The bleeding witness of my hatred by;
Having heaven, her conscience, and these bars against me!
And I no friends to back my suit withal,
But the plain devil, and dissembling looks!
And yet to win her,—all the world to nothing!”
In many places in the play his air of searching and sarcastic incredulity, and his rich vindictive chuckle of self-applause, were as artistically fine as they were morally repulsive. As Kean had done before him, he made an effective point in speaking the line,
“To shrink my arm up like a withered shrub:”
he looked at the limb for some time with a sort of bitter discontent, and struck it back with angry disgust. When the queenly women widowed by his murderous intervention began to upbraid him with his monstrous deeds, the cool audacity, the immense aplomb, the half-hidden enjoyment of the joke, with which he relieved himself from the situation by calling out,—
“A flourish, trumpets! strike alarums, drums!
Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women