arms by the ninth of the next month? and are there not some of them set forward already? What a pagan rascal is this! an infidel!-Ha! you shall see now, in very sincerity of fear and cold heart, will he to the king, and lay open all our proceedings. Oh! I could divide myself, and go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skimmed milk with so honourable an action-Hang him! let him tell the king. We are prepared. I will set forward to-night. VIII-Othello's Apology for his Marriage. MOST potent, grave, and reverend seigniors: I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver, Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms, (For such proceedings I am charged withal) I won his daughter with. Her father lov'd me; oft invited me ; From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes, I ran it through, e'en from my boyish days To the very monent that he bade me tell it. Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances; Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hair-breadth 'scapes in th' imminent deadly breach ; And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, All these to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline; But still the house affairs would draw her thence ; Whereof by parcels she had something heard, And often did beguile her of her tears, She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange : She wish'd she had not heard it; yet she wish'd She thank'd me; And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, IX.-Henry IV's Soliloquy on Sleep. And hush'd with buzzing night flies to thy slumber, And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody? O thou dull god! Why liest thou with the vile, And in the calmest and the stillest night, Deny it to a king ?-Then happy, lowly clown! X.-Captain Bobadil's Method of defeating an Army. I WILL tell you, Sir, by the way of private and under seal, I am a gentleman; and live here obscure, and to myself: but were I known to his Majesty and the Lords, observe me, I would undertake, upon this poor head and life, for the public.benefit of the state, not only to spare the entire lives of his subjects in general, but to save the one half, nay, three-fourths of his yearly charge in holding war, and against what enemy soever. And how would I do it, think you? Why thus, Sir.-I would select nineteen more to myself, throughout the land; gentlemen they should be; of good spirit, strong and able constitution. I would choose them by an instinct that I have-And I would teach these nineteen the special rules; as your punto, your reverso, your stoccata, your imbrocata, your passada, your montonto, till they could all play very near, or altogether, as well as myself. This done; say the enemy were forty thousand strong. We twenty would come into the field the tenth of March, or thereabouts, and we would challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not, in their honour refuse us. Well-we would kill them; challenge twenty more-kill them; twenty more-kill them; twenty more kill them too. And thus, would we kill, every man, his ten a day— that's tenscore: Tenscore-that's two hundred; two hundred a day-five days, a thousand: Forty thousand-forty times five-five times forty-two hundred days kill them all up by computation. And this I will venture my poor gentleman-like carcass to perform, (provided there be no treason practised upon us) by fair and discreet manhood; that is, civilly-by the sword. XI-Soliloquy of Hamlet's Uncle, on the Murder of his Brother. OH! my offence is rank; it smells to heaven; Or pardon'd, being down?-Then I'll look up. May one be pardon'd, and retain th' offence? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent? XII-Soliloquy of Hamlet on Death. To be or not to be-that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The stings and arrows of outrageous fortuneOr to take arms against a sea of troubles; And, by opposing, end them? To die-to sleepNo more?—and, by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to.-'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die—to sleepTo sleep-perchance to dream-ay, there's the rub For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.-There's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life; For, who could bear the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love-the law's delay The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes- Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; XIII.-Falstaff's Encomium on Sack. A GOOD sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain: dries me there, all the foolish, dull and crudy vapours which environ it makes it apprehensive, quick, inventive: full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which delivered over to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris, is the warming of the blood; which, before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice. But the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme. It illuminateth the face; which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm: and then, the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart! who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage-and this valour comes of sherris So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it awork; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it, and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, steril, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled, with drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them, should be-to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack. XIV. Prologue to the Tragedy of Cato. TO wake the soul by tender strokes of art, |