Fidg. Doctor, the effect is wonderful.
Ninety-five, did you say?
Bur. Ninety-five and a fraction. -But wait till you see me on horseback! (Exeunt, arm in arm, L.) MOLIÈRE (altered).
XXVIII. BRUTUS OVER THE BODY OF LUCRETIA.
THUS, thus, my friends, fast as our breaking hearts
Permitted utterance, we have told our story.
And now, to say one word of the imposture,
The mask necessity has made me wear.
When the ferocious malice of your king—
King do I call him?— when the monster, Tarquin,
Slew, as you most of you may well remember,
My father, Marcus, and my elder brother,
Envying at once their virtues and their wealth,
How could I hope a shelter from his power
But in the false face I have worn so long?
Would you know why Brutus has summoned you?
Ask ye
what brings him here? Behold this dagger,
Clotted with gore! Behold that frozen corse!
See where the lost Lucretia sleeps in death!
She was the mark and model of the time;
The mould in which each female grace was formed,
The very shrine and săcristy of virtue!
The worthiest of the worthy! Not the nymph
Who met old Numa in his hallowed walk,
And whispered in his ear her strains divine,
Can I conceive beyond her!
Of vestal virgins bent to her!
You all can witness that when
It was a holiday in Rome.
The young choir
O, my countrymen,
she went forth,
Old age
Forgot its crutch, labor its task; all ran;
And mothers, turning to their daughters, cried,
There, there's Lucretia!" Now look ye where she lies.
That beauteous flower, that innocent, sweet rose,
Torn up by ruthless violence! gone, gone!
Say, would ye seek instruction? would ye seek
What ye should do? Ask ye yon conscious walls,
And they will cry, Revenge!
Ask yon deserted street, where Tullia drove
O'er her dead father's corse; 't will cry, Revenge!
Ask yon er senate-house, whose stones are purple
With human blood, and it will cry, Revenge!
SOLILOQUY OF RICHARD III.
Go to the tomb of Tarquin's murdered wife,
And the poor queen, who loved him as her son
Their unappeased ghosts will shriek, Revenge!
The temples of the gods, the all-viewing heavens,
The gods themselves, shall justify the cry,
And swell the general sound-Revenge! Revenge!
XXIX. - THE USES OF ADVERSITY.
Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam.
The seasons' difference, as, the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say,
This is no flattery; these are counselors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:
And this our life, exempt from public haunts,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
SOLILOQUY OF RICHARD III.
WAS ever woman in this humor wooed?
Was ever woman in this humor won?
I'll have her; but I will not keep her long.
What! I, that killed her husband, and his father,
To take her in her heart's extremest hate;
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of my hatred by;
With God, her conscience, and these bars, against me,
And I no friends to back my suit withal,
But the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her, - all the world to nothing! Ha!
Hath she forgot already that brave prince,
Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,
Stabbed in my angry mood, at Tewksbury?
A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,
Framed in the prodigality of nature,
Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right loyal,—
The spacious world can not again afford.
And will she yet abase her eyes on me,
That cropped the golden prime of this sweet prince,'
And made her widow to a woeful bed?
On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety?
On me, that halt, and am misshapen thus ?
My dukedom to a beggarly den'ier,
I do mistake my person all this while.
Upon my life, she finds, although I can not,
Myself to be a marvelous proper man.
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
And entertain a score or two of tailors,
To study fashions to adorn my body.
Since I am crept in favor with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost.
But, first, I'll turn yon fellow in his grave;
And then return lamenting to my love.
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I
may see my shadow as I pass!
XXXI. - FALCONBRIDGE TO KING JOHN.
ALL Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out
But Dover Castle; London hath received,
Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers.
Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone
To offer service to your enemy;
And wild amazement hurries up and down
The little number of your doubtful friends.
But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?
Be great in act as you have been in thought!
Let not the world see fear and sad distrust
Govern the motions of a kingly eyc.
Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire:
Threaten the threatener, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror. So shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviors from the great,
Grow great by your example, and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution.
Away, and glister like the god of war
When he intendeth to become the field!
Show boldness and aspiring confidence.
What shall they seek the lion in his den,
And fright him there? and make him tremble there?
O, let it not be said! Forage, and run
To meet displeasure further from the doors!
And grapple with him ere he come so nigh.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die, — to sleep, -
No more;
and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die,-to sleep:
To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con'tu-mely
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To and sweat under a weary life,
groan
But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns-puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
XXXIII. - HAMLET'S ADDRESS TO THE PLAYERS.
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. not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod : pray you, avoid it.
Be not too tame, neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, can not but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. O! there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
XXXIV. - SOLILOQUY OF MACBETH.
If it were done when 't is done, then 't were well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come. But, in these cases,
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice
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