09w17:1 Shakespeare's Blog Part XIII

by timothy. 0 Comments

April 20th
Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesy is out at last as a printed book. Well, we have done better than Gorboduc in the years since he penned it. He would have right tragedies and right comedies and delightful teaching &c. Yet if we are to hold a mirror to nature (I thank thee, nasty Chapman, for that phrase) we must see all in one. Thus, gibbering in my nakedness and approaching her with my cock-crowing yard, I see I am a clown, I see I am also a great king that will possess a golden kingdom. Tragedy is a goat and comedy a village Priapus and dying is the word that links both. Cut your great king’s head off and thrust him in the earth that new life may spring.

(Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like The Sun, p.152-153)

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