The Works of William Shakespeare: Macbeth. Hamlet. King Lear. Othello. Antony and Cleopatra. Cymbeline

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Chapman and Hall, 1866

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Page 122 - I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul ; freeze thy young blood ; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine...
Page 154 - And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them : for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some" quantity of barren spectators to laugh too ; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered : that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 153 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to the action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature : for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Page 146 - I'll leave you till night; you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord ! [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Giiildenstern. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' ye :—Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and 'peasant slave am I ! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd ; Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit ? and...
Page 146 - With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, And cleave the general ear with horrid speech; Make mad the guilty, and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Page 521 - Burn'd on the water ; the poop was beaten gold, Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar'd all description ; she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, O'er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature ; on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,...
Page 400 - May the winds blow till they have waken'd death! And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas Olympus-high and duck again as low As hell's from heaven! If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear, My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.
Page 152 - Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Page 322 - Come on, sir; here's the place: — stand still. — How fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire — dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond...
Page 261 - This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit of our own behaviour, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars : as if we were villains by necessity ; fools by heavenly compulsion ; knaves, thieves, and treachers,* by spherical predominance ; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on...

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