a feeling made more explicit in the final speech of Alcibiades.
[24] The lily seems to be in almost all cases the Madonna lily. It is very doubtful whether the lily of the valley is referred to at all.
[25] But there is something disappointing, and even estranging, in Sonnet 50, which, promising to show a real sympathy, cheats us in the end. I may observe, without implying that the fact has any personal significance, that the words about ‘the poor beetle that we tread upon’ are given to a woman (Isabella), and that it is Marina who says:
| I trod upon a worm against my will, But I wept for it. |
[26] Three times in one drama Shakespeare refers to this detestable trait. See Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 268, where I should like to qualify still further the sentence containing the qualification ‘on the whole.’ Good judges, at least, assure me that I have admitted too much against the dog.
[27] Nor can I recall any sign of liking, or even approval, of that ‘prudent, cautious, self-control’ which, according to a passage in Burns, is ‘wisdom’s root.’
[28] The locus classicus, of course, is Troilus and Cressida, I. iii. 75 ff.
[29] Of all the evils inflicted by man on man those chosen for mention in the dirge in Cymbeline, one of the last plays, are the frown o’ the great, the tyrant’s stroke, slander, censure rash.
[30] Having written these paragraphs, I should like to disclaim the belief that Shakespeare was habitually deeply discontented with his position in life.
[31] Allusions to puritans show at most what we take almost for granted, that he did not like precisians or people hostile to the stage.