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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Characteristics of Women
+       Moral, Poetical, and Historical
+
+Author: Anna Jameson
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2008 [EBook #26152]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN
+
+MORAL, POETICAL, AND HISTORICAL
+
+BY
+
+MRS. JAMESON
+
+_From the last London Edition_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press,
+Cambridge 1889
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+TO THE NEW EDITION.
+
+
+In preparing for the press a new edition of this little work, the author
+has endeavored to render it more worthy of the approbation and kindly
+feeling with which it has been received; she cannot better express her
+sense of both than by justifying, as far as it is in her power, the
+cordial and flattering tone of all the public criticisms. It is to the
+great name of SHAKSPEARE, that bond of sympathy among all who speak his
+language, and to the subject of the work, not to its own merits, that
+she attributes the success it has met with,--success the more
+delightful, because, in truth, it was from the very first, so entirely
+unlooked for, as to be a matter of surprise as well as of pleasure and
+gratitude.
+
+In this edition there are many corrections, and some additions which the
+author hopes may be deemed improvements. She has been induced to insert
+several quotations at length, which were formerly only referred to, from
+observing that however familiar they may be to the mind of the reader,
+they are always recognized with pleasure--like dear domestic faces; and
+if the memory fail at the moment to recall the lines or the sentiment to
+which the attention is directly required, few like to interrupt the
+course of thought, or undertake a journey from the sofa or garden-seat
+to the library, to hunt out the volume, the play, the passage, for
+themselves.
+
+When the first edition was sent to press, the author contemplated
+writing the life of Mrs. Siddons, with a reference to her art; and
+deferred the complete development of the character of Lady Macbeth, till
+she should be able to illustrate it by the impersonation and commentary
+of that grand and gifted actress; but the task having fallen into other
+hands, the analysis of the character has been almost entirely rewritten,
+as at first conceived, or rather restored to its original form.
+
+This little work, as it now stands, forms only part of a plan which the
+author hopes, if life be granted her, to accomplish;--at all events,
+life, while it is spared, shall be devoted to its fulfilment.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                              Page
+INTRODUCTION                                     8
+
+CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.
+Portia                                          53
+Isabella                                        83
+Beatrice                                        99
+Rosalind                                       110
+
+CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION.
+Juliet                                         119
+Helena                                         153
+Perdita                                        172
+Viola                                          181
+Ophelia                                        187
+Miranda                                        207
+
+CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS.
+Hermione                                       219
+Desdemona                                      240
+Imogen                                         259
+Cordelia                                       280
+
+HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.
+Cleopatra                                      302
+Octavia                                        341
+Volumnia                                       345
+Constance of Bretagne                          357
+Elinor of Guienne                              387
+Blanche of Castile                             389
+Margaret of Anjou                              396
+Katharine of Arragon                           407
+Lady Macbeth                                   437
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+_Scene--A Library._
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You will not listen to me?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I do, with all the deference which befits a gentleman when a lady holds
+forth on the virtues of her own sex.
+
+    He is a parricide of his mother's name,
+    And with an impious hand murders her fame,
+    That wrongs the praise of women; that dares write
+    Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite
+    The milk they lent us.
+                       Yours was the nobler birth,
+    For you from man were made--man but of earth--
+    The son of dust!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+What's this?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+"Only a rhyme I learned from one I talked withal;" 'tis a quotation from
+some old poet that has fixed itself in my memory--from Randolph, I
+think.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+'Tis very justly thought, and very politely quoted, and my best courtesy
+is due to him and to you:--but now will you listen to me?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+With most profound humility.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Nay, then! I have done, unless you will lay aside these mock airs of
+gallantry, and listen to me for a moment! Is it fair to bring a
+second-hand accusation against me, and not attend to my defence?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Well, I will be serious.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Do so, and let us talk like reasonable beings.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Then tell me, (as a reasonable woman you will not be affronted with the
+question,) do you really expect that any one will read this little book
+of yours?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I might answer, that it has been a great source of amusement and
+interest to me for several months, and that so far I am content: but no
+one writes a book without a hope of finding readers, and I shall find a
+few. Accident first made me an authoress; and not now, nor ever, have I
+written to flatter any prevailing fashion of the day for the sake of
+profit, though this is done, I know, by many who have less excuse for
+thus coining their brains. This little book was undertaken without a
+thought of fame or money: out of the fulness of my own heart and soul
+have I written it. In the pleasure it has given me, in the new and
+various views of human nature it has opened to me, in the beautiful and
+soothing images it has placed before me, in the exercise and improvement
+of my own faculties, I have already been repaid: if praise or profit
+come beside, they come as a surplus. I should be gratified and grateful,
+but I have not sought for them, nor worked for them. Do you believe
+this?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I do: in this I cannot suspect you of affectation, for the profession of
+disinterestedness is uncalled for, and the contrary would be too far
+countenanced by the custom of the day to be matter of reserve or
+reproach. But how could you (saving the reverence due to a
+lady-authoress, and speaking as one reasonable being to another) choose
+such a threadbare subject?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I presume you have written a book to maintain the superiority of your
+sex over ours; for so I judge by the names at the heads of some of your
+chapters; women fit indeed to inlay heaven with stars, but, pardon me,
+very unlike those who at present walk upon this earth.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Very unlike the fine ladies of your acquaintance, I grant you; but as to
+maintaining the superiority, or speculating on the rights of
+women--nonsense! why should you suspect me of such folly?--it is quite
+out of date. Why should there be competition or comparison?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Both are ill-judged and odious; but did you ever meet with a woman of
+the world, who did not abuse most heartily the whole race of men?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Did you ever talk with a man of the world, who did not speak with levity
+or contempt of the whole human race of women?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Perhaps I might answer like Voltaire--"Hélas ils pourraient bien avoir
+raison tous deux." But do you thence infer that both are good for
+nothing?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Thence I infer that the men of the world and the women of the world are
+neither of them--good for much.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+And you have written a book to make them better?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Heaven forbid! else I were only fit for the next lunatic asylum. Vanity
+run mad never conceived such an impossible idea.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Then, in a few words, what is the subject, and what the object, of your
+book?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I have endeavoured to illustrate the various modifications of which the
+female character is susceptible, with their causes and results. My life
+has been spent in observing and thinking; I have had, as you well know,
+more opportunities for the first, more leisure for the last, than have
+fallen to the lot of most people. What I have seen, felt, thought,
+suffered, has led me to form certain opinions. It appears to me that the
+condition of women in society, as at present constituted, is false in
+itself, and injurious to them,--that the education of women, as at
+present conducted, is founded in mistaken principles, and tends to
+increase fearfully the sum of misery and error in both sexes; but I do
+not choose presumptuously to fling these opinions in the face of the
+world, in the form of essays on morality, and treatises on education. I
+have rather chosen to illustrate certain positions by examples, and
+leave my readers to deduce the moral themselves, and draw their own
+inferences.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+And why have you not chosen your examples from real life? you might
+easily have done so. You have not been a mere spectator, or a mere
+actor, but a lounger behind the scenes of existence--have even assisted
+in preparing the puppets for the stage: you might have given us an
+epitome of your experience, instead of dreaming over Shakspeare.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I might so, if I had chosen to become a female satirist, which I will
+never be.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+You would, at least, stand a better chance of being read.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I am not sure of that. The vile taste for satire and personal gossip
+will not be eradicated, I suppose, while the elements of curiosity and
+malice remain in human nature; but as a fashion of literature, I think
+it is passing away;--at all events it is not my _forte_. Long experience
+of what is called "the world," of the folly, duplicity, shallowness,
+selfishness, which meet us at every turn, too soon unsettles our
+youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it
+were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions and retire from
+the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys our
+belief--it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and
+happiness; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes
+us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of goodness; it teaches us to
+consider _self_ as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which
+all motives are to be referred.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But this being so, we must either revolve with these earthly natures,
+and round the same centre, or seek a sphere for ourselves, and dwell
+apart.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I trust it is not necessary to do either. While we are yet young, and
+the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us
+a world within, we cannot look fairly on the world without:--all things
+then are good. When first we throw ourselves forth, and meet burs and
+briars on every side, which stick in our very hearts;--and fair tempting
+fruits which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with
+impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm hour,
+when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern
+their true bearings; when the perception of evil, or sorrow, or sin,
+brings also the perception of some opposite good, which awakens our
+indulgence, or the knowledge of the cause which excites our pity. Thus
+it is with me. I can smile,--nay, I can laugh still, to see folly,
+vanity, absurdity, meanness, exposed by scornful wit, and depicted by
+others in fictions light and brilliant. But these very things, when I
+encounter the reality, rather make me sad than merry, and take away all
+the inclination, if I had the power, to hold them up to derision.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Unless, by doing so, you might correct them.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Correct them! Show me that one human being who has been made essentially
+better by satire! O no, no! there is something in human nature which
+hardens itself against the lash--something in satire which excites only
+the lowest and worst of our propensities. That avowal in Pope--
+
+                   I must be proud to see
+    Men not afraid of God, afraid of me!
+
+--has ever filled me with terror and pity--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+From its truth perhaps?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+From its arrogance,--for the truth is, that a vice never corrected a
+vice. Pope might be proud of the terror he inspired in those who feared
+no God in whom vanity was stronger than conscience: but that terror made
+no individual man better; and while he indulged his own besetting sin,
+he administered to the malignity of others. Your professed satirists
+always send me to think upon the opposite sentiment in Shakspeare, on
+"the mischievous foul sin of chiding sin." I remember once hearing a
+poem of Barry Cornwall's, (he read it to me,) about a strange winged
+creature that, having the lineaments of a man, yet preyed on a man, and
+afterwards coming to a stream to drink, and beholding his own face
+therein, and that he had made his prey of a creature like himself, pined
+away with repentance. So should those do, who having made themselves
+mischievous mirth out of the sins and sorrows of others, remembering
+their own humanity, and seeing within themselves the same lineaments--so
+should _they_ grieve and pine away, self-punished.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+'Tis an old allegory, and a sad one--and but too much to the purpose.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I abhor the spirit of ridicule--I dread it and I despise it. I abhor it
+because it is in direct contradiction to the mild and serious spirit of
+Christianity; I fear it, because we find that in every state of society
+in which it has prevailed as a fashion, and has given the tone to the
+manners and literature, it marked the moral degradation and approaching
+destruction of that society; and I despise it, because it is the usual
+resource of the shallow and the base mind, and, when wielded by the
+strongest hand with the purest intentions, an inefficient means of good.
+The spirit of satire reversing the spirit of mercy which is twice
+blessed, seems to me twice accursed;--evil in those who indulge it--evil
+to those who are the objects of it.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+"Peut-être fallait-il que la punition des imprudens et des faibles fut
+confiée à la malignité, car la pure vertu n'eût jamais été assez
+cruelle."
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+That is a woman's sentiment.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+True--it _was_; and I have pleasure in reminding you that a female
+satirist by profession is yet an anomaly in the history of our
+literature, as a female schismatic is yet unknown in the history of our
+religion. But to what do you attribute the number of satirical women we
+meet in society?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Not to our nature; but to a state of society in which the levelling
+spirit of _persiflage_ has been long a fashion; to the perverse
+education which fosters it; to affections disappointed or unemployed,
+which embitter the temper; to faculties misdirected or wasted, which
+oppress and irritate the mind; to an utter ignorance of ourselves, and
+the common lot of humanity, combined with quick and refined perceptions
+and much superficial cultivation; to frivolous habits, which make
+serious thought a burden, and serious feeling a bane if suppressed, if
+betrayed, a ridicule. Women, generally speaking, are by nature too much
+subjected to suffering in many forms--have too much of fancy and
+sensibility, and too much of that faculty which some philosophers call
+_veneration_, to be naturally satirical. I have known but one woman
+eminently gifted in mind and person, who is also distinguished for
+powers of satire as bold as merciless; and she is such a compound of all
+that nature can give of good, and all that society can teach of evil--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+That she reminds us of the dragon of old, which was generated between
+the sunbeams from heaven and the slime of earth.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+No such thing. Rather of the powerful and beautiful fairy Melusina, who
+had every talent and every charm under heaven but once in so many hours
+was fated to become a serpent. No, I return to my first position. It is
+not by exposing folly and scorning fools, that we make other people
+wiser, or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and
+examples of the kindly and generous affections--to show how the human
+soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering--to prove how much of
+possible good may exist in things evil and perverted--how much hope
+there is for those who despair--how much comfort for those whom a
+heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so
+put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit
+of the day--O would I could do this!
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+On the same principle, I suppose, that they have changed the treatment
+of lunatics; and whereas they used to condemn poor distempered wretches
+to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waistcoat, they now send
+them to sunshine and green fields, to wander in gardens among birds and
+flowers, and soothe them with soft music and kind flattering speech.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You laugh at me! perhaps I deserve it.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+No, in truth; I am a little amused, but most honestly attentive: and
+perhaps wish I could think more like you. But to proceed: I allow that
+with this view of the case, you could not well have chosen your
+illustrations from real life; but why not from history?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+As far as history could guide me, I have taken her with me in one or two
+recent publications, which all tend to the same object. Nor have I here
+lost sight of her; but I have entered on a land where she alone is not
+to be trusted, and may make a pleasant companion but a most fallacious
+guide. To drop metaphor: history informs us that such things have been
+done or have occurred; but when we come to inquire into motives and
+characters, it is the most false and partial and unsatisfactory
+authority we can refer to. Women are illustrious in history, not from
+what they have been in themselves, but generally in proportion to the
+mischief they have done or caused. Those characters best fitted to my
+purpose are precisely those of which history never heard, or disdains to
+speak; of those which have been handed down to us by many different
+authorities under different aspects we cannot judge without prejudice;
+in others there occur certain chasms which it is difficult to supply;
+and hence inconsistencies we have no means of reconciling, though
+doubtless they _might_ be reconciled if we knew the whole, instead of a
+part.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But instance--instance!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Examples crowd upon me; but take the first that occurs. Do you remember
+that Duchesse de Longueville, whose beautiful picture we were looking at
+yesterday?--the heroine of the Fronde?--think of that woman--bold,
+intriguing, profligate, vain, ambitious, factious!--who made men rebels
+with a smile;--or if that were not enough, the lady was not scrupulous,
+apparently without principle as without shame, nothing was _too_ much!
+And then think of the same woman protecting the virtuous philosopher
+Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned; and from motives which her
+worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even
+to her own servants--preparing his food herself, watching for his
+safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her
+discretion, her disinterested benevolence, not only defied danger, (that
+were little to a woman of her temper,) but endured a lengthened trial,
+all the ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continual
+self-control, and the thousand small daily sacrifices which, to a vain,
+dissipated, proud, impatient woman, must have been hard to bear. Now if
+Shakspeare had drawn the character of the Duchesse de Longueville, he
+would have shown us the same individual woman in both situations:--for
+the same being, with the same faculties, and passions, and powers, it
+surely was: whereas in history, we see in one case a fury of discord, a
+woman without modesty or pity; and in the other an angel of
+benevolence, and a worshipper of goodness; and nothing to connect the
+two extremes in our fancy.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But these are contradictions which we meet on every page of history,
+which make us giddy with doubt, or sick with belief, and are the proper
+subjects of inquiry for the moralist and the philosopher.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I cannot say that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help
+_me_ out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found
+solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight;
+the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I
+found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are
+complete individuals, whose hearts and souls are laid open before us:
+all may behold, and all judge for themselves.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But all will not judge alike.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+No; and herein lies a part of their wonderful truth. We hear
+Shakspeare's men and women discussed, praised and dispraised, liked,
+disliked, as real human beings; and in forming our opinions of them, we
+are influenced by our own characters, habits of thought, prejudices,
+feelings, impulses, just as we are influenced with regard to our
+acquaintances and associates.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But we are then as likely to misconceive and misjudge them.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes, if we had only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we
+can do with them what we cannot do with real people: we can unfold the
+whole character before us, stripped of all pretensions of self-love, all
+disguises of manner. We can take leisure to examine, to analyze, to
+correct our own impressions, to watch the rise and progress of various
+passions--we can hate, love, approve, condemn, without offence to
+others, without pain to ourselves.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+In this respect they may be compared to those exquisite anatomical
+preparations of wax, which those who could not without disgust and
+horror dissect a real specimen, may study, and learn the mysteries of
+our frame, and all the internal workings of the wondrous machine of
+life.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+And it is the safer and the better way--for us at least. But look--that
+brilliant rain-drop trembling there in the sunshine suggests to me
+another illustration. Passion, when we contemplate it through the
+medium of imagination, is like a ray of light transmitted through a
+prism; we can calmly, and with undazzled eye, study its complicate
+nature, and analyze its variety of tints; but passion brought home to us
+in its reality, through our own feelings and experience, is like the
+same ray transmitted through a lens,--blinding, burning, consuming where
+it falls.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Your illustration is the most poetical, I allow; but not the most just.
+But tell me, is the ground you have taken sufficiently large?--is the
+foundation you have chosen strong enough to bear the moral
+superstructure you raise upon it? You know the prevalent idea is, that
+Shakspeare's women are inferior to his men. This assertion is constantly
+repeated, and has been but tamely refuted.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Professor Richardson?--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+He is as dry as a stick, and his refutation not successful even as a
+piece of logic. Then it is not sufficient for critics to assert this
+inferiority and want of variety: they first assume the fallacy, then
+argue upon it. Cibber accounts for it from the circumstance that all the
+female parts in Shakspeare's time were acted by boys--there were no
+women on the stage; and Mackenzie, who ought to have known better, says
+that he was not so happy in his delineations of love and tenderness, as
+of the other passions; because, forsooth, the majesty of his genius
+could not stoop to the refinements of delicacy;--preposterous!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Stay! before we waste epithets of indignation, let us consider. If these
+people mean that Shakspeare's women are inferior in power to his men, I
+grant it at once; for in Shakspeare the male and female characters bear
+precisely the same relation to each other that they do in nature and in
+society--they are not equal in prominence or in power--they are
+subordinate throughout. Richardson remarks, that "if situation
+influences the mind, and if uniformity of conduct be frequently
+occasioned by uniformity of condition, there _must_ be a greater
+diversity of male than of female characters,"--which is true; add to
+this our limited sphere of action, consequently of experience,--the
+habits of self-control rendering the outward distinctions of character
+and passion less striking and less strong--all this we see in Shakspeare
+as in nature: for instance, Juliet is the most impassioned of the female
+characters, but what are _her_ passions compared to those which shake
+the soul of Othello?
+
+    "Even as the dew-drop on the myrtle-leaf
+    To the vex'd sea."
+
+Look at Constance, frantic for the loss of her son--then look at Lear,
+maddened by the ingratitude of his daughters: why it is the west wind
+bowing those aspen tops that wave before our window, compared to the
+tropic hurricane, when forests crash and burn, and mountains tremble to
+their bases!
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+True; and Lady Macbeth, with all her soaring ambition, her vigor of
+intellect, her subtlety, her courage, and her cruelty--what is she,
+compared to Richard III.?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I will tell you what she is--she is a woman. Place Lady Macbeth in
+comparison with Richard III., and you see at once the essential
+distinction between masculine and feminine ambition--though both in
+extreme, and overleaping all restraints of conscience or mercy. Richard
+says of himself, that he has "neither pity, love, nor fear:" Lady
+Macbeth is susceptible of all three. You smile! but that remains to be
+proved. The reason that Shakspeare's wicked women have such a singular
+hold upon our fancy, is from the consistent preservation of the feminine
+character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and
+intelligible--not like those monstrous caricatures we meet with in
+history--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+In history?--this is new!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes! I repeat, in history, where certain isolated facts and actions are
+recorded, without any relation to causes, or motives, or connecting
+feelings and pictures exhibited, from which the considerate mind turns
+in disgust, and the feeling heart has no relief but in positive, and I
+may add, reasonable incredulity. I have lately seen one of Correggio's
+finest pictures, in which the three Furies are represented, not as
+ghastly deformed hags, with talons and torches, and snaky hair, but as
+young women, with fine luxuriant forms and regular features, and a
+single serpent wreathing the tresses like a bandeau--but _such_
+countenances!--such a hideous expression of malice, cunning, and
+cruelty!--and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da
+Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa--
+
+    Where it is less the horror than the grace
+    Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone--
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    'Tis the melodious tints of beauty thrown
+    Athwart the hue of guilt and glare of pain,
+    That humanize and harmonize the strain.
+
+And Shakspeare, who understood all truth, worked out his conceptions on
+the same principle, having said himself, that "proper deformity shows
+not in the fiend so horrid as in women." Hence it is that whether he
+portrayed the wickedness founded in perverted power, as in Lady Macbeth;
+or the wickedness founded in weakness, as in Gertrude, Lady Anne, or
+Cressida, he is the more fearfully impressive, because we cannot claim
+for ourselves an exemption from the same nature, before which, in its
+corrupted state, we tremble with horror or shrink with disgust.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Do you remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought
+it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the
+scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel
+on your sex?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+They might have spared themselves the trouble. Lady Anne is just one of
+those women whom we see walking in crowds through the drawing-rooms of
+the world--the puppets of habit, the fools of fortune, without any
+particular inclination for vice, or any steady principle of virtue;
+whose actions are inspired by vanity, not affection, and regulated by
+opinion, not by conscience: who are good while there is no temptation to
+be otherwise, and ready victims of the first soliciting to evil. In the
+case of Lady Anne, we are startled by the situation: not three months a
+widow, and following to the sepulchre the remains of a husband and a
+father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them.
+In such a case it required perhaps either Richard or the arch-fiend
+himself to tempt her successfully; but in a less critical moment, a far
+less subtle and audacious seducer would have sufficed. Cressida is
+another modification of vanity, weakness, and falsehood, drawn in
+stronger colors. The world contains many Lady Annes and Cressidas,
+polished and refined externally, whom chance and vanity keep right, whom
+chance and vanity lead wrong, just as it may happen. When we read in
+history of the enormities of certain women, perfect scarecrows and
+ogresses, we can safely, like the Pharisee in Scripture, hug ourselves
+in our secure virtue, and thank God that we are not as others are--but
+the wicked women in Shakspeare are portrayed with such perfect
+consistency and truth, that they leave us no such resource--they
+frighten us into reflection--they make us believe and tremble. On the
+other hand, his amiable women are touched with such exquisite
+simplicity--they have so little external pretensions--and are so unlike
+the usual heroines of tragedy and romance, that they delight us more
+"than all the nonsense of the beau-ideal!" We are flattered by the
+perception of our own nature in the midst of so many charms and virtues:
+not only are they what we could wish to be, or ought to be, but what we
+persuade ourselves we might be, or would be, under a different and a
+happier state of things, and, perhaps, some time or other _may_ be. They
+are not stuck up, like the cardinal virtues, all in a row, for us to
+admire and wonder at--they are not mere poetical abstractions--nor (as
+they have been termed) mere abstractions of the affections,--
+
+    But common clay ta'en from the common earth.
+    Moulded by God, and tempered by the tears
+    Of angels, to the perfect form of--_woman_.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Beautiful lines!--Where are they?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I quote from memory, and I am afraid inaccurately, from a poem of Alfred
+Tennyson's.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Well, between argument, and sentiment, and logic, and poetry, you are
+making out a very plausible case. I think with you that, in the
+instances you have mentioned, (as Lady Macbeth and Richard, Juliet, and
+Othello, and others,) the want of comparative power is only an
+additional excellence; but to go to an opposite extreme of delineation,
+we must allow that there is not one of Shakspeare's women that, as a
+dramatic character, can be compared to Falstaff.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+No; because any thing like Falstaff in the form of woman--any such
+compound of wit, sensuality, and selfishness, unchecked by the moral
+sentiments and the affections, and touched with the same vigorous
+painting, would be a gross and monstrous caricature. If it could exist
+in nature, we might find it in Shakspeare; but a moment's reflection
+shows us that it would be essentially an impossible combination of
+faculties in a female.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+It strikes me, however, that his humorous women are feebly drawn, in
+comparison with some of the female wits of other writers.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Because his women of wit and humor are not introduced for the sole
+purpose of saying brilliant things, and displaying the wit of the
+author; they are, as I will show you, real, natural women, in whom _wit_
+is only a particular and occasional modification of intellect. They are
+all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral
+agents; and _then_ witty, as if by accident, or as the Duchesse de
+Chaulnes said of herself, "par la grâce de Dieu." As to humor, it is
+carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly; in the termagant Catherine;
+in Maria, in "Twelfth Night;" in Juliet's nurse; in Mrs. Ford and Mrs.
+Page. What can exceed in humorous naïveté, Mrs. Quickly's upbraiding
+Falstaff, and her concluding appeal--"Didst thou not kiss me, and bid me
+fetch thee thirty shillings?" Is it not exquisite--irresistible? Mrs.
+Ford and Mrs. Page are both "merry wives," but how perfectly
+discriminated! Mrs. Ford has the most good nature--Mrs. Page is the
+cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief
+in her mirth. In all these instances I allow that the humor is more or
+less vulgar; but a humorous woman, whether in high or low life has
+always a tinge of vulgarity.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I should like to see that word _vulgar_ properly defined, and its
+meaning limited--at present it is the most arbitrary word in the
+language.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes, like the word romantic, it is a convenient "exploding word," and in
+its general application signifies nothing more than "see how much finer
+I am than other people!"[1] but in literature and character I shall
+adhere to the definition of Madame de Staël, who uses the word _vulgar_
+as the reverse of _poetical_. Vulgarity (as I wish to apply the word) is
+the _negative_ in all things. In literature, it is the total absence of
+elevation and depth in the ideas, and of elegance and delicacy in the
+expression of them. In character, it is the absence of truth,
+sensibility, and reflection. The vulgar in manner, is the result of
+vulgarity of character; it is grossness, hardness, or affectation.--If
+you would see how Shakspeare has discriminated, not only different
+degrees, but different kinds of plebeian vulgarity in women, you have
+only to compare the nurse in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Quickly. On the
+whole, if there are people who, taking the strong and essential
+distinction of sex into consideration, still maintain that Shakspeare's
+female characters are not, in truth, in variety, in power, equal to his
+men, I think I shall prove the contrary.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I observe that you have divided your illustrations into classes; but
+shades of character so melt into each other, and the various faculties
+and powers are so blended and balanced, that all classification must be
+arbitrary. I am at a loss to conceive where you have drawn the line;
+here, at the head of your first chapter, I find "Characters of
+Intellect"--do you call Portia intellectual, and Hermione and Constance
+not so?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I know that Schlegel has said that it is impossible to arrange
+Shakspeare's characters in classes: yet some classification was
+necessary for my purpose. I have therefore divided them into characters
+in which intellect and wit predominate; characters in which fancy and
+passion predominate; and characters in which the moral sentiments and
+affections predominate. The historical characters I have considered
+apart, as requiring a different mode of illustration. Portia I regard as
+a perfect model of an intellectual woman, in whom wit is tempered by
+sensibility, and fancy regulated by strong reflection. It is objected to
+her, to Beatrice, and others of Shakspeare's women, that the display of
+intellect is tinged with a coarseness of manner belonging to the age in
+which he wrote. To remark that the conversation and letters of
+high-bred and virtuous women of that time were more bold and frank in
+expression than any part of the dialogue appropriated to Beatrice and
+Rosalind, may excuse it to our judgment, but does not reconcile it to
+our taste. Much has been said, and more might be said on this
+subject--but I would rather not discuss it. It is a mere difference of
+manner which is to be regretted, but has nothing to do with the essence
+of the character.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I think you have done well in avoiding the topic altogether; but between
+ourselves, do you really think that the refinement of manner, the
+censorious, hypocritical, verbal scrupulosity, which is carried so far
+in this "picked age" of ours, is a true sign of superior refinement of
+taste, and purity of morals? Is it not rather a whiting of the
+sepulchre? I will not even allude to individual instances whom we both
+know, but does it not remind you, on the whole, of the tone of French
+manners previous to the revolution--that "décence," which Horace Walpole
+so admired,[2] veiling the moral degradation, the inconceivable
+profligacy of the higher classes?--Stay--I have not yet done--not to
+you, but _for_ you, I will add thus much;--our modern idea of delicacy
+apparently attaches more importance to words than to things--to manners
+than to morals. You will hear people inveigh against the improprieties
+of Shakspeare, with Don Juan, or one of those infernal French novels--I
+beg your pardon--lying on their toilet table. Lady Florence is shocked
+at the sallies of Beatrice, and Beatrice would certainly stand aghast to
+see Lady Florence dressed for Almack's; so you see that in both cases
+the fashion makes the indecorum. Let her ladyship new model her gowns!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Well, well, leave Lady Florence--I would rather hear you defend
+Shakspeare.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I think it is Coleridge who so finely observes that Shakspeare ever kept
+the high road of human life, whereon all travel, that he did not pick
+out by-paths of feeling and sentiment; in him we have no moral
+highwaymen, and sentimental thieves and rat-catchers, and interesting
+villains, and amiable, elegant adulteresses--_à-la-mode Germanorum_--no
+delicate entanglements of situation, in which the grossest images are
+presented to the mind disguised under the superficial attraction of
+style and sentiment. He flattered no bad passion, disguised no vice in
+the garb of virtue, trifled with with no just and generous principle. He
+can make us laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, yet still preserve our
+love for our fellow-beings, and our reverence for ourselves. He has a
+lofty and a fearless trust in his own powers, and in the beauty and
+excellence of virtue; and with his eye fixed on the lode-star of truth,
+steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other
+pilot we had been wrecked:--for instance, who but himself would have
+dared to bring into close contact two such characters as Iago and
+Desdemona? Had the colors in which he has arrayed Desdemona been one
+atom less transparently bright and pure, the charm had been lost; she
+could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the
+overpowering blackness of _his_ character must have passed over the
+sun-bright purity of _hers_. For observe that Iago's disbelief in the
+virtue of Desdemona is not pretended, it is real. It arises from his
+total want of faith in all virtue; he is no more capable of conceiving
+goodness than she is capable of conceiving evil. To the brutish
+coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears
+only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection, which saw
+"Othello's visage in his mind," only a perversion of taste; her bashful
+modesty, only a cloak for evil propensities; so he represents them with
+all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to
+listen to him. He rips her to pieces before us--he would have bedeviled
+an angel! yet such is the unrivalled, though passive delicacy of the
+delineation, that it can stand it unhurt, untouched! It is
+wonderful!--yet natural as it is wonderful! After all, there are people
+in the world, whose opinions and feelings are tainted by an habitual
+acquaintance with the evil side of society, though in action and
+intention they remain right; and who, without the real depravity of
+heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the
+character and productions of others.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Heaven bless me from such critics! yet if genius, youth, and innocence
+could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? I pity from my soul the
+persons you allude to--for to such minds there can exist few
+uncontaminated sources of pleasure either in nature or in art.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Ay--"the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them
+melancholy."[3] You pity them, and they will sneer at you. But what have
+we here?--"Characters of Imagination--Juliet--Viola;" are these romantic
+young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are
+they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this
+enlightened age?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+As warnings, of course--what else?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Against the dangers of romance?--but where are they? "Vraiment," as B.
+Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit à
+la maison." Where are they--these disciples of poetry and romance, these
+victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown
+roses--all conscience and tenderness--whom it is so necessary to guard
+against too much confidence in others, and too little in
+themselves--where are they?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young
+gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too
+enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too violent in their hatred
+of vice, too sincere in friendship, too faithful in love, too active and
+disinterested in the cause of truth--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young
+people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of
+sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the
+romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought?
+Do _you_ bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm?
+Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed
+to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite
+philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to
+the few who are in danger of being misled by an excess of the generous
+impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be proclaimed
+by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no; there are young
+women in these days, but there is no such thing as youth--the bloom of
+existence is sacrificed to a fashionable education, and where we should
+find the rose-buds of the spring, we see only the fullblown, flaunting,
+precocious roses of the hot-bed.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Blame then that _forcing_ system of education, the most pernicious, the
+most mistaken, the most far-reaching in its miserable and mischievous
+effects, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up
+women in convents till they were married, and then launched them
+innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough; but not worse than a
+system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated
+girls, trained by knowing mothers, and all-accomplished governesses,
+with whom vanity and expediency take place of conscience and
+affection--(in other words, of romance)--"frutto senile in sul giovenil
+fiore;" with feelings and passions suppressed or contracted, not
+governed by higher faculties and purer principles; with whom
+opinion--the same false honor which sends men out to fight duels--stands
+instead of the strength and the light of virtue within their own souls.
+Hence the strange anomalies of artificial society--girls of sixteen who
+are models of manner miracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who
+sneer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and
+matrons of forty, who, when the passions should be tame and wait upon
+the judgment, amaze the world and put us to confusion with their doings.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Or turn politicians to vary the excitement--How I hate political women!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Why do you hate them?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Because they are mischievous.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+But why are they mischievous?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Why!--why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all
+mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs
+in this world, than a woman run mad with politics. The number of
+political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and
+drawing-rooms are the _foyers_ of party-spirit, is another trait of
+resemblance between the state of society now, and that which existed at
+Paris before the revolution.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+And do you think, like some interesting young lady in Miss Edgeworth's
+tales, that "women have nothing to do with politics?" Do you mean to say
+that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of
+legislation, or of feeling an interest in the government and welfare of
+their country, or of perceiving and sympathizing in the progress of
+great events?--That they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do
+feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer
+source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of
+egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of the
+noblest kind.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I agree in all this; and all this does not mitigate my horror of
+political women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and
+absurd. If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine
+coteries!--but you never talk politics.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me; but I prefer
+listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect
+education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads
+the memory, while it fetters the judgment. Women, however well read in
+history, never generalize in politics; never argue on any broad or
+general principle; never reason from a consideration of past events,
+their causes and consequences. But they are always political through
+their affections, their prejudices, their personal _liaisons_, their
+hopes, their fears.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+If it were no worse, I could stand it; for that is at least feminine.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partisans,
+such violent party women, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a
+woman _talk_ politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once
+the motive, the affection, the secret bias which swayed her opinions and
+inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so "difficult
+for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but
+justice only?"--how much more for woman!
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles,
+would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them
+some right to meddle with politics?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+It would cease in that case to be _meddling_, as you term it, for it
+would be legitimized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical
+ladies, and quote Lord Byron--but O leave those angry common-places to
+others!--they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you,
+that women have achieved enough to silence them forever,[4] and how
+often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments
+which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her
+qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will
+be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers
+and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation of their
+powers of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery
+by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Well--till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the
+province of politics to ourselves. I see here you have treated of a very
+different class of beings, "_women in whom the affections and the moral
+sentiments predominate_." Are there many such, think you, in the world?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes, many such; the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet
+and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect, and less observed;
+it is more common, too, therefore less remarked; but in women it
+generally gives the prevailing tone to the character, except where
+vanity has been made the ruling motive.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Except! I admire your exception! You make in this case the rule the
+exception. Look round the world.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You are not one of those with whom that common phrase "the world"
+signifies the circle, whatever and wherever that may be, which limits
+our individual experience--as a child considers the visible horizon as
+the bounds which shut in the mighty universe. Believe me, it is a sorry,
+vulgar kind of wisdom, if it be wisdom--a shallow and confined
+philosophy, if it be philosophy--which resolves all human motives and
+impulses into egotism in one sex, and vanity in the other. Such may be
+the way of _the world_, as it is called--the result of a very artificial
+and corrupt state of society, but such is not general nature, nor female
+nature. Would you see the kindly, self-sacrificing affections developed
+under their most honest but least poetical guise--displayed without any
+mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being
+thought vain?--you will see it, not among the prosperous, the high-born,
+the educated, "far, far removed from want, and grief, and fear," but
+among the poor, the miserable, the perverted--among those habitually
+exposed to all influences that harden and deprave.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I believe it--nay, I know it; but how should _you_ know it, or anything
+of the strange places of refuge which truth and nature have found in the
+two extremes of society?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+It is no matter what I have seen or known; and for the two extremes of
+society, I leave them to the author of Paul Clifford, and that most
+exquisite painter of living manners, Mrs. Gore. St. Giles's is no more
+_nature_ than St. James's. I wanted character in its essential truth,
+not mortified by particular customs, by fashion, by situation. I wished
+to illustrate the manner in which the affections would naturally display
+themselves in women--whether combined with high intellect, regulated by
+reflection, and elevated by imagination, or existing with perverted
+dispositions, or purified by the moral sentiments. I found all these in
+Shakspeare; his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm
+affections predominate, and triumph over shame, fear, pride, resentment,
+vanity, jealousy,--are particularly worthy of consideration, and perfect
+in their kind, because so quiet in their effect.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Several critics have remarked in general terms on those beautiful
+pictures of female friendship, and of the generous affection of women
+for each other, which we find in Shakspeare. Other writers, especially
+dramatic writers, have found ample food for wit and satiric delineation
+in the littleness of feminine spite and rivalry, in the mean spirit of
+competition, the petty jealousy of superior charms, the mutual slander
+and mistrust, the transient leagues of folly or selfishness miscalled
+friendship--the result of an education which makes vanity the ruling
+principle, and of a false position in society. Shakspeare, who looked
+upon women with the spirit of humanity, wisdom, and deep love, has done
+justice to their natural good tendencies and kindly sympathies. In the
+friendship of Beatrice and Hero, of Rosalind and Celia; in the
+description of the girlish attachment of Helena and Hermia, he has
+represented truth and generous affection rising superior to all the
+usual sources of female rivalry and jealousy; and with such force and
+simplicity, and obvious self-conviction, that he absolutely forces the
+same conviction on us.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Add to these the generous feeling of Viola for her rival Olivia; of
+Julia for her rival Sylvia; of Helena for Diana; of the old Countess for
+Helena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in
+Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought--(and
+when did he ever think other than the truth?)--that women have by nature
+"virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their
+sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satirists and
+fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is
+another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully
+represented--the distinction between masculine and feminine _courage_.
+A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated
+form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because
+it is not required of us, it is not one of the means through which we
+seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through
+our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our
+strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you
+remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his "blue thrum
+cap," and standing at her husband's side, unknown to him during a
+sea-fight? There she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot.
+Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her--"Good God,
+that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the
+acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage
+of Juliet, when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her
+own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the
+sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in
+piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel
+and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications
+of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth?--
+
+    My hands are of your color, but I shame
+    To wear a heart so white.
+
+And again,
+
+    A little water clears us of this deed,
+    How easy is it then!
+
+If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere
+firmness of nerve, what is it?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Not _that_, at least, which apparently you deem it; you will find, if
+you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth
+very differently. Take these frightful passages with the context--take
+the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend
+of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian without any
+qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and
+tremble; but that which quenched _him_ lent her fire. The absolute
+necessity for self-command, the strength of her reason, and her love for
+her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the
+fear of detection, leaving her the full possession of her faculties.
+Recollect that the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference
+of a little water clearing the blood-stain from her hand, sees in
+imagination that hand forever reeking, forever polluted: and when reason
+is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature
+and womanhood, we behold her making unconscious efforts to wash out
+that "damned spot," and sighing, heart-broken, over that little hand
+which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I hope you have given her a place among the women in whom the tender
+affections and moral sentiments predominate.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more
+accurate classification than placing her among the historical
+characters.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Apropos to the historical characters, I hope you have refuted that
+_insolent_ assumption, (shall I call it?) that Shakspeare tampered
+inexcusably with the truth of history. He is the truest of all
+historians. His anachronisms always remind me of those in the fine old
+Italian pictures; either they are insignificant, or, if properly
+considered, are really beauties; for instance, every one knows that
+Correggio's St. Jerome presenting his books to the Virgin, involves
+half-a-dozen anachronisms,--to say nothing of that heavenly figure of
+the Magdalen, in the same picture, kissing the feet of the infant
+Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination
+of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment
+and poetry that ever breathed and glowed from the canvas? You remember
+too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount
+Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the background? In these and a hundred
+other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity
+involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented,
+if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under every
+aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with
+Shakspeare and his anachronisms. The learned scorn of Johnson and some
+of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of
+Schlegel, seem in this case superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic
+oracle and Julio Romano contemporary--what does it signify? he committed
+no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a
+turtle-dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is
+true to the spirit and even to the _letter_ of history; where he
+deviates from the latter, the reason may be found in some higher beauty
+and more universal truth.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic
+character all the historic testimony I could collect relative to
+Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &c.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Analyzing the character of Cleopatra must have been something like
+catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more
+embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like
+intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and
+subjecting it to a chemical process.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette.
+What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that
+ever were--or are? She would put Lady ---- herself to school. But now
+for the moral.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+The moral!--of what?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Of your book. It has a moral, I suppose.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I
+have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently
+explained my own views, may I proceed?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+If you please--I am prepared to listen in earnest.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See Foster's Essay on the application of the word
+_romantic_--_Essays_, vol. I
+
+[2] Correspondence, vol. iii.
+
+[3] An Oriental proverb
+
+[4] In our own time, Madame de Staël, Mrs. Somerville, Harriet
+Martineau, Mrs. Marcet; we need not go back to the Rolands and Agnesi,
+nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinson.
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.
+
+
+PORTIA.
+
+We hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that
+intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are
+common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it
+appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of
+woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical
+organization;--it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That
+certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or
+intellectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded
+in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this:
+in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and
+self-directed--more independent of the rest of the character, than we
+ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a
+much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.
+
+In thinking over all the distinguished women can at this moment call to
+mind, I recollect but one, who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied
+her sex, but the moral qualities had been first perverted.[5] It is from
+not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men of genius
+have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us exquisite and
+just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of women, as
+modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted to portray them
+with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they
+have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of
+intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have either suppressed
+the feminine attributes altogether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they
+have made them completely artificial.[6] Women distinguished for wit may
+sometimes appear masculine and flippant, but the cause must be sought
+elsewhere than in nature, who disclaims all such. Hence the witty and
+intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of
+some particular time; they are like some old portraits which can still
+amuse and please by the beauty of the workmanship, in spite of the
+graceless costume or grotesque accompaniments, but from which we turn to
+worship with ever new delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian--the
+saints and the virgins of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Millamants
+and Belindas, the Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles are out of date, while
+Portia and Rosalind, in whom nature and the feminine character are
+paramount, remain bright and fresh to the fancy as when first created.
+
+Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, and Rosalind, may be classed together, as
+characters of intellect, because, when compared with others, they are at
+once distinguished by their mental superiority. In Portia, it is
+intellect kindled into romance by a poetical imagination; in Isabel, it
+is intellect elevated by religious principle; in Beatrice, intellect
+animated by spirit; in Rosalind, intellect softened by sensibility. The
+wit which is lavished on each is profound, or pointed, or sparkling, or
+playful--but always feminine; like spirits distilled from flowers, it
+always reminds us of its origin; it is a volatile essence, sweet as
+powerful; and to pursue the comparison a step further the wit of Portia
+is like ottar of roses, rich and concentrated; that of Rosalind, like
+cotton dipped in aromatic vinegar; the wit of Beatrice is like sal
+volatile; and that of Isabel, like the incense wafted to heaven. Of
+these four exquisite characters, considered as dramatic and poetical
+conceptions, it is difficult to pronounce which is most perfect in its
+way, most admirably drawn, most highly finished. But if considered in
+another point of view, as women and individuals, as breathing realities,
+clothed in flesh and blood, I believe we must assign the first rank to
+Portia, as uniting in herself in a more eminent degree than the others,
+all the noblest and most lovable qualities that ever met together in
+woman; and presenting a complete personification of Petrarch's exquisite
+epitome of female perfection:--
+
+        Il vago spirito ardento,
+    E'n alto intelletto, un puro core.
+
+It is singular, that hitherto no critical justice has been done to the
+character of Portia; it is yet more wonderful, that one of the finest
+writers on the eternal subject of Shakspeare and his perfections, should
+accuse Portia of pedantry and affectation, and confess she is not a
+great favorite of his--a confession quite worthy of him, who avers his
+predilection for servant-maids, and his preference of the Fannys and the
+Pamelas over the Clementinas and Clarissas.[7] Schlegel, who has given
+several pages to a rapturous eulogy on the Merchant of Venice, simply
+designates Portia as a "rich, beautiful, clever heiress:"--whether the
+fault lie in the writer or translator, I do protest against the word
+clever.[8] Portia _clever!_ what an epithet to apply to this heavenly
+compound of talent, feeling, wisdom, beauty, and gentleness! Now would
+it not be well, if this common and comprehensive word were more
+accurately defined, or at least more accurately used? It signifies
+properly, not so much the possession of high powers, as dexterity in the
+adaptation of certain faculties (not necessarily of a high order) to a
+certain end or aim--not always the worthiest. It implies something
+common-place, inasmuch as it speaks the presence of the _active_ and
+_perceptive_, with a deficiency of the _feeling_ and _reflective_
+powers; and applied to a woman, does it not almost invariably suggest
+the idea of something we should distrust or shrink from, if not allied
+to a higher nature? The profligate French women, who ruled the councils
+of Europe in the middle of the last century, were clever women; and that
+_philosopheress_ Madame du Châtelet, who managed, at one and the same
+moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a
+calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman! If Portia had been
+created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe--if
+she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a
+means to baffle the Jew, she might have been pronounced a clever woman.
+But what Portia does, is forgotten in what she _is_. The rare and
+harmonious blending of energy, reflection, and feeling, in her fine
+character, make the epithet _clever_ sound like a discord as applied to
+_her_, and place her infinitely beyond the slight praise of Richardson
+and Schlegel, neither of whom appear to have fully comprehended her.
+
+These and other critics have been apparently so dazzled and engrossed by
+the amazing character of Shylock, that Portia has received less than
+justice at their hands; while the fact is, that Shylock is not a finer
+or more finished character in his way, than Portia is in hers. These two
+splendid figures are worthy of each other; worthy of being placed
+together within the same rich framework of enchanting poetry, and
+glorious and graceful forms. She hangs beside the terrible, inexorable
+Jew, the brilliant lights of her character set off by the shadowy power
+of his, like a magnificent beauty-breathing Titian by the side of a
+gorgeous Rembrandt.
+
+Portia is endued with her own share of those delightful qualities, which
+Shakspeare has lavished on many of his female characters; but besides
+the dignity, the sweetness, and tenderness which should distinguish her
+sex generally, she is individualized by qualities peculiar to herself;
+by her high mental powers, her enthusiasm of temperament, her decision
+of purpose, and her buoyancy of spirit. These are innate; she has other
+distinguishing qualities more external, and which are the result of the
+circumstances in which she is placed. Thus she is the heiress of a
+princely name and countless wealth; a train of obedient pleasures have
+ever waited round her; and from infancy she has breathed an atmosphere
+redolent of perfume and blandishment Accordingly there is a commanding
+grace, a highbred, airy elegance, a spirit of magnificence in all that
+she does and says, as one to whom splendor had been familiar from her
+very birth. She treads as though her footsteps had been among marble
+palaces, beneath roofs of fretted gold, o'er cedar floors and pavements
+of jasper and porphyry--amid gardens full of statues, and flowers, and
+fountains, and haunting music. She is full of penetrative wisdom, and
+genuine tenderness, and lively wit; but as she has never known want, or
+grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the
+sombre or the sad; her affections are all mixed up with faith, hope and
+joy; and her wit has not a particle of malevolence or causticity.
+
+It is well known that the Merchant of Venice is founded on two different
+tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner,
+Shakspeare has rejected altogether the character of the astutious Lady
+of Belmont with her magic potions, who figures in the Italian novel.
+With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licentious part of
+the story, which some of his contemporary dramatists would have seized
+on with avidity, and made the best or worst of it possible; and he has
+substituted the trial of the caskets from another source.[9] We are not
+told expressly where Belmont is situated; but as Bassanio takes ship to
+go thither from Venice, and as we find them afterwards ordering horses
+from Belmont to Padua, we will imagine Portia's hereditary palace as
+standing on some lovely promontory between Venice and Trieste,
+overlooking the blue Adriatic, with the Friuli mountains or the Euganean
+hills for its background, such as we often see in one of Claude's or
+Poussin's elysian landscapes. In a scene, in a home like this,
+Shakspeare, having first exorcised the original possessor, has placed
+his Portia; and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and moving
+circumstances of the story, become natural, probable, and necessary in
+connexion with her. That such a woman should be chosen by the solving of
+an enigma, is not surprising: herself and all around her, the scene, the
+country, the age in which she is placed, breathe of poetry, romance, and
+enchantment.
+
+    From the four quarters of the earth they come
+    To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint
+    The Hyrcanian desert, and the vasty wilds
+    Of wide Arabia, are as thoroughfares now,
+    For princes to come view fair Portia;
+    The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head
+    Spits in the face of heaven is no bar
+    To stop the foreign spirits; but they come
+    As o'er a brook to see fair Portia.
+
+The sudden plan which she forms for the release of her husband's friend,
+her disguise, and her deportment as the young and learned doctor, would
+appear forced and improbable in any other woman but in Portia are the
+simple and natural result of her character.[10] The quickness with which
+she perceives the legal advantage which may be taken of the
+circumstances; the spirit of adventure with which she engages in the
+masquerading, and the decision, firmness, and intelligence with which
+she executes her generous purpose, are all in perfect keeping, and
+nothing appears forced--nothing as introduced merely for theatrical
+effect.
+
+But all the finest parts of Portia's character are brought to bear in
+the trial scene. There she shines forth all her divine self. Her
+intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honorable
+principles, her best feelings as a woman, are all displayed. She
+maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her
+point in the end; yet the painful heart-thrilling uncertainty in which
+she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not
+contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two
+objects in view; to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her
+husband's honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of
+her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe
+the safety of Antonio to any thing rather than the legal quibble with
+which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she reserves as a
+last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock in the first
+instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and
+feelings. She must be understood from the beginning to the end as
+examining, with intense anxiety, the effect of her own words on his mind
+and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit, which she hopes
+to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to his
+mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence, which, with an irresistible
+and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from
+heaven:"--but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and
+unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these heavenly words
+upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks his avarice:
+
+    Shylock, there's _thrice_ thy money offered thee!
+
+Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to his avarice and his pity:
+
+                       Be merciful!
+    Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond.
+
+All that she says afterwards--her strong expressions, which are
+calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves--the
+reflections she interposes--her delays and circumlocution to give time
+for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself--all, all are
+premeditated and tend in the same manner to the object she has in view.
+Thus--
+
+    You must prepare your bosom for his knife.
+    Therefore lay bare your bosom!
+
+These two speeches, though addressed apparently to Antonio, are spoken
+_at_ Shylock, and are evidently intended to penetrate _his_ bosom. In
+the same spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh;
+and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready--
+
+    Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,
+    To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death!
+
+                        SHYLOCK.
+
+    Is it so nominated in the bond?
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    It is not so expressed--but what of that?
+    'Twere good you do so much, for _charity_.
+
+So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or
+to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew,
+that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His
+gentle, yet manly resignation--the deep pathos of his farewell, and the
+affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio--
+
+    Commend me to your honorable wife;
+    Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death, &c.
+
+are well calculated to swell that emotion, which through the whole scene
+must have been laboring suppressed within her heart.
+
+At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no
+longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent "to the last hour of
+act," springs on his victim--"A sentence come, prepare!" then the
+smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust, burst forth with an
+impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had at
+first affected;--particularly in the speech--
+
+    Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
+    Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more,
+    But just the pound of flesh; if thou tak'st more,
+    Or less than a just pound,--be it but so much
+    As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,
+    Or the division of the twentieth part
+    Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn
+    But in the estimation of a hair,--
+    Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
+
+But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler
+scorn and a more self-possessed exultation.
