Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth

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Wiley & Putnam, 1845 - 218 pages

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Page 114 - Whose midnight revels, by a forest side, Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course ; they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Page 178 - This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the school-men, who, having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading f but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning...
Page 17 - Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men May read strange matters : — To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it.
Page 35 - I'll have them read me strange philosophy And tell the secrets of all foreign kings; I'll have them wall all Germany with brass, And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg...
Page 187 - ... tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt: ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.
Page 142 - Queen ; At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept, And from thenceforth those graces were not seen, For they this Queen attended ; in whose stead Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Page 184 - ... of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons: one face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs.
Page 130 - I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old. Back and side go bare, go bare; Both foot and hand go cold; But, belly, God send thee good ale enough.. Whether it be new or old!
Page 37 - Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn'd perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come; Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
Page 16 - Yet all these were when no man did them know, Yet have from wisest ages hidden been : And later times things more unknown shall show. Why then should witless man so much misween That nothing is but that which he hath seen?

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