morality and hypocrisy of the other characters of the play Barnadine is Caliban transported from Prospero's wizard island to the forests of Bohemia or the prisons of Vienna he is the creature of bad habits as Caliban is of gross instincts he has however a strong notion of the natural fitness of things according to his own sensations quote he has been drinking hard all night and he will not be hanged to that day unquote and Shakespeare has let him off the best we do not understand why the philosophical German critic Schlegel should be so severe on these pleasant persons Lucio, Pompey and master Froth as to call them wretches they appear almighty comfortable in their occupations and determined to pursue them as the flesh unfortunate should serve a very good exposure of the want of self-knowledge and contempt for others which is so common in the world is put into the mouth of the person, the jailer when the provost proposes to associate Pompey with him in his office quote a bod sir fire upon him he will discredit our mystery unquote and the same answer would serve in nine instances out of ten to the same kind of a remark quote too sir you weigh equally a feather will turn the scale Shakespeare was in one sense the least moral of all writers for morality commonly so called made up of antipathies and his talent consisted of sympathy with human nature in all its shapes, degrees, depressions and elevations the object of the pedantic moralist is to find out the bad in everything his was to show that there is some soul of goodness in things evil even master Barnadine is not left to the mercy of what others think of him but when he comes in speaks for himself and pleads his own cause as well as if counsel had been assigned him in one sense Shakespeare was no moralist at all in another he was the greatest of all moralists he was a moralist in the same sense in which nature is one he taught what he had learned from her he showed the greatest knowledge of humanity with the greatest fellow feeling for it one of the most dramatic passages in the present play is the interview between Claudio and his sister when she comes to inform him of the conditions on which Angelo will spare his life Claudio let me know the point Isabella I do fear thee Claudio and I quake lest thou a feverish life shouldst entertain and six or seven winters more respect than her perpetual honor darest thou die the sense of death is most in apprehension and the poor beetle that we tread upon in corporal sufferance finds a greatest when a giant dies why give you me this shame think you I can a resolution fetch from flowery tenderness if I must die I will encounter darkness as a bride and hug it my arms there speak my brother there my father's grave did utter forth a voice yes thou must die thou art too noble to conserve a life for your subliances this outward saint deputy who settled visage and deliberate word nips youth in the head and in folly's death and mew is falconed at the fowl is yet a devil the princely Angelo oh, tis the cunning livery of hell the damnedest body to invest in cover and princely guards does thou think Claudio if I would yield to him my virginity how might's be freed oh heavens it cannot be yes, he would give thee for this rank of fence so to offend him still this night's the time that I should do what I abhor to name or else thou dyest tomorrow thou shalt not do it oh, worry about my life I'd throw it down for your deliverance as frankly as a pin thanks, dear Isabelle be ready, Claudio for your death tomorrow yes has he affections in him that thus can make him bite the law by the nose when he would force it sure it is no sin or the deadly seven knit is the least which is the least if it were damnable he being so wise why would he for the momentary trick be purgably find oh Isabelle what says my brother death is a fearful thing and shame at life a hateful aye but to die and go we know not where to lie in cold obstruction and to rot this sensible warm motion to become a needed Claude and the delighted spirit to bathe in fiery floods or to reside in thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice to be imprisoned in the fewless winds blown with restless violence round about the pendant world or to be worse than worse of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts imagined howling is too horrible the weariest the most loathed worldly life that at age ache, penury and imprisonment can lay on nature as a paradise to what we fear of death alas sweet sister let me live what sin you do to save a brother's life nature dispenses with a deed so far that it becomes a virtue what adds to the dramatic beauty of this scene and the effect of Claudio's passionate attachment to life is that it immediately follows the Duke's lecture to him on the character of the friar recommending an absolute indifference to it reason thus with life if I do lose thee I do lose a thing that none but fools would keep a breath thou art servile to all the sky influences that do this habitation yet merely thou art death's fool for him thou laborest by thy flight shun and yet runs toward him still thou art not noble for all the accommodations that thou bearst are nursed by baseness thou art by no means valiant for thou disfear the soft and tender fork of a poor