Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: With an Account of His Reputation at Various Periods

Front Cover
C. Scribner's Sons, 1901 - 449 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 304 - In sooth, I know not why I am so sad : It wearies me ; you say it wearies you ; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn ; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me. That I have much ado to know myself.
Page 109 - THE stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies ; but in life it doth much mischief — sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury.
Page 4 - Muses' anvil; turn the same (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame, Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born.
Page 243 - But what we gained in skill we lost in strength. Our builders were with want of genius curst; The second temple was not like the first; Till you, the best Vitruvius, come at length, Our beauties equal, but excel our strength.
Page 294 - It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale : look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east. Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops : I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Page 4 - Yet must I not give nature all; thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and, that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses...
Page 21 - Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster, with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave. While in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field...
Page 347 - As a general statement, this is quite true, and it is to be hoped that, as it has been in the past, so it will be in the future.
Page 31 - First, if it be objected, that what I publish is no true poem, in the strict laws of time, I confess it : as also in the want of a proper chorus ; whose habit and moods are such and so difficult, as not any, whom I have seen, since the ancients, no, not they who have most presently affected laws, have yet come in the way of.
Page 20 - For where the stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day, there is both many days and places, inartificially [unskilfully] imagined.

Bibliographic information