Essays on Shakespeare

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Macmillan and Company, 1874 - 379 pages
 

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Page 103 - Nay, take my life and all ; pardon not that : You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house ; you take my life, When you do take the means whereby I live.
Page 50 - But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, Than that, which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.
Page 23 - That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Page 88 - I learn'd in Florence how to kiss my hand, Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog, And duck as low as any bare-foot friar...
Page 79 - Give me the merchants of the Indian mines, That trade in metal of the purest mould; The wealthy Moor, that in the eastern rocks Without control can pick his riches up, And in his house heap pearl like pebble stones, Receive them free, and sell them by the weight!
Page 21 - Here is rhyme not empty of reason. This we were bid to credit from our poet, Whose true scope, if you would know it, In all his poems still hath been this measure, To mix profit with your pleasure; And not as some, whose throats their envy failing, Cry hoarsely, all he writes is railing...
Page 6 - Be able to discourse, to write, to paint, But principal, as Plato holds, your music, And so does wise Pythagoras, I take it, Is your true rapture: when there is concent In face, in voice, and clothes: and is, indeed, Our sex's chiefest ornament.
Page 88 - Christian is ? if you prick us, do we not bleed ? if you tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility ? revenge ; If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example ? why, revenge. The villany, you teach me, I will execute ; and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.
Page 79 - May serve, in peril of calamity, To ransom great kings from captivity. This is the ware wherein consists my wealth; And thus, methinks, should men of judgment frame Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade, And as their wealth increaseth, so inclose Infinite riches in a little room.
Page 55 - If we shadows have offended. Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend...

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