Shakespeare Commentaries, Volume 1Smith, Elder and Company, 1863 |
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Common terms and phrases
according action actor æsthetic appears beauty Ben Jonson Benedick calls character chronicle circumstances comedy Comedy of Errors comic contrast curse death deeds delight drama Dream Duke England English excited exhibited expression fairies Falstaff father favour fear feeling fool Gentlemen of Verona Goethe hand happiness heart Henry Henry IV Henry VI hero honour human humour idea inner Italian jests Juliet king knows learned Love's Labour's Lost lovers manner matter merry mind moral nature noble once outward passages passion perceive Percy Pericles period piece Plautus play poems poet poet's poetic poetry political possession Prince racter refined relation Richard Richard II Romeo Romeo and Juliet says scene self-love Shake Shakespeare side sonnets soul speare speare's spirit stage stands style taste Thomas Heywood thought throne Titus Andronicus tragedy tragic true truth weak whilst whole wooing words youth
Popular passages
Page 443 - Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at the stake.
Page 264 - That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Page 477 - In peace there's nothing- so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears. Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood...
Page 653 - O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Page 135 - ... twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.
Page 644 - The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing ; My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting ? And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, And so my patent back again is swerving. Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking; So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, Comes home again, on better judgment making. Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, In sleep...
Page 50 - All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. CXXX My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips...
Page 134 - Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Page 426 - O, if this were seen, The happiest youth, — viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue, Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
Page 637 - Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising...