Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare: Twelve Essays

This Subject is best reached from the point of reflecting that, of all the animals, man alone appears to be capable of laughter. If, as so many naturalists now claim, man has as...

Whatever accidental infirmity deposits us in positions incongruous with our ordinary state generates a ludicrous impression. When the obese lover, encased in corsets and tightly...

The simile gives us such a new perception of the mysterious relations of mind and Nature that we should not be surprised if the object designated had really, in the great involv...

If irony does not forget good nature in its indignation at discovered shams, it can impart the exhilaration of wit. In a late novel, entitled the "Maid of Sker," there is a fish...

Just freely as you please, do I reply: I never hated people of your kind; Of all the spirits that deny The knave is he best suits my mind. Since man soon tires and thinks that l...

Imagine this saturnine and self-involved man obliged to consort daily with Sir Toby, who brings his hand to the buttery-bar before breakfast, and who hates going to bed "as an u...

From Malvolio and Dogberry to the famous Ajax may seem a stride fit only for such a blundering giant to contemplate; but the apparent distance is due to the quantity of Ajax, an...

We see it too in the scene where he brings his wife into the Duke's company, with such an air of self-possession mixed with a pleased sense that she is his best joke at the punc...

He extemporizes deafness, and does not hear the Chief Justice calling to him. When the attendant comes and plucks him by the elbow to bid him note the Justice, he gains time by...

But notice the art of Shakspeare in this, that, if the King had broken with his old pal in such a way as not to hurt our feelings, we should not have been so well prepared to sy...

Hamlet tells them not to seem too wise about it. The theory of premeditated madness rests upon this passage, and upon one other, which will be noticed. But suppose that Shakspea...

What other mood than Irony could a soul with such a secret for its guest spread for entertainment? Too strongly built and level to be cracked with the earthquake of madness; too...

The Clown is not only quaint, droll, full of banter, sly with sense, like clowns in the other plays, but he is the most ebullient with spirits of them all, ready for the next fr...

In the first scene of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," Hermia and Lysander are in love with each other. Demetrius, who was once deep in love for Helena, has transferred his midsum...

The English people were scandalized by the interference of Alice Perers with the politics of the reign of Edward III. She was a "fair piece of sin," for whose sake Edward antici...

It would be a dreary business to construct a catalogue of all these modern slights to the memory of Shakspeare. They turn his plays into a system of theology. Some critics decla...

If Lord Bacon wrote the plays, he must have conceived the female characters which invest them with such dignity and graciousness. To have done that required a comprehension of t...

One could not, of course, claim for Shakspeare that his pages include all the varieties of women which Nature is capable of producing. He has no daughters of the people, like Eg...

Observe the level, unobtrusive nature of Shakspeare's Sonnets and of the songs in the plays. The difference between them and our later scaling of the falsetto is like the differ...

The noble lady's plea fills us with admiring pity: we admire to see the strong, beautiful woman so downcast with this new emotion which Heaven has quartered upon her life; but w...

What kind of a woman is this one who sallies forth to turn a man into a husband? Shakspeare endows her with natural traits so positive that they claim no repose, are contented w...

And the King says, "How do you, pretty lady?" Yes, that she is, through it all. If she had her wits, and were using them to persuade us to revenge her, it could not move like th...

It is also a very common procedure to illustrate the excellences of Shakspeare by comparing them with the inferior work of the contemporary dramatists. Either Shakspeare at his...

This tragedy was slowly conceived during the married life of Macbeth and his Lady. Their ambitious desires spent years in collusion before an heir of opportunity was born to the...

Dante's forerunner, who is celebrated in Browning's "Sordello," is beloved by Palma, whose influence continually resists his poetic day-dreams. He, speculating too finely upon h...

She does not give Macbeth time to observe that to murder Duncan will exact of him the murder of Malcolm also, who is designated by the King to succeed him. She is in no temper t...