Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/97

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THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE

this type are the man's anxiety not to be found by his enemies, and the woman's reckless desire to detain him if only for a moment. He tells her that already the birds of dawn are singing; she answers that he hears the birds of a darkening twilight. And of this type of French lyric there is one perfect illustration, Juliet's cry to Romeo,

"Will you begone? It is not yet near day!
It was the nightingale and not the lark."

So Shakspere is become a research scholar, poor man!

Or dare we dissent from all that this sort of criticism implies? Only two things actually known of Shakspere bear on this problem; for other aids to the understanding of his mind we should look not in books, but in life. We know that he was a man of action, a man infinitely busy with practical affairs, a man who pro-

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