For it is a perennial6 puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet7. What were the conditions in which women lived? I asked myself; for fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble8 upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment9 is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew10, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun11 in mid-air by incorporeal12 creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.
I went, therefore, to the shelf where the histories stand and took down one of the latest, Professor Trevelyan’s History of England. Once more I looked up Women, found ‘position of’ and turned to the pages indicated. ‘Wife-beating’, I read, ‘was a recognized right of man, and was practised without shame by high as well as low. . . . Similarly,’ the historian goes on, ‘the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents’ choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted13 on public opinion. Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice14, particularly in the “chivalrous” upper classes. . . . Betrothal15 often took place while one or both of the parties was in the cradle, and marriage when they were scarcely out of the nurses’ charge.’ That was about 1470, soon after Chaucer’s time. The next reference to the position of women is some two hundred years later, in the time of the Stuarts. ‘It was still the exception for women of the upper and middle class to choose their own husbands, and when the husband had been assigned, he was lord and master, so far at least as law and custom could make him. Yet even so,’ Professor Trevelyan concludes, ‘neither Shakespeare’s women nor those of authentic seventeenth-century memoirs16, like the Verneys and the Hutchinsons, seem wanting in personality and character.’ Certainly, if we consider it, Cleopatra must have had a way with her; Lady Macbeth, one would suppose, had a will of her own; Rosalind, one might conclude, was an attractive girl. Professor Trevelyan is speaking no more than the truth when he remarks that Shakespeare’s women do not seem wanting in personality and character. Not being a historian, one might go even further and say that women have burnt like beacons17 in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time — Clytemnestra, Antigone, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Phedre, Cressida, Rosalind, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi, among the dramatists; then among the prose writers: Millamant, Clarissa, Becky Sharp, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Madame de Guermantes — the names flock to mind, nor do they recall women ‘lacking in personality and character.’ Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid18; infinitely19 beautiful and hideous20 in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even greater.5 But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.
5 ‘It remains21 a strange and almost inexplicable22 fact that in Athena’s city, where women were kept in almost Oriental suppression as odalisques or drudges23, the stage should yet have produced figures like Clytemnestra and Cassandra Atossa and Antigone, Phedre and Medea, and all the other heroines who dominate play after play of the “misogynist” Euripides. But the paradox24 of this world where in real life a respectable woman could hardly show her face alone in the street, and yet on the stage woman equals or surpasses man, has never been satisfactorily explained. In modern tragedy the same predominance exists. At all events, a very cursory26 survey of Shakespeare’s work (similarly with Webster, though not with Marlowe or Jonson) suffices to reveal how this dominance, this initiative of women, persists from Rosalind to Lady Macbeth. So too in Racine; six of his tragedies bear their heroines’ names; and what male characters of his shall we set against Hermione and Andromaque, Berenice and Roxane, Phedre and Athalie? So again with Ibsen; what men shall we match with Solveig and Nora, Heda and Hilda Wangel and Rebecca West?’— F. L. Lucas, Tragedy, pp. 114-15.
A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant27. She pervades28 poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors29 in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.
