Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors!... They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder, with their brazen throats.
(Acte IV, scène ii.)
156: Comparez M. de Pourceaugnac, dans Molière.
157: Polichinelle dans le Malade imaginaire, Géronte dans Scapin.
158: L'École des Femmes, Tartuffe, le Misanthrope, le Bourgeois gentilhomme, le Malade imaginaire, Georges Dandin.
159: Analogue aux Fourberies de Scapin.
160: Analogue aux Fâcheux.
161: Analogue aux Précieuses.
162: Analogue aux pièces de Destouches.
163: Entendez la reine Élisabeth.
164:
My light-feather-heel'd coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him and can whisper a light message to a loose wench, with some round volubility? one that sweeps the gods' drinking room every morning and set the cushions in order again, which they threw one at another's head over night?
(Cynthia's Revels, acte I, sc. i.)
165:
See, see the mourning fount, whose springs
Th' untimely fate of that too beauteous boy weep yet,
That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature,
Who, now transform'd into this drooping flower,
Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream....
Witness thy youth's dear sweets here spent untasted,
Like a fair taper with his own flame wasted!...
But with thy water let this curse remain,
As an inseparate plague, that who but taste
A drop thereof, may with the instant touch,
Grow dotingly enamour'd on themselves.
(Ibid.)
166:
But knowing myself an essence too sublimated and refined by travel.... able to speak the mere extraction of language, one that was your first that ever enrich'd his country with the true laws of duello, whose optics have drunk the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen prince's courts where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred forty and five ladies, all nobly, if not princely descended.... In all so happy, as even admiration herself doth seem to fasten her kisses upon me.
(Ibid.)
167:
O vanity,
How are thy painted beauties doted on,
By light and empty idiots! How pursued
With open and extended appetite!
How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,
Raised on their toes to catch thy airy forms,
Still turning giddy, till they reel like drunkards,
That buy the merry madness of an hour,
With the long irksomeness of following time!
(Ibid.)
168:
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep....
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver,
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever.
(Acte V, sc. iii.)
169: A celebration of Charis. Miscellaneous poems.
170: Masque of Beauty.
171:
Earine,
Who had her very being and her name,
With the first knots or buddings of the spring,
Born with the primrose, or the violet
Or earliest roses blown; when Cupid smiled,
And Venus led the Graces out to dance,
And all the flowers and sweets in Nature's lap
Leap'd out, and made their solemn conjuration
To last but while she lived.
(Acte I, sc. ii.)
But she, as chaste as was her name, Earine,
Died undeflower'd; and now her sweet soul hovers
Here in the air above us.
(Acte III, sc. i.)
172: On pourra suivre cette idée en psychologie: la perception extérieure, la mémoire sont des hallucinations vraies, etc. Ceci est le point de vue analytique: à un autre point de vue, au contraire, la raison, la santé sont des buts naturels.
173: Voy. Spinosa et D. Stewart: La conception à son état naturel est croyance.
174: Halliwell's Life of Shakspeare.
175: Né en 1564, mort en 1616. Il retouche des pièces dès 1591. La première pièce qui soit de lui tout entière est de 1593. (Payne Collier.)
176: M. Halliwell et d'autres commentateurs tâchent de prouver qu'à cette époque les fiançailles préalables constituaient le vrai mariage; que ces fiançailles avaient eu lieu, et qu'ainsi il n'y a rien d'irrégulier dans la conduite de Shakspeare.
177: Halliwell, 123.
178: Toutes ces anecdotes sont des traditions, et partant plus ou moins douteuses; mais les autres faits sont authentiques.
179: 1589. Termes d'un document conservé. Il est nommé avec Burbadge et Greene.
180:
Alas; 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts; sold cheap what is most dear.
181: Sonnets 91 et 111. Hamlet, III, scène ii. Plusieurs des paroles d'Hamlet sont moins bien placées dans la bouche d'un prince que dans celle de l'auteur. Comparez le sonnet: Tired with all these; etc.