worm thy best of rest is sleep and that thou art provoked yet grossly fierced thy death which is no more thou art not thyself for thou exists on many a thousand grains that issue out of dust happy thou art not for what thou hast not still thou strives to get and what thou hast forgets thou art not certain for thy complexion shifts to strange effects after the moon if thou art rich thou art poor for like an ass who's back with ingot's boughs but a journey and death unloads thee friend thou hast none for thy own boughs which to call thee sire the mere effusion of thy proper loins to curse the gout's surpego and the room for ending thee no sooner thou hast nor youth nor age but as it were an after-dinner's sleep dreaming on both for all thy blessed youth becomes as it aged andeth beg the alms of palsy deld and when thou art old and rich thou hast neither heat affection, limb, nor beauty to make thy riches pleasant what's yet in this that bears the name of life yet in this life I hid more thousand deaths yet death we fear that makes these odds all even of Windsor the merry wives of Windsor is no doubt a very amusing play with a great deal of humor character and nature in it but we should have liked it much better if anyone else had been the hero of it instead of fall staff we could have been contented if Shakespeare had not been commanded to show the knight in love wits and philosophers for the most part do not shine in that character and Sir John himself by no means comes off with flying colors many people complain of the degradation and insults to which Don Quixote is so frequently exposed in his various adventures but what are the unconscious indignities which he suffers compared with the sensible mortifications which fall staff is made to bring upon himself what are the blows and buffettings which the Don receives from the staves of the Yangesian carriers or from Sancho Panza's more hard-hearted hands compared with the contamination of the Buckbasket the disguise of the fat woman of Brentford and the horns of her and the hunter which are discovered on Sir John's head in reading the play we indeed wish him well through all these discomfortures but it would have been as well as if he had not got into them fall staff and the merry wives of Windsor is not the man he was in the two parts of Henry IV his wit and eloquence have left him making a butt of others he is made a butt of by them neither is there a single particle of love in him to excuse his follies he is merely a designing bare-faced nave and an unsuccessful one the scene with Ford is master book and that with simple slender's man who comes to ask after the wise woman are almost the only ones in which his old intellectual ascendancy appears he is like a person recalled to this stage to perform an unaccustomed and ungracious part and in which we perceive only some faint sparks of those flashes of merriment that were wont to send the hearers in a roar but the single scene with doll tearsheet or Mrs. Quickley's account of his desiring quote to eat some of housewife Keech's prawns and telling her quote to be no more so familiarity with such people is worth the whole of the merry wives of Windsor put together Ford's jealousy which is the mainspring of the comic incidents is certainly very well managed Page on the contrary appears to be somewhat exorious in his disposition and we have pretty plain indications of the effect of the characters of the husbands on the different degrees of fidelity in their wives Mrs. Quickley makes a very lively go-between both between Falstaff and his Dulcinias and Anne Page and her lovers and seems in the latter case so intent on her own interest as totally to overlook the intentions of her employers her master Dr. Kaeus the Frenchman and her fellow servant Jack Rugby are very completely described this last mentioned person is rather quaintly commended by Mrs. Quickley as quote an honest willing kind fellow as ever servants shall come in house with all and I warrant you no tell tale nor no breed bait his worst fault is that a prayer he is something P vision that way but nobody but has his fault the Welsh Parsons Sir Hugh Evans a title which in those days was given to the clergy is an excellent character in all respects he is as respectable as he is laughable he has quote very good discretions and very odd humours the dual scene with Kaeus gives him an opportunity to show his collars and his tremblings of mind his valor and his melancholy in an irresistible manner in the dialogue which at his mother's request he holds with his pupil William Page to show his progress in learning it is hard to say whether the simplicity of the master or the scholar is the greatest nim Bartolf and Pistol are but the shadows of what they were and justice shallow himself has little of his consequence left but his cousins lender makes up for the deficiency he is a very potent piece of imbecility in him the pretensions of the worthy Gloucestershire family are well kept up and immortalized he and his friends Sackerson and his book of songs and his love of Anne Page and is having nothing to say to her can never be forgotten it is the only first trait character in the play but it is in that class Shakespeare is the only writer who was as great at describing weakness