+
+It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of this
+marvellous scene, we must go along with Portia as well as with Shylock;
+we must understand her concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble
+motives, and pursue in our fancy the under current of feeling, working
+in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of Shylock's
+character,--his deadly and inexorable malice,--would be too oppressive;
+the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue
+too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this
+double source of interest and contemplation.
+
+I come now to that capacity for warm and generous affection, that
+tenderness of heart, which render Portia not less lovable as a woman,
+than admirable for her mental endowments. The affections are to the
+intellect, what the forge is to the metal; it is they which temper and
+shape it to all good purposes, and soften, strengthen, and purify it.
+What an exquisite stroke of judgment in the poet, to make the mutual
+passion of Portia and Bassanio, though unacknowledged to each other,
+anterior to the opening of the play! Bassanio's confession very properly
+comes first:--
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    In Belmont is a lady richly left,
+    And she is fair, and fairer than that word,
+    Of wond'rous virtues: sometimes from her eyes
+    I did receive fair speechless messages;
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+and prepares us for Portia's half betrayed, unconscious election of this
+most graceful and chivalrous admirer--
+
+                        NERISSA.
+
+    Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a
+    Venetian, a scholar, and a soldier, that came hither in
+    company of the Marquis of Montferrat?
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, so he was called.
+
+                        NERISSA.
+
+    True, madam; he of all the men that ever my foolish
+    eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair
+    lady.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    I remember him well; and I remember him worthy of
+    thy praise.
+
+Our interest is thus awakened for the lovers from the very first; and
+what shall be said of the casket-scene with Bassanio, where every line
+which Portia speaks is so worthy of herself, so full of sentiment and
+beauty, and poetry and passion? Too naturally frank for disguise, too
+modest to confess her depth of love while the issue of the trial remains
+in suspense, the conflict between love and fear, and maidenly dignity,
+cause the most delicious confusion that ever tinged a woman's cheek, or
+dropped in broken utterance from her lips.
+
+    I pray you, tarry, pause a day or two,
+    Before you hazard; for in choosing wrong,
+    I lose your company; therefore, forbear awhile;
+    There's something tells me, (but it is not love,)
+    I would not lose you; and you know yourself,
+    Hate counsels not in such a quality:
+    But lest you should not understand me well,
+    (And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought)
+    I would detain you here some month or two
+    Before you venture for me. I could teach you
+    How to choose right,--but then I am forsworn;--
+    So will I never be: so you may miss me;--
+    But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin,
+    That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
+    They have o'erlooked me, and divided me:
+    One half of me is yours, the other half yours,--
+    Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
+    And so all yours!
+
+The short dialogue between the lovers is exquisite.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+           Let me choose,
+    For, as I am, I live upon the rack.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess
+    What treason there is mingled with your love.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    None, but that ugly treason of mistrust,
+    Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love.
+    There may as well be amity and life
+    'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Ay! but I fear you speak upon the rack,
+    Where men enforced do speak any thing.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Well then, confess, and live.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+                             Confess and love
+    Had been the very sum of my confession!
+    O happy torment, when my torturer
+    Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
+
+A prominent feature in Portia's character is that confiding, buoyant
+spirit, which mingles with all her thoughts and affections. And here let
+me observe, that I never yet met in real life, nor ever read in tale or
+history, of any woman, distinguished for intellect of the highest
+order, who was not also remarkable for this trusting spirit, this
+hopefulness and cheerfulness of temper, which is compatible with the
+most serious habits of thought, and the most profound sensibility. Lady
+Wortley Montagu was one instance; and Madame de Staël furnishes another
+much more memorable. In her Corinne, whom she drew from herself, this
+natural brightness of temper is a prominent part of the character. A
+disposition to doubt, to suspect, and to despond, in the young, argues,
+in general, some inherent weakness, moral or physical, or some miserable
+and radical error of education; in the old, it is one of the first
+symptoms of age; it speaks of the influence of sorrow and experience,
+and foreshows the decay of the stronger and more generous powers of the
+soul. Portia's strength of intellect takes a natural tinge from the
+flush and bloom of her young and prosperous existence, and from her
+fervent imagination. In the casket-scene, she fears indeed the issue of
+the trial; on which more than her life is hazarded but while she
+trembles, her hope is stronger than her fear. While Bassanio is
+contemplating the caskets, she suffers herself to dwell for one moment
+on the possibility of disappointment and misery.
+
+    Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
+    Then if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
+    Fading in music: that the comparison
+    May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
+    And watery death-bed for him.
+
+Then, immediately follows that revulsion of feeling, so beautifully
+characteristic of the hopeful, trusting, mounting spirit of this noble
+creature.
+
+                            But he may win!
+    And what is music then?--then music is
+    Even as the flourish, when true subjects bow
+    To a new-crowned monarch: such it is
+    As are those dulcet sounds at break of day,
+    That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
+    And summon him to marriage. Now he goes
+    With no less presence, but with much more love
+    Than young Alcides, when he did redeem
+    The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
+    To the sea monster. I stand here for sacrifice.
+
+Here, not only the feeling itself, born of the elastic and sanguine
+spirit which had never been touched by grief, but the images in which it
+comes arrayed to her fancy,--the bridegroom waked by music on his
+wedding-morn,--the new-crowned monarch,--the comparison of Bassanio to
+the young Alcides, and of herself to the daughter of Laomedon,--are all
+precisely what would have suggested themselves to the fine poetical
+imagination of Portia in such a moment.
+
+Her passionate exclamations of delight, when Bassanio has fixed on the
+right casket, are as strong as though she had despaired before. Fear and
+doubt she could repel; the native elasticity of her mind bore up against
+them; yet she makes us feel, that, as the sudden joy overpowers her
+almost to fainting, the disappointment would as certainly have killed
+her.
+
+    How all the other passions fleet to air,
+    As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair,
+    And shudd'ring fear, and green-eyed jealousy?
+    O love! be moderate, allay thy ecstasy;
+    In measure rain thy joy scant this excess;
+    I feel too much thy blessing: make it less,
+    For fear I surfeit!
+
+Her subsequent surrender of herself in heart and soul, of her maiden
+freedom, and her vast possessions, can never be read without deep
+emotions; for not only all the tenderness and delicacy of a devoted
+woman, are here blended with all the dignity which becomes the princely
+heiress of Belmont, but the serious, measured self-possession of her
+address to her lover, when all suspense is over, and all concealment
+superfluous, is most beautifully consistent with the character. It is,
+in truth, an awful moment, that in which a gifted woman first discovers,
+that besides talents and powers, she has also passions and affections;
+when she first begins to suspect their vast importance in the sum of her
+existence; when she first confesses that her happiness is no longer in
+her own keeping, but is surrendered forever and forever into the
+dominion of another! The possession of uncommon powers of mind are so
+far from affording relief or resource in the first intoxicating
+surprise--I had almost said terror--of such a revolution, that they
+render it more intense. The sources of thought multiply beyond
+calculation the sources of feeling; and mingled, they rush together, a
+torrent deep as strong. Because Portia is endued with that enlarged
+comprehension which looks before and after, she does not feel the less,
+but the more: because from the height of her commanding intellect she
+can contemplate the force, the tendency, the consequences of her own
+sentiments--because she is fully sensible of her own situation, and the
+value of all she concedes--the concession is not made with less
+entireness and devotion of heart, less confidence in the truth and worth
+of her lover, than when Juliet, in a similar moment, but without any
+such intrusive reflections--any check but the instinctive delicacy of
+her sex, flings herself and her fortunes at the feet of her lover:
+
+    And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,
+    And follow thee, my lord, through all the world.[11]
+
+In Portia's confession, which is not breathed from a moonlit balcony,
+but spoken openly in the presence of her attendants and vassals, there
+is nothing of the passionate self-abandonment of Juliet, nor of the
+artless simplicity of Miranda, but a consciousness and a tender
+seriousness, approaching to solemnity, which are not less touching.
+
+    You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
+    Such as I am: though for myself alone,
+    I would not be ambitious in my wish,
+    To wish myself much better; yet, for you,
+    I would be trebled twenty times myself;
+    A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
+    More rich; that only to stand high in your account,
+    I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
+    Exceed account; but the full sum of me
+    Is sum of something; which to term in gross,
+    Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd,
+    Happy in this, she is not yet so old
+    But she may learn; and happier than this,
+    She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
+    Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit
+    Commits itself to yours to be directed,
+    As from her lord, her governor, her king.
+    Myself and what is mine, to you and yours
+    Is now converted. But now, I was the lord,
+    Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
+    Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,
+    This house, these servants, and this same myself,
+    Are yours, my lord.
+
+We must also remark that the sweetness, the solicitude, the subdued
+fondness which she afterwards displays, relative to the letter, are as
+true to the softness of her sex, as the generous self-denial with which
+she urges the departure of Bassanio, (having first given him a husband's
+right over herself and all her countless wealth,) is consistent with a
+reflecting mind, and a spirit at once tender, reasonable, and
+magnanimous.
+
+It is not only in the trial scene that Portia's acuteness, eloquence,
+and lively intelligence are revealed to us; they are displayed in the
+first instance, and kept up consistently to the end. Her reflections,
+arising from the most usual aspects of nature, and from the commonest
+incidents of life are in such a poetical spirit, and are at the same
+time so pointed, so profound, that they have passed into familiar and
+daily application, with all the force of proverbs.
+
+     If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do,
+     chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes'
+     palaces.
+
+     I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be
+     one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
+
+    The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
+    When neither is attended; and, I think,
+    The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
+    When every goose is cackling, would be thought
+    No better a musician than the wren.
+    How many things by season, seasoned are
+    To their right praise and true perfection!
+
+    How far that little candle throws his beams!
+    So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
+    A substitute shines as brightly as a king,
+    Until a king be by; and then his state
+    Empties itself, as doth an inland brook,
+    Into the main of waters.
+
+Her reflections on the friendship between her husband and Antonio are as
+full of deep meaning as of tenderness; and her portrait of a young
+coxcomb, in the same scene, is touched with a truth and spirit which
+show with what a keen observing eye she has looked upon men and things.
+
+    ----I'll hold thee any wager,
+    When we are both accouter'd like young men.
+    I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
+    And wear my dagger with the braver grace
+    And speak, between the change of man and boy
+    With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
+    Into a manly stride; and speak of frays,
+    Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies--
+    How honorable ladies sought my love,
+    Which I denying, they fell sick and died;
+    I could not do withal: then I'll repent,
+    And wish, for all that, that I had not killed them;
+    And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell,
+    That men should swear, I have discontinued school
+    Above a twelvemonth!
+
+And in the description of her various suitors, in the first scene with
+Nerissa, what infinite power, wit, and vivacity! She half checks herself
+as she is about to give the reins to her sportive humor: "In truth, I
+know it is a sin to be a mocker."--But if it carries her away, if is so
+perfectly good-natured, so temperately bright, so lady-like, it is ever
+without offence; and so far, most unlike the satirical, poignant,
+unsparing wit of Beatrice, "misprising what she looks on." In fact, I
+can scarce conceive a greater contrast than between the vivacity of
+Portia and the vivacity of Beatrice. Portia, with all her airy
+brilliance, is supremely soft and dignified; every thing she says or
+does, displays her capability for profound thought and feeling, as well
+as her lively and romantic disposition; and as I have seen in an Italian
+garden a fountain flinging round its wreaths of showery light, while the
+many-colored Iris hung brooding above it, in its calm and soul-felt
+glory; so in Portia the wit is ever kept subordinate to the poetry, and
+we still feel the tender, the intellectual, and the imaginative part of
+the character, as superior to, and presiding over its spirit and
+vivacity.
+
+In the last act, Shylock and his machinations being dismissed from our
+thoughts, and the rest of the _dramatis personæ_ assembled together at
+Belmont, all our interest and all our attention are riveted on Portia,
+and the conclusion leaves the most delightful impression on the fancy.
+The playful equivoque of the rings, the sportive trick she puts on her
+husband, and her thorough enjoyment of the jest, which she checks just
+as it is proceeding beyond the bounds of propriety, show how little she
+was displeased by the sacrifice of her gift, and are all consistent with
+her bright and buoyant spirit. In conclusion; when Portia invites her
+company to enter her palace to refresh themselves after their travels,
+and talk over "these events at full," the imagination, unwilling to lose
+sight of the brilliant group, follows them in gay procession from the
+lovely moonlight garden to marble halls and princely revels, to splendor
+and festive mirth, to love and happiness.
+
+Many women have possessed many of those qualities which render Portia so
+delightful. She is in herself a piece of reality, in whose possible
+existence we have no doubt: and yet a human being, in whom the moral,
+intellectual, and sentient faculties should be so exquisitely blended
+and proportioned to each other; and these again, in harmony with all
+outward aspects and influences probably never existed--certainly could
+not now exist. A woman constituted like Portia, and placed in this age,
+and in the actual state of society, would find society armed against
+her; and instead of being like Portia, a gracious, happy, beloved, and
+loving creature, would be a victim, immolated in fire to that
+multitudinous Moloch termed Opinion. With her, the world without would
+be at war with the world within; in the perpetual strife, either her
+nature would "be subdued to the element it worked in," and bending to a
+necessity it could neither escape nor approve, lose at last something of
+its original brightness; or otherwise--a perpetual spirit of resistance,
+cherished as a safeguard, might perhaps in the end destroy the
+equipoise; firmness would become pride and self-assurance; and the soft,
+sweet, feminine texture of the mind, settle into rigidity. Is there then
+no sanctuary for such a mind?--Where shall it find a refuge from the
+world?--Where seek for strength against itself? Where, but in heaven?
+
+Camiola, in Massinger's Maid of Honor, is said to emulate Portia; and
+the real story of Camiola (for she is an historical personage) is very
+beautiful. She was a lady of Messina, who lived in the beginning of the
+fourteenth century; and was the contemporary of Queen Joanna, of
+Petrarch and Boccaccio. It fell out in those days, that Prince Orlando
+of Arragon, the younger brother of the King of Sicily, having taken the
+command of a naval armament against the Neapolitans, was defeated,
+wounded, taken prisoner, and confined by Robert of Naples (the father of
+Queen Joanna) in one of his strongest castles. As the prince had
+distinguished himself by his enmity to the Neapolitans, and by many
+exploits against them, his ransom was fixed at an exorbitant sum, and
+his captivity was unusually severe; while the King of Sicily, who had
+some cause of displeasure against his brother, and imputed to him the
+defeat of his armament, refused either to negotiate for his release, or
+to pay the ransom demanded.
+
+Orlando, who was celebrated for his fine person and reckless valour, was
+apparently doomed to languish away the rest of his life in a dungeon,
+when Camiola Turinga, a rich Sicilian heiress, devoted the half of her
+fortune to release him. But as such an action might expose her to evil
+comments, she made it a condition, that Orlando should marry her. The
+prince gladly accepted the terms, and sent her the contract of marriage,
+signed by his hand; but no sooner was he at liberty, than he refused to
+fulfil it, and even denied all knowledge of his benefactress.
+
+Camiola appealed to the tribunal of state, produced the written
+contract, and described the obligations she had heaped on this
+ungrateful and ungenerous man; sentence was given against him, and he
+was adjudged to Camiola, not only as her rightful husband, but as a
+property which, according to the laws of war in that age, she had
+purchased with her gold. The day of marriage was fixed; Orlando
+presented himself with a splendid retinue; Camiola also appeared,
+decorated as for her bridal; but instead of bestowing her hand on the
+recreant, she reproached him in the presence of all with his breach of
+faith, declared her utter contempt for his baseness; and then freely
+bestowing on him the sum paid for his ransom, as a gift worthy of his
+mean soul, she turned away, and dedicated herself and her heart to
+heaven. In this resolution she remained inflexible, though the king and
+all the court united in entreaties to soften her. She took the veil; and
+Orlando, henceforth regarded as one who had stained his knighthood, and
+violated his faith, passed the rest of his life as a dishonored man, and
+died in obscurity.
+
+Camiola, in "The Maid of Honor," is, like Portia, a wealthy heiress,
+surrounded by suitors, and "queen o'er herself:" the character is
+constructed upon the same principles, as great intellectual power,
+magnanimity of temper, and feminine tenderness; but not only do pain and
+disquiet, and the change induced by unkind and inauspicious influences,
+enter into this sweet picture to mar and cloud its happy beauty,--but
+the portrait itself may be pronounced out of drawing;--for Massinger
+apparently had not sufficient delicacy of sentiment to work out his own
+conception of the character with perfect consistency. In his adaptation
+of the story he represents the mutual love of Orlando and Camiola as
+existing previous to the captivity of the former, and on his part
+declared with many vows of eternal faith, yet she requires a written
+contract of marriage before she liberates him. It will perhaps be said
+that she has penetrated his weakness, and anticipates his falsehood:
+miserable excuse!--how could a magnanimous woman love a man, whose
+falsehood she believes but _possible_?--or loving him, how could she
+deign to secure herself by such means against the consequences?
+Shakspeare and Nature never committed such a solecism. Camiola doubts
+before she has been wronged; the firmness and assurance in herself
+border on harshness. What in Portia is the gentle wisdom of a noble
+nature, appears, in Camiola, too much a spirit of calculation: it savors
+a little of the counting house. As Portia is the heiress of Belmont, and
+Camiola a merchant's daughter, the distinction may be proper and
+characteristic, but it is not in favor of Camiola. The contrast may be
+thus illustrated:
+
+                         CAMIOLA.
+
+     You have heard of Bertoldo's captivity and the king's
+     neglect, the greatness of his ransom; _fifty thousand
+     crowns_, Adorni! _Two parts of my estate!_ Yet I so love the
+     gentleman, for to you I will confess my weakness, that I
+     purpose now, when he is forsaken by the king and his own
+     hopes, to ransom him.
+
+                    _Maid of Honor_, _Act. 3_.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    What sum owes he the Jew?
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    For me--three thousand ducats.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    What! _no more!_
+    Pay him six thousand and deface the bond,
+    Double six thousand, and then treble that,
+    Before a friend of this description
+    Shall lose a hair thro' my Bassanio's fault.
+          ----You shall have gold
+    To pay the _petty debt_ twenty times o'er.
+
+                    _Merchant of Venice._
+
+Camiola, who is a Sicilian, might as well have been born at Amsterdam:
+Portia could have only existed in Italy. Portia is profound as she is
+brilliant; Camiola is sensible and sententious; she asserts her dignity
+very successfully; but we cannot for a moment imagine Portia as reduced
+to the necessity of asserting hers. The idiot Sylli, in "The Maid of
+Honor," who follows Camiola like one of the deformed dwarfs of old time,
+is an intolerable violation of taste and propriety, and it sensibly
+lowers our impression of the principal character. Shakspeare would never
+have placed Sir Andrew Aguecheek in constant and immediate approximation
+with such a woman as Portia.
+
+Lastly, the charm of the poetical coloring is wholly wanting in Camiola,
+so that when she is placed in contrast with the glowing eloquence, the
+luxuriant grace, the buoyant spirit of Portia, the effect is somewhat
+that of coldness and formality. Notwithstanding the dignity and the
+beauty of Massinger's delineation, and the noble self-devotion of
+Camiola, which I acknowledge and admire, the two characters will admit
+of no comparison as sources of contemplation and pleasure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is observable that something of the intellectual brilliance of Portia
+is reflected on the other female characters of the "Merchant of Venice,"
+so as to preserve in the midst of contrast a certain harmony and
+keeping. Thus Jessica, though properly kept subordinate, is certainly
+
+    A most beautiful pagan--a most sweet Jew.
+
+She cannot be called a sketch--or if a sketch, she is like one of those
+dashed off in glowing colors from the rainbow pallette of a Rubens; she
+has a rich tinge of orientalism shed over her, worthy of her eastern
+origin. In any other play, and in any other companionship than that of
+the matchless Portia, Jessica would make a very beautiful heroine of
+herself. Nothing can be more poetically, more classically fanciful and
+elegant, than the scenes between her and Lorenzo;--the celebrated
+moonlight dialogue, for instance, which we all have by heart. Every
+sentiment she utters interests us for her:--more particularly her
+bashful self-reproach, when flying in the disguise of a page;--
+
+    I am glad 'tis night, you do not look upon me,
+    For I am much asham'd of my exchange;
+    But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
+    The pretty follies that themselves commit;
+    For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
+    To see me thus transformed to a boy.
+
+And the enthusiastic and generous testimony to the superior graces and
+accomplishments of Portia comes with a peculiar grace from her lips.
+
+    Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match.
+    And on the wager lay two earthly women,
+    And Portia one, there must be something else
+    Pawned with the other; for the poor rude world
+    Hath not her fellow.
+
+We should not, however, easily pardon her for cheating her father with
+so much indifference, but for the perception that Shylock values his
+daughter far beneath his wealth.
+
+     I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in
+     her ear!--would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats
+     in her coffin!
+
+Nerissa is a good specimen of a common genus of characters; she is a
+clever confidential waiting-woman, who has caught a little of her lady's
+elegance and romance; she affects to be lively and sententious, falls in
+love, and makes her favor conditional on the fortune of the caskets, and
+in short mimics her mistress with good emphasis and discretion. Nerissa
+and the gay talkative Gratiano are as well matched as the incomparable
+Portia and her magnificent and captivating lover.
+
+
+ISABELLA.
+
+The character of Isabella, considered as a poetical delineation, is less
+mixed than that of Portia; and the dissimilarity between the two
+appears, at first view, so complete that we can scarce believe that the
+same elements enter into the composition of each. Yet so it is; they are
+portrayed as equally wise, gracious, virtuous, fair, and young; we
+perceive in both the same exalted principle and firmness of character;
+the same depth of reflection and persuasive eloquence; the same
+self-denying generosity and capability of strong affections; and we must
+wonder at that marvellous power by which qualities and endowments,
+essentially and closely allied, are so combined and modified as to
+produce a result altogether different. "O Nature! O Shakespeare! which
+of ye drew from the other?"
+
+Isabella is distinguished from Portia, and strongly individualized by a
+certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and
+purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is
+"severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have
+placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in
+such a man as Angelo--
+
+    O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
+    With saints dost bait thy hook!
+
+This impression of her character is conveyed from the very first, when
+Lucio, the libertine jester, whose coarse audacious wit checks at every
+feather, thus expresses his respect for her,--
+
+    I would not--though 'tis my familiar sin
+    With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest
+    Tongue far from heart--play with all virgins so.
+    I hold you as a thing enskyed, and sainted;
+    By your renouncement an immortal spirit,
+    And to be talked with in sincerity,
+    As with a saint.
+
+A strong distinction between Isabella and Portia is produced by the
+circumstances in which they are respectively placed. Portia is a
+high-born heiress, "Lord of a fair mansion, master of her servants,
+queen o'er herself;" easy and decided, as one born to command, and used
+to it. Isabella has also the innate dignity which renders her "queen
+o'er herself," but she has lived far from the world and its pomps and
+pleasures; she is one of a consecrated sisterhood--a novice of St.
+Clare; the power to command obedience and to confer happiness are to her
+unknown. Portia is a splendid creature, radiant with confidence, hope,
+and joy. She is like the orange-tree, hung at once with golden fruit and
+luxuriant flowers, which has expanded into bloom and fragrance beneath
+favoring skies, and has been nursed into beauty by the sunshine and the
+dews of heaven. Isabella is like a stately and graceful cedar, towering
+on some alpine cliff, unbowed and unscathed amid the storm. She gives
+us the impression of one who has passed under the ennobling discipline
+of suffering and self-denial: a melancholy charm tempers the natural
+vigor of her mind: her spirit seems to stand upon an eminence, and look
+down upon the world as if already enskyed and sainted; and yet when
+brought in contact with that world which she inwardly despises, she
+shrinks back with all the timidity natural to her cloistral education.
+
+This union of natural grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments
+of a recluse,--of austerity of life with gentleness of manner,--of
+inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashfulness of
+deportment, is delineated with the most beautiful and wonderful
+consistency. Thus when her brother sends to her, to entreat her
+mediation, her first feeling is fear, and a distrust in her own powers:
+
+    ... Alas! what poor ability's in me
+    To do him good?
+
+                        LUCIO.
+
+    Essay the power you have.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    My power, alas! I doubt.
+
+In the first scene with Angelo she seems divided between her love for
+her brother and her sense of his fault; between her self-respect and her
+maidenly bashfulness. She begins with a kind of hesitation "at war
+'twixt will and will not:" and when Angelo quotes the law, and insists
+on the justice of his sentence, and the responsibility of his station,
+her native sense of moral rectitude and severe principles takes the
+lead, and she shrinks back:--
+
+                              O just, but severe law!
+    I _had_ a brother then--Heaven keep your honor!
+                                  [_Retiring._
+
+Excited and encouraged by Lucio, and supported by her own natural
+spirit, she returns to the charge,--she gains energy and self-possession
+as she proceeds, grows more earnest and passionate from the difficulty
+she encounters, and displays that eloquence and power of reasoning for
+which we had been already prepared by Claudio's first allusion to her:--
+
+            ... In her youth
+    There is a prone and speechless dialect,
+    Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art,
+    When she will play with reason and discourse,
+    And well she can persuade.
+
+It is a curious coincidence that Isabella, exhorting Angelo to mercy,
+avails herself of precisely the same arguments, and insists on the
+self-same topics which Portia addresses to Shylock in her celebrated
+speech; but how beautifully and how truly is the distinction marked! how
+like, and yet how unlike! Portia's eulogy on mercy is a piece of
+heavenly rhetoric; it falls on the ear with a solemn measured harmony;
+it is the voice of a descended angel addressing an inferior nature: if
+not premeditated, it is at least part of a preconcerted scheme; while
+Isabella's pleadings are poured from the abundance of her heart in
+broken sentences, and with the artless vehemence of one who feels that
+life and death hang upon her appeal. This will be best understood by
+placing the corresponding passages in immediate comparison with each
+other.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
+    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
+    Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
+    It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
+    'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
+    The throned monarch better than his crown;
+    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
+    The attribute to awe and majesty,
+    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
+    But mercy is above this sceptred sway--
+    It is enthron'd in the hearts of kings.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+            Well, believe this,
+    No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
+    Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
+    The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe.
+    Become them with one half so good a grace
+    As mercy does.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+                  Consider this--
+    That in the course of justice, none of us
+    Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;
+    And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
+    The deeds of mercy.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+                              ... Alas! alas!
+    Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
+    And He, that might the 'vantage best have took,
+    Found out the remedy. How would you be,
+    If He, which is the top of judgment, should
+    But judge you as you are? O, think on that,
+    And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
+    Like man new made!
+
+The beautiful things which Isabella is made to utter, have, like the
+sayings of Portia, become proverbial; but in spirit and character they
+are as distinct as are the two women. In all that Portia says, we
+confess the power of a rich poetical imagination, blended with a quick
+practical spirit of observation, familiar with the surfaces of things;
+while there is a profound yet simple morality, a depth of religious
+feeling, a touch of melancholy, in Isabella's sentiments, and something
+earnest and authoritative in the manner and expression, as though they
+had grown up in her mind from long and deep meditation in the silence
+and solitude of her convent cell:--
+
+                      O it is excellent
+    To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
+    To use it like a giant.
+
+            Could great men thunder,
+    As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet:
+    For every pelting, petty officer
+    Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder
+    Merciful Heaven!
+    Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
+    Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
+    Than the soft myrtle. O but man, proud man!
+    Drest in a little brief authority,
+    Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
+    His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
+    Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
+    As make the angels weep.
+
+    Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them;
+    But in the less, foul profanation.
+    That in the captain's but a choleric word,
+    Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
+
+    Authority, although it err like others,
+    Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself
+    That skins the vice o' the top. Go to you, bosom;
+    Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
+    That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
+    A natural guiltiness such as his is,
+    Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
+    Against my brother's life.
+
+    Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
+    But graciously to know I am no better.
+
+    The sense of death is most in apprehension;
+    And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
+    In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
+    As when a giant dies.
+
+                            'Tis not impossible
+    But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,
+    May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute
+    As Angelo; even so may Angelo,
+    In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,
+    Be an arch villain.
+
+Her fine powers of reasoning, and that natural uprightness and purity
+which no sophistry can warp, and no allurement betray, are farther
+displayed in the second scene with Angelo.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    What would you do?
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    As much for my poor brother as myself;
+    That is, were I under the terms of death,
+    The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
+    And strip myself to death as to a bed
+    That, longing, I have been sick for, ere I'd yield
+    My body up to shame.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    Then must your brother die.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    And 'twere the cheaper way;
+    Better it were a brother died at once,
+    Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
+    Should die forever.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    Were you not then cruel as the sentence,
+    That you have slander'd so!
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Ignominy in ransom, and free pardon,
+    Are of two houses: lawful mercy is
+    Nothing akin to foul redemption.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
+    And rather proved the sliding of your brother
+    A merriment than a vice.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    O pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,
+    To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean:
+    I something do excuse the thing I hate,
+    For his advantage that I dearly love.
+
+Towards the conclusion of the play we have another instance of that
+rigid sense of justice, which is a prominent part of Isabella's
+character, and almost silences her earnest intercession for her brother,
+when his fault is placed between her plea and her conscience. The Duke
+condemns the villain Angelo to death, and his wife Mariana entreats
+Isabella to plead for him.
+
+              Sweet Isabel, take my part,
+    Lend me your knees, and all my life to come
+    I'll lend you all my life to do you service.
+
+Isabella remains silent, and Mariana reiterates her prayer.
+
+                        MARIANA.
+
+    Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me,
+    Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak all!
+    O Isabel! will you not lend a knee?
+
+Isabella, thus urged, breaks silence and appeals to the Duke, not with
+supplication, or persuasion, but with grave argument, and a kind of
+dignified humility and conscious power, which are finely characteristic
+of the individual woman.
+
+                        Most bounteous Sir,
+    Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
+    As if my brother liv'd; I partly think
+    A due sincerity govern'd his deeds
+    Till he did look on me; since it is so
+    Let him not die. My brother had but justice,
+    In that he did the thing for which he died.
+    For Angelo,
+    His art did not o'ertake his bad intent,
+    That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects.
+    Intents, but merely thoughts.
+
+In this instance, as in the one before mentioned, Isabella's
+conscientiousness is overcome by the only sentiment which ought to
+temper justice into mercy, the power of affection and sympathy.
+
+Isabella's confession of the general frailty of her sex, has a peculiar
+softness, beauty, and propriety. She admits the imputation with all the
+sympathy of woman for woman; yet with all the dignity of one who felt
+her own superiority to the weakness she acknowledges.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    Nay, women are frail too.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
+    Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
+    Women! help heaven! men their creation mar
+    In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail,
+    For we are soft as our complexions are,
+    And credulous to false prints.
+
+Nor should we fail to remark the deeper interest which is thrown round
+Isabella, by one part of her character, which is betrayed rather than
+exhibited in the progress of the action; and for which we are not at
+first prepared, though it is so perfectly natural. It is the strong
+under-current of passion and enthusiasm flowing beneath this calm and
+saintly self-possession; it is the capacity for high feeling and
+generous and strong indignation, veiled beneath the sweet austere
+composure of the religious recluse, which, by the very force of
+contrast, powerfully impress the imagination. As we see in real life
+that where, from some external or habitual cause, a strong control is
+exercised over naturally quick feelings and an impetuous temper, they
+display themselves with a proportionate vehemence when that restraint is
+removed; so the very violence with which her passions burst forth, when
+opposed or under the influence of strong excitement, is admirably
+characteristic.
+
+Thus in her exclamation, when she first allows herself to perceive
+Angelo's vile design--
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Ha! little honor to be much believed,
+    And most pernicious purpose;--seeming!--seeming
+    I will proclaim thee, Angelo: look for it!
+    Sign me a present pardon for my brother,
+    Or with an outstretched throat I'll tell the world
+    Aloud, what man thou art!
+
+And again, where she finds that the "outward tainted deputy," has
+deceived her--
+
+    O I will to him, and pluck out his eyes!
+    Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!
+    Injurious world! most damned Angelo!
+
+She places at first a strong and high-souled confidence in her brother's
+fortitude and magnanimity, judging him by her own lofty spirit:
+
+                    I'll to my brother;
+    Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
+    Yet hath he in him such a mind of honor,
+    That had he twenty heads to tender down,
+    On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up
+    Before his sister should her body stoop
+    To such abhorr'd pollution.
+
+But when her trust in his honor is deceived by his momentary weakness,
+her scorn has a bitterness, and her indignation a force of expression
+almost fearful; and both are carried to an extreme, which is perfectly
+in character:
+
+    O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
+    Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
+    Is't not a kind of incest to take life
+    From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
+    Heaven shield, my mother play'd my father fair!
+    For such a warped slip of wilderness
+    Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance;
+    Die! perish! might but my bending down,
+    Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.
+    I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death.
+    No word to save thee.
+
+The whole of this scene with Claudio is inexpressibly grand in the
+poetry and the sentiment; and the entire play abounds in those passages
+and phrases which must have become trite from familiar and constant use
+and abuse, if their wisdom and unequalled beauty did not invest them
+with an immortal freshness and vigor, and a perpetual charm.
+
+The story of Measure for Measure is a tradition of great antiquity, of
+which there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible
+tragedy, the _Promos and Cassandra_ of George Whetstone, is supposed,
+from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the
+groundwork of the play; but the character of Isabella is, in conception
+and execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with
+infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation
+of Isabella, they award either silence or worse than silence. Johnson
+and the rest of the black-letter crew, pass over her without a word. One
+critic, a lady-critic too, whose name I will be so merciful as to
+suppress, treats Isabella as a coarse vixen. Hazlitt, with that strange
+perversion of sentiment and want of taste which sometimes mingle with
+his piercing and powerful intellect, dismisses Isabella with a slight
+remark, that "we are not greatly enamoured of her rigid chastity, nor
+can feel much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at
+another's expense." What shall we answer to such criticism? Upon what
+ground can we read the play from beginning to end, and doubt the
+angel-purity of Isabella, or contemplate her possible lapse from
+virtue? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a sin against the light of
+heaven.
+
+        Having waste ground enough,
+    Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,
+    And pitch our evils there?
+
+Professor Richardson is more just, and truly sums up her character as
+"amiable, pious, sensible, resolute, determined, and eloquent:" but his
+remarks are rather superficial.
+
+Schlegel's observations are also brief and general, and in no way
+distinguish Isabella from many other characters; neither did his plan
+allow him to be more minute. Of the play altogether, he observes very
+beautifully, "that the title Measure for Measure is in reality a
+misnomer, the sense of the whole being properly the triumph of mercy
+over strict justice:" but it is also true that there is "an original sin
+in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial
+interest in it."[12] Of all the characters, Isabella alone has our
+sympathy. But though she triumphs in the conclusion, her triumph is not
+produced in a pleasing manner. There are too many disguises and tricks,
+too many "by-paths and indirect crooked ways," to conduct us to the
+natural and foreseen catastrophe, which the Duke's presence throughout
+renders inevitable. This Duke seems to have a predilection for bringing
+about justice by a most unjustifiable succession of falsehoods and
+counterplots. He really deserves Lucio's satirical designation, who
+somewhere styles him "The Fantastical Duke of Dark Corners." But
+Isabella is ever consistent in her pure and upright simplicity, and in
+the midst of this simulation, expresses a characteristic disapprobation
+of the part she is made to play,
+
+    To speak so indirectly I am loth:
+    I would say the truth.[13]
+
+She yields to the supposed Friar with a kind of forced docility, because
+her situation as a religious novice, and his station, habit, and
+authority, as her spiritual director, demand this sacrifice. In the end
+we are made to feel that her transition from the convent to the throne
+has but placed this noble creature in her natural sphere: for though
+Isabella, as Duchess of Vienna, could not more command our highest
+reverence than Isabella, the novice of Saint Clare, yet a wider range of
+usefulness and benevolence, of trial and action, was better suited to
+the large capacity, the ardent affections, the energetic intellect, and
+firm principle of such a woman as Isabella, than the walls of a
+cloister. The philosophical Duke observes in the very first scene--
+
+            Spirits are not finely touched,
+    But to fine issues: nor nature never lends
+    The smallest scruple of her excellence,
+    But like a thrifty goddess she determines,
+    Herself the glory of a creditor,
+    Both thanks and use.[14]
+
+This profound and beautiful sentiment is illustrated in the character
+and destiny of Isabella. She says, of herself, that "she has spirit to
+act whatever her heart approves;" and what her heart approves we know.
+
+In the convent, (which may stand here poetically for any narrow and
+obscure situation in which such a woman might be placed,) Isabella would
+not have been unhappy, but happiness would have been the result of an
+effort, or of the concentration of her great mental powers to some
+particular purpose; as St. Theresa's intellect, enthusiasm, tenderness,
+restless activity, and burning eloquence, governed by one overpowering
+sentiment of devotion, rendered her the most extraordinary of saints.
+Isabella, like St. Theresa, complains that the rules of her order are
+not sufficiently severe, and from the same cause,--that from the
+consciousness of strong intellectual and imaginative power, and of
+overflowing sensibility, she desires a more "strict restraint," or, from
+the continual, involuntary struggle against the trammels imposed, feels
+its necessity.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    And have you nuns no further privileges?
+
+                        FRANCISCA.
+
+    Are not these large enough?
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Yes, truly; I speak, not as desiring more,
+    But rather wishing a more strict restraint
+    Upon the sisterhood!
+
+Such women as Desdemona and Ophelia would have passed their lives in the
+seclusion of a nunnery, without wishing, like Isabella, for stricter
+bonds, or planning, like St. Theresa, the reformation of their order,
+simply, because any restraint would have been efficient, as far as
+_they_ were concerned. Isabella, "dedicate to nothing temporal," might
+have found resignation through self government, or have become a
+religious enthusiast: while "place and greatness" would have appeared to
+her strong and upright mind, only a more extended field of action, a
+trust and a trial. The mere trappings of power and state, the gemmed
+coronal, the ermined robe, she would have regarded as the outward
+emblems of her earthly profession; and would have worn them with as much
+simplicity as her novice's hood and scapular; still, under whatever
+guise she might tread this thorny world--the same "angel of light."
+
+
+BEATRICE.
+
+Shakspeare has exhibited in Beatrice a spirited and faithful portrait of
+the fine lady of his own time. The deportment, language, manners, and
+allusions, are those of a particular class in a particular age; but the
+individual and dramatic character which forms the groundwork, is
+strongly discriminated; and being taken from general nature, belongs to
+every age. In Beatrice, high intellect and high animal spirits meet, and
+excite each other like fire and air. In her wit (which is brilliant
+without being imaginative) there is a touch of insolence, not unfrequent
+in women when the wit predominates over reflection and imagination. In
+her temper, too, there is a slight infusion of the termagant; and her
+satirical humor plays with such an unrespective levity over all subjects
+alike, that it required a profound knowledge of women to bring such a
+character within the pale of our sympathy. But Beatrice, though wilful,
+is not wayward; she is volatile, not unfeeling. She has not only an
+exuberance of wit and gayety, but of heart, and soul, and energy of
+spirit; and is no more like the fine ladies of modern comedy,--whose wit
+consists in a temporary allusion, or a play upon words, and whose
+petulance is displayed in a toss of the head, a flirt of the fan, or a
+flourish of the pocket handkerchief,--than one of our modern dandies is
+like Sir Philip Sydney.
+
+In Beatrice, Shakspeare has contrived that the poetry of the character
+shall not only soften, but heighten its comic effect. We are not only
+inclined to forgive Beatrice all her scornful airs, all her biting
+jests, all her assumption of superiority; but they amuse and delight us
+the more, when we find her, with all the headlong simplicity of a child,
+falling at once into the snare laid for her affections; when we see
+_her_, who thought a man of God's making not good enough for her, who
+disdained to be o'ermastered by "a piece of valiant dust," stooping like
+the rest of her sex, vailing her proud spirit, and taming her wild heart
+to the loving hand of him whom she had scorned, flouted, and misused,
+"past the endurance of a block." And we are yet more completely won by
+her generous enthusiastic attachment to her cousin. When the father of
+Hero believes the tale of her guilt; when Claudio, her lover, without
+remorse or a lingering doubt, consigns her to shame; when the Friar
+remains silent, and the generous Benedick himself knows not what to say,
+Beatrice, confident in her affections, and guided only by the impulses
+of her own feminine heart, sees through the inconsistency, the
+impossibility of the charge, and exclaims, without a moment's
+hesitation,
+
+    O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!
+
+Schlegel, in his remarks on the play of "Much Ado about nothing," has
+given us an amusing instance of that sense of reality with which we are
+impressed by Shakspeare's characters. He says of Benedick and Beatrice,
+as if he had known them personally, that the exclusive direction of
+their pointed raillery against each other "is a proof of a growing
+inclination." This is not unlikely; and the same inference would lead us
+to suppose that this mutual inclination had commenced before the opening
+of the play. The very first words uttered by Beatrice are an inquiry
+after Benedick, though expressed with her usual arch impertinence:--
+
+     I pray you, is Signior Montanto returned from the wars, or
+     no?
+
+     I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars?
+     But how many hath he killed? for indeed I promised to eat
+     all of his killing.
+
+And in the unprovoked hostility with which she falls upon him in his
+absence, in the pertinacity and bitterness of her satire, there is
+certainly great argument that he occupies much more of her thoughts than
+she would have been willing to confess, even to herself. In the same
+manner Benedick betrays a lurking partiality for his fascinating enemy;
+he shows that he has looked upon her with no careless eye, when he says,
+
+     There's her cousin, (meaning Beatrice,) an' she were not
+     possessed with a fury, excels her as much in beauty as the
+     first of May does the last of December.
+
+Infinite skill, as well as humor, is shown in making this pair of airy
+beings the exact counterpart of each other; but of the two portraits,
+that of Benedick is by far the most pleasing, because the independence
+and gay indifference of temper, the laughing defiance of love and
+marriage, the satirical freedom of expression, common to both, are more
+becoming to the masculine than to the feminine character. Any woman
+might love such a cavalier as Benedick, and be proud of his affection;
+his valor, his wit, and his gayety sit so gracefully upon him! and his
+light scoffs against the power of love are but just sufficient to render
+more piquant the conquest of this "heretic in despite of beauty." But a
+man might well be pardoned who should shrink from encountering such a
+spirit as that of Beatrice, unless, indeed, he had "served an
+apprenticeship to the taming school." The wit of Beatrice is less
+good-humored than that of Benedick; or, from the difference of sex,
+appears so. It is observable that the power is throughout on her side,
+and the sympathy and interest on his: which, by reversing the usual
+order of things, seems to excite us _against the grain_, if I may use
+such an expression. In all their encounters she constantly gets the
+better of him, and the gentleman's wits go off halting, if he is not
+himself fairly _hors de combat_. Beatrice, woman-like, generally has the
+first word, and will have the last. Thus, when they first meet, she
+begins by provoking the merry warfare:--
+
+     I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick;
+     nobody marks you.
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Is it possible Disdain should die, while she hath such meet
+     food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must
+     convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.
+
+It is clear that she cannot for a moment endure his neglect, and he can
+as little tolerate her scorn. Nothing that Benedick addresses to
+Beatrice personally can equal the malicious force of some of her
+attacks upon him: he is either restrained by a feeling of natural
+gallantry, little as she deserves the consideration due to her sex, (for
+a female satirist ever places herself beyond the pale of such
+forbearance,) or he is subdued by her superior volubility. He revenges
+himself, however, in her absence: he abuses her with such a variety of
+comic invective, and pours forth his pent-up wrath with such a ludicrous
+extravagance and exaggeration, that he betrays at once how deep is his
+mortification, and how unreal his enmity.
+
+In the midst of all this tilting and sparring of their nimble and fiery
+wits, we find them infinitely anxious for the good opinion of each
+other, and secretly impatient of each other's scorn: but Beatrice is the
+most truly indifferent of the two; the most assured of herself. The
+comic effect produced by their mutual attachment, which, however natural
+and expected, comes upon us with all the force of a surprise, cannot be
+surpassed: and how exquisitely characteristic the mutual avowal!
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Do not swear by it, and eat it.
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make him eat
+     it, that says, I love not you.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Will you not eat your word?
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     With no sauce that can be devised to it: I protest, I love
+     thee.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Why, then, God forgive me!
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     What offence, sweet Beatrice?
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     You stayed me in a happy hour. I was about to protest, I
+     loved you.
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     And do it with all thy heart.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     I love you with so much of my heart, that there is none left
+     to protest.
+
+But here again the dominion rests with Beatrice, and she appears in a
+less amiable light than her lover. Benedick surrenders his whole heart
+to her and to his new passion. The revulsion of feeling even causes it
+to overflow in an excess of fondness; but with Beatrice temper has still
+the mastery. The affection of Benedick induces him to challenge his
+intimate friend for her sake, but the affection of Beatrice does not
+prevent her from risking the life of her lover.
+
+The character of Hero is well contrasted with that of Beatrice, and
+their mutual attachment is very beautiful and natural. When they are
+both on the scene together, Hero has but little to say for herself:
+Beatrice asserts the rule of a master spirit, eclipses her by her mental
+superiority, abashes her by her raillery, dictates to her, answers for
+her, and would fain inspire her gentle-hearted cousin with some of her
+own assurance.
+
+     Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make a curtsey, and
+     say, "Father, as it please you;" but yet, for all that,
+     cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another
+     curtsey, and, "Father, as it please me."
+
+But Shakspeare knew well how to make one character subordinate to
+another, without sacrificing the slightest portion of its effect; and
+Hero, added to her grace and softness, and all the interest which
+attaches to her as the sentimental heroine of the play, possesses an
+intellectual beauty of her own. When she has Beatrice at an advantage,
+she repays her with interest, in the severe, but most animated and
+elegant picture she draws of her cousin's imperious character and
+unbridled levity of tongue. The portrait is a little overcharged,
+because administered as a corrective, and intended to be overheard.
+
+    But nature never fram'd a woman's heart
+    Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice:
+    Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
+    Misprising what they look on; and her wit
+    Values itself so highly, that to her
+    All matter else seems weak; she cannot love,
+    Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
+    She is so self-endeared.
+
+                        URSULA.
+
+    Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.
+
+                        HERO.
+
+    No: not to be so odd, and from all fashions,
+    As Beatrice is cannot be commendable:
+    But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,
+    She'd mock me into air: O she would laugh me
+    Out of myself, press me to death with wit.
+    Therefore let Benedick, like cover'd fire,
+    Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly:
+    It were a better death than die with mocks,
+    Which is as bad as die with tickling.
+
+Beatrice never appears to greater advantage than in her soliloquy after
+leaving her concealment "in the pleached bower where honeysuckles,
+ripened by the sun, forbid the sun to enter;" she exclaims, after
+listening to this tirade against herself,--
+
+    What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
+    Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?
+
+The sense of wounded vanity is lost in bitter feelings, and she is
+infinitely more struck by what is said in praise of Benedick, and the
+history of his supposed love for her than by the dispraise of herself.
+The immediate success of the trick is a most natural consequence of the
+self-assurance and magnanimity of her character; she is so accustomed to
+assert dominion over the spirits of others, that she cannot suspect the
+possibility of a plot laid against herself.
+
+A haughty, excitable, and violent temper is another of the
+characteristics of Beatrice; but there is more of impulse than of
+passion in her vehemence. In the marriage scene where she has beheld her
+gentle-spirited cousin,--whom she loves the more for those very
+qualities which are most unlike her own,--slandered, deserted, and
+devoted to public shame, her indignation, and the eagerness with which
+she hungers and thirsts after revenge, are, like the rest of her
+character, open, ardent, impetuous, but not deep or implacable. When she
+bursts into that outrageous speech--
+
+     Is he not approved in the height a villain that hath
+     slandered, scorned, dishonored my kinswoman? O that I were a
+     man! What! bear her in hand until they come to take hands;
+     and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander,
+     unmitigated rancor--O God, that I were a man! I would eat
+     his heart in the market-place!
+
+And when she commands her lover, as the first proof of his affection,
+"to kill Claudio," the very consciousness of the exaggeration,--of the
+contrast between the real good-nature of Beatrice and the fierce tenor
+of her language, keeps alive the comic effect, mingling the ludicrous
+with the serious. It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the point and
+vivacity of the dialogue, few of the speeches of Beatrice are capable of
+a general application, or engrave themselves distinctly on the memory;
+they contain more mirth than matter; and though wit be the predominant
+feature in the dramatic portrait, Beatrice more charms and dazzles us by
+what she is than by what she _says_. It is not merely her sparkling
+repartees and saucy jests, it is the soul of wit, and the spirit of
+gayety in forming the whole character,--looking out from her brilliant
+eyes, and laughing on her full lips that pout with scorn,--which we have
+before us, moving and full of life. On the whole, we dismiss Benedick
+and Beatrice to their matrimonial bonds rather with a sense of amusement
+than a feeling of congratulation or sympathy; rather with an
+acknowledgment that they are well-matched, and worthy of each other than
+with any well-founded expectation of their domestic tranquillity. If, as
+Benedick asserts, they are both "too wise to woo peaceably," it may be
+added that both are too wise, too witty, and too wilful to live
+peaceably together. We have some misgivings about Beatrice--some
+apprehensions that poor Benedick will not escape the "predestinated
+scratched face," which he had foretold to him who should win and wear
+this quick-witted and pleasant-spirited lady; yet when we recollect that
+to the wit and imperious temper of Beatrice is united a magnanimity of
+spirit which would naturally place her far above all selfishness, and
+all paltry struggles for power--when we perceive, in the midst of her
+sarcastic levity and volubility of tongue, so much of generous
+affection, and such a high sense of female virtue and honor, we are
+inclined to hope the best. We think it possible that though the
+gentleman may now and then swear, and the lady scold, the native
+good-humor of the one, the really fine understanding of the other, and
+the value they so evidently attach to each other's esteem, will ensure
+them a tolerable portion of domestic felicity, and in this hope we leave
+them.
+
+
+ROSALIND.
+
+I come now to Rosalind, whom I should have ranked before Beatrice,
+inasmuch as the greater degree of her sex's softness and sensibility,
+united with equal wit and intellect, give her the superiority as a
+woman; but that, as a dramatic character, she is inferior in force. The
+portrait is one of infinitely more delicacy and variety, but of less
+strength and depth. It is easy to seize on the prominent features in the
+mind of Beatrice, but extremely difficult to catch and fix the more
+fanciful graces of Rosalind. She is like a compound of essences, so
+volatile in their nature, and so exquisitely blended, that on any
+attempt to analyze them, they seem to escape us. To what else shall we
+compare her, all-enchanting as she is?--to the silvery summer clouds
+which, even while we gaze on them, shift their hues and forms dissolving
+into air, and light, and rainbow showers?--to the May-morning, flush
+with opening blossoms and roseate dews, and "charm of earliest
+birds?"--to some wild and beautiful melody, such as some shepherd boy
+might "pipe to Amarillis in the shade?"--to a mountain streamlet, now
+smooth as a mirror in which the skies may glass themselves, and anon
+leaping and sparkling in the sunshine--or rather to the very sunshine
+itself? for so her genial spirit touches into life and beauty whatever
+it shines on!
+
+But this impression, though produced by the complete development of the
+character, and in the end possessing the whole fancy, is not immediate.