182:
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my out-cast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope;
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd...,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in those thoughts myself almost despising.
183:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
184:
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means, which public manners breed.
185: Anecdote écrite en 1602, d'après l'acteur Tooley.
186: William, nom de Shakspeare.
187: Le comte de Southampton avait dix-neuf ans quand Shakspeare lui dédia son Adonis.
188: Voy. les Amours des dieux, au château de Blenheim, par Titien.
189:
With blindfold fury she begins to forage,
Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil.
190:
And, glutton-like, she feeds, yet never filleth;
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,
Paying what ransom the insulter willeth,
Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high
That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.
Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Lives with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone,
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuff'd, or prey be gone;
Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin,
And where she ends she doth anew begin.
191:
Lo, hear the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts on up high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast,
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.
192: Comparez les premières poésies d'Alfred de Musset, Contes d'Italie et d'Espagne.
193: Crawley, cité par Chasles, Études sur Shakspeare.
194:
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies.
195:
Those lips of thine
That have profan'd their scarlet ornaments,
And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents.
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee.
196: Voy. la fin de Gérard de Nerval.
197:
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
Which, like a canker in a fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
198:
Elle était brune, ni belle, ni jeune, et mal famée. (Sonnets.)
199:
From you I have been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Had put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
200:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose.
201:
The forward violet thus I did chide:
«Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride,
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.»
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair:
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair.
A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,
And to this robbery had annex'd thy breath;
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.
202:
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Who, like two spirits, do suggest me still.
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman, colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side.
.... Love is too young to know what conscience is....
For thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason....
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
203: Cette interprétation nouvelle des Sonnets est due aux conjectures ingénieuses et solides de M. Chasles.
204: Love is my sin. (142e sonnet.)
205: Miranda, Desdémona, Viola. Premières paroles du duc dans la Nuit des Rois:
DUKE.
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.—
That strain again;—it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing, and giving odour.—Enough, no more,
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soever,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute, so full of shapes is fancy,
That it alone is high-fantastical.
206: Témoignages de Jonson et de Chettle. Melliferous, honey-tongued. Voy. Halliwell, 183.
207:
Haply I think of thee,—and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate.
208:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest....
209:
No longer mourn for me, when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
210: Le rôle où il excellait était celui du fantôme dans Hamlet.
211: In his own conceit the only shake-scene in the country.
212: «He was a respectable man.—A good word: what does it mean?—He kept a gig.» Procès anglais.
213: Voy. ses portraits et surtout son buste.
214: Voy. surtout ses dernières pièces: Tempest, Twelfth night.
215: Hamlet, III, scène iv.
216:
The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from 'noyance; but much more
That spirit, upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone, but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it, with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis'd and adjoin'd, which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
217:
A station like the herald Mercury
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.
218:
Such an act, that blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue, hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul; and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: Heaven's face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought sick at the act.
219: C'est pourquoi, aux yeux d'un écrivain du dix-septième siècle, le style de Shakspeare est le plus obscur, le plus prétentieux, le plus pénible, le plus barbare et le plus absurde qui fut jamais.
220: Le Dictionnaire de Shakspeare est le plus abondant de tous. Il comprend environ 15000 mots, et celui de Milton 8000.
221: Voy. dans Hamlet le discours de Laërtes à sa sœur, et de Polonius à Laërtes. Le style est hors de la situation, et on voit là à nu le procédé naturel et obligé de Shakspeare.
222: Winter's Tale, acte I, scène i.
223: Il y a ici un calembour intraduisible.
224:
What, hast smutch'd thy nose?—
They say it's a copy out of mine. Come, captain,
We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain:...
Come, sir page, look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain!
Most dear'st! my collop! Looking on the lines
Of my boy's face, methought, I did recoil
Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled
Lest it should bite its master....
How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman:...
My brother, are you so fond of your prince,
As we do seem to be of ours?
225:
POLYXENES.
If at home, sir,
He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter:
Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all!
