Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/309

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THE WINTER'S TALE.
279

spear's peculiar manner of conveying the painful struggle of different thoughts and feelings, labouring for utterance, and almost strangled in the birth. For instance;—

"Ha' not you seen, Camillo?
(But that's past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass
Is thicker than a cuckold's horn) or heard?
(For to a vision so apparent, rumour
Cannot be mute) or thought (for cogitation
Resides not within man that does not think)
My wife is slippery; if thou wilt, confess,
Or else be impudently negative,
To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought."—

Here Leontes is confounded with his passion, and does not know which way to turn himself, to give words to the anguish, rage, and apprehension, which tug at his breast. It is only as he is worked up into a clearer conviction of his wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his unjust suspicions to Camillo, who irritates him by his opposition, that he bursts out into the following vehement strain of bitter indignation: yet even here his passion staggers, and is as it were oppressed with its own intensity.

"Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh? (a note infallible
Of breaking honesty! ) horsing foot on foot?

Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?