Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud;
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven.

The Watch strikes.
Oh, half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon.
Oh, if my soul must suffer for my sin,
Impose some end to my incessant pain.
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:
No end is limited to damned souls.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?

Oh, Pythagoras! metempsychosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engendered me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

The Clock strikes Twelve.

It strikes, it strikes; now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
Oh soul, be changed into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean: ne'er be found.

Thunder, and enter the Devils.

Oh mercy, heaven, look not so fierce on me.
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while:
Ugly hell gape not; come not, Lucifer:
I'll burn my books: Oh, Mephistophiles!

William Shakespeare.

Born 1564.

Died 1616.

SHAKESPEARE was born on 23d April 1564, in Henley Street, Stratfordupon-Avon, and though looked on, even in his day, as the greatest poet England had ever produced, the materials of his biography are of the most scanty kind. His father was a wool-dealer and butcher, and though in humble, was never in straitened circumstances. Shakespeare received only a plain education, having at school made no progress beyond the rudiments of Latin. While only eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a small farmer at Shottery, near Stratford. She was con

siderably older than himself. Nothing is known of his occupation at this period, excepting that he was making a figure in the justice of peacecourt for deer-stealing. After one of these visits to the justice-court he appears to have written a satirical ballad on the justice, which he affixed to his park gate. The ballad has been lost, but it is said to have been so bitter that Shakespeare had at last to flee to London, where he began his career at the theatres by holding horses for gentlemen who came to the play. He afterwards was admitted inside the theatres to act the humbler parts of the drama. From this moment he rose rapidly, and although all details are awanting, it is known that in his twenty-fifth year he was a sharer in the profits of the representations. In 1593 appeared his first poem, "Venus and Adonis," and in 1594 "Lucrece." About the same time he appears to have become part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, and on the fair way to fortune. His plays were now issued in rapid succession, though the dates when written are not known. The latter years of Shakespeare's life were spent in ease and retirement; he had accumulated a fortune and retired to his native village, where he passed the remainder of his life. He had three children by Anne Hathaway, two girls and a boy; the daughters only survived their parent. Shakespeare died in his fifty-second year, on his birthday, April 23, 1616. He was buried in the parish church of Stratford, where his monument may still be seen.

MURDER OF KING DUNCAN.

MACBETH and a Servant.

Macbeth. Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

[Exit Servant.

The handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight?—
-or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made th' fools o' th' other senses,
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing.
It is the bloody business, which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now, o'er one half the world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep: now witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered Murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rds his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sound and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whilst I threat, he lives-
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me :
Hear it not Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

LOVE SCENE.

[A bell rings.

[Exit.

Romeo. He jests at scars that never felt a woundBut, soft! what light through yonder window breaks; It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

[Juliet appears above at a window.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou her maid are far more fair than she;
Be not her maid since she is envious;

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off-
It is my lady; O! it is my love;

What of that?

O that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing.
Her eye discourses; I will answer it-
I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars of all the heav'n,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp: her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
Oh that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

OTHELLO RELATES HIS COURTSHIP TO THE
SENATE.

MOST potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approved good masters;
That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,
It is most true; true, I have married her;
The very head and front of my offending

Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech,
And little blest with the soft phrase of peace;

For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith,
Till now, some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field;

And little of this great world can I speak,

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;
And therefore shall I little grace my cause

In speaking for myself. Yet by your gracious patience
I will a round unvarnished tale deliver

Of my whole course of love: what drugs, what charms,
What conjuration, and what mighty magic-

For such proceeding I am charged withal—

I won his daughter with.

Her father loved me, oft invited me;

Still questioned me the story of my life,

From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have past.

I ran it through, ev'n from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it :
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field;

Of hairbreadth 'scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach ;
Of being taken by the insolent foe,

And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence,
And portance in my travel's history.

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my lot to speak, such was the process;

And of the cannibals that each other eat,

The anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. These things to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline;

But still the house affairs would draw her thence;

Which ever as she could with haste despatch,
She'd come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart,
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively. I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears,

When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;

She swore-in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful

She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished

That Heaven had made her such a man:-she thanked me, And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story;

And that would woo her. On this hint I spake ;
She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them.

END OF EARTHLY GLORIES.

OUR revels now are ended: these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air-into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind! We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

LIFE AND DEATH.

The Tempest.

To be, or not to be, that is the question-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die--to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end

« НазадПродовжити »