Biographia Dramatica: pt.1. Authors and Actors: A-H

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Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1812 - Dramatists, English

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Page 517 - The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates PROVING THAT IT IS LAWFUL, AND HATH BEEN HELD SO THROUGH ALL AGES, FOR ANY WHO HAVE THE POWER TO CALL TO ACCOUNT A TYRANT, OR WICKED KING, AND AFTER DUE CONVICTION TO DEPOSE AND PUT HIM TO DEATH, IF THE ORDINARY MAGISTRATE HAVE NEGLECTED OR DENIED TO DO IT.
Page 416 - But he has done his robberies so openly that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
Page 416 - In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him ; but something of art was wanting to the drama, till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions ; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such an height.
Page 416 - If there was any fault in his language, it was that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially.
Page 416 - As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it.
Page 417 - Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.
Page 567 - 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 skyey influences) That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict.
Page 501 - Seven years, My Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms or was repulsed from your door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement or one smile of favour.
Page 699 - Tarlton before they would go to the queen, and he was their usher to prepare their advantageous access unto her. In a word, he told the queen more of her faults than most of her chaplains, and cured her melancholy better than all of her physicians. Much of his merriment lay in his very looks and actions, according to the epitaph written upon him: Hie situs est cujus poterat vox, actio, vultus, Ex Heraclito reddere Democritum.
Page 413 - Here was deposited, the mortal part of a man, who feared GOD, but not death; and maintained independence, but sought not riches ; who thought none below him, but the base and unjust, none above him, but the wise and virtuous...