+The first introduction of Rosalind is less striking than interesting; we
+see her a dependant, almost a captive, in the house of her usurping
+uncle; her genial spirits are subdued by her situation, and the
+remembrance of her banished father her playfulness is under a temporary
+eclipse.
+
+    I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry!
+
+_is_ an adjuration which Rosalind needed not when once at liberty, and
+sporting "under the greenwood tree." The sensibility and even
+pensiveness of her demeanor in the first instance, render her archness
+and gayety afterwards, more graceful and more fascinating.
+
+Though Rosalind is a princess, she is a princess of Arcady; and
+notwithstanding the charming effect produced by her first scenes, we
+scarcely ever think of her with a reference to them, or associate her
+with a court, and the artificial appendages of her rank. She was not
+made to "lord it o'er a fair mansion," and take state upon her like the
+all-accomplished Portia; but to breathe the free air of heaven, and
+frolic among green leaves. She was not made to stand the siege of daring
+profligacy, and oppose high action and high passion to the assaults of
+adverse fortune, like Isabel; but to "fleet the time carelessly as they
+did i' the golden age." She was not made to bandy wit with lords, and
+tread courtly measures with plumed and warlike cavaliers, like Beatrice;
+but to dance on the green sward, and "murmur among living brooks a music
+sweeter than their own."
+
+Though sprightliness is the distinguishing characteristic of Rosalind,
+as of Beatrice, yet we find her much more nearly allied to Portia in
+temper and intellect. The tone of her mind is, like Portia's, genial and
+buoyant: she has something, too, of her softness and sentiment; there is
+the same confiding abandonment of self in her affections; but the
+characters are otherwise as distinct as the situations are dissimilar.
+The age, the manners, the circumstance in which Shakspeare has placed
+his Portia, are not beyond the bounds of probability; nay, have a
+certain reality and locality. We fancy her a contemporary of the
+Raffaelles and the Ariostos; the sea-wedded Venice, its merchants and
+Magnificos,--the Rialto, and the long canals,--rise up before us when we
+think of her. But Rosalind is surrounded with the purely ideal and
+imaginative; the reality is in the characters and in the sentiments, not
+in the circumstances or situation. Portia is dignified, splendid, and
+romantic; Rosalind is playful, pastoral, and picturesque: both are in
+the highest degree poetical, but the one is epic and the other lyric.
+
+Every thing about Rosalind breathes of "youth and youth's sweet prime."
+She is fresh as the morning, sweet as the dew-awakened blossoms, and
+light as the breeze that plays among them. She is as witty, as voluble,
+as sprightly as Beatrice; but in a style altogether distinct. In both,
+the wit is equally unconscious; but in Beatrice it plays about us like
+the lightning, dazzling but also alarming; while the wit of Rosalind
+bubbles up and sparkles like the living fountain, refreshing all around.
+Her volubility is like the bird's song; it is the outpouring of a heart
+filled to overflowing with life, love, and joy, and all sweet and
+affectionate impulses. She has as much tenderness as mirth, and in her
+most petulant raillery there is a touch of softness--"By this hand, it
+will not hurt a fly!" As her vivacity never lessens our impression of
+her sensibility, so she wears her masculine attire without the slightest
+impugnment of her delicacy. Shakspeare did not make the modesty of his
+women depend on their dress, as we shall see further when we come to
+Viola and Imogen. Rosalind has in truth "no doublet and hose in her
+disposition." How her heart seems to throb and flutter under her page's
+vest! What depth of love in her passion for Orlando! whether disguised
+beneath a saucy playfulness, or breaking forth with a fond impatience,
+or half betrayed in that beautiful scene where she faints at the sight
+of his 'kerchief stained with his blood! Here her recovery of her
+self-possession--her fears lest she should have revealed her sex--her
+presence of mind, and quick-witted excuse--
+
+    I pray you, tell your brother how well I counterfeited.
+
+and the characteristic playfulness which seems to return so naturally
+with her recovered senses,--are all as amusing as consistent. Then how
+beautifully is the dialogue managed between herself and Orlando! how
+well she assumes the airs of a saucy page, without throwing off her
+feminine sweetness! How her wit flutters free as air over every subject!
+With what a careless grace, yet with what exquisite propriety!
+
+    For innocence hath a privilege in her
+    To dignify arch jests and laughing eyes.
+
+And if the freedom of some of the expressions used by Rosalind or
+Beatrice be objected to, let it be remembered that this was not the
+fault of Shakspeare or the women, but generally of the age. Portia,
+Beatrice, Rosalind, and the rest lived in times when more importance was
+attached to things than to words; now we think more of words than of
+things; and happy are we in these later days of super-refinement, if we
+are to be saved by our verbal morality. But this is meddling with the
+province of the melancholy Jaques, and our argument is Rosalind.
+
+The impression left upon our hearts and minds by the character of
+Rosalind--by the mixture of playfulness, sensibility, and what the
+French (and we for lack of a better expression) call _naïveté_--is like
+a delicious strain of music. There is a depth of delight, and a subtlety
+of words to express that delight, which is enchanting. Yet when we call
+to mind particular speeches and passages, we find that they have a
+relative beauty and propriety, which renders it difficult to separate
+them from the context without injuring their effect She says some of the
+most charming things in the world, and some of the most humorous: but we
+apply them as phrases rather than as maxims, and remember them rather
+for their pointed felicity of expression and fanciful application, than
+for their general truth and depth of meaning. I will give a few
+instances:--
+
+     I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time--that I was
+     an Irish rat--which I can hardly remember.[15]
+
+     Good, my complexion! Dost thou think, though I am
+     caparisoned like a man, that I have a doublet and hose in my
+     disposition?
+
+     We dwell here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon
+     a petticoat.
+
+     Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well
+     a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why
+     they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so
+     ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
+
+     A traveller! By my faith you have great reason to be sad. I
+     fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then
+     to have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes
+     and poor hands.
+
+     Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you lisp, and wear
+     strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country;
+     be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for
+     making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think
+     you have swam in a gondola.
+
+     Break an hour's promise in love! He that will divide a
+     minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the
+     thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may
+     be said of him that Cupid hath clapp'd him o' the shoulder,
+     but I warrant him heart-whole.
+
+     Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten
+     them--but not for love.
+
+     I could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel, and
+     to cry like a woman; but I must comfort the weaker vessel,
+     as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to
+     petticoat.
+
+Rosalind has not the impressive eloquence of Portia, nor the sweet
+wisdom of Isabella. Her longest speeches are not her best; nor is her
+taunting address to Phebe, beautiful and celebrated as it is, equal to
+Phebe's own description of her. The latter, indeed, is more in
+earnest.[16]
+
+Celia is more quiet and retired: but she rather yields to Rosalind, than
+is eclipsed by her. She is as full of sweetness, kindness, and
+intelligence, quite as susceptible, and almost as witty, though she
+makes less display of wit. She is described as less fair and less
+gifted; yet the attempt to excite in her mind a jealousy of her lovelier
+friend, by placing them in comparison--
+
+    Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name;
+    And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous,
+    When she is gone--
+
+fails to awaken in the generous heart of Celia any other feeling than an
+increased tenderness and sympathy for her cousin. To Celia, Shakspeare
+has given some of the most striking and animated parts of the dialogue;
+and in particular, that exquisite description of the friendship between
+her and Rosalind--
+
+            If she be a traitor,
+    Why, so am I; we have still slept together,
+    Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,
+    And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
+    Still we were coupled and inseparable.
+
+The feeling of interest and admiration thus excited for Celia at the
+first, follows her through the whole play. We listen to her as to one
+who has made herself worthy of our love; and her silence expresses more
+than eloquence.
+
+Phebe is quite an Arcadian coquette; she is a piece of pastoral poetry.
+Audrey is only rustic. A very amusing effect is produced by the contrast
+between the frank and free bearing of the two princesses in disguise,
+and the scornful airs of the real Shepherdess. In the speeches of Phebe,
+and in the dialogue between her and Sylvius, Shakspeare has anticipated
+all the beauties of the Italian pastoral, and surpassed Tasso and
+Guarini. We find two among the most poetical passages of the play
+appropriated to Phebe; the taunting speech to Sylvius, and the
+description of Rosalind in her page's costume;--which last is finer than
+the portrait of Bathyllus in Anacreon.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist of the seventeenth century,
+painted one or two pictures, considered admirable as works of art, of
+which the subjects are the most vicious and barbarous conceivable. I
+remember one of these in the gallery of Florence, which I looked at
+once, but once, and wished then, as I do now, for the privilege of
+burning it to ashes.
+
+[6] Lucy Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, may be placed next to
+Desdemona; Diana Vernon is (comparatively) a failure as every woman will
+allow; while the masculine lady Geraldine in Miss Edgeworth's tale of
+Ennui, and the intellectual Corinne are consistent, essential women; the
+distinction is more easily felt than analyzed.
+
+[7] Hazlitt's Essays, vol. ii. p. 167.
+
+[8] I am informed that the original German word is _geistreiche_
+literally, _rich in soul or spirit_, a just and beautiful epithet. 2d.
+_Edit._
+
+[9] In the "Mercatante di Venezia" of Ser. Giovanni, we have the whole
+story of Antonio and Bassanio, and part of the story but not the
+character of Portia. The incident of the caskets is from the Gesta
+Romanorum.
+
+[10] In that age, delicate points of law were not determined by the
+ordinary judges of the provinces, but by doctors of law, who were called
+from Bologna, Padua, and other places celebrated for their legal
+colleges.
+
+[11] Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Scene 2
+
+[12] Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.
+
+[13] Act iv. Scene 5.
+
+[14] _Use_, i. e. usury, interest.
+
+[15] In Shakspeare's time, there were people In Ireland, (there may be
+so still, for aught I know,) who undertook to charm rats to death, by
+chanting certain verses which acted as a spell. "Rhyme them to death, as
+they do rats in Ireland," is a line in one of Ben Jonson's comedies;
+this will explain Rosalind's humorous allusion.
+
+[16] Rousseau could describe such a character as Rosalind, but failed to
+represent it consistently. "N'est-ce pas de ton coeur que viennent les
+graces de ton enjouement? Tes railleries sont des signes d'intérêt plus
+touchants que les compliments d'un autre. Tu caresses quand tu folâtres.
+Tu ris, mais ton rire pénètre l'âme; tu ris, mais tu fais pleurer de
+tendresse et je te vois presque toujours sérieuse avec les indifférents"
+_Héloïse._
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION.
+
+
+JULIET.
+
+O Love! thou teacher'--O Grief! thou tamer--and Time, thou healer of
+human hearts!--bring hither all your deep and serious revelations!--And
+ye too, rich fancies of unbruised, unbowed youth--ye visions of long
+perished hopes--shadows of unborn joys--gay colorings of the dawn of
+existence! whatever memory hath treasured up of bright and beautiful in
+nature or in art; all soft and delicate images--all lovely
+forms--divinest voices and entrancing melodies--gleams of sunnier skies
+and fairer climes,--Italian moonlights and airs that "breathe of the
+sweet south,"--now, if it be possible, revive to my imagination--live
+once more to my heart! Come, thronging around me, all inspirations that
+wait on passion, on power, on beauty; give me to tread, not bold, and
+yet unblamed, within the inmost sanctuary of Shakspeare's genius, in
+Juliet's moonlight bower, and Miranda's enchanted isle!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not without emotion, that I attempt to touch on the character of
+Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her--only to be
+exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them!--it is impossible
+to say any thing better; but it is possible to say something more. Such
+in fact is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet's
+character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth,
+and its variety. There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of
+purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a
+whole; and to attempt to analyze the impression thus conveyed at once to
+soul and sense, is as if while hanging over a half-blown rose, and
+revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder,
+leaflet by leaflet, the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet
+how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do
+justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in
+its beauty?
+
+Love, as a passion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting
+the axiom of Rochefoucauld, that there is but one love, though a
+thousand different copies, yet the true sentiment itself has as many
+different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not
+only modified by the individual character and temperament, but it is
+under the influence of climate and circumstance. The love that is calm
+in one moment, shall show itself vehement and tumultuous at another. The
+love that is wild and passionate in the south, is deep and
+contemplative in the north; as the Spanish or Roman girl perhaps poisons
+a rival, or stabs herself for the sake of a living lover, and the German
+or Russian girl pines into the grave for love of the false, the absent,
+or the dead. Love is ardent or deep, bold or timid, jealous or
+confiding, impatient or humble, hopeful or desponding--and yet there are
+not many loves, but one love.
+
+All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love or have
+loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The passion
+is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence. It is the
+soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life-blood along
+her veins, "blending with every atom of her frame." The love that is so
+chaste and dignified in Portia--so airy-delicate and fearless in
+Miranda--so sweetly confiding in Perdita--so playfully fond in
+Rosalind--so constant in Imogen--so devoted in Desdemona--so fervent in
+Helen--so tender in Viola,--is each and all of these in Juliet. All
+these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet
+self; or if she does, it is of the Gismunda, or the Lisetta, or the
+Fiammetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not in the character or
+circumstances, but in the truly Italian spirit, the glowing, national
+complexion of the portrait.[17]
+
+There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect in
+color consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How perfectly
+did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect! and how beautifully he
+has exemplified it in Juliet?
+
+    So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
+    As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows!
+
+Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are
+all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all
+discord: all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial life.
+Juliet, like Portia, is the foster child of opulence and splendor; she
+dwells in a fair city--she has been nurtured in a palace--she clasps her
+robe with jewels--she braids her hair with rainbow-tinted pearls; but in
+herself she has no more connection with the trappings around her, than
+the lovely exotic, transplanted from some Eden-like climate, has with
+the carved and gilded conservatory which has reared and sheltered its
+luxuriant beauty.
+
+But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or
+harsh. A tissue of beautiful poetry weaves together the principal
+figures, and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the
+costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most
+opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet
+are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are they,
+like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the
+darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of
+humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade
+of character in each, tends to the development of the sentiment which is
+the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly
+be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the splendid
+imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of genius, and
+the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as
+though Shakspeare had really transported himself into Italy, and had
+drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been
+said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not
+love-sick!" What a false idea would anything of the mere whining
+amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare--the
+noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet--with even less
+truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in "Twelfth
+Night" of the wan girl dying of love, "who pined in thought, and with a
+green and yellow melancholy," would never surely occur to us, when
+thinking on the enamored and impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love
+keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm
+into passion, passion into heroism! No, the whole sentiment of the play
+is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit of the
+south: it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of life, and of
+the very sap of life.[18] We have indeed the struggle of love against
+evil destinies, and a thorny world; the pain, the grief, the anguish,
+the terror, the despair; the aching adieu; the pang unutterable of
+parted affection; and rapture, truth, and tenderness trampled into an
+early grave: but still an Elysian grace lingers round the whole, and the
+blue sky of Italy bends over all!
+
+In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the
+drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its
+inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the passion which has
+taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity,
+the resistless violence of the torrent: but she is herself as "moving
+delicate," as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over
+it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which
+hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment
+is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughout, the
+individual part of the character in all its variety is developed, and
+marked with the nicest discrimination. For instance,--the simplicity of
+Juliet is very different from the simplicity of Miranda: her innocence
+is not the innocence of a desert island. The energy she displays does
+not once remind us of the moral grandeur of Isabel, or the intellectual
+power of Portia;--it is founded in the strength of passion, not in the
+strength of character:--it is accidental rather than inherent, rising
+with the tide of feeling or temper, and with it subsiding. Her romance
+is not the pastoral romance of Perdita, nor the fanciful romance of
+Viola; it is the romance of a tender heart and a poetical imagination.
+Her inexperience is not ignorance: she has heard that there is such a
+thing as falsehood, though she can scarcely conceive it. Her mother and
+her nurse have perhaps warned her against flattering vows and man's
+inconstancy; or she has even
+
+    ----Turned the tale by Ariosto told,
+    Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old!
+
+Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt--
+
+              Ah, gentle Romeo!
+    If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
+
+That conscious shrinking from her own confession--
+
+    Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny
+    What I have spoke!
+
+The ingenuous simplicity of her avowal--
+
+    Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
+    I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay,
+    So thou wilt woo--but else, not for the world!
+    In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
+    And therefore thou may'st think my 'havior light,
+    But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
+    Than those who have more cunning to be strange.
+
+And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which she throws herself for
+forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for
+the love she bears him--
+
+            Therefore pardon me,
+    And not impute this yielding to light love,
+    Which the dark night hath so discovered.
+
+In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with
+such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity,
+there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have
+infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the
+slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment: for she does not even wait
+to hear his asseverations;--
+
+    But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee
+    To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief.
+
+                        ROMEO.
+
+    So thrive my soul--
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    A thousand times, good night!
+
+But all these flutterings between native impulses and maiden fears
+become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up in the
+depth and enthusiasm of confiding love.
+
+    My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
+    My love as deep; the more I give to you
+    The more I have--for both are _infinite_!
+
+What a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no
+end to its affections! For "what was to hinder the thrilling tide of
+pleasure which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without
+stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without? What was to
+abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure which her heart
+had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger? What
+was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just
+rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet
+felt?"[19]
+
+Lord Byron's Haidée is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the
+development is epic, not dramatic.[20]
+
+I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of
+singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla
+of Schiller's Wallenstein; she is the German Juliet; far unequal,
+indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I know not if
+critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have
+had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he
+portrayed Thekla; but there are some striking points of coincidence,
+while the national distinction in the character of the passion leaves to
+Thekla a strong cast of originality.[21] The _Princess_ Thekla is, like
+Juliet, the heiress of rank and opulence; her first introduction to us,
+in her full dress and diamonds, does not impair the impression of her
+softness and simplicity. We do not think of them, nor do we sympathize
+with the complaint of her lover,--
+
+    The dazzle of the jewels which played round you
+    Hid the beloved from me.
+
+We almost feel the reply of Thekla before she utters it,--
+
+                            Then you saw me
+    Not with your heart, but with your eyes!
+
+The timidity of Thekla in her first scene, her trembling silence in the
+commencement, and the few words she addresses to her mother, remind us
+of the unobtrusive simplicity of Juliet's first appearance; but the
+impression is different; the one is the shrinking violet, the other the
+unexpanded rose-bud. Thekla and Max Piccolomini are, like Romeo and
+Juliet, divided by the hatred of their fathers. The death of Max, and
+the resolute despair of Thekla, are also points of resemblance; and
+Thekla's complete devotion, her frank yet dignified abandonment of all
+disguise, and her apology for her own unreserve, are quite in Juliet's
+style,--
+
+    I ought to be less open, ought to hide
+    My heart more from thee--so decorum dictates:
+    But where in this place wouldst thou seek for truth
+    If in my mouth thou didst not find it?
+
+The same confidence, innocence, and fervor of affection, distinguish
+both heroines; but the love of Juliet is more vehement, the love of
+Thekla is more calm, and reposes more on itself; the love of Juliet
+gives us the idea of infinitude, and that of Thekla of eternity: the
+love of Juliet flows on with an increasing tide, like the river pouring
+to the ocean; and the love of Thekla stands unalterable, and enduring as
+the rock. In the heart of Thekla love shelters as in a home; but in the
+heart of Juliet he reigns a crowned king,--"he rides on its pants
+triumphant!" As women, they would divide the loves and suffrages of
+mankind, but not as dramatic characters: the moment we come to look
+nearer, we acknowledge that it is indeed "rashness and ignorance to
+compare Schiller with Shakspeare."[22] Thekla is a fine conception in
+the German spirit, but Juliet is a lovely and palpable creation. The
+coloring in which Schiller has arrayed his Thekla is pale, sombre,
+vague, compared with the strong individual marking, the rich glow of
+life and reality, which distinguish Juliet. One contrast in particular
+has always struck me; the two beautiful speeches in the first interview
+between Max and Thekla, that in which she describes her father's
+astrological chamber, and that in which he replies with reflections on
+the influence of the stars, are said to "form in themselves a fine
+poem." They do so; but never would Shakspeare have placed such
+extraneous description and reflection in the mouths of _his_ lovers.
+Romeo and Juliet speak of themselves only; they see only themselves in
+the universe, all things else are as an idle matter. Not a word they
+utter, though every word is poetry--not a sentiment or description,
+though dressed in the most luxuriant imagery, but has a direct relation
+to themselves, or to the situation in which they are placed, and the
+feelings that engross them: and besides, it may be remarked of Thekla,
+and generally of all tragedy heroines in love, that, however beautifully
+and distinctly characterized, we see the passion only under one or two
+aspects at most, or in conflict with some one circumstance or contending
+duty or feeling. In Juliet alone we find it exhibited under every
+variety of aspect, and every gradation of feeling it could possibly
+assume in a delicate female heart: as we see the rose, when passed
+through the colors of the prism, catch and reflect every tint of the
+divided ray, and still it is the same sweet rose.
+
+I have already remarked the quiet manner in which Juliet steals upon us
+in her first scene, as the serene, graceful girl, her feelings as yet
+unawakened, and her energies all unknown to herself, and unsuspected by
+others. Her silence and her filial deference are charming:--
+
+    I'll look to like, if looking liking move;
+    But no more deep will I endart mine eye,
+    Than your consent shall give it strength to fly
+
+Much in the same unconscious way we are impressed with an idea of her
+excelling loveliness:--
+
+    Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
+
+and which could make the dark vault of death "a feasting presence full
+of light." Without any elaborate description, we behold Juliet, as she
+is reflected in the heart of her lover, like a single bright star
+mirrored in the bosom of a deep, transparent well. The rapture with
+which he dwells on the "white wonder of her hand;" on her lips,
+
+    That even in pure and vestal modesty
+    Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.
+
+And then her eyes, "two of the fairest stars in all the heavens!" In his
+exclamation in the sepulchre,
+
+    Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair!
+
+there is life and death, beauty and horror, rapture and anguish
+combined. The Friar's description of her approach,
+
+                           O, so light a step
+    Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint!
+
+and then her father's similitude,
+
+    Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
+    Upon the sweetest flower of all the field;--
+
+all these mingle into a beautiful picture of youthful, airy, delicate
+grace, feminine sweetness, and patrician elegance.
+
+And our impression of Juliet's loveliness and sensibility is enhanced,
+when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for
+another. His visionary passion for the cold, inaccessible Rosaline,
+forms but the prologue, the threshold, to the true--the real sentiment
+which succeeds to it. This incident, which is found in the original
+story, has been retained by Shakspeare with equal feeling and judgment;
+and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from prejudicing
+us against Romeo, by casting on him, at the outset of the piece, the
+stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in
+the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the portrait of the
+lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend
+Juliet herself? for in the original story we find that her attention is
+first attracted towards Romeo, by seeing him "fancy sick and pale of
+cheer," for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times
+every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first
+entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was
+selected to be his fancy's queen; and the more rigorous the beauty, and
+the more hopeless the love, the more honorable the slavery. To go about
+"metamorphosed by a mistress," as Speed humorously expresses it,[23]--to
+maintain her supremacy in charms at the sword's point; to sigh; to walk
+with folded arms; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show a careless
+desolation, was the fashion of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the
+Bayards, the Herberts of the time--all those who were the mirrors "in
+which the noble youth did dress themselves," were of this fantastic
+school of gallantry--the last remains of the age of chivalry; and it was
+especially prevalent in Italy. Shakspeare has ridiculed it in many
+places with exquisite humor; but he wished to show us that it has its
+serious as well as its comic aspect. Romeo, then, is introduced to us
+with perfect truth of costume, as the thrall of a dreaming, fanciful
+passion for the scornful Rosaline, who had forsworn to love; and on her
+charms and coldness, and on the power of love generally, he descants to
+his companions in pretty phrases, quite in the style and taste of the
+day.[24]
+
+    Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
+    O any thing, of nothing first create!
+    O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
+    Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
+
+    Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
+    Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lover's eyes;
+    Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lover's tears.
+
+But when once he has beheld Juliet, and quaffed intoxicating draughts of
+hope and love from her soft glance, how all these airy fancies fade
+before the soul-absorbing reality! The lambent fire that played round
+his heart, burns to that heart's very core. We no longer find him
+adorning his lamentations in picked phrases, or making a confidant of
+his gay companions: he is no longer "for the numbers that Petrarch
+flowed in;" but all is consecrated, earnest, rapturous, in the feeling
+and the expression. Compare, for instance, the sparkling antithetical
+passages just quoted, with one or two of his passionate speeches to or
+of Juliet:--
+
+                          Heaven is here,
+    Where Juliet lives! &c.
+
+    Ah Juliet! if the measure of thy joy
+    Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more
+    To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
+    This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue
+    Unfold the imagin'd happiness, that both
+    Receive in either by this dear encounter.
+
+    Come what sorrow may,
+    It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
+    That one short minute gives me in her sight.
+
+How different! and how finely the distinction is drawn! His first
+passion is indulged as a waking dream, a reverie of the fancy; it is
+depressing, indolent, fantastic; his second elevates him to the third
+heaven, or hurries him to despair. It rushes to its object through all
+impediments, defies all dangers, and seeks at last a triumphant grave,
+in the arms of her he so loved. Thus Romeo's previous attachment to
+Rosaline is so contrived as to exhibit to us another variety in that
+passion, which is the subject of the poem, by showing us the distinction
+between the fancied and the real sentiment. It adds a deeper effect to
+the beauty of Juliet; it interests us in the commencement for the tender
+and romantic Romeo; and gives an individual reality to his character, by
+stamping him like an historical, as well as a dramatic portrait, with
+the very spirit of the age in which he lived.[25]
+
+It may be remarked of Juliet as of Portia, that we not only trace the
+component qualities in each as they expand before us in the course of
+the action, but we seem to have known them previously, and mingle a
+consciousness of their past, with the interest of their present and
+their future. Thus, in the dialogue between Juliet and her parents, and
+in the scenes with the Nurse, we seem to have before us the whole of her
+previous education and habits: we see her, on the one hand, kept in
+severe subjection by her austere parents; and on the other, fondled and
+spoiled by a foolish old nurse--a situation perfectly accordant with the
+manners of the time. Then Lady Capulet comes sweeping by with her train
+of velvet, her black hood, her fan, and her rosary--the very
+_beau-idéal_ of a proud Italian matron of the fifteenth century, whose
+offer to poison Romeo in revenge for the death of Tybalt, stamps her
+with one very characteristic trait of the age and country. Yet she loves
+her daughter; and there is a touch of remorseful tenderness in her
+lamentation over her, which adds to our impression of the timid softness
+of Juliet, and the harsh subjection in which she has been kept:--
+
+    But one, poor one!--one poor and loving child,
+    But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
+    And cruel death hath catched it from my sight!
+
+Capulet, as the jovial, testy old man, the self willed, violent,
+tyrannical father,--to whom his daughter is but a property, the appanage
+of his house, and the object of his pride,--is equal as a portrait: but
+both must yield to the Nurse, who is drawn with the most wonderful power
+and discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the
+magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the
+marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coarseness, we
+start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity,
+mixed with the dotage and petulance of age--her subserviency, her
+secrecy, and her total want of elevated principle, or even common
+honesty--are brought before us like a living and palpable truth.
+
+Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty
+parents, and her plebeian nurse, not only throw into beautiful relief
+her own native softness and elegance, but are at once the cause and the
+excuse of her subsequent conduct. She trembles before her stern mother
+and her violent father: but, like a petted child, alternately cajoles
+and commands her nurse. It is her old foster-mother who is the
+confidante of her love. It is the woman who cherished her infancy, who
+aids and abets her in her clandestine marriage. Do we not perceive how
+immediately our impression of Juliet's character would have been
+lowered, if Shakspeare had placed her in connection with any
+common-place dramatic waiting-woman?--even with Portia's adroit Nerissa,
+or Desdemona's Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the
+sweetness and dignity of Juliet's character are preserved inviolate to
+the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of
+passion.
+
+The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is
+exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We
+behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and
+weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action
+of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged
+girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves"
+had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those
+bursts of vehement feeling, which prepare us for the climax of passion
+at the catastrophe; in her invectives against Romeo, when she hears of
+the death of Tybalt; in her indignation when the nurse echoes those
+reproaches, and the rising of her temper against unwonted
+contradiction:--
+
+                        NURSE.
+
+    Shame come to Romeo!
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+              Blistered be thy tongue,
+    For such a wish! he was not born to shame.
+
+Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent
+exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover:--
+
+    Upon _his_ brow Shame is ashamed to sit,
+    For 'tis a throne where Honor may be crown'd
+    Sole monarch of the universal earth!
+
+And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to
+the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and
+self-reproach--
+
+    Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
+    When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it?
+
+With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at
+first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse
+is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose
+energies are yet untried.
+
+    Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
+    Upon so soft a subject as myself.
+
+While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompass her, she
+clings to it. She appeals to her father--to her mother--
+
+    Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
+    Hear me with patience but to speak one word!
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
+    Delay this marriage for a month,--a week!
+
+And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the
+helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual
+dependence--
+
+    O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented?
+    Some comfort, nurse!
+
+The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these
+events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry
+Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness
+of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does
+not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous
+amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which
+take possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own
+superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    Speakest thou from thy heart?
+
+                        NURSE.
+
+    Aye, and from my soul too;--or else
+    Beshrew them both!
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+                       Amen!
+
+This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood--
+
+              Go, counsellor!
+    Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain!
+
+and the calm, concentrated force of her resolve,
+
+    If all else fail,--myself have power to die;
+
+have a sublime pathos. It appears to me also an admirable touch of
+nature, considering the master-passion which, at this moment, rules in
+Juliet's soul, that she is as much shocked by the nurse's dispraise of
+her lover, as by her wicked, time-serving advice.
+
+This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet
+assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl, puts on the wife
+and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from
+oppression. It is idle to criticize her dissembling submission to her
+father and mother; a higher duty has taken place of that which she owed
+to them; a more sacred tie has severed all others. Her parents are
+pictured as they are, that no feeling for them may interfere in the
+slightest degree with our sympathy for the lovers. In the mind of Juliet
+there is no struggle between her filial and her conjugal duties, and
+there ought to be none. The Friar, her spiritual director, dismisses her
+with these instructions:--
+
+    Go home,--be merry,--give consent
+    To marry Paris;
+
+and she obeys him. Death and suffering in every horrid form she is ready
+to brave, without fear or doubt, "to live an unstained wife:" and the
+artifice to which she has recourse, which she is even instructed to use,
+in no respect impairs the beauty of the character; we regard it with
+pain and pity; but excuse it, as the natural and inevitable consequence
+of the situation in which she is placed. Nor should we forget, that the
+dissimulation, as well as the courage of Juliet, though they spring from
+passion, are justified by principle:--
+
+    My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;
+    How shall my faith return again to earth,
+    Unless that husband send it me from heaven?
+
+In her successive appeals to her father, her mother, her nurse, and the
+Friar, she seeks those remedies which would first suggest themselves to
+a gentle and virtuous nature, and grasps her dagger only as the last
+resource against dishonor and violated faith;--
+
+    God join'd my heart with Romeo's,--thou our hands.
+    And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,
+    Shall be the label to another deed,
+    Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
+    Turn to another,--_this_ shall slay them both!
+
+Thus, in the very tempest and whirlwind of passion and terror,
+preserving, to a certain degree, that moral and feminine dignity which
+harmonizes with our best feelings, and commands our unreproved sympathy.
+
+I reserve my remarks on the catastrophe, which demands separate
+consideration; and return to trace from the opening, another and
+distinguishing trait in Juliet's character.
+
+In the extreme vivacity of her imagination, and its influence upon the
+action, the language, the sentiments of the drama, Juliet resembles
+Portia; but with this striking difference. In Portia, the imaginative
+power, though developed in a high degree, is so equally blended with the
+other intellectual and moral faculties, that it does not give us the
+idea of excess. It is subject to her nobler reason; it adorns and
+heightens all her feelings; it does not overwhelm or mislead them. In
+Juliet, it is rather a part of her southern temperament, controlling and
+modifying the rest of her character; springing from her sensibility,
+hurried along by her passions, animating her joys, darkening her
+sorrows, exaggerating her terrors, and, in the end, overpowering her
+reason. With Juliet, imagination is, in the first instance, if not the
+source, the medium of passion; and passion again kindles her
+imagination. It is through the power of imagination that the eloquence
+of Juliet is so vividly poetical; that every feeling, every sentiment
+comes to her, clothed in the richest imagery, and is thus reflected from
+her mind to ours. The poetry is not here the mere adornment, the outward
+garnishing of the character; but its result, or rather blended with its
+essence. It is indivisible from it, and interfused through it like
+moonlight through the summer air. To particularize is almost impossible,
+since the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Juliet is one rich
+stream of imagery: she speaks in pictures and sometimes they are crowded
+one upon another--thus in the balcony scene--
+
+    I have no joy of this contract to-night:
+    It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
+    Too like the lightning which doth cease to be
+    Ere one can say it lightens.
+
+    This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
+    May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
+
+Again,
+
+                         O for a falconer's voice
+    To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
+    Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud,
+    Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,
+    And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine
+    With repetition of my Romeo's name.
+
+Here there are three images in the course of six lines. In the same
+scene, the speech of twenty-two lines, beginning,
+
+    Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
+
+contains but one figurative expression, _the mask of night_; and every
+one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar
+propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause
+of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the
+situation and in the feeling of the moment; where confusion, and
+anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play
+of the imagination would be checked and subdued for the time.
+
+In the soliloquy of the second act, where she is chiding at the nurse's
+delay:--
+
+    O she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts,
+    That ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,
+    Driving back shadows over low'ring hills:
+    Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love,
+    And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings!
+
+How beautiful! how the lines mount and float responsive to the sense!
+She goes on--
+
+    Had she affections, and warm youthful blood,
+    She'd be as swift in motion as a ball;
+    My words should bandy her to my sweet love,
+    And his to me!
+
+The famous soliloquy, "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds," teems with
+luxuriant imagery. The fond adjuration, "Come night! come Romeo! _come
+thou day in night_!" expresses that fulness of enthusiastic admiration
+for her lover, which possesses her whole soul; but expresses it as only
+Juliet could or would have expressed it,--in a bold and beautiful
+metaphor. Let it be remembered, that, in this speech, Juliet is not
+supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidante; and I
+confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in
+those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery, yet more
+gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful "Hymn to the
+Night," breathed out by Juliet in the silence and solitude of her
+chamber. She is thinking aloud; it is the young heart "triumphing to
+itself in words." In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls
+upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost
+infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the
+imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is
+thrown over the whole; and her impatience, to use her own expression, is
+truly that of "a child before a festival, that hath new robes and may
+not wear them." It is at the very moment too that her whole heart and
+fancy are abandoned to blissful anticipation, that the nurse enters with
+the news of Romeo's banishment; and the immediate transition from
+rapture to despair has a most powerful effect.
+
+It is the same shaping spirit of imagination which, in the scene with
+the Friar, heaps together all images of horror that ever hung upon a
+troubled dream.
+
+    O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
+    From off the battlements of yonder tower,
+    Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
+    Where serpents are--chain me with roaring bears,
+    Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house
+    O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones;
+    Or bid me go into a new made grave;
+    Or hide me with a dead man in his shroud;--
+    Things that to hear them told have made me tremble
+
+But she immediately adds,--
+
+    And I will do it without fear or doubt,
+    To live an unstained wife to my sweet love!
+
+In the scene where she drinks the sleeping potion, although her spirit
+does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid
+fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till
+gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise,
+the horror rises to frenzy--her imagination realizes its own hideous
+creations, and she _sees_ her cousin Tybalt's ghost.[26]
+
+In particular passages this luxuriance of fancy may seem to wander into
+excess. For instance,--
+
+    O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face!
+    Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
+    Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
+    Dove-feather'd raven! wolfish ravening lamb, &c.
+
+Yet this highly figurative and antithetical exuberance of language is
+defended by Schlegel on strong and just grounds; and to me also it
+appears natural, however critics may argue against its taste or
+propriety.[27] The warmth and vivacity of Juliet's fancy, which plays
+like a light over every part of her character--which animates every line
+she utters--which kindles every thought into a picture, and clothes her
+emotions in visible images, would naturally, under strong and unusual
+excitement, and in the conflict of opposing sentiments, run into some
+extravagance of diction.[28]
+
+With regard to the termination of the play, which has been a subject of
+much critical argument, it is well known that Shakspeare, following the
+old English versions, has departed from the original story of Da
+Porta;[29] and I am inclined to believe that Da Porta, in making Juliet
+waken from her trance while Romeo yet lives, and in his terrible final
+scene between the lovers, has himself departed from the old tradition,
+and, as a romance, has certainly improved it; but that which is
+effective in a narrative, is not always calculated for the drama, and I
+cannot but agree with Schlegel, that Shakspeare has done well and wisely
+in adhering to the old story. Can we doubt for a moment that he who has
+given us the catastrophe of Othello, and the tempest scene in Lear,
+might also have adopted these additional circumstances of horror in the
+fate of the lovers, and have so treated them as to harrow up our very
+soul--had it been his object to do so? But apparently it was _not_. The
+tale is one,
+
+    Such as, once heard, in gentle heart destroys
+    All pain but pity.
+
+It is in truth a tale of love and sorrow, not of anguish and terror. We
+behold the catastrophe afar off with scarcely a wish to avert it. Romeo
+and Juliet _must_ die; their destiny is fulfilled; they have quaffed off
+the cup of life, with all its infinite of joys and agonies, in one
+intoxicating draught. What have they to do more upon this earth? Young,
+innocent, loving and beloved, they descend together into the tomb: but
+Shakspeare has made that tomb a shrine of martyred and sainted affection
+consecrated for the worship of all hearts,--not a dark charnel vault,
+haunted by spectres of pain, rage, and desperation. Romeo and Juliet are
+pictured lovely in death as in life; the sympathy they inspire does not
+oppress us with that suffocating sense of horror, which in the altered
+tragedy makes the fall of the curtain a relief; but all pain is lost in
+the tenderness and poetic beauty of the picture. Romeo's last speech
+over his bride is not like the raving of a disappointed boy: in its deep
+pathos, its rapturous despair, its glowing imagery, there is the very
+luxury of life and love. Juliet, who had drunk off the sleeping potion
+in a fit of frenzy, wakes calm and collected--
+
+    I do remember well where I should be,
+    And there I am--Where is my Romeo?
+
+The profound slumber in which her senses have been steeped for so many
+hours has tranquillized her nerves, and stilled the fever in her blood;
+she wakes "like a sweet child who has been dreaming of something
+promised to it by its mother," and opens her eyes to ask for it--
+
+    ... Where is my Romeo?
+
+she is answered at once,--
+
+    Thy husband in thy bosom here lies dead.
+
+This is enough: she sees at once the whole horror of her situation--she
+sees it with a quiet and resolved despair--she utters no reproach
+against the Friar--makes no inquiries, no complaints, except that
+affecting remonstrance--
+
+    O churl--drink all, and leave no friendly drop
+    To help me after!
+
+All that is left to her is to die, and she dies. The poem, which opened
+with the enmity of the two families, closes with their reconciliation
+over the breathless remains of their children; and no violent,
+frightful, or discordant feeling is suffered to mingle with that soft
+impression of melancholy left within the heart, and which Schlegel
+compares to one long, endless sigh.
+
+"A youthful passion," says Goëthe, (alluding to one of his own early
+attachments,) "which is conceived and cherished without any certain
+object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it
+rises calmly in a brilliant track, and seems to mix, and even to dwell
+for a moment, with the stars of heaven; but at length it falls--it
+bursts--consuming and destroying all around, even as itself expires."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To conclude: love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of
+passion and imagination and accordingly, to one of these, or to both,
+all the qualities of Juliet's mind and heart (unfolding and varying as
+the action of the drama proceeds) may be finally traced; the former
+concentrating all those natural impulses, fervent affections and high
+energies, which lend the character its internal charm, its moral power
+and individual interest: the latter diverging from all those splendid
+and luxuriant accompaniments which invest it with its external glow, its
+beauty, its vigor, its freshness, and its truth.
+
+With all this immense capacity of affection and imagination, there is a
+deficiency of reflection and of moral energy arising from previous habit
+and education: and the action of the drama, while it serves to develope
+the character, appears but its natural and necessary result. "Le mystère
+de l'existence," said Madame de Staël to her daughter, "c'est le rapport
+de nos erreurs avec nos peines."
+
+
+HELENA.
+
+In the character of Juliet we have seen the passionate and the
+imaginative blended in an equal degree, and in the highest conceivable
+degree as combined with delicate female nature. In Helena we have a
+modification of character altogether distinct; allied, indeed, to Juliet
+as a picture of fervent, enthusiastic, self-forgetting love, but
+differing wholly from her in other respects; for Helen is the union of
+strength of passion with strength of character.
+
+"To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions, and yet be able to
+preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable
+heart amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is
+perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and
+rarest endowment of humanity."[30] Such a character, almost as difficult
+to delineate in fiction as to find in real life, has Shakspeare given us
+in Helena; touched with the most soul-subduing pathos, and developed
+with the most consummate skill.
+
+Helena, as a woman, is more passionate than imaginative; and, as a
+character, she bears the same relation to Juliet that Isabel bears to
+Portia. There is equal unity of purpose and effect, with much less of
+the glow of imagery and the external coloring of poetry in the
+sentiments, language, and details. It is passion developed under its
+most profound and serious aspect; as in Isabella, we have the serious
+and the thoughtful, not the brilliant side of intellect. Both Helena and
+Isabel are distinguished by high mental powers, tinged with a melancholy
+sweetness; but in Isabella the serious and energetic part of the
+character is founded in religious principle; in Helena it is founded in
+deep passion.
+
+There never was, perhaps, a more beautiful picture of a woman's love,
+cherished in secret, not self-consuming in silent languishment--not
+pining in thought--not passive and "desponding over its idol"--but
+patient and hopeful, strong in its own intensity, and sustained by its
+own fond faith. The passion here reposes upon itself for all its
+interest; it derives nothing from art or ornament or circumstance; it
+has nothing of the picturesque charm or glowing romance of Juliet;
+nothing of the poetical splendor of Portia, or the vestal grandeur of
+Isabel. The situation of Helena is the most painful and degrading in
+which a woman can be placed. She is poor and lowly; she loves a man who
+is far her superior in rank, who repays her love with indifference, and
+rejects her hand with scorn. She marries him against his will; he leaves
+her with contumely on the day of their marriage, and makes his return to
+her arms depend on conditions apparently impossible.[31] All the
+circumstances and details with which Helena is surrounded, are shocking
+to our feelings and wounding to our delicacy: and yet the beauty of the
+character is made to triumph over all: and Shakspeare, resting for all
+his effect on its internal resources and its genuine truth and
+sweetness, has not even availed himself of some extraneous advantages
+with which Helen is represented in the original story. She is the
+Giletta di Narbonna of Boccaccio. In the Italian tale, Giletta is the
+daughter of a celebrated physician attached to the court of Roussillon;
+she is represented as a rich heiress, who rejects many suitors of worth
+and rank, in consequence of her secret attachment to the young Bertram
+de Roussillon. She cures the King of France of a grievous distemper, by
+one of her fathers prescriptions; and she asks and receives as her
+reward the young Count of Roussillon as her wedded husband. He forsakes
+her on their wedding day, and she retires, by his order, to his
+territory of Roussillon. There she is received with honor, takes state
+upon her in her husband's absence as the "lady of the land," administers
+justice, and rules her lord's dominions so wisely and so well, that she
+is universally loved and reverenced by his subjects. In the mean time,
+the Count, instead of rejoining her, flies to Tuscany, and the rest of
+the story is closely followed in the drama. The beauty, wisdom, and
+royal demeanor of Giletta are charmingly described, as well as her
+fervent love for Bertram. But Helena, in the play, derives no dignity or
+interest from place or circumstance, and rests for all our sympathy and
+respect solely upon the truth and intensity of her affections. She is
+indeed represented to us as one
+
+    Whose beauty did astonish the survey
+    Of richest eyes: whose words all ears took captive;
+    Whose dear perfection, hearts that scorn'd to serve.
+    Humbly called mistress.
+
+As her dignity is derived from mental power, without any alloy of pride,
+so her humility has a peculiar grace. If she feels and repines over her
+lowly birth, it is merely as an obstacle which separates her from the
+man she loves. She is more sensible to his greatness than her own
+littleness: she is continually looking from herself up to him, not from
+him down to herself. She has been bred up under the same roof with him;
+she has adored him from infancy. Her love is not "th' infection taken in
+at the eyes," nor kindled by youthful romance: it appears to have taken
+root in her being; to have grown with her years; and to have gradually
+absorbed all her thoughts and faculties, until her fancy "carries no
+favor in it but Bertram's," and "there is no living, none, if Bertram be
+away."
+
+It may be said that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not
+justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him
+with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr.
+Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena
+like a coward, and leaves her like a profligate. This is much too
+severe; in the first place, there is no necessity that we _should_
+reconcile ourselves to him. In this consists a part of the wonderful
+beauty of the character of Helena--a part of its womanly truth, which
+Johnson, who accuses Bertram, and those who so plausibly defend him, did
+not understand. If it never happened in real life, that a woman, richly
+endued with heaven's best gifts, loved with all her heart, and soul, and
+strength, a man unequal to or unworthy of her, and to whose faults
+herself alone was blind--I would give up the point: but if it be in
+nature, why should it not be in Shakspeare? We are not to look into
+Bertram's character for the spring and source of Helena's love for him,
+but into her own. She loves Bertram,--because she loves him!--a woman's
+reason,--but here, and sometimes elsewhere, all-sufficient.
+
+And although Helena tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction
+stronger than reason tells her that she does not: her love is like a
+religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted
+her thoughts is forever before her; to despair would be a crime,--it
+would be to cast herself away and die. The faith of her affection,
+combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things
+possible makes them so. It could say to the mountain of pride which
+stands between her and her hopes, "Be thou removed!" and it is removed.
+This is the solution of her behavior in the marriage scene, where
+Bertram, with obvious reluctance and disdain, accepts her hand, which
+the king, his feudal lord and guardian, forces on him. Her maidenly
+feeling is at first shocked, and she shrinks back--
+
+    That you are well restor'd, my lord, I am glad:
+    Let the rest go.
+
+But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity, and dash the cup
+from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the
+treasure for which she has ventured both life and honor, when it is just
+within her grasp? Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by
+the public disclosure of her preference, be thrust back into shame, "to
+blush out the remainder of her life," and die a poor, lost, scorned
+thing? This would be very pretty and interesting and characteristic in
+Viola or Ophelia, but not at all consistent with that high determined
+spirit, that moral energy, with which Helena is portrayed. Pride is the
+only obstacle opposed to her. She is not despised and rejected as a
+woman, but as a poor physician's daughter; and this, to an understanding
+so clear, so strong, so just as Helena's, is not felt as an unpardonable
+insult. The mere pride of rank and birth is a prejudice of which she
+cannot comprehend the force, because her mind towers so immeasurably
+above it; and, compared to the infinite love which swells within her own
+bosom, it sinks into nothing. She cannot conceive that he, to whom she
+has devoted her heart and truth, her soul, her life, her service, must
+not one day love her in return; and once her own beyond the reach of
+fate, that her cares, her caresses, her unwearied patient tenderness,
+will not at last "win her lord to look upon her"--
+
+    ... For time will bring on summer,
+    When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns,
+    And be as sweet as sharp.
+
+It is this fond faith which, hoping all things, enables her to endure
+all things:--which hallows and dignifies the surrender of her woman's
+pride, making it a sacrifice on which virtue and love throw a mingled
+incense.
+
+The scene in which the Countess extorts from Helen the confession of her
+love, must, as an illustration, be given here. It is perhaps, the finest
+in the whole play, and brings out all the striking points of Helen's
+character, to which I have already alluded. We must not fail to remark,
+that though the acknowledgment is wrung from her with an agony which
+seems to convulse her whole being, yet when once she has given it solemn
+utterance, she recovers her presence of mind, and asserts her native
+dignity. In her justification of her feelings and her conduct, there is
+neither sophistry, nor self-deception, nor presumption, but a noble
+simplicity, combined with the most impassioned earnestness; while the
+language naturally rises in its eloquent beauty, as the tide of feeling,
+now first let loose from the bursting heart, comes pouring forth in
+words. The whole scene is wonderfully beautiful.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+    What is your pleasure, madam?
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    You know, Helen, I am a mother to you.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+    Mine honorable mistress.
+
+                        COUNTESS
+
+                       Nay, a mother;
+    Why not a mother? When I said a mother,
+    Methought you saw a serpent: what's in mother,
+    That you start at it? I say, I am your mother:
+    And put you in the catalogue of those
+    That were enwombed mine: 'tis often seen,
+    Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
+    A native slip to us from foreign seeds.
+    You ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan,
+    Yet I express to you a mother's care;--
+    God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood,
+    To say, I am thy mother? What's the matter
+    That this distempered messenger of wet,
+    The many-color'd Iris, rounds thine eye?
+    Why?--that you are my daughter?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                   That I am not.
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    I say, I am your mother.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                    Pardon, madam:
+    The Count Roussillon cannot be my brother:
+    I am from humble, he from honor'd name;
+    No note upon my parents, his all noble:
+    My master, my dear lord he is: and I
+    His servant live, and will his vassal die:
+    He must not be my brother.
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+                Nor I your mother?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+    You are my mother, madam; would you were
+    (So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,)
+    Indeed my mother, or, were you both our mothers,
+    I care no more for, than I do for Heaven,[32]
+    So I were not his sister; can't no other,
+    But I, your daughter, he must be my brother?
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law;
+    God shield, you mean it not! daughter and mother
+    So strive upon your pulse: what, pale again?
+    My fear hath catch'd your fondness: now I see
+    The mystery of your loneliness, and find
+    Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 'tis gross
+    You love my son; invention is asham'd,
+    Against the proclamation of thy passion,
+    To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true;
+    But tell me, then, 'tis so:--for, look, thy cheeks
+    Confess it, one to the other.
+                               Speak, is't so?
+    If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue!
+    If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee,
+    As heaven shall work in me for thy avail,
+    To tell me truly.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+               Good madam, pardon me!
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Do you love my son?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                    Your pardon, noble mistress!
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Love you my son?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                   Do not you love him, madam?
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Go not about; my love hath in't a bond,
+    Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose
+    The state of your affection; for your passions
+    Have to the full appeach'd.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                  Then I confess
+    Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,
+    That before you, and next unto high heaven,
+    I love your son:--
+    My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love
+    Be not offended; for it hurts not him,
+    That he is loved of me; I follow him not
+    By any token of presumptuous suit;
+    Nor would I have him till I do deserve him:
+    Yet never know how that desert should be.
+    I know I love in vain; strive against hope;
+    Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve,
+    I still pour in the waters of my love,
+    And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like,
+    Religious in mine error, I adore
+    The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
+    But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,
+    Let not your hate encounter with my love,
+    For loving where you do: but, if yourself,
+    Whose aged honor cites a virtuous youth,
+    Did ever in so true a flame of liking,
+    Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian
+    Was both herself and love; O then give pity
+    To her, whose state is such, that cannot choose
+    But lend and give, where she is sure to lose;
+    That seeks not to find that her search implies,
+    But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.
+
+This old Countess of Roussillon is a charming sketch. She is like one of
+Titian's old women, who still, amid their wrinkles, remind us of that
+soul of beauty and sensibility, which must have animated them when
+young. She is a fine contrast to Lady Capulet--benign, cheerful, and
+affectionate; she has a benevolent enthusiasm, which neither age, nor
+sorrow, nor pride can wear away. Thus, when she is brought to believe
+that Helen nourishes a secret attachment for her son, she observes--
+
+    Even so it was with me when I was young!
