Lucentio

“ In which story is plot or else character the supreme interest?
Is the Bianca story or the Katherine story the more entertaining? Why?
III BIANCA AND HER SUITORS Lucentio's errand in Padua, his breeding and relations to his servant qualify him as quite the conventional hero of a romantic love-story. How does he compare with the young noblemen of "Love's Labour's Lost?" What part of the study of Philosophy does he specially desire to take up and how does his temper toward learning fall in with theirs? ”

“ How now! what’s the matter?
BAPTISTA.
What, is the man lunatic?
TRANIO.
Sir, you seem a sober ancient gentleman by your habit, but your words show you a madman. Why, sir, what ’cerns it you if I wear pearl and gold? I thank my good father, I am able to maintain it.
VINCENTIO.
Thy father! O villain! he is a sailmaker in Bergamo.
BAPTISTA.
You mistake, sir; you mistake, sir. Pray, what do you think is his name?
VINCENTIO.
His name! As if I knew not his name! I have brought him up ever since he was three years old, and his name is Tranio.
PEDANT.
Away, away, mad ass! His name is Lucentio ”

“ You are like to haue a thin and slender pittance.
Bap.
It likes me well:
Cambio hie you home, and bid Bianca make her readie
straight:
And if you will tell what hath hapned,
Lucentios Father is arriued in Padua,
And how she's like to be Lucentios wife.
Biond.
Exit.I praie the gods she may withall my heart.
Tran.
Dallie not with the gods, but get thee gone.
Enter Peter.
Signior Baptista, shall I leade the way,
Welcome, one messe is like to be your cheere,
Come sir, we will better it in Pisa.
Bap.
Exeunt.I follow you.
Enter Lucentio and Biondello.
Bion.
Cambio. ”

“ Exit Cesario.
List to me, Lucio: listen, brother dear, First playmate-child, tending whose innocence Myself learned motherhood. Shall I deny Youth to be loved and follow after love? There is a love breaks like a morning beam On the husht novice kneeling by his arms; And worse there is, whose kisses strangle love, Whose feet take hold of hell. My Lucio, Follow not that!
Lucio. Why, who—who hath maligned The Countess?
Regent Not maligned. Lucetta, here—
Lucio. Lucetta! Curse Lucetta and her tongue! Am I a child, to be nagged by waiting-maids?
Regent. No, but a man, and shall weigh evidence. ”

“ Lucetta points to the stairs. He dashes off in pursuit.
Duke. All-seeing God! Where were thine eyes, or else thy justice? Dead? O, never dead!
Lucio. Ay, Duke, push God aside, As I push thee. I have the better right: I killed her—I. O never pass, sweet soul, Till thou hast drunk a shudder of this wretch, Thy brother, playmate, murderer!
Duke. Wine! bring wine—
Regent (as the wine is brought and revives her) . Flower, he will crush thee—but the bliss, the bliss! I swim in bliss. What ... Lucio? Where's my lord? ”

“ Lucio, the friend of Claudio, visited him in the prison, and Claudio said to him: “I pray you, Lucio, do me this kind service. Go to my sister Isabel, who this day proposes to enter the convent of Saint Clare; acquaint her with the danger of my state; implore her that she make friends with the strict deputy; bid her go herself to Angelo. I have great hopes in that; for she can discourse with prosperous art, and well she can persuade; besides, there is a speechless dialect in youthful sorrow such as moves men.” ”

“ So Lucien may perhaps succeed to admiration in spite of his mistakes; he has only to profit by some happy vein or to be among good companions; but if an evil angel crosses his path, he will go to the very depths of hell. ‘Tis a brilliant assemblage of good qualities embroidered upon too slight a tissue; time wears the flowers away till nothing but the web is left; and if that is poor stuff, you behold a rag at the last. So long as Lucien is young, people will like him; but where will he be as a man of thirty? That is the question which those who love him sincerely are bound to ask themselves. ”

