]




ACT III.

SCENE I.--KING ARTHUR'S _Palace_.


[1] _Ghost (solus)_. Hail! ye black horrors of midnight's
midnoon'
Ye fairies, goblins, bats, and screech-owls, hail!
And, oh! ye mortal watchmen, whose hoarse throats
Th' immortal ghosts dread croakings counterfeit,
All hail!--Ye dancing phantoms, who, by day,
Are some condemn'd to fast, some feast in fire,
Now play in churchyards, skipping o'er the graves,
To the [2]loud music of the silent bell,
All hail!

[Footnote 1: Of all the particulars in which the modern stage falls
short of the ancient, there is none so much to be lamented as the
great scarcity of ghosts Whence this proceeds I will not presume to
determine Some are of opinion that the moderns are unequal to that
sublime language which a ghost ought to speak One says, ludicrously,
that ghosts are out of fashion, another, that they are properer for
comedy, forgetting, I suppose, that Aristotle hath told us that a
ghost is the soul of tragedy, for so I render the [Greek text:
psychae o muythos taes tragodias], which M. Dacier, amongst others,