It was certainly an odd monster that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and beauty in a kitchen chopping up suet. But these monsters, however amusing to the imagination, have no existence in fact. What one must do to bring her to life was to think poetically30 and prosaically31 at one and the same moment, thus keeping in touch with fact — that she is Mrs Martin, aged25 thirty-six, dressed in blue, wearing a black hat and brown shoes; but not losing sight of fiction either — that she is a vessel32 in which all sorts of spirits and forces are coursing and flashing perpetually. The moment, however, that one tries this method with the Elizabethan woman, one branch of illumination fails; one is held up by the scarcity33 of facts. One knows nothing detailed34, nothing perfectly35 true and substantial about her. History scarcely mentions her. And I turned to Professor Trevelyan again to see what history meant to him. I found by looking at his chapter headings that it meant ——
‘The Manor36 Court and the Methods of Open-field Agriculture . . . The Cistercians and Sheep-farming . . . The Crusades.. . The University . . . The House of Commons . . . The Hundred Years’ War . . . The Wars of the Roses . . . The Renaissance37 Scholars . . . The Dissolution of the Monasteries38 . . . Agrarian39 and Religious Strife40 . . . The Origin of English Sea-power. .. The Armada . . . ’ and so on. Occasionally an individual woman is mentioned, an Elizabeth, or a Mary; a queen or a great lady. But by no possible means could middle-class women with nothing but brains and character at their command have taken part in any one of the great movements which, brought together, constitute the historian’s view of the past. Nor shall we find her in collection of anecdotes41. Aubrey hardly mentions her. any She never writes her own life and scarcely keeps a diary; there are only a handful of her letters in existence. She left no plays or poems by which we can judge her. What one wants, I thought — and why does not some brilliant student at Newnham or Girton supply it? — is a mass of information; at what age did she marry; how many children had she as a rule; what was her house like, had she a room to herself; did she do the cooking; would she be likely to have a servant? All these facts lie somewhere, presumably, in parish registers and account books; the life of the average Elizabethan woman must be scattered42 about somewhere, could one collect it and make a book of it. It would be ambitious beyond my daring, I thought, looking about the shelves for books that were not there, to suggest to the students of those famous colleges that they should rewrite history, though I own that it often seems a little queer as it is, unreal, lop-sided; but why should they not add a supplement to history, calling it, of course, by some in conspicuous43 name so that women might figure there with out impropriety? For one often catches a glimpse of them in the lives of the great, whisking away into the back ground, concealing44, I sometimes think, a wink45, a laugh, perhaps a tear. And, after all, we have lives enough of Jane Austen; it scarcely seems necessary to consider again the influence of the tragedies of Joanna Baillie upon the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe; as for myself, I should not mind if the homes and haunts of Mary Russell Mitford were closed to the public for a century at least. But what I find deplorable, I continued, looking about the bookshelves again, is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century. I have no model in my mind to turn about this way and that. Here am I asking why women did not write poetry in the Elizabethan age, and I am not sure how they were educated; whether they were taught to write; whether they had sitting-rooms to themselves; how many women had children before they were twenty-one; what, in short, they did from eight in the morning till eight at night. They had no money evidently; according to Professor Trevelyan they were married whether they liked it or not before they were out of the nursery, at fifteen or sixteen very likely. It would have been extremely odd, even upon this showing, had one of them suddenly written the plays of Shakespeare, I concluded, and I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop46, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He also told a lady who applied47 to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare.
Be that as it may, I could not help thinking, as I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and entirely48, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. Shakespeare himself went, very probably — his mother was an heiress — to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin — Ovid, Virgil and Horace — and the elements of grammar and logic49. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighbourhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practising his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen. Meanwhile his extraordinarily51 gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous52, as imaginative, as agog53 to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew54 and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly55, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter — indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father’s eye. Perhaps she scribbled56 some pages up in an apple loft57 on the sly but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed58 to the son of a neighbouring woolstapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely59 beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads60 or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings61, let herself down by a rope one summer’s night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune50 of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager — a fat, loose-lipped man — guffawed63. He bellowed64 something about poodles dancing and women acting65 — no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted — you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern66 or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted67 to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last — for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows — at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so — who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled68 in a woman’s body? — killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.
That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’s genius. But for my part, I agree with the deceased bishop, if such he was — it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare’s day should have had Shakespeare’s genius. For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born to-day among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Bront? or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on to paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed69 by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable70 man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bront? who dashed her brains out on the moor71 or mopped and mowed72 about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without singing them, was often a woman. It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think, suggested who made the ballads73 and the folk-songs, crooning them to her children, beguiling74 her spinning with them, or the length of the winter’s night.
