Holy State,"--a pleasant and
profitable work, in which Fuller is happy in making his humour subserve
the best ends:--Of "The Good Wife," he says, "She never crosseth her
husband in the spring-tide of his anger, but stays till it be
ebbing-water. And then mildly she argues the matter, not so much to
condemn him as to acquit herself. Surely men, contrary to iron, are
worst to be wrought upon when they are hot, and are far more tractable
in cold blood. It is an observation of seamen, 'That if a single meteor
or fire-ball falls on their mast, it portends ill-luck; but if two come
together (which they count Castor and Pollux) they presage good
success.' But sure in a family it bodeth most bad when two fire balls
(husband's and wife's anger) both come together." In speaking of good
parents, he says, "A father that whipt his son for swearing, and swore
at him while he whipt him, did more harm by his example than good by his
correction."

CHAPTER VI.

Shakespeare--Ben Jonson--Beaumont and Fletcher--The Wise Men of Gotham.

Greene, in his admonition to his brother sinners of the stage, tells
them that "there is an vpstart crow beautified with our feathers an
absolute Johannes factotum, in his own conceyt the onely Shake-scene in
a countrey," and in truth these olden writers are principally
interesting as having laid the foundations upon which Shakespeare built
some of his earliest plays. The genius of our great dramatist was
essentially poetic, and some of his plays, which we now call comedies,
were originally entitled "histories." How seldom do we hear any of his
humorous passages quoted, or find them reckoned among our household
words! From some of his observations we might think he was altogether
averse from jocosity. Henry V. says

"How ill gray hairs become a fool--a jester!"

In "Much ado about Nothing," Beatrice speaks as follows--

"Why, he is the Prince's jester; a very dull fool, only his gift is
in devising unprofitable slanders; none but libertines delight in
him, and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany,
for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him
and beat him."

But notwithstanding all this condemnation Beatrice is herself the
liveliest character in Shakespeare, and her lady's wit is some of the
best he shows--

_Beatrice._ For hear me, Hero; wooing, wedding, and repenting is as
a Scotch jig, a measure and a cinque-p