Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/103

 Of such a winnow'd purity in love! How were I then uplifted! but, alas! I am as true as truth's simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth."

What a pure flame mounts up from each altar of these consecrated lines to show the detestable uncleanness of some scenes which are left over from the original play! When the wanton Cressida sweeps the chaste fire from those altars and leaves them standing cold in his heart, Shakspeare cries,—

"O Cressid! Let all untruths stand by thy stained name, And they'll seem glorious."

Some of the sentences spoken by Ulysses have become fixed in the English consciousness; the rings of robust reflection have grown around and appropriated them, so that the material is quotable in every market and is applied to modern conveniences. The famous speech that charges the Greek factions to their neglect of "degree, priority, and place,"—

"Oh, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder to all high designs, The enterprise is sick!"—

contains a truth as applicable to a democracy as to that Shakspearian age which reared the defeaters of the Armada, and sent Drake and Hawkins round the world.

What cause, in want of time or other inconvenience, left this uncultivated play to be ascribed to Shakspeare is past conjecture. In many respects it is like the modern burlesque, and may be regarded as a remote