+                                This thorn
+    Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong,
+    It is the show and seal of nature's truth,
+    When love's strong passion is impress'd in youth.
+
+Her fond, maternal love for Helena, whom she has brought up: her pride
+in her good qualities overpowering all her own prejudices of rank and
+birth, are most natural in such a mind; and her indignation against her
+son, however strongly expressed, never forgets the mother.
+
+                        What angel shall
+    Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive
+    Unless _her_ prayers, whom heaven delights to hear
+    And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
+    Of greatest justice.
+                        Which of them both
+    Is dearest to me--I have no skill in sense
+    To make distinction.
+
+This is very skilfully, as well as delicately conceived. In rejecting
+those poetical and accidental advantages which Giletta possesses in the
+original story, Shakspeare has substituted the beautiful character of
+the Countess; and he has contrived, that, as the character of Helena
+should rest for its internal charm on the depth of her own affections,
+so it should depend for its _external_ interest on the affection she
+inspires. The enthusiastic tenderness of the old Countess, the
+admiration and respect of the King, Lafeu, and all who are brought in
+connection with her, make amends for the humiliating neglect of Bertram;
+and cast round Helen that collateral light, which Giletta in the story
+owes to other circumstances, striking indeed, and well imagined, but not
+(I think) so finely harmonizing with the character.
+
+It is also very natural that Helen, with the intuitive discernment of a
+pure and upright mind, and the penetration of a quick-witted woman,
+should be the first to detect the falsehood and cowardice of the boaster
+Parolles, who imposes on every one else.
+
+It has been remarked, that there is less of poetical imagery in this
+play than in many of the others. A certain solidity in Helen's character
+takes place of the ideal power; and with consistent truth of keeping,
+the same predominance of feeling over fancy, of the reflective over the
+imaginative faculty, is maintained through the whole dialogue. Yet the
+finest passages in the serious scenes are those appropriated to her;
+they are familiar and celebrated as quotations, but fully to understand
+their beauty and truth, they should be considered relatively to her
+character and situation; thus, when in speaking of Bertram, she says,
+"that he is one to whom she wishes well," the consciousness of the
+disproportion between her words and her feelings draws from her this
+beautiful and affecting observation, so just in itself, and so true to
+her situation, and to the sentiment which fills her whole heart:--
+
+                            'Tis pity
+    That wishing well had not a body in't
+    Which might be felt: that we the poorer born,
+    Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
+    Might with effects of them follow our friends,
+    And act what we must only think, which never
+    Returns us thanks.
+
+Some of her general reflections have a sententious depth and a
+contemplative melancholy, which remind us of Isabella:--
+
+    Our remedies oft in themselves do lie
+    Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
+    Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
+    Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
+
+    Impossible be strange events to those
+    That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose
+    What hath been cannot be.
+
+    He that of greatest works is finisher,
+    Oft does them by the weakest minister;
+    So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
+    When judges have been babes.
+
+    Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
+    Where most it promises; and oft it hits,
+    Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.
+
+Her sentiments in the same manner are remarkable for the union of
+profound sense with the most passionate feeling; and when her language
+is figurative, which is seldom, the picture presented to us is
+invariably touched either with a serious, a lofty, or a melancholy
+beauty. For instance:--
+
+                It were all one
+    That I should love a bright particular star,
+    And think to wed it--he's so far above me.
+
+And when she is brought to choose a husband from among the young lords
+at the court, her heart having already made its election, the
+strangeness of that very privilege for which she had ventured all,
+nearly overpowers her, and she says beautifully:--
+
+    The blushes on my cheeks thus whisper me,
+    "We blush that thou shouldst choose;--but be refused,
+    Let the white death sit on that cheek for ever
+    We'll ne'er come there again!"
+
+In her soliloquy after she has been forsaken by Bertram, the beauty lies
+in the intense feeling, the force and simplicity of the expressions.
+There is little imagery, and wherever it occurs, it is as bold as it is
+beautiful, and springs out of the energy of the sentiment, and the
+pathos of the situation. She has been reading his cruel letter.
+
+    _Till I have no wife I have nothing in France._
+    'Tis bitter!
+    Nothing in France, until he has no wife!
+    Thou shalt have none, Roussillon, none in France,
+    Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I
+    That chase thee from thy country, and expose
+    Those tender limbs of thine to the event
+    Of the none-sparing war? And is it I
+    That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou
+    Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark
+    Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,
+    That ride upon the violent speed of fire,
+    Fly with false aim! move the still-piercing air,
+    That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord!
+    Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;
+    Whoever charges on his forward breast,
+    I am the caitiff that do hold him to it;
+    And though I kill him not, I am the cause
+    His death was so effected; better 'twere
+    I met the ravin lion when he roared
+    With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere
+    That all the miseries which nature owes,
+    Were mine at once.
+
+                          No, no, although
+    The air of paradise did fan the house,
+    And angels officed all; I will be gone.
+
+Though I cannot go the length of those who have defended Bertram on
+almost every point, still I think the censure which Johnson has passed
+on the character is much too severe. Bertram is certainly not a pattern
+hero of romance, but full of faults such as we meet with every day in
+men of his age and class. He is a bold, ardent, self-willed youth, just
+dismissed into the world from domestic indulgence, with an excess of
+aristocratic and military pride, but not without some sense of true
+honor and generosity. I have lately read a defence of Bertram's
+character, written with much elegance and plausibility. "The young
+Count," says this critic, "comes before us possessed of a good heart,
+and of no mean capacity, but with a haughtiness which threatens to dull
+the kinder passions, and to cloud the intellect. This is the inevitable
+consequence of an illustrious education. The glare of his birthright has
+dazzled his young faculties. Perhaps the first words he could
+distinguish were from the important nurse, giving elaborate directions
+about his lordship's pap. As soon as he could walk, a crowd of
+submissive vassals doffed their caps, and hailed his first appearance on
+his legs. His spelling book had the arms of the family emblazoned on the
+cover. He had been accustomed to hear himself called the great, the
+mighty son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A
+succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion;
+and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in
+his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible.
+To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win
+fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the
+great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality
+with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them
+alone for the world's observance. Thus in his own person he discovers
+there is something better than mere hereditary honors; and his heart is
+prepared to acknowledge that the entire devotion of a Helen's love is of
+more worth than the court-bred smiles of a princess."[33]
+
+It is not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should
+revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or
+that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose
+despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens
+him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit
+himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the
+time to be called _cowardice_. Such forced marriages were not uncommon
+even in our own country, when the right of wardship, now vested in the
+Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel
+despotism by the sovereign.
+
+There is an old ballad, in which the king bestows a maid of low degree
+on a noble of his court, and the undisguised scorn and reluctance of the
+knight and the pertinacity of the lady, are in point.
+
+    He brought her down full forty pound
+      Tyed up within a glove,
+    "Fair maid, I'll give the same to thee,
+      Go seek another love."
+
+    "O I'll have none of your gold," she said,
+      "Nor I'll have none of your fee;
+    But your fair bodye I must have,
+      The king hath granted me."
+
+    Sir William ran and fetched her then,
+      Five hundred pounds in gold,
+    Saying, "Fair maid, take this to thee,
+      My fault will ne'er be told."
+
+    "'Tis not the gold that shall me tempt,"
+      These words then answered she;
+    "But your own bodye I must have,
+      The king hath granted me."
+
+    "Would I had drank the water clear,
+      When I did drink the wine,
+    Rather than my shepherd's brat
+      Should be a ladye of mine!"[34]
+
+Bertram's disgust at the tyranny which has made his freedom the payment
+of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not
+towards him--whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown
+and untried--might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her
+on the very day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry
+boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily
+defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him.
+The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not,
+indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his
+misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not withstanding the
+clever defence that has been made for him, he has our pardon rather than
+our sympathy; and for mine own part, I could find it easier to love
+Bertram as Helena does, than to excuse him; her love for him is his best
+excuse.
+
+
+PERDITA.
+
+In Viola and Perdita the distinguishing traits are the same--sentiment
+and elegance; thus we associate them together, though nothing can be
+more distinct to the fancy than the Doric grace of Perdita, compared to
+the romantic sweetness of Viola. They are created out of the same
+materials, and are equal to each other in the tenderness, delicacy, and
+poetical beauty of the conception. They are both more imaginative than
+passionate; but Perdita is the more imaginative of the two. She is the
+union of the pastoral and romantic with the classical and poetical, as
+if a dryad of the woods had turned shepherdess. The perfections with
+which the poet has so lavishly endowed her, sit upon her with a certain
+careless and picturesque grace, "as though they had fallen upon her
+unawares." Thus Belphoebe, in the Fairy Queen, issues from the
+flowering forest with hair and garments all besprinkled with the leaves
+and blossoms they had entangled in their flight; and so arrayed by
+chance and "heedless hap," takes all hearts with "stately presence and
+with princely port,"--most like to Perdita!
+
+The story of Florizel and Perdita is but an episode in the "Winter's
+Tale;" and the character of Perdita is properly kept subordinate to that
+of her mother, Hermione: yet the picture is perfectly finished in every
+part;--Juliet herself is not more firmly and distinctly drawn. But the
+coloring in Perdita is more silvery light and delicate; the pervading
+sentiment more touched with the ideal; compared with Juliet, she is like
+a Guido hung beside a Georgione, or one of Paesiello's airs heard after
+one of Mozart's.
+
+The qualities which impart to Perdita her distinct individuality, are
+the beautiful combination of the pastoral with the elegant--of
+simplicity with elevation--of spirit with sweetness. The exquisite
+delicacy of the picture is apparent. To understand and appreciate its
+effective truth and nature, we should place Perdita beside some of the
+nymphs of Arcadia, or the Chloris' and Sylvias of the Italian pastorals,
+who, however graceful in themselves, when opposed to Perdita, seem to
+melt away into mere poetical abstractions;--as, in Spenser, the fair but
+fictitious Florimel, which the subtle enchantress had moulded out of
+snow, "vermeil tinctured," and informed with an airy spirit, that knew
+"all wiles of woman's wits," fades and dissolves away, when placed next
+to the real Florimel, in her warm, breathing, human loveliness.
+
+Perdita does not appear till the fourth act, and the whole of the
+character is developed in the course of a single scene, (the third,)
+with a completeness of effect which leaves nothing to be
+required--nothing to be supplied. She is first introduced in the
+dialogue between herself and Florizel, where she compares her own lowly
+state to his princely rank, and expresses her fears of the issue of
+their unequal attachment. With all her timidity and her sense of the
+distance which separates her from her lover, she breathes not a single
+word which could lead us to impugn either her delicacy or her dignity.
+
+                        FLORIZEL.
+
+    These your unusual weeds to each part of you
+    Do give a life--no shepherdess, but Flora
+    Peering in April's front; this your sheep-shearing
+    Is as the meeting of the petty gods,
+    And you the queen on't.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+    Sir, my gracious lord,
+    To chide at your extremes it not becomes me;
+    O pardon that I name them: your high self,
+    The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured
+    With a swain's bearing; and me, poor lowly maid,
+    Most goddess-like prank'd up:--but that our feasts
+    In every mess have folly, and the feeders
+    Digest it with a custom, I should blush
+    To see you so attired; sworn, I think
+    To show myself a glass.
+
+The impression of her perfect beauty and airy elegance of demeanor is
+conveyed in two exquisite passages:--
+
+                 What you do
+    Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
+    I'd have you do it ever. When you sing,
+    I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms,
+    Pray so, and for the ordering your affairs
+    To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
+    A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
+    Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
+    No other function.
+
+                   I take thy hand; this hand
+    As soft as dove's down, and as white as it;
+    Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow,
+    That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er.
+
+The artless manner in which her innate nobility of soul shines forth
+through her pastoral disguise, is thus brought before us at once:--
+
+    This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
+    Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems,
+    But smacks of something greater than herself;
+    Too noble for this place.
+
+Her natural loftiness of spirit breaks out where she is menaced and
+reviled by the King, as one whom his son has degraded himself by merely
+looking on; she bears the royal frown without quailing; but the moment
+he is gone, the immediate recollection of herself, and of her humble
+state, of her hapless love, is full of beauty, tenderness, and nature:--
+
+              Even here undone!
+    I was much afeard: for once or twice,
+    I was about to speak; and tell him plainly
+    The self-same sun, that shines upon his court
+    Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
+    Looks on alike.
+
+                  Will't please, you Sir, be gone?
+    I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
+    Of your own state take care; this dream of mine--
+    Being now awake--I'll queen it no inch further,
+    But milk my ewes, and weep.
+
+             How often have I told you 'twould be thus
+    How often said, my dignity would last
+    But till 'twere known!
+
+                        FLORIZEL.
+
+                      It cannot fail, but by
+    The violation of my faith; and then
+    Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together
+    And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks.
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may
+    Be thereat glean'd! for all the sun sees, or
+    The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide
+    In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath
+    To thee, my fair beloved!
+
+Perdita has another characteristic, which lends to the poetical delicacy
+of the delineation a certain strength and moral elevation, which is
+peculiarly striking. It is that sense of truth and rectitude, that
+upright simplicity of mind, which disdains all crooked and indirect
+means, which would not stoop for an instant to dissemblance, and is
+mingled with a noble confidence in her love and in her lover. In this
+spirit is her answer to Camilla, who says, courtier like,--
+
+                          Besides, you know
+    Prosperity's the very bond of love;
+    Whose fresh complexion, and whose heart together
+    Affliction alters.
+
+To which she replies,--
+
+                    One of these is true;
+    I think, affliction may subdue the cheek,
+    But not take in the mind.
+
+In that elegant scene where she receives the guests at the
+sheep-shearing, and distributes the flowers, there is in the full flow
+of the poetry, a most beautiful and striking touch of individual
+character: but here it is impossible to mutilate the dialogue.
+
+                        Reverend sirs,
+    For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
+    Seeming and savor all the winter long;
+    Grace and remembrance be to you both,
+    And welcome to our shearing!
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+                            Shepherdess,
+    (A fair one are you,) well you fit our ages
+    With flowers of winter.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+                    Sir, the year growing ancient,
+    Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
+    Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season
+    Are our carnations, and streaked gilliflowers,
+    Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
+    Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
+    To get slips of them.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+              Wherefore, gentle maiden,
+    Do you neglect them?
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+              For I have heard it said,
+    There is an art, which in their piedness, shares
+    With great creating nature.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+               Say there be;
+    Yet nature is made better by no mean
+    But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art
+    Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
+    That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
+    A gentle scion to the wildest stock;
+    And make conceive a bark of baser kind
+    By bud of nobler race. This is an art
+    Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
+    The art itself is nature.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+                So it is.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+    Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers,
+    And do not call them bastards.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+                I'll not put
+    The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;
+    No more than were I painted, I would wish
+    This youth should say 'twere well.
+
+It has been well remarked of this passage, that Perdita does not attempt
+to answer the reasoning of Polixenes: she gives up the argument, but,
+woman-like, retains her own opinion, or rather, her sense of right,
+unshaken by his sophistry. She goes on in a strain of poetry, which
+comes over the soul like music and fragrance mingled: we seem to inhale
+the blended odors of a thousand flowers, till the sense faints with
+their sweetness; and she concludes with a touch of passionate sentiment,
+which melts into the very heart:--
+
+                     O Proserpina!
+    For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
+    From Dis's wagon! daffodils,
+    That come before the swallow dares, and take
+    The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
+    But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
+    Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
+    That die unmarried, ere they can behold
+    Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
+    Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
+    The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
+    The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
+    To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend
+    To strew him o'er and o'er.
+
+                        FLORIZEL.
+
+                 What! like a corse?
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+    No, like a bank, for Love to lie and play on;
+    Not like a corse: or if,--not to be buried,
+    But quick, and in mine arms!
+
+This love of truth, this _conscientiousness_, which forms so distinct a
+feature in the character of Perdita, and mingles with its picturesque
+delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, is maintained consistently to
+the last. When the two lovers fly together from Bohemia, and take refuge
+in the court of Leontes, the real father of Perdita, Florizel presents
+himself before the king with a feigned tale, in which he has been
+artfully instructed by the old counsellor Camillo. During this scene,
+Perdita does not utter a word. In the strait in which they are placed,
+she cannot deny the story which Florizel relates--she will not confirm
+it. Her silence, in spite of all the compliments and greetings of
+Leontes, has a peculiar and characteristic grace and, at the conclusion
+of the scene, when they are betrayed, the truth bursts from her as if
+instinctively, and she exclaims, with emotion,--
+
+    The heavens set spies upon us--will not have
+    Our contract celebrated.
+
+After this scene, Perdita says very little. The description of her
+grief, while listening to the relation of her mother's death,--
+
+     "One of the prettiest touches of all, was, when at the
+     relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came
+     by it, how attentiveness wounded her daughter: till from one
+     sign of dolor to another, she did, with an _alas_! I would
+     fain say, bleed  tears:"--
+
+her deportment too as she stands gazing on the statue of Hermione, fixed
+in wonder, admiration and sorrow, as if she too were marble--
+
+                  O royal piece!
+    There's magic in thy majesty, which has
+    From thy admiring daughter ta'en the spirits,
+    Standing like stone beside thee!
+
+are touches of character conveyed indirectly, and which serve to give a
+more finished effect to this beautiful picture.
+
+
+VIOLA.
+
+As the innate dignity of Perdita pierces through her rustic disguise, so
+the exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs over her masculine attire.
+Viola is, perhaps, in a degree less elevated and ideal than Perdita, but
+with a touch of sentiment more profound and heart-stirring; she is
+"deep-learned in the lore of love,"--at least theoretically,--and speaks
+as masterly on the subject as Perdita does of flowers.
+
+                        DUKE.
+
+            How dost thou like this tune?
+
+                        VIOLA.
+
+    It gives a very echo to the seat
+    Where love is thron'd.
+
+And again,
+
+    If I did love you in my master's flame,
+    With such a suffering, such a deadly life--
+    in your denial I would find no sense,
+    I would not understand it.
+
+                        OLIVIA.
+
+              Why, what would you do?
+
+                        VIOLA.
+
+    Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
+    And call upon my soul within the house;
+    Write loyal cantons[35] of contemned love,
+    And sing them loud even in the dead of night.
+    Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
+    And make babbling gossip of the air
+    Cry out, Olivia! O you should not rest
+    Between the elements of air and earth,
+    But you should pity me.
+
+                        OLIVIA.
+
+                     You might do much.
+
+The situation and the character of Viola have been censured for their
+want of consistency and probability; it is therefore worth while to
+examine how far this criticism is true. As for her situation in the
+drama, (of which she is properly the heroine,) it is shortly this. She
+is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria: she is alone and without
+protection in a strange country. She wishes to enter into the service of
+the Countess Olivia; but she is assured that this is impossible; "for
+the lady having recently lost an only and beloved brother, has abjured
+the sight of men, has shut herself up in her palace, and will admit no
+kind of suit." In this perplexity Viola remembers to have heard her
+father speak with praise and admiration of Orsino, the Duke of the
+country; and having ascertained that he is not married, and that
+therefore his court is not a proper asylum for her in her feminine
+character, she attires herself in the disguise of a page, as the best
+protection against uncivil comments, till she can gain some tidings of
+her brother.
+
+If we carry our thoughts back to a romantic and chivalrous age, there is
+surely sufficient probability here for all the purposes of poetry. To
+pursue the thread of Viola's destiny;--she is engaged in the service of
+the Duke, whom she finds "fancy-sick" for the love of Olivia. We are
+left to infer, (for so it is hinted in the first scene,) that this
+Duke--who with his accomplishments, and his personal attractions, his
+taste for music, his chivalrous tenderness, and his unrequited love, is
+really a very fascinating and poetical personage, though a little
+passionate and fantastic--had already made some impression on Viola's
+imagination; and when she comes to play the confidante, and to be loaded
+with favors and kindness in her assumed character, that she should be
+touched by a passion made up of pity, admiration, gratitude, and
+tenderness, does not, I think, in any way detract from the genuine
+sweetness and delicacy of her character, for "_she never told her
+love_."
+
+Now all this, as the critic wisely observes, may not present a very just
+picture of life; and it may also fail to impart any moral lesson for the
+especial profit of well-bred young ladies; but is it not in truth and in
+nature? Did it ever fail to charm or to interest, to seize on the
+coldest fancy, to touch the most insensible heart?
+
+Viola then is the chosen favorite of the enamoured Duke, and becomes his
+messenger to Olivia, and the interpreter of his sufferings to that
+inaccessible beauty. In her character of a youthful page, she attracts
+the favor of Olivia, and excites the jealousy of her lord. The situation
+is critical and delicate; but how exquisitely is the character of Viola
+fitted to her part, carrying her through the ordeal with all the inward
+and spiritual grace of modesty. What beautiful propriety in the
+distinction drawn between Rosalind and Viola! The wild sweetness, the
+frolic humor which sports free and unblamed amid the shades of Ardennes,
+would ill become Viola, whose playfulness is assumed as part of her
+disguise as a court-page, and is guarded by the strictest delicacy. She
+has not, like Rosalind, a saucy enjoyment in her own incognito; her
+disguise does not sit so easily upon her; her heart does not beat freely
+under it. As in the old ballad, where "Sweet William" is detected
+weeping in secret over her "man's array,"[36] so in Viola, a sweet
+consciousness of her feminine nature is for ever breaking through her
+masquerade:--
+
+    And on her cheek is ready with a blush
+    Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
+    The youthful Phoebus.
+
+She plays her part well, but never forgets nor allows us to forget, that
+she is playing a part.
+
+                        OLIVIA.
+
+    Are you a comedian?
+
+                        VIOLA.
+
+    No, my profound heart! and yet by the very fangs of
+    malice I swear, I am not that I play!
+
+And thus she comments on it:--
+
+    Disguise, I see thou art wickedness,
+    Wherein the pregnant enemy does much;
+    How easy is it for the proper false
+    In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
+    Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we.
+
+The feminine cowardice of Viola, which will not allow her even to affect
+a courage becoming her attire,--her horror at the idea of drawing a
+sword, is very natural and characteristic; and produces a most humorous
+effect, even at the very moment it charms and interests us.
+
+Contrasted with the deep, silent, patient love of Viola for the Duke, we
+have the lady-like wilfulness of Olivia; and her sudden passion, or
+rather fancy, for the disguised page, takes so beautiful a coloring of
+poetry and sentiment, that we do not think her forward. Olivia is like a
+princess of romance, and has all the privileges of one; she is, like
+Portia, high born and high bred, mistress over her servants--but not
+like Portia, "queen o'er herself." She has never in her life been
+opposed; the first contradiction, therefore, rouses all the woman in
+her, and turns a caprice into a headlong passion; yet she apologizes for
+herself.
+
+    I have said too much unto a heart of stone,
+    And laid mine honor too unchary out;
+    There's something in me that reproves my fault;
+    But such a headstrong potent fault it is,
+    That it but mocks reproof!
+
+And in the midst of her self-abandonment, never allows us to contemn,
+even while we pity her:--
+
+    What shall you ask of me that I'll deny.
+    That honor, saved, may upon asking give?
+
+The distance of rank which separates the Countess from the youthful
+page--the real sex of Viola--the dignified elegance of Olivia's
+deportment, except where passion gets the better of her pride--her
+consistent coldness towards the Duke--the description of that "smooth,
+discreet, and stable bearing" with which she rules her household--her
+generous care for her steward Malvolio, in the midst of her own
+distress,--all these circumstances raise Olivia in our fancy, and render
+her caprice for the page a source of amusement and interest, not a
+subject of reproach. _Twelfth Night_ is a genuine comedy;--a perpetual
+spring of the gayest and the sweetest fancies. In artificial society men
+and women are divided into castes and classes, and it is rarely that
+extremes in character or manners can approximate. To blend into one
+harmonious picture the utmost grace and refinement of sentiment, and
+the broadest effects of humor; the most poignant wit, and the most
+indulgent benignity;--in short, to bring before us in the same scene,
+Viola and Olivia, with Malvolio and Sir Toby, belonged only to Nature
+and to Shakspeare.
+
+
+OPHELIA.
+
+A woman's affections, however strong, are sentiments, when they run
+smooth; and become passions only when opposed.
+
+In Juliet and Helena, love is depicted as a passion, properly so called;
+that is, a natural impulse, throbbing in the heart's blood, and mingling
+with the very sources of life;--a sentiment more or less modified by the
+imagination; a strong abiding principle and motive, excited by
+resistance, acting upon the will, animating all the other faculties, and
+again influenced by them. This is the most complex aspect of love, and
+in these two characters, it is depicted in colors at once the most
+various, the most intense, and the most brilliant.
+
+In Viola and Perdita, love, being less complex, appears more refined;
+more a sentiment than a passion--a compound of impulse and fancy, while
+the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The
+same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of
+Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer
+Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, love
+takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the whole piece; it
+is scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a
+reverie, which a fairy spell dissolves or fixes at pleasure.
+
+But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as
+combined with female nature; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has
+portrayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a
+manner latent, if existing; in whom love is an unconscious impulse, and
+imagination lends the external charm and hue, not the internal power; in
+whom the feminine character appears resolved into its very elementary
+principles--as modesty, grace,[37] tenderness. _Without_ these a woman
+is no woman, but a thing which, luckily, wants a name yet; _with_ these,
+though every other faculty were passive or deficient, she might still be
+herself. These are the inherent qualities with which God sent us into
+the world: they may be perverted by a bad education--they may be
+obscured by harsh and evil destinies--they may be overpowered by the
+development of some particular mental power, the predominance of some
+passion--but they are never wholly crushed out of the woman's soul,
+while it retains those faculties which render it responsible to its
+Creator. Shakspeare then has shown us that these elemental feminine
+qualities, modesty, grace, tenderness, when expanded under genial
+influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature:
+such is Miranda. When thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and
+amid the trammels and corruptions of society, without energy to resist,
+or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation.
+
+Ophelia--poor Ophelia! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast
+among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the
+thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before
+her! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the
+wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear--like the
+exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms--like the
+snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth--like
+the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses--such
+is the character of Ophelia: so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a
+touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and
+worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply.
+The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret
+which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as
+upon her own. Her sorrows ask not words but tears; and her madness has
+precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of
+real insanity, if brought before us: we feel inclined to turn away, and
+veil our eyes in reverential pity and too painful sympathy.
+
+Beyond every character that Shakspeare has drawn, (Hamlet alone
+excepted,) that of Ophelia makes us forget the poet in his own creation.
+Whenever we bring her to mind, it is with the same exclusive sense of
+her real existence, without reference to the wondrous power which called
+her into life. The effect (and what an effect!) is produced by means so
+simple, by strokes so few, and so unobtrusive, that we take no thought
+of them. It is so purely natural and unsophisticated, yet so profound in
+its pathos, that, as Hazlitt observes, it takes us back to the old
+ballads; we forget that, in its perfect artlessness, it is the supreme
+and consummate triumph of art.
+
+The situation of Ophelia in the story,[38] is that of a young girl who,
+at an early age, is brought from a life of privacy into the circle of a
+court--a court such as we read of in those early times, at once rude,
+magnificent, and corrupted. She is placed immediately about the person
+of the queen, and is apparently her favorite attendant. The affection
+of the wicked queen for this gentle and innocent creature, is one of
+those beautiful redeeming touches, one of those penetrating glances into
+the secret springs of natural and feminine feeling which we find only in
+Shakspeare. Gertrude, who is not so wholly abandoned but that there
+remains within her heart some sense of the virtue she has forfeited,
+seems to look with a kind yet melancholy complacency on the lovely being
+she has destined for the bride of her son; and the scene in which she is
+introduced as scattering flowers on the grave of Ophelia, is one of
+those effects of contrast in poetry, in character and in feeling, at
+once natural and unexpected; which fill the eye, and make the heart
+swell and tremble within itself--like the nightingales singing in the
+grove of the Furies in Sophocles.[39]
+
+Again, in the father of Ophelia, the Lord Chamberlain Polonius--the
+shrewd, wary, subtle, pompous, garrulous old courtier--have we not the
+very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it
+could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as
+possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when
+she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect
+purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed
+on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it
+necessary to warn her simplicity, give her lessons of worldly wisdom,
+and instruct her "to be scanter of her maiden presence," for that
+Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the
+better to beguile," we feel at once that it comes too late; for from the
+moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and
+vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny.
+Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young,
+and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct
+which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it was--and I watched
+it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird hither and thither, with its
+silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a
+few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewildered, into the
+turbid wave beneath, and was swallowed up forever. It reminded me then
+of the fate of Ophelia; and now when I think of her, I see again before
+me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm.
+It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence,
+and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with
+such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her
+person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own
+feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she
+has strength to bear them; and love and grief together rend and shatter
+the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a
+crystal vase. She says very little, and what she does say seems rather
+intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart; yet in those
+few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and
+with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul
+with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems
+innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the
+cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and
+Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as
+distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of the north,
+whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more
+conscious of being loved than of loving; and yet, alas! loving in the
+silent depths of her young heart far more than she is loved.
+
+When her brother warns her against Hamlet's importunities--
+
+    For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,
+    Hold it a fashion, and a toy of blood,
+    A violet in the youth of primy nature,
+    Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,
+    The perfume and the suppliance of a minute--
+    No more!
+
+she replies with a kind of half consciousness--
+
+             No more but so?
+
+                        LAERTES.
+
+         Think it no more.
+
+He concludes his admonition with that most beautiful passage, in which
+the soundest sense, the most excellent advice, is conveyed in a strain
+of the most exquisite poetry.
+
+    The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
+    If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
+    Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes.
+    The canker galls the infants of the spring
+    Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd:
+    And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
+    Contagious blastments are most imminent.
+
+She answers with the same modesty, yet with a kind of involuntary
+avowal, that his fears are not altogether without cause:--
+
+    I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
+    As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
+    Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
+    Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
+    Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine,
+    Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
+    And recks not his own read.[40]
+
+When her father, immediately afterwards, catechizes her on the same
+subject, he extorts from her, in short sentences, uttered with bashful
+reluctance, the confession of Hamlet's love for her, but not a word of
+her love for him. The whole scene is managed with inexpressible
+delicacy: it is one of those instances, common in Shakspeare, in which
+we are allowed to perceive what is passing in the mind of a person,
+without any consciousness on their part. Only Ophelia herself is unaware
+that while she is admitting the extent of Hamlet's courtship, she is
+also betraying how deep is the impression it has made, how entire the
+love with which it is returned.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    What is between you? give me up the truth!
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders
+    Of his affection to me.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Affection! poh! you speak like a green girl,
+    Unsifted in such perilous circumstances.
+    Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;
+    That you have taken these tenders for true pay
+    Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly
+    Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
+    Wronging it thus) you'll tender me a fool.
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    My lord, he hath importun'd me with love
+    In honorable fashion.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
+    With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.
+            This is for all:
+    would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
+    Have you so slander any moment's leisure
+    As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet,
+    Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    I shall obey, my lord.
+
+Besides its intrinsic loveliness, the character of Ophelia has a
+relative beauty and delicacy when considered in relation to that of
+Hamlet, which is the delineation of a man of genius in contest with the
+powers of this world. The weakness of volition, the instability of
+purpose, the contemplative sensibility, the subtlety of thought, always
+shrinking from action, and always occupied in "thinking too precisely on
+the event," united to immense intellectual power, render him unspeakably
+interesting: and yet I doubt whether any woman, who would have been
+capable of understanding and appreciating such a man, would have
+passionately loved him. Let us for a moment imagine any one of
+Shakspeare's most beautiful and striking female characters in immediate
+connection with Hamlet. The gentle Desdemona would never have despatched
+her household cares in haste, to listen to his philosophical
+speculations, his dark conflicts with his own spirit. Such a woman as
+Portia would have studied him; Juliet would have pitied him; Rosalind
+would have turned him over with a smile to the melancholy Jacques;
+Beatrice would have laughed at him outright; Isabel would have reasoned
+with him; Miranda could but have wondered at him: but Ophelia loves him.
+Ophelia, the young, fair, inexperienced girl, facile to every
+impression, fond in her simplicity, and credulous in her innocence,
+loves Hamlet; not from what he is in himself, but for that which appears
+to her--the gentle, accomplished prince, upon whom she has been
+accustomed to see all eyes fixed in hope and admiration, "the expectancy
+and rose of the fair state," the star of the court in which she moves,
+the first who has ever whispered soft vows in her ear: and what can be
+more natural?
+
+But it is not singular, that while no one entertains a doubt of
+Ophelia's love for Hamlet--though never once expressed by herself, or
+asserted by others, in the whole course of the drama--yet it is a
+subject of dispute whether Hamlet loves Ophelia, though she herself
+allows that he had importuned her with love, and "had given countenance
+to his suit with almost all the holy vows of heaven;" although in the
+letter which Polonius intercepted, Hamlet declares that he loves her
+"best, O most best!"--though he asserts himself, with the wildest
+vehemence,--
+
+    I lov'd Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
+    Could not, with all their quantity of love,
+    Make up my sum:
+
+--still I have heard the question canvassed; I have even heard it denied
+that Hamlet did love Ophelia. The author of the finest remarks I have
+yet seen on the play and character of Hamlet, leans to this opinion. As
+the observations I allude to are contained in a periodical publication,
+and may not be at hand for immediate reference, I shall indulge myself
+(and the reader no less) by quoting the opening paragraphs of this noble
+piece of criticism, upon the principle, and for the reason I have
+already stated in the introduction.
+
+"We take up a play, and ideas come rolling in upon us, like waves
+impelled by a strong wind. There is in the ebb and flow of Shakspeare's
+soul all the grandeur of a mighty operation of nature; and when we think
+or speak of him, it should be with humility where we do not understand,
+and a conviction that it is rather to the narrowness of our own mind
+than to any failing in the art of the great magician, that we ought to
+attribute any sense of weakness, which may assail us during the
+contemplation of his created worlds.
+
+"Shakspeare himself, had he even been as great a critic as a poet, could
+not have written a regular dissertation upon Hamlet. So ideal, and yet
+so real an existence, could have been shadowed out only in the colors of
+poetry. When a character deals solely or chiefly with this world and its
+events when it acts and is acted upon by objects that have a palpable
+existence, we see it distinctly, as if it were cast in a material mould,
+as if it partook of the fixed and settled lineaments of the things on
+which it lavishes its sensibilities and its passions. We see in such
+cases the vision of an individual soul, as we see the vision of an
+individual countenance. We can describe both, and can let a stranger
+into our knowledge. But how tell in words, so pure, so fine, so ideal an
+abstraction as Hamlet? We can, indeed, figure to ourselves generally his
+princely form, that outshone all others in manly beauty, and adorn it
+with the consummation of all liberal accomplishment. We can behold in
+every look, every gesture, every motion, the future king,--
+
+    The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,
+    Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state;
+    The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
+    Th' observ'd of all observers.
+
+"But when we would penetrate into his spirit, meditate on those things
+on which he meditates, accompany him even unto the brink of eternity,
+fluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, soar with him into the
+purest and serenest regions of human thought, feel with him the curse of
+beholding iniquity, and the troubled delight of thinking on innocence,
+and gentleness, and beauty; come with him from all the glorious dreams
+cherished by a noble spirit in the halls of wisdom and philosophy, of a
+sudden into the gloomy courts of sin, and incest, and murder; shudder
+with him over the broken and shattered fragments of all the fairest
+creations of his fancy,--be borne with him at once, from calm, and
+lofty, and delighted speculations, into the very heart of fear, and
+horror, and tribulations,--have the agonies and the guilt of our mortal
+world brought into immediate contact with the world beyond the grave,
+and the influence of an awful shadow hanging forever on our
+thoughts,--be present at a fearful combat between all the stirred-up
+passions of humanity in the soul of man, a combat in which one and all
+of these passions are alternately victorious and overcome; I say, that
+when we are thus placed and acted upon, how is it possible to draw a
+character of this sublime drama, or of the mysterious being who is its
+moving spirit? In him, his character and situation, there is a
+concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity. There is
+scarcely a trait of frailty or of grandeur, which may have endeared to
+us our most beloved friends in real life, that is not to be found in
+Hamlet. Undoubtedly Shakspeare loved him beyond all his other creations.
+Soon as he appears on the stage we are satisfied: when absent we long
+for his return. This is the only play which exists almost altogether in
+the character of one single person. Who ever knew a Hamlet in real life?
+yet who, ideal as the character is, feels not its reality? This is the
+wonder. We love him not, we think of him, not because he is witty,
+because he was melancholy, because he was filial; but we love him
+because he existed, and was himself. This is the sum total of the
+impression. I believe that, of every other character either in tragic or
+epic poetry, the story makes part of the conception; but of Hamlet, the
+deep and permanent interest is the conception of himself. This seems to
+belong, not to the character being more perfectly drawn, but to there
+being a more intense conception of individual human life than perhaps
+any other human composition. Here is a being with springs of thought,
+and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search. These springs rise
+from an unknown depth, and in that depth there seems to be a oneness of
+being which we cannot distinctly behold, but which we believe to be
+there; and thus irreconcilable circumstances, floating on the surface of
+his actions, have not the effect of making us doubt the truth of the
+general picture."[41]
+
+This is all most admirable, most eloquent, most true! but the critic
+subsequently declares, that "there is nothing in Ophelia which could
+make her the object of an engrossing passion to so majestic a spirit as
+Hamlet."
+
+Now, though it be with reluctance, and even considerable mistrust of
+myself, that I differ from a critic who can thus feel and write, I do
+not think so:--I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for
+Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely the kind of love which such
+a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia.
+
+When the heathen would represent their Jove as clothed in all his
+Olympian terrors, they mounted him on the back of an eagle, and armed
+him with the lightnings; but when in Holy Writ the Supreme Being is
+described as coming in his glory, He is upborne on the wings of
+cherubim, and his emblem is the dove. Even so our blessed religion,
+which has revealed deeper mysteries in the human soul than ever were
+dreamt of by philosophy till she went hand-in-hand with faith, has
+taught us to pay that worship to the symbols of purity and innocence,
+which in darker times was paid to the manifestations of power: and
+therefore do I think that the mighty intellect, the capacious, soaring,
+penetrating genius of Hamlet may be represented, without detracting from
+its grandeur, as reposing upon the tender virgin innocence of Ophelia,
+with all that deep delight with which a superior nature contemplates the
+goodness which is at once perfect in itself, and of itself unconscious.
+That Hamlet regards Ophelia with this kind of tenderness,--that he loves
+her with a love as intense as can belong to a nature in which there is,
+(I think,) much more of contemplation and sensibility than action or
+passion--is the feeling and conviction with which I have always read the
+play of Hamlet.
+
+As to whether the mind of Hamlet be, or be not, touched with
+madness--this is another point at issue among critics, philosophers, ay,
+and physicians. To me it seems that he is not so far disordered as to
+cease to be a responsible human being--that were too pitiable: but
+rather that his mind is shaken from its equilibrium, and bewildered by
+the horrors of his situation--horrors which his fine and subtle
+intellect, his strong imagination, and his tendency to melancholy, at
+once exaggerate, and take from him the power either to endure, or "by
+opposing, end them." We do not see him as a lover, nor as Ophelia first
+beheld him; for the days when he importuned her with love were before
+the opening of the drama--before his father's spirit revisited the
+earth; but we behold him at once in a sea of troubles, of perplexities,
+of agonies, of terrors. Without remorse, he endures all its horrors;
+without guilt, he endures all its shame. A loathing of the crime he is
+called on to revenge, which revenge is again abhorrent to his nature,
+has set him at strife with himself; the supernatural visitation has
+perturbed his soul to its inmost depths; all things else, all interests,
+all hopes, all affections, appear as futile, when the majestic shadow
+comes lamenting from its place of torment "to shake him with thoughts
+beyond the reaches of his soul!" His love for Ophelia is then ranked by
+himself among those trivial, fond records which he has deeply sworn to
+erase from his heart and brain. He has no thought to link his terrible
+destiny with hers: he cannot marry her: he cannot reveal to her, young,
+gentle, innocent as she is, the terrific influences which have changed
+the whole current of his life and purposes. In his distraction he
+overacts the painful part to which he had tasked himself; he is like
+that judge of the Areopagus, who being occupied with graver matters,
+flung from him the little bird which had sought refuge in his bosom, and
+with such angry violence, that unwittingly he killed it.
+
+In the scene with Hamlet,[42] in which he madly outrages her and
+upbraids himself, Ophelia says very little: there are two short
+sentences in which she replies to his wild, abrupt discourse:--
+
+                         HAMLET.
+
+     I did love you once.
+
+                         OPHELIA.
+
+     Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
+
+                         HAMLET.
+
+     You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so
+     inocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved
+     you not.
+
+                         OPHELIA.
+
+     I was the more deceived.
+
+Those who ever heard Mrs. Siddons read the play of Hamlet, cannot forget
+the world of meaning, of love, of sorrow, of despair, conveyed in these
+two simple phrases. Here, and in the soliloquy afterwards, where she
+says,--
+
+    And I of ladies most deject and wretched,
+    That sucked the honey of his music vows,
+
+are the only allusions to herself and her own feelings in the course of
+the play; and these, uttered almost without consciousness on her own
+part, contain the revelation of a life of love, and disclose the secret
+burthen of a heart bursting with its own unuttered grief. She believes
+Hamlet crazed; she is repulsed, she is forsaken, she is outraged, where
+she had bestowed her young heart, with all its hopes and wishes; her
+father is slain by the hand of her lover, as it is supposed, in a
+paroxysm of insanity: she is entangled inextricably in a web of horrors
+which she cannot even comprehend, and the result seems inevitable.
+
+Of her subsequent madness, what can be said? What an affecting--what an
+astonishing picture of a mind utterly, hopelessly wrecked!--past
+hope--past cure! There is the frenzy of excited passion--there is the
+madness caused by intense and continued thought--there is the delirium
+of fevered nerves; but Ophelia's madness is distinct from these: it is
+not the suspension, but the utter destruction of the reasoning powers;
+it is the total imbecility which, as medical people well know,
+frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance is
+frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is _insane_. Her sweet mind lies in
+fragments before us--a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies;
+her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to
+sadness--each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old
+ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her
+infancy--are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can
+only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture
+that we can endure to dwell upon it:--
+
+    Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
+    She turns to favor and to prettiness.
+
+That in her madness she should exchange her bashful silence for empty
+babbling, her sweet maidenly demeanor for the impatient restlessness
+that spurns at straws, and say and sing precisely what she never would
+or could have uttered had she been in possession of her reason, is so
+far from being an impropriety, that it is an additional stroke of
+nature. It is one of the symptoms of this species of insanity, as we are
+assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance in the case of a
+young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, and whose
+malady arose from a similar cause.
+
+The whole action of this play sweeps past us like a torrent, which
+hurries along in its dark and resistless course all the personages of
+the drama towards a catastrophe that is not brought about by human will,
+but seems like an abyss ready dug to receive them, where the good and
+the wicked are whelmed together.[43] As the character of Hamlet has been
+compared, or rather contrasted, with the Greek Orestes, being like him,
+called on to avenge a crime by a crime, tormented by remorseful doubts,
+and pursued by distraction, so, to me, the character of Ophelia bears a
+certain relation to that of the Greek Iphigenia,[44] with the same
+strong distinction between the classical and the romantic conception of
+the portrait. Iphigenia led forth to sacrifice, with her unresisting
+tenderness, her mournful sweetness, her virgin innocence, is doomed to
+perish by that relentless power, which has linked her destiny with
+crimes and contests, in which she has no part but as a sufferer; and
+even so, poor Ophelia, "divided from herself and her fair judgment,"
+appears here like a spotless victim offered up to the mysterious and
+inexorable fates.
+
+"For it is the property of crime to extend its mischiefs over innocence,
+as it is of virtue to extend its blessings over many that deserve them
+not, while frequently the author of one or the other is not, as far as
+we can see, either punished or rewarded."[45] But there's a heaven above
+us!
+
+
+MIRANDA.
+
+We might have deemed it impossible to go beyond Viola, Perdita, and
+Ophelia, as pictures of feminine beauty; to exceed the one in tender
+delicacy, the other in ideal grace, and the last in simplicity,--if
+Shakspeare had not done this; and he alone could have done it. Had he
+never created a Miranda, we should never have been made to feel how
+completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each
+other.
+
+The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of
+womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these only;
+they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She is so
+perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but
+ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda--even one
+of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations--there is not one
+of them that could sustain the comparison for a moment; not one that
+would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into
+immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this "Eve of an
+enchanted Paradise."
+
+What, then, has Shakspeare done?--"O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the
+man!"--he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex;
+he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate
+spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural; and the
+only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is
+Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature
+of elemental light and air, that "ran upon the winds, rode the curl'd
+clouds, and in the colors of the rainbow lived," Miranda herself appears
+a palpable reality; a woman, "breathing thoughtful breath," a woman,
+walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a heart as
+frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom.
+
+I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of
+womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar
+grace. She resembles nothing upon earth; but do we therefore compare
+her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the
+fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain or the
+ocean?--oread or dryad fleet, sea-maid, or naiad of the stream? We
+cannot think of them together. Miranda is a consistent, natural, human
+being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace, and
+purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only is she
+exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she
+_could_ not possibly be otherwise than as she is portrayed. She has
+never beheld one of her own sex; she has never caught from society one
+imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in
+her enchanted solitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and
+its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her
+father, the princely magician; her companions have been the rocks and
+woods, the many-shaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars; her
+playmates the ocean billows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran
+rippling to kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over
+her head, ministered duteous to her every wish, and presented before
+her pageants of beauty and grandeur. The very air, made vocal by her
+father's art, floated in music around her. If we can presuppose such a
+situation with all its circumstances, do we not behold in the character
+of Miranda not only the credible, but the natural, the necessary results
+of such a situation? She retains her woman's heart, for that is
+unalterable and inalienable, as a part of her being; but her deportment,
+her looks, her language, her thoughts--all these, from the supernatural
+and poetical circumstances around her, assume a cast of the pure ideal;
+and to us, who are in the secret of her human and pitying nature,
+nothing can be more charming and consistent than the effect which she
+produces upon others, who never having beheld any thing resembling her,
+approach her as "a wonder," as something celestial:--
+
+    Be sure! the goddess on whom these airs attend!
+
+And again:--
+
+                  What is this maid?
+    Is she the goddess who hath severed us,
+    And brought us thus together?
+
+And Ferdinand exclaims, while gazing on her,
+
+    My spirits as in a dream are all bound up!
+    My father's loss, the weakness that I feel,
+    The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats,
+    To whom I am subdued, are but light to me
+    Might I but through my prison once a day
+    Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth
+    Let liberty make use of, space enough
+    Have I in such a prison.
+
+Contrasted with the impression of her refined and dignified beauty, and
+its effect on all beholders, is Miranda's own soft simplicity, her
+virgin innocence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and
+language of society. It is most natural that in a being thus
+constituted, the first tears should spring from compassion, "suffering
+with those that she saw suffer:"--
+
+                    O the cry did knock
+    Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perished.
+    Had I been any god of power, I would
+    Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er
+    It should the good ship so have swallowed,
+    And the freighting souls within her;
+
+and that her first sigh should be offered to a love at once fearless and
+submissive, delicate and fond. She has no taught scruples of honor like
+Juliet; no coy concealments like Viola; no assumed dignity standing in
+its own defence. Her bashfulness is less a quality than an instinct; it
+is like the self-folding of a flower, spontaneous and unconscious. I
+suppose there is nothing of the kind in poetry equal to the scene
+between Ferdinand and Miranda. In Ferdinand, who is a noble creature, we
+have all the chivalrous magnanimity with which man, in a high state of
+civilization, disguises his real superiority, and does humble homage to
+the being of whose destiny he disposes; while Miranda, the mere child of
+nature, is struck with wonder at her own new emotions. Only conscious of
+her own weakness as a woman, and ignorant of those usages of society
+which teach us to dissemble the real passion, and assume (and sometimes
+abuse) an unreal and transient power, she is equally ready to place her
+life, her love, her service beneath his feet.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                    Alas, now! pray you,
+    Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
+    Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoined to pile!
+    Pray set it down and rest you: when this burns,
+    'Twill weep for having weary'd you. My father
+    Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself:
+    He's safe for these three hours.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                    O most dear mistress,
+    The sun will set before I shall discharge
+    What I must strive to do.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                              If you'll sit down,
+    I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that,
+    I'll carry it to the pile.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                            No, precious creature;
+    I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
+    Than you should such dishonor undergo,
+    While I sit lazy by.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                        It would become me
+    As well as it does you; and I should do it
+    With much more ease; for my good will is to it,
+    And yours against.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                           You look wearily.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+    No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me
+    When you are by at night. I do beseech you,
+    (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,)
+    What is your name?
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                          Miranda. O my father
+    I have broke your 'hest to say so!
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                              Admir'd Miranda!
+    Indeed the top of admiration; worth
+    What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady
+    I have eyed with best regard: and many a time
+    The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
+    Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
+    Have I liked several women; never any
+    With so full soul, but some defect in her
+    Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
+    And put it to the foil. But you, O you,
+    So perfect and so peerless, are created
+    Of every creature's best!
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                             I do not know
+    One of my sex: no woman's face remember,
+    Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
+    Mere that I may call men, than you, good friend,
+    And my dear father. How features are abroad
+    I am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,
+    (The jewel in my dower,) I would not wish
+    Any companion in the world but you;
+    Nor can imagination form a shape,
+    Besides yourself, to like of--But I prattle
+    Something too wildly, and my father's precepts
+    Therein forget.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                    I am, in my condition
+    A prince, Miranda--I do think a king--
+    (I would, not so!) and would no more endure
+    This wooden slavery, than I would suffer
+    The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak
+    The very instant that I saw you, did
+    My heart fly to your service; there resides,
+    To make me slave to it; and for your sake,
+    Am I this patient log-man.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                             Do you love me?
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+    O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound
+    And crown what I profess with kind event,
+    If I speak true: if hollowly, invert
+    What best is boded me, to mischief! I,
+    Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
+    Do love, prize, honor you.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                            I am a fool,
+    To weep at what I am glad of.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                                  Wherefore weep you
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+    At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
+    What I desire to give; and much less take,
+    What I shall die to want--But this is trifling:
+    And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
+    The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;
+    And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
+    I am your wife, if you will marry me;
+    If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
+    You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
+    Whether you will or no!
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                              My mistress, dearest!
+    And I thus humble ever.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                            My husband, then?
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+    Ay, with a heart as willing,
+    As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+    And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell
+    Till half an hour hence.
+
+As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a
+lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with
+propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly
+claims her as "a thread of his own life--nay, that for which he lives."
+Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral
+worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity, is one of the most sublime
+visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand,
+before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works
+through the agency of spirits: not by any evil and forbidden compact,
+but solely by superior might of intellect--by potent spells gathered
+from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with
+his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and
+astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagined:[46]
+and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and St. Leon, sink
+into common-places before the princely, the philosophic, the benevolent
+Prospero.
+
+The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the
+Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his
+companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm,[47] brought
+back a most fearful account of those unknown islands, which they
+described as "a land of devils--a most prodigious and enchanted place,
+subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings." Such was the
+idea entertained of the "still-vext Bermoothes" in Shakspeare's age; but
+later travellers describe them as perfect regions of enchantment in a
+far different sense; as so many fairy Edens, clustered like a knot of
+gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish
+luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round
+with groves of coral; in short, each island a tiny paradise, rich with
+perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and
+ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed:
+so that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked
+mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however
+lovely in nature and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize
+with the beautiful and wondrous reality.
