The Age of Shakespeare eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 244 pages of information about The Age of Shakespeare.

The Age of Shakespeare eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 244 pages of information about The Age of Shakespeare.
Hebraist, and so far from that of a Hellenist or Latinist of the Renascence, that we recognize in this great poet one more of those Englishmen of genius on whom the direct or indirect influence of the Hebrew Bible has been actually as great as the influences of the country and the century in which they happened to be born.  The single-hearted fury of unselfish and devoted indignation which animates every line of his satire is more akin to the spirit of Ezekiel or Isaiah than to the spirit of Juvenal or Persius:  though the fierce literality of occasional detail, the prosaic accuracy of implacable and introspective abhorrence, may seem liker the hard Roman style of impeachment by photography than the great Hebrew method of denunciation by appeal.  But the fusion of sarcastic realism with imaginative passion produces a compound of such peculiar and fiery flavor as we taste only from the tragic chalice of Tourneur or of Shakespeare.  The bitterness which serves but as a sauce or spice to the meditative rhapsodies of Marston’s heroes or of Webster’s villains is the dominant quality of the meats and wines served up on the stage which echoes to the cry of Vindice or of Timon.  But the figure of Tourneur’s typic hero is as distinct in its difference from the Shakespearean figure which may possibly have suggested it as in its difference from the Shakespearean figure which it may not impossibly have suggested.  There is perhaps too much play made with skulls and cross-bones on the stage of Cyril Tourneur:  he cannot apparently realize the fact that they are properties of which a thoughtful poet’s use should be as temperate and occasional as Shakespeare’s:  but the graveyard meditations of Hamlet, perfect in dramatic tact and instinct, seem cool and common and shallow in sentiment when set beside the intensity of inspiration which animates the fitful and impetuous music of such passages as these: 

                              Here’s an eye
   Able to tempt a great man—­to serve God;
   A pretty hanging lip, that has forgot now to dissemble. 
   Methinks this mouth should make a swearer tremble,
   A drunkard clasp his teeth, and not undo ’em
   To suffer wet damnation to run through ’em. 
   Here’s a cheek keeps her color let the wind go whistle;
   Spout, rain, we fear thee not:  be hot or cold,
   All’s one with us; and is not he absurd,
   Whose fortunes are upon their faces set
   That fear no other God but wind and wet?

   Hippolito. Brother, y’ave spoke that right;
   Is this the face that living shone so bright?

Vindice. The very same.  And now methinks I could e’en chide myself For doting on her beauty, though her death Shall be revenged after no common action.  Does the silk-worm expend her yellow labors For thee? for thee does she undo herself?  Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships For the poor benefit of a bewitching minute?[1] Why does yon fellow
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The Age of Shakespeare from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.