I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged. You have also in the Nurse the arrogance of ignorance, with the pride of meanness at being connected with a great family. How wonderfully are these low peculiarities con- trasted with a young and pure mind, educated under different circumstances! Another point ought to be mentioned as characteristic of the ignorance of the Nurse : — it is, that in all her re- collections, she assists herself by the remembrance of visual circumstances. Susan and she — God rest all Christian souls! Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall : My lord and you were then at Mantua. When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool. To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug! Shake, quoth the dove-house : 'twas no need, I trow, The Seventh Lecture 425 To bid me trudge. She afterwards goes on with similar visual impressions, so true to the character. On the other hand, look at Shakspeare : where can any character be produced that does not speak the language of nature? Kings or Constables, precisely what they must have said? Where, from observation, could he learn the language proper to Sovereigns, Queens, Noblemen or Generals? But that I love the gentle Desdemona, I would not my unhoused free condition Put into circumscription and confine For the sea's worth. I ask where was Shakspeare to observe such language as this? If he did observe it, it was with the inward eye of meditation upon his own nature : for the time, he became Othello, and spoke as Othello, in such circum- stances, must have spoken. Another remark I may make upon " Romeo and Juliet " is, that in this tragedy the poet is not, as I have hinted, entirely blended with the dramatist, — at least, not in the degree to be afterwards noticed in " Lear," " Hamlet," " Othello," or " Macbeth. We are to remember that Shakspeare, not placed under cir- cumstances of excitement, and only wrought upon by his own vivid and vigorous imagination, writes a language that invariably, and intuitively becomes the condition and position of each character. On the other hand, there is a language not descriptive The Seventh Lecture 427 of passion, nor uttered under the influence of it, which is at the same time poetic, and shows a high and active fancy, as when Capulet says to Paris, — " Such comfort as do lusty young men feel, When well-apparell'd April on the heel Of limping winter treads, even such delight Among fresh female buds, shall you this night Inherit at my house. In my mind, what have often been censured as Shak- speare's conceits are completely justifiable, as belonging to the state, age, or feeling of the individual. O loving hate I O anything, of nothing first created! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! Our prices here! Or visit our site >> how to write a speech about someone More info about: the fall of a city theme characters in white fang biology paper example book review essay personal statement writing services geography paper topics censorship research paper lab report example biology
