William Shakespeare
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 230
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ...considers his position so very important and maintains it so zealously, but who is always uttering contradictory maxims and precepts; who is so presumptuous and yet so modest; who looks at things with so correct an eye and yet pronounces such foolish judgments; talks so much and yet says so little, in fact, perpetually contradicts himself, giving orders for what he advises to be left undone, entreating to be registered an 'ass, and yet is the very one to discover the nothing which is the cause of the much ado. He is the chief representative of that view of life upon which the whole is based, inasmuch as its comic power is exhibited most strongly and most directly in him. For this contrast, which, in accordance with its nature, usually appears divided between its two poles, is, so to say, individualized in him, that is, united in the one individual and fully reflected in his inconsistent and ever contradictory doings and resolves, thoughts and sayings. Dogberry personifies, if we may say so, the spirit and meaning of the whole, and, therefore, plays essentially the same part as the Fool in Twelfth Night, Touchstone in As You Like It, Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the majority of the clowns in Shakespeare's comedies. Besides this, he is also an important character in so far as it is he who discovers the rascally trick of Don John and his accomplice which gives rise to the whole complication; in fact, the comic caprice of accident delights in employing the most comic of all characters, the clowns par excellence, to bring to light that which it was indeed easy enough to discover, which, however, the sense of the sensible personages did not perceive. At all events our point of view gives an easy and simple explanation as to...