Shakespeare's medical knowledge / by Charles W. Stearns.

  • Stearns, Charles W. (Charles Woodward), 1818-1887.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shakespeare's medical knowledge / by Charles W. Stearns. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the fine arts; trade, politics, and government; divinity, philosophy, and ethics ; handicraft, horses, and field-sports; and even the language and arts of thieves and rogues. And after all these have been extracted from his writings, there yet will remain the vast and durable edifice of his poetry. Unless Shakespeare's hard fortune at some early period of his life had forced him to a close contact with the lower orders of society, he could never have given us with his pen those instantaneous views which convey to our minds more than canvas or colors can to the eye. For what painter would undertake to represent a gossiping tailor, standing on slippers thrust upon contrary feet, telling his news to a smith, who in the hearing lets his iron on the anvil cool ? ' His servants and clowns are a compound of ignorance and wit, of dulness and sense, of kindness and selfishness, suck as only nature ever formed, and only Shakespeare ever copied. He had found real wit under plain statute caps, and his true laborer knew how to be