_Shylock._ There I have another bad match. A bankrupt, a prodigal, who
dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was us'd to
come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond. He was wont to
call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money
for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond.
_Salarino._ Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his
flesh. What's that good for?
_Shylock._ To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will
feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hind'red me half a million;
laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted
my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his
reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the
same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a
Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do
we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us,
shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble
you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will
execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
III
HAMLET TO THE PLAYERS[56]
_Hamlet._ Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players
do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the
air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you
must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to see a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipp'd
for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.
_First Player._ I warrant your honor.
_Hamlet._ Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your
tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For
anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the
very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this
overdone, or come tardy off, tho it make the unskilful laugh, can not
but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in
your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that
highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of
Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted
and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made
men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
_First Player._ I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us,
sir.
_Hamlet._ O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that
will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to
laugh too tho in the mean time some necessary question of the play be
then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful
ambition in the Fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.
[_Exeunt Players._
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 54: From "Julius Cæsar," Act III, Sc. ii.]
[Footnote 55: From "The Merchant of Venice." Act III, Sc. ii.]
[Footnote 56: From "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," Act III, Sc. ii.]
BEN JONSON
Born in 1573; died in 1637; became a player in 1597; his
first play, "Everyman in His Humor," performed at the Globe
Theater in 1598, Shakespeare taking one of the parts; went
to France in 1613 as tutor to a son of Raleigh; visited
Drummond of Hawthornden in 1618; his library, one of the
finest in England, burned about 1621; his works first
collected in 1616; buried in Poet's Corner, Westminster,
Abbey.
OF SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER WITS[57]
I remember the players that have often mentioned it as an honor to
Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never
blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a
thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told
posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to
commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine
own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side
idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and
free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle
expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it
was necessary he should be stopt. _Sufflaminandus erat_, as Augustus
said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it
had been so too. Many times he fell into those things which could not
escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking
to him, "Cæsar, thou dost me wrong." He replied, "Cæsar did never
wrong but with just cause"; and such like, which were ridiculous. But
he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to
be praised than to be pardoned.
In the difference of wits I have observed there are many notes; and it
is a little maistry to know them, to discern what every nature, every
disposition will bear; for before we sow our land we should plough it.
There are no fewer forms of minds than of bodies amongst us. The
variety is incredible, and therefore we must search. Some are fit to
make divines, some poets, some lawyers, some physicians, some to be
sent to the plow, and trades.
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting. Some wits
are swelling and high; others low and still; some hot and fiery;
others cold and dull; one must have a bridle, the other a spur. There
be some that are forward and bold; and these will do every little
thing easily. I mean that is hard by and next them, which they will
utter unretarded without any shame-facedness. These never perform
much, but quickly. They are what they are on the sudden; they show
presently like grain that, scattered on the top the ground, shoots up,
but takes no root; has a yellow blade, but the ear empty. They are
wits of good promise at first, but there is an _ingenistitium_; they
stand still at sixteen, they get no higher. You have others that labor
only to ostentation; and are ever more busy about the colors and
surface of a work than in the matter and foundation, for that is hid,
the other is seen.
Others that in composition are nothing but what is rough and broken.
_Quæ per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt._ And if it would come gently,
they trouble it of purpose. They would not have it run without rubs,
as if that style were more strong and manly that struck the ear with a
kind of unevenness. These men err not by chance, but knowingly and
willingly; they are like men that affect a fashion by themselves; have
some singularity in a ruff, cloak, or hatband; or their beards
specially cut to provoke beholders, and set a mark upon themselves.
They would be reprehended while they are looked on. And this vice, one
that is authority with the rest, loving, delivers over to them to be
imitated; so that ofttimes the faults which he fell into, the others
seek for. This is the danger, when vice becomes a precedent.
Others there are that have no composition at all; but a kind of tuning
and riming fall in what they write. It runs and slides, and only makes
a sound. Women's poets they are called, as you have women's tailors.
"They write a verse as smooth, as soft as cream,
In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream."
You may sound these wits and find the depth of them with your middle
finger. They are cream-bowl, or but puddle-deep.
Some that turn over all books, and are equally searching in all
papers; that write out of what they presently find or meet, without
choice. By which means it happens that what they have discredited and
impugned in one week, they have before or after extolled the same in
another. Such are all the essayists, even their master Montaigne.
These, in all they write, confess still what books they have read
last, and therein their own folly so much that they bring it to the
stake raw and undigested; not that the place did need it neither, but
that they thought themselves furnished and would vent it....
