Characters of Shakespeare's Plays eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 337 pages of information about Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 337 pages of information about Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.
in his sudden advancement.  ’I am Christophero Sly, call not me honour nor lordship.  I ne’er drank sack in my life:  and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef; ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet, nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.—­What, would you make me mad?  Am not I Christophero Sly, old Sly’s son of Burtonheath, by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker?  Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying’st knave in Christendom.’

This is honest.  ‘The Slies are no rogues’, as he says of himself.  We have a great predilection for this representative of the family; and what makes us like him the better is, that we take him to be of kin (not many degrees removed) to Sancho Panza.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

This is a play as full of genius as it is of wisdom.  Yet there is an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it.  The height of moral argument’ which the author has maintained in the intervals of passion or blended with the more powerful impulses of nature, is hardly surpassed in any of his plays.  But there is in general a want of passion; the affections are at a stand; our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions.  The only passion which influences the story is that of Angelo; and yet he seems to have a much greater passion for hypocrisy than for his mistress.  Neither are we greatly enamoured of Isabella’s rigid chastity, though she could not act otherwise than she did.  We do not feel the same confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good’ at another’s expense, as if it had been out to some less disinterested trial.  As to the Duke, who makes a very imposing and mysterious stage-character, he is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state; more tenacious of his own character than attentive to the feelings and apprehensions of others.  Claudio is the only person who feels naturally; and yet he is placed in circumstances of distress which almost preclude the wish for his deliverance.  Mariana is also in love with Angelo, whom we hate.  In this respect, there may be said to be a general system of cross-purposes between the feelings of the different characters and the sympathy of the reader or the audience.  This principle of repugnance seems to have reached its height in the character of Master Barnardine, who not only sets at defiance the opinions of others, but has even thrown off all self-regard,—­’one that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s

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Characters of Shakespeare's Plays from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.