This may be true or it may be false — who can say? — but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare’s sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology75 to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted76 and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder78 by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity79 to a certainty. No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish80 which may have been irrational81 — for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons — but were none the less inevitable82. Chastity had then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman’s life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. To have lived a free life in London in the sixteenth century would have meant for a woman who was poet and playwright83 a nervous stress and dilemma84 which might well have killed her. Had she survived, whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed85, issuing from a strained and morbid86 imagination. And undoubtedly87, I thought, looking at the shelf where there are no plays by women, her work would have gone unsigned. That refuge she would have sought certainly. It was the relic88 of the sense of chastity that dictated89 anonymity90 to women even so late as the nineteenth century. Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man. Thus they did homage91 to the convention, which if not implanted by the other sex was liberally encouraged by them (the chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of man) that publicity92 in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible93 desire to cut their names on it, as Alf, Bert or Chas. must do in obedience94 to their instinct, which murmurs95 if it sees a fine woman go by, or even a dog, Ce chien est a moi. And, of course, it may not be a dog, I thought, remembering Parliament Square, the Sieges Allee and other avenues; it may be a piece of land or a man with curly black hair. It is one of the great advantages of being a woman that one can pass even a very fine negress without wishing to make an Englishwoman of her.
That woman, then, who was born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself. All the conditions of her life, all her own instincts, were hostile to the state of mind which is needed to set free whatever is in the brain. But what is the state of mind that is most propitious96 to the act of creation? I asked. Can one come by any notion of the state that furthers and makes possible that strange activity? Here I opened the volume containing the Tragedies of Shakespeare. What was Shakespeare’s state of mind, for instance, when he wrote Lear and Antony and Cleopatra? It was certainly the state of mind most favourable97 to poetry that there has ever existed. But Shakespeare himself said nothing about it. We only know casually98 and by chance that he ‘never blotted99 a line’. Nothing indeed was ever said by the artist himself about his state of mind until the eighteenth century perhaps. Rousseau perhaps began it. At any rate, by the nineteenth century self-consciousness had developed so far that it was the habit for men of letters to describe their minds in confessions100 and autobiographies102. Their lives also were Written, and their letters were printed after their deaths. Thus, though we do not know what Shakespeare went through when he wrote Lear, we do know what Carlyle went through when he wrote the French Revolution; what Flaubert went through when he wrote Madame Bovary; what Keats was going through when he tried to write poetry against the coming death and the indifference103 of the world.
And one gathers from this enormous modern literature of confession101 and self-analysis that to write a work of genius is almost always a feat104 of prodigious105 difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating106 all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle scrupulously107 verifies this or that fact. Naturally, it will not pay for what it does not want. And so the writer, Keats, Flaubert, Carlyle, suffers, especially in the creative years of youth, every form of distraction4 and discouragement. A curse, a cry of agony, rises from those books of analysis and confession. ‘Mighty poets in their misery108 dead’— that is the burden of their song. if anything comes through in spite of all this, it is a miracle, and probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it was conceived.
But for women, I thought, looking at the empty shelves, these difficulties were infinitely more formidable. In the first place, to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room, was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble, even up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since her pin money, which depended on the goodwill109 of her father, was only enough to keep her clothed, she was debarred from such alleviations as came even to Keats or Tennyson or Carlyle, all poor men, from a walking tour, a little journey to France, from the separate lodging110 which, even if it were miserable111 enough, sheltered them from the claims and tyrannies of their families. Such material difficulties were formidable; but much worse were the immaterial. The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility112. The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw62, Write? What’s the good of your writing? Here the psychologists of Newnham and Girton might come to our help, I thought, looking again at the blank spaces on the shelves. For surely it is time that the effect of discouragement upon the mind of the artist should be measured, as I have seen a dairy company measure the effect of ordinary milk and Grade A milk upon the body of the rat. They set two rats in cages side by side, and of the two one was furtive113, timid and small, and the other was glossy114, bold and big. Now what food do we feed women as artists upon? I asked, remembering, I suppose, that dinner of prunes115 and custard. To answer that question I had only to open the evening paper and to read that Lord Birkenhead is of opinion — but really I am not going to trouble to copy out Lord Birkenhead’s opinion upon the writing of women. What Dean Inge says I will leave in peace. The Harley Street specialist may be allowed to rouse the echoes of Harley Street with his vociferations without raising a hair on my head. I will quote, however, Mr Oscar Browning, because Mr Oscar Browning was a great figure in Cambridge at one time, and used to examine the students at Girton and Newnham. Mr Oscar Browning was wont116 to declare ‘that the impression left on his mind, after looking over any set of examination papers, was that, irrespective of the marks he might give, the best woman was intellectually the inferior of the worst man’. After saying that Mr Browning went back to his rooms — and it is this sequel that endears him and makes him a human figure of some bulk and majesty117 — he went back to his rooms and found a stable-boy lying on the sofa —’a mere118 skeleton, his cheeks were cavernous and sallow, his teeth were black, and he did not appear to have the full use of his limbs. That’s Arthur” [said Mr Browning]. “He’s a dear boy really and most high-minded. —-The two pictures always seem to me to complete each other. And happily in this age of biography the two pictures often do complete each other, so that we are able to interpret the opinions of great men not only by what they say, but by what they do.
