"
"You can jeer at that poor lady's poetry, yet take pleasure in such
balderdash as Hudibras!"
"I love wit, dearest; though I am not witty. But as for your Princesse de
Cleves, I find her ineffably dull."
"That is because you do not take the trouble to discover for whom the
characters are meant. You lack the key to the imbroglio," said his wife,
with a superior air.
"I do not care for a book that is a series of enigmas. Don Quixote needs no
such guess-work. Shakespeare's characters are painted not from the petty
models of yesterday and to-day, but from mankind in every age and every
climate. Moliere's and Calderon's personages stand on as solid a basis. In
less than half a century your 'Grand Cyrus' will be insufferable jargon."
"Not more so than your _Hamlet_ or _Othello_. Shakespeare was but kept in
fashion during the late King's reign because his Majesty loved him--and
will soon be forgotten, now that we have so many gayer and brisker
dramatists."
"Whoever quotes Shakespeare, nowadays?" asked Lady Sarah Tewkesbury, who
had been showing a rustic niece the beauties of the river, as seen from
Fareham House. "Even Mr. Taylor, whose sermons bristle with elegant
allusions, never points one of his passionate climaxes with a Shakespearian
line.
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