It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to do more
than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and great;
but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of
their ill. For their jests, and their sentences (which they only and
ambitiously seek for) stick out and are more eminent because all is
sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick
darkness than a faint shadow. Now, because they speak all they can
(however unfitly), they are thought to have the greater copy; where
the learned use ever election and a mean, they look back to what they
intended at first, and make all an even and proportioned body. The
true artificer will not run away from Nature as he were afraid of her,
or depart from life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the
capacity of his hearers. And tho his language differ from the vulgar
somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and
Tamer-chams of the late age, which had nothing in them but the
scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the
ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it as none
but artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called
barren, dull, lean, a poor writer or by what contumelious word can
come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labor, judgment,
knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. He
gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men, will
acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing, his
subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his readers,
with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what sharpness; in
jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in men's affections;
how invade and break in upon them, and makes their minds like the
thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold what word is proper,
which hath ornaments, which height, what is beautifully translated,
where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show the
composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene,
sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is not only
praised of the most, but commended (which is worse), especially for
that it is naught.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 57: From "Timber; or Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter."]
IZAAK WALTON
Born in 1593, died in 1683; an ironmonger in London in 1618;
his home in Fleet Street in 1624, and from 1628 to 1644 in
Chancery Lane, where he had Dr. John Donne, whose life he
wrote, for friend and neighbor; living at Clerkenwell in
1653, when he published "The Compleat Angler"; after the
Restoration lived at Winchester and Salisbury; wrote lives
of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanderson.
I
THE ANTIQUITY OF ANGLING[58]
_Piscator_--O sir, doubt not that angling is an art: is it not an art
to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout that is more
sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and
timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to
catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast. Doubt not,
therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your
learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning
it? for angling is somewhat like poetry--men are to be born so: I
mean, with inclinations to it, tho both may be heightened by discourse
and practise; but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only
bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a
large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the
art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but
angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be like
virtue, a reward to itself.
_Venator_--Sir, I am now become so full of expectation, that I long
much to have you proceed, and in the order you propose.
_Piscator_--Then first, for the antiquity of angling, of which I shall
not say much, but only this: some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's
flood,[59] others, that Belus,[60] who was the first inventor of godly
and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling; and some
others say--for former times have had their disquisitions about the
antiquity of it--that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his
sons, and that by them it was derived to posterity; others say that he
left it engraven on those pillars which he erected, and trusted to
preserve the knowledge of the mathematics, music, and the rest of that
precious knowledge and those useful arts, which by God's appointment
or allowance and his noble industry were thereby preserved from
perishing in Noah's flood.
These, sir, have been the opinions of several men that have possibly
endeavored to make angling more ancient than is needful, or may well
be warranted; but for my part, I shall content myself in telling you
that angling is much more ancient than the Incarnation of our Savior:
for in the prophet Amos, mention is made of fish-hooks; and in the
book of Job, which was long before the days of Amos--for that book is
said to be writ by Moses--mention is made also of fish-hooks, which
must imply anglers in those times.
But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentleman by
being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and
communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches; or, wanting
those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors (and yet I
grant that where a noble and ancient descent and such merit meet in
any man, it is a double dignification of that person);--so if this
antiquity of angling, which for my part I have not forced, shall, like
an ancient family, be either an honor or an ornament to this virtuous
art which I profess to love and practise, I shall be the gladder that
I made an accidental mention of the antiquity of it, of which I shall
say no more, but proceed to that just commendation which I think it
deserves.
And for that, I shall tell you that in ancient times a debate hath
arisen, and it remains yet unresolved: whether the happiness of man in
this world doth consist more in contemplation or action?
Concerning which, some have endeavored to maintain their opinion of
the first, by saying that the nearer we mortals come to God by way of
imitation, the more happy we are. And they say that God enjoys himself
only by a contemplation of his own infiniteness, eternity, power, and
goodness, and the like. And upon this ground, many cloisteral men of
great learning and devotion prefer contemplation before action. And
many of the fathers seem to approve this opinion, as may appear in
their commentaries upon the words of our Savior to Martha (Luke x: 41,
42).
And on the contrary, there want not men of equal authority and credit,
that prefer action to be the more excellent; as namely, experiments in
physic, and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation
of man's life; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to
others, either to serve his country or do good to particular persons.
And they say also that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and
virtue, and is a maintainer of human society; and for these, and other
like reasons, to be preferred before contemplation.
Concerning which two opinions, I shall forbear to add a third by
declaring my own; and rest myself contented in telling you, my very
worthy friend, that both these meet together, and do most properly
belong to the most honest, ingenious, quiet, and harmless art of
angling.
And first I shall tell you what some have observed, and I have found
it to be a real truth--that the very sitting by the river's side is
not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will
invite an angler to it; and this seems to be maintained by the learned
Peter Du Moulin, who in his discourse on the fulfilling of prophecies,
observes that when God intended to reveal any future events or high
notions to His prophets, He then carried them either to the deserts or
the sea-shore, that having so separated them from amidst the press of
people and business, and the cares of the world, He might settle their
mind in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation.
II
OF THE TROUT[61]
The trout is a fish highly valued both in this and foreign nations; he
may be justly said, as the old poet said of wine, and we English say
of venison, to be a generous fish: a fish that is so like the buck
that he also has his seasons; for it is observed, that he comes in and
goes out of season with the stag and buck. Gesner says his name is of
German offspring, and says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely,
in the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravel; and that he may
justly contend with all fresh-water fish, as the mullet may with all
sea-fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste, and that being in
right season, the most dainty palates have allowed precedency to him.
And before I go further in my discourse, let me tell you, that you are
to observe, that as there be some barren does that are good in summer,
so there be some barren trouts that are good in winter; but there are
not many that are so, for usually they be in their perfection in the
month of May, and decline with the buck. Now you are to take notice,
that in several countries, as in Germany and in other parts, compared
to ours, fish differ much in their bigness and shape, and other ways,
and so do trouts: It is well known that in Lake Leman, the lake of
Geneva, there are trouts taken of three cubits long, as is affirmed by
Gesner, a writer of good credit; and Mercator says, the trouts that
are taken in the lake of Geneva are a great part of the merchandise of
that famous city. And you are further to know, that there be certain
waters, that breed trouts remarkable both for their number and
smallness. I know a little brook in Kent that breeds them to a number
incredible, and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none
greater than about the size of a gudgeon: there are also in divers
rivers, especially that relate to or be near to the sea, as
Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor, a little trout called samlet,
or skegger trout (in both which places I have caught twenty or forty
at a standing), that will bite as fast and as freely as minnows; these
be by some taken to be young salmon; but in those waters they never
grow to be bigger than a herring.
There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout called there a
Fordidge trout, a trout that bears the name of the town where it is
usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish; many of them
near the bigness of a salmon, but known by their different color; and
in their best season they cut very white; and none of these have been
known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught
by Sir George Hastings, an excellent angler, and now with God: and he
hath told me, he thought _that_ trout bit not for hunger but
wantonness; and it is rather to be believed, because both he, then,
and many others before him, have been curious to search into their
bellies, what the food was by which they lived, and have found out
nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity.
Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported by good
authors, that grasshoppers, and some fish, have no mouths, but are
nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills, man knows
not how: and this may be believed, if we consider that when the raven
hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care, but leaves her young
ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said, in the Psalms, "to
feed the young ravens that call upon Him." And they be kept alive and
fed by dew, or worms that breed in their nests, or some other ways
that we mortals know not; and this may be believed of the Fordidge
trout, which, as it is said of the stork (Jerem. viii: 7), that "he
knows his season," so he knows his times, I think almost his day of
coming into the river out of the sea, where he lives, and, it is like,
feeds nine months of the year, and fasts three in the river of
Fordidge. And you are to note that those townsmen are very punctual in
observing the time of beginning to fish for them, and boast much that
their river affords a trout that exceeds all others. And just so does
Sussex boast of several fish; as namely, a Shelsey cockle, a
Chichester lobster, an Arundel mullet, and an Amerly trout.
And now for some confirmation of the Fordidge trout: you are to know
that this trout is thought to eat nothing in the fresh water; and it
may be better believed, because it is well known, that swallows and
bats and wagtails, which are called half-year birds, and not seen to
fly in England for six months in the year, but about Michaelmas leave
us for a better climate than this; yet some of them that have been
left behind their fellows, have been found many thousands at a time,
in hollow trees, or clay caves; where they have been observed to live
and sleep out the whole winter without meat; and so Albertus observes,
that there is one kind of frog that hath her mouth naturally shut up
about the end of August, and that she lives so all the winter; and tho
it be strange to some, yet it is known to too many among us to be
doubted.
And so much for these Fordidge trouts, which never afford an angler
sport, but either live their time of being in the fresh water by their
meat formerly got in the sea (not unlike the swallow or frog), or by
the virtue of the fresh water only; or, as the birds of Paradise and
the chameleon are said to live, by the sun and the air.
There is also in Northumberland a trout called a bull trout, of a much
greater length and bigness than any in the southern parts. And there
are, in many rivers that relate to the sea, salmon trouts, as much
different from others, both in shape and in their spots, as we see
sheep in some countries differ one from another in their shape and
bigness, and in the fineness of their wool. And certainly, as some
pastures breed larger sheep, so do some rivers, by reason of the
ground over which they run, breed larger trouts.
Now the next thing that I will commend to your consideration is, that
the trout is of a more sudden growth than other fish. Concerning
which, you are also to take notice, that he lives not so long as the
perch and divers other fishes do, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed
in his "History of Life and Death."[62]
And now you are to take notice, that he is not like the crocodile,
which if he lives never so long, yet always thrives till his death.
And you are to know, that he will about, especially before, the time
of his spawning, get almost miraculously through weirs and flood-gates
against the streams; even through such high and swift places as is
almost incredible. Next, that the trout usually spawns about October
or November, but in some rivers a little sooner or later; which is the
more observable, because most other fish spawn in the spring or
summer, when the sun hath warmed both the earth and the water, and
made it fit for generation. And you are to note, that he continues
many months out of season; for it may be observed of the trout, that
he is like the buck or the ox, that he will not be fat in many months,
tho he go in the very same pasture that horses do, which will be fat
in one month; and so you may observe, that most other fishes recover
strength, and grow sooner far and in season, than the trout doth.