as strength end of the Mary Wives and Windsor chapter 33 of characters of Shakespeare's plays by William Haslett this Libravox recording is in the public domain the comedy of errors this comedy is taken very much from the monec me of Pilatus and is not an improvement on it Shakespeare appears to have bestowed no great pains on it and there are but a few passages which bear the decided stamp of this genius he seems to have relied on his author and on the interest arising out of the intricacy of the plot the curiosity excited is certainly very considerable though not of the most pleasing kind we are teased as with the riddle which notwithstanding we try to solve in reading the play from the sameness of the names of the two antipolisies and the two dromios as well as from there being constantly taken for each other by those who see them it is difficult without a painful intention to keep the characters distinct in the mind and again on the stage either the complete similarity of their persons and dress must produce the same perplexity whenever they first enter or the identity of appearance which the story supposes will be destroyed we still however having a clue to the difficulty can tell which is which merely from the practical contradictions which arise as soon as the different parties begin to speak and we are indemnified for the perplexity and blunders into which we are thrown by seeing others thrown into greater and almost inextricable ones this play among other considerations leads us not to feel much regret that Shakespeare was not what is called a classical scholar we do not think his fort would have ever lain in imitating or improving on what others invented so much as inventing for himself and perfecting what he invented not perhaps by the omission of faults but by the addition of the highest excellences his own genius was strong enough to bear him up and he soared longest and best on unborrowed plumes the only passage of a very Shakespearean cast in this comedy is the one in which the abyss with admirable characteristic artifice makes Adriana confess her own misconduct in driving her husband mad abyss how long have this possession held the man? Adriana this week he hath been very sour, sad and much much different from the man he was but till this afternoon his passion ne'er break into extremity of rage abyss hath he not lost much wealth at wreck by sea, buried some dear friend hath not else's eye strayed his affection in an unlawful love, a sin prevailing much in youthful men who give their eyes the liberty of gazing which of these sorrows is he subject to? to none of these except to be the last, namely some love that drew him off from home you should for that have reprehended him why so he did but not rough enough as roughly as my modesty would let me happily and private and in assemblies too I but not enough it was the copy of our conference in bed he slept not for my urging it aboard he fed not for my urging it alone it was the subject of my theme and company I often glanced at it still did I tell him it was vile and bad abyss and therefore came it that the man was mad the venom to clamours of a jealous woman poisoned more deadly than a mad dog's tooth seems his sleep were hindered by thy railing and therefore comes it that his head is light though says his meat was sauced with eye-up braidings and quiet meals make ill digestions therefore the raging fire of fever bred and what's a fever but a fit of madness thus says to sports were hindered by their brawls sweet recreation bought what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy kinsmen to grim and comfortless despair and at her heels a huge infectious troop of pale disc temperatures and foes to life and food and sport and life-preserving rest would be disturbed would mad or manner beast the consequences end by jealous fits have scared thy husband from the use of wits Luciana she never reprehended him but mildly when he demeaned himself rough rude and mildly oh why bear you these rebukes and answer not Adriana she did betray me to my own reproof pinch the conjurer is also an excrescence he is found in Plautus he is indeed a very formidable anachronism they brought one pinch a hungry lean-faced villain a mere anatomy a montabank a threadbare juggler and a fortune teller a needy hollow-eyed sharp-looking rich a living dead man this is exactly like some of the puritanical portraits to be met with in Hogarth end of the comedy of errors chapter 34 of characters of Shakespeare's plays by William Haslett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain doubtful plays of Shakespeare we forgive for the satisfaction of the reader what the celebrated German critic Schlegel says on this subject and then add a very few remarks of our own quote all the editors with the exception of Cable are unanimous in rejecting Titus Andronicus is unworthy of Shakespeare though they always allow it to be printed with other pieces as the scapegoat as it were of their abusive criticism the correct method in such an investigation is first to examine into the external grounds evidences etc and to weigh their worth and then to adduce the internal reasons derived from the quality of the work the critics of Shakespeare follow a course directly the reverse of this the preconceived