+
+There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is
+rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon
+the occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest
+daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly
+necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most
+unhappy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was
+one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The characters which I have here classed together, as principally
+distinguished by the predominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to
+rise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda;
+the last being in comparison so refined, so elevated above all stain of
+earth, that we can only acknowledge her in connection with it through
+the emotions of sympathy she feels and inspires.
+
+I remember, when I was in Italy, standing "at evening on the top of
+Fiesole," and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val
+d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive
+grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation,
+which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving
+with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth
+seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple
+shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in
+the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint
+perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted
+upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the
+earth to the sky, and immediately above this scene hung the soft
+crescent moon--alone, with all the bright heaven to herself; and as that
+sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of
+Miranda compared to that of Juliet.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[17] Lord Byron remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speak _avec
+connaissance de fait_,) that they are the only women in the world
+capable of impressions, at once very sudden and very durable; which, he
+adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes afterwards,
+how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social
+position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves,
+and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the
+whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and
+devotedness afterwards.--Both these traits of national character are
+exemplified in Juliet--_Moore's Life of Byron_, vol. ii. pp. 303, 338.
+4to edit.
+
+[18] _La sève de la vie_, is an expression used somewhere by Madame de
+Staël.
+
+[19] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.
+
+[20] I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character, which I
+have heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as the heroine _par
+excellence_ of amatory fiction--I mean the Julie of Rousseau's Nouvelle
+Héloïse; I protest against her altogether. As a creation of fancy the
+portrait is a compound of the most gross and glaring inconsistencies; as
+false and impossible to the reflecting and philosophical mind, as the
+fabled Syrens, Hamatryads and Centaurs to the eye of the anatomist. As a
+woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society; and if
+the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has
+garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense
+and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted.
+Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth,
+does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit
+into her, and then calls the "impetticoated" paradox a _woman_. He makes
+her a peg on which to hang his own visions and sentiments--and what
+sentiments! but that I fear to soil my pages, I would pick out a few of
+them, and show the difference between this strange combination of youth
+and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophistical prudery, and
+detestable _grossièreté_, and our own Juliet. No! if we seek a French
+Juliet, we must go far--far back to the real Héloïse, to her eloquence,
+her sensibility, her fervor of passion, her devotedness of truth. She,
+at least, married the man she loved, and loved the man she married, and
+more than died for him; but enough of both.
+
+[21] Constant describes her beautifully--"Sa voix si douce au travers le
+bruit des armes, sa forme délicate au milieu de cet hommes tous couverts
+de fer, la pureté de son âme opposée leurs calculs avides, son calme
+céleste qui contraste avec leurs agitations, remplissent le spectateur
+d'une émotion constante et mélancolique, telle que ne la fait ressentir
+nulle tragédie ordinaire."
+
+[22] Coleridge--preface to Wallenstein.
+
+[23] In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona."
+
+[24] There is an allusion to this court language of love in "All Well
+that Ends Well," where Helena says,--
+
+     There shall your master have a thousand loves--
+     A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign;
+     A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear,
+     His humble ambition, proud humility,
+     His jarring concord, and his discord dulcut,
+     His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
+     Of pretty fond adoptious Christendoms
+     That blinking Cupid gossips.--ACT I SCENE 1
+
+The courtly poets of Elizabeth's time, who copied the Italian
+sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits.
+
+[25] Since this was written, I have met with some remarks of a similar
+tendency in that most interesting book, "The Life of Lord E.
+Fitzgerald."
+
+[26] Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she has placed
+before herself in the most fearful colors all its possible consequences,
+is compared by Schlegel to the famous story of Alexander and his
+physician.
+
+[27]
+
+     Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
+     Thoughts so all unlike each other;
+     To mutter and mock a broken charm,
+     To dally with wrong that does no harm!
+     Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty,
+     At each wild word to feel within
+     A sweet recoil of love and pity.
+     And what if in a world of sin
+     (O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
+     Such giddiness of heart and brain
+     Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
+     So talks as it's most used to do?
+
+                    COLERIDGE.
+
+These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet's wild
+exclamations against Romeo.
+
+[28] "The censure," observes Schlegel, "originates in a fanciless way of
+thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that does not suit its
+tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural
+pathos which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and nowise
+elevated above every-day life; but energetic passions electrify the
+whole mental powers and will, consequently, in highly-favored natures,
+express themselves in an ingenious and figurative manner."
+
+[29] The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a
+popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakspeare
+wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful
+love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. "Juliet, a noble
+maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord
+Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned
+himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with
+his dagger." This note, which furnishes, in brief, the whole argument of
+Shakspeare's play, might possibly have made the first impression on his
+fancy. In the novel of Da Porta the catastrophe is altogether different.
+After the death of Romeo, the Friar Lorenzo endeavors to persuade Juliet
+to leave the fatal monument. She refuses; and throwing herself back on
+the dead body of her husband, she resolutely holds her breath and
+dies.--"E voltatasi al giacente corpo di Romeo, il cui capo sopra un
+origliere, che con lei uell' arca era stato lasciato, posto aveva; gli
+occhi meglio rinchiusi avendogli, e di lagrime il freddo volto
+bagnandogli, disse;" Che debbo senza di te in vita più fare, signor mio?
+e che altro mi resta verso te se non colla mia morte seguirti? "E detto
+questo, la sua gran sciagura nell' animo recatasi, e la perdita del caro
+amante ricordandosi, deliberando di più non vivere, raccolto a se il
+fiato, e per buono spazio tenutolo, e poscia con un gran grido fuori
+mandandolo, sopra il morto corpo, morta ricadde."
+
+There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to
+make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says
+Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a
+degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the
+date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed
+sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate
+conventual garden--once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The
+situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as
+their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its
+amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the
+very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory of Juliet.
+
+When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "_dans le genre
+romantique_," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring.
+
+[30] Foster's Essays
+
+[31] I have read somewhere that the play of which Helena is the heroine,
+(All's Well that Ends Well,) was at first entitled by Shakspeare "Love's
+Labor Won." Why the title was altered or by whom I cannot discover.
+
+[32] i. e. I care as much for as I do for heaven.
+
+[33] New Monthly Magazine, vol. iv.
+
+[34] Percy's Reliques.
+
+[35] i. e. _canzons_, songs
+
+[36] Percy's Reliques, vol. iii.--see the ballad of the "Lady turning
+Serving Man."
+
+[37] By this word, as used here, I would be understood to mean that
+inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to the good, the
+beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar, the violent,
+and the false;--that which we see diffused externally over the form and
+movements, where there is perfect innocence and unconsciousness, as in
+children.
+
+[38] _i. e._ In the story of the drama; for in the original "History of
+Amleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his materials, there is a
+woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce Amleth, but
+not even the germ of the character of Ophelia.
+
+[39] In the Oedipus Coloneus
+
+[40] "And recks not his own read," _i. e._ heeds not his own lesson.
+
+[41] Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 11.
+
+[42] Act iii. scene 1.
+
+[43] Goëthe. See the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister
+
+[44] The Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides.
+
+[45] Goëthe
+
+[46] Such as Cornelius Agrippa, Michael Scott, Dr. Dee. The last was the
+contemporary of Shakspeare.
+
+[47] In 1609, about three years before Shakspeare produced the Tempest,
+which, though placed first in all the editions of his works, was one of
+the last of his dramas.
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS
+
+
+HERMIONE.
+
+Characters in which the affections and the moral qualities predominate
+over fancy and all that bears the name of passion, are not, when we meet
+with them in real life, the most striking and interesting, nor the
+easiest to be understood and appreciated; but they are those on which,
+in the long run, we repose with increasing confidence and ever-new
+delight. Such characters are not easily exhibited in the colors of
+poetry, and when we meet with them there, we are reminded of the effect
+of Raffaelle's pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds assures us, that it took
+him three weeks to discover the beauty of the frescos in the Vatican;
+and many, if they spoke the truth, would prefer one of Titian's or
+Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less
+there is of marked expression or vivid color in a countenance or
+character, the more difficult to delineate it in such a manner as to
+captivate and interest us: but when this is done, and done to
+perfection, it is the miracle of poetry in painting, and of painting in
+poetry. Only Raffaelle and Correggio have achieved it in one case, and
+only Shakspeare in the other.
+
+When, by the presence or the agency of some predominant and exciting
+power, the feelings and affections are upturned from the depths of the
+heart, and flung to the surface, the painter or the poet has but to
+watch the workings of the passions, thus in a manner made visible, and
+transfer them to his page or his canvas, in colors more or less
+vigorous: but where all is calm without and around, to dive into the
+profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie
+hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions
+of the heart, patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few
+graceful touches place before us the distinct and visible result,--to do
+this demanded power of another and a rarer kind.
+
+There are several of Shakspeare's characters which are especially
+distinguished by this profound feeling in the conception, and subdued
+harmony of tone in the delineation. To them may be particularly applied
+the ingenious simile which Goëthe has used to illustrate generally all
+Shakspeare's characters, when he compares them to the old-fashioned
+batches in glass cases, which not only showed the index pointing to the
+hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index in motion.
+
+Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations
+nearly similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can
+render that situation striking and interesting. They are all gentle,
+beautiful, and innocent; all are models of conjugal submission, truth,
+and tenderness, and all are victims of the unfounded jealousy of their
+husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance ceases;
+the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and
+the characters, which are as different as it is possible to imagine,
+conceived and discriminated with a power of truth and a delicacy of
+feeling yet more astonishing.
+
+Critically speaking, the character of Hermione is the most simple in
+point of dramatic effect, that of Imogen is the most varied and complex.
+Hermione is most distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude,
+Desdemona by her gentleness and refined grace, while Imogen combines all
+the best qualities of both, with others which they do not possess;
+consequently she is, as a character, superior to either; but considered
+as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual taste.
+
+Hermione is the heroine of the first three acts of the Winter's Tale.
+She is the wife of Leontes, king of Sicilia, and though in the prime of
+beauty and womanhood, is not represented in the first bloom of youth.
+Her husband on slight grounds suspects her of infidelity with his friend
+Polixenes, king of Bohemia; the suspicion once admitted, and working on
+a jealous, passionate, and vindictive mind, becomes a settled and
+confirmed opinion. Hermione is thrown into a dungeon; her new-born
+infant is taken from her, and by the order of her husband, frantic with
+jealousy, exposed to death on a desert shore; she is herself brought to
+a public trial for treason and incontinency, defends herself nobly, and
+is pronounced innocent by the oracle. But at the very moment that she is
+acquitted, she learns the death of the prince her son, who
+
+    Conceiving the dishonor of his mother,
+    Had straight declined, drooped, took it deeply,
+    Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself,
+    Threw off his spirit, appetite, and sleep,
+    And downright languished.
+
+She swoons away with grief, and her supposed death concludes the third
+act. The last two acts are occupied with the adventures of her daughter
+Perdita; and with the restoration of Perdita to the arms of her mother,
+and the reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes, the piece concludes.
+
+Such, in few words, is the dramatic situation. The character of Hermione
+exhibits what is never found in the other sex, but rarely in our
+own--yet sometimes;--dignity without pride, love without passion, and
+tenderness without weakness. To conceive a character in which there
+enters so much of the negative, required perhaps no rare and astonishing
+effort of genius, such as created a Juliet, a Miranda, or a Lady
+Macbeth; but to delineate such a character in the poetical form, to
+develop it through the medium of action and dialogue, without the aid of
+description: to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious beauty, its
+unimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon
+our sympathy and our imagination; and out of this exterior calm,
+produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and
+internal power:--it is this which renders the character of Hermione one
+of Shakspeare's masterpieces.
+
+Hermione is a queen, a matron, and a mother: she is good and beautiful,
+and royally descended. A majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious
+simplicity, an easy, unforced, yet dignified self-possession, are in all
+her deportment, and in every word she utters. She is one of those
+characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, that "still waters
+run deep." Her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind the
+sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment, are like the springs
+that feed the mountain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and
+inexhaustible.
+
+Shakspeare has conveyed (as is his custom) a part of the character of
+Hermione in scattered touches and through the impressions which she
+produces on all around her. Her surpassing beauty is alluded to in few
+but strong terms:--
+
+                          This jealousy
+    Is for a precious creature; as she is rare
+    Must it be great.
+    Praise her but for this her out-door form,
+    'Which, on my faith, deserves high speech--'
+
+    If one by one you wedded all the world,
+    Or from the all that are, took something good
+    To make a perfect woman; she you killed
+    Would be unparalleled.
+
+    I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes,
+    Have taken treasure from her lips--
+                        --and left them
+    More rich for what they yielded.
+
+The expressions "most sacred lady," "dread mistress," "sovereign," with
+which she is addressed or alluded to, the boundless devotion and respect
+of those around her, and their confidence in her goodness and innocence,
+are so many additional strokes in the portrait.
+
+                        For her, my lord,
+    I dare my life lay down, and will do't, sir,
+    Please you t' accept it, that the queen is spotless
+    I' the eyes of heaven, and to you.
+
+    Every inch of woman in the world,
+    Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false,
+    If she be so.
+    I would not be a stander-by to hear
+    My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
+    My present vengeance taken!
+
+The mixture of playful courtesy, queenly dignity, and lady-like
+sweetness, with which she prevails on Polixenes to prolong his visit, is
+charming.
+
+                        HERMIONE.
+
+                You'll stay!
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+    No, madam.
+
+                        HERMIONE.
+
+                Nay, but you will.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+    I may not, verily.
+
+
+                        HERMIONE.
+
+                      Verily!
+    You put me off with limber vows; but I,
+    Tho' you would seek t' unsphere the stars with oaths
+    Should still say, "Sir, no going!" Verily,
+    You shall _not_ go! A lady's verily is
+    As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet?
+    Force me to keep you as a prisoner,
+    Not like a guest?
+
+And though the situation of Hermione admits but of few general
+reflections, one little speech, inimitably beautiful and characteristic,
+has become almost proverbial from its truth. She says:--
+
+              One good deed, dying tongueless,
+    Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that.
+    Our praises are our wages; you may ride us
+    With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere
+    With spur we heat an acre.
+
+She receives the first intimation of her husband's jealous suspicions
+with incredulous astonishment. It is not that, like Desdemona, she does
+not or cannot understand; but she _will_ not. When he accuses her more
+plainly, she replies with a calm dignity:--
+
+              Should a villain say so--
+    The most replenished villain in the world--
+    He were as much more villain: you, my lord,
+    Do but mistake.
+
+This characteristic composure of temper never forsakes her; and yet it
+is so delineated that the impression is that of grandeur, and never
+borders upon pride or coldness: it is the fortitude of a gentle but a
+strong mind, conscious of its own innocence. Nothing can be more
+affecting than her calm reply to Leontes, who, in his jealous rage,
+heaps insult upon insult, and accuses her before her own attendants, as
+no better "than one of those to whom the vulgar give bold titles."
+
+                How will this grieve you,
+    When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that
+    You have thus published me! Gentle my lord,
+    You scarce can right me thoroughly then, to say
+    You _did_ mistake.
+
+Her mild dignity and saint-like patience, combined as they are with the
+strongest sense of the cruel injustice of her husband, thrill us with
+admiration as well as pity; and we cannot but see and feel, that for
+Hermione to give way to tears and feminine complaints under such a blow,
+would be quite incompatible with the character. Thus she says of
+herself, as she is led to prison:--
+
+                There's some ill planet reigns:
+    I must be patient till the heavens look
+    With an aspect more favorable. Good my lords,
+    I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
+    Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
+    Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
+    That honorable grief lodged here, that burns
+    Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lords
+    With thought so qualified as your charities
+    Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
+    The king's will be performed.
+
+When she is brought to trial for supposed crimes, called on to defend
+herself, "standing to prate and talk for life and honor, before who
+please to come and hear," the sense of her ignominious situation--all
+its shame and all its horror press upon her, and would apparently crush
+even _her_ magnanimous spirit, but for the consciousness of her own
+worth and innocence, and the necessity that exists for asserting and
+defending both.
+
+                 If powers divine
+    Behold our human actions, (as they do),
+    I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make
+    False accusation blush, and tyranny
+    Tremble at patience.
+
+                 *   *   *   *
+
+                 For life, I prize it
+    As I weigh grief, which I would spare. For honor--
+    'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
+    And only that I stand for.
+
+Her earnest, eloquent justification of herself, and her lofty sense of
+female honor, are rendered more affecting and impressive by that
+chilling despair that contempt for a life which has been made bitter to
+her through unkindness, which is betrayed in every word of her speech,
+though so calmly characteristic. When she enumerates the unmerited
+insults which have been heaped upon her, it is without asperity or
+reproach, yet in a tone which shows how completely the iron has entered
+her soul. Thus, when Leontes threatens her with death:--
+
+                Sir, spare your threats;
+    The bug which you would fright me with, I seek.
+    To me can life be no commodity;
+    The crown and comfort of my life, your favor,
+    I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
+    But know not how it went. My second joy,
+    The first-fruits of my body, from his presence
+    I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort--
+    Starr'd most unluckily!--is from my breast,
+    The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
+    Haled out to murder. Myself on every post
+    Proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred,
+    The childbed privilege denied, which 'longs
+    To women of all fashion. Lastly, hurried
+    Here to this place, i' the open air, before
+    I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,
+    Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
+    That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed,
+    But yet hear this; mistake me not. No! life,
+    I prize it not a straw:--but for mine honor.
+    (Which I would free,) if I shall be condemned
+    Upon surmises; all proof sleeping else,
+    But what your jealousies awake; I tell you,
+    'Tis rigor and not law.
+
+The character of Hermione is considered open to criticism on one point.
+I have heard it remarked that when she secludes herself from the world
+for sixteen years, during which time she is mourned as dead by her
+repentant husband, and is not won to relent from her resolve by his
+sorrow, his remorse, his constancy to her memory; such conduct, argues
+the critic, is unfeeling as it is inconceivable in a tender and virtuous
+woman. Would Imogen have done so, who is so generously ready to grant a
+pardon before it be asked? or Desdemona, who does not forgive because
+she cannot even resent? No, assuredly; but this is only another proof of
+the wonderful delicacy and consistency with which Shakspeare has
+discriminated the characters of all three. The incident of Hermione's
+supposed death and concealment for sixteen years, is not indeed very
+probable in itself, nor very likely to occur in every-day life. But
+besides all the probability necessary for the purposes of poetry, it has
+all the likelihood it can derive from the peculiar character of
+Hermione, who is precisely the woman who could and would have acted in
+this manner. In such a mind as hers, the sense of a cruel injury,
+inflicted by one she had loved and trusted, without awakening any
+violent anger or any desire of vengeance, would sink deep--almost
+incurably and lastingly deep. So far she is most unlike either Imogen or
+Desdemona, who are portrayed as much more flexible in temper; but then
+the circumstances under which she is wronged are very different, and far
+more unpardonable. The self-created, frantic jealousy of Leontes is very
+distinct from that of Othello, writhing under the arts of Iago: or that
+of Posthumus, whose understanding has been cheated by the most damning
+evidence of his wife's infidelity. The jealousy which in Othello and
+Posthumus is an error of judgment, in Leontes is a vice of the blood;
+he suspects without cause, condemns without proof; he is without
+excuse--unless the mixture of pride, passion, and imagination, and the
+predisposition to jealousy with which Shakspeare has portrayed him, be
+considered as an excuse. Hermione has been openly insulted: he to whom
+she gave herself, her heart, her soul, has stooped to the weakness and
+baseness of suspicion; has doubted her truth, has wronged her love, has
+sunk in her esteem, and forfeited her confidence. She has been branded
+with vile names; her son, her eldest hope, is dead--dead through the
+false accusation which has stuck infamy on his mother's name; and her
+innocent babe, stained with illegitimacy, disowned and rejected, has
+been exposed to a cruel death. Can we believe that the mere tardy
+acknowledgment of her innocence could make amends for wrongs and agonies
+such as these? or heal a heart which must have bled inwardly, consumed
+by that untold grief, "which burns worse than tears drown?" Keeping in
+view the peculiar character of Hermione, such as she is delineated, is
+she one either to forgive hastily or forget quickly? and though she
+might, in her solitude, mourn over her repentant husband, would his
+repentance suffice to restore him at once to his place in her heart: to
+efface from her strong and reflecting mind the recollection of his
+miserable weakness? or can we fancy this high-souled woman--left
+childless through the injury which has been inflicted on her, widowed in
+heart by the unworthness of him she loved, a spectacle of grief to
+all--to her husband a continual reproach and humiliation--walking
+through the parade of royalty in the court which had witnessed her
+anguish, her shame, her degradation, and her despair? Methinks that the
+want of feeling, nature, delicacy, and consistency, would lie in such an
+exhibition as this. In a mind like Hermione's, where the strength of
+feeling is founded in the power of thought, and where there is little of
+impulse or imagination,--"the depth, but not the tumult of the
+soul,"[48]--there are but two influences which predominate over the
+will,--time and religion. And what then remained, but that, wounded in
+heart and spirit, she should retire from the world?--not to brood over
+her wrongs, but to study forgiveness, and wait the fulfilment of the
+oracle which had promised the termination of her sorrows. Thus a
+premature reconciliation would not only have been painfully inconsistent
+with the character; it would also have deprived us of that most
+beautiful scene, in which Hermione is discovered to her husband as the
+statue or image of herself. And here we have another instance of that
+admirable art, with which the dramatic character is fitted to the
+circumstances in which it is placed: that perfect command over her own
+feelings, that complete self-possession necessary to this extraordinary
+situation, is consistent with all that we imagine of Hermione: in any
+other woman it would be so incredible as to shock all our ideas of
+probability.
+
+This scene, then, is not only one of the most picturesque and striking
+instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama,
+but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as
+it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love,
+the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the
+astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her
+mother like one entranced, looks as if she were also turned to marble.
+There is here one little instance of tender remembrance in Leontes,
+which adds to the charming impression of Hermione's character.
+
+    Chide me, dear stone! that I may say indeed
+    Thou art Hermione; or rather thou art she
+    In thy not chiding, for she was as tender
+    As infancy and grace.
+
+                     Thus she stood,
+    Even with such life of majesty--warm life--
+    As now it coldly stands--when first I woo'd her!
+
+The effect produced on the different persons of the drama by this living
+statue--an effect which at the same moment is, and is _not_
+illusion--the manner in which the feelings of the spectators become
+entangled between the conviction of death and the impression of life,
+the idea of a deception and the feeling of a reality; and the exquisite
+coloring of poetry and touches of natural feeling with which the whole
+is wrought up, till wonder, expectation, and intense pleasure, hold our
+pulse and breath suspended on the event,--are quite inimitable.
+
+The expressions used here by Leontes,--
+
+                    Thus she stood,
+    Even with such life of majesty--_warm life_.
+      The fixture of her eye has motion in't.
+      And we are mock'd by art!
+
+And by Polixines,--
+
+    The very life seems warm upon her lip,
+
+appear strangely applied to a statue, such as we usually imagine it--of
+the cold colorless marble; but it is evident that in this scene Hermione
+personates one of those images or effigies, such as we may see in the
+old gothic cathedrals, in which the stone, or marble, was colored after
+nature. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these effigies, either at
+Basle or at Fribourg, which made me start: the figure was large as life;
+the drapery of crimson, powdered with stars of gold; the face and eyes,
+and hair, tinted after nature, though faded by time: it stood in a
+gothic niche, over a tomb, as I think, and in a kind of dim uncertain
+light. It would have been very easy for a living person to represent
+such an effigy, particularly if it had been painted by that "rare
+Italian master, Julio Romano,"[49] who, as we are informed, was the
+reputed author of this wonderful statue.
+
+The moment when Hermione descends from her pedestal, to the sound of
+soft music, and throws herself without speaking into her husband's arms,
+is one of inexpressible interest. It appears to me that her silence
+during the whole of this scene (except where she invokes a blessing on
+her daughter's head) is in the finest taste as a poetical beauty,
+besides being an admirable trait of character. The misfortunes of
+Hermione, her long religious seclusion, the wonderful and almost
+supernatural part she has just enacted, have invested her with such a
+sacred and awful charm, that any words put into her mouth, must, I
+think, have injured the solemn and profound pathos of the situation.
+
+There are several among Shakspeare's characters which exercise a far
+stronger power over our feelings, our fancy, our understanding, than
+that of Hermione; but not one,--unless perhaps Cordelia,--constructed
+upon so high and pure a principle. It is the union of gentleness with
+power which constitutes the perfection of mental grace. Thus among the
+ancients, with whom the _graces_ were also the _charities_, (to show,
+perhaps, that while form alone may constitute beauty, sentiment is
+necessary to grace,) one and the same word signified equally _strength_
+and _virtue_. This feeling, carried into the fine arts, was the secret
+of the antique grace--the grace of repose. The same eternal nature--the
+same sense of immutable truth and beauty, which revealed this sublime
+principle of art to the ancient Greeks, revealed it to the genius of
+Shakspeare; and the character of Hermione, in which we have the same
+largeness of conception and delicacy of execution,--the same effect of
+suffering without passion, and grandeur without effort, is an instance,
+I think, that he felt within himself, and by intuition, what we study
+all our lives in the remains of ancient art. The calm, regular,
+classical beauty of Hermione's character is the more impressive from the
+wild and gothic accompaniments of her story, and the beautiful relief
+afforded by the pastoral and romantic grace which is thrown around her
+daughter Perdita.
+
+The character of Paulina, in the Winter's Tale, though it has obtained
+but little notice, and no critical remark, (that I have seen,) is yet
+one of the striking beauties of the play: and it has its moral too. As
+we see running through the whole universe that principle of contrast
+which may be called the life of nature, so we behold it every where
+illustrated in Shakspeare: upon this principle he has placed Emilia
+beside Desdemona, the nurse beside Juliet; the clowns and dairy-maids,
+and the merry peddler thief Autolycus round Florizel and Perdita;--and
+made Paulina the friend of Hermione.
+
+Paulina does not fill any ostensible office near the person of the
+queen, but is a lady of high rank in the court--the wife of the Lord
+Antigones. She is a character strongly drawn from real and common
+life--a clever, generous, strong-minded, warmhearted woman, fearless in
+asserting the truth, firm in her sense of right, enthusiastic in all her
+affections: quick in thought, resolute in word, and energetic in action;
+but heedless, hot-tempered, impatient, loud, bold, voluble, and
+turbulent of tongue; regardless of the feelings of those for whom she
+would sacrifice her life, and injuring from excess of zeal those whom
+she most wishes to serve. How many such are there in the world! But
+Paulina, though a very termagant, is yet a poetical termagant in her
+way; and the manner in which all the evil and dangerous tendencies of
+such a temper are placed before us, even while the individual character
+preserves the strongest hold upon our respect and admiration, forms an
+impressive lesson, as well as a natural and delightful portrait.
+
+In the scene, for instance, where she brings the infant before Leontes,
+with the hope of softening him to a sense of his injustice--"an office
+which," as she observes, "becomes a woman best"--her want of
+self-government, her bitter, inconsiderate reproaches, only add, as we
+might easily suppose, to his fury.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                      I say I come
+    From your good queen!
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    Good queen!
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    Good queen, my lord, good queen: I say good queen;
+    And would by combat make her good, so were I
+    A man, the worst about you.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    Force her hence.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes,
+    First hand me: on mine own accord I'll off;
+    But first I'll do mine errand. The good queen
+    (For she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter--
+    Here 'tis; commends it to your blessing.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+                                Traitors!
+    Will you not push her out! Give her the bastard.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                                Forever
+    Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
+    Tak'st up the princess by that forced baseness
+    Which he has put upon't!
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    He dreads his wife.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    So, I would _you_ did; then 'twere past all doubt
+    You'd call your children your's.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+                          A callat,
+    Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,
+    And now baits me!--this brat is none of mine.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                                    It is yours,
+    And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
+    So like you, 'tis the worse.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+                                      A gross hag!
+    And lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd,
+    That wilt not stay her tongue.
+
+                        ANTIGONES.
+
+                Hang all the husbands
+    That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself
+    Hardly one subject.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    Once more, take her hence.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    A most unworthy and unnatural lord
+    Can do no more.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    I'll have thee burn'd.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                                 I care not:
+    It is an heretic that makes the fire,
+    Not she which burns in't.
+
+Here, while we honor her courage and her affection, we cannot help
+regretting her violence. We see, too, in Paulina, what we so often see
+in real life, that it is not those who are most susceptible in their own
+temper and feelings, who are most delicate and forbearing towards the
+feelings of others. She does not comprehend, or will not allow for the
+sensitive weakness of a mind less firmly tempered than her own. There
+is a reply of Leontes to one of her cutting speeches, which is full of
+feeling, and a lesson to those, who, with the best intentions in the
+world, force the painful truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated
+heart.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
+    Or, from the all that are, took something good
+    To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
+    Would be unparallel'd.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    I think so. Kill'd!
+    She I kill'd? I did so: but thou strik'st me
+    Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
+    Upon thy tongue, as in my thought. Now, good now,
+    Say so but seldom.
+
+                        CLEOMENES.
+
+    Not at all, good lady:
+    You might have spoken a thousand things that would
+    Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd
+    Your kindness better.
+
+We can only excuse Paulina by recollecting that it is a part of her
+purpose to keep alive in the heart of Leontes the remembrance of his
+queen's perfections, and of his own cruel injustice. It is admirable,
+too, that Hermione and Paulina, while sufficiently approximated to
+afford all the pleasure of contrast, are never brought too nearly in
+contact on the scene or in the dialogue;[50] for this would have been a
+fault in taste, and have necessarily weakened the effect of both
+characters:--either the serene grandeur of Hermione would have subdued
+and overawed the fiery spirit of Paulina, or the impetuous temper of the
+latter must have disturbed in some respect our impression of the calm,
+majestic, and somewhat melancholy beauty of Hermione.
+
+
+DESDEMONA.
+
+The character of Hermione is addressed more to the imagination; that of
+Desdemona to the feelings. All that can render sorrow majestic is
+gathered round Hermione; all that can render misery heart-breaking is
+assembled round Desdemona. The wronged but self-sustained virtue of
+Hermione commands our veneration; the injured and defenceless innocence
+of Desdemona so wrings the soul, "that all for pity we could die."
+
+Desdemona, as a character, comes nearest to Miranda, both in herself as
+a woman, and in the perfect simplicity and unity of the delineation; the
+figures are differently draped--the proportions are the same. There is
+the same modesty, tenderness, and grace; the same artless devotion in
+the affections, the same predisposition to wonder, to pity, to admire;
+the same almost ethereal refinement and delicacy; but all is pure poetic
+nature within Miranda and around her: Desdemona is more associated with
+the palpable realities of every-day existence, and we see the forms and
+habits of society tinting her language and deportment; no two beings can
+be more alike in character--nor more distinct as individuals.
+
+The love of Desdemona for Othello appears at first such a violation of
+all probabilities, that her father at once imputes it to magic, "to
+spells and mixtures powerful o'er the blood."
+
+                        She, in spite of nature,
+    Of years, of country, credit, every thing,
+    To fall in love with what she feared to look on!
+
+And the devilish malignity of Iago, whose coarse mind cannot conceive an
+affection founded purely in sentiment, derives from her love itself a
+strong argument against her.
+
+    Ay, there's the point, as to be bold with you,
+    Not to affect any proposed matches
+    Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
+    Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends,[51] &c.
+
+Notwithstanding this disparity of age, character, country, complexion,
+we, who are admitted into the secret, see her love rise naturally and
+necessarily out of the leading propensities of her nature.
+
+At the period of the story a spirit of wild adventure had seized all
+Europe. The discovery of both Indies was yet recent; over the shores of
+the western hemisphere still fable and mystery hung, with all their dim
+enchantments, visionary terrors, and golden promises! perilous
+expeditions and distant voyages were every day undertaken from hope of
+plunder, or mere love of enterprise; and from these the adventurers
+returned with tales of "Antres vast and desarts wild--of cannibals that
+did each other eat--of Anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow
+beneath their shoulders." With just such stories did Raleigh and
+Clifford, and their followers return from the New World: and thus by
+their splendid or fearful exaggerations, which the imperfect knowledge
+of those times could not refute, was the passion for the romantic and
+marvellous nourished at home, particularly among the women. A cavalier
+of those days had no nearer no surer way to his mistress's heart, than
+by entertaining her with these wondrous narratives. What was a general
+feature of his time, Shakspeare seized and adapted to his purpose with
+the most exquisite felicity of effect. Desdemona, leaving her household
+cares in haste, to hang breathless on Othello's tales, was doubtless a
+picture from the life; and her inexperience and her quick imagination
+lend it an added propriety: then her compassionate disposition is
+interested by all the disastrous chances, hair-breadth 'scapes, and
+moving accidents by flood and field, of which he has to tell; and her
+exceeding gentleness and timidity, and her domestic turn of mind, render
+her more easily captivated by the military renown, the valor, and lofty
+bearing of the noble Moor--
+
+    And to his honors and his valiant parts
+    Does she her soul and fortunes consecrate.
+
+The confession and the excuse for her love is well placed in the mouth
+of Desdemona, while the history of the rise of that love, and of his
+course of wooing, is, with the most graceful propriety, as far as she is
+concerned, spoken by Othello, and in her absence. The last two lines
+summing up the whole--
+
+    She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
+    And I loved her that she did pity them--
+
+comprise whole volumes of sentiment and metaphysics.
+
+Desdemona displays at times a transient energy, arising from the power
+of affection, but gentleness gives the prevailing tone to the
+character--gentleness in its excess--gentleness verging on
+passiveness--gentleness, which not only cannot resent,--but cannot
+resist.
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Then of so gentle a condition!
+
+                        IAGO.
+
+    Ay! too gentle.
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Nay, that's certain
+
+Here the exceeding softness of Desdemona's temper is turned against her
+by Iago, so that it suddenly strikes Othello in a new point of view, as
+the inability to resist temptation; but to us who perceive the character
+as a whole, this extreme gentleness of nature is yet delineated with
+such exceeding refinement, that the effect never approaches to
+feebleness. It is true that _once_ her extreme timidity leads her in a
+moment of confusion and terror to prevaricate about the fatal
+handkerchief. This handkerchief, in the original story of Cinthio, is
+merely one of those embroidered handkerchiefs which were as fashionable
+in Shakspeare's time as in our own; but the minute description of it as
+"lavorato alla morisco sottilissimamente,"[52] suggested to the poetical
+fancy of Shakspeare one of the most exquisite and characteristic
+passages in the whole play. Othello makes poor Desdemona believe that
+the handkerchief was a talisman.
+
+              There's magic in the web of it.
+    A sibyl, that had numbered in the world
+    The sun to make two hundred compasses,
+    In her prophetic fury sew'd the work:
+    The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,
+    And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful
+    Conserv'd of maidens' hearts.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Indeed! is't true?
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Most veritable, therefore look to't well.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Then would to heaven that I had never seen it!
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Ha! wherefore!
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Why do you speak so startingly and rash?
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Is't lost,--Is't gone? Speak, is it out of the way?
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Heavens bless us!
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Say you?
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    It is not lost--but what an' if it were?
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Ha!
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    I say it is not lost.
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Fetch it, let me see it.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Why so I can, sir, but I will not now, &c.
+
+Desdemona, whose soft credulity, whose turn for the marvellous, whose
+susceptible imagination had first directed her thoughts and affections
+to Othello, is precisely the woman to be frightened out of her senses by
+such a tale as this, and betrayed by her fears into a momentary
+tergiversation. It is most natural in such a being, and shows us that
+even in the sweetest natures there can be no completeness and
+consistency without moral energy.[53]
+
+With the most perfect artlessness, she has something of the instinctive,
+unconscious address of her sex; as when she appeals to her father--
+
+    So much duty as my mother show'd
+    To you, preferring you before her father,
+    So much I challenge, that I may profess
+    Due to the Moor, my lord.
+
+And when she is pleading for Cassio--
+
+                    What! Michael Cassio!
+    That came a wooing with you; and many a time.
+    When I have spoken of you disparagingly,
+    Hath ta'en your part?
+
+In persons who unite great sensibility and lively fancy, I have often
+observed this particular species of address, which is always unconscious
+of itself, and consists in the power of placing ourselves in the
+position of another, and imagining, rather than perceiving, what is in
+their hearts. We women have this _address_ (if so it can be called)
+naturally, but I have seldom met with it in men. It is not inconsistent
+with extreme simplicity of character, and quite distinct from that kind
+of art which is the result of natural acuteness and habits of
+observation--quick to perceive the foibles of others, and as quick to
+turn them to its own purposes; which is always conscious of itself, and,
+if united with strong intellect, seldom perceptible to others. In the
+mention of her mother, and the appeal to Othello's self-love, Desdemona
+has no design formed on conclusions previously drawn; but her intuitive
+quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, lead her more safely to
+the same results, and the distinction is as truly as it is delicately
+drawn.
+
+When Othello first outrages her in a manner which appears inexplicable,
+she seeks and finds excuses for him. She is so innocent that not only
+she cannot believe herself suspected, but she cannot conceive the
+existence of guilt in others.
+
+              Something, sure, of state,
+    Either from Venice, or some unhatch'd practice
+    Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,
+    Hath puddled his clear spirit.
+                      'Tis even so--
+    Nay, we must think, men are not gods,
+    Nor of them look for such observances
+    As fit the bridal.
+
+And when the direct accusation of crime is flung on her in the vilest
+terms, it does not anger but stun her, as if it transfixed her whole
+being; she attempts no reply, no defence; and reproach or resistance
+never enters her thought.
+
+    Good friend, go to him--for by this light of heaven
+    I know not how I lost him: here I kneel:--
+    If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,
+    Either in discourse of thought or actual deed;
+    Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
+    Delighted them in any other form;
+    Or that I do not yet, and ever did,
+    And ever will, though he do shake me off
+    To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,
+    Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,
+    And his unkindness may defeat my life,
+    But never taint my love.
+
+And there is one stroke of consummate delicacy surprising, when we
+remember the latitude of expression prevailing in Shakspeare's time, and
+which he allowed to his other women generally: she says, on recovering
+from her stupefaction--
+
+    Am I that name, Iago?
+
+                        IAGO.
+
+    What name, sweet lady?
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    That which she says my lord did say I was.
+
+So completely did Shakspeare enter into the angelic refinement of the
+character.
+
+Endued with that temper which is the origin of superstition in love as
+in religion,--which, in fact makes love itself a religion,--she not
+only does not utter an upbraiding, but nothing that Othello does or
+says, no outrage, no injustice, can tear away the charm with which her
+imagination had invested him, or impair her faith in his honor; "Would
+you had never seen him!" exclaims Emilia.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    So would not I!--my love doth so approve him,
+    That even his stubbornness, his checks and frowns
+    Have grace and favor in them.
+
+There is another peculiarity, which, in reading the play of Othello, we
+rather feel than perceive: through the whole of the dialogue
+appropriated to Desdemona, there is not one general observation. Words
+are with her the vehicle of sentiment, and never of reflection; so that
+I cannot find throughout a sentence of general application. The same
+remark applies to Miranda: and to no other female character of any
+importance or interest; not even to Ophelia.
+
+The rest of what I wished to say of Desdemona, has been anticipated by
+an anonymous critic, and so beautifully, so justly, so eloquently
+expressed, that I with pleasure erase my own page, to make room for his.
+
+"Othello," observes this writer, "is no love story; all that is below
+tragedy in the passion of love, is taken away at once, by the awful
+character of Othello; for such he seems to us to be designed to be. He
+appears never as a lover, but at once as a husband: and the relation of
+his love made dignified, as it is a husband's justification of his
+marriage, is also dignified, as it is a soldier's relation of his stern
+and perilous life. His love itself, as long as it is happy, is perfectly
+calm and serene--the protecting tenderness of a husband. It is not till
+it is disordered, that it appears as a passion: then is shown a power in
+contention with itself--a mighty being struck with death, and bringing
+up from all the depths of life convulsions and agonies. It is no
+exhibition of the power of the passion of love, but of the passion of
+life, vitally wounded, and self over-mastering. If Desdemona had been
+really guilty, the greatness would have been destroyed, because his love
+would have been unworthy, false. But she is good, and his love is most
+perfect, just, and good. That a man should place his perfect love on a
+wretched thing, is miserably debasing, and shocking to thought; but that
+loving perfectly and well, he should by hellish human circumvention be
+brought to distrust and dread, and abjure his own perfect love, is most
+mournful indeed--it is the infirmity of our good nature wrestling in
+vain with the strong powers of evil. Moreover, he would, had Desdemona
+been false, have been the mere victim of fate; whereas he is now in a
+manner his own victim. His happy love was heroic tenderness; his injured
+love is terrible passion, and disordered power, engendered within itself
+to its own destruction, is the height of all tragedy.
+
+"The character of Othello is perhaps the most greatly drawn, the most
+heroic of any of Shakspeare's actors; but it is, perhaps, that one also
+of which his reader last acquires the intelligence. The intellectual and
+warlike energy of his mind--his tenderness of affection--his loftiness
+of spirit--his frank, generous magnanimity--impetuosity like a
+thunderbolt--and that dark, fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting
+even his imagination,--compose a character entirely original, most
+difficult to delineate, but perfectly delineated."
+
+Emilia in this play is a perfect portrait from common life, a
+masterpiece in the Flemish style: and though not necessary as a
+contrast, it cannot be but that the thorough vulgarity, the loose
+principles of this plebeian woman, united to a high degree of spirit,
+energetic feeling, strong sense and low cunning, serve to place in
+brighter relief the exquisite refinement, the moral grace, the
+unblemished truth, and the soft submission of Desdemona.
+
+On the other perfections of this tragedy, considered as a production of
+genius--on the wonderful characters of Othello and Iago--on the skill
+with which the plot is conducted, and its simplicity which a
+word unravels,[54] and on the overpowering horror of the
+catastrophe--eloquence and analytical criticism have been exhausted; I
+will only add, that the source of the pathos throughout--of that pathos
+which at once softens and deepens the tragic effect--lies in the
+character of Desdemona. No woman differently constituted could have
+excited the same intense and painful compassion, without losing
+something of that exalted charm, which invests her from beginning to
+end, which we are apt to impute to the interest of the situation, and to
+the poetical coloring, but which lies, in fact, in the very essence of
+the character. Desdemona, with all her timid flexibility and soft
+acquiescence, is not weak; for the negative alone is weak; and the mere
+presence of goodness and affection implies in itself a species of power;
+power without consciousness, power without effort, power with
+repose--that soul of grace!
+
+I know a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the absence of intellectual
+power is never felt as a deficiency, nor the absence of energy of will
+as impairing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity, as a want
+of feeling: one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the sentiment of
+rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a
+necessary state of being, than an imposed law. No shade of sin or vanity
+has yet stolen over that bright innocence. No discord within has marred
+the loveliness without--no strife of the factitious world without has
+disturbed the harmony within. The comprehension of evil appears forever
+shut out, as if goodness had converted all things to itself; and all to
+the pure in heart must necessarily be pure. The impression produced is
+exactly that of the character of Desdemona; genius is a rare thing, but
+abstract goodness is rarer. In Desdemona, we cannot but feel that the
+slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have
+injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the
+first,--"an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final
+sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all
+truth! But, alas! to see her fluttering like a cherub in the talons of a
+fiend!--to see her--O poor Desdemona!
+
+
+IMOGEN.
+
+We come to Imogen. Others of Shakspeare's characters are, as dramatic
+and poetical conceptions, more striking, more brilliant, more powerful;
+but of all his women, considered as individuals rather than as heroines,
+Imogen is the most perfect. Portia and Juliet are pictured to the fancy
+with more force of contrast, more depth of light and shade; Viola and
+Miranda, with more aerial delicacy of outline; but there is no female
+portrait that can be compared to Imogen as a woman--none in which so
+great a variety of tints are mingled together into such perfect harmony.
+In her, we have all the fervor of youthful tenderness, all the romance
+of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of ideal grace,--the bloom of
+beauty, the brightness of intellect and the dignity of rank, taking a
+peculiar hue from the conjugal character which is shed over all, like a
+consecration and a holy charm. In Othello and the Winter's Tale, the
+interest excited for Desdemona and Hermione is divided with others: but
+in Cymbeline, Imogen is the angel of light, whose lovely presence
+pervades and animates the whole piece. The character altogether may be
+pronounced finer, more complex in its elements, and more fully developed
+in all its parts, than those of Hermione and Desdemona; but the position
+in which she is placed is not, I think, so fine--at least, not so
+effective, as a tragic situation.
+
+Shakspeare has borrowed the chief circumstances of Imogen's story from
+one of Boccaccio's tales.[55]
+
+A company of Italian merchants who are assembled in a tavern at Paris,
+are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives: all of them
+express themselves with levity, or skepticism, or scorn, on the virtue
+of women, except a young Genoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains,
+that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste
+than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments and the
+coarse raillery of another young merchant, Ambrogiolo, Bernabo proceeds
+to enumerate the various perfections and accomplishments of his Zinevra.
+He praises her loveliness, her submission, and her discretion--her skill
+in embroidery, her graceful service, in which the best trained page of
+the court could not exceed her; and he adds, as rarer accomplishments,
+that she could mount a horse, fly a hawk, write and read, and cast up
+accounts, as well as any merchant of them all. His enthusiasm only
+excites the laughter and mockery of his companions, particularly of
+Ambrogiolo, who, by the most artful mixture of contradiction and
+argument, rouses the anger of Bernabo, and he at length exclaims, that
+he would willingly stake his life, his head, on the virtue of his wife.
+This leads to the wager which forms so important an incident in the
+drama. Ambrogiolo bets one thousand florins of gold against five
+thousand, that Zinevra, like the rest of her sex, is accessible to
+temptation--that in less than three months he will undermine her virtue,
+and bring her husband the most undeniable proofs of her falsehood. He
+sets off for Genoa, in order to accomplish his purpose; but on his
+arrival, all that he learns, and all that he beholds with his own eyes,
+of the discreet and noble character of the lady, make him despair of
+success by fair means; he therefore has recourse to the basest
+treachery. By bribing an old woman in the service of Zinevra, he is
+conveyed to her sleeping apartment, concealed in a trunk, from which he
+issues in the dead of the night; he takes note of the furniture of the
+chamber, makes himself master of her purse, her morning robe, or cymar,
+and her girdle, and of a certain mark on her person. He repeats these
+observations for two nights, and, furnished with these evidences of
+Zinevra's guilt, he returns to Paris, and lays them before the wretched
+husband. Bernabo rejects every proof of his wife's infidelity except
+that which finally convinces Posthumus. When Ambrogiolo mentions the
+"mole, cinque-spotted," he stands like one who has received a poniard in
+his heart; without further dispute he pays down the forfeit, and filled
+with rage and despair both at the loss of his money and the falsehood of
+his wife, he returns towards Genoa; he retires to his country house, and
+sends a messenger to the city with letters to Zinevra, desiring that she
+would come and meet him, but with secret orders to the man to despatch
+her by the way. The servant prepares to execute his master's command,
+but overcome by her entreaties for mercy, and his own remorse, he spares
+her life, on condition that she will fly from the country forever. He
+then disguises her in his own cloak and cap, and brings back to her
+husband the assurance that she is killed, and that her body has been
+devoured by the wolves. In the disguise of a mariner, Zinevra then
+embarks on board a vessel bound to the Levant, and on arriving at
+Alexandria, she is taken into the service of the Sultan of Egypt, under
+the name of Sicurano; she gains the confidence of her master, who, not
+suspecting her sex, sends her as captain of the guard which was
+appointed for the protection of the merchants at the fair of Acre. Here
+she accidentally meets Ambrogiolo, and sees in his possession the purse
+and girdle, which she immediately recognizes as her own. In reply to her
+inquiries, he relates with fiendish exultation the manner in which he
+had obtained possession of them, and she persuades him to go back with
+her to Alexandria. She then sends a messenger to Genoa in the name of
+the Sultan, and induces her husband to come and settle in Alexandria. At
+a proper opportunity, she summons both to the presence of the Sultan,
+obliges Ambrogiolo to make a full confession of his treachery, and
+wrings from her husband the avowal of his supposed murder of herself:
+then falling at the feet of the Sultan discovers her real name and sex,
+to the great amazement of all. Bernabo is pardoned at the prayer of his
+wife, and Ambrogiolo is condemned to be fastened to a stake, smeared
+with honey, and left to be devoured by the flies and locusts. This
+horrible sentence is executed; while Zinevra, enriched by the presents
+of the Sultan, and the forfeit wealth of Ambrogiolo, returns with her
+husband to Genoa, where she lives in great honor and happiness, and
+maintains her reputation of virtue to the end of her life.
+
+These are the materials from which Shakspeare has drawn the dramatic
+situation of Imogen. He has also endowed her with several of the
+qualities which are attributed to Zinevra; but for the essential truth
+and beauty of the individual character, for the sweet coloring of
+pathos, and sentiment, and poetry interfused through the whole, he is
+indebted only to nature and himself.
+
+It would be a waste of words to refute certain critics who have accused
+Shakspeare of a want of judgment in the adoption of the story; of
+having transferred the manners of a set of intoxicated merchants and a
+merchant's wife to heroes and princesses, and of having entirely
+destroyed the interest of the catastrophe.[56] The truth is, that
+Shakspeare has wrought out the materials before him with the most
+luxuriant fancy and the most wonderful skill. As for the various
+anachronisms, and the confusion of names, dates, and manners, over which
+Dr. Johnson exults in no measured terms, the confusion is nowhere but in
+his own heavy obtuseness of sentiment and perception, and his want of
+poetical faith. Look into the old Italian poets, whom we read
+continually with still increasing pleasure; does any one think of
+sitting down to disprove the existence of Ariodante, king of Scotland?
+or to prove that the mention of Proteus and Pluto, baptism and the
+Virgin Mary, in a breath, amounts to an anachronism? Shakspeare, by
+throwing his story far back into a remote and uncertain age, has
+blended, by his "own omnipotent will," the marvellous, the heroic, the
+ideal, and the classical,--the extreme of refinement and the extreme of
+simplicity,--into one of the loveliest fictions of romantic poetry; and,
+to use Schlegel's expression, "has made the social manners of the latest
+times harmonize with heroic deeds, and even with the appearances of the
+gods."[57]
+
+But, admirable as is the conduct of the whole play, rich in variety of
+character and in picturesque incident, its chief beauty and interest is
+derived from Imogen.
+
+When Ferdinand tells Miranda that she was "created of every creature's
+best," he speaks like a lover, or refers only to her personal charms:
+the same expression might be applied critically to the character of
+Imogen; for, as the portrait of Miranda is produced by resolving the
+female character into its original elements, so that of Imogen unites
+the greatest number of those qualities which we imagine to constitute
+excellency in woman.
+
+Imogen, like Juliet, conveys to our mind the impression of extreme
+simplicity in the midst of the most wonderful complexity. To conceive
+her aright, we must take some peculiar tint from many characters, and so
+mingle them, that, like the combination of hues in a sunbeam, the effect
+shall be as one to the eye. We must imagine something of the romantic
+enthusiasm of Juliet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the
+dignified purity of Isabel, of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the
+self-possession and intellect of Portia--combined together so equally
+and so harmoniously, that we can scarcely say that one quality
+predominates over the other. But Imogen is less imaginative than Juliet,
+less spirited and intellectual than Portia, less serious than Helen and
+Isabel; her dignity is not so imposing as that of Hermione, it stands
+more on the defensive; her submission, though unbounded, is not so
+passive as that of Desdemona; and thus while she resembles each of
+these characters individually, she stands wholly distinct from all.
