He must have seen it before he could have
said it; and to see such a truth is to love it; or rather, love of truth
in the general must have preceded and enabled to the discovery of it.
Such a passage is the speech of the _Duke_, opening the second act of
the play just referred to, "As You Like it." The lesson it contains is,
that the well-being of a man cannot be secured except he partakes of the
ills of life, "the penalty of Adam." And it seems to us strange that the
excellent editors of the Cambridge edition, now in the course of
publication--a great boon to all students of Shakspere--should not have
perceived that the original reading, that of the folios, is the right
one,--
"Here feel we _not_ the penalty of Adam?"
which, with the point of interrogation supplied, furnishes the true
meaning of the whole passage; namely, that the penalty of Adam is just
what makes the "wood more free from peril than the envious court,"
teaching each "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to
think."
But Shakspere, although everywhere felt, is nowhere seen in his plays.
He is too true an artist to show his own face from behind the play of
life with which he fills his stage.
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