opinion against a piece and seek and justification of this opinion to render the historical grounds suspicious and to set them aside Titus Andronicus is to be found in the first folio edition of Shakespeare's works which it was known was conducted by Heminge and Condell for many years his friends and fellow managers of the same theater is it possible to persuade ourselves that they would not have known if a piece in their repertoire did or did not actually belong to Shakespeare and are we to lay to the charge of these honorable men a designed fraud in this single case when we know that they did not show themselves so very desirous of scraping everything together which went by the name of Shakespeare but as it appears merely gave those plays of which they had manuscripts in hand yet the following circumstance is still stronger George Mears a contemporary and admirer of Shakespeare mentions Titus Andronicus in an enumeration of his works in the year 1598 Mears was personally acquainted with the poet and so very intimately that the latter read over to him his sonnets before they were printed I cannot conceive that all of the critical skepticism in the world would be sufficient to get over such a testimony this tragedy, it is true is framed according to a false idea of the tragic which by an accumulation of cruelties and enormities degenerates into the horrible and yet leaves no deep impression behind the story of Tyrius and Philemila is heightened and overcharged under other names and mixed up with a repast of Atreus and the Estes and many other incidents in detail there is no want of beautiful lines, bold images nay even features which betray the peculiar conception of Shakespeare among these we may reckon the joy of his more at the blackness and ugliness of his child begotten adultery and in the compassion of Titus Andronicus grown childish through grief for a fly which had been struck dead and his rage afterwards when he imagines he discovers in it his black enemy we recognize the future poet of Lear are critics afraid that Shakespeare's fame would be injured were it established that in his early youth he ushered into the world of feeble and immature work was Rome the less the conquer of the world because Remus could leap over its first walls let anyone place himself in Shakespeare's situation at the commencement of his career he found only a few indifferent models and yet these met with the most favorable reception because men are never difficult to please in the novelty of an art before their taste has become vastidious from choice and abundance must not this situation influence on him before he learned to make higher demands on himself and by digging deeper in his own mind discovered the richest veins of a noble metal it is even highly probable that he must have made several failures before getting into the right path genius is in a certain sense infallible and has nothing to learn but art is to be learned and must be acquired by practice and experience in Shakespeare's acknowledged works he traces of his apprenticeship and yet an apprenticeship he certainly had this every artist must have and especially in a period where he has not before him the example of a school already formed I consider it as extremely probable that Shakespeare began to write for the theater at a much earlier period than the one which is generally stated namely not till after the year 1590 it appears that as early as the year 1584 when only 20 years of age he had left his paternal home and repaired to London can we imagine that such an active head would remain idle for six whole years without making any attempt to emerge by his talents from an uncongenial situation that in the dedication of the poem of Venus and Adonis he calls it quote the first air of his invention proves nothing against the supposition it was the first which he printed he might have composed it at an earlier period perhaps also he did not include theatrical labours as they then possessed but little literary dignity the earlier Shakespeare began to compose for the theater the less we are enabled to consider the immaturity and imperfection of a work as a proof of its spuriousness in opposition to historical evidence if we only find in it prominent features of his mind several of the works rejected as spurious may still have been produced in the period between Titus Andronicus and the earliest of the acknowledged pieces quote at last Stevens published seven pieces ascribed to Shakespeare in two supplementary volumes it is to be remarked that they all appeared in print in Shakespeare's lifetime with his name prefixed to full length there the following quote one the proofs of the genuineness of this piece are not altogether unambiguous the grounds for doubt on the other hand are entitled to attention however this question is immediately connected with that respecting Titus Andronicus and must be at the same time resolved in the affirmative or negative quote two Pericles Prince of Tyre this piece was acknowledged by Deriden but as a youthful work of Shakespeare it is most undoubtedly his and has been admitted into several of the late editions the supposed imperfections originate in the circumstance that Shakespeare here handled a childish and extravagant romance of the old poet