Historical Memoir on Italian Tragedy: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time : Illustrated with Specimens and Analyses of the Most Celebrated Tragedies and Interspersed with Occasional Observations on the Italian Theatres and Biographical Notices of the Principal Tragic Writers of Italy

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E. Harding, 1799 - Italian drama - 338 pages

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Page 58 - It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale : look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east : Night's candles are burnt out...
Page xviii - Bid him disband his legions, Restore the commonwealth to liberty, Submit his actions to the public censure, And stand the judgment of a Roman senate. Bid him do this, and Cato is his friend.
Page 332 - Oh, think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods! Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Fill'd up with horror all, and big with death...
Page 125 - His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to any of their laws ; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which they expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the incidents be various and affecting, and the characters consistent, natural, and distinct. No other unity is intended, and therefore none is to be sought. In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action.
Page 205 - Here I observed certaine things that I never saw before. For I saw women acte, a thing that I never saw before, though I have heard that it hath beene sometimes used in London, and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture, and whatsoever convenient for a Player, as ever I saw any masculine Actor.
Page xli - Father, first they sung omnipotent, Immutable, immortal, infinite, Eternal King; thee, author of all being, Fountain of light, thyself invisible Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt'st Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad'st The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine, Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
Page 63 - One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way; but swept like a drag-net, great and small.
Page xx - Pompey fought for Caesar, Oh ! my friends How is the toil of fate, the work of ages, The Roman empire fallen ! O curst ambition!
Page xviii - Cato, thou hast a daughter. CATO. Adieu, young Prince: I would not hear a word Should lessen thee in my esteem...
Page 241 - E ne sarà fors' anche scacciato, egli, il cui padre a ricca mensa tanta gente accogliea. Ma poi se infermo cade, com" è pur troppo agevol cosa, chi n'avrà cura?

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