What We Really Know about Shakespeare |
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Author:
| Dall, Caroline Wells Healey |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-65542-2 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2009 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $14.14 |
Book Description:
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PERSONAL CHAEACTEE OP SHAKESPEARE. Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. Shakespeake. Mr. Halliwell-phillipps follows the example of other authors in constantly reiterating that nothing which is to be found in Shakespeare's Plays can be considered as in any degree indicative of his personal...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PERSONAL CHAEACTEE OP SHAKESPEARE. Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. Shakespeake. Mr. Halliwell-phillipps follows the example of other authors in constantly reiterating that nothing which is to be found in Shakespeare's Plays can be considered as in any degree indicative of his personal character. I cannot for one moment admit this. I am well aware that a very bad man may write eloquently in defence of virtue, but the how he writes of it will inevitably betray his want of sympathy with it. It does not trouble me to know that after a merry bout with the sippers of Bidford, Shakespeare might have found himself obliged to pass a night under the old tree on the high-road, which was called, until its decayed condition made it necessary to remove it, Shakespeare's canopy. Excessive drinking was hardly considered in his time a bad habit, certainly it was by very few regarded as a vice; but if this anecdote be true, 98 PERSONAL CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEAKE. still we know from all the evidences of his life that Shakespeare was not a drunkard. Honesty and thrift distinguished him, as every intelligent reader of the advice of Polonius to Laertes would expect. As to hisjpersonal reserve and chastity, united as they must have been to a natural love of fun and a most genial disposition, we find the proof of it in the exquisite sensitiveness which he shows to those traits in his women. George Gordon Byron could never have been the creator of Cordelia, Portia, or Miranda. I think no author of his time could have treated the voluptuous story of Venus and Adonis as Shakespeare treated it. All through the hot air of its passion a fresh, pure breeze of something higher trembles, and I am astonished that more has not been made of this point by cr...