Every Man in His Humour

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Yale University Press, 1921 - Comedies of humours - 448 pages

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Page 348 - ... make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Page 384 - What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one (from whence they came) Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life...
Page 380 - So in every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Now thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition : As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his effects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour.
Page 402 - For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.
Page 275 - Or spirit of the nethermost abyss Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies Bordering on light ; when straight behold the throne Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread...
Page xxxvi - cause we would make known, No country's mirth is better than our own. No clime breeds better matter for your whore, Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more, Whose manners, now called humours, feed the stage; And which have still been subject for the rage Or spleen of comic writers.
Page 402 - God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.
Page 261 - Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in arts, all that I know (How nothing's that! ), to whom my country owes The great renown and name wherewith she goes...
Page 380 - This may be truly said to be a humour. But that a rook, by wearing a pied feather, The cable hatband, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tye, or the Switzer's knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is more than most ridiculous.

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