Gower and was unwilling to drag the subject out of its proper sphere hence he even introduces Gower himself and makes him deliver a prologue entirely in his antiquated language and versification this power of assuming so far in a manner is at least no proof of helplessness quote three the London Protocol if we are not mistaken Lessing pronounced this piece to be Shakespeare's and wished to bring it on the German stage quote four the Puritan or the widow of Wattling Street one of my literary friends intimately acquainted with Shakespeare was of opinion that the poet must have wished to write a play for once in the style of Ben Johnson and that in this way we must account for the difference between the present piece and his usual manner to follow out this idea however would lead to a very nice critical investigation quote five Thomas Lord Cromwell quote six Sir John Old Castle first part quote seven or Yorkshire tragedy quote the three last pieces are not only unquestionably Shakespeare's but in my opinion they deserve to be classed among his best and maturist works Stevens admits at last in some degree are Shakespeare's as well as the others accepting Lachrine but he speaks of all of them with great contempt as quite worthless productions this condemnatory sentence is not however in the slightest degree convincing nor is it supported by critical acumen I should like to see how such a critic would of his own natural suggestion have decided on Shakespeare's acknowledged masterpieces and what he would have thought of praising in them had the public opinion imposed on him by the majority of admiration Thomas Lord Cromwell and Sir John Old Castle are biographical dramas and models in this species the first is linked from its subject to Henry VIII and the second to Henry V the second part of Old Castle is wanting I know not whether a copy of the old edition has been discovered in England or whether it is lost the Yorkshire tragedy is a tragedy in one act the tale of murder the tragical effect is overpowering and it is extremely important to see how poetically Shakespeare could handle such a subject quote, there have been still farther ascribed to him first, the Mary Devil of Edmonton a comedy in one act printed in Doddsley's old plays this has certainly some appearances in its favor it contains a Mary landlord who bears a great similarity to the one in the Mary Wives of Windsor however, at all events though an ingenious it is but a hasty sketch second the accusation of Paris third, the birth of Merlin fourth, Edward III fifth, the fair Emma sixth, Muchidors seventh, Arden of Feversham I have never seen any of these and cannot therefore say anything respecting them from the passages cited I am led to conjecture that the subject of Muchidors is the popular story of Valentine and Orson the beautiful subject which Lope de Vega has also taken for play Arden of Feversham is said to be a tragedy on the story of a man from whom the poet was descended by on the mother's side if the quality of the piece is not too directly at variance with this claim the circumstance would afford an additional probability in its favor for such motives were not foreign to Shakespeare he treated Henry the seventh who bestowed lands on his forefathers for services performed by them with a visible partiality whoever takes from Shakespeare a play early ascribed to him and confessedly belonging to his time is unquestionably bound to answer with some degree of probability this question who has then written it Shakespeare's competitors in the dramatic walk are pretty well known and if those of them who have even acquired a considerable name a Lily, a Marlowe, a Haywood are still so very far below him we can hardly imagine that the author of a work which rises so high beyond theirs would have remained unknown end quote lectures on dramatic literature volume two page two hundred and fifty two we agree to the truth of this last observation but not to the justice of its application to some of the plays here mentioned it is true that Shakespeare's best works are very superior to those of Marlowe or Haywood but it is not true that the best of the doubtful plays above enumerated are superior or even equal to the best of theirs the Yorkshire tragedy in which Schlegel speaks of is an undoubted production of our authors is much more in the manner of Haywood than of Shakespeare the effect is indeed overpowering but the motive producing it is by no means the praise which Schlegel gives to Thomas Lord Cromwell and to Sir John Oldcastle is altogether exaggerated they are very indifferent compositions which have not the slightest pretensions to rank with Henry V or Henry VIII we suspect that the German critic was not very well acquainted with the dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare or aware of their general merits and that he accordingly mistakes a resemblance in style and manner for an equal degree of excellence Shakespeare differed from the other writers of his age not in the mode of treating his subjects but in the grace and power which he displayed in them the reason assigned by a literary friend of Schlegel's for supposing the Puritan or the widow of Wattling Street to be Shakespeare's namely that it is in the style of Ben Johnson that is to say