Characters of Shakespeare's Plays

The story of ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and of several others of Shakespeare's plays, is taken from Boccaccio. The poet has dramatized the original novel with great skill and co...

A more affecting image of the loneliness of a state of exile can hardly be given than by what Bolingbroke afterwards observes of his having 'sighed his English breath in foreign...

follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented as conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to undertake anything and everything, as if it was as much a mat...

The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are very amusing and instructive. The disinterested willingness of Pandarus to serve his friend in an affair which lies next his heart is...

Lear. I'll tell thee; life and death! I am asham'd That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus: [To Gonerill.] That these hot tears, which break from me perforce, Should make...

We the rather insert this passage here, inasmuch as we have no doubt it has been expunged from the Family Shakespeare. Such critics do not perceive that the feelings of the hear...

Hostess. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself, and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a...

That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanch, Is near to England; look upon the years Of Lewis the Dauphin, and that lovely maid. If lusty love should go in quest of beauty, Wh...

Caesar. Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagination it displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action; and the one is made the moving principle of the other....

The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the queen's kinsmen is also a masterpiece. One of the finest strokes in the play, and which serves to show as much as anything the...

Talbot. With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts, In open market-place produced they me, To be a public spectacle to all. Here, said they, is the terror of the French, Th...

This is but natural: it is but natural for a mother to have more regard for her son than for a whole city; but then the city should be left to take some care of itself. The care...

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) came of an Irish Protestant stock, and of a branch of it transplanted in the reign of George I from the county of Antrim to Tipperary. His father mig...

The character of Iago is one of the supererogations of Shakespeare's genius. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought this whole character unnatural, because his villainy...

(1) To begin with, Hazlitt had hold of the right end of the stick. He really understood that Shakespeare was a dramatic craftsman, studied him as such, worshipped him for his in...

Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? You have among you many a purchas'd slave, Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules, You use in abject and in slavi...

How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more. Sure he tha...

Think not I love him, tho' I ask for him; Tis but a peevish boy, yet he talks well;-- But what care I for words! yet words do well, When he that speaks them pleases those that h...

The scene with Ford as Master Brook, and that with Simple, Slender's man, who comes to ask after the Wise Woman, are almost the only ones in which his old intellectual ascendanc...

We do not otherwise know how to account for such assertions as the following: 'In his tragic scenes, there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectatio...

Our idolatry of Shakespeare (not to say our admiration) ceases with his plays. In his other productions he was a mere author, though not a common author. It was only by represen...