But though this is possible now, such opinions coming from the lips of important people must have been formidable enough even fifty years ago. Let us suppose that a father from the highest motives119 did not wish his daughter to leave home and become writer, painter or scholar. ‘See what Mr Oscar Browning says,’ he would say; and there so was not only Mr Oscar Browning; there was the Saturday Review; there was Mr Greg — the ‘essentials of a woman’s being’, said Mr Greg emphatically, ‘are that they are supported by, and they minister to, men’— there was an enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect that nothing could be expected of women intellectually. Even if her father did not read out loud these opinions, any girl could read them for herself; and the reading, even in the nineteenth century, must have lowered her vitality120, and told profoundly upon her work. There would always have been that assertion — you cannot do this, you are incapable121 of doing that — to protest against, to overcome. Probably for a novelist this germ is no longer of much effect; for there have been women novelists of merit. But for painters it must still have some sting in it; and for musicians, I imagine, is even now active and poisonous in the extreme. The woman composer stands where the actress stood in the time of Shakespeare. Nick Greene, I thought, remembering the story I had made about Shakespeare’s sister, said that a woman acting put him in mind of a dog dancing. Johnson repeated the phrase two hundred years later of women preaching. And here, I said, opening a book about music, we have the very words used again in this year of grace, 1928, of women who try to write music. ‘Of Mlle. Germaine Tailleferre one can only repeat Dr Johnson’s dictum concerning, a woman preacher, transposed into terms of music. “Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog’s walking on his hind77 legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”6 So accurately122 does history repeat itself.
6 A Survey of Contemporary Music, Cecil Gray, P. 246.
Thus, I concluded, shutting Mr Oscar Browning’s life and pushing away the rest, it is fairly evident that even in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist. On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted123. Her mind must have been strained and her vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that. For here again we come within range of that very interesting and obscure masculine complex which has had so much influence upon the woman’s movement; that deepseated desire, not so much that she shall be inferior as that he shall be superior, which plants him wherever one looks, not only in front of the arts, but barring the way to politics too, even when the risk to himself seems infinitesimal and the suppliant124 humble125 and devoted126. Even Lady Bessborough, I remembered, with all her passion for politics, must humbly127 bow herself and write to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower: ‘ . . . notwithstanding all my violence in politicks and talking so much on that subject, I perfectly agree with you that no woman has any business to meddle128 with that or any other serious business, farther than giving her opinion (if she is ask’d).’ And so she goes on to spend her enthusiasm where it meets with no obstacle whatsoever129, upon that immensely important subject, Lord Granville’s maiden130 speech in the House of Commons. The spectacle is certainly a strange one, I thought. The history of men’s opposition131 to women’s emancipation132 is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. An amusing book might be made of it if some young student at Girton or Newnham would collect examples and deduce a theory — but she would need thick gloves on her hands, and bars to protect her of solid gold.
But what is amusing now, I recollected133, shutting Lady Bessborough, had to be taken in desperate earnest once. Opinions that one now pastes in a book labelled cock-a-doodledum and keeps for reading to select audiences on summer nights once drew tears, I can assure you. Among your grandmothers and great-grandmothers there were many that wept their eyes out. Florence Nightingale shrieked134 aloud in her agony.7 Moreover, it is all very well for you, who have got yourselves to college and enjoy sitting-rooms — or is it only bed-sitting-rooms? — of your own to say that genius should disregard such opinions; that genius should be above caring what is said of it. Unfortunately, it is precisely135 the men or women of genius who mind most what is said of them. Remember Keats. Remember the words he had cut on his tombstone. Think of Tennyson; think but I need hardly multiply instances of the undeniable, if very unfortunate, fact that it is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage136 of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
7 See Cassandra, by Florence Nightingale, printed in The Cause, by R. Strachey.
And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate, I thought, returning again to my original enquiry into what state of mind is most propitious for creative work, because the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent137, like Shakespeare’s mind, I conjectured138, looking at the book which lay open at Antony and Cleopatra. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed.
