We find in the rest of this scene nothing better worth remark than such
poor catches at a word as this;
And let those milkwhite messengers of time
Show thy time's learning in this dangerous time;
a villainous trick of verbiage which went nigh now and then to affect the
adolescent style of Shakespeare, and which happens to find itself as
admirably as unconsciously burlesqued in two lines of this very scene:
I will not give a penny for a life,
Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death.
The verses intervening are smooth, simple, and passably well worded;
indeed the force of elegant commonplace cannot well go further than in
such lines as these.
Thyself art bruised and bent with many broils,
And stratagems forepast with iron pens
Are texed {271} in thine honourable face;
Thou art a married man in this distress,
But danger woos me as a blushing maid;
Teach me an answer to this perilous time.
_Audley_. To die is all as common as to live;
The one in choice, the other holds in chase;
For from the instant we begin to live
We do pursue and hunt the time to die:
First bud we, then we blow, and after seed;
Then presently we fall; and as a shade
Follows the body, so we follow death.
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