in a style just the reverse of his own is not very satisfactory to a plain English understanding Laquany and the London prodigal if they were Shakespeare's at all must have been among the sins of his youth Arden of Feversham contains several striking passages but the passion which they express is rather that of a sanguine temperament than of a lofty imagination and in this respect they approximate more nearly to the style of other writers of the time than to Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is certainly as unlike Shakespeare's usual style as it is possible it is an accumulation of vulgar physical horrors in which the power exercised by the poet bears no proportion to the repugnance excited by the subject the character of Aaron the Moor is the only thing which shows any originality of conception and the scene in which he expresses his joy at the blackness and ugliness of his child begotten adultery the only one worthy of Shakespeare even this is worthy of him only in the display of power for it gives a no pleasure Shakespeare managed these things differently nor do we think it is sufficient answer to say that this was an embryo or crude production of the author in its kind it is full grown and its features decided and overcharged it is not like a first and perfect essay but shows a confirmed habit a systematic preference of violent effect to everything else there are occasional detached images of great beauty and delicacy but these were not beyond the powers of other writers than living the circumstance which inclines us to reject the external evidence in favor of this play being Shakespeare's is that the grammatical construction is constantly false and mixed up with vulgar abbreviations a fault that never occurs in any of his genuine plays a similar defect and the halting measure of the verse are the chief objections to Pericles of Tyre if we accept the far-fetched and complicated absurdity of the story the movement of the thoughts and passions has something in it not unlike Shakespeare and several of the discretions are either the original hints of passages which Shakespeare has engrafted on his other plays or are imitations of them by some contemporary poet the most memorable idea in it is in Marina's speech where she compares the moral to quote a lasting storm hurrying her from her friends end of doubtful plays of Shakespeare our idolatry of Shakespeare not to say our admiration ceases with this place in his other productions he was a mere author though not a common author it was only by representing others that he became himself he could go out of himself in the role of Cleopatra but in his own person he appeared to be always waiting for the prompter's cue in expressing the thoughts of others he seemed inspired in expressing his own he was a mechanic the license of an assumed character was necessary to restore his genius to the privileges of nature and to give him courage to break through the tyranny of fashion the trammels of custom not in casing as the general air in his poems on the contrary he appears to be quote cooped and cabined in by all the technicalities of art by all the petty intricacies of thought and language which poetry had learned from the controversial jargon of the schools where words had been made a substitute for things there was if we mistake not something of modesty and a painful sense of personal this Shakespeare's imagination by identifying itself with the strongest characters in the most trying circumstances grappled at once with nature and trampled the littleness of art under his feet the rapid changes of situation the wide range of the universe gave him life and spirit and afforded full scope to his genius but returned into his closet again and having assumed the badge of his profession his only labor in his vocation and conformed himself to existing models the thoughts, the passions the words which the poets pen glancing from heaven to earth from earth to heaven lent to others shook off the fetters of pedantry and affectation while his own thoughts and feelings standing by themselves were seized upon as lawful prey and tortured to death according to the established rules in a word we do not like Shakespeare's poems because we like his plays the one and all their excellences are just the reverse of the other it has been the fashion of late to cry up our author's poems as equal to his plays this is the desperate cant of modern criticism we would ask was there the slightest comparison between Shakespeare and either Chaucer or Spencer as mere poets, not any the two poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and Lucrice appear to us like a couple of ice houses they're about as hard as glittering and as cold the author seems all the time to be thinking of his verses and not of his subject not of what his characters would feel but of what he shall say and as it must happen in all such cases he always puts into their mouths those things which they would be the last to think of and which it shows the greatest ingenuity in him to find out the whole is laboured uphill work the poet is perpetually singling out the difficulties of the art to make an exhibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them he is making perpetual trials of them as if his mastery over