+
+It is true, that the conjugal tenderness of Imogen is at once the chief
+subject of the drama, and the pervading charm of her character; but it
+is not true, I think, that she is merely interesting from her tenderness
+and constancy to her husband. We are so completely let into the essence
+of Imogen's nature, that we feel as if we had known and loved her before
+she was married to Posthumus, and that her conjugal virtues are a charm
+superadded, like the color laid upon a beautiful groundwork. Neither
+does it appear to me, that Posthumus is unworthy of Imogen, or only
+interesting on Imogen's account. His character, like those of all the
+other persons of the drama, is kept subordinate to hers: but this could
+not be otherwise, for she is the proper subject--the heroine of the
+poem. Every thing is done to ennoble Posthumus, and justify her love for
+him; and though we certainly approve him more for her sake than for his
+own, we are early prepared to view him with Imogen's eyes; and not only
+excuse, but sympathize in her admiration of one
+
+    Who sat 'mongst men like a descended god.
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Who lived in court, which it is rare to do,
+    Most praised, most loved:
+    A sample to the youngest; to the more mature,
+    A glass that feated them.
+
+And with what beauty and delicacy is her conjugal and matronly
+character discriminated! Her love for her husband is as deep as Juliet's
+for her lover, but without any of that headlong vehemence, that
+fluttering amid hope, fear, and transport--that giddy intoxication of
+heart and sense, which belongs to the novelty of passion, which we feel
+once, and but once, in our lives. We see her love for Posthumus acting
+upon her mind with the force of an habitual feeling, heightened by
+enthusiastic passion, and hallowed by the sense of duty. She asserts and
+justifies her affection with energy indeed, but with a calm and
+wife-like dignity:--
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+    Thou took'st a beggar, would'st have made my throne
+    A seat for baseness.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                   No, I rather added a lustre to it
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+              O thou vile one!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                                      Sir,
+    It is your fault that I have loved Posthumus;
+    You bred him as my playfellow, and he is
+    A man worth any woman; overbuys me,
+    Almost the sum he pays.
+
+Compare also, as examples of the most delicate discrimination of
+character and feeling, the parting scene between Imogen and Posthumus,
+that between Romeo and Juliet, and that between Troilus and Cressida:
+compare the confiding matronly tenderness, the deep but resigned sorrow
+of Imogen, with the despairing agony of Juliet, and the petulant grief
+of Cressida.
+
+When Posthumus is driven into exile, he comes to take a last farewell of
+his wife:--
+
+                       IMOGEN.
+
+                      My dearest husband,
+    I something fear my father's wrath, but nothing
+    (Always reserved my holy duty) what
+    His rage can do on me. You must be gone,
+    And I shall here abide the hourly shot
+    Of angry eyes: not comforted to live,
+    But that there is this jewel in the world
+    That I may see again.
+
+                        POSTHUMUS.
+
+                      My queen! my mistress!
+    O, lady, weep no more! lest I give cause
+    To be suspected of more tenderness
+    Than doth become a man. I will remain
+    The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                  Should we be taking leave
+    As long a term as yet we have to live,
+    The loathness to depart would grow--Adieu!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Nay, stay a little:
+    Were you but riding forth to air yourself,
+    Such parting were too petty. Look here, love,
+    This diamond was my mother's; take it, heart
+    But keep it till you woo another wife,
+    When Imogen is dead!
+
+Imogen, in whose tenderness there is nothing jealous or fantastic, does
+not seriously apprehend that her husband will woo another wife when she
+is dead. It is one of those fond fancies which women are apt to express
+in moments of feeling, merely for the pleasure of hearing a protestation
+to the contrary. When Posthumus leaves her, she does not burst forth in
+eloquent lamentation; but that silent, stunning, overwhelming sorrow,
+which renders the mind insensible to all things else, is represented
+with equal force and simplicity.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    There cannot be a pinch in death
+    More sharp than this is.
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+                    O disloyal thing,
+    That should'st repair my youth; thou heapeat
+    A year's age on me!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                      I beseech you, sir,
+    Harm not yourself with your vexation; I
+    Am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare[58]
+    Subdues all pangs, all fears.
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+                          Past grace? obedience?
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Past hope and in despair--that way past grace.
+
+In the same circumstances, the impetuous excited feelings of Juliet,
+and her vivid imagination, lend something far more wildly agitated, more
+intensely poetical and passionate to her grief.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    Art thou gone so? My love, my lord, my friend!
+    I must hear from thee every day i' the hour,
+    For in a minute there are many days--
+    O by this count I shall be much in years,
+    Ere I again behold my Romeo!
+
+                        ROMEO.
+
+    Farewell! I will omit no opportunity
+    That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    O! think'st thou we shall ever meet again?
+
+                        ROMEO.
+
+    I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve
+    For sweet discourses in our time to come.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    O God! I have an ill-divining soul:
+    Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
+    As one dead in the bottom of a tomb:
+    Either my eye-sight fails, or thou look'st pale.
+
+We have no sympathy with the pouting disappointment of Cressida, which
+is just like that of a spoilt child which has lost its sugar-plum,
+without tenderness, passions, or poetry: and, in short, perfectly
+characteristic of that vain, fickle, dissolute, heartless
+woman,--"unstable as water."
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    And is it true that I must go from Troy?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    A hateful truth.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+                      What, and from Troilus too?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    From Troy and Troilus.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+                          Is it possible?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    And suddenly.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    I must then to the Greeks?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+                              No remedy.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    A woeful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks!
+    When shall we see again?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    Hear me, my love. Be thou but true of heart--
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    I true! How now? what wicked deem is this?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,
+    For it is parting from us;
+    I speak not, be thou true, as fearing thee;
+    For I will throw my glove to Death himself
+    That there's no maculation in thy heart:
+    But be thou true, say I, to fashion in
+    My sequent protestation. Be thou true,
+    And I will see thee.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+                        O heavens! be true again--
+    O heavens! you love me not.
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+                    Die I a villain, then!
+    In this I do not call your faith in question,
+    So mainly as my merit--
+                        --But be not tempted.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    Do you think I will?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the eagerness of Imogen to meet her husband there is all a wife's
+fondness, mixed up with the breathless hurry arising from a sudden and
+joyful surprise; but nothing of the picturesque eloquence, the ardent,
+exuberant, Italian imagination of Juliet, who, to gratify her
+impatience, would have her heralds thoughts;--press into her service the
+nimble pinioned doves, and wind-swift Cupids,--change the course of
+nature, and lash the steeds of Phoebus to the west. Imogen only thinks
+"one score of miles, 'twixt sun and sun," slow travelling for a lover,
+and wishes for a horse with wings--
+
+    O for a horse with wings! Hear'st thou, Pisanio?
+    He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me
+    How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs
+    May plod it in a week, why may not I
+    Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio,
+    (Who long'st like me, to see thy lord--who long'st--
+    O let me bate, but not like me--yet long'st,
+    But in a fainter kind--O not like me,
+    For mine's beyond beyond,) say, and speak thick--
+    (Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing
+    To the smothering of the sense)--how far is it
+    To this same blessed Milford? And by the way,
+    Tell me how Wales was made so happy, as
+    To inherit such a haven. But, first of all,
+    How we may steal from hence; and for the gap
+    That we shall make in time, from our hence going
+    And our return, to excuse. But first, how get hence.
+    Why should excuse be born, or e'er begot?
+    We'll talk of that hereafter. Pr'ythee speak,
+    How many score of miles may we well ride
+    'Twixt hour and hour?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                        One score, 'twixt sun and sun,
+    Madam, 's enough for you; and too much too.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Why, one that rode to his execution, man,
+    Could never go so slow!
+
+There are two or three other passages bearing on the conjugal tenderness
+of Imogen, which must be noticed for the extreme intensity of the
+feeling, and the unadorned elegance of the expression.
+
+    I would thou grew'st unto the shores o' the haven
+    And question'dst every sail: if he should write,
+    And I not have it, 'twere a paper lost
+    As offer'd mercy is. What was the last
+    That he spake to thee?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                          'Twas, His queen! his queen!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Then wav'd his hankerchief?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                              And kiss'd it, madam.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Senseless linen! happier therein than I!--
+    And that was all?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                    No, madam; for so long
+    As he could make me with this eye or ear
+    Distinguish him from others, he did keep
+    The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief
+    Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind
+    Could best express how slow his soul sail'd on,
+    How swift his ship.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                      Thou should'st have made him
+    As little as a crow, or less, ere left
+    To after-eye him.
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                      Madam, so I did.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    I would have broke my eye-strings; cracked them, but
+    To look upon him; till the diminution
+    Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
+    Nay, followed him, till he had melted from
+    The smallness of a gnat to air; and then
+    Have turn'd mine eye, and wept.
+
+Two little incidents, which are introduced with the most unobtrusive
+simplicity, convey the strongest impression of her tenderness for her
+husband, and with that perfect unconsciousness on her part, which adds
+to the effect. Thus when she has lost her bracelet--
+
+                            Go, bid my woman
+    Search for a jewel, that too casually,
+    Hath left my arm. It was thy master's: 'shrew me,
+    If I would lose it for a revenue
+    Of any king in Europe. I do think
+    I saw't this morning; confident I am,
+    Last night 'twas on mine arm--_I kiss'd it.
+    I hope it has not gone to tell my lord
+    That I kiss aught but he._
+
+It has been well observed, that our consciousness that the bracelet is
+really gone to bear false witness against her, adds an inexpressibly
+touching effect to the simplicity and tenderness of the sentiment.
+
+And again, when she opens her bosom to meet the death to which her
+husband has doomed her, she finds his letters preserved next her heart
+
+                                     What's here!
+    The letters of the loyal Leonatus?--
+    Soft, we'll no defence.
+
+The scene in which Posthumus stakes his ring on the virtue of his wife,
+and gives Iachimo permission to tempt her, is taken from the story. The
+baseness and folly of such conduct have been justly censured; but
+Shakspeare, feeling that Posthumus needed every excuse, has managed the
+quarrelling scene between him and Iachimo with the most admirable
+skill. The manner in which his high spirit is gradually worked up by the
+taunts of this Italian fiend, is contrived with far more probability,
+and much less coarseness, than in the original tale. In the end he is
+not the challenger, but the challenged; and could hardly (except on a
+moral principle, much too refined for those rude times) have declined
+the wager without compromising his own courage and his faith in the
+honor of Imogen.
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     I durst attempt it against any lady in the world.
+
+                         POSTHUMUS.
+
+     You are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion; and I
+     doubt not you sustain what you're worthy of, by your
+     attempt.
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     What's that?
+
+                         POSTHUMUS.
+
+     A repulse: though your _attempt_, as you call it, deserve
+     more--a punishment too.
+
+                         PHILARIO.
+
+     Gentlemen, enough of this. It came in too suddenly; let it
+     die as it was born, and I pray you be better acquainted.
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     Would I had put my estate and my neighbor's on the
+     approbation of what I have said!
+
+                         POSTHUMUS.
+
+     What lady would you choose to assail?
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     Yours, whom in constancy you think stands so safe
+
+In the interview between Imogen and Iachimo, he does not begin his
+attack on her virtue by a direct accusation against Posthumus; but by
+dark hints and half-uttered insinuations, such as Iago uses to madden
+Othello, he intimates that her husband, in his absence from her, has
+betrayed her love and truth, and forgotten her in the arms of another.
+All that Imogen says in this scene is comprised in a few lines--a brief
+question, or a more brief remark. The proud and delicate reserve with
+which she veils the anguish she suffers, is inimitably beautiful. The
+strongest expression of reproach he can draw from her, is only, "My
+lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." When he continues in the same strain,
+she exclaims in an agony, "Let me hear no more." When he urges her to
+revenge, she asks, with all the simplicity of virtue, "How should I be
+revenged?" And when he explains to her how she is to be avenged, her
+sudden burst of indignation, and her immediate perception of his
+treachery, and the motive for it, are powerfully fine: it is not only
+the anger of a woman whose delicacy has been shocked, but the spirit of
+a princess insulted in her court.
+
+    Away! I do condemn mine ears, that have
+    So long attended thee. If thou wert honorable,
+    Thou would'st have told this tale for virtue not
+    For such an end thou seek'st, as base as strange
+    Thou wrong'st a gentleman, who is as far
+    From thy report as thou from honor; and
+    Solicit'st here a lady that disdains
+    Thee and the devil alike.
+
+It has been remarked, that "her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false
+imputation, and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes,
+and may show that where there is a real attachment to virtue, there is
+no need of an outrageous antipathy to vice."[59]
+
+This is true; but can we fail to perceive that the instant and ready
+forgiveness of Imogen is accounted for, and rendered more graceful and
+characteristic by the very means which Iachimo employs to win it? He
+pours forth the most enthusiastic praises of her husband, professes that
+he merely made this trial of her out of his exceeding love for
+Posthumus, and she is pacified at once; but, with exceeding delicacy of
+feeling, she is represented as maintaining her dignified reserve and her
+brevity of speech to the end of the scene.[60]
+
+We must also observe how beautifully the character of Imogen is
+distinguished from those of Desdemona and Hermione. When she is made
+acquainted with her husband's cruel suspicions, we see in her deportment
+neither the meek submission of the former, nor the calm resolute dignity
+of the latter. The first effect produced on her by her husband's letter
+is conveyed to the fancy by the exclamation of Pisanio, who is gazing on
+her as she reads.--
+
+    What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper
+    Has cut her throat already! No, 'tis slander,
+    Whose edge is sharper than the sword!
+
+And in her first exclamations we trace, besides astonishment and
+anguish, and the acute sense of the injustice inflicted on her, a flash
+of indignant spirit, which we do not find in Desdemona or Hermione
+
+    False to his bed!--What is it to be false?
+    To lie in watch there, and to think of him?
+    To weep 'twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,
+    To break it with a fearful dream of him,
+    And cry myself awake?--that's false to his bed,
+    Is it?
+
+This is followed by that affecting lamentation over the falsehood and
+injustice of her husband, in which she betrays no atom of jealousy or
+wounded self-love, but observes in the extremity of her anguish, that
+after _his_ lapse from truth, "all good seeming would be discredited,"
+and she then resigns herself to his will with the most entire
+submission.
+
+In the original story, Zinevra prevails on the servant to spare her, by
+her exclamations and entreaties for mercy. "The lady, seeing the
+poniard, and hearing those words, exclaimed in terror, 'Alas! have pity
+on me for the love of Heaven! do not become the slayer of one who never
+offended thee, only to pleasure another. God, who knows all things,
+knows that I have never done that which could merit such a reward from
+my husband's hand.'"
+
+Now let us turn to Shakspeare. Imogen says,--
+
+              Come, fellow, be thou honest;
+    Do thou thy master's bidding: when thou seest him,
+    A little witness my obedience. Look!
+    I draw the sword myself; take it, and hit
+    The innocent mansion of my love, my heart.
+    Fear not; 'tis empty of all things but grief:
+    Thy master is not there, who was, indeed,
+    The riches of it. Do his bidding; strike!
+
+The devoted attachment of Pisanio to his royal mistress, all through the
+piece, is one of those side touches by which Shakspeare knew how to give
+additional effect to his characters.
+
+Cloten is odious;[61] but we must not overlook the peculiar fitness and
+propriety of his character, in connection with that of Imogen. He is
+precisely the kind of man who would be most intolerable to such a woman.
+He is a fool,--so is Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek: but the folly
+of Cloten is not only ridiculous, but hateful; it arises not so much
+from a want of understanding as a total want of heart; it is the
+perversion of sentiment, rather than the deficiency of intellect; he has
+occasional gleams of sense, but never a touch of feeling. Imogen
+describes herself not only as "sprighted with a fool," but as "frighted
+and anger'd worse." No other fool but Cloten--a compound of the booby
+and the villain--could excite in such a mind as Imogen's the same
+mixture of terror, contempt, and abhorrence. The stupid, obstinate
+malignity of Cloten, and the wicked machinations of the queen--
+
+    A father cruel, and a step-dame false,
+    A foolish suitor to a wedded lady--
+
+justify whatever might need excuse in the conduct of Imogen--as her
+concealed marriage and her flight from her father's court--and serve to
+call out several of the most beautiful and striking parts of her
+character: particularly that decision and vivacity of temper, which in
+her harmonize so beautifully with exceeding delicacy, sweetness, and
+submission.
+
+In the scene with her detested suitor, there is at first a careless
+majesty of disdain, which is admirable.
+
+                         I am much sorry, sir,
+    You put me to forget a lady's manners,
+    By being so verbal;[62] and learn now, for all,
+    That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce,
+    By the very truth of it, I care not for you,
+    And am so near the lack of charity,
+    (T' accuse myself,) I hate you; which I had rather
+    You felt, than make 't my boast.
+
+But when he dares to provoke her, by reviling the absent Posthumus, her
+indignation heightens her scorn, and her scorn sets a keener edge on her
+indignation.
+
+                        CLOTEN.
+
+    For the contract you pretend with that base wretch,
+    One bred of alms, and fostered with cold dishes,
+    With scraps o' the court; it is no contract, none.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                      Profane fellow!
+    Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more,
+    But what thou art, besides, thou wert too base
+    To be his groom; thou wert dignified enough,
+    Even to the point of envy, if 'twere made
+    Comparative for your virtues, to be styl'd
+    The under hangman of his kingdom; and hated
+    For being preferr'd so well.
+
+    He never can meet more mischance than come
+    To be but nam'd of thee. His meanest garment
+    That ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer
+    In my respect, than all the hairs above thee.
+    Were they all made such men.
+
+One thing more must be particularly remarked because it serves to
+individualize the character from the beginning to the end of the poem.
+We are constantly sensible that Imogen, besides being a tender and
+devoted woman, is a princess and a beauty, at the same time that she is
+ever superior to her position and her external charms. There is, for
+instance, a certain airy majesty of deportment--a spirit of accustomed
+command breaking out every now and then--the dignity, without the
+assumption of rank and royal birth, which is apparent in the scene with
+Cloten and elsewhere; and we have not only a general impression that
+Imogen, like other heroines, is beautiful, but the peculiar style and
+character of her beauty is placed before us: we have an image of the
+most luxuriant loveliness, combined with exceeding delicacy, and even
+fragility of person: of the most refined elegance, and the most
+exquisite modesty, set forth in one or two passages of description; as
+when Iachimo is contemplating her asleep:--
+
+                                 Cytherea,
+    How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily.
+    And whiter than the sheets.
+
+                         'Tis her breathing that
+    Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper
+    Bows toward her; and would underpeep her lids
+    To see the enclos'd lights, now canopied
+    Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd
+    With blue of heaven's own tinct!
+
+The preservation of her feminine character under her masculine attire;
+her delicacy, her modesty, and her timidity, are managed with the same
+perfect consistency and unconscious grace as in Viola. And we must not
+forget that her "neat cookery," which is so prettily eulogized by
+Guiderius:--
+
+    He cuts out roots in characters,
+    And sauc'd our broths, as Juno had been sick,
+    And he her dieter,
+
+formed part of the education of a princess in those remote times.
+
+Few reflections of a general nature are put into the mouth of Imogen;
+and what she says is more remarkable for sense, truth, and tender
+feeling, than for wit, or wisdom, or power of imagination. The following
+little touch of poetry reminds us of Juliet:--
+
+                                Ere I could
+    Give him that parting kiss, which I had set
+    Between two charming words, comes in my father;
+    And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,
+    Shakes all our buds from growing.
+
+Her exclamation on opening her husband's letter reminds us of the
+profound and thoughtful tenderness of Helen:--
+
+    O learned indeed were that astronomer
+    That knew the stars, as I his characters!
+    He'd lay the future open.
+
+The following are more in the manner of Isabel:--
+
+                             Most miserable
+    Is the desire that's glorious: bless'd be those,
+    How mean soe'er, that have their honest wills,
+    That seasons comfort,
+                  Against self-slaughter
+    There is a prohibition so divine
+    That cravens my weak hand.
+
+    Thus may poor fools
+    Believe false teachers; though those that are betray'd
+    Do feel the reason sharply, yet the traitor
+    Stands in worse case of woe,
+    Are we not brothers?
+
+                So man and man should be;
+    But clay and clay differs in dignity,
+    Whose dust is both alike.
+
+                Will poor folks lie
+    That have afflictions on them, knowing 'tis
+    A punishment or trial? Yes: no wonder,
+    When rich ones scarce tell true: to lapse in fulness
+    Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood
+    Is worse in kings than beggars.
+
+The sentence which follows, and which I believe has become proverbial,
+has much of the manner of Portia, both in the thought and the
+expression:--
+
+    Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
+    Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume
+    Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;
+    In a great pool, a swan's nest; pr'ythee, think
+    There's livers out of Britain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The catastrophe of this play has been much admired for the peculiar
+skill with which all the various threads of interest are gathered
+together at last, and entwined with the destiny of Imogen. It may be
+added, that one of its chief beauties is the manner in which the
+character of Imogen is not only preserved, but rises upon us to the
+conclusion with added grace: her instantaneous forgiveness of her
+husband before he even asks it, when she flings herself at once into his
+arms--
+
+    Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?
+
+and her magnanimous reply to her father, when he tells her, that by the
+discovery of her two brothers she has lost a kingdom--
+
+    No--I have gain'd two worlds by it--
+
+clothing a noble sentiment in a noble image, give the finishing touches
+of excellence to this most enchanting portrait.
+
+On the whole, Imogen is a lovely compound of goodness, truth, and
+affection, with just so much of passion and intellect and poetry, as
+serve to lend to the picture that power and glowing richness of effect
+which it would otherwise have wanted; and of her it might be said, if we
+could condescend to quote from any other poet with Shakespeare open
+before us, that "her person was a paradise, and her soul the cherub to
+guard it."[63]
+
+
+CORDELIA.
+
+There is in the beauty of Cordelia's character an effect too sacred for
+words, and almost too deep for tears; within her heart is a fathomless
+well of purest affection, but its waters sleep in silence and
+obscurity,--never failing in their depth and never overflowing in their
+fulness. Every thing in her seems to lie beyond our view, and affects us
+in a manner which we feel rather than perceive. The character appears to
+have no surface, no salient points upon which the fancy can readily
+seize: there is little external development of intellect, less of
+passion, and still less of imagination. It is completely made out in the
+course of a few scenes, and we are surprised to find that in those few
+scenes there is matter for a life of reflection, and materials enough
+for twenty heroines. If Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies,
+Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and
+holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of
+selfishness and passion, approaches near to perfection; and in her
+adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action,
+may be pronounced altogether perfect. The character, to speak of it
+critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be comprehended
+at once, or easily; and in the same manner Cordelia, as a woman, is one
+whom we must have loved before we could have known her, and known her
+long before we could have known her truly.
+
+Most people, I believe, have heard the story of the young German artist
+Müller, who, while employed in copying and engraving Raffaelle's Madonna
+del Sisto, was so penetrated by its celestial beauty, so distrusted his
+own power to do justice to it, that between admiration and despair he
+fell into a sadness; thence through the usual gradations, into a
+melancholy, thence into madness; and died just as he had put the
+finishing stroke to his own matchless work, which had occupied him for
+eight years. With some slight tinge of this concentrated kind of
+enthusiasm I have learned to contemplate the character of Cordelia; I
+have looked into it till the revelation of its hidden beauty, and an
+intense feeling of the wonderful genius which created it, have filled me
+at once with delight and despair. Like poor Müller, but with more
+reason, I _do_ despair of ever conveying, through a different and
+inferior medium, the impression made on my own mind to the mind of
+another.
+
+Schlegel, the most eloquent of critics, concludes his remarks on King
+Lear with these words: "Of the heavenly beauty of soul of Cordelia, I
+will not venture to speak." Now if I attempt what Schlegel and others
+have left undone, it is because I feel that this general acknowledgment
+of her excellence can neither satisfy those who have studied the
+character, nor convey a just conception of it to the mere reader. Amid
+the awful, the overpowering interest of the story, amid the terrible
+convulsions of passion and suffering, and pictures of moral and physical
+wretchedness which harrow up the soul, the tender influence of Cordelia,
+like that of a celestial visitant, is felt and acknowledged without
+being quite understood. Like a soft star that shines for a moment from
+behind a stormy cloud and the next is swallowed up in tempest and
+darkness, the impression it leaves is beautiful and deep,--but vague.
+Speak of Cordelia to a critic or to a general reader, all agree in the
+beauty of the portrait, for all must feel it; but when we come to
+details, I have heard more various and opposite opinions relative to her
+than any other of Shakspeare's characters--a proof of what I have
+advanced in the first instance, that from the simplicity with which the
+character is dramatically treated, and the small space it occupies, few
+are aware of its internal power, or its wonderful depth of purpose.
+
+It appears to me that the whole character rests upon the two sublimest
+principles of human action, the love of truth and the sense of duty; but
+these, when they stand alone, (as in the Antigone,) are apt to strike us
+as severe and cold. Shakspeare has, therefore, wreathed them round with
+the dearest attributes of our feminine nature, the power of feeling and
+inspiring affection. The first part of the play shows us how Cordelia is
+loved, the second part how she can love. To her father she is the object
+of a secret preference, his agony at her supposed unkindness draws from
+him the confession, that he had loved her most, and "thought to set his
+rest on her kind nursery." Till then she had been "his best object, the
+argument of his praise, balm of his age, most best, most dearest!" The
+faithful and worthy Kent is ready to brave death and exile in her
+defence: and afterwards a farther impression of her benign sweetness is
+conveyed in a simple and beautiful manner, when we are told that "since
+the lady Cordelia went to France, her father's poor fool had much pined
+away." We have her sensibility "when patience and sorrow strove which
+should express her goodliest:" and all her filial tenderness when she
+commits her poor father to the care of the physician, when she hangs
+over him as he is sleeping, and kisses him as she contemplates the wreck
+of grief and majesty.
+
+    O my dear father! restoration hang
+    Its medicine on my lips: and let this kiss
+    Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
+    Have in thy reverence made!
+    Had you not been their father, these white flakes
+    Had challenged pity of them! Was this a face
+    To be exposed against the warring winds,
+    To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder
+    In the most terrible and nimble stroke
+    Of quick cross lightning? to watch, (poor perdu!)
+    With thin helm? mine enemy's dog,
+    Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
+    Against my fire.
+
+Her mild magnanimity shines out in her farewell to her sisters, of whose
+real character she is perfectly aware:--
+
+    Ye jewels of our father! with washed eyes
+    Cordelia leaves you! I know ye what ye are,
+    And like a sister, am most loath to call
+    Your faults as they are nam'd. Use well our father,
+    To your professed bosoms I commit him.
+    But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,
+    I would commend him to a better place;
+    So farewell to you both.
+
+                        GONERIL.
+
+    Prescribe not us our duties!
+
+The modest pride with which she replies to the Duke of Burgundy is
+admirable; this whole passage is too illustrative of the peculiar
+character of Cordelia, as well as too exquisite, to be mutilated
+
+                  I yet beseech your majesty,
+    (If, for I want that glib and oily heart,
+    To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend
+    I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known,
+    It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
+    No unchaste action, or dishonored step
+    That hath deprived me of your grace and favor;
+    But even for want of that, for which I am richer;
+    A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue
+    I am glad I have not, tho' not to have it
+    Hath lost me in your liking.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+                                Better thou
+    Hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better.
+
+                        FRANCE.
+
+    Is it but this? a tardiness of nature,
+    That often leaves the history unspoke
+    Which it intends to do?--My lord of Burgundy,
+    What say you to the lady? love is not love
+    When it is mingled with respects that stand
+    Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
+    She is herself a dowry.
+
+                        BURGUNDY.
+
+                            Royal Lear,
+    Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
+    And here I take Cordelia by the hand
+    Duchess of Burgundy.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.
+
+                        BURGUNDY.
+
+    I am sorry, then, you have lost a father
+    That you must lose a husband.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                 Peace be with Burgundy!
+    Since that respects of fortune are his love,
+    I shall not be his wife.
+
+                        FRANCE.
+
+    Fairest Cordelia! thou art more rich, being poor,
+    Most choice, forsaken, and most lov'd, despised!
+    Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.
+
+She takes up arms, "not for ambition, but a dear father's right." In her
+speech after her defeat, we have a calm fortitude and elevation of soul,
+arising from the consciousness of duty, and lifting her above all
+consideration of self. She observes,--
+
+                      We are not the first
+    Who with best meaning have incurred the worst!
+
+She thinks and fears only for her father.
+
+    For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;
+    Myself would else out-frown false fortune's frown.
+
+To complete the picture, her very voice is characteristic, "ever soft,
+gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman."
+
+But it will be said, that the qualities here exemplified--as
+sensibility, gentleness, magnanimity, fortitude, generous affection--are
+qualities which belong, in their perfection, to others of Shakspeare's
+characters--to Imogen, for instance, who unites them all; and yet Imogen
+and Cordelia are wholly unlike each other. Even though we should reverse
+their situations, and give to Imogen the filial devotion of Cordelia,
+and to Cordelia the conjugal virtues of Imogen, still they would remain
+perfectly distinct as women. What is it, then, which lends to Cordelia
+that peculiar and individual truth of character, which distinguishes her
+from every other human being?
+
+It is a natural reserve, a tardiness of disposition, "which often leaves
+the history unspoke which it intends to do;" a subdued quietness of
+deportment and expression, a veiled shyness thrown over all her
+emotions, her language and her manner; making the outward demonstration
+invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. Not only
+is the portrait singularly beautiful and interesting in itself, but the
+conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of
+the story, is rendered consistent and natural by the wonderful truth and
+delicacy with which this peculiar disposition is sustained throughout
+the play.
+
+In early youth, and more particularly if we are gifted with a lively
+imagination, such a character as that of Cordelia is calculated above
+every other to impress and captivate us. Any thing like mystery, any
+thing withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by
+awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half perceive
+and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed.
+But this feeling is a part of our young life: when time and years have
+chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor
+from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out
+of which we build a shrine for our idol--then do we seek, we ask, we
+thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness, which revives in
+us the withered affections and feelings, buried but not dead. Then the
+excess of love is welcomed, not repelled: it is gracious to us as the
+sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk, with its few green leaves.
+Lear is old--"fourscore and upward"--but we see what he has been in
+former days: the ardent passions of youth have turned to rashness and
+wilfulness: he is long passed that age when we are more blessed in what
+we bestow than in what we receive. When he says to his daughters, "I
+gave ye all!" we feel that he requires all in return, with a jealous,
+restless, exacting affection which defeats its own wishes. How many such
+are there in the world! How many to sympathize with the fiery, fond old
+man, when he shrinks as if petrified from Cordelia's quiet calm reply!
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+                        Now our joy,
+    Although the last not least--
+    What can you say to draw
+    A third more opulent than your sisters'? Speak!
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    Nothing, my lord.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Nothing!
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+             Nothing.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Nothing can come of nothing: speak again!
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    Unhappy that I am! I cannot heave
+    My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
+    According to my bond; nor more, nor less.
+
+Now this is perfectly natural. Cordelia has penetrated the vile
+characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious, that, in proportion as her
+own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross
+hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their "plaited
+cunning;" and would retire from all competition with what she so
+disdains and abhors,--even into the opposite extreme? In such a case, as
+she says herself--
+
+    What should Cordelia do?--love and be silent?
+
+For the very expressions of Lear--
+
+               What can you say to draw
+    A third more opulent than your sisters'?
+
+are enough to strike dumb forever a generous, delicate, but shy
+disposition, such as Cordelia's, by holding out a bribe for professions.
+
+If Cordelia were not thus portrayed, this deliberate coolness would
+strike us as verging on harshness or obstinacy; but it is beautifully
+represented as a certain modification of character, the necessary result
+of feelings habitually, if not naturally, repressed: and through the
+whole play we trace the same peculiar and individual disposition--the
+same absence of all display--the same sobriety of speech veiling the
+most profound affections--the same quiet steadiness of purpose--the same
+shrinking from all exhibition of emotion.
+
+"Tous les sentimens naturels ont leur pudeur," was a _vivâ voce_
+observation of Madame de Staël, when disgusted by the sentimental
+affectation of her imitators. This "pudeur," carried to an excess,
+appears to me the peculiar characteristic of Cordelia. Thus, in the
+description of her deportment when she receives the letter of the Earl
+of Kent, informing her of the cruelty of her sisters and the wretched
+condition of Lear, we seem to have her before us:--
+
+                        KENT.
+
+    Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief?
+
+                        GENTLEMAN.
+
+    Ay, sir, she took them, and read them in my presence
+    And now and then an ample tear stole down
+    Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen
+    Over her passion; who, most rebel-like
+    Sought to be king over her.
+
+                        KENT.
+
+    O then it moved her!
+
+                        GENTLEMAN.
+
+                        Not to a rage.
+    Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father
+    Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart,
+    Cried, _Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! Sisters!
+    What, i' the storm? i' the night?
+    Let pity not be believed._ Then she shook
+    The holy water from her heavenly eyes;
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                      Then away she started,
+    To deal with grief alone.
+
+Here the last line--the image brought before us of Cordelia starting
+away from observation, "to deal with grief alone," is as exquisitely
+beautiful as it is characteristic.
+
+But all the passages hitherto quoted must yield in beauty and power to
+that scene, in which her poor father recognizes her, and in the
+intervals of distraction asks forgiveness of his wronged child. The
+subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's character, her quiet but
+intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man,
+are brought before us in so few words, and at the same time sustained
+with such a deep intuitive knowledge of the innermost workings of the
+human heart, that as there is nothing surpassing this scene in
+Shakspeare himself, so there is nothing that can be compared to it in
+any other writer.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.
+    Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
+    Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
+    Do scald like molten lead.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                       Sir, do you know me?
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    You are a spirit, I know: when did you die?
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    Still, still far wide!
+
+                        PHYSICIAN.
+
+    He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight!
+    I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity
+    To see another thus. I know not what to say.
+    I will not swear these are my hands: Let's see.
+    I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured
+    Of my condition.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                      O look upon me, sir,
+    And hold your hands in benediction o'er me--
+    No, sir, you must not kneel.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+              Pray, do not mock me:
+    I am a very foolish, fond old man,
+    Fourscore and upwards; and to deal plainly with you,
+    I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
+    Methinks I should know you, and know this man,
+    Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
+    What place this is; and all the skill I have
+    Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
+    Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
+    For as I am a man, I think this lady
+    To be my child Cordelia.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                              And so I am, I am.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray you weep not
+    If you have poison for me I will drink it.
+    I know you do not love me; for your sisters
+    Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
+    You have some cause, they have not.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    No cause, no cause!
+
+As we do not estimate Cordelia's affection for her father by the
+coldness of her language, so neither should we measure her indignation
+against her sisters by the mildness of her expressions. What, in fact,
+can be more eloquently significant, and at the same time more
+characteristic of Cordelia, than the single line when she and her father
+are conveyed to their prison:--
+
+    Shall we not see these _daughters_ and these _sisters_?
+
+The irony here is so bitter and intense, and at the same time so quiet,
+so feminine, so dignified in the expression, that who but Cordelia would
+have uttered it in the same manner, or would have condensed such ample
+meaning into so few and simple words?
+
+We lose sight of Cordelia during the whole of the second and third, and
+great part of the fourth act; but towards the conclusion she reappears.
+Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness being carried to its
+extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, "like an engine wrenching
+our frame of nature from its fixed place," then, like a redeeming angel,
+she descends to mingle in the scene, "loosening the springs of pity in
+our eyes," and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of
+admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed
+terrible! wondrous terrible! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his
+arms, compassion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are left
+only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own
+sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the
+catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of
+absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for
+heaven--our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!--O who, after
+sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life
+prolonged? What replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?--a crown upon
+that old gray head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath?--on
+which the deep dread bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent
+their fury? O never, never!
+
+    Let him pass! he hates him
+    That would upon the rack of this rough world
+    Stretch him out longer.
+
+In the story of King Lear and his three daughters, as it is related in
+the "delectable and mellifluous" romance of Perceforest, and in the
+Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the conclusion is fortunate. Cordelia
+defeats her sisters, and replaces her father on his throne. Spenser, in
+his version of the story, has followed these authorities. Shakspeare has
+preferred the catastrophe of the old ballad, founded apparently on some
+lost tradition. I suppose it is by way of amending his errors, and
+bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been
+thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have
+altered Romeo and Juliet: they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia
+into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of
+the play--exit with drums and colors flying--to be married to Edgar. Now
+any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous
+impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be
+imagined. "I cannot conceive," says Schlegel, "what ideas of art and
+dramatic connection those persons have, who suppose we can at pleasure
+tack a double conclusion to a tragedy--a melancholy one for hard-hearted
+spectators, and a merry one for those of softer mould." The fierce
+manners depicted in this play, the extremes of virtue and vice in the
+persons, belong to the remote period of the story.[64] There is no
+attempt at character in the old narratives; Regan and Goneril are
+monsters of ingratitude, and Cordelia merely distinguished by her filial
+piety; whereas, in Shakspeare, this filial piety is an affection quite
+distinct from the qualities which serve to individualize the human
+being; we have a perception of innate character apart from all
+accidental circumstance: we see that if Cordelia had never known her
+father, had never been rejected from his love, had never been a born
+princess or a crowned queen, she would not have been less Cordelia; less
+distinctly _herself_; that is, a woman of a steady mind, of calm but
+deep affections, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved
+deportment.
+
+As to Regan and Goneril--"tigers, not daughters"--we might wish to
+regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable;
+but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for
+the prototype of Cordelia: there was a Julia Alpinula, the young
+priestess of Aventicum,[65] who, unable to save her father's life by the
+sacrifice of her own, died with him--"_infelix patris, infelix
+proles_"--but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter,
+too. I remember seeing at Genoa, Guido's "Pieta Romana," in which the
+expression of the female bending over the aged parent, who feeds from
+her bosom, is perfect,--but it is not a Cordelia: only Raffaelle could
+have painted Cordelia.
+
+But the character which at once suggests itself in comparison with
+Cordelia, as the heroine of filial tenderness and piety, is certainly
+the Antigone of Sophocles. As poetical conceptions, they rest on the
+same basis: they are both pure abstractions of truth, piety, and natural
+affection; and in both, love, as a passion, is kept entirely out of
+sight: for though the womanly character is sustained, by making them the
+objects of devoted attachment, yet to have portrayed them as influenced
+by passion, would have destroyed that unity of purpose and feeling which
+is one source of power; and, besides, have disturbed that serene purity
+and grandeur of soul, which equally distinguishes both heroines. The
+spirit, however, in which the two characters are conceived, is as
+different as possible; and we must not fail to remark, that Antigone,
+who plays a principal part in two fine tragedies, and is distinctly and
+completely made out, is considered as a masterpiece, the very triumph of
+the ancient classical drama; whereas, there are many among Shakspeare's
+characters which are equal to Cordelia as dramatic conceptions, and
+superior to her in finishing of outline, as well as in the richness of
+the poetical coloring.
+
+When Oedipus, pursued by the vengeance of the gods, deprived of sight
+by his own mad act, and driven from Thebes by his subjects and his sons,
+wanders forth, abject and forlorn, he is supported by his daughter
+Antigone; who leads him from city to city, begs for him, and pleads for
+him against the harsh, rude men, who, struck more by his guilt than his
+misery, would drive him from his last asylum. In the opening of the
+"Oedipus Coloneus," where the wretched old man appears leaning on his
+child, and seats himself in the consecrated Grove of the Furies, the
+picture presented to us is wonderfully solemn and beautiful. The
+patient, duteous tenderness of Antigone; the scene in which she pleads
+for her brother Polynices, and supplicates her father to receive his
+offending son; her remonstrance to Polynices, when she entreats him not
+to carry the threatened war into his native country, are finely and
+powerfully delineated; and in her lamentation over Oedipus, when he
+perishes in the mysterious grove, there is a pathetic beauty, apparent
+even through the stiffness of the translation.
+
+    Alas! I only wished I might have died
+    With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
+    For longer life?
+    O I was fond of misery with him;
+    E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved
+    When he was with me. O my dearest father,
+    Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,
+    Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
+    Wert dear, and shalt be ever.
+    --Even as he wished he died,
+    In a strange land--for such was his desire--
+    A shady turf covered his lifeless limbs,
+    Nor unlamented fell! for O these eyes,
+    My father, still shall weep for thee, nor time
+    E'er blot thee from my memory.
+
+The filial piety of Antigone is the most affecting part of the tragedy
+of "Oedipus Coloneus:" her sisterly affection, and her heroic
+self-devotion to a religious duty, form the plot of the tragedy called
+by her name. When her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had slain
+each other before the walls of Thebes, Creon issued an edict forbidding
+the rites of sepulture to Polynices, (as the invader of his country,)
+and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know
+the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as
+alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon
+hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave,
+enters in the first scene, announcing her fixed resolution to brave the
+threatened punishment: her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril
+of such an undertaking, and endeavors to dissuade her from it, on which
+Antigone replies:--
+
+    Wert thou to proffer what I do not ask--
+    Thy poor assistance--I would scorn it now;
+    Act as thou wilt, I'll bury him myself:
+    Let me perform but that, and death is welcome.
+    I'll do the pious deed, and lay me down
+    By my dear brother; loving and beloved,
+    We'll rest together.
+
+She proceeds to execute her generous purpose; she covers with earth the
+mangled corse of Polynices, pours over it the accustomed libations, is
+detected in her pious office, and after nobly defending her conduct, is
+led to death by command of the tyrant: her sister Ismene, struck with
+shame and remorse, now comes forward to accuse herself as a partaker in
+the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and
+scornfully rejects her; and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation
+on the misery of perishing "without the nuptial song--a virgin and a
+slave," she dies _à l'antique_--she strangles herself to avoid a
+lingering death.
+
+Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her
+grave: but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether
+Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover.
+
+Thus it will be seen that in the Antigone there is a great deal of what
+may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry
+and character: she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs
+the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed
+before us as to _command_ our admiration. According to the classical
+ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the
+delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace,
+a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste and our
+understanding, while they fill and exalt the imagination: but in
+Cordelia it is not the external coloring or form, it is not what she
+says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and
+suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism
+of Cordelia is more passive and tender--it melts into our heart; and in
+the veiled loveliness and unostentatious delicacy of her character,
+there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and
+less elaborate than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our
+admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her
+austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the
+Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of
+the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath
+th' almighty dove?" and as that heavenly form is connected with our
+human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or
+maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she
+not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her
+filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48]
+
+                    ----The gods approve
+     The depth, and not the tumult of the soul.
+
+                              WORDSWORTH.
+
+"Il pouvait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de l'orage sans son
+coeur," was finely observed of Madame de Staël in her maturer years; it
+would have been true of Hermione at any period of her life.
+
+[49] Winter's Tale, act v scene 11
+
+[50] Only in the last scene, when, with solemnity befitting the
+occasion, Paulina invokes the majestic figure to "descend, and be stone
+no more," and where she presents her daughter to her. "Turn, good lady!
+our Perdita is found."
+
+[51] Act iii, scene 3.
+
+[52] Which being interpreted into modern English, means, I believe,
+nothing more than that the pattern was what we now call _arabesque_.
+
+[53] There is an incident in the original tale, "Il Moro di Venezia,"
+which could not well be transferred to the drama, but which is very
+effective, and adds, I think, to the circumstantial horrors of the
+story. Desdemona does not accidentally drop the handkerchief; it is
+stolen from her by Iago's little child, an infant of three years old,
+whom he trains and bribes to the theft. The love of Desdemona for this
+child, her little playfellow--the pretty description of her taking it in
+her arms and caressing it, while it profits by its situation to steal
+the handkerchief from her bosom, are well imagined, and beautifully
+told; and the circumstance of Iago employing his own innocent child as
+the instrument of his infernal villany, adds a deeper, and, in truth an
+unnecessary touch of the fiend, to his fiendish character.
+
+[54] Consequences are so linked together, that the exclamation of
+Emilia,
+
+     O thou dull Moor!--That handkerchief thou speakest of
+     I found by fortune, and did give my husband!--
+
+is sufficient to reveal to Othello the whole history of his ruin.
+
+[55] Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Giornata, 2do.
+
+[56] _Vide_ Dr. Johnson, and Dunlop's History of Fiction.
+
+[57] See Hazlitt and Schlegel on the catastrophe of Cymbeline.
+
+[58] More rare--_i. e._ more exquisitely poignant.
+
+[59] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.
+
+[60] _Vide_ act 1. scene 7.
+
+[61] The character of Cloten has been pronounced by some unnatural, by
+others inconsistent, and by others obsolete. The following passage
+occurs in one of Miss Seward's letters, vol. iii p. 246: "It is curious
+that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten, have given
+the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of
+countenance, the shuffling gait, the burst of voice, the bustling
+insignificance, the fever and ague fits of valor, the froward
+tetchiness, the unprincipled malice, and, what is more curious, those
+occasional gleams of good sense amidst the floating clouds of folly
+which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which, in the
+character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in
+character; but in the some-time Captain C----, I saw that the portrait
+of Cloten was not out of nature."
+
+[62] i. e. _full of words_.
+
+[63] Dryden.
+
+[64] King Lear may be supposed to have lived about one thousand years
+before the Christian era, being the forth or fifth in descent from King
+Brut, the great-grandson of Æneas, and the fabulous founder of the
+kingdom of Britain.
+
+[65] She is commemorated by Lord Byron. _Vide_ Childe Harold Canto iii.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.
+
+
+CLEOPATRA.
+
+I cannot agree with one of the most philosophical of Shakspeare's
+critics, who has asserted "that the actual truth of particular events,
+in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure
+as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all,
+it is equally just with regard to characters: and in either case can we
+admit it? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which
+Shakspeare has treated the received and admitted truths of history--I
+mean according to the imperfect knowledge of his time--is admirable; his
+inaccuracies are few: his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction
+between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be
+wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury of
+history, to debase its purity,--new-stamp it arbitrarily with effigies
+and legends of his own devising and then attempt to pass it current,
+like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners: he only
+rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened it, so that history herself
+has been known to receive it back as sterling.
+
+Truth, wherever manifested, should be sacred: so Shakspeare deemed, and
+laid no profane hand upon her altars. But tragedy--majestic tragedy, is
+worthy to stand before the sanctuary of Truth, and to be the priestess
+of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue
+amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the
+changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily
+subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within;"[66]--whatever is
+pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the
+perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl
+and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the
+interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the
+serious sorrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived,
+suffered and acted upon this earth, to array them in her rich and
+stately robes, and present them before us as powers evoked from dust and
+darkness, to awaken the generous sympathies, the terror or the pity of
+mankind. It does not add to the pain, as far as tragedy is a source of
+emotion, that the wrongs and sufferings represented, the guilt of Lady
+Macbeth, the despair of Constance, the arts of Cleopatra, and the
+distresses of Katherine, had a real existence; but it adds infinitely to
+the moral effect, as a subject of contemplation and a lesson of
+conduct.[67]
+
+I shall be able to illustrate these observations more fully in the
+course of this section, in which we will consider those characters which
+are drawn from history; and first, Cleopatra.
+
+Of all Shakspeare's female characters, Miranda and Cleopatra appear to
+me the most wonderful. The first, unequalled as a poetic conception; the
+latter, miraculous as a work of art. If we could make a regular
+classification of his characters, these would form the two extremes of
+simplicity and complexity; and all his other characters would be found
+to fill up some shade or gradation between these two.
+
+Great crimes, springing from high passions, grafted on high qualities,
+are the legitimate source of tragic poetry. But to make the extreme of
+littleness produce an effect like grandeur--to make the excess of
+frailty produce an effect like power--to heap up together all that is
+most unsubstantial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till
+the worthlessness be lost in the magnitude, and a sense of the sublime
+spring from the very elements of littleness,--to do this, belonged only
+to Shakspeare that worker of miracles. Cleopatra is a brilliant
+antithesis, a compound of contradictions, of all that we most hate,
+with what we most admire. The whole character is the triumph of the
+external over the innate; and yet like one of her country's
+hieroglyphics, though she present at first view a splendid and
+perplexing anomaly, there is deep meaning and wondrous skill in the
+apparent enigma, when we come to analyze and decipher it. But how are we
+to arrive at the solution of this glorious riddle, whose dazzling
+complexity continually mocks and eludes us? What is most astonishing in
+the character of Cleopatra is its antithetical construction--its
+_consistent inconsistency_, if I may use such an expression--which
+renders it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles.
+It will, perhaps, be found on the whole, that vanity and the love of
+power predominate; but I dare not say it _is_ so, for these qualities
+and a hundred others mingle into each other, and shift and change, and
+glance away, like the colors in a peacock's train.
+
+In some others of Shakspeare's female characters, also remarkable for
+their complexity, (Portia and Juliet, for instance,) we are struck with
+the delightful sense of harmony in the midst of contrast, so that the
+idea of unity and simplicity of effect is produced in the midst of
+variety; but in Cleopatra it is the absence of unity and simplicity
+which strikes us; the impression is that of perpetual and irreconcilable
+contrast. The continual approximation of whatever is most opposite in
+character, in situation, in sentiment, would be fatiguing, were it not
+so perfectly natural: the woman herself would be distracting, if she
+were not so enchanting.
+
+I have not the slightest doubt that Shakspeare's Cleopatra is the real
+historical Cleopatra--the "Rare Egyptian"--individualized and placed
+before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's
+wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of
+irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of
+imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her
+tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her
+magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of
+the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized,
+mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant
+impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy
+sorcery.
+
+What better proof can we have of the individual truth of the character
+than the admission that Shakspeare's Cleopatra produces exactly the same
+effect on us that is recorded of the real Cleopatra? She dazzles our
+faculties, perplexes our judgment, bewilders and bewitches our fancy;
+from the beginning to the end of the drama, we are conscious of a kind
+of fascination against which our moral sense rebels, but from which
+there is no escape. The epithets applied to her perpetually
+by Antony and others confirm this impression: "enchanting
+queen!"--"witch"--"spell"--"great fairy"--"cockatrice"--"serpent of old
+Nile"--"thou grave charm!"[68] are only a few of them; and who does not
+know by heart the famous quotations in which this Egyptian Circe is
+described with all her infinite seductions?
+
+                   Fie! wrangling queen!
+    Whom every thing becomes--to chide, to laugh,
+    To weep; whose every passion fully strives
+    To make itself, in thee, fair and admired.
+
+    Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
+    Her infinite variety:--
+                          For vilest things
+    Become themselves in her.
+
+And the pungent irony of Enobarbus has well exposed her feminine arts,
+when he says, on the occasion of Antony's intended departure,--
+
+     Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies
+     instantly: I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer
+     moment.
+
+                         ANTONY.
+
+     She is cunning past man's thought.
+
+                         ENOBARBUS.
+
+     Alack, sir, no! her passions are made of nothing but the
+     finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and
+     waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and
+     tempests than almanacs can report; this cannot be cunning
+     in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as
+     Jove.
