For parting us,-O, and is all forgot?

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence ?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our neelds' created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted;
But yet a union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
And will you rend our ancient love asunder?

How noble in

What a piece of work is man! reason! How infinite in faculties! in form, and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

W

88

36-ii. 2.

See, what a grace was seated on this brow:
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury,
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination, and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.

89

36-iii. 4.

I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man,
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug

▾ Needles.

W

Apollo's.

The act of standing.

y

With amplest entertainment: My free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold;
But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.

90

How this grace

27-i. 1.

Speaks his own standing! what a mental power
This eye shoots forth! how big imagination
Moves in this lip! to the dumbness of the gesture
One might interpret.

91

The painting is almost the natural man;

27-i. 1.

For since dishonour traffics with man's nature,
He is but outside: these pencill'd figures are
Even such as they give out.

27-i. 1.

92

Thou art like the harpy,

Which, to betray, doth wear an angel's face,

Seize with an eagle's talons."

93

34-iv. 4.

There be players, that I have seen play,-and heard others praise, and that highly,-not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

94

Hath he so long held out with me untired,
And stops he now for breath?

95

36-iii. 2.

24-iv. 2.

What a wicked beast was I, to disfurnish myself

My design does not stop at any particular character. Anciently they wrote upon waxen tables with an iron style. a Pictures have no hypocrisy; they are what they profess to be. b Thou resemblest in thy conduct the harpy, which allures with the face of an angel, that it may seize with the talons of an eagle.

against such a good time, when I might have shewn myself honourable? how unluckily it happened, that I should purchase the day before for a little part, and undo a great deal of honour. Commend me bountifully to his good lordship; and I hope, his honour will conceive the fairest of me, because I have no power to be kind: and tell him this from me, I count it one of my greatest afflictions, say, that I cannot pleasure such an honourable gentleman. 27-iii. 2.

96

Now do I play the touch,

To try if thou be current gold, indeed.

97

To build his fortune, I will strain a little,
For 'tis a bond in men.

98

For herein fortune shews herself more kind
Than is her custom: it is still her use,

24-iv. 2.

27-i. 1.

To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,
To view with hollow eye, and wrinkled brow,
An age of poverty.

9-iv. 1.

I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears.

101

15-iii. 4.

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself; and what remains is bestial.

102

O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,

37-ii. 3.

And men have lost their reason!

c Pass over us.

29-iii, 2,

103

I set you up a glass

Where you may see the inmost part of you.

104

Common mother, thou,

36-iii. 4.

Whose womb immeasurable, and infinite breast,
Teems, and feeds all; whose self-same mettle,
Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff'd,
Engenders the black toad, and adder blue,
The gilded newt, and eyeless venom'd worm,
With all the abhorred births below crisp heaven
Whereon Hyperion's quickening fire doth shine;
Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate,
From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root.
27-iv. 3.

105

I have upon a high and pleasant hill

Feign'd Fortune to be throned. The base o' the

mount

Is rank'd with all deserts, all kind of natures,
That labour on the bosom of this sphere

To propagate their states: amongst them all,
Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix'd,
One do I personate,-

Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her;
Whose present grace to present slaves and servants
Translates his rivals.

All those, which were his fellows but of late
(Some better than his value), on the moment
Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,
Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,

Make sacred even his stirrop, and through him
Drink the free air.——

When Fortune, in her shift and change of mood,
Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants,
Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top,
Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot. 27-i. 1.

e

d To advance their conditions of life. Whisperings of officious servility,

Inhale.

106

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits, and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover;
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow: Then, a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth: And then the justice;
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern1 instances,
And so he plays his part: The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon;
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound: Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

107

10-ii. 7.

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.

108

So tedious is this day,

As is the night before some festival

1-iv. 1.

g Violent.

h Trite, common.