Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/281

 refuses to send relief to his son, wishing the prince to win his spurs unaided, and earn the first-fruits of his fame single-handed against the heaviest odds; but the forcible feebleness of a minor poet's fancy shows itself amusingly in the mock stoicism and braggart philosophy of the King's reassuring reflection, "We have more sons than one."

In the first and third scenes of the fourth act we may concede some slight merit to the picture of a chivalrous emulation in magnanimity between the Duke of Burgundy and his former fellow-student, whose refusal to break his parole as a prisoner extorts from his friend the concession refused to his importunity as an envoy: but the execution is by no means worthy of the subject.

The limp loquacity of long-winded rhetoric, so natural to men and soldiers in an hour of emergency, which distinguishes the dialogue between the Black Prince and Audley on the verge of battle, is relieved by this one last touch of quasi-Shakespearean thought or style discoverable in the play of which I must presently take a short—and a long—farewell.

Death's name is much more mighty than his deeds: Thy parcelling this power hath made it more. As many sands as these my hands can hold Are but my handful of so many sands; Then all the world—and call it but a power— Easily ta'en up, and quickly thrown away; But if I stand to count them sand by sand