William Cartwright (dramatist)

William Cartwright (1 September 1611 – 29 November 1643) was an English poet, dramatist and churchman.

Quotes

• There are two Births, the one when Light
    First strikes the new awak’ned sense;
  The Other when two Souls unite;
    And we must count our life from thence:
  When you lov’d me, and I lov’d you,
  Then both of us were born anew.
  Love then to us did new Souls give,
    And in those Souls did plant new pow’rs;
  Since when another life we live,
    The Breath we breathe is his, not ours;
  Love makes those young, whom Age doth Chill,
  And whom he finds young, keeps young still.
  • "To Chloe who wish’d her self young enough for me", sts. 2–3

• She who to Heaven more heaven doth annex,
  Whose lowest Thought was above all our Sex,
  Accounted nothing Death but t’be Repriv’d,
  And dyed as free from sickness as she liv’d.
  Others are dragg’d away, or must be driven,
  She only saw her time and stept to Heaven.
  • "On a vertuous young Gentlewoman that dyed suddenly", ll. 5–10

• I can hear thee curse, yet chase thee;
  Drink thy tears, yet still embrace thee.
  Easie riches is no treasure;
  She that’s willing, spoils the pleasure.
  Love bids learn the restless fight,
  Pull and struggle whilst ye twine:
  Let me use my force to night,
  The next conquest shall be thine.
  • "A Song of Dalliance" or "Loves Courtship", st. 4
  • Variants. l. 3: "are" for "is" (PB 1656); l. 5: "wrestlers slight" (PB 1656, Bullen, Goffin); l. 6: "when we twine" (PB 1656)

• Give me a Girl, if one I needs must meet,
  Or in her nuptial, or her Winding-sheet;
  I know but two good Hours that Women have,
  One in the Bed, another in the Grave,
  Thus of the whole Sex all I would desire,
  Is to enjoy their Ashes or their Fire.
  • Select Proverbs, ... Chiefly Moral (1707)
  • Cp. Pseudo-Hipponax, fragment quoted by Stobaeus, 4, 22, 35:
    Δύ᾿ ἡμέραι γυναικός εἰσιν ἥδισται,
    ὅταν γαμῇ τις κἀκφέρῃ τεθνηκυῖαν.
    Two days are best of a man’s wedded life,
    The days when he marries and buries his wife.
    —The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (1938), no. 182

External links

• Parnassus Biceps (London: George Eversden, 1656)
• The Life and Poems of William Cartwright, ed. R. Cullis Goffin (Cambridge University Press, 1918)
• The Plays and Poems of William Cartwright, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (University of Michigan Press, 1951)