The brine they wept at killing ’em; then if
You stay to see of us such spinsters, we
Should hold you here forever.’
One might apply to this sort of poetry what Marvel says of some sort of passions, that it is
‘Tearing our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.’
It is not in the true spirit of Shakespear, who was ‘born only heir to all humanity,’ whose horrors were not gratuitous, and who did not harrow up the feelings for the sake of making mere bravura speeches. There are also in this first act, several repetitions of Shakespear’s phraseology: a thing that seldom or never occurs in his own works. For instance,
——‘Past slightly
His careless execution’—
‘The very lees of such, millions of rates