I start with the proposition that the language of passion is almost invariably broken and abrupt, and the deduction that I wish to draw from this proposition, and the passages that I am about to quote is, that—Shakspeare on more than one occasion advisedly used monosyllables, and monosyllables only, when he wished to express violent and overwhelming mental emotion, ex. gratiâ:—
Lear. “Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl, and cry:—I will preach to thee; mark me.
[Gloster. “Alack! alack the day!]
Lear. “When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools,—This a good block?”
—King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.
In this passage [I bracket Gloster] we find no fewer than forty-two monosyllables following each other consecutively. Again,
“——— but through his lips do throng
Weak words, so thick come, in his poor heart’s aid,