a wave o’ th’ sea. “Winter’s Tale,” iv, 4, 141.
Kean, Edmund (1787-1833), the great English tragic actor whom Hazlitt was instrumental in discovering for the London public. Shylock and Othello were his most successful roles. For accounts of his various performances, see “A View of the English Stage” (Works, VIII). Most of the points in this essay are reproduced from the notice of Kean’s Hamlet (VIII, 185-189).
ROMEO AND JULIET
This extract is the opening paragraph of the sketch.
[P. 84.] a great critic, A. W. Schlegel. The passage alluded to by Hazlitt appears in Coleridge’s Works (IV, 60-61) in what is little more than a free translation: “Read ‘Romeo and Juliet’;—all is youth and spring;—youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitancies;—spring with its odors, its flowers, and its transiency; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through, and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth;—whilst in Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the freshness of the spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening.”
[P. 85.] fancies wan. Cf. “Lycidas,” “cowslips wan.”
MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
These extracts are the second and last paragraphs of the essay.
[P. 85.] Lord, what fools. iii, 2, 115.
[P. 86.] human mortals. ii, 1, 101.