Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/283

 a villainous trick of verbiage which went nigh now and then to affect the adolescent style of Shakespeare, and which happens to find itself as admirably as unconsciously burlesqued in two lines of this very scene:

I will not give a penny for a life, Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death.

The verses intervening are smooth, simple, and passably well worded; indeed the force of elegant commonplace cannot well go further than in such lines as these.

Thyself art bruised and bent with many broils, And stratagems forepast with iron pens Are texèd in thine honourable face; Thou art a married man in this distress, But danger woos me as a blushing maid; Teach me an answer to this perilous time. Audley. To die is all as common as to live; The one in choice, the other holds in chase; For from the instant we begin to live We do pursue and hunt the time to die: First bud we, then we blow, and after seed; Then presently we fall; and as a shade Follows the body, so we follow death. If then we hunt for death, why do we fear it? If we fear it, why do we follow it?

(Let me intimate a doubt in passing, whether Shakespeare would ever have put by the mouth of any but a farcical mask a query so provocative of response from an Irish echo—"Because we can't help.")