y Marlowe's lines (if you will study the whole passage) to be
lovely. You may even judge Shakespeare's to be crude by comparison. But
you cannot help noting that whereas Marlowe steadily deals in abstract,
nebulous terms, Shakespeare constantly uses concrete ones, which later on
he learned to pack into verse, such as:--

Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care.

Is it unfair to instance Marlowe, who died young? Then let us take
Webster for the comparison; Webster, a man of genius or of something very
like it, and commonly praised by the critics for his mastery over
definite, detailed, and what I may call _solidified sensation_. Let us
take this admired passage from his "Duchess of Malfy":--

_Ferdinand._ How doth our sister Duchess bear herself
In her imprisonment?

_Basola._ Nobly: I'll describe her.
She's sad as one long used to 't, and she seems
Rather to welcome the end of misery
Than shun it: a behaviour so noble
As gives a majesty to adversity
(Note the abstract terms.)
You may discern the shape of loveliness
More perfect in her tears than in her smiles;
She will muse for hours together; and her silence
(Here we first come on the concrete: and beautiful it is.)
Methinks expresseth more than if she spake.

Now set against this the well-known passage from "Twelfth Night" where
the Duke asks and Viola answers a question about someone unknown to him
and invented by her--a mere phantasm, in short: yet note how much more
definite is the language:--

_Viola._ My father had a daughter lov'd a man;
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
_I_ should your lordship.

_Duke._ And what's her history?

_Viola._ A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

Observe (apart from the dramatic skill of it) how, when Shakespeare _has_
to use the abstract noun 'concealment,' on an instant it turns into a
visible worm 'feeding' on the visible rose; how, having to use a second
abstract wo