" Now, here is confirmation of
my suspicion. It is most unusual for Shakespeare to give the physical
peculiarities of any of his characters; no one knows how Romeo looked,
or Juliet or even Hamlet or Ophelia; and here he repeats the
description.
The only other examples we have as yet found in Shakespeare of such
physical portraiture is the sketching of Falstaff in "Henry IV." and the
snapshot of Master Slender in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," as a "little
wee face, with a little yellow beard,--a cane-coloured beard." Both
these photographs, as we noticed at the time, were very significant, and
Slender's extraordinarily significant by reason of its striking and
peculiar realism. Though an insignificant character, Slender
is photographed for us by Shakespeare's contempt and hatred, just as this
Rosaline is photographed by his passionate love, photographed again and
again.
Shakespeare's usual way of describing the physical appearance of a man
or woman, when he allowed himself to do it at all, which was seldom, was
what one might call the ideal or conventional way.
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