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Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930

"Twilight in Italy"

But wherever he went, they went with him, to the confusion
of everybody.
He was a thin, rather frail-looking peasant, pathetic, and very gentle.
There was something pure and fine about him, he was so exceedingly
gentle and by natural breeding courteous. But he did not feel kingly, he
acted the part with beautiful, simple resignation.
Enrico Persevalli had overshot himself in every direction, but worst of
all in his own. He had become a hulking fellow, crawling about with his
head ducked between his shoulders, pecking and poking, creeping about
after other people, sniffing at them, setting traps for them, absorbed
by his own self-important self-consciousness. His legs, in their black
knee-breeches, had a crawling, slinking look; he always carried the
black rag of a cloak, something for him to twist about as he twisted in
his own soul, overwhelmed by a sort of inverted perversity.
I had always felt an aversion from Hamlet: a creeping, unclean thing he
seems, on the stage, whether he is Forbes Robertson or anybody else. His
nasty poking and sniffing at his mother, his setting traps for the King,
his conceited perversion with Ophelia make him always intolerable.


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