He makes a July's day short as December;
And, with his varying childness, cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood.
226:
How now! how now, chop-logic? What is this?
Proud,—and I thank you,—and I thank you not;—
And yet not proud:—mistress minion, you,
Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds;
But settle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
Out, you green sick carrion! out, you baggage,
You tallow-face!
JULIET.
Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
CAPULET.
Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!
I tell thee what,—get thee to church o'Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face:
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
My fingers itch....
LADY CAPULET.
You are too hot.
CAPULET.
God's bread! it makes me mad. Day, night, early,
At home, abroad, alone, in company,
Waking, or sleeping, still my care hath been
To have her match'd: and having now provided
A gentleman of princely parentage;
Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,
Stuff'd (as they say) with honourable parts,
Proportion'd as one's heart could wish a man,—
And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
To answer, "I'll not wed,—I cannot love,—
I am too young,—I pray you pardon me;—"
But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you:
Graze where you will, you shall not house with me;
Look to't, think on 't, I do not use to jest.
Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:
An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die i' the streets,
For, by my soul, I'll never acknowledge thee.
227: King Henri VIII, acte II, scène iii, etc.
228: Much ado about nothing. Voy. la façon dont Henri V fait la cour à Catherine de France.
229:
BENEDICT.
I will go to the antipodes... rather than bold three words' conference with this harpy.... I cannot endure my lady Tongue.
DON PEDRO.
You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.
BEATRICE.
So I would not he should do me, my lord, but I should prove the mother of fools.
230:
He call'd her whore; a beggar, in his drink,
Could not have laid such terms upon his callet.
231: Henri VI, 2e part., acte IV, scène iii.
232:
JAKE CADE.
There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny.... There shall be no money: all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in our livery.
And here, sitting upon London-stone, I charge and command, that, of the city's cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing but claret-wine this first year of our reign.... Away, burn all the records of the realm; my mouth shall be the parliament of England.... And henceforth all things shall be held in common.... What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Monsieur Basimecu, the dauphin of France?
The proudest peer of the realm shall not wear a head on his shoulders unless he pays me tribute; there shall not be a maid married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they have it. (Re-enter rebels with the heads of Lord Say and his son-in-law.) But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved well when they were alive.
233:
Fellows, hold the chair: Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot.
(Gloster is held down in the chair, while Cornwall plucks out one of his eyes, and sets his foot on it.)
GLOSTER.
He that will think to live till he be old,
Give me some help:—O cruel! O ye gods!
REGAN.
One side will mock another; the other too.
CORNWALL.
If you see vengeance....
SERVANT.
Hold your hand, my lord.
I have serv'd you ever since I was a child:
But better service have I never done you,
Than now to bid you hold.
CORNWALL.
How now, you dog?
SERVANT.
If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
I'd shake it in this quarrel: What do you mean?
CORNWALL.
My villain! (Draws, and runs at him.)
SERVANT.
Nay, then come down, and take the chance of anger.
(Draws; they fight; Cornwall is wounded.)
REGAN.
Give me thy sword. (To another servant.)
A peasant stand up thus!
(Snatches a sword, comes behind, and stabs him.)
SERVANT.
O, I am slain! My lord! you have one eye left
To see some mischief in him:—O! (Dies.)
CORNWALL.
Lest it see more, prevent it:—Out, vile jelly:
Where is thy lustre now?
(Tears out Gloster's other eye, and throws it on the ground.)
GLOSTER.
All dark and comfortless. Where's my son?...
REGAN.
Go, thrust him out at gates, and let him smell
His way to Dover....
234:
CALIBAN.
Beat him enough: after a little time,
I'll beat him too.
Pry thee, my king, be quiet: seest thou here,
This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter:
Do that good mischief, which may make this island
Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,
For aye thy foot-licker.
235:
I am not warm yet: let us fight again.
Voyez acte III, scène II, la plaisante façon dont les généraux poussent en avant cette vaillante brute.
236:
CLOTEN.
His garment? Now, the devil,—
IMOGEN.
