176 Shakspeare 



motions of real things, however incongruously 

 mixed and fashioned these be. 



A marvel of sublimation without substance it 

 would verily be if these pictures of licentious love 

 and its base treacheries were only unsubstantial 

 excursions of sportive fancy, not the buildings of 

 imagination on a basis of personal experience. 

 He who believes possible or probable such real 

 life in that which had no personal root might do 

 well to recollect and ponder the angry words 

 impatiently flung by Romeo at Friar Lawrence's 

 proffered comforts of philosophy : — 



Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel. 



Of no more worth is the artist's barren skill 

 who paints with imagination without observation 

 than the skill of him who paints with observation 

 without imagination ; into the art that is to live 

 must life-blood enter. Interesting and not un- 

 instructive in this connection it will be to recollect 

 the scenes in the Boar's Head Tavern in East- 

 cheap, in which Prince Hal, Poins, Falstaff, 

 Bardolph, Dame Quickly and the rest of the dis- 

 solute crew figure, especially the scene in which 

 Doll Tearsheet, flattering and fooling Falstaff 

 while sitting on his knee and kissing him, assures 

 him that he is in excellent good condition, his 

 pulse beating as well as heart could desire and 

 his colour as red as any rose, and protests, in 

 answer to his lament ll I am old, I am old," that 

 she loves him " better than she loves e'er a scurvy 



