Your coach is coming, madam.
_Gertrud_. That's well said. Now Heaven! methinks I am eene up
to the knees in preferment....
But a little higher, but a little higher, but a little higher!
There, there, there lyes Cupid's fire!
_Mrs. Touchstone_. But must this young man (Hamlet), an't
please you, madam, run by your coach all the way a foote?
_Gertrud_. I by my faith, I warrant him; hee gives no other
milke, as I have another servant does.
_Mrs. Touchstone_. Ahlas! 'tis eene pittie meethinks; for God's
sake, madam, buy him but a hobbie horse; let the poore youth have
something betwixt his legges to ease 'hem. Alas! we must doe as we
would be done too.
That is all we dare to quote from this comedy; but it quite suffices
to characterise the meanness of the warfare which Jonson's clique
carried on against Shakspere.
However, the lofty ideas contained in 'Hamlet' could not be lowered by
such an attack; they became the common property of the best and noblest.
Those ideas were of too high a range, too abstract in their nature, to
be easily made a sport of before the multitude. A few pleasantries,
used by Shakespeare in a moment of easy-going style, were laid hold
of maliciously, and caricatured most indecently, by his antagonists,
in order to entertain the common crowd there with. Innocent children,
moreover, were made to act such satires: 'little eyases, that cry
out on the top of the question, and are most tyrannically clapped
for't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages.
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