To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently.
CLOTEN.
You have abus'd me? His meanest garment?
I'll be reveng'd:—his meanest garment, well.
With that suit upon my back, will I ravish her: First, kill him and in her eyes; there shall she see my valour, which will then be a torment to her contempt. He, on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his dead body,—and when my lust has dined,—(which, as I say, to vex her, I will execute in the clothes that she so praised) to the court I'll knock her back, foot her home again.
237: Roméo et Juliette.
238:
NURSE.
'Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
LADY CAPULET.
She's not fourteen.
NURSE.
Come Lammas eve at night, shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she,—God rest all Christian souls!—
Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me: But, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was wean'd—I never shall forget it,—
Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug.
Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall,
My lord and you were then at Mantua:—
Nay, I do bear a brain:—but, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool!
To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug.
Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge.
And since that time it is eleven years:
For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
She could have run and waddled all about.
For even the day before she broke her brow.
239:
NURSE.
Jesu! What haste? Can you not stay awhile?
Do you not see that I am out of breath?
JULIET.
How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath
To say to me that thou art out of breath?
Is thy news good, or bad? Answer to that:
Say either, and I will stay the circumstance:
Let me be satisfied, is it good or bad?
NURSE.
Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man: Romeo, no, not he; though his face be better than any man's. Yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body,—though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare: He is not the flower of courtesy,—but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb.—Go thy ways, wench; serve God:—What, have you dined at home?
JULIET.
No, no: but all this did I know before:
What says he of our marriage? What of that?
NURSE.
Lord! how my head aches,—what a head have I!
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
My back, o' t'other side,—O my back, my back!—
Beshrew your heart, for sending me about,
To catch my death with jaunting up and down!
JULIET.
I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well,—
Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?
NURSE.
Your love says like an honest gentleman,
And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome,
And, I warrant, a virtuous:—Where is your mother?
240:
NURSE.
O, he's a lovely gentleman!
Romeo's a dishclout to him; an eagle, Madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye,
As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first.
241:
Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! Stabbed with a white wench's black eyes; shot through the ear with a love-song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft.
242:
O, she misused me past the endurance of a block; an oak, but with one green leaf on it, would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life, and scold with her.
243:
O, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than the agate-stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bones; the lash, of film;
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut;
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight:
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream....
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as he lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometimes she driveth on a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear; at which he starts, and wakes;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab,
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This, this is she....
244:
There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together.... and the shirt stolen from my host at St. Alban.... they'll find linen enough on every hedge.
PRINCE.
I never did see such pitiful rascals.
FALSTAFF.
Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.
245:
Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold.... What, shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?
246:
Be thou assur'd, good Cassio....
My lord shall never rest;
I'll watch him tame, and talk him out of patience;
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;
I'll intermingle everything he does
With Cassio's suit....
247:
OTHELLO.
Not now, sweet Desdemona; some other time.
DESDEMONA.
But shall't be shortly?
OTHELLO.
The sooner, sweet, for you.
DESDEMONA.
Shall't be to-night at supper?
OTHELLO.
No, not to-night.
DESDEMONA.
To-morrow dinner, then?
OTHELLO.
I shall not dine at home.
DESDEMONA.
Why, then, to-morrow night; or Tuesday,
Or Tuesday noon, or night; or Wednesday morn;—
I pray thee, name the time, but let it not
Exceed three days; in faith, he's penitent....
Why, this is not a boon;
'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,
Or keep you warm, or sue to you to do peculiar profit
To your own person....
Shall I deny you? No: farewell, my lord;
Emilia, come:—be it as your fancies teach you.
Whate'er you be, I am obedient.
248:
His bloody brow! O, Jupiter, no blood!...
Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!
.... No, good madam; I will not out of doors;... Indeed no, by your patience; I will not over the threshold till my lord return from the wars.
CORIOLUS.
My gracious silence, hail!
Wouldst thou have laugh'd, had I come coffin'd home,
That weep'st to see me triumph?
249: