Poetaster, Volume 27

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H. Holt, 1905 - 282 pages

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Page xci - O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow ; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill ; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge, that made him bewray his credit.
Page cii - Lastly, I would inform you, that this book, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage ; wherein a second pen had good share...
Page 215 - ... it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour, also in some measure, we had before him ; but something of art was wanting to the drama, till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions ; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he 'knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height.
Page xxv - He had many quarrells with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him,' wrote his Poetaster on him; the beginning of them were, that Marston represented him in the stage, in his youth given to vénerie.
Page xc - It is said of the incomparable Virgil, that he brought forth his verses like a bear, and after formed them with licking.
Page 230 - There is still another place, built in the form of a theatre, which serves for the baiting of bulls and bears; they are fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs, from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other; and it sometimes happens that they are killed upon the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired.
Page xc - I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand.
Page lx - O, it will get us a huge deal of money, captain, and we have need on't; for this winter has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes: nobody comes at us, not a gentleman, nor a — Tuc.
Page 165 - Oh, it's your only fine humour, sir: your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself, diver times, sir, and then do I no more but take pen and paper, presently, and overflow you half a score, or a dozen of sonnets at a sitting.
Page liii - He will censure or discourse of anything, but as absurdly as you would wish. His fashion is not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. He never drinks below the salt. He does naturally admire his wit that wears gold lace or tissue; stabs any man that speaks more contemptibly of the scholar than he. He is a great proficient in all the illiberal sciences, as cheating, drinking, swaggering, whoring, and such like, never kneels but to pledge healths, nor prays but for a pipe of pudding-tobacco.

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