A Line that Shakespeare Would Have Envied

Here is an interesting theatrical character study of 'Cardinal Richelieu', from the 1839 play Richelieu: Or the Conspiracy by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

John Hassall — The Conspiracy — ca 1900

Famous lines that the Cardinal intones in Act II, scene II:

True, This!—

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold

The arch-enchanters wand! — itself a nothing! —

But taking sorcery from the master-hand

To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike

The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —

States can be saved without it!

In 1870, literary critic Edward Sherman Gould wrote that Bulwer "had the good fortune to do, what few men can hope to do: he wrote a line that is likely to live for ages."