Ah, what a world of descant makes my soul
Upon this voluntary ground of love!
"Pretty enough, very pretty! but" exactly as like and as near the style
of Shakespeare's early plays as is the style of Constable's sonnets to
that of Shakespeare's. Unless we are to assign to the Master every
unaccredited song, sonnet, elegy, tragedy, comedy, and farce of his
period, which bears the same marks of the same date--a date, like our
own, of too prolific and imitative production--as we find inscribed on
the greater part of his own early work; unless we are to carry even as
far as this the audacity and arrogance of our sciolism, we must somewhere
make a halt--and it must be on the near side of such an attribution as
that of _King Edward III_. to the hand of Shakespeare.
With the disappearance of the poetic pimp and the entrance of the
unsuspecting Countess, the style rises yet again--and really, this time,
much to the author's credit. It would need a very fine touch from a very
powerful hand to improve on the delicacy and dexterity of the prelude or
overture to the King's avowal of adulterous love.
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