Shakespeare & the Universities, and Other Studies in Elizabethan Drama

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B. Blackwell, 1923 - Drama - 272 pages

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Page 64 - Hanmer, the Oxford editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature for such studies. He had, what is the first requisite to emendatory criticism, that intuition by which the poet's intention is immediately discovered, and that dexterity of intellect which despatches its work by the easiest means.
Page 14 - Historic of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke By William Shake-speare. As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London : as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where.
Page 67 - I have this to say : the language of the age is never the language of poetry ; except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose. Our poetry, on the contrary, has a language peculiar to itself ; to which almost every one, that has written, has added something by enriching it with foreign idioms and derivatives : nay sometimes words of their own composition or invention. Shakespeare and Milton have been great creators this way ; and...
Page 68 - But they are infinite: and our language not being a settled thing (like the French) has an undoubted right to words of an hundred years old, provided antiquity have not rendered them unintelligible.
Page 257 - Whose written deuises fair excell most of the sonets, and cantos in print. His Amaryllis, & Sir Walter Raleighs Cynthia, how fine & sweet inuentions? Excellent matter of emulation for Spencer, Constable, France, Watson, Daniel, Warner, Chapman, Siluester, Shakespeare, & the rest of owr florishing metricians.
Page 70 - He remembered perhaps enough of his school-boy learning to put the Hig, tiag, hog, into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans ; and might pick up in the writers of the time, or the course of his conversation, a familiar phrase or two of French or Italian : but his studies were most demonstratively confined to nature and his own language.
Page 22 - Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace : but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for 't : these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages— so they call them— that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.
Page 63 - But, by inserting his emendations, whether invented or borrowed, into the page, without any notice of varying copies, he has appropriated the labour of his predecessors, and made his own edition of little authority. His confidence indeed, both in himself and others, was too great; he supposes...
Page 65 - Those Sibyl-leaves, the sport of every wind, (For poets ever were a careless kind) By thee dispos'd no farther toil demand, But, just to Nature, own thy forming hand. So spread o'er Greece th...
Page 46 - He was most princely : ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he...

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