' The Welsh Parson, Sir Hugh
Evans (a title which in those days was given to the clergy) is an
excellent character in all respects. He is as respectable as he is
laughable. He has 'very good discretions, and very odd humours'. The
duel-scene with Caius gives him an opportunity to show his 'cholers
and his tremblings of mind', his valour and his melancholy, in an
irresistible manner. In the dialogue, which at his mother's request
he holds with his pupil, William Page, to show his progress in
learning, it is hard to say whether the simplicity of the master or
the scholar is the greatest. Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol, are but the
shadows of what they were; and Justice Shallow himself has little of
his consequence left. But his cousin, Slender, makes up for the
deficiency. He is a very potent piece of imbecility. In him the
pretensions of the worthy Gloucestershire family are well kept up,
and immortalized. He and his friend Sackerson and his book of songs
and his love of Anne Page and his having nothing to say to her can
never be forgotten. It is the only first-rate character in the play,
but it is in that class. Shakespeare is the only writer who was as
great in describing weakness as strength.
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
This comedy is taken very much from the Menaechmi of Plautus, and is
not an improvement on it.
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