Of this speech in the third act of King Lear--
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.
--A.C. Bradley, one of the best Shakespearean critics, suggests that criticism must stand mute, and declares only, "This is one of those passages which make one worship Shakespeare." Indent, new paragraph, nothing more to say about that.
The accumulation of such passages, in diverse situations across approximately 36 dramas, all compelling the conclusion that nothing remains to be said, is responsible for Shakespeare's status as the author of "humanistic scriptures, the tested residue of pragmatic wisdom, a general collection of quotable texts and usable examples" (as Harry Levin, in his General Introduction to The Riverside Shakespeare, puts it). This raises the question: who's in second place?
Since I have recently quoted Dr. Johnson to shed light upon the troubles of Tiger Woods, it should not surprise my hordes of loyal readers to learn that, today, I vote for him (Johnson, not Woods). I've been reading Johnson's LIfe of Savage and, on a coffee break from work trouble on Friday, came upon this passage:
Examples need not be sought at any great distance to prove that superiority of fortune has a natural tendency to kindle pride, and that pride seldom fails to exert itself in contempt and insult; and if this is often the effect of hereditary wealth and of honors enjoyed only to the merit of others, it is some extenuation of any indecent triumphs to which this unhappy man [Savage] may have been betrayed that his prosperity was heightened by the force of novelty and made more intoxicating by a sense of the misery in which he had so long languished and perhaps of the insults which he had formerly borne, and which he might now think himself entitled to revenge. It is too common for those who have unjustly suffered pain to inflict it likewise in their turn with the same injustice, and to imagine that they have a right to treat others as they have themselves been treated. . . .
[Savage] was then able to discern that if misery be the effect of virtue it ought to be reverenced; if of ill fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. And the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyric who is capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner.
Maybe this does not deserve the epithet "quotable," but it's overflowing of wisdom and humanity, and is one of those passages that make me worship Dr. Johnson. On a lower note:
Q: What is the difference between a Cadillac Escalade and a golf ball?
A: Tiger Woods can drive a golf ball 300 yards.
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