The Prose Works of Charles Lamb, Volume 1

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Page 189 - Achilles' image stood his spear Grip'd in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined.
Page 208 - But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.
Page 97 - Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came. Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew, The Actor's genius bade them breathe anew ; Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day : And till Eternity with power sublime Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, Shakspeare and Garrick like twin stars shall shine, And earth irradiate with a beam divine.
Page 120 - On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage ; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear, — we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms...
Page 123 - What we see upon a stage is body and bodily action ; what we are conscious of in reading is almost exclusively the mind and its movements : and this, I think, may sufficiently account for the very different sort of delight with which the same play so often affects us in the reading and the seeing.
Page 102 - It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of almost any other dramatist whatever.
Page 157 - He would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one ; for his Homer is not so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written.
Page 114 - tis true I have gone here and there And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new.
Page 181 - I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being asked which book he esteemed most in his library, answered, — " Shakspeare :" being asked which he esteemed next best, replied,
Page 103 - Talking is the direct object of the imitation here. But in all the best dramas, and in Shakspeare above all, how obvious it is, that the form of speaking, whether it be in soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and often a highly artificial one, for putting the reader or spectator into possession of that knowledge of the inner structure and workings of mind in a character, which he could otherwise never have arrived at in that form of composition by any gift short of intuition. We do here as we...

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