Note 34 — THE ROUND TABLE
Reading edition
‘Oh! for my sake do you with fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.’
At another time, we find him ‘desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope’: so little was Shakspeare, as far as we can learn, enamoured of himself!