Shakespere: A Critical Biography and an Estimate of the Facts, Fancies, Forgeries, and Fabrications, Regarding His Life and Works, which Have Appeared in Remote and Recent Literature

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Houlston and Wright, 1861 - 123 pages

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Page 120 - The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give.
Page 64 - Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Fool'd by those rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay ? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge ? Is this thy body's end ? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ; Within be fed, without...
Page 31 - THE love I dedicate to your lordship is without end ; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being part in all I have, devoted yours.
Page 30 - I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour.
Page 36 - Take the instant way ; For honour travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast : keep then the path ; For emulation hath a thousand sons That one by one pursue : if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an enter'd tide they all rush by And leave you hindmost...
Page 118 - ... stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them : even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.
Page 61 - Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness ! This is the state of man ; to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him : The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ; And,— when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening, — nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.
Page 118 - THIS Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut...
Page 120 - From thence to honour thee, I would not seek For names : but call forth thund'ring ^Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread And shake a stage: or when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Page 118 - His mind and hand went together ; and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.

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