Shakspere, Personal Recollections

by John A. Joyce

"Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall
That girdlest in those wolves! Dive in the earth,
And fence not Athens! Matrons turn incontinent!
Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools,
Pluck the grave, wrinkled senate from the bench
And minister in their steads! To general filths
Convert of the instant, green virginity!
Do it in your parents' eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with your knives,
And cut your trusters' throats! bound servants steal!
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are;
And kill by law! maid, to thy master's bed;
Thy mistress is of the brothel! son of sixteen,
Pluck the lined crutch from the old, limping sire;
With it beat out his brains! piety, and fear
Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighborhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Decrees, observances, customs and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries,
And yet confusion live! Plagues incident to men,
Your potent and infectious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners! lust and liberty
Creep in the minds and marrows of your youth;
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot! itches, blains,
Sow all the Athenian blossoms; and their crop
Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath;
That their society, as their friendship, may
Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee,
But nakedness, thou detestable town!

You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con,
That you are thieves professed; that you work not
In holier shapes; for there is boundless theft
In legal professions. Rascal thieves;
Here's gold; go, suck the subtle blood of the grape,
Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth
And so 'scape hanging; trust not the physician;
His antidotes are poison, and he slays
More than you rob; take wealth and lives together;
Do villainy, do, since you profess to do it,
Like workmen. I'll example you with thievery;
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surges resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement; each thing's a thief;
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have unchecked theft! Love not yourselves; away—
Rob one another! There's more gold; cut-throats;
All that you meet are thieves! To Athens, go,
Break open shops! Nothing can you steal
But thieves do lose it!"

Jaques, in the forest of Arden, discourses to the exiled Duke of the fools of fortune, and the nature of man.

"A fool, a fool!—I met a fool in the forest
A motley fool;—a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool;
Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,
And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms.
In good set terms,—and yet a motley fool.
Good morrow, fool, quoth I. No, sir, quoth he,
Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune;
And then he drew a dial from his poke;
And looking on it with lack-luster eye
Says very wisely: It is ten o'clock;
Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags;
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;
And after an hour more, 'twill be eleven;
And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale! When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep contemplative;
And I did laugh sans intermission,
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley is the only wear!"

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits, and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and pewking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school boy, with his satchel,
And shining, morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwilling to school; and then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow; then a soldier;
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth; and then the justice;
In fair, round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so, he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon;
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big, manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound; Last scene of all
That ends this strange, eventful history
In second childishness, and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything!"

In "Measure for Measure" the brave Duke, the pure Isabella and cowardly Claudio discourse thus on death:

"Be absolute for death; either death or life,
Shall thereby be sweeter. Reason thus with life,—
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
But none but fools would keep; a breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skiey influences)
That dost this habitation, where thou keepest,
Hourly afflict; merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou laborest by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still; Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant:
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm! Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast forgett'st; Thou art not certain
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And Death unloads thee! Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, leprosy, and the rheum
For ending thee no sooner; Thou hast nor youth, nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both; For all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty
To make thy riches pleasant!"

"O, I do fear thy courage, Claudio; and I quake
Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honor. Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies!
Ay, Isabella, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible, warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine howling! 'Tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death!"

King Henry the Fourth, on his deathbed thus bitterly rebukes Prince Hal for his heartless haste in taking the crown before the last breath leaves his father:

"Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought;
I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair,
That thou wilt needs invest thee with mine honors
Before thy hour be ripe? O, foolish youth!
Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.
Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity
Is held from falling with so weak a mind
That it will quickly drop; my day is dim.
Thou hast stolen that, which after some few hours,
Were thine without offense; and at my death,
Thou hast sealed up my expectation;
Thou life did manifest, thou lov'st me not,
And thou wilt have me die assured of it.
Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts;
Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
To stab at half an hour of my life.
What! can'st thou not forbear me half an hour?
Then get thee gone; and dig my grave thyself;
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear;
That thou art crowned, not that I am dead,
Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse
Be drops of balm, to sanctify thy head;
Only compound me with begotten dust;
Give that which gave thee life, unto the worms;
Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;
For now a time is come to mock at form.
Harry the Fifth is crowned; up, vanity!
Down royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
And to the English Court assemble now,
From every region, apes of idleness!
Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum;
Have you a ruffian, that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night; rob, murder and commit
The oldest sins, the newest kind of ways!
Be happy, he will trouble you no more;
England shall double gild his treble guilt;
For the Fifth Harry from curbed license plucks
The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
Shall flesh his tooth in every innocent.
O, poor Kingdom, sick with civil blows!
When that my care could not withhold thy riots
What wilt thou do, when riot is thy care?
O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!"