Shakespeare and the Modern Stage: With Other Essays

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C. Scribner's Sons, 1906 - Performing Arts - 251 pages

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Page 186 - A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man. Any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.
Page 169 - There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out...
Page 160 - I'll begin it, — Ding, dong, bell. All. Ding, dong, bell. Bass. So may the outward shows be least themselves : The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil ? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text...
Page 162 - The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place ? Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark, what discord follows...
Page 46 - 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 - Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings; It is an attribute to God himself, And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.
Page 155 - Lear. What, art mad ? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears : see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
Page 45 - Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Page 50 - Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou are a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give.
Page 20 - O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention ! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene...

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