But let us read Montaigne's view: [72]--
'I find that love is nothing else than a thirst of enjoying a desired
subject; nor that Venus is anything else but the pleasure of emptying
one's seminary vessels, similar to the pleasure which Nature has given
us in discharging other parts.'
Now, this significant quality also, of saying indecencies without shame,
Hamlet has in common with Montaigne. No character in Shakspere's dramas
uses such language as Hamlet; and in this case, let it be observed, it
is not used between men, but towards the beloved one! We shall remark
upon his relations with Ophelia later on.
The frivolous Montaigne speaks of love as one might do of a good dish to
be enjoyed at every degree of age, according to taste and inclination.
In Essay III.(4) we learn how, in his youth, 'standing in need of a
vehement diversion for the sake of distraction, he made himself
amorous by art and study.' Elsewhere he tells what great things he was
able, as a young man, to achieve in this line. [73] He, therefore,
does not agree with the sage who praises age because it frees us from
voluptuousness. [74]
He, on the contrary, says:--'I shall never take kindly to impotence,
whatever good it may do me.'
Montaigne, the old and young lover, is lashed in act v. sc. I, in
disfigured verses of a song sung by the grave-digger, which dates about
from the year 1557, and at Shakspere's time probably was very popular.
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