Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama

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Smith, Elder & Company, 1900 - English drama - 551 pages
"A critical inquiry into the condition of the English drama" -- Preface.

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Page 42 - Why this is hell, nor am I out of it : Think'st thou that I who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being deprived of everlasting bliss ? O Faustus!
Page 345 - I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaimed their malefactions ; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ.
Page 411 - Full little knowest thou that hast not tried What hell it is in suing long to bide ; To lose good days that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent, To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow, To have thy prince's grace yet want her Peers...
Page 492 - O, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars...
Page 67 - Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam...
Page 474 - THE measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin — rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre...
Page 255 - But He, her fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace ; She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
Page 215 - ... as well for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them, during our pleasure.
Page 308 - How would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding...
Page 38 - 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...

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