Then meet, and join. Jove's lightnings, the precursors
O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not: the fire, and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune
Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble.—Temp., i. 2.
She tore the letter into a thousand halfpence; railed at herself. . .
him," says she, "by my own spirit."
sobs, beats her heart, tears her
M. Ado, ii. 3.

I have sold all my trumpery; had been hallowed.-W. T., iv. 3.

"I measure

Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, hair, prays, cries, "Oh, sweet Benedick!"

they throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets

Their joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, . . . Our king, . . . cries, "Oh, thy mother, thy mother!" then asks Bohemia forgiveness, then again worries he his daughter with clipping her; now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by.-Ibid., v. 2.

She lifted the princess from the earth; and so locks her in embracing, as if she would pin her to her heart.-Ibid., v. 2.

The great supply,

That was expected by the Dauphin here,

Are wreck'd three nights ago on Goodwin Sands.—John, v. 3.

I am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have 'scaped by miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet.-1 H. IV., ii. 4. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men set upon us— And unbound the rest, and then come in the other.-Ibid., ii. 4.

Thrice from the banks of Wye

And sandy-bottom'd Severn have I sent him
Bootless home and weather-beaten back.-

Home without boots, and in foul weather too!

How 'scapes he agues, in the devil's name?—Ibid., iii. 1.

I have misused the king's press damnably. . . . I press me none but good householders, yeomen's sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors.—Ibid., iv. 2.

And have the summary of all our griefs,

When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which, long ere this, we offer'd to the king,
And might by no suit gain our audience:

When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person.-2 H. IV., iv. 1.

Suffolk first died: and York, all haggled over,
Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep'd,
And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes
That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
And cries aloud, "Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk!
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven;
Tarry, sweet soul,"

Upon these words I came and cheer'd him up:
He smil'd me in the face, raught me his hand,
And, with a feeble gripe, says, "Dear my lord,
Commend my service to my sovereign."
So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck
He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips;
And so, espous'd to death, with blood he seal'd
A testament of noble-ending love.-H. V., iv. 6.

The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,
That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough
In your embowell'd bosoms.-R. III., v. 2.

Before the sun rose he was harness'd light,
And to the field goes he.-Tr. & Cr., i. 2.

She came, and puts me her white hand to his cloven chin.—Tr. & Cr., i. 2.

I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it again; and over and over he comes, and up again.—Coriol., i. 3.

But, when I came (some minute ere the time
Of her awakening), here untimely lay

The noble Paris, and true Romeo, dead..

She wakes; and I entreated her come forth

And bear this work of heaven with patience.-R. & Jul., v. 3.

And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead;

Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,

In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;

The noise of battle hurtled in the air,

Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan;

And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.-Jul. C., ii. 2.

Two nights together had these gentlemen,

Marcellus and Bernardo

Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,

Arm'd at all points exactly, cap-à-pé,

Appears before them, and with solemn march

Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,

Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me

In dreadful secrecy impart they did;

And I with them the third night kept the watch:
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,

Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes.-Hamlet, i. 2.

Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew's levies; which to him appear'd
To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack;
But, better look'd into, he truly found

It was against your highness: whereat griev'd-
That so his sickness, age, and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand-sends out arrests
On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys;
Receives rebuke from Norway; and, in fine,
Makes vow before his uncle, never more

To give th' assay of arms against your majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,

Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee.-Ibid., ii. 2.

You played once in the university, you say?—Ibid., iii. 2.

Richer than all his tribe; of one, whose subdu'd eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum.-Oth., v. 2.

When I was born:

Never were waves nor wind more violent;

And from the ladder-tackle washes off

A canvas-climber. "Ha!" says one," wilt thou?”
And with a dropping industry they skip

From stem to stern: the boatswain whistles, and

The master calls, and trebles their confusion.—Per., iv. I.

Both Shakespeare's chief narative poems present numerous instances of this peculiarity in style, besides those afforded in their very opening lines:

Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he lov'd, but love he laugh'd to scorn:
Sick-thoughted Venus, makes amain unto him,

And like a bold-fac'd suitor 'gins to woo him.-V. & Adon., Stanza 1.

From the besieged Ardea all in post,

Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,

Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,

And to Collatium bears the lightless fire

Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire.-Lucrece, Stanza 1.

In adverting to a future time he allows the speaker to deviate into present tense; thereby giving a forcible and immediate impression to the prediction:

Truth shall nurse her,

Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her:

She shall be lov'd and fear'd: her own shall bless her;

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,

And hang their heads with sorrow: good grows with her:

In her days every man shall eat in safety,

Under his own vine, what he plants.-H. VIII., v. 4.

From conditional tense, he permits Cominius-in the heat of martial admiration addressing Marcius-to deviate into future tense, thereby giving more direct and natural effect to the speech:—

If I should tell thee o'er this thy day's work,

Thou 'It not believe thy deeds.-Coriol., i. 9.

