I open _Troilus and Cressida_
(because, like the speech of Aeneas, it has to do with the story of
Troy), and I read, in a perfectly serious context (IV. v. 6 f.):
Thou, trumpet, there's thy purse.
Now crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe:
Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek
Outswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon:
Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood;
Thou blow'st for Hector.
'Splendid!' one cries. Yes, but if you are told it is also bombastic,
can you deny it? I read again (V. v. 7):
bastard Margarelon
Hath Doreus prisoner,
And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,
Upon the pashed corses of the kings.
Or, to turn to earlier but still undoubted works, Shakespeare wrote in
_Romeo and Juliet_,
here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids;
and in _King John_,
And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath
Out of the bloody finger-ends of John;
and in _Lucrece_,
And, bubbling from her breast, it doth divide
In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood
Circles her body in on every side,
Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood
Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.
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