+
+The whole secret of her absolute dominion over the facile Antony may be
+found in one little speech:--
+
+    See where he is--who's with him--what he does--
+    (I did not send you.) If you find him sad,
+    Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report
+    That I am sudden sick! Quick! and return.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Madam, methinks if you did love him dearly,
+    You do not hold the method to enforce
+    The like from him.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    What should I do, I do not?
+
+                       CHARMIAN.
+
+    In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Tempt him not too far.
+
+But Cleopatra is a mistress of her art, and knows better: and what a
+picture of her triumphant petulance, her imperious and imperial
+coquetry, is given in her own words!
+
+                  That time--O times!
+    I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night
+    I laughed him into patience: and next morn,
+    Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
+    Then put my tires and mantles on, whilst
+    I wore his sword, Philippan.
+
+When Antony enters full of some serious purpose which he is about to
+impart, the woman's perverseness, and the tyrannical waywardness with
+which she taunts him and plays upon his temper, are admirably depicted.
+
+    I know, by that same eye, there's some good news.
+    What says the married woman?[69] You may go;
+    Would she had never given you leave to come!
+    Let her not say, 'tis I that keep you here;
+    I have no power upon you; hers you are.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    The gods best know--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+               O, never was there queen
+    So mightily betray'd! Yet at the first,
+    I saw the treasons planted.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                              Cleopatra!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Why should I think you can be mine, and true,
+    Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,
+    Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness
+    To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
+    Which break themselves in swearing!
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                        Most sweet queen!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Nay, pray you, seek no color for your going,
+    But bid farewell, and go.
+
+She recovers her dignity for a moment at the news of Fulvia's death, as
+if roused by a blow:--
+
+    Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
+    It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?
+
+And then follows the artful mockery with which she tempts and provokes
+him, in order to discover whether he regrets his wife.
+
+                      O most false love!
+    Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill
+    With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see
+    In Fulvia's death, how mine receiv'd shall be.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    Quarrel no more; but be prepared to know
+    The purposes I bear: which are, or cease,
+    As you shall give th' advice. Now, by the fire
+    That quickens Nilus' shrine, I go from hence
+    Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war,
+    As thou affectest.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+            Cut my lace, Charmian, come--But
+    let it be. I am quickly ill, and well.
+    So Antony loves.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                My precious queen, forbear:
+    And give true evidence to his love which stands
+    An honorable trial.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                         So Fulvia told me.
+    I pr'ythee turn aside, and weep for her:
+    Then bid adieu to me, and say, the tears
+    Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene
+    Of excellent dissembling; and let it look
+    Like perfect honor.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                You'll heat my blood--no more.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    You can do better yet; but this is meetly.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    Now, by my sword--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                   And target--still he mends:
+    But this is not the best. Look, pr'ythee, Charmian,
+    How this Herculean Roman does become
+    The carriage of his chafe!
+
+This is, indeed, most "excellent dissembling;" but when she has fooled
+and chafed the Herculean Roman to the verge of danger, then comes that
+return of tenderness which secures the power she has tried to the
+utmost, and we have all the elegant, the poetical Cleopatra in her
+beautiful farewell.
+
+                  Forgive me!
+    Since my becomings kill me when they do not
+    Eye well to you. Your honor calls you hence,
+    Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,
+    And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword
+    Sit laurell'd victory; and smooth success
+    Be strew'd before your feet!
+
+Finer still are the workings of her variable mind and lively
+imagination, after Antony's departure; her fond repining at his absence,
+her violent spirit, her right royal wilfulness and impatience, as if it
+were a wrong to her majesty, an insult to her sceptre, that there should
+exist in her despite such things as space and time; and high treason to
+her sovereign power, to dare to remember what she chooses to forget
+
+    Give me to drink mandragora,
+    That I might sleep out this great gap of time
+    My Antony is away.
+
+                       O Charmian!
+    Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he,
+    Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?
+    O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
+    Do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?
+    The demi-Atlas of this earth--the arm
+    And burgonet of men. He's speaking now,
+    Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile?
+    For so he calls me.
+                        Met'st thou my posts?
+
+                        ALEXAS.
+
+    Ay, madam, twenty several messengers:
+    Why do you send so thick?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                   Who's born that day
+    When I forget to send to Antony,
+    Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian.
+    Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian,
+    Ever love Cæsar so?
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+                        O that brave Cæsar!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Be chok'd with such another emphasis!
+    Say, the brave Antony.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+                          The valiant Cæsar!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth,
+    If thou with Cæsar paragon again
+    My man of men!
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+                  By your most gracious pardon,
+    I sing but after you.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                         My salad days,
+    When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
+    To say as I said then. But, come away--
+    Get me some ink and paper: he shall have every day
+    A several greeting, or I'll unpeople Egypt.
+
+We learn from Plutarch, that it was a favorite amusement with Antony and
+Cleopatra to ramble through the streets at night, and bandy ribald jests
+with the populace of Alexandria. From the same authority, we know that
+they were accustomed to live on the most familiar terms with their
+attendants and the companions of their revels. To these traits we must
+add, that with all her violence, perverseness, egotism, and caprice,
+Cleopatra mingled a capability for warm affections and kindly feeling,
+or rather what we should call in these days, a constitutional
+_good-nature_; and was lavishly generous to her favorites and
+dependents. These characteristics we find scattered through the play;
+they are not only faithfully rendered by Shakspeare, but he has made the
+finest use of them in his delineation of manners. Hence the occasional
+freedom of her women and her attendants, in the midst of their fears and
+flatteries, becomes most natural and consistent: hence, too, their
+devoted attachment and fidelity, proved even in death. But as
+illustrative of Cleopatra's disposition, perhaps the finest and most
+characteristic scene in the whole play, is that in which the messenger
+arrives from Rome with the tidings of Antony's marriage with Octavia.
+She perceives at once with quickness that all is not well, and she
+hastens to anticipate the worst, that she may have the pleasure of being
+disappointed. Her impatience to know what she fears to learn, the
+vivacity with which she gradually works herself up into a state of
+excitement, and at length into fury, is wrought out with a force of
+truth which makes us recoil.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                              Antony's dead!
+    If thou say so, villain, thou kill'st thy mistress.
+    But well and free,
+    If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here
+    My bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings
+    Have lipp'd, and trembled kissing.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    First, madam, he is well.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Why, there's more gold. But, sirrah, mark! we use
+    To say, the dead are well: bring it to that,
+    The gold I give thee will I melt, and pour
+    Down thy ill-uttering throat.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Good madam, hear me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                        Well, go to, I will.
+    But there's no goodness in thy face. If Antony
+    Be free and healthful, why so tart a favor
+    To trumpet such good tidings? If not well,
+    Thou should'st come like a fury crown'd with snakes.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Wil't please you hear me?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak'st;
+    Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well,
+    Or friends with Cæsar, or not captive to him,
+    I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail
+    Rich pearls upon thee.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Madam, he's well.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                     Well said.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    And friends with Cæsar.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                       Thou art an honest man.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Cæsar and he are greater friends than ever.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Make thee a fortune from me.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+                           But yet, madam--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I do not like _but yet_--it does allay
+    The good precedence. Fie upon _but yet_:
+    _But yet_ is as a gaoler to bring forth
+    Some monstrous malefactor. Pr'ythee, friend,
+    Pour out thy pack of matter to mine ear,
+    The good and bad together. He's friends with Cæsar
+    In state of health, thou say'st; and thou say'st free.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Free, madam! No: I made no such report,
+    He's bound unto Octavia.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    For what good turn?
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+              Madam he's married to Octavia.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    The most infectious pestilence upon thee!
+                        [_Strikes him down._
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Good madam, patience.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                  What say you? [_Strikes him again._
+    Hence horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes
+    Like balls before me--I'll unhair thine head--
+    Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stewed in brine
+    Smarting in ling'ring pickle.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+                                  Gracious madam!
+    I, that do bring the news, made not the match.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Say 'tis not so, a province I will give thee,
+    And make thy fortunes proud: the blow thou hadst
+    Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage;
+    And I will boot thee with what gift beside
+    Thy modesty can beg.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+                          He's married, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Rogue, thou hast lived too long. [_Draws a dagger._
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Nay then I'll run.
+    What mean you, madam? I have made no fault. [_Exit._
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Good madam, keep yourself within yourself;
+    The man is innocent.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt.
+    Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures
+    Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again;
+    Though I am mad, I will not bite him--Call!
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    He is afraid to come.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                         I will not hurt him.
+    These hands do lack nobility, that they strike
+    A meaner than myself.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    In praising Antony I have dispraised Cæsar.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Many times, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                     I am paid for't now--
+    Lead me from hence.
+    I faint. O Iras, Charmian--'tis no matter
+    Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him
+    Report the features of Octavia, her years,
+    Her inclination--let him not leave out
+    The color of her hair. Bring me word quickly.
+                            [_Exit Alex._
+
+    Let him forever go--let him not--Charmian,
+    Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,
+    T'other way he's a Mars. Bid you Alexas
+                            [_To Mardian._
+
+    Bring me word how tall she is. Pity me, Charmian.
+    But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.
+
+I have given this scene entire because I know nothing comparable to it
+The pride and arrogance of the Egyptian queen, the blandishment of the
+woman, the unexpected but natural transitions of temper and feeling, the
+contest of various passions, and at length--when the wild hurricane has
+spent its fury--the melting into tears, faintness, and languishment, are
+portrayed with the most astonishing power, and truth, and skill in
+feminine nature. More wonderful still is the splendor and force of
+coloring which is shed over this extraordinary scene. The mere idea of
+an angry woman beating her menial, presents something ridiculous or
+disgusting to the mind; in a queen or a tragedy heroine it is still more
+indecorous;[70] yet this scene is as far as possible from the vulgar or
+the comic. Cleopatra seems privileged to "touch the brink of all we
+hate" with impunity. This imperial termagant, this "wrangling queen,
+whom every thing becomes," becomes even her fury. We know not by what
+strange power it is, that in the midst of all these unruly passions and
+childish caprices, the poetry of the character, and the fanciful and
+sparkling grace of the delineation are sustained and still rule in the
+imagination; but we feel that it is so.
+
+I need hardly observe, that we have historical authority for the
+excessive violence of Cleopatra's temper. Witness the story of her
+boxing the ears of her treasurer, in presence of Octavius, as related by
+Plutarch. Shakspeare has made a fine use of this anecdote also towards
+the conclusion of the drama, but it is not equal in power to this scene
+with the messenger.
+
+The man is afterwards brought back, almost by force, to satisfy
+Cleopatra's jealous anxiety, by a description of Octavia:--but this
+time, made wise by experience, he takes care to adapt his information to
+the humors of his imperious mistress, and gives her a satirical picture
+of her rival. The scene which follows, in which Cleopatra--artful,
+acute, and penetrating as she is--becomes the dupe of her feminine spite
+and jealousy, nay, assists in duping herself; and after having cuffed
+the messenger for telling her truths which are offensive, rewards him
+for the falsehood which flatters her weakness--is not only an admirable
+exhibition of character, but a fine moral lesson.
+
+She concludes, after dismissing the messenger with gold and thanks,
+
+                  I repent me much
+    That I so harry'd him. Why, methinks by him
+    This creature's no such thing?
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    O nothing, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    The man hath seen some majesty, and should know!
+
+Do we not fancy Cleopatra drawing herself up with all the vain
+consciousness of rank and beauty as she pronounces this last line? and
+is not this the very woman who celebrated her own apotheosis,--who
+arrayed herself in the robe and diadem of the goddess Isis, and could
+find no titles magnificent enough for her children but those of _the
+Sun_ and _the Moon_?
+
+The despotism and insolence of her temper are touched in some other
+places most admirably. Thus, when she is told that the Romans libel and
+abuse her, she exclaims,--
+
+    Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
+    That speak against us!
+
+And when one of her attendants observes, that "Herod of Jewry dared not
+look upon her but when she were well pleased," she immediately replies,
+"That Herod's head I'll have."[71]
+
+When Proculeius surprises her in her monument, and snatches her poniard
+from her, terror, and fury, pride, passion, and disdain, swell in her
+haughty soul, and seem to shake her very being.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                   Where art thou, death?
+    Come hither, come! come, come and take a queen
+    Worth many babes and beggars!
+
+                        PROCULEIUS.
+
+    O temperance, lady?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Sir, I will eat no meat; I'll not drink, sir:
+    If idle talk will once be necessary.
+    I'll not sleep neither; this mortal house I'll ruin,
+    Do Cæsar what he can! Know, sir, that I
+    Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court,
+    Nor once be chastis'd with the sober eye
+    Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up,
+    And show me to the shouting varletry
+    Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
+    Be gentle grave to me! Rather on Nilus' mud
+    Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies
+    Blow me into abhorring! Rather make
+    My country's high pyramids my gibbet,
+    And hang me up in chains!
+
+In the same spirit of royal bravado, but finer still, and worked up with
+a truly Oriental exuberance of fancy and imagery, is her famous
+description of Antony, addressed to Dolabella:--
+
+    Most noble empress you have heard of me?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I cannot tell.
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Assuredly, you know me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.
+    You laugh when boys, or women, tell their dreams
+    Is't not your trick?
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    I understand not, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I dream'd there was an emperor Antony;
+    O such another sleep, that I might see
+    But such another man!
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    If it might please you--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck
+    A sun and moon; which kept their course, and lighted
+    The little O, the earth.
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Most sovereign creature--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    His legs bestrid the ocean: his reared arm
+    Crested the world; his voice was propertied
+    As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
+    But when he meant to quail or shake the orb
+    He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
+    There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas,
+    That grew the more by reaping. His delights
+    Were dolphin like; they show'd his back above
+    The element they liv'd in. In his livery[72]
+    Walk'd crowns and coronets; realms and islands were
+    As plates[73] dropp'd from his pocket.
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Cleopatra!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Think you there was, or might be, such a man
+    As this I dream'd of?
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Gentle madam, no.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    You lie,--up to the hearing of the gods!
+
+There was no room left in this amazing picture for the display of that
+passionate maternal tenderness, which was a strong and redeeming feature
+in Cleopatra's historical character; but it is not left untouched, for
+when she is imprecating mischiefs on herself, she wishes, as the last
+and worst of possible evils, that "thunder may smite Cæsarion!"
+
+In representing the mutual passion of Antony and Cleopatra as real and
+fervent, Shakspeare has adhered to the truth of history as well as to
+general nature. On Antony's side it is a species of infatuation, a
+single and engrossing feeling: it is, in short, the love of a man
+declined in years for a woman very much younger than himself, and who
+has subjected him to every species of female enchantment. In Cleopatra
+the passion is of a mixed nature, made up of real attachment, combined
+with the love of pleasure, the love of power, and the love of self. Not
+only is the character most complicated, but no one sentiment could have
+existed pure and unvarying in such a mind as hers; her passion in itself
+is true, fixed to one centre; but like the pennon streaming from the
+mast, it flutters and veers with every breath of her variable temper:
+yet in the midst of all her caprices, follies, and even vices, womanly
+feeling is still predominant in Cleopatra: and the change which takes
+place in her deportment towards Antony, when their evil fortune darkens
+round them, is as beautiful and interesting in itself as it is striking
+and natural. Instead of the airy caprice and provoking petulance she
+displays in the first scenes, we have a mixture of tenderness, and
+artifice, and fear, and submissive blandishment. Her behavior, for
+instance, after the battle of Actium, when she quails before the noble
+and tender rebuke of her lover, is partly female subtlety and partly
+natural feeling.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                     O my lord, my lord,
+    Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought
+    You would have follow'd.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                Egypt, thou know'st too well
+    My heart was to the rudder tied by the strings,
+    And thou should'st tow me after. O'er my spirit
+    Thy full supremacy thou know'st; and that
+    Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
+    Command me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    O, my pardon?
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                    Now I must
+    To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
+    And palter in the shifts of lowness; who
+    With half the bulk o' the world play'd as I pleas'd,
+    Making and marring fortunes. You did know
+    How much you were my conqueror; and that
+    My sword, made weak by my affection, would
+    Obey it on all cause.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    O pardon, pardon!
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates
+    All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;
+    Even this repays me.
+
+It is perfectly in keeping with the individual character, that
+Cleopatra, alike destitute of moral strength and physical courage,
+should cower terrified and subdued before the masculine spirit of her
+lover, when once she has fairly roused it. Thus Tasso's Armida, half
+siren, half sorceress, in the moment of strong feeling, forgets her
+incantations, and has recourse to persuasion, to prayers, and to tears.
+
+    Lascia gl' incanti, e vuol provar se vaga
+    E supplice belta sia miglior maga.
+
+Though the poet afterwards gives us to understand that even in this
+relinquishment of art there was a more refined artifice.
+
+         Nella doglia amara
+    Già tutte non oblia l' arti e le frodi.
+
+And something like this inspires the conduct of Cleopatra towards Antony
+in his fallen fortunes. The reader should refer to that fine scene,
+where Antony surprises Thyreus kissing her hand, "that kingly seal and
+plighter of high hearts," and rages like a thousand hurricanes.
+
+The character of Mark Antony, as delineated by Shakspeare, reminds me of
+the Farnese Hercules. There is an ostentatious display of power, an
+exaggerated grandeur, a colossal effect in the whole conception,
+sustained throughout in the pomp of the language, which seems, as it
+flows along, to resound with the clang of arms and the music of the
+revel. The coarseness and violence of the historic portrait are a little
+kept down; but every word which Antony utters is characteristic of the
+arrogant but magnanimous Roman, who "with half the bulk o' the world
+played as he pleased," and was himself the sport of a host of mad (and
+bad) passions, and the slave of a woman.
+
+History is followed closely in all the details of the catastrophe, and
+there is something wonderfully grand in the hurried march of events
+towards the conclusion. As disasters hem her round, Cleopatra gathers up
+her faculties to meet them, not with the calm fortitude of a great soul,
+but the haughty, tameless spirit of a wilful woman, unused to reverse or
+contradiction.
+
+Her speech, after Antony has expired in her arms, I have always regarded
+as one of the most wonderful in Shakspeare. Cleopatra is not a woman to
+grieve silently. The contrast between the violence of her passions and
+the weakness of her sex, between her regal grandeur and her excess of
+misery, her impetuous, unavailing struggles with the fearful destiny
+which has compassed her, and the mixture of wild impatience and pathos
+in her agony, are really magnificent. She faints on the body of Antony,
+and is recalled to life by the cries of her women:--
+
+                        IRAS.
+
+                Royal Egypt--empress!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    No more, but e'en a woman![74] and commanded
+    By such poor passion as the maid that milks,
+    And does the meanest chares.--It were for me
+    To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods:
+    To tell them that our world did equal theirs
+    Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught,
+    Patience is sottish, and impatience does
+    Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin
+    To rush into the secret house of death
+    Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?
+    What, what? good cheer! why how now, Charmian?
+    My noble girls!--ah, women, women! look
+    Our lamp is spent, is out.
+    We'll bury him, and then what's brave, what's noble,
+    Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
+    And make death proud to take us.
+
+But although Cleopatra talks of dying "after the high Roman fashion" she
+fears what she most desires, and cannot perform with simplicity what
+costs her such an effort. That extreme physical cowardice, which was so
+strong a trait in her historical character, which led to the defeat of
+Actium, which made her delay the execution of a fatal resolve, till she
+had "tried conclusions infinite of _easy_ ways to die," Shakspeare has
+rendered with the finest possible effect, and in a manner which
+heightens instead of diminishing our respect and interest. Timid by
+nature, she is courageous by the mere force of will, and she lashes
+herself up with high-sounding words into a kind of false daring. Her
+lively imagination suggests every incentive which can spur her on to the
+deed she has resolved, yet trembles to contemplate. She pictures to
+herself all the degradations which must attend her captivity, and let
+it be observed, that those which she anticipates are precisely such as a
+vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would especially dread, and which
+only true virtue and magnanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have
+endured the loss of freedom; but to be led in triumph through the
+streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to Cæsar with
+dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art; but "to be
+chastised" by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured
+Octavia--"rather a ditch in Egypt!"
+
+    If knife, drugs, serpents, have
+    Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe.
+    Your wife, Octavia, with her modest eyes,
+    And still conclusion,[75] shall acquire no honor
+    Demurring upon me.
+
+                       Now Iras, what think'st thou?
+    Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shall be shown
+    In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves,
+    With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall
+    Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
+    Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
+    And forc'd to drink their vapor.
+
+                        IRAS.
+
+                                    The gods forbid!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Nay, 'tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors
+    Will catch at us like strumpets; and scald rhymers
+    Ballad us out o' tune. The quick comedians
+    Extemporally will stage us, and present
+    Our Alexandrian revels. Antony
+    Shall be brought drunken forth; and I shall see
+    Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.
+
+She then calls for her diadem, her robes of state, and attires herself
+as if "again for Cydnus, to meet Mark Antony." Coquette to the last, she
+must make Death proud to take her, and die, "phoenix like," as she had
+lived, with all the pomp of preparation--luxurious in her despair.
+
+The death of Lucretia, of Portia, of Arria, and others who died "after
+the high Roman fashion," is sublime according to the Pagan ideas of
+virtue, and yet none of them so powerfully affect the imagination as the
+catastrophe of Cleopatra. The idea of this frail, timid, wayward woman,
+dying with heroism from the mere force of passion and will, takes us by
+surprise. The Attic elegance of her mind, her poetical imagination, the
+pride of beauty and royalty predominating to the last, and the sumptuous
+and picturesque accompaniments with which she surrounds herself in
+death, carry to its extreme height that effect of contrast which
+prevails through her life and character. No arts, no invention could add
+to the real circumstances of Cleopatra's closing scene. Shakspeare has
+shown profound judgment and feeling in adhering closely to the classical
+authorities; and to say that the language and sentiments worthily fill
+up the outline, is the most magnificent praise that can be given. The
+magical play of fancy and the overpowering fascination of the character
+are kept up to the last, and when Cleopatra, on applying the asp,
+silences the lamentations of her women:--
+
+                    Peace! peace!
+    Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
+    That sucks the nurse to sleep?--
+
+These few words--the contrast between the tender beauty of the image and
+the horror of the situation--produce an effect more intensely mournful
+than all the ranting in the world. The generous devotion of her women
+adds the moral charm which alone was wanting: and when Octavius hurries
+in too late to save his victim, and exclaims, when gazing on her--
+
+                    She looks like sleep--
+    As she would catch another Antony
+    In her strong toil of grace,
+
+the image of her beauty and her irresistible arts, triumphant even in
+death, is at once brought before us, and one masterly and comprehensive
+stroke consummates this most wonderful, most dazzling delineation.
+
+I am not here the apologist of Cleopatra's historical character, nor of
+such women as resemble her: I am considering her merely as a dramatic
+portrait of astonishing beauty, spirit, and originality. She has
+furnished the subject of two Latin, sixteen French, six English, and at
+least four Italian tragedies;[76] yet Shakspeare alone has availed
+himself of all the interest of the story, without falsifying the
+character. He alone has dared to exhibit the Egyptian queen with all her
+greatness and all her littleness--all her frailties of temper--all her
+paltry arts and dissolute passions--yet preserved the dramatic propriety
+and poetical coloring of the character, and awakened our pity for fallen
+grandeur, without once beguiling us into sympathy with guilt and error.
+Corneille has represented Cleopatra as a model of chaste propriety,
+magnanimity, constancy, and every female virtue; and the effect is
+almost ludicrous. In our own language, we have two very fine tragedies
+on the story of Cleopatra: in that of Dryden, which is in truth a noble
+poem, and which he himself considered his masterpiece, Cleopatra is a
+mere common-place "all-for-love" heroine, full of constancy and fine
+sentiments. For instance:--
+
+                                My love's so true,
+    That I can neither hide it where it is,
+    Nor show it where it is not. Nature meant me
+    A wife--a silly, harmless, household dove,
+    Fond without art, and kind without deceit.
+    But fortune, that has made a mistress of me,
+    Has thrust me out to the wild world, unfurnished
+    Of falsehood to be happy.
+
+Is this Antony's Cleopatra--the Circe of the Nile--the Venus of the
+Cydnus? _She_ never uttered any thing half so mawkish in her life.
+
+In Fletcher's "False One," Cleopatra is represented at an earlier period
+of her history: and to give an idea of the aspect under which the
+character is exhibited, (and it does not vary throughout the play,) I
+shall give one scene; if it be considered out of place, its extreme
+beauty will form its best apology.
+
+Ptolemy and his council having exhibited to Cæsar all the royal
+treasures in Egypt, he is so astonished and dazzled at the view of the
+accumulated wealth, that he forgets the presence of Cleopatra, and
+treats her with negligence. The following scene between her and her
+sister Arsinoe occurs immediately afterwards.
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+    You're so impatient!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                        Have I not cause?
+    Women of common beauties and low births,
+    When they are slighted, are allowed their angers--
+    Why should not I, a princess, make him know
+    The baseness of his usage?
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+                              Yes, 'tis fit:
+    But then again you know what man--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                            He's no man!
+    The shadow of a greatness hangs upon him,
+    And not the virtue; he is no conqueror,
+    Has suffered under the base dross of nature;
+    Poorly deliver'd up his power to wealth.
+    The god of bed-rid men taught his eyes treason.
+    Against the truth of love he has rais'd rebellion
+    Defied his holy flames.
+
+                        EROS.
+
+                            He will fall back again
+    And satisfy your grace.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                            Had I been old,
+    Or blasted in my bud, he might have show'd
+    Some shadow of dislike: but to prefer
+    The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe,
+    And the poor glow-worm light of some faint jewels
+    Before the light of love, and soul of beauty--
+    O how it vexes me! He is no soldier:
+    All honorable soldiers are Love's servants.
+    He is a merchant, a mere wandering merchant,
+    Servile to gain; he trades for poor commodities,
+    And makes his conquests thefts! Some fortunate captains
+    That quarter with him, and are truly valiant.
+    Have flung the name of "Happy Cæsar" on him;
+    Himself ne'er won it. He's so base and covetous,
+    He'll sell his sword for gold.
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+                                  This is too bitter.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    O, I could curse myself, that was so foolish.
+    So fondly childish, to believe his tongue--
+    His promising tongue--ere I could catch his temper.
+    I'd trash enough to have cloyed his eyes withal,
+    (His covetous eyes,) such as I scorn to tread on,
+    Richer than e'er he saw yet, and more tempting;
+    Had I known he'd stoop'd at that, I'd saved mine honor--
+    I had been happy still! But let him take it.
+    And let him brag how poorly I'm rewarded;
+    Let him go conquer still weak wretched ladies;
+    Love has his angry quiver too, his deadly,
+    And when he finds scorn, armed at the strongest--
+    I am a fool to fret thus for a fool,--
+    An old blind fool too! I lose my health; I will not,
+    I will not cry; I will not honor him
+    With tears diviner than the gods he worships;
+    I will not take the pains to curse a poor thing.
+
+                        EROS.
+
+    Do not; you shall not need.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                Would I were prisoner
+    To one I hate, that I might anger him!
+    I will love any man to break the heart of him!
+    Any that has the heart and will to kill him!
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+    Take some fair truce.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                          I will go study mischief,
+    And put a look on, arm'd with all my cunnings.
+    Shall meet him like a basilisk, and strike him.
+    Love! put destroying flame into mine eyes,
+    Into my smiles deceits, that I may torture him--
+    That I may make him love to death, and laugh at him
+
+    _Enter_ APOLLODORUS.
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+    Cæsar commends his service to your grace
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    His service? What's his service?
+
+                        EROS.
+
+                                    Pray you be patient
+    The noble Cæsar loves still.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                    What's his will?
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+    He craves access unto your highness.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA
+
+                                        No;--
+    Say no; I will have none to trouble me.
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+    Good sister!--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                None, I say. I will be private.
+    Would thou hadst flung me into Nilus, keeper,
+    When first thou gav'st consent to bring my body
+    To this unthankful Cæsar!
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+                            'Twas your will, madam.
+    Nay more, your charge upon me, as I honor'd you.
+    You know what danger I endur'd.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                  Take this, [_giving a jewel_,
+    And carry it to that lordly Cæsar sent thee;
+    There's a new love, a handsome one, a rich one,--
+    One that will hug his mind: bid him make love to it:
+    Tell the ambitious broker this will suffer--
+
+    _Enter_ CÆSAR.
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+    He enters.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+              How!
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                    I do not use to wait, lady
+    Where I am, all the doors are free and open.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I guess so by your rudeness.
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                                You're not angry?
+    Things of your tender mould should be most gentle.
+    Why should you frown? Good gods, what a set anger
+    Have you forc'd into your face! Come, I must temper you.
+    What a coy smile was there, and a disdainful!
+    How like an ominous flash it broke out from you!
+    Defend me, love! Sweet, who has anger'd you?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Show him a glass! That false face has betray'd me--
+    That base heart wrong'd me!
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                              Be more sweetly angry.
+    I wrong'd you, fair?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                        Away with your foul flatteries;
+    They are too gross! But that I dare be angry,
+    And with as great a god as Cæsar is,
+    To show how poorly I respect his memory
+    I would not speak to you.
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                      Pray you, undo this riddle,
+    And tell me how I've vexed you.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                    Let me think first,
+    Whether I may put on patience
+    That will with honor suffer me. Know I hate you!
+    Let that begin the story. Now I'll tell you.
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+    But do it mildly: in a noble lady,
+    Softness of spirit, and a sober nature,
+    That moves like summer winds, cool, and blows sweetness,
+    Shows blessed, like herself.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                And that great blessedness.
+    You first reap'd of me; till you taught my nature,
+    Like a rude storm, to talk aloud and thunder,
+    Sleep was not gentler than my soul, and stiller.
+    You had the spring of my affections,
+    And my fair fruits I gave you leave to taste of;
+    You must expect the winter of mine anger.
+    You flung me off--before the court disgraced me--
+    When in the pride I appear'd of all my beauty--
+    Appear'd your mistress; took unto your eyes
+    The common strumpet, love of hated lucre,--
+    Courted with covetous heart the slave of nature,--
+    Gave all your thoughts to gold, that men of glory,
+    And minds adorned with noble love, would kick at!
+    Soldiers of royal mark scorn such base purchase;
+    Beauty and honor are the marks they shoot at.
+    I spake to you then, I courted you, and woo'd you,
+    Called you dear Cæsar, hung about you tenderly,
+    Was proud to appear your friend--
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                            You have mistaken me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    But neither eye, nor favor, not a smile
+    Was I blessed back withal, but shook off rudely,
+    And as you had been sold to sordid infamy,
+    You fell before the images of treasure,
+    And in your soul you worship'd. I stood slighted;
+    Forgotten, and contemned; my soft embraces,
+    And those sweet kisses which you called Elysium
+    As letters writ in sand, no more remember'd;
+    The name and glory of your Cleopatra
+    Laugh'd at, and made a story to your captains!
+    Shall I endure?
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                  You are deceived in all this;
+    Upon my life you are; 'tis your much tenderness.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    No, no; I love not that way; you are cozen'd;
+    I love with as much ambition as a conqueror,
+    And where I love will triumph!
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                                  So you shall:
+    My heart shall be the chariot that shall bear you:
+    All I have won shall wait upon you. By the gods,
+    The bravery of this woman's mind has fir'd me!
+    Dear mistress, shall I but this once----
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                        How! Cæsar!
+    Have I let slip a second vanity
+    That gives thee hope?
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                              You shall be absolute,
+    And reign alone as queen; you shall be any thing.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+        Farewell, unthankful!
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+                            Stay!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                I will not.
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+                                          I command.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Command, and go without, sir,
+    I do command _thee_ be my slave forever,
+    And vex, while I laugh at thee!
+
+                        CÆSAR.
+
+    Thus low, beauty----      [_He kneels_
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    It is too late; when I have found thee absolute,
+    The man that fame reports thee, and to me,
+    May be I shall think better. Farewell, conqueror!
+
+    (_Exit._)
+
+Now this is magnificent poetry, but this is not Cleopatra, this is not
+"the gipsey queen." The sentiment here is too profound, the majesty too
+real, and too lofty. Cleopatra could be great by fits and starts, but
+never sustained her dignity upon so high a tone for ten minutes
+together. The Cleopatra of Fletcher reminds us of the antique colossal
+statue of her in the Vatican, all grandeur and grace. Cleopatra in
+Dryden's tragedy is like Guido's dying Cleopatra in the Pitti Palace,
+tenderly beautiful. Shakspeare's Cleopatra is like one of those graceful
+and fantastic pieces of antique Arabesque, in which all anomalous shapes
+and impossible and wild combinations of form are woven together in
+regular confusion and most harmonious discord: and such, we have reason
+to believe, was the living woman herself, when she existed upon this
+earth.
+
+
+OCTAVIA.
+
+I do not understand the observation of a late critic, that in this play
+"Octavia is only a dull foil to Cleopatra." Cleopatra requires no foil,
+and Octavia is not dull, though in a moment of jealous spleen, her
+accomplished rival gives her that epithet.[77] It is possible that her
+beautiful character, if brought more forward and colored up to the
+historic portrait, would still be eclipsed by the dazzling splendor of
+Cleopatra's; for so I have seen a flight of fireworks blot out for a
+while the silver moon and ever-burning stars. But here the subject of
+the drama being the love of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavia is very
+properly kept in the background, and far from any competition with her
+rival: the interest would otherwise have been unpleasantly divided, or
+rather Cleopatra herself must have served but as a foil to the tender,
+virtuous, dignified, and generous Octavia, the very _beau ideal_ of a
+noble Roman lady:--
+
+    Admired Octavia, whose beauty claims
+    No worse a husband than the best of men;
+    Whose virtues and whose general graces speak
+    That which none else can utter.
+
+Dryden has committed a great mistake in bringing Octavia and her
+children on the scene, and in immediate contact with Cleopatra. To have
+thus violated the truth of history[78] might have been excusable, but to
+sacrifice the truth of nature and dramatic propriety, to produce a mere
+stage effect, was unpardonable. In order to preserve the unity of
+interest, he has falsified the character of Octavia as well as that of
+Cleopatra:[79] he has presented us with a regular scolding-match
+between the rivals, in which they come sweeping up to each other from
+opposite sides of the stage, with their respective trains, like two
+pea-hens in a passion. Shakspeare would no more have brought his
+captivating, brilliant, but meretricious Cleopatra into immediate
+comparison with the noble and chaste simplicity of Octavia, than a
+connoisseur in art would have placed Canova's Dansatrice, beautiful as
+it is, beside the Athenian Melpomene, or the Vestal of the Capitol.
+
+The character of Octavia is merely indicated in a few touches, but every
+stroke tells. We see her with "downcast eyes sedate and sweet, and looks
+demure,"--with her modest tenderness and dignified submission--the very
+antipodes of her rival! Nor should we forget that she has furnished one
+of the most graceful similes in the whole compass of poetry, where her
+soft equanimity in the midst of grief is compared to
+
+                The swan's down feather
+    That stands upon the swell at flood of tide,
+    And neither way inclines.
+
+The fear which, seems to haunt the mind of Cleopatra, lest she should be
+"chastised by the sober eye" of Octavia, is exceedingly characteristic
+of the two women: it betrays the jealous pride of her, who was conscious
+that she had forfeited all real claim to respect; and it places Octavia
+before us in all the majesty of that virtue which could strike a kind
+of envying and remorseful awe even into the bosom of Cleopatra. What
+would she have thought and felt, had some soothsayer foretold to her the
+fate of her own children, whom she so tenderly loved? Captives, and
+exposed to the rage of the Roman populace, they owed their existence to
+the generous, admirable Octavia, in whose mind there entered no particle
+of littleness. She received into her house the children of Antony and
+Cleopatra, educated them with her own, treated them with truly maternal
+tenderness, and married them nobly.
+
+Lastly, to complete the contrast, the death of Octavia should be put in
+comparison with that of Cleopatra.
+
+After spending several years in dignified retirement, respected as the
+sister of Augustus, but more for her own virtues, Octavia lost her
+eldest son Marcellus, who was expressively called the "Hope of Rome."
+Her fortitude gave way under this blow, and she fell into a deep
+melancholy, which gradually wasted her health. While she was thus
+declining into death, occurred that beautiful scene, which has never
+yet, I believe, been made the subject of a picture, but should certainly
+be added to my gallery, (if I had one,) and I would hang it opposite to
+the dying Cleopatra. Virgil was commanded by Augustus to read aloud to
+his sister that book of the Eneid in which he had commemorated the
+virtues and early death of the young Marcellus. When he came to the
+lines--
+
+    This youth, the blissful vision of a day,
+    Shall just be shown on earth, then snatch'd away, &c.
+
+The mother covered her face, and burst into tears. But when Virgil
+mentioned her son by name, ("Tu Marcellus eris,") which he had artfully
+deferred till the concluding lines, Octavia, unable to control her
+agitation, fainted away. She afterwards, with a magnificent spirit,
+ordered the poet a gratuity of ten thousand sesterces for each line of
+the panegyric.[80] It is probable that the agitation she suffered on
+this occasion hastened the effects of her disorder; for she died soon
+after, (of grief, says the historian,) having survived Antony about
+twenty years.
+
+
+VOLUMNIA.
+
+Octavia, however, is only a beautiful sketch, while in Volumnia,
+Shakspeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in the
+true antique spirit, and finished in every part. Although Coriolanus is
+the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the
+final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother, Volumnia, and
+the power she exercised over his mind, by which, according to the story,
+"she saved Rome and lost her son." Her lofty patriotism, her patrician
+haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit,
+are exhibited with the utmost power of effect; yet the truth of female
+nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigor,
+is without harshness.
+
+I shall begin by illustrating the relative position and feelings of the
+mother and son; as these are of the greatest importance in the action of
+the drama, and consequently most prominent in the characters. Though
+Volumnia is a Roman matron, and though her country owes its salvation to
+her, it is clear that her maternal pride and affection are stronger even
+than her patriotism. Thus when her son is exiled, she burst into an
+imprecation against Rome and its citizens:--
+
+    Now the red pestilence strikes all trades in Rome,
+    And occupations perish!
+
+Here we have the impulses of individual and feminine nature,
+overpowering all national and habitual influences. Volumnia would never
+have exclaimed like the Spartan mother, of her dead son, "Sparta has
+many others as brave as he;" but in a far different spirit she says to
+the Romans,--
+
+                      Ere you go, hear this:
+    As far as doth the Capitol exceed
+    The meanest house in Rome, so far my son,
+    Whom you have banished, does exceed you all.
+
+In the very first scene, and before the introduction of the principal
+personages, one citizen observes to another that the military exploits
+of Marcius were performed, not so much for his country's sake "as to
+please his mother." By this admirable stroke of art, introduced with
+such simplicity of effect, our attention is aroused, and we are prepared
+in the very outset of the piece for the important part assigned to
+Volumnia, and for her share in producing the catastrophe.
+
+In the first act we have a very graceful scene, in which the two Roman
+ladies, the wife and mother of Coriolanus, are discovered at their
+needle-work, conversing on his absence and danger, and are visited by
+Valeria:--
+
+                 The noble sisters of Publicola,
+    The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,
+    That's curded by the frost from purest snow,
+    And hangs on Dian's temple!
+
+Over this little scene Shakspeare, without any display of learning, has
+breathed the very spirit of classical antiquity. The haughty temper of
+Volumnia, her admiration of the valor and high bearing of her son, and
+her proud but unselfish love for him, are finely contrasted with the
+modest sweetness, he conjugal tenderness, and the fond solicitude of his
+wife Virgilia.
+
+                         VOLUMNIA.
+
+     When yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my
+     womb; when youth with comeliness pluck'd all gaze his way;
+     when, for a day of king's entreaties, a mother should not
+     sell him an hour from her beholding--considering how honor
+     would become such a person; that it was no better than
+     picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not
+     stir,--was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like
+     to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he
+     returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter--I
+     sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child,
+     than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.
+
+                         VIRGILIA.
+
+     But had he died in the business, madam? how then?
+
+                         VOLUMNIA.
+
+     Then his good report should have been my son; I therein
+     would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a
+     dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than
+     thine and my good Marcius, I had rather eleven die nobly for
+     their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.
+
+     _Enter a_ GENTLEWOMAN.
+
+     Madam, the lady Valeria is come to visit you.
+
+                         VIRGILIA.
+
+     Beseech you, give me leave to retire myself.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    Indeed you shall not.
+    Methinks I hear hither your husband's drum:
+    See him pluck Aufidius down by the hair:
+    As children from a bear, the Volces shunning him:
+    Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus--
+    "Come on, you cowards! you were got in fear,
+    Though you were born in Rome." His bloody brow
+    With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes;
+    Like to a harvest-man, that's task'd to mow
+    Or all, or lose his hire.
+
+                        VIRGILIA.
+
+    His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    Away, you fool! it more becomes a man
+    Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba,
+    When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier
+    Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood
+    At Grecian swords contending. Tell Valeria
+    We are fit to bid her welcome.       [_Exit Gent._
+
+                        VIRGILIA.
+
+    Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    He'll beat Aufidius's head below his knee.
+    And tread upon his neck.
+
+This distinction between the two females is as interesting and beautiful
+as it is well sustained. Thus when the victory of Coriolanus is
+proclaimed, Menenius asks, "Is he wounded?"
+
+                        VIRGILIA.
+
+    O no, no, no!
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    Yes, he is wounded--I thank the gods for it!
+
+And when he returns victorious from the wars, his high-spirited mother
+receives him with blessings and applause--his gentle wife with "gracious
+silence" and with tears.
+
+The resemblance of temper in the mother and the son, modified as it is
+by the difference of sex, and by her greater age and experience, is
+exhibited with admirable truth. Volumnia, with all her pride and spirit,
+has some prudence and self-command; in her language and deportment all
+is matured and matronly. The dignified tone of authority she assumes
+towards her son, when checking his headlong impetuosity, her respect and
+admiration for his noble qualities, and her strong sympathy even with
+the feelings she combats, are all displayed in the scene in which she
+prevails on him to soothe the incensed plebeians.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                         Pray be counsell'd:
+    I have a heart as little apt as yours,
+    But yet a brain that leads my use of anger
+    To better vantage.
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+                       Well said, noble woman:
+    Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that
+    The violent fit o' the time craves it as physic
+    For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,
+    Which I can scarcely bear.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                              What must I do?
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+    Return to the tribunes.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                            Well.
+    What then? what then?
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+                          Repent what you have spoke.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+    For them? I cannot do it to the gods;
+    Must I then do't to them?
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                            You are too absolute,
+    Though therein you can never be too noble,
+    But when extremities speak.
+
+                         I pr'ythee now, my son,
+    Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand;
+    And thus far having stretch'd it, (here be with them)
+    Thy knee bussing the stones, (for in such business
+    Action is eloquent, and the eyes of the ignorant
+    More learned than the ears,) waving thy head,
+    Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart
+    Now humble, as the ripest mulberry,
+    That will not hold the handling. Or, say to them,
+    Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils
+    Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,
+    Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,
+    In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame
+    Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far
+    As thou hast power and person.
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+                             This but done,
+    Even as she speaks, why all their hearts were yours
+    For they have pardons, being asked, as free
+    As words to little purpose.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                             Pr'ythee now,
+    Go, and be rul'd: although I know thou hadst rather
+    Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf
+    Than flatter him in a bower.
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+    Only fair speech.
+
+                        COMINIUS.
+
+                       I think 'twill serve, if he
+    Can thereto frame his spirit.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                            He must, and will:
+    Pr'ythee, now say you will, and go about it.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+    Must I go show them my unbarb'd sconce? Must I
+    With my base tongue give to my noble heart
+    A lie, that it must bear? Well, I will do't;
+    Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
+    This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,
+    And throw it against the wind. To the market-place
+    You have put me now to such a part, which never
+    I shall discharge to the life.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    I pr'ythee now, sweet son, as thou hast said,
+    My praises made thee first a soldier, so
+    To have my praise for this, perform a part
+    Thou hast not done before.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                              Well, I must do't:
+    Away, my disposition, and possess me
+    Some harlot's spirit!
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                          I will not do't:
+    Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
+    And by my body's action, teach my mind
+    A most inherent baseness.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                              At thy choice, then:
+    To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor,
+    Than thou of them. Come all to ruin: let
+    Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear
+    Thy dangerous stoutness: for I mock at death
+    With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list--
+    Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me
+    But owe thy pride thyself.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                              Pray be content;
+    Mother, I am going to the market place--
+    Chide me no more.
+
+When the spirit of the mother and the son are brought into immediate
+collision, he yields before her; the warrior who stemmed alone the whole
+city of Corioli, who was ready to face "the steep Tarpeian death, or at
+wild horses' heels,--vagabond exile--flaying," rather than abate one jot
+of his proud will--shrinks at her rebuke. The haughty, fiery,
+overbearing temperament of Coriolanus, is drawn in such forcible and
+striking colors, that nothing can more impress us with the real grandeur
+and power of Volumnia's character, than his boundless submission to her
+will--his more than filial tenderness and respect.
+
+                            You gods! I prate,
+    And the most noble mother of the world
+    Leave unsaluted. Sink my knee i' the earth--
+    Of thy deep duty more impression show
+    Than that of common sons!
+
+When his mother appears before him as a suppliant, he exclaims,--
+
+    My mother bows;
+    As if Olympus to a molehill should
+    In supplication nod.
+
+Here the expression of reverence, and the magnificent image in which it
+is clothed, are equally characteristic both of the mother and the son.
+
+Her aristocratic haughtiness is a strong trait in Volumnia's manner and
+character, and her supreme contempt for the plebeians, whether they are
+to be defied or cajoled, is very like what I have heard expressed by
+some high-born and high-bred women of our own day.
+
+                        I muse my mother
+    Does not approve me further, who was wont
+    To call them woollen vassals; things created
+    To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads
+    In congregations; to yawn, be still, and wonder
+    When one but of my ordinance stood up
+    To speak of peace or war.
+
+And Volumnia reproaching the tribunes,--
+
+                      'Twas you incensed the rabble--
+    Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth,
+    As I can of those mysteries which Heaven
+    Will not have earth to know.
+
+There is all the Roman spirit in her exultation when the trumpets sound
+the return of Coriolanus.
+
+                      Hark! the trumpets!
+    These are the ushers of Marcius: before him
+    He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.
+
+And in her speech to the gentle Virgilia, who is weeping her husband's
+banishment--
+
+    Leave this faint puling! and lament as I do
+    In anger--Juno-like!
+
+But the triumph of Volumnia's character, the full display of all her
+grandeur of soul, her patriotism, her strong affections, and her sublime
+eloquence, are reserved for her last scene, in which she pleads for the
+safety of Rome, and wins from her angry son that peace which all the
+swords of Italy and her confederate arms could not have purchased. The
+strict and even literal adherence to the truth of history is an
+additional beauty.
+
+Her famous speech, beginning "Should we be silent and not speak," is
+nearly word for word from Plutarch, with some additional graces of
+expression, and the charm of metre superadded. I shall give the last
+lines of this address, as illustrating that noble and irresistible
+eloquence which was the crowning ornament of the character. One
+exquisite touch of nature, which is distinguished by italics, was beyond
+the rhetorician and historian, and belongs only to the poet.
+
+                              Speak to me, son;
+    Thou hast affected the fine strains of honor,
+    To imitate the graces of the gods;
+    To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
+    And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
+    That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?
+    Think'st thou it honorable for a nobleman
+    Still to remember wrongs? Daughter, speak you:
+    He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy;
+    Perhaps thy childishness may move him more
+    Than can our reasons. There is no man in the world
+    More bound to his mother; yet here he lets me prate
+    Like one i' the stocks. Thou hast never in thy life
+    Show'd thy dear mother any courtesy;
+    _When she, (poor hen!) fond of no second brood,
+    Has cluck'd thee to the wars, and safely home,
+    Laden with honor._ Say my request's unjust,
+    And spurn me back: but, if it be not so,
+    Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee
+    That thou restrain'st from me the duty which
+    To a mother's part belongs. He turns away:
+    Down, ladies: let us shame him with our knees.
+    To his surname Coriolanus 'longs more pride,
+    Than pity to our prayers; down, and end;
+    This is the last; so will we home to Rome,
+    And die among our neighbors. Nay, behold us;
+    This boy, that cannot tell what he would have,
+    But kneels, and holds up hands, for fellowship,
+    Does reason our petition with more strength
+    Than thou hast to deny't.[81]
+
+It is an instance of Shakspeare's fine judgment, that after this
+magnificent and touching piece of eloquence, which saved Rome, Volumnia
+should speak no more, for she could say nothing that would not
+deteriorate from the effect thus left on the imagination. She is at last
+dismissed from our admiring gaze amid the thunder of grateful
+acclamations--
+
+    Behold, our patroness,--the life of Rome.
+
+
+CONSTANCE.
+
+We have seen that in the mother of Coriolanus, the principal qualities
+are exceeding pride, self-will, strong maternal affection, great power
+of imagination, and energy of temper. Precisely the same qualities enter
+into the mind of Constance of Bretagne: but in her these qualities are
+so differently modified by circumstances and education, that not even in
+fancy do we think of instituting a comparison between the Gothic
+grandeur of Constance, and the more severe and classical dignity of the
+Roman matron.
+
+The scenes and circumstances with which Shakspeare has surrounded
+Constance, are strictly faithful to the old chronicles, and are as
+vividly as they are accurately represented. On the other hand, the hints
+on which the character has been constructed, are few and vague; but the
+portrait harmonizes so wonderfully with its historic background, and
+with all that later researches have discovered relative to the personal
+adventures of Constance, that I have not the slightest doubt of its
+individual truth. The result of a life of strange vicissitude; the
+picture of a tameless will, and high passions, forever struggling in
+vain against a superior power: and the real situation of women in those
+chivalrous times, are placed before us in a few noble scenes. The manner
+in which Shakspeare has applied the scattered hints of history to the
+formation of the character, reminds us of that magician who collected
+the mangled limbs which had been dispersed up and down, reunited them
+into the human form, and reanimated them with the breathing and
+conscious spirit of life.
+
+Constance of Bretagne was the only daughter and heiress of Conan IV.,
+Duke of Bretagne; her mother was Margaret of Scotland, the eldest
+daughter of Malcolm IV.: but little mention is made of this princess in
+the old histories; but she appears to have inherited some portion of the
+talent and spirit of her father, and to have transmitted them to her
+daughter. The misfortunes of Constance may be said to have commenced
+before her birth, and took their rise in the misconduct of one of her
+female ancestors. Her great-grandmother Matilda, the wife of Conan III.,
+was distinguished by her beauty and imperious temper, and not less by
+her gallantries. Her husband, not thinking proper to repudiate her
+during his lifetime, contented himself with disinheriting her son Hoel,
+whom he declared illegitimate; and bequeathed his dukedom to his
+daughter Bertha, and her husband Allan the Black, Earl of Richmond, who
+were proclaimed and acknowledged Duke and Duchess of Bretagne.
+
+Prince Hoel, so far from acquiescing in his father's will, immediately
+levied an army to maintain his rights, and a civil war ensued between
+the brother and sister, which lasted for twelve or fourteen years.
+Bertha, whose reputation was not much fairer than that of her mother
+Matilda, was succeeded by her son Conan IV.; he was young, and of a
+feeble, vacillating temper, and after struggling for a few years against
+the increasing power of his uncle Hoel, and his own rebellious barons,
+he called in the aid of that politic and ambitious monarch, Henry II. of
+England. This fatal step decided the fate of his crown and his
+posterity; from the moment the English set foot in Bretagne, that
+miserable country became a scene of horrors and crimes--oppression and
+perfidy on the one hand, unavailing struggles on the other. Ten years of
+civil discord ensued, during which the greatest part of Bretagne was
+desolated, and nearly a third of the population carried off by famine
+and pestilence. In the end, Conan was secured in the possession of his
+throne by the assistance of the English king, who, equally subtle and
+ambitious, contrived in the course of this warfare to strip Conan of
+most of his provinces by successive treaties; alienate the Breton nobles
+from their lawful sovereign, and at length render the Duke himself the
+mere vassal of his power.
