FOOTNOTES:
[23] This may be rant, but it is rant in the right place. The line is a fine one that divides true from false hyperbole, but this utterance of Castalio has, I think, the real ring of maddened emotion, which is often absent from Dryden's heroic plays. Rage and despair do sometimes vent themselves in hyperbole and trope. Whether the poet can make us feel the utterance to be inevitable is the question, and that depends on his own sympathy with the situation.
