Romeo. What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?Servant. I know not, sir.
Romeo. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
Shakespeare’s geographical knowledge seems to have been very limited. If he could have gone, as the citizen of Stratford to-day, to the Carnegie library, how many shocking errors he had avoided! Here he could have learned that Bohemia has no seacoast, that Florence is not a port, and that the forest of Arden neither hides lions nor contains palms. But would this knowledge have increased his poetical feeling and his power of representation? Hardly. The northern land with its “sniping winds,” how well it is characterized; how simple and true to life his description of the mild climate of Sicily, crowned with temples, in the “Winter’s Tale” (iii, i):—
“The climate’s delicate, the air most sweet,
Fertile the isle; temple much surpassing
The common praise it bears.”
It was not yet the fashion to flee the winter and try to find eternal spring in the South. Every season is welcome to the poet who loves the peculiar charm of each one, as he says in “Love’s Labor’s Lost” (i, i):—
“At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows,
But like of each thing that in season grows.”
He probably never traveled far, but how intensely does he feel the curious sensations of all travelers, the weariness and yet the eagerness to see the new sights! How perfectly modern sound in the “Comedy of Errors” (i, i) the words:—