FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103  
104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>   >|  
scene where Lavinia enters with her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, little Robert fell a-crying, and threatened, in case the play was left in the cottage, to burn it. It is hard to believe that what Burns despised and detested at the age of nine could have been written by Shakespeare at the age of twenty-five. Taking, then, "Venus and Adonis" as the point of departure, we find Shakespeare at the age of twenty-two endowed with all the faculties, but relatively deficient in the passions, of the poet. The poem is a throng of thoughts, fancies, and imaginations, but somewhat cramped in the utterance. Coleridge says, that "in his poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other." Fine as this is, it would perhaps be more exact to say, that in his earlier poems his intellect, acting apart from his sensibility, and playing with its own ingenuities of fancy and meditation, condensed its thoughts in crystals. Afterwards, when his whole nature became liquid, he gave us his thoughts in a state of fusion, and his intellect flowed in streams of fire. Take, for example, that passage in the poem where Venus represents the loveliness of Adonis as sending thrills of passion into the earth on which he treads, and as making the bashful moon hide herself from the sight of his bewildering beauty:-- "But if thou fall, O, then imagine this! The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips, And all is but to rob thee of a kiss. Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn, Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn. "Now of this dark night I perceive the reason: Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine, Till forging Nature be condemned of treason, For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine. Wherein she framed thee, in high heaven's despite. To shame the sun by day and her by night." This is reflected and reflecting passion, or, at least, imagination awakening passion, rather than passion penetrating imagination. Now mark, by contrast, the gush of the heart into the brain, dissolving thought, imagination, and expression, so that they run molten, in the delirious ecstasy of Pericles in recovering his long-lo
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103  
104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

passion

 

imagination

 

thoughts

 
intellect
 
twenty
 

Shakespeare

 
Adonis
 

heaven

 

cloudy

 

forlorn


loveliness
 

modest

 

thieves

 

sending

 

making

 
bashful
 

beauty

 

bewildering

 

treads

 
thrills

footing

 
imagine
 

penetrating

 

contrast

 

awakening

 

reflected

 

reflecting

 
Pericles
 

ecstasy

 

recovering


delirious

 

molten

 

dissolving

 

thought

 

expression

 

obscures

 

Cynthia

 

silver

 

represents

 

reason


perceive

 

forsworn

 

forging

 

Nature

 

framed

 

Wherein

 
divine
 

moulds

 

condemned

 

treason