Vulgar words in A Study of Shakespeare (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 102 ~ ~ ~
It was bad enough while theorists of this breed confined themselves to the suggestion of a possible partnership with Fletcher, a possible interpolation by Jonson; but in the descent from these to the alleged adulteration of the text by Middleton and Rowley we have surely sounded the very lowest depth of folly attainable by the utmost alacrity in sinking which may yet be possible to the bastard brood of Scriblerus.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 313 ~ ~ ~
In the one play our memory turns next to the figures of Arthur and the Bastard, in the other to those of Wolsey and his king: the residue in either case is made up of outlines more lightly and slightly drawn.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 321 ~ ~ ~
As far beyond the reach of any but his maker's hand is the pattern of a perfect English warrior, set once for all before the eyes of all ages in the figure of the noble Bastard.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 349 ~ ~ ~
But the character of the Bastard, clear and simple as broad sunlight though it be, has in it other features than this single and beautiful likeness of frank young manhood; his love of country and loathing of the Church that would bring it into subjection are two sides of the same national quality that has made and will always make every Englishman of his type such another as he was in belief and in unbelief, patriot and priest-hater; and no part of the design bears such witness to the full-grown perfection of his creator's power and skill as the touch that combines and fuses into absolute unity of concord the high and various elements of faith in England, loyalty to the wretched lord who has made him knight and acknowledged him kinsman, contempt for his abjection at the foul feet of the Church, abhorrence of his crime and constancy to his cause for something better worth the proof of war than his miserable sake who hardly can be roused, even by such exhortation as might put life and spirit into the dust of dead men's bones, to bid his betters stand and strike in defence of the country dishonoured by his reign.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 427 ~ ~ ~
From this play Shakespeare can have got neither hint nor help towards the execution of his own; the crude rough sketch of the Bastard as he brawls and swaggers through the long length of its scenes is hardly so much as the cast husk or chrysalid of the noble creature which was to arise and take shape for ever at the transfiguring touch of Shakespeare.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 902 ~ ~ ~
For this brutal and brutish buffoon--I am speaking of Shakespeare's Thersites--has no touch of humour in all his currish composition: Shakespeare had none as nature has none to spare for such dirty dogs as those of his kind or generation.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,119 ~ ~ ~
The opening speech is spoken by one Lodowick, a parasite of the King's; who would appear, like Francois Villon under the roof of his Fat Madge, to have succeeded in reconciling the professional duties--may I not say, the generally discordant and discrepant offices?--of a poet and a pimp.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,150 ~ ~ ~
With the disappearance of the poetic pimp and the entrance of the unsuspecting Countess, the style rises yet again--and really, this time, much to the author's credit.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,715 ~ ~ ~
To such an assertion from the insolent organs of pretentious ignorance I should be content with the simple rejoinder that Shakespeare most assuredly did nothing whatever of the sort; but to return such an answer in the present case would be to write myself down--and that in company to which I should most emphatically object--as something very decidedly more--and worse--than an ass.