them were doubted the images which are often striking are generally applied to things which they are the least like so that they do not blend with the poem but seem stuck upon it like a splendid patchwork or remain quite distinct from it like detached substances painted and varnished over a beautiful thought is sure to be lost in an endless commentary upon it the speakers are like persons who have both leisure and inclination to make riddles on their own situation and to twist and turn every object or incident into acrostics and anagrams everything is spun out into allegory passion is always preferred to the main story sentiment is built up upon plays of words the hero or heroine feels not from the impulse of passion but from the force of dialectics there is besides a strange attempt to substitute the language of painting for that of poetry to make us see their feelings in the faces of the persons and again consistently with this in the description of the picture in Tarquin and Lucrice those circumstances are chiefly insisted on which it would be impossible to convey except by words the invocation to opportunity in the Tarquin and Lucrice is full of thoughts and images but at the same time it is overloaded by them the concluding stanza expresses all our objections to this kind of poetry oh idle words servants to shallow fools unprofitable sounds weak arbitrators themselves in skill contending schools debate when leisure serves with dull debaters to trembling clients be their mediators for me I forced not argument a straw since that my case has passed all help of law the description of the horse in Venus and Adonis has been particularly admired and not without reason round hoofed short-jointed, fetlock shag and long raw debressed tall eyes, small head and nostril wide high crest short ears, straight legs and passing strong thin mane, thick tail broad buttock, tender hide look what a horse should have he did not lack save a proud rider on so proud a back now this inventory of perfection shows great knowledge of the horse and is good matter of fact poetry let the reader but compare it with a speech in the Midsummer Night's Dream where Theseus describes his hounds and their heads are hung with ears that sweep away the morning dew and he will perceive at once what we mean by the difference between Shakespeare's own poetry and that of his plays we prefer the passionate pilgrim very much to the lovers complaint it has been doubted whether the latter poem is Shakespeare's of the sonnets we do not well know what to say the subject of them seems to be somewhat equivocal but many of them are highly beautiful in themselves and interesting as they relate to the state of the personal feelings of the author the following are some of the most striking constancy let those who are in favor with their stars of public honor and proud titles boast whilst die whom fortune of such triumph bars unlooked for joy in that I honor most great princes favorits their fairleaf spread but as the marigold in the son's eye and in themselves their pride lies buried for out of frown they in their glory die the painful warrior famous for fight after a thousand victories once foiled is from the book of honor raised quite and all the rest forgot for which he toiled then happy I that love and unbeloved where I may not remove it love's consolation when in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries and look upon myself and curse my fate wishing me like to one more rich in hope featured like him like him with friends possessed desiring this man's art scope with what I most enjoy content at least yet in these thoughts myself almost despising happily I think on me and then my state like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings novelty my love is strengthened though more weak and seeming I love not less though less the show appear that love is merchandised whose rich is steaming the owner's tongue doth publish everywhere our love was new and then but in the spring when I was want to greet it with my lays as Philemel in summers front doth sing and stops his pipe in growth of riper days not that the summer is less pleasant now than when her mournful hymns did hush the night but that wild music birthens every bow and sweets grown common lose their dear delight therefore like her I sometimes hold my tongue because I would not dull you with my song life's decay that time of year thou mayest in me behold when yellow leaves or none or few do hang upon these bows which shake against the cold bear ruined choirs where late the sweet bird sang in me thou seeest the twilight of such day as after sunset fadeth in the west which by and by black night kick away death's second self that seals up all in rest in me thou seeest the glowing of such fire that on the ashes of his youth doth lie as the death bed whereon it must expire consumed with that which it was nourished by this thou perceivest which makes thy love more strong to love that well which thou must leave ere long in all these as well as many others there is a mild tone of sentiment deep mellow and sustained very different from the crudeness of his earlier poems end of poems and sonnets end of characters of Shakespeare's plays by William Haslett with an introduction by Sir Arthur Cooler Couch