Specimens of English dramatic poets

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J.M. Dent & Company, 1903

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Page 68 - Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep; A quiet resting from all jealousy, A thing we all pursue. I know, besides, It is but giving over of a game That must be lost.
Page 95 - I sit by and sing, Or gather rushes to make many a ring For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love, How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes She took eternal fire that never dies ; How she...
Page 72 - My soul from other lands to thee shall soar. Thy else almighty beauty cannot move Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness ; them hast read How roughly he in pieces shivered Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved.
Page 12 - It shall not be a house of convertites ; My mind shall make it honester to me Than the Pope's palace, and more peaceable Than thy soul, though thou art a cardinal.
Page 106 - A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned ; so that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy.
Page 206 - Urswick, command the Dukeling, and these fellows, To Digby the Lieutenant of the Tower : With safety let them be convey'd to London. It is our pleasure, no uncivil outrage, Taunts, or abuse, be suffer'd to their persons : They shall meet fairer law than they deserve.
Page 137 - Fletcher's ideas moved slow ; his versification, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at every turn ; he lays line upon line, making up one after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we see their junctures. Shakspeare mingles every thing, runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and metaphors ; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and clamorous for disclosure.
Page 16 - Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm, But keep the wolf far thence that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
Page 24 - Which tradesmen use in the city.; their false lights Are to rid bad wares off: and I must tell you, If you will know where breathes a complete man, (I speak it without flattery) turn your eyes, And progress through yourself. Ant. Were there nor heaven nor hell, I should be honest : I have long serv'd virtue, And ne'er ta'en wages of her.
Page 17 - Miserable creature! If thou persist in this, 'tis damnable. Dost thou imagine, thou canst slide on blood, And not be tainted with a shameful fall ? Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree, Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves, And yet to prosper ? Instruction to thee Comes like sweet showers to o'er-harden'd ground ; They wet, but pierce not deep.

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