“ The streets at Rome are not thronged as with us; nor does there exist, in a city consecrated by so many sublime objects, that restless and vulgar curiosity which torments the English public. Each lives in himself, not in his neighbour. The moral air of Rome is Indifference.
Lucilla, therefore, hurried along unmolested and unobserved, until at length her feet failed her, and she sank exhausted, but still unconscious of her movements and of all around, upon one of the scattered fragments of ancient pride that at every turn are visible in the streets of Rome. ”

“ There were a great many mountain-tops to thank, for the crags and peaks and pinnacles tumbled away through the morning mist in an endless confusion of grandeur. I have been all day in better humour with Lucerne than ever before--a forecast reflection of Italian moods. If Switzerland, as I wrote the other day, is so furiously a show-place, Lucerne is certainly one of the biggest booths at the fair. ”

“ Lucerne, September.—Berne, I find, has been filling with tourists at the expense of Lucerne, which I have been having almost to myself. There are six people at the table d’hôte; the excellent dinner denotes on the part of the chef the easy leisure in which true artists love to work. The waiters have nothing to do but lounge about the hall and chink in their pockets the fees of the past season. The day has been lovely in itself, and pervaded, to my sense, by the gentle glow of a natural satisfaction at my finding myself again on the threshold of Italy. ”

“ Lucetta, here, the ladder and the man.
What man she will not say. Cesario
Has tracked his footprint on her garden plots.
Must we say more?
Fulvia. No need. Her fingering mind Is a close cupboard turning all things rancid.
Lucio. Yea, for such wry-necks all the world's a lawn To peek and peer and pounce a sinful worm;
The fatter, the more luscious.
Regent. Lucio, This woman nought gainsays. ”

“ In what you have done for the sake of L. Lucceius, I wish you to be fully aware that you have obliged a man who will be exceedingly grateful; and that, while this is very much the case with Lucceius himself, so also Pompey as often as he sees me—and he sees me very often—thanks you in no common terms. I add also, what I know will be exceedingly gratifying to you, that I am myself immensely delighted with your kindness to Lucceius. ”

“ He reads In your heart—He that judges of all thoughts and deeds. With eyes, mine forestall not! This only I say: You have not the right (read it, you, as you may!) To say... 'I am the wrong'd."'... "Have I wrong'd thee?—wrong'd THEE!" He falter'd, "Lucile, ah, Lucile!" "Nay, not me," She murmur'd, "but man! The lone nun standing here Has no claim upon earth, and is pass'd from the sphere Of earth's wrongs and earth's reparations. But she, The dead woman, Lucile, she whose grave is in me, Demands from her grave reparation to man, Reparation to God. ”

“ It had been a different thing, however, when Messer Leonardo, the Duke’s own petted protégé, had proposed to introduce Lucio into the great picture of the Last Supper he was about to paint for the monks of Santa Maria delle Grazie. And as its divine protagonist! Here was service deliriously sanctified. Lucio must be enraptured to consecrate his young glowing beauty to an end so sublime. And he went, indeed, to the great Master’s atelier in the Palace, and was made the subject of innumerable studies, pending his appearance in the fresco. ”

“ Lucullus, upon his return to Rome, found his brother Marcus accused by Caius Memmius, for his acts as quaestor, done by Sylla's orders; and on his acquittal, Memmius changed the scene, and animated the people against Lucullus himself, urging them to deny him a triumph for appropriating the spoils and prolonging the war. In this great struggle, the nobility and chief men went down and mingling in person among the tribes, with much entreaty and labor, scarce at length prevailed upon them to consent to his triumph. ”

“ More and more as you linger in Lucca it is his work you seek out, caught by its sweetness, its delicate and melancholy joy, its strangeness too, as though he had desired to express some long thought-out, recondite beauty, and, half afraid to express himself after all, had let his thoughts pass over the marble as the wind passes over the sand between the Pineta and the sea. ”

“ To which Lucia answered by return: “Thou dost not love me!” He suffered more acutely than ever, despite the daring, the letters, the stolen kisses and the embraces in doorways. Day by day Lucia grew [Pg 219] more strange; one morning her face was pale and her voice hoarse and acrid. She neither gave her hand nor said good-day: her elbows looked angular and her shoulders as if they would pierce her gown; she even stooped as if suddenly stricken with age, answering every one—her husband, Caterina, and Andrea—disagreeably, especially Andrea. ”

