between Shakespeare's rhetorical
and dramatic use of language, or, as I before termed it, his imitative
and idiomatic style, may be better understood on comparing some brief
specimens of his earlier and later workmanship. As an instance of the
former, take a part of York's speech to the King, in _King Richard the
Second_, ii. 1:

"I am the last of noble Edward's sons,
Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first:
In war was never lion rag'd more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman.
His face thou hast, for even so look'd he,
Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours;
But when he frown'd, it was against the French,
And not against his friends: his noble hand
Did win what he did spend, and not spend that
Which his triumphant father's hand had won:
His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin."

No one, I think, can help feeling that this is the style of a man
rather aiming at finely-turned phrases than deeply in earnest with the
matter in hand; more the language of brilliant rhetoric than of
impassioned thought. At all events, there is to my taste an air of
falsetto about it; it seems more like the image of a painted than of a
living passion. Be this as it may, the Poet's own riper style quite
discredits it; though I have to confess that, but for his teachings,
we might not so well have known of any thing better. Now contrast with
the foregoing one of the hero's speeches in _Coriolanus_, iii. 2,
where his mother urges him to play the demagogue, and practise smiles
for the gaining of votes:

"Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot's spirit! my throat of war be turn'd--
Which quired with my drum--into a pipe
Small as an eunuch's, or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep! the smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks; and school-boys' tears take up
The glasses of my sight! a beggar's tongue
Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees,
Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath receiv'd an alms!--I will not do't;
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,
And by my body's action teach my mind
A most inherent baseness."

Perhaps the Poet's different styles might be still better exemplified
in passages of pathos; but here I must rest with merely referring, for
instance, to York's speech in _King Ri