Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy by Thomas Lodge
page 20 of 188 (10%)
page 20 of 188 (10%)
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latter is most noteworthy. Hazlitt calls him the only purely
contemplative character Shakespeare ever drew. From the beginning to the end of the play he does absolutely nothing except to think and moralize. Another critic has said, "Shakespeare designed Jaques to be a maker of fine sentiments, a dresser forth in sweet language of the ordinary commonplaces...." It has been suggested,[1] not without some show of reason, that Shakespeare in adapting Lodge's romance for the stage purposely included in the list of _dramatis personae_ a character bearing a strong resemblance to Euphues, the pretended author of the romance. "Like Euphues, Jaques has made false steps in youth, which have somewhat darkened his views of life; like Euphues, he conceals under a veil of sententious satire a real goodness of heart, shown in his action toward Audrey and Touchstone. A traveler, like Euphues, he has a melancholy of his own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and is prepared, like his prototype, to lecture his contemporaries on every theme." [Footnote 1: Seccombe and Allen, "The Age of Shakespeare," Vol. I, p. 119.] Scarcely less significant are the changes that Shakespeare made in the characteristics of the _dramatis personae_. The motive of the elder brother in mistreating the younger he makes envy, not avarice as in the romance, a substitution due to his desire to unify the action by drawing a parallel between the brothers and the dukes. The superiority of Shakespeare's Rosalind to Lodge's delineation of the character has, perhaps, been slightly overestimated. To describe Lodge's Rosalynde as "a colorless being, incapable of entering into the spirit of her part"[1] is really too severe a condemnation. Of course Lodge's heroine does lack the exquisite charm of saucy playfulness coupled |
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