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As mercy does. If he had been as you,
And you as he, you would have slipt like him;
But he, like you, would not have been so stern.
-Measure for Measure.

HUMAN LIFE.

ALL the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school: and then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow: then, a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth: and then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part: the sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound: last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
-As You Like It.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

-Macbeth.

POWER OF MUSIC.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica: look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest,
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim.
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
(Enter musicians.)

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn;
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.

Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lorenzo. The reason is, your spirits are attentive;
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud-
Which is the hot condition of their blood-

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turned to a modest

gaze

By the sweet power of music. Therefore, the poet

Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.

-Merchant of Venice.

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall:
Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!

-Twelfth Night.

OUTWARD SHOW.

So may the outward shows be least themselves;
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What fatal error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple, but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars;
Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk?
And these assume but valour's excrement,
To render them redoubted. Look on beauty,
And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it:
So are those crispéd snaky golden locks,
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known

To be the dowry of a second head,

The skull that bred them, in the sepulchre.
Thus ornament is but the guiled shore

To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,

The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.

-Merchant of Venice.

Well, come, my Kate; we will unto your father's,
Even in these honest mean habiliments;

Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor:
For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich;
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honour peereth in the meanest habit.
What! is the jay more precious than the lark
Because his feathers are more beautiful?

Or is the adder better than the eel
Because his painted skin contents the eye?
Oh no, good Kate; neither art thou the worse
For this poor furniture and mean array.

-Taming of the Shrew.

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He left a promise to return again

Orlando parted from you,

Within an hour; and, pacing through the forest,
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,
Lo, what befell! He threw his eye aside,
And mark, what object did present itself!
Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity,

A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair,
Lay sleeping on his back; about his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,
Who with her head, nimble in threats, approached
The opening of his mouth; but suddenly
Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself,
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush: under which bush's shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,

Lay couching, head on ground, with cat-like watch,
When that the sleeping man should stir; for 'tis
The royal disposition of that beast

To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead:

This seen, Orlando did approach the man,

And found it was his brother-his elder brother.

Celia. Oh, I have heard him speak of that same brother; And he did reckon him the most unnatural

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And well he might so do,

For well I know he was unnatural.

Rosalind. But, to Orlando; did he leave him there,

Food to the sucked and hungry lioness?

Oli. Twice did he turn his back, and purposed so;

But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,

And nature, stronger than his just occasion,

Made him give battle to the lioness,

Who quickly fell before him.

-As You Like It.

EXILE.

Duke Senior. Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam—
The season's difference. As the icy fang,

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say—
This is no flattery: these are counsellors,
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Amiens. I would not change it. Happy is your Grace
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

Into so quiet and so sweet a style!

Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools—
Being native burghers of this desert city—
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored.

1st Lord.

Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother, that hath banished you.
To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke S.

But what said Jaques? Did he not moralise this spectacle?

1st Lord. Oh yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping in the needless stream:

"Poor deer," quoth he, "thou makest a testament,
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which had too much." Then, being alone,
Left and abandoned of his velvet friends;
""Tis right," quoth he; "thus misery doth part
The flux of company." Anon, a careless herd,
Full

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