Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/141

 her to, but to make a lamp of her, and run from her by her own light. I warrant her rags, and the tallow in them, will burn a Poland winter : if she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world."

Falstaff might have said of himself that "wherever his shadow falls it leaves a grease-spot."

Shakspeare evidently relished these unctuous conceits, for in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," when Falstaff's wooing in the forest is suddenly interrupted, he says, "I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that is in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus."

There is sometimes in Shakspeare an exaggeration of this kind which has a Titanic grasp to it that throttles laughter just as it meditates escape. The grotesque and humorous element is stunned by a fierce and passionate feeling, such as Dante might have steeped one of the circles of his Inferno in. A specimen of this may be found in "Henry VIII.," where Lord Abergavenny, talking about Wolsey's low-born greatness, says:

"But I can see his pride Peep through each part of him: whence has he that? If not from hell, the devil is a niggard; Or has given all before, and he begins A new hell in himself."

All the followers of Falstaff catch his habit of improving Bardolph's redness. The Page could not distinguish his face through a red lattice, but, at last spying his eyes, thought he had made two holes in a new red petticoat to peep through. And, after Falstaff is dead, a