'alarum'd by his sentinel the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch,' and other such phrases in _Macbeth_, had
occurred in the speech of Aeneas, we should certainly have been told
that they were meant for burlesque. I open _Troilus and Cressida_
(because, like the speech of Aeneas, it has to do with the story of
Troy), and I read, in a perfectly serious context (IV. v. 6 f.):

Thou, trumpet, there's thy purse.
Now crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe:
Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek
Outswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon:
Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood;
Thou blow'st for Hector.

'Splendid!' one cries. Yes, but if you are told it is also bombastic,
can you deny it? I read again (V. v. 7):

bastard Margarelon
Hath Doreus prisoner,
And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,
Upon the pashed corses of the kings.

Or, to turn to earlier but still undoubted works, Shakespeare wrote in
_Romeo and Juliet_,

here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids;

and in _King John_,

And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath
Out of the bloody finger-ends of John;

and in _Lucrece_,

And, bubbling from her breast, it doth divide
In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood
Circles her body in on every side,
Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood
Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.
Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd,
And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd.

Is it so very unlikely that the poet who wrote thus might, aiming at a
peculiarly heightened and passionate style, write the speech of Aeneas?

4. But, pursuing this line of argument, we must go further. There is
really scarcely one idea, and there is but little phraseology, in the
speech that cannot be paralleled from Shakespeare's own works. He merely
exaggerates a little here what he has done elsewhere. I will conclude
this Note by showing that this is so as regards almost all the passages
most objected to, as well as some others. (1) 'The Hyrcanian beast' is
Macbeth's 'Hyrcan tiger' (III. iv. 101), who also occurs in _3 Hen. VI._
I. iv. 155. (2) With 'total gules' Steevens compared _Timon_ IV. iii. 59
(an undoubtedly Shakespearean passage),

With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules.

(3) With 'baked and impasted' cf. _John_ III.