For though we say that we know nothing about Shakespeare’s state of mind, even as we say that, we are saying something about Shakespeare’s state of mind. The reason perhaps why we know so little of Shakespeare — compared with Donne or Ben Jonson or Milton — is that his grudges139 and spites and antipathies140 are hidden from us. We are not held up by some ‘revelation’ which reminds us of the writer. All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance141 was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind.
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avalanche
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lava
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distraction
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distractions
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sonnet
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pebble
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attachment
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avarice
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betrothal
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18
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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19
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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20
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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21
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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22
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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23
drudges
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| n.做苦工的人，劳碌的人( drudge的名词复数 ) | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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25
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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26
cursory
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| adj.粗略的；草率的；匆促的 | |
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27
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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28
pervades
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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29
conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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30
poetically
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| adv.有诗意地，用韵文 | |
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31
prosaically
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| adv.无聊地；乏味地；散文式地；平凡地 | |
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32
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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33
scarcity
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| n.缺乏，不足，萧条 | |
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34
detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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35
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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36
manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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37
renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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38
monasteries
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| 修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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39
agrarian
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| adj.土地的，农村的，农业的 | |
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40
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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41
anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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42
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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43
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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44
concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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45
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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46
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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47
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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48
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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49
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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50
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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51
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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52
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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53
agog
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| adj.兴奋的，有强烈兴趣的； adv.渴望地 | |
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54
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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55
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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56
scribbled
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| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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57
loft
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| n.阁楼，顶楼 | |
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58
betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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59
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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60
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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61
belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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62
guffaw
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| n.哄笑；突然的大笑 | |
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63
guffawed
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| v.大笑，狂笑( guffaw的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
bellowed
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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65
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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66
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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67
lusted
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| 贪求（lust的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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68
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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69
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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70
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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71
moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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72
mowed
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| v.刈，割( mow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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74
beguiling
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| adj.欺骗的，诱人的v.欺骗( beguile的现在分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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75
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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76
thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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77
hind
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| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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78
asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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79
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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80
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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81
irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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82
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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83
playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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84
dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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85
deformed
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| adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的 | |
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86
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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87
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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88
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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89
dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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90
anonymity
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| n.the condition of being anonymous | |
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91
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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92
publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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93
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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94
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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95
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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96
propitious
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| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
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97
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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98
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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99
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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100
confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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101
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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102
autobiographies
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| n.自传( autobiography的名词复数 )；自传文学 | |
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103
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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104
feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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105
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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106
accentuating
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| v.重读( accentuate的现在分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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107
scrupulously
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| adv.一丝不苟地；小心翼翼地，多顾虑地 | |
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108
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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109
goodwill
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| n.善意，亲善，信誉，声誉 | |
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110
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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111
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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112
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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113
furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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114
glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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115
prunes
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| n.西梅脯，西梅干( prune的名词复数 )v.修剪（树木等）( prune的第三人称单数 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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116
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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117
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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118
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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119
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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120
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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121
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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122
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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123
exhorted
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| v.劝告，劝说( exhort的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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124
suppliant
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| adj.哀恳的；n.恳求者，哀求者 | |
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125
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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126
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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127
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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128
meddle
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| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
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129
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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130
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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131
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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132
emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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133
recollected
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| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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134
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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135
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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136
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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137
incandescent
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| adj.遇热发光的， 白炽的，感情强烈的 | |
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138
conjectured
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| 推测，猜测，猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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139
grudges
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| 不满，怨恨，妒忌( grudge的名词复数 ) | |
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140
antipathies
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| 反感( antipathy的名词复数 )； 引起反感的事物； 憎恶的对象； （在本性、倾向等方面的）不相容 | |
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141
grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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