Sing, siren, for thyself.
In this case identity of sex was as palpable an evidence for identity of
authorship as diversity of sex had afforded in the preceding instance.
Again:
Have oaths no _more validity_ with princes?
In _Romeo and Juliet_, Act iii. Scene 3, the very same words were coupled
in the very same order:
_More validity_,
More honourable state, more courtship lies
In carrion flies than Romeo.
Again:
It would have killed a salamander.
Compare the _First Part of King Henry IV_, Act iii. Scene 3.
I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two
and thirty years.
In Act ii. Scene 2 the hero, on being informed how heavy are the odds
against him in the field, answers,
I am glad on't; the honour is the greater.
To which his confidant rejoins:
The danger is the greater.
And in the sixth scene of the same act the messenger observes:
I only heard the prince wish
. . . . . . .
He had fewer by a thousand men.
Could any member doubt that we had here the same hand which gave us the
like debate between King Henry and Westmoreland on the eve of Agincourt?
or could any member suppose that in the subsequent remark of the same
military confidant, "I smell a rat, sir," there was merely a fortuitous
coincidence with Hamlet's reflection as he "whips out his rapier"--in
itself a martial proceeding--under similar circumstances to the same
effect?
In the very next scene a captain observes of his own troops
Methinks such tattered rogues should never conquer:
a touch that could only be due to the pencil which had drawn Falstaff's
ragged regiment.
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