Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/114

 *guageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin."

Thersites does not allude to opinions which may be turned as easily as a jacket, but to the opinionative temper; nothing turns us so neatly inside out as our good opinion of ourselves. Shakspeare uses the word "opinion" occasionally in this sense; as in I Henry IV. iii. i, where Worcester criticises Hotspur's disposition:—

"Defect of manners, want of government, Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain."

So, whether in armor, in a swallow-tail, or in a surplice, our peacock vein expands around the world.

Then Thersites proposes to imitate the austere conceit of Ajax: "Let Patroclus make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax." This is done, and the freezing brevity of Thersites is exactly like Malvolio's in the height of his fantasy, when Sir Toby and the rest offer to converse with him.

BOTTOM.

When Malvolio is trying to break up the midnight revel, the mischievous Maria fleers at him with, "Go shake your ears." That is a performance for which Malvolio is still too distant from his congener. But self-sufficiency succeeds in preserving that structure in Bottom, who is so deep and rich with harmless vanity that he sprouts into the auricular appendages, and he shakes them in the most amiable, frisky way through