Art

For a good poet’s made, as well as born.

He was not of an age but for all time.

Call forth thundering Aeschylus.

Marlowe’s mighty line.

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room; Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free, Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.

Be thou the tenth Muse.

The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us, and present Our Alexandrian revels. Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I’ the posture of a whore.

Like a strutting player, whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound ’Twixt his stretch’d footing and the scaffoldage.

The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

The naked, poor, and mangled Peace, Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births.

The singing masons building roofs of gold.

O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!

Such water-colors to impaint his cause.

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

As in a theater, the eyes of men, After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world.

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair; And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

He makes sweet music with th’ enamell’d stones.

Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant, And kestrels dear to kestrels, but to me the Muse and song.

Caress the detail, the divine detail.

Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

When you depict sad or unlucky people, and want to touch the reader’s heart, try to be colder—it gives their grief, as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief. As it is, your heroes weep and you sigh. Yes, you must be cold.