He seems often to have realized the
faults of his own haste. His Othello says:
"How poor are they that have not patience."
With this speed of thought and wealth of language and of wit, he
naturally loved to show off in conversation; but as he wished to get on
and make a figure in the world, he should have talked less and
encouraged his patrons to show off. Poor heedless, witty, charming
Shakespeare! One threat which he used again and again, discovers all his
world-blindness to me. Gravely, in sonnet 140, he warns Mary Fitton that
she had better not provoke him or he will write the truth about
her--just as if the maid of honour who could bear bastard after bastard,
while living at court, cared one straw what poor Shakespeare might say
or write or sing of her. And Hamlet runs to the same weapon: he praises
the players to Polonius as
"Brief chronicles of the time; after your death you
were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while
you live."
It is all untrue; actors were then, as now, only mummers without
judgement.
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