“ Lucan the poet was at the head of them, who, observing Homer and Virgil at the table, was going to sit down himself, had not the latter whispered him, that whatever pretence he might otherwise have had, he forfeited his claim to it, by coming in as one of the historians. Lucan was so exasperated with the repulse, that he muttered something to himself; and was heard to say, that since he could not have a seat among them himself, he would bring in one who alone had more merit than their whole assembly: upon which he went to the door, and brought in Cato of Utica. ”

“ A lot of people do not know how to have a good time or how to see a strange and delightful place. I meet many people who do not care for Europe, or Italy, or Switzerland,—the people who bring a stack of trunks and good clothes and have to put in their time dressing up only to be out-dressed by somebody else.
But Lucerne has one thing different. It is the “Lion of Lucerne,” the monument erected in honor of the Swiss soldiers who died in the French palace defending the rotten Bourbon dynasty when the revolutionists broke in and captured the king and queen. ”

“ When soldiers feel this, when they feel that they and their general are part of one living thing, they can perform miracles. Lucullus had no such power. He was harsh, tyrannical, and inhuman in his attitude and, overwhelmed by a mass of work, never found time to relax. The sternness of discipline never unbent. He seemed to grudge the soldiers any share in the vast booty sent to Rome. ”

“ Such is, or such at least appears to me this lovely territory of Lucca: where cheap living, free government, and genteel society, may be enjoyed with a tranquillity unknown to larger states: where there are delicious and salutary baths a few miles out of town, for the nobility to make villeggiatura at; and where, if those nobility were at all disposed to cultivate and communicate learning, every opportunity for study is afforded.
Some drawbacks will however always be found from human felicity. ”

“ A divine graciousness transfused the white temples that caught that golden gleam; a matchless nobleness had set its seal in the short chin raised, but not abruptly. The smile that hovered about the coral lips, yet redder as they seemed by force of contrast with the even teeth, was the smile of some sorrowing angel. Lucien’s hands denoted race; they were shapely hands; hands that men obey at a sign, and women love to kiss. Lucien was slender and of middle height. ”

“ As they walked along the corridor, with Lucien’s hand upon his nephew’s shoulder, Doria—looking through the window—saw four galleys approaching. He pointed them out to his uncle as the convoy of his cousin Andrea and begged the prince to convey an important message to him and to do his cousin the honour of sending an escort with it. Lucien was only too pleased to gratify his guest and at once ordered some fourteen men of his own bodyguard to welcome the on-coming fleet. In this way Bartolomeo rid the palace of fourteen formidable armed men, of nearly all, in fact, who were on duty that night. ”

“ While he was considering and hesitating what to do, a gentle breeze blowing from the adjoining plain, which was covered with grass, carried many of the flowers to the army of Lucullus, and spontaneously strewed them about, so that they rested and fell on the men's shields and helmets, which seemed to their opponents to be crowned with chaplets. Thus encouraged, the soldiers of Lucullus engaged, and gained a victory, with the loss to the opposite party of eighteen thousand men and their camp. This Lucullus was the brother of the Lucullus who afterwards defeated Mithridates and Tigranes. ”

“ When I consider that Lucan died at twenty-six, I cannot help ranking him among the most extraordinary men that ever lived.— Macaulay.
The whole production (the Pharsalia) is youthful and unripe, but indicative of genuine power.—Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, History of Roman Literature, vol. 2, p. 78.
Lucan was born in Spain; was taken early to Rome; was carefully educated; wrote much; and was much admired; but was disliked by Nero, who forbade him to publish poems or recite them, and finally put him to death on the charge of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso. ”

“ The Guardian of the new convent of Saint Francis, being obliged by the rule of his order to support the friars by daily alms collected from the people, and finding the inhabitants of Lucca determined to starve them out of their city, applies to Ludovico for help. That wicked man thrusts the Guardian and his lay-brother Antolín—the gracioso of the play—out of the house, to be hooted and pelted by the mob. ”