" Associate this with _Falstaff's_ soliloquy
about _honour_ in the same play, act v. scene 1, and the true character
of his courage or cowardice--for it may bear either name--comes out.
Is there not conscious art in representing the hospitable face of the
castle of _Macbeth_, bearing on it a homely welcome in the multitude of
the nests of _the temple-haunting martlet_ (Psalm lxxxiv. 3), just as
_Lady Macbeth_, the fiend-soul of the house, steps from the door, like
the speech of the building, with her falsely smiled welcome? Is there
not _observance_ in it?
But the production of such instances might be endless, as the work of
Shakspere is infinite. I confine myself to two more, taken from "The
Merchant of Venice."
Shakspere requires a character capable of the magnificent devotion of
friendship which the old story attributes to _Antonio_. He therefore
introduces us to a man sober even to sadness, thoughtful even to
melancholy. The first words of the play unveil this characteristic. He
holds "the world but as the world,"--
"A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one."
The cause of this sadness we are left to conjecture.
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