William Shakespeare: A Critical StudyBrandes, Georg
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William Shakespeare: A Critical Study
Brandes, Georg
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Criticism and interpretation
"Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time,
but also how thou art accompanied: for though the camomile,
the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth,
the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears."
Compare with this the following passage from Lyly (cited by Landmann):--
"Too much studie doth intoxicate their braines, for (say
they) although yron, the more it is used, the brighter it
is, yet silver with much wearing doth wast to nothing ...
though the Camomill, the more it is troden and pressed
downe, the more it spreadeth, yet the Violet, the oftner
it is handeled and touched, the sooner it withereth and
decayeth."
Falstaff continues in the same exquisite strain:--
"There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of,
and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch:
this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so
doth the company thou keepest."
This citation of "ancient writers" in proof of so recondite a
phenomenon as the stickiness of pitch is again pure Lyly. Yet again,
the adjuration, "Now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not
in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also," is
an obvious travesty of the Euphuistic style.
Strictly speaking, it is not against Euphuism itself that Shakespeare's
youthful satire is directed in _Love's Labour's Lost_. It is certain
collateral forms of artificiality in style and utterance that are
aimed at. In the first place, bombast, represented by the ridiculous
Spaniard, Armado (the suggestion of the Invincible Armada in the name
cannot be unintentional); in the next place, pedantry, embodied in the
schoolmaster Holofernes, for whom tradition states that Florio, the
teacher of languages and translator of Montaigne, served as a model--a
supposition, however, which seems scarcely probable when we remember
Florio's close connection with Shakespeare's patron, Southampton.
Further, we find throughout the play the over-luxuriant and far-fetched
method of expression, universally characteristic of the age, which
Shakespeare himself had as yet by no means succeeded in shaking off.
Only towards the close does he rise above it and satirise it. That is
the intent of Biron's famous speech (v. 2):--
"Taffata phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical: these summer-flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
I do forswear them; and I here protest,
By this white glove, (how white the hand, God knows)
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd
In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes."
In the very first scene of the play, the King describes Armado, in too
indulgent terms, as--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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