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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the
realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got
sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether
any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred"
compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain,
that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the
burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his
poems by Cloten and Touchstone.
Jupiter and Semele
This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not;
but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it
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