and so forth.
But as soon as he learns that his friends are dead he breaks out in a long lament for them which ranges over everything from worms to kings, and in its melancholy pessimism is the prototype of those meditations which Shakespeare has put in the mouth of nearly all his favourite characters. Who is not reminded of Hamlet's great monologue when he reads:
“For within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court: and there the antic sits
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin{1}
Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell, King!”
{Footnote 1: In Hamlet's famous soliloquy the pin is a “bodkin."}
Let us take another two lines of this soliloquy:
“For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”
In the second scene of the third act of “Titus Andronicus” we find Titus saying to his daughter:
“I'll to thy closet; and go read with thee
Sad stories chancèd in the times of old.”
Again, in the “Comedy of Errors,” Ægeon tells us that his life was prolonged:
“To tell sad stories of my own mishaps.”