Plays and Poems Volume 1; With a New Glossarial Index (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1821 Excerpt: ...though he wrote for the stage in the year 1627, did not always understand him. The very books which are necessary to our author's " " The tongue in general is so much refined since Shakspeare's time, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible)', Preface to Dryden's Troilus and Cressida. The various changes made by Dryden in articular passages in thatplay, and by him and D'Avenant in Tihe Tempest, prove decisively that they frequently did not understand our poet's language. In his defence of. the Epilogue to The Conquest of Granada, Dryden arraigns Ben Jonson for using the personal, instead of the neutral, pronoun, and urifeard for unqfiairl. " Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once, " We should stand upright, and urgfiaafd." I illustration, were of so little account in their time, that what now we can scarce procure at any price, was then the furniture of the nursery or stall. In fifty years after " Hzlr (says he) is ill syntax with heaven, and by urgfiafd he means unafraid; words of a quite contrary signification.--He perpetually uses ports for gates, which is an affected error in.him, to introduce Latin by the loss of the English idiom." i Now his for its, however ill the syntax may be, was the common language of the time; and to fear, in the sense of to terrigfy, is found not only in all the poets, but in every dictionary of t at age. With respect to ports, Shakspeare, who will not be suspected o affecting Latinisms, frequently employs that word in the same sense as Jonson has done, and as probably the whole kingdom did; for the word is still so used in Scotland. D'Avenant's alteration of Macbeth, and Measure for Measure, f...