Where Silvia and the disguised page, Sebastian, are talking of the supposedly absent Julia, the author allows them to speak of her in the present tense; but suddenly to diverge into the past tense; because, after Silvia's first question, "Is she not passing fair?" the answer throws the subject of inquiry into the condition of a person whose beauty (and almost as if she herself also) had passed away:

She hath been fairer, madam, than she is:
When she did think my master lov'd her well,
She, in my judgment, was as fair as you:
But since she did neglect her looking-glass,
And threw her sun-expelling mask away,
The air hath starv'd the roses in her cheeks,
And pinch'd the lily tincture of her face,
That now she is become as black as I.

:

Therefore Silvia's next question comes with most natural effect :How tall was she?-Two G. of V., iv. 4.

Shakespeare has in a few instances used a past tense where ordinarily a present tense is employed :—

Slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores.-1 H. IV., iv. 2.

What you shall know meantime
Of this abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,

To let me be partaker.—

Doubt not, sir;

I knew it for my bond.-Ant. & C., i. 4.

A fire from heaven came, and shrivell'd up
Their bodies, even to loathing; for they so stunk,
That all those eyes ador'd them ere their fall,

Scorn now their hand should give them burial.—
'Twas very strange.—Per., ii. 4.

Very noteworthy is the way in which our poet occasionally uses the word "now" when referring to a past time; thereby giving wonderfully spirited effect to passages of narration:

The lioness had torn some flesh away,

Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted,

And cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind.-As You L., iv. 3.

Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries . . . Now thanks the old shepherd-W. T., v. 2. I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child, than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.-Coriol., i. 3.

Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd

With heraldry more dismal; head to foot

Now is he total gules.-Hamlet, ii. 2.

And now our cowards

(Like fragments in hard voyages) became

The life o' the need . . . ten, chas'd by one,

Are now each one the slaughterman of twenty.-Cym., v. 3.

And what was first but fear what might be done,
Grows elder now, and cares it be not done.-Per., i. 2.

DISSONANCES.

Shakespeare-remarkable for his harmonious beauty of diction, where musical versification is in keeping with his subject-has certain dissonant effects of expression in passages, where harshness is more consistent and characteristic than smoothness would be. Paulina, hissing out her detestation of Leontes' cruel injustice to his queen, utters a sentence sibilant with ss :—

What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?

What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling
In leads or oils ? what old or newer torture
Must I receive, whose every word deserves
To taste of thy most worst ?—W. T., iii. 2.

• The effect is thus conveyed of 'I knew it to be my bounden duty, before you asked me to inform you.'

What a capital effect of bluntness is given to King Harry's defiant speech by the rugged little sentence we have italicised in the following lines :

They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints,—
Which, if they have as I will leave 'em them,

Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.-H. V., iv. 3.

And how well consists the close succession of murmuring ss in the following couplet with the image it expresses:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse
use.—Macb., iii. 2.

Into Shylock's mouth the poet has put a repetition phrase in the following passage, which gives a sound like the raving bark of the very "dog" he taunts Antonio with having called him:—

I'll have my bond; speak not against my bond.
Thou call'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause;
But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs;

I'll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak:

I'll have my bond; and therefore speak no more.

I'll have no speaking; I will have my bond.-Mer. of V., iii. 3.

And, later on, he has put into the same Shylock's mouth the word "Barrabas" (not as spelt in the New Testament, Barabbas'), spelt and accented in a mode that imparts a finely snarling effect to the

name:

These be the Christian husbands! I have a daughter;

Would any of the stock of Barrabas

Had been her husband rather than a Christian !—Ibid, iv. 1.

In the following, a scornful disgust is thrown into the expression by the tone of words chosen :

You shall find there

A man, who is the abstract of all faults
That all men follow.-Ant. & C., i. 4.

There is a noteworthy aptness in the next passage, where the iterated checks of "wots what watch" come with as excellent effect of disturbance to the ear, as come the repose and placid cadence of the concluding line with soft effect; each forming a thorough echo to the sense of the respective phrase:

But in gross brain little wots

What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,

Whose hours the peasant best advantages.-H. V., iv. I.

It is worth while to observe how frequently our poet has this kind of unpleasing effect-this dissonant consonance of repeated similar sound— where the word "wot" occurs; also to observe that it accords well with the puzzled impression conveyed by the phrase itself:

Anon, I wot not by what strong escape.-Com. of E., v. 1.

Than those that walk, and wot not what they are.-Love's L. L., i. 1.
But, my good lord, I wot not by what power.—Mid. N. D., iv. 1.

As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what:

But what, o' God's name, doth become of this?—R. II., ii. 1.