A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen: and on the characteristics of Shakspere's style and the secret of his supremacySpalding, William
General
A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen: and on the characteristics of Shakspere's style and the secret of his supremacy
[89:1] The theory which, denying to the Beautiful any capacity of giving
pleasure through its innate qualities, ascribes its effects exclusively
to the associated ideas which the contemplation of it calls up, proceeds
wholly on the assumption, that the sentiment awakened by Beauty when it
is beheld bodily present, is the same with that which flows from a
poetical description of it. If it be true (as I must believe it is) that
the feelings in the two cases are essentially different, the hypothesis
falls to the ground. Its maintainers seem in truth to have drawn their
conclusions altogether from reflection on the effects produced by Beauty
when it is represented in poetry, where association is undoubtedly the
source of the enjoyment; and an attention to the working of the fine
arts would have taught other inferences.
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[90:2] page 93
[91:1] page 94.
[91:2]
[Sidenote: Invention is making a _new_ thing out of a thing already
made.]
Alfieri appears to have himself perceived accurately wherein it is that
his power lies, when he says, with his usual self-reliance: "Se la
parola 'invenzione' in tragedia si restringe al trattare soltanto
soggetti non prima trattati, nessuno autore ha inventato meno di me."
"Se poi la parola 'invenzione' si estende fino al _far cosa nuova di
cosa già fatta_, io son costretto a credere che nessuno autore abba
inventato piu di me."
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[101:1] ? in Jaques.
[101:2] page 104
[102:1] ? _All's Well_, Bertram; _Othello_, Cassio; _Meas. for Meas._
Claudio; _Ant. & Cleop._ Antony; _Timon_, Alcibiades.--F.
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A FEW INSTANCES OF SHAKSPERE'S PECULIARITIES AS NOTED BY SPALDING.
=Repetition=, p. 12. 1. Prologue to _Henry V._:
'And at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire,
Crouch for employment.'
Compare _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. scene iv.:
'Where thou slew'st, Hirtus and Pausa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow.'
2. _Macbeth_, Act V. scene vii.:
'They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course';
and _Lear_, Act III. scene vii.:
'I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.'
=Conciseness verging on obscurity=, p. 13. _Macbeth_, Act I. scene iii.:
'Present fears are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.'
Act I. scene vii.:
'If it were done when 'tis done,' etc.
Act V. scene vii.:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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