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قراءة كتاب Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess
The hard-handed men of Athens perform their crude interlude, made all the more grotesque by the awkwardness of Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. In the character of Thisbe, it is his part to fall upon the sword and die, thus ending the play. Imagine the delight of the courtly auditors when the clumsy man in the part of the disconsolate lady falls, not upon the blade, but upon the scabbard of the unfamiliar weapon!
But laughter and applause are arrested by the appearance of a bright, transparent cloud. It reaches from heaven to earth, and bourne in upon it, with music and with song, are Oberon, Titania, and their elfin train. The cloud parts, and Puck steps forth to speak the epilogue:--
"If we shadows have offended
Think but this, and all is mended.
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear."
The Christmas play is over, but not over the Christmas fun. Lords and ladies are but human, and have devised a "stately dance," in which they themselves participate until nearly sunrise, the Queen herself joining at times, and never so happy as when assured of her "wondrous majesty and grace."
Did they--did any one--at this Christmas play of three hundred years ago feel the full charm and glory of this immortal creation of the poet? Did its lines ring in their ears the next day, and the next, and the next? Did they foresee how its rhythm would dance down the ages and abide in these present days, and in this present speech of ours?
But this is something that I, your truthful reporter, cannot answer.
A Dance of the Sixteenth Century
"A fortnight hold we this solemnity.
In nightly revels and new jollity."
III.
An Old-Time Christmas Carol.
Sung to the Queen in the Presence at
Whitehall MDXCVI.
I sing of a maiden
That is makeless.[1]
King of all kings
To her son she ches.[2]
He came al so still
There his mother was,
As dew in April
That falleth on the grass.
He came al so still
To his mother's bower,
As dew in April
That falleth on the flower.
He came al so still
There his mother lay,
As dew in April
That falleth on the spray.
Mother and maiden
Was never none but she;
Well may such a lady
God's mother be.
Footnote 1: Matchless.
Footnote 2: Chose.
Ye End.
