[51]
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence.
What then?
what rests?
Try what repentance can; what can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
O wretched state!
O bosom black as death!
O bruised soul that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged!
Help, angels, make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees!
And heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe;
All may be well!
He repeated this entire passage from memory, with a feeling and appreciation unsurpassed by anything I ever witnessed upon the stage.
Remaining in thought for a few moments, he continued:--
“The opening of the play of ‘King Richard the Third’ seems to me often entirely misapprehended.
It is quite common for an actor to come upon the stage, and, in a sophomoric style, to begin with a flourish:--
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York,
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried!
” “Now,” said he, “this is all wrong.
Richard, you remember, had been, and was then, plotting the destruction of his brothers, to make room for himself.
Outwardly, the most loyal to the newly crowned king, secretly he could scarcely contain his impatience at the obstacles still in the way of his own elevation.
He appears upon the stage, just after the crowning of Edward, burning with repressed hate and jealousy.
The prologue is the utterance of the most intense bitterness and satire.”
