The Man Shakespeare by Frank Harris
page 52 of 447 (11%)
page 52 of 447 (11%)
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Hamlet-Shakespeare affects:
"The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good: the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair." This Duke plays philosopher, too, in and out of season as Hamlet did: he says to Isabella: "Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful," generalizing his praise even to a woman. Again, when Pompey is arrested, he passes from the individual to the general, exclaiming: "That we were all as some would seem to be, Free from our faults, as from faults seeming free." Then follows the interesting talk with Lucio, who awakens the slightly pompous Duke to natural life with his contempt. When Lucio tells the Duke, who is disguised as a friar, that he (the Duke) was a notorious loose-liver--"he had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service"--the Duke merely denies the soft impeachment; but when Lucio tells him that the Duke is not wise, but "a very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow," the Duke bursts out, "either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking: ... Let him but be testimonied in his own bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier," which recalls Hamlet's "Friends, scholars, |
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