Parolles. Yet I am thankful; if my heart were great,
'Twould burst at this. Captain I'll be no more,
But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft
As captain shall. Simply the thing I am
Shall make me live; who knows himself a braggart,
Let him fear this; for it shall come to pass,
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
Rust sword, cool blushes, and Parolles live
Safest in shame; being fooi'd, by fool'ry thrive;
There's place and means for every man alive.
I'll after them.
The story of ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and of several others of
Shakespeare's plays, is taken from Boccaccio. The poet has
dramatized the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and
has preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment without
improving upon it, which was impossible. There is indeed in
Boccaccio's serious pieces a truth, a pathos, and an exquisite
refinement of sentiment, which is hardly to be met with in any other
prose writer whatever. Justice has not been done him by the world.
He has in general passed for a mere narrator of lascivious tales or
idle jests. This character probably originated in his obnoxious
attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by the grossness of
mankind, who revenged their own want of refinement on Boccaccio, and
only saw in his writings what suited the coarseness of their own
tastes.
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