The king rode off a wiser man than oft is monarch’s lot,
And deemed that naught was sweeter than the kiss he never got.
—George M. Vickers.
- [414] By permission of W. F. Shaw, owner of Copyright.
Contrasts in Shakespeare.
Oration delivered at the Commencement of the Mt. Vernon Institute of Elocution and Languages, June, 1886.
Through the whole of Shakespeare’s plays, we find every prominent character stamped with a separate individuality, which is preserved in every detail and characteristic, whether in the insane jealousy of Othello, the impetuosity of Harry Hotspur, the constancy of Portia, the vindictiveness of Shylock, the wickedness of Don John, or the benign, forgiving spirit of Prospero.
There is a silvery vein of wit threading his plays, gleaming and flashing like a sparkling brook in the sunshine.
It runs smoothly in the calmly-uttered and thoughtful sentences of Hamlet; it bubbles and laughs in the saucy badinage of Beatrice and Celia; seeks the shadow in the melancholy of Jacques; enters the realm of the pun in the wordy self-assertion of Polonius, and descends to the comic and sometimes the vulgar in Falstaff and Dogberry.
In the character of Hamlet we find a keen sense of humor, overcast by the ever-present suspicion of his father’s foul end, and a vague distrust of those around him. A certain sarcasm lurks in the depths, and imparts an incisiveness to every well-turned sentence. He says to Guildenstern: