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A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare
In addition to the Roman plays, Shakespeare also wrote a couple of Greek tragedies. Of them, Timon of Athens was an early play, and will not really repay discussion, though it is worth noting that the character of the misanthropic Timon displays understanding of monomania that is rare in a writer who was generally conscious of the fluidity of human motivation.
The other Greek tragedy, Troilus and Cressida, in one of Shakespeare’s most interesting plays, though it does not have the dramatic appeal of the greater tragedies. In one sense it defies analysis since, though its outcome is tragic, with the romance across racial barriers, Greek and Trojan, doomed to failure, it also covers a lot of other ground in its depiction of the relations between the various Greeks who have gathered at Troy. And the manner in which Cressida accepts her fate, when Troilus is placed beyond her reach, is perhaps a more realistic assessment of the way human nature reacts to disappointment, rather than the morbid despair of a Romeo and a Juliet.
Though the strength of the play lies in the volatility of the various exchanges, there are a few memorable lines, in particular Ulysses’ account of the transience of human success
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter’d tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time. Continue reading