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YORK. As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent ou him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious:

Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes
Did scowl on Richard; no man cried: God save him;
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home:
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head;
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off-
His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience-
That had not God, for some strong purpose, steeled
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him.

Fear of Death.

King Richard II. Act V. sc. 2.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

Measure for Measure, Act III. sc. 1.7

Perseverance.

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,.

Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way,

For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where but one goes abreast: Keep, then, the path;
For Emulation hath a thousand sous,

That one by one pursue: if you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost ;-

Or, like a gallant horse, fall'n in first rank,

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;

For Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer; Welcome ever smiles,

And Farewell goes out sighing,// Oh! let not Virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating Time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin—
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt,

More laud than gilt o'erdusted:

The present eye raises the present object.

Troilus and Cressida, Act III. sc. 3.
Mercy.

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and inajesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above the sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then shew likest God's,
When mercy scasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

Merchant of Venice, Act IV. sc. 1.

The Forest of Arden.

DUKE, senior, AMIENS, and other Lords.

DUKE. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp?

Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

The seasons' difference; as, the icy fang.

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind;

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say:

This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I would not change it!

AMIENS. Happy is your grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

Into so quiet and so sweet a style!

DUKE. Come, shall we go and kill us venison ? [

And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should, in their own confines, with forked heads,

Have their round haunches gored.

FIRST LORD. Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;

Y

And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banished you.
To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish and, indeed, my lord.
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE. But what said Jaques ?

Did he not moralise this spectacle?

FIRST LORD. O yes, into a thousand similes.
First, for his weeping in the needless stream-
'Poor deer,' quoth he, thou mak'st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much.' Then, being alone,
Left and abandoned of his velvet friends;

'Tis right,' quoth he; thus misery doth part
The flux of company. Anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,

And never stays to greet him: Ay,' quoth Jaques,
'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion: Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?'

As You Like It, Act II sc. 1

The World Compared to a Stage.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in his nurse's arms:

And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then the soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel;
Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with good cupon lined,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,"

With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shanks; and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble. pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion:

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Ibid. Act II. sc. %.

Oberon's Vision.

OBERON. My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, ou a dolphin's back,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.

PUCK. I remember.

OBE. That very time I saw (but thou couldst not),
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all armed; 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

Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden ineditation, fancy-free.

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon a little western flower

Before, milk-white; now, purple with love's wound-
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

Fetch me that flower; the herb I shewed thee once;
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,

Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb: and be thou here again,
Ere the leviathan can swin a league.

PUCK. I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act. II. sc. 2.

BEN JONSON.

The second name in the dramatic literature of this period has been generally assigned to BEN JONSON, though some may be disposed to claim it for the more Shakspearian genius of Beaumont and Fletcher. Jonson was born nine years after Shakspeare-in 1573-and appeared as a writer for the stage in his twentieth year. His early life was full of hardship and vicissitude. His father, a clergyman in Westminster-a member of a Scottish family from Annandale-died before the poet's birth, and his mother marrying again, Ben was brought from Westminster School, and put to the employment of his stepfather, which was that of a bricklayer. Disliking the occupation, Jons n enlisted as a soldier, and served in the Low Countries. He is reported to have killed one of the enemy in single combat, in the view of both armies, and to have otherwise distinguished himself for his youthful bravery. a poet, Jonson alterwards reverted with pride to his conduct as a soldier. On his return, he is said to have entered St John's College, Cambridge; but his stay there must have been short-if he

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ever was enrolled of the university-for, about the age of twenty, he is found married, and an actor in London. Ben made his debut at a low theatre near Clerkenwell, and, as his opponents afterwards reminded him, failed completely as an actor. At the same time, he was engaged in writing for the stage, either by himself or conjointly with others. He quarrelled with another performer, and on their fighting a duel with swords, Jonson had the misfortune to kill his antagonist, and was severely wounded himself. He was committed to prison on a charge of murder, but was released without a trial. On regaining his liberty, he commenced writing for the stage, and produced, in 1595, his Every Man in his Humour.' The scene was laid in Italy, but the characters and manners depicted in the piece were English; and Jonson afterwards recast the whole, and transferred the scene to England. In its revised form, Every Man in his Humour' was brought out at the Globe Theatre in 1598, and Shakspeare was one of the performers in the play. He had himself produced some of his finest comedies by this time, but Jonson was no imitator of his great rival, who blended a spirit of poetical romance with his comic sketches, and made no attempt to delineate the domestic manners of his countrymen. Jonson opened a new walk in the drama; he felt his strength, and the public cheered him on with its plaudits. Queen Elizabeth patronised the new poet, and ever afterwards he was man of mark and likelihood. In 1599, appeared his Every Man out of his Humour,' a less able performance than its predecessor. 'Cynthia's Revels and the Poetaster' followed, and the fierce rivalry and contention which clouded Jonson's after-life seem to have begun about this time. He had attacked Marston and Dekker, two of his brother-dramatists, in the 'Poetaster.' Dekker replied with spirit in his Satiromastix,' and Ben was silent for two years, 'living upon one Townsend, and scorning the world,' as is recorded in the diary of a contemporary. In 1603, he tried if tragedy had a more kind aspect,' and produced his classic drama of Sejanu.' Shortly after the accession of King James, a comedy called Eastward Hoe' was written conjointly by Jonson, Chapman, and Marston. Some passages in this piece reflected on the Scottish nation; and the matter was represented to the king by one of his courtiersSir James Murray-in so strong a light, that the authors were thrown into prison, and threatened with the loss of their ears and noses. They were not tried; and when Ben was set at liberty, he gave an entertainment to his friends---Selden and Camden being of the number. His mother was present on this joyous occasion, and she produced a paper of poison, which, she said, she intended to have given her son in his liquor, rather than he should submit to personal mutilation and disgrace, and another dose which she intended afterwards to have taken herself. The old lady must, as Whalley remarks, have been more of an antique Roman than a Briton. Jonson's own conduct in this affair was noble and spirited. He had no considerable

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