+
+In the midst of these scenes of turbulence and bloodshed was Constance
+born, in the year 1164. The English king consummated his perfidious
+scheme of policy, by seizing on the person of the infant princess,
+before she was three years old, as a hostage for her father. Afterwards,
+by contracting her in marriage to his third son, Geoffrey Plantagenet,
+he ensured, as he thought, the possession of the duchy of Bretagne to
+his own posterity.
+
+From this time we hear no more of the weak, unhappy Conan, who, retiring
+from a fruitless contest, hid himself in some obscure retreat: even the
+date of his death is unknown. Meanwhile Henry openly claimed the duchy
+in behalf of his son Geoffrey and the Lady Constance; and their claims
+not being immediately acknowledged, he invaded Bretagne with a large
+army, laid waste the country, bribed or forced some of the barons into
+submission, murdered or imprisoned others, and, by the most treacherous
+and barbarous policy, contrived to keep possession of the country he had
+thus seized. However, in order to satisfy the Bretons, who were attached
+to the race of their ancient sovereigns, and to give some color to his
+usurpation, he caused Geoffrey and Constance to be solemnly crowned at
+Rennes, as Duke and Duchess of Bretagne. This was in the year 1169 when
+Constance was five, and Prince Geoffrey about eight, years old. His
+father, Henry, continued to rule, or rather to ravage and oppress, the
+country in their name for about fourteen years, during which period we
+do not hear of Constance. She appears to have been kept in a species of
+constraint as a hostage rather than a sovereign; while her husband
+Geoffrey, as he grew up to manhood, was too much engaged in keeping the
+Bretons in order, and disputing his rights with his father, to think
+about the completion of his union with Constance, although his sole
+title to the dukedom was properly and legally in right of his wife. At
+length, in 1182, the nuptials were formally celebrated, Constance being
+then in her nineteenth year. At the same time, she was recognized as
+Duchess of Bretagne _de son chef_, (that is, in her own right,) by two
+acts of legislation, which are still preserved among the records of
+Bretagne, and bear her own seal and signature.
+
+Those domestic feuds which embittered the whole life of Henry II., and
+at length broke his heart, are well known. Of all his sons, who were in
+continual rebellion against him, Geoffrey was the most undutiful, and
+the most formidable: he had all the pride of the Plantagenets,--all the
+warlike accomplishments of his two elder brothers, Henry and Richard;
+and was the only one who could compete with his father in talent,
+eloquence, and dissimulation. No sooner was he the husband of Constance,
+and in possession of the throne of Bretagne, than he openly opposed his
+father; in other words, he maintained the honor and interests of his
+wife and her unhappy country against the cruelties and oppression of the
+English plunderers.[82] About three years after his marriage, he was
+invited to Paris for the purpose of concluding a league, offensive and
+defensive, with the French king: in this journey he was accompanied by
+the Duchess Constance, and they were received and entertained with royal
+magnificence. Geoffrey, who excelled in all chivalrous accomplishments,
+distinguished himself in the tournaments which were celebrated on the
+occasion; but unfortunately, after an encounter with a French knight,
+celebrated for his prowess, he was accidentally flung from his horse,
+and trampled to death in the lists before he could be extricated.
+
+Constance, being now left a widow, returned to Bretagne, where her
+barons rallied round her, and acknowledged her as their sovereign. The
+Salique law did not prevail in Bretagne, and it appears that in those
+times the power of a female to possess and transmit the rights of
+sovereignty had been recognized in several instances; but Constance is
+the first woman who exercised those rights in her own person. She had
+one daughter, Elinor, born in the second year of her marriage, and a few
+months after her husband's death she gave birth to a son. The States of
+Bretagne were filled with exultation; they required that the infant
+prince should not bear the name of his father,--a name which Constance,
+in fond remembrance of her husband, would have bestowed on him--still
+less that of his grandfather Henry; but that of Arthur, the redoubted
+hero of their country, whose memory was worshipped by the populace.
+Though the Arthur of romantic and fairy legends--the Arthur of the round
+table, had been dead for six centuries, they still looked for his second
+appearance among them, according to the prophecy of Merlin; and now,
+with fond and short-sighted enthusiasm, fixed their hopes on the young
+Arthur as one destined to redeem the glory and independence of their
+oppressed and miserable country. But in the very midst of the rejoicings
+which succeeded the birth of the prince, his grandfather, Henry II.,
+demanded to have the possession and guardianship of his person; and on
+the spirited refusal of Constance to yield her son into his power, he
+invaded Bretagne with a large army, plundering, burning, devastating the
+country as he advanced. He seized Rennes, the capital, and having by the
+basest treachery obtained possession of the persons both of the young
+duchess and her children, he married Constance forcibly to one of his
+own favorite adherents, Randal de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, and
+conferred on him the duchy of Bretagne, to be held as a fief of the
+English crown.
+
+The Earl of Chester, though a brave knight and one of the greatest
+barons of England, had no pretensions to so high an alliance; nor did he
+possess any qualities or personal accomplishments which might have
+reconciled Constance to him as a husband. He was a man of diminutive
+stature and mean appearance, but of haughty and ferocious manners, and
+unbounded ambition.[83] In a conference between this Earl of Chester and
+the Earl of Perche, in Lincoln cathedral, the latter taunted Randal with
+his insignificant person, and called him contemptuously "_Dwarf_."
+"Sayst thou so!" replied Randal; "I vow to God and our Lady, whose
+church this is, that ere long I will seem to thee high as that steeple!"
+He was as good as his word, when, on ascending the throne of Brittany,
+the Earl of Perche became his vassal.
+
+We cannot know what measures were used to force this degradation on the
+reluctant and high-spirited Constance; it is only certain that she never
+considered her marriage in the light of a sacred obligation, and that
+she took the first opportunity of legally breaking from a chain which
+could scarcely be considered as legally binding. For about a year she
+was obliged to allow this detested husband the title of Duke of
+Bretagne, and he administered the government without the slightest
+reference to her will, even in form, till 1189, when Henry II. died,
+execrating himself and his undutiful children. Whatever great and good
+qualities this monarch may have possessed, his conduct in Bretagne was
+uniformly detestable. Even the unfilial behavior of his sons may be
+extenuated; for while he spent his life, and sacrificed his peace, and
+violated every principle of honor and humanity to compass their
+political aggrandizement, he was guilty of atrocious injustice towards
+them, and set them a bad example in his own person.
+
+The tidings of Henry's death had no sooner reached Bretagne than the
+barons of that country rose with one accord against his government,
+banished or massacred his officers, and, sanctioned by the Duchess
+Constance, drove Randal de Blondeville and his followers from Bretagne;
+he retired to his earldom of Chester, there to brood over his injuries,
+and meditate vengeance.
+
+In the mean time, Richard I. ascended the English throne. Soon
+afterwards he embarked on his celebrated expedition to the Holy Land,
+having previously declared Prince Arthur, the only son of Constance,
+heir to all his dominions.[84]
+
+His absence, and that of many of her own turbulent barons and
+encroaching neighbors, left to Constance and her harassed dominions a
+short interval of profound peace. The historians of that period,
+occupied by the warlike exploits of the French and English kings in
+Palestine, make but little mention of the domestic events of Europe
+during their absence; but it is no slight encomium on the character of
+Constance, that Bretagne flourished under her government, and began to
+recover from the effects of twenty years of desolating war. The seven
+years during which she ruled as an independent sovereign, were not
+marked by any events of importance; but in the year 1196 she caused her
+son Arthur, then nine years of age, to be acknowledged Duke of Bretagne
+by the States, and associated him with herself in all the acts of
+government.
+
+There was more of maternal fondness than policy in this measure, and it
+cost her dear. Richard, that royal firebrand, had now returned to
+England: by the intrigues and representations of Earl Randal, his
+attention was turned to Bretagne. He expressed extreme indignation that
+Constance should have proclaimed her son Duke of Bretagne, and her
+partner in power, without his consent, he being the feudal lord and
+natural guardian of the young prince. After some excuses and
+representations on the part of Constance, he affected to be pacified,
+and a friendly interview was appointed at Pontorson, on the frontiers of
+Normandy.
+
+We can hardly reconcile the cruel and perfidious scenes which follow
+with those romantic and chivalrous associations which illustrate the
+memory of Coeur-de-Lion--the friend of Blondel, and the antagonist of
+Saladin. Constance, perfectly unsuspicious of the meditated treason,
+accepted the invitation of her brother-in-law, and set out from Rennes
+with a small but magnificent retinue to join him at Pontorson. On the
+road, and within sight of the town, the Earl of Chester was posted with
+a troop of Richard's soldiery, and while the Duchess prepared to enter
+the gates, where she expected to be received with honor and welcome, he
+suddenly rushed from his ambuscade, fell upon her and her suite, put the
+latter to flight, and carried off Constance to the strong Castle of St.
+Jaques de Beuvron, where he detained her a prisoner for eighteen months.
+The chronicle does not tell us how Randal treated his unfortunate wife
+during this long imprisonment. She was absolutely in his power; none of
+her own people were suffered to approach her, and whatever might have
+been his behavior towards her, one thing alone is certain, that so far
+from softening her feelings towards _him_, it seems to have added
+tenfold bitterness to her abhorrence and her scorn.
+
+The barons of Bretagne sent the Bishop of Rennes to complain of this
+violation of faith and justice, and to demand the restitution of the
+Duchess. Richard meanly evaded and temporized: he engaged to restore
+Constance to liberty on certain conditions; but this was merely to gain
+time. When the stipulated terms were complied with, and the hostages
+delivered, the Bretons sent a herald to the English king, to require him
+to fulfil his part of the treaty, and restore their beloved Constance.
+Richard replied with insolent defiance, refused to deliver up either the
+hostages or Constance, and marched his army into the heart of the
+country.
+
+All that Bretagne had suffered previously was as nothing compared to
+this terrible invasion; and all that the humane and peaceful government
+of Constance had effected during seven years was at once annihilated.
+The English barons and their savage and mercenary followers spread
+themselves through the country, which they wasted with fire and sword.
+The castles of those who ventured to defend themselves were razed to the
+ground; the towns and villages plundered and burnt, and the wretched
+inhabitants fled to the caves and forests; but not even there could they
+find an asylum; by the orders, and in the presence of Richard, the woods
+were set on fire, and hundreds either perished in the flames, or were
+suffocated in the smoke.
+
+Constance, meanwhile, could only weep in her captivity over the miseries
+of her country, and tremble with all a mother's fears for the safety of
+her son. She had placed Arthur under the care of William Desroches, the
+seneschal of her palace, a man of mature age, of approved valor, and
+devotedly attached to her family. This faithful servant threw himself,
+with his young charge, into the fortress of Brest, where he for some
+time defied the power of the English king.
+
+But notwithstanding the brave resistance of the nobles and people of
+Bretagne, they were obliged to submit to the conditions imposed by
+Richard. By a treaty concluded in 1198, of which the terms are not
+exactly known, Constance was delivered from her captivity, though not
+from her husband; but in the following year, when the death of Richard
+had restored her to some degree of independence, the first use she made
+of it was to _divorce herself_ from Randal. She took this step with her
+usual precipitancy, not waiting for the sanction of the Pope, as was the
+custom in those days; and soon afterwards she gave her hand to Guy,
+Count de Thouars, a man of courage and integrity, who for some time
+maintained the cause of his wife and her son against the power of
+England. Arthur was now fourteen, and the legitimate heir of all the
+dominions of his uncle Richard. Constance placed him under the
+guardianship of the king of France, who knighted the young prince with
+his own hand, and solemnly swore to defend his rights against his
+usurping uncle John.
+
+It is at this moment that the play of King John opens; and history is
+followed as closely as the dramatic form would allow, to the death of
+John. The real fate of poor Arthur, after he had been abandoned by the
+French, and had fallen into the hands of his uncle, is now ascertained;
+but according to the chronicle from which Shakspeare drew his materials,
+he was killed in attempting to escape from the castle of Falaise.
+Constance did not live to witness this consummation of her calamities;
+within a few months after Arthur was taken prisoner, in 1201, she died
+suddenly, before she had attained her thirty-ninth year; but the cause
+of her death is not specified.
+
+Her eldest daughter Elinor, the legitimate heiress of England, Normandy,
+and Bretagne, died in captivity; having been kept a prisoner in Bristol
+Castle from the age of fifteen. She was at that time so beautiful, that
+she was called proverbially, "La belle Bretonne," and by the English the
+"Fair Maid of Brittany." She, like her brother Arthur, was sacrificed to
+the ambition of her uncles.
+
+Of the two daughters of Constance by Guy de Thouars, the eldest, Alice,
+became Duchess of Bretagne, and married the Count de Dreux, of the royal
+blood of France. The sovereignty of Bretagne was transmitted through her
+descendants in an uninterrupted line, till, by the marriage of the
+celebrated Anne de Bretagne with Charles VIII. of France, her dominions
+were forever united with the French monarchy.
+
+In considering the real history of Constance, three things must strike
+us as chiefly remarkable.
+
+First, that she is not accused of any vice, or any act of injustice or
+violence; and this praise, though poor and negative, should have its due
+weight, considering the scanty records that remain of her troubled life,
+and the period at which she lived--a period in which crimes of the
+darkest dye were familiar occurrences. Her father, Conan, was considered
+as a gentle and amiable prince--"gentle even to feebleness;" yet we are
+told that on one occasion he acted over again the tragedy of Ugolino and
+Ruggiero, when he shut up the Count de Dol, with his two sons and his
+nephew, in a dungeon, and deliberately starved them to death; an event
+recorded without any particular comment by the old chroniclers of
+Bretagne. It also appears that, during those intervals when Constance
+administered the government of her states with some degree of
+independence, the country prospered under her sway, and that she
+possessed at all times the love of her people and the respect of her
+nobles.
+
+Secondly, no imputation whatever has been cast on the honor of Constance
+as a wife and as a woman. The old historians, who have treated in a very
+unceremonious style the levities of her great-grandmother Matilda, her
+grandmother Bertha, her godmother Constance, and her mother-in-law
+Elinor, treat the name and memory of our Lady Constance with uniform
+respect.
+
+Her third marriage, with Guy de Thouars, has been censured as impolitic,
+but has also been defended; it can hardly, considering her age, and the
+circumstances in which she was placed, be a just subject of reproach.
+During her hated union with Randal de Blondeville, and the years passed
+in a species of widowhood, she conducted herself with propriety: at
+least I can find no reason to judge otherwise.
+
+Lastly, we are struck by the fearless, determined spirit, amounting at
+times to rashness, which Constance displayed on several occasions, when
+left to the free exercise of her own power and will; yet we see how
+frequently, with all this resolution and pride of temper, she became a
+mere instrument in the hands of others, and a victim to the superior
+craft or power of her enemies. The inference is unavoidable; there must
+have existed in the mind of Constance, with all her noble and amiable
+qualities, a deficiency somewhere, a want of firmness, a want of
+judgment or wariness, and a total want of self-control.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the play of King John, the three principal characters are the King,
+Falconbridge, and Lady Constance. The first is drawn forcibly and
+accurately from history: it reminds us of Titian's portrait of Cæsar
+Borgia, in which the hatefulness of the subject is redeemed by the
+masterly skill of the artist,--the truth, and power, and wonderful
+beauty of the execution. Falconbridge is the spirited creation of the
+poet.[85] Constance is certainly an historical personage; but the form
+which, when we meet it on the record of history, appears like a pale
+indistinct shadow, half melted into its obscure background, starts
+before us into a strange relief and palpable breathing reality upon the
+page of Shakspeare.
+
+Whenever we think of Constance, it is in her maternal character. All the
+interest which she excites in the drama turns upon her situation as the
+mother of Arthur. Every circumstance in which she is placed, every
+sentiment she utters, has a reference to him, and she is represented
+through the whole of the scenes in which she is engaged, as alternately
+pleading for the rights, and trembling for the existence of her son.
+
+The same may be said of the Merope. In the four tragedies of which her
+story forms the subject,[86] we see her but in one point of view,
+namely, as a mere impersonation of the maternal feeling. The poetry of
+the situation is every thing, the character nothing. Interesting as she
+is, take Merope out of the circumstances in which she is placed,--take
+away her son, for whom she trembles from the first scene to the last,
+and Merope in herself is nothing; she melts away into a name, to which
+we can fix no other characteristic by which to distinguish her. We
+recognize her no longer. Her position is that of an agonized mother; and
+we can no more fancy her under a different aspect, than we can imagine
+the statue of Niobe in a different attitude.
+
+But while we contemplate the character of Constance, she assumes before
+us an individuality perfectly distinct from the circumstances around
+her. The action calls forth her maternal feelings, and places them in
+the most prominent point of view: but with Constance, as with a real
+human being, the maternal affections are a powerful instinct, modified
+by other faculties, sentiments, and impulses, making up the individual
+character. We think of her as a mother, because, as a mother distracted
+for the loss of her son, she is immediately presented before us, and
+calls forth our sympathy and our tears; but we infer the rest of her
+character from what we see, as certainly and as completely as if we had
+known her whole course of life.
+
+That which strikes us as the principal attribute of Constance is
+_power_--power of imagination, of will, of passion, of affection, of
+pride: the moral energy, that faculty which is principally exercised in
+self-control, and gives consistency to the rest, is deficient; or
+rather, to speak more correctly, the extraordinary development of
+sensibility and imagination, which lends to the character its rich
+poetical coloring, leaves the other qualities comparatively subordinate.
+Hence it is that the whole complexion of the character, notwithstanding
+its amazing grandeur, is so exquisitely feminine. The weakness of the
+woman, who by the very consciousness of that weakness is worked up to
+desperation and defiance, the fluctuations of temper and the bursts of
+sublime passion, the terrors, the impatience, and the tears, are all
+most true to feminine nature. The energy of Constance not being based
+upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide of passion.
+Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and is excited into frenzy
+by sorrow and disappointment while neither from her towering pride, nor
+her strength of intellect, can she borrow patience to submit, or
+fortitude to endure. It is, therefore, with perfect truth of nature,
+that Constance is first introduced as pleading for peace.
+
+    Stay for an answer to your embassy,
+    Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood:
+    My Lord Chatillon may from England bring
+    That right in peace, which here we urge in war;
+    And then we shall repent each drop of blood,
+    That hot, rash haste so indirectly shed.
+
+And that the same woman, when all her passions are roused by the sense
+of injury, should afterwards exclaim,
+
+    War, war! No peace! peace is to me a war!
+
+That she should be ambitious for her son, proud of his high birth and
+royal rights, and violent in defending them, is most natural; but I
+cannot agree with those who think that in the mind of Constance,
+_ambition_--that is, the love of dominion for its own sake--is either a
+strong motive or a strong feeling: it could hardly be so where the
+natural impulses and the ideal power predominate in so high a degree.
+The vehemence with which she asserts the just and legal rights of her
+son is that of a fond mother and a proud-spirited woman, stung with the
+sense of injury, and herself a reigning sovereign,--by birth and right,
+if not in fact: yet when bereaved of her son, grief not only "fills the
+room up of her absent child," but seems to absorb every other faculty
+and feeling--even pride and anger. It is true that she exults over him
+as one whom nature and fortune had destined to be _great_, but in her
+distraction for his loss, she thinks of him only as her "Pretty Arthur."
+
+    O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
+    My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
+    My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!
+
+No other feeling can be traced through the whole of her frantic scene:
+it is grief only, a mother's heart-rending, soul-absorbing grief, and
+nothing else. Not even indignation, or the desire of revenge, interfere
+with its soleness and intensity. An ambitious woman would hardly have
+thus addressed the cold, wily Cardinal:--
+
+    And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say,
+    That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
+    If that be true, I shall see my boy again:
+    For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
+    To him that did but yesterday suspire,
+    There was not such a gracious creature born.
+    But now will canker eat my bud,
+    And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
+    And he will look as hollow as a ghost;
+    As dim and merge as an ague's fit;
+    And so he'll die; and rising so again,
+    When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
+    I shall not know him: therefore never, never.
+    Must I behold my pretty Arthur more!
+
+The bewildered pathos and poetry of this address could be natural in no
+woman, who did not unite, like Constance, the most passionate
+sensibility with the most vivid imagination.
+
+It is true that Queen Elinor calls her on one occasion, "ambitious
+Constance;" but the epithet is rather the natural expression of Elinor's
+own fear and hatred than really applicable.[87] Elinor, in whom age had
+subdued all passions but ambition, dreaded the mother of Arthur as her
+rival in power, and for that reason only opposed the claims of the son:
+but I conceive, that in a woman yet in the prime of life, and endued
+with the peculiar disposition of Constance, the mere love of power would
+be too much modified by fancy and feeling to be called a _passion_.
+
+In fact, it is not pride, nor temper, nor ambition, nor even maternal
+affection, which in Constance gives the prevailing tone to the whole
+character; it is the predominance of imagination. I do not mean in the
+conception of the dramatic portrait, but in the temperament of the woman
+herself. In the poetical, fanciful, excitable cast of her mind, in the
+_excess_ of the ideal power, tinging all her affections, exalting all
+her sentiments and thoughts, and animating the expression of both,
+Constance can only be compared to Juliet.
+
+In the first place, it is through the power of imagination that when
+under the influence of excited temper, Constance is not a mere incensed
+woman; nor does she, in the style of Volumnia, "lament in anger,
+Juno-like," but rather like a sibyl in a fury. Her sarcasms come down
+like thunderbolts. In her famous address to Austria--
+
+    O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame
+    That bloody spoil! thou slave! thou wretch! thou coward! &c.
+
+it is as if she had concentrated the burning spirit of scorn, and dashed
+it in his face: every word seems to blister where it falls. In the
+scolding scene between her and Queen Elinor, the laconic insolence of
+the latter is completely overborne by the torrent of bitter contumely
+which bursts from the lips of Constance, clothed in the most energetic,
+and often in the most figurative expressions.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Let me make answer; Thy usurping son.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Out insolent! thy bastard shall be king,
+    That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world!
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    My bed was ever to thy son as true,
+    As thine was to thy husband; and this boy
+    Liker in feature to his father Geffrey,
+    Than thou and John in manners: being as like
+    As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
+    My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think
+    His father never was so true begot;
+    It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+                        Come to thy grandam, child.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Do child; go to its grandam, child:
+    Give grandam kingdom, and its grandam will
+    Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:
+    There's a good grandam.
+
+                        ARTHUR.
+
+                            Good my mother, peace!
+    I would that I were low laid in my grave;
+    I am not worth this coil that's made for me.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Now shame upon you, whe'r she does or no!
+    His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shame,
+    Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes
+    Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee:
+    Ay, with these crystal beads heav'n shall be bribed
+    To do him justice, and revenge on you.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!
+    Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurp
+    The dominations, royalties, and rights
+    Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's son
+    Infortunate in nothing but in thee.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Thou unadvised scold, I can produce
+    A will that bars the title of thy son.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will--
+    A woman's will--a canker'd grandam's will!
+
+                        KING PHILIP.
+
+    Peace, lady: pause, or be more moderate.
+
+And in a very opposite mood, when struggling with the consciousness of
+her own helpless situation, the same susceptible and excitable fancy
+still predominates:--
+
+    Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me;
+    For I am sick, and capable of fears;
+    Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears
+    A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
+    A woman, naturally born to fears;
+    And though thou now confess thou didst but jest
+    With my vexed spirits, I cannot take a truce,
+    But they will quake and tremble all this day.
+    What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?
+    Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?
+    What means that hand upon that breast of thine?
+    Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,
+    Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds?
+    Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Fellow, begone! I cannot brook thy sight--
+    This news hath made thee a most ugly man!
+
+It is the power of imagination which gives so peculiar a tinge to the
+maternal tenderness of Constance; she not only loves her son with the
+fond instinct of a mother's affection, but she loves him with her
+poetical imagination, exults in his beauty and his royal birth, hangs
+over him with idolatry, and sees his infant brow already encircled with
+the diadem. Her proud spirit, her ardent enthusiastic fancy, and her
+energetic self-will, all combine with her maternal love to give it that
+tone and character which belongs to her only: hence that most beautiful
+address to her son, which coming from the lips of Constance, is as full
+of nature and truth as of pathos and poetry, and which we could hardly
+sympathize with in any other:--
+
+                        ARTHUR.
+
+    I do beseech you, madam, be content.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,
+    Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,
+    Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,
+    Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious.
+    Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks,
+    I would not care--I then would be content;
+    For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou
+    Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.
+    But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy!
+    Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:
+    Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast,
+    And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O!
+    She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee;
+    She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John;
+    And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France
+    To tread down fair respect of sovereignty.
+
+It is this exceeding vivacity of imagination which in the end turns
+sorrow to frenzy. Constance is not only a bereaved and doating mother,
+but a generous woman, betrayed by her own rash confidence; in whose mind
+the sense of injury mingling with the sense of grief, and her impetuous
+temper conflicting with her pride, combine to overset her reason; yet
+she is not mad: and how admirably, how forcibly she herself draws the
+distinction between the frantic violence of uncontrolled feeling and
+actual madness!--
+
+    Thou art not holy to belie me so;
+    I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
+    My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
+    Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
+    I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were!
+    For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
+    O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
+
+Not only has Constance words at will, and fast as the passionate
+feelings rise in her mind they are poured forth with vivid, overpowering
+eloquence; but, like Juliet, she may be said to speak in pictures. For
+instance:--
+
+    Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum?
+    Like a proud river peering o'er its bounds.
+
+And throughout the whole dialogue there is the same overflow of
+eloquence, the same splendor of diction, the same luxuriance of imagery;
+yet with an added grandeur, arising from habits of command, from the
+age, the rank, and the matronly character of Constance. Thus Juliet
+pours forth her love like a muse in a rapture: Constance raves in her
+sorrow like a Pythoness possessed with the spirit of pain. The love of
+Juliet is deep and infinite as the boundless sea: and the grief of
+Constance is so great, that nothing but the round world itself is able
+to sustain it.
+
+    I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
+    For grief is proud and makes his owner stout.
+    To me, and to the state of my great grief
+    Let kings assemble, for my grief's so great,
+    That no supporter but the huge firm earth
+    Can hold it up. Here I and Sorrow sit;
+    Here is my throne,--bid kings come bow to it!
+
+An image more majestic, more wonderfully sublime, was never presented to
+the fancy; yet almost equal as a flight of poetry is her apostrophe to
+the heavens;--
+
+    Arm, arm, ye heavens, against these perjured kings
+    A widow calls!--be husband to me, heavens!
+
+And again--
+
+    O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth,
+    Then with a passion would I shake the world!
+
+Not only do her thoughts start into images, but her feelings become
+persons: grief haunts her as a living presence:
+
+    Grief fills the room up of my absent child;
+    Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
+    Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
+    Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
+    Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
+    Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
+
+And death is welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as
+Juliet _saw_ "the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one
+ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered
+fancy:--
+
+                O amiable, lovely death!
+    Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
+    Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
+    Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
+    And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
+    And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows;
+    And right these fingers with thy household worms;
+    And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust;
+    And be a carrion monster like thyself;
+    Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st,
+    And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,
+    O come to me!
+
+Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy.
+Majesty is also the characteristic of Hermione: but what a difference
+between _her_ silent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the eloquent
+grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth
+clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but
+absolutely electrify us!
+
+On the whole, it may be said that pride and maternal affection form the
+basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us; but that
+these passions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, assume
+their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of
+intellect and fancy. It is the energy of passion which lends the
+character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination
+throughout which dilates it into magnificence.
+
+Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be
+found in the parts of Juliet and Constance; the most splendid, perhaps,
+excepting only the parts of Lear and Othello; and for the same
+reason,--that Lear and Othello as men, and Juliet and Constance as
+women, are distinguished by the predominance of the same
+faculties,--passion and imagination.
+
+The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially
+interfering with the truth of the situation, is the entire omission of
+the character of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance is incorrectly
+represented as in a state of widowhood, at a period when, in point of
+fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place
+just at the period of the opening of the drama; that Guy de Thouars
+played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the
+death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this personage,
+altogether superfluous in the action, would have completely destroyed
+the dramatic interest of the situation;--and what a situation! One more
+magnificent was never placed before the mind's eye than that of
+Constance, when, deserted and betrayed, she stands alone in her despair,
+amid her false friends and her ruthless enemies![88] The image of the
+mother-eagle, wounded and bleeding to death, yet stretched over her
+young in an attitude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are
+clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity
+of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the
+grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that
+mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy
+of Philip: between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold,
+subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely
+Louis; the still unconquered spirit of that wrangling queen, old Elinor;
+the bridal loveliness and modesty of Blanche; the boyish grace and
+innocence of young Arthur; and Constance in the midst of them, in all
+the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and
+passion, helpless at once and desperate,--form an assemblage of figures,
+each perfect in its kind, and, taken all together, not surpassed for the
+variety, force, and splendor of the dramatic and picturesque effect.
+
+
+QUEEN ELINOR.
+
+Elinor of Guienne, and Blanche of Castile, who form part of the group
+around Constance, are sketches merely, but they are strictly historical
+portraits, and full of truth and spirit.
+
+At the period when Shakspeare has brought these three women on the scene
+together, Elinor of Guienne (the daughter of the last Duke of Guienne
+and Aquitaine, and like Constance, the heiress of a sovereign duchy) was
+near the close of her long, various, and unquiet life--she was nearly
+seventy: and, as in early youth, her violent passions had overborne both
+principle and policy, so in her old age we see the same character, only
+modified by time; her strong intellect and love of power, unbridled by
+conscience or principle, surviving when other passions were
+extinguished, and rendered more dangerous by a degree of subtlety and
+self-command to which her youth had been a stranger. Her personal and
+avowed hatred for Constance, together with its motives, are mentioned by
+the old historians. Holinshed expressly says, that Queen Elinor was
+mightily set against her grandson Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy
+conceived against his mother, than by any fault of the young prince, for
+that she knew and dreaded the high spirit of the Lady Constance.
+
+Shakspeare has rendered this with equal spirit and fidelity.
+
+                        QUEEN ELINOR.
+
+    What now, my son! have I not ever said,
+    How that ambitious Constance would not cease,
+    Till she had kindled France and all the world
+    Upon the right and party of her son?
+    This might have been prevented and made whole
+    With very easy arguments of love;
+    Which now the manage of two kingdoms must
+    With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.
+
+                        KING JOHN.
+
+    Our strong possession and our right for us!
+
+                        QUEEN ELINOR.
+
+    Your strong possession much more than your right;
+    Or else it must go wrong with you and me.
+    So much my conscience whispers in your ear--
+    Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear.
+
+Queen Elinor preserved to the end of her life her influence over her
+children, and appears to have merited their respect. While intrusted
+with the government, during the absence of Richard I., she ruled with a
+steady hand, and made herself exceedingly popular; and as long as she
+lived to direct the counsels of her son John, his affairs prospered. For
+that intemperate jealousy which converted her into a domestic firebrand,
+there was at least much cause, though little excuse. Elinor had hated
+and wronged the husband of her youth,[89] and she had afterwards to
+endure the negligence and innumerable infidelities of the husband whom
+she passionately loved:[90]--"and so the whirligig of time brought in
+his revenges." Elinor died in 1203, a few months after Constance, and
+before the murder of Arthur--a crime which, had she lived, would
+probably never have been consummated; for the nature of Elinor, though
+violent, had no tincture of the baseness and cruelty of her son.
+
+
+BLANCHE.
+
+Blanche of Castile was the daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile, and the
+grand-daughter of Elinor. At the time that she is introduced into the
+drama, she was about fifteen, and her marriage with Louis VIII., then
+Dauphin, took place in the abrupt manner here represented. It is not
+often that political marriages have the same happy result. We are told
+by the historians of that time, that from the moment Louis and Blanche
+met, they were inspired by a mutual passion, and that during a union of
+more than twenty-six years they were never known to differ, nor even
+spent more than a single day asunder.[91]
+
+In her exceeding beauty and blameless reputation; her love for her
+husband, and strong domestic affections; her pride of birth and rank;
+her feminine gentleness of deportment; her firmness of temper; her
+religious bigotry; her love of absolute power, and her upright and
+conscientious administration of it, Blanche greatly resembled Maria
+Theresa of Austria. She was, however, of a more cold and calculating
+nature; and in proportion as she was less amiable as a woman, did she
+rule more happily for herself and others. There cannot be a greater
+contrast than between the acute understanding, the steady temper, and
+the cool intriguing policy of Blanche, by which she succeeded in
+disuniting and defeating the powers arrayed against her and her infant
+son, and the rash confiding temper and susceptible imagination of
+Constance, which rendered herself and her son easy victims to the fraud
+or ambition of others. Blanche, during forty years, held in her hands
+the destinies of the greater part of Europe, and is one of the most
+celebrated names recorded in history--but in what does she survive to us
+except in a name? Nor history, nor fame, though "trumpet-tongued," could
+do for _her_ what Shakspeare and poetry have done for Constance. The
+earthly reign of Blanche is over, her sceptre broken, and her power
+departed. When will the reign of Constance cease? when will _her_ power
+depart? Not while this world is a world, and there exists in it human
+souls to kindle at the touch of genius, and human hearts to throb with
+human sympathies!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no female character of any interest in the play of Richard II.
+The Queen (Isabelle of France) enacts the same passive part in the drama
+that she does in history.
+
+The same remark applies to Henry IV. In this admirable play there is no
+female character of any importance; but Lady Percy, the wife of Hotspur,
+is a very lively and beautiful sketch: she is sprightly, feminine, and
+fond; but without any thing energetic or profound, in mind or in
+feeling. Her gayety and spirit in the first scenes, are the result of
+youth and happiness, and nothing can be more natural than the utter
+dejection and brokenness of heart which follow her husband's death: she
+is no heroine for war or tragedy; she has no thought of revenging her
+loss; and even her grief has something soft and quiet in its pathos. Her
+speech to her father-in-law, Northumberland, in which she entreats him
+"not to go to the wars," and at the same time pronounces the most
+beautiful eulogium on her heroic husband, is a perfect piece of feminine
+eloquence, both in the feeling and in the expression.
+
+Almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy's celebrated address to her
+husband, beginning,
+
+    O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?
+
+and that of Portia to Brutus, in Julius Cæsar,
+
+    ... You've ungently, Brutus,
+    Stol'n from my bed.
+
+The situation is exactly similar, the topics of remonstrance are nearly
+the same; the sentiments and the style as opposite as are the characters
+of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently accustomed to win more from
+her fiery lord by caresses than by reason: he loves her in his rough way
+"as Harry Percy's wife," but she has no real influence over him: he has
+no confidence in her.
+
+                        LADY PERCY.
+
+    ... In faith,
+    I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.
+    I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir
+    About this title, and hath sent for you
+    To line his enterprise, but if you go--
+
+                        HOTSPUR.
+
+    So far afoot, I shall be weary, love!
+
+The whole scene is admirable, but unnecessary here, because it
+illustrates no point of character in her. Lady Percy has no _character_,
+properly so called; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and
+faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's
+fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties,
+scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly
+dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's
+thoughts, and proves it too
+
+    I grant I am a woman, but withal,
+    A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife,
+    I grant I am a woman, but withal,
+    A woman well reputed--Cato's daughter.
+    Think you, I am no stronger than my sex
+    Being so father'd and so husbanded?
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    You are my true and honorable wife:
+    As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops
+    That visit my sad heart!
+
+Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is
+but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see
+an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of
+heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by
+profession, and in reality the reverse--acting deeds against his nature
+by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same
+profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and
+timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity,
+which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The
+fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own
+fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch
+relates, that on the day on which Cæsar was assassinated, Portia
+appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her
+emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has
+rendered this circumstance literally.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,
+    Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.
+    Why dost thou stay?
+
+                        LUCIUS.
+
+                      To know my errand, madam.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    I would have had thee there and here again,
+    Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.
+    O constancy! be strong upon my side:
+    Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
+    I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
+    ... Ah me! how weak a thing
+    The heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.
+
+There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not
+well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in
+the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she
+might not shake _his_ fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a
+chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she
+stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length
+burst into a passion of tears.[92]
+
+If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have
+been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or
+external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of
+sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the _philosophy_ of Portia
+and the _heroism_ of her death, certainly mistook the character
+altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not
+deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took
+place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed
+feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented
+it:--
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!
+
+                        CASSIUS.
+
+    Of your philosophy you make no use,
+    If you give place to accidental evils.
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead.
+
+                        CASSIUS.
+
+    Ha!--Portia?
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    She is dead.
+
+                        CASSIUS.
+
+    How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?
+    O insupportable and touching loss--
+    Upon what sickness?
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    Impatient of my absence,
+    And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
+    Had made themselves so strong--(for with her death
+    These tidings came)--_with this she fell distract_,
+    And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.
+
+So much for woman's philosophy!
+
+
+MARGARET OF ANJOU.
+
+Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal
+evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally
+written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,[93] with
+considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr.
+Warburton, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism
+convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be
+convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the _unanswerable_.
+"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a
+case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that
+the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more
+of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of
+Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery,
+bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action,
+and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that
+there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as
+Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most
+skeptical.[94]
+
+Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the
+character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those
+who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most
+conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters,
+we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not
+always equal, but he had not two _manners_, as they say of painters. I
+discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit
+in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors,
+but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very
+unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these
+tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and
+consistency--but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so
+well in what true greatness of spirit consisted--who could excite our
+respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us
+a heroine without a touch of heroism; he would not have portrayed a
+high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest
+vicissitudes of fortune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would
+have broken the most masculine spirit, with unshaken constancy, yet left
+her without a single personal quality which would excite our interest in
+her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of
+history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen,
+the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere "Amazonian trull," with
+every coarser feature of depravity and ferocity; he would have redeemed
+her from unmingled detestation; he would have breathed into her some of
+his own sweet spirit--he would have given the woman a soul.
+
+The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all
+other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in
+stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that
+after the espousals of Henry and Margaret, "the king's friends fell from
+him; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves; the
+Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten;
+many thousands slain; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son
+slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as
+she was received with pomp and triumph."
+
+This passage seems to have furnished the groundwork of the character as
+it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret is
+portrayed with all the exterior graces of her sex; as bold and artful,
+with spirit to dare, resolution to act, and fortitude to endure; but
+treacherous, haughty, dissembling, vindictive, and fierce. The bloody
+struggle for power in which she was engaged, and the companionship of
+the ruthless iron men around her, seem to have left her nothing of
+womanhood but the heart of a mother--that last stronghold of our
+feminine nature! So far the character is consistently drawn: it has
+something of the power, but none of the flowing ease of Shakspeare's
+manner. There are fine materials not well applied; there is poetry in
+some of the scenes and speeches; the situations are often exceedingly
+poetical; but in the character of Margaret herself, there is not an atom
+of poetry. In her artificial dignity, her plausible wit, and her endless
+volubility, she would remind us of some of the most admired heroines of
+French tragedy, but for that unlucky box on the ear which she gives the
+Duchess of Gloster,--a violation of tragic decorum, which of course
+destroys all parallel.
+
+Having said thus much, I shall point out some of the finest and most
+characteristic scenes in which Margaret appears. The speech in which she
+expresses her scorn of her meek husband, and her impatience of the power
+exercised by those fierce overbearing barons, York, Salisbury, Warwick,
+Buckingham, is very fine, and conveys as faithful an idea of those
+feudal times as of the woman who speaks. The burst of female spite with
+which she concludes, is admirable--
+
+    Not all these lords do vex me half so much
+    As that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wife.
+    She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,
+    More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife.
+    Strangers in court do take her for the queen:
+    She bears a duke's revenues on her back,
+    And in her heart she scorns our poverty.
+    Shall I not live to be avenged on her?
+    Contemptuous base-born callet as she is!
+    She vaunted 'mongst her minions t'other day,
+    The very train of her worst wearing gown
+    Was better worth than all my father's lands,
+    Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.
+
+Her intriguing spirit, the facility with which she enters into the
+murderous confederacy against the good Duke Humphrey, the artful
+plausibility with which she endeavours to turn suspicion from
+herself--confounding her gentle consort by mere dint of words--are
+exceedingly characteristic, but not the less revolting.
+
+Her criminal love for Suffolk (which is a dramatic incident, not an
+historic fact) gives rise to the beautiful parting scene in the third
+act; a scene which it is impossible to read without a thrill of emotion,
+hurried away by that power and pathos which forces us to sympathize with
+the eloquence of grief, yet excites not a momentary interest either for
+Margaret or her lover. The ungoverned fury of Margaret in the first
+instance, the manner in which she calls on Suffolk to curse his enemies,
+and then shrinks back overcome by the violence of the spirit she had
+herself evoked, and terrified by the vehemence of his imprecations; the
+transition in her mind from the extremity of rage to tears and melting
+fondness, have been pronounced, and justly, to be in Shakspeare's own
+manner.
+
+    Go, speak not to me--even now begone.
+    O go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn'd
+    Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,
+    Loather a hundred times to part than die:
+    Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!
+
+which is followed by that beautiful and intense burst of passion from
+Suffolk--
+
+    'Tis not the hand I care for, wert thou hence;
+    A wilderness is populous enough,
+    So Suffolk had thy heavenly company:
+    For where thou art, there is the world itself,
+    With every several pleasure in the world;
+    And where thou art not, desolation!
+
+In the third part of Henry the Sixth, Margaret, engaged in the terrible
+struggle for her husband's throne, appears to rather more advantage. The
+indignation against Henry, who had pitifully yielded his son's
+birthright for the privilege of reigning unmolested during his own life,
+is worthy of her, and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here
+inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of
+the Duke of York; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty
+with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner,--the bitterness
+of her mockery, and the unwomanly malignity with which she presents him
+with the napkin stained with the blood of his youngest son, and "bids
+the father wipe his eyes withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion
+and horror. York replies in the celebrated speech, beginning--
+
+    She-wolf of France, and worse than wolves of France,
+    Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth--
+
+and taunts her with the poverty of her father, the most irritating topic
+he could have chosen.
+
+    Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?
+    It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen,
+    Unless the adage must be verified,
+    That beggars, mounted, ride their horse to death.
+    'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud;
+    But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small.
+    'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;
+    The contrary doth make thee wondered at.
+    'Tis government that makes them seem divine,
+    The want thereof makes thee abominable.
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!
+    How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the child
+    To bid the father wipe his face withal,
+    And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?
+    Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,
+    Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!
+
+By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted such a speech could be
+answered only in one way--with her dagger's point--and thus she answers
+it.
+
+It is some comfort to reflect that this trait of ferocity is not
+historical: the body of the Duke of York was found, after the battle,
+among the heaps of slain, and his head struck off: but even this was not
+done by the command of Margaret.
+
+In another passage, the truth and consistency of the character of
+Margaret are sacrificed to the march of the dramatic action, with a very
+ill effect. When her fortunes were at the very lowest ebb, and she had
+sought refuge in the court of the French king, Warwick, her most
+formidable enemy, upon some disgust he had taken against Edward the
+Fourth, offered to espouse her cause; and proposed a match between the
+prince her son and his daughter Anne of Warwick--the "gentle Lady Anne,"
+who figures in Richard the Third. In the play, Margaret embraces the
+offer without a moment's hesitation:[95] we are disgusted by her
+versatile policy, and a meanness of spirit in no way allied to the
+magnanimous forgiveness of her terrible adversary. The Margaret of
+history sternly resisted this degrading expedient. She could not, she
+said, pardon from her heart the man who had been the primary cause of
+all her misfortunes. She mistrusted Warwick, despised him for the
+motives of his revolt from Edward, and considered that to match her son
+into the family of her enemy from mere policy was a species of
+degradation. It took Louis the Eleventh, with all his art and
+eloquence, fifteen days to wring a reluctant consent, accompanied with
+tears, from this high-hearted woman.
+
+The speech of Margaret to her council of generals before the battle of
+Tewksbury, (Act v. scene 5,) is as remarkable a specimen of false
+rhetoric, as her address to the soldiers, on the eve of the fight, is of
+true and passionate eloquence.
+
+She witnesses the final defeat of her army, the massacre of her
+adherents, and the murder of her son; and though the savage Richard
+would willingly have put an end to her misery, and exclaims very
+pertinently--
+
+    Why should she live to fill the world with words?
+
+she is dragged forth unharmed, a woful spectacle of extremest
+wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we
+compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter
+of her son, to the ravings of Constance, we shall perceive where
+Shakspeare's genius did _not_ preside, and where it _did_. Margaret, in
+bold defiance of history, but with fine dramatic effect, is introduced
+again in the gorgeous and polluted court of Edward the Fourth. There she
+stalks around the seat of her former greatness, like a terrible phantom
+of departed majesty, uncrowned, unsceptered, desolate, powerless--or
+like a vampire thirsting for blood--or like a grim prophetess of evil,
+imprecating that ruin on the head of her enemies, which she lived to see
+realized. The scene following the murder of the princes in the Tower,
+in which Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York sit down on the ground
+bewailing their desolation, and Margaret suddenly appears from behind
+them, like the very personification of woe, and seats herself beside
+them revelling in their despair, is, in the general conception and
+effect grand and appalling.
+
+                        THE DUCHESS.
+
+    O, Harry's wife, triumph not in my woes;
+    God witness with me, I have wept for thine!
+
+                        QUEEN MARGARET.
+
+    Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge,
+    And now I cloy me with beholding it.
+    Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward;
+    Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward:
+    Young York he is but boot, because both they
+    Match not the high perfection of my loss.
+    Thy Clarence he is dead, that stabb'd my Edward;
+    And the beholders of this tragic play,
+    The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
+    Untimely smother'd in their dusky graves.
+    Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer,
+    Only reserv'd their factor, to buy souls
+    And send them thither. But at hand, at hand,
+    Ensues his piteous and unpitied end;
+    Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar for him: saints pray
+    To have him suddenly convey'd from hence.
+    Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,
+    That I may live to say, The dog is dead.[96]
+
+She should have stopped here; but the effect thus powerfully excited is
+marred and weakened by so much superfluous rhetoric, that we are tempted
+to exclaim with the old Duchess of York--
+
+    Why should calamity be full of words?
+
+
+QUEEN KATHERINE OF ARRAGON.
+
+To have a just idea of the accuracy and beauty of this historical
+portrait, we ought to bring immediately before us those circumstances of
+Katherine's life and times, and those parts of her character, which
+belong to a period previous to the opening of the play. We shall then be
+better able to appreciate the skill with which Shakspeare has applied
+the materials before him.
+
+Katherine of Arragon, the fourth and youngest daughter of Ferdinand,
+King of Arragon, and Isabella of Castile, was born at Alcala, whither
+her mother had retired to winter after one of the most terrible
+campaigns of the Moorish war--that of 1485.
+
+Katherine had derived from nature no dazzling qualities of mind, and no
+striking advantages of person. She inherited a tincture of Queen
+Isabella's haughtiness and obstinacy of temper, but neither her beauty
+nor her splendid talents. Her education under the direction of that
+extraordinary mother, had implanted in her mind the most austere
+principles of virtue, the highest ideas of female decorum, the most
+narrow and bigoted attachment to the forms of religion, and that
+excessive pride of birth and rank, which distinguished so particularly
+her family and her nation. In other respects, her understanding was
+strong, and her judgment clear. The natural turn of her mind was simple,
+serious, and domestic, and all the impulses of her heart kindly and
+benevolent. Such was Katherine; such, at least, she appears on a
+reference to the chronicles of her times, and particularly from her own
+letters, and the papers written or dictated by herself which relate to
+her divorce; all of which are distinguished by the same artless
+simplicity of style, the same quiet good sense, the same resolute, yet
+gentle spirit and fervent piety.
+
+When five years old, Katherine was solemnly affianced to Arthur, Prince
+of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII.; and in the year 1501, she landed
+in England, after narrowly escaping shipwreck on the southern coast,
+from which every adverse wind conspired to drive her. She was received
+in London with great honor, and immediately on her arrival united to the
+young prince. He was then fifteen and Katherine in her seventeenth
+year.
+
+Arthur, as it is well known, survived his marriage only five months; and
+the reluctance of Henry VII. to refund the splendid dowry of the
+Infanta, and forego the advantages of an alliance with the most powerful
+prince of Europe, suggested the idea of uniting Katherine to his second
+son Henry; after some hesitation, a dispensation was procured from the
+Pope, and she was betrothed to Henry in her eighteenth year. The prince,
+who was then only twelve years old, resisted as far as he was able to do
+so, and appears to have really felt a degree of horror at the idea of
+marrying his brother's widow. Nor was the mind of King Henry at rest; as
+his health declined, his conscience reproached him with the equivocal
+nature of the union into which he had forced his son; and the vile
+motives of avarice and expediency which had governed him on this
+occasion. A short time previous to his death, he dissolved the
+engagement, and even caused Henry to sign a paper in which he solemnly
+renounced all idea of a future union with the Infanta. It is observable,
+that Henry signed this paper with reluctance, and that Katherine,
+instead of being sent back to her own country, still remained in
+England.
+
+It appears that Henry, who was now about seventeen, had become
+interested for Katherine, who was gentle and amiable. The difference of
+years was rather a circumstance in her favor; for Henry was just at that
+age, when a youth is most likely to be captivated by a woman older than
+himself: and no sooner was he required to renounce her, than the
+interest she had gradually gained in his affections, became, by
+opposition, a strong passion. Immediately after his father's death, he
+declared his resolution to take for his wife the Lady Katherine of
+Spain, and none other; and when the matter was discussed in council, it
+was urged that, besides the many advantages of the match in a political
+point of view, she had given so "much proof of virtue, and sweetness of
+condition, as they knew not where to parallel her." About six weeks
+after his accession, June 3, 1509, the marriage was celebrated with
+truly royal splendor, Henry being then eighteen, and Katherine in her
+twenty-fourth year.
+
+It has been said with truth, that if Henry had died while Katherine was
+yet his wife, and Wolsey his minister, he would have left behind him the
+character of a magnificent, popular, and accomplished prince, instead of
+that of the most hateful ruffian and tyrant who ever swayed these
+realms. Notwithstanding his occasional infidelities, and his impatience
+at her midnight vigils, her long prayers, and her religious austerities,
+Katherine and Henry lived in harmony together. He was fond of openly
+displaying his respect and love for her; and she exercised a strong and
+salutary influence over his turbulent and despotic spirit. When Henry
+set out on his expedition to France, in 1513, he left Katherine regent
+of the kingdom during his absence, with full powers to carry on the war
+against the Scots; and the Earl of Surrey at the head of the army, as
+her lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine--the pacific,
+domestic, and unpretending Katherine--describing herself as having "her
+heart set to war," and "horrible busy" with making "standards, banners,
+badges, scarfs, and the like."[97] Nor was this mere silken
+preparation--mere dalliance with the pomp and circumstance of war; for
+within a few weeks afterwards, her general defeated the Scots in the
+famous battle of Floddenfield, where James IV. and most of his nobility
+were slain.[98]
+
+Katherine's letter to Henry, announcing this event, so strikingly
+displays the piety and tenderness, the quiet simplicity, and real
+magnanimity of her character, that there cannot be a more apt and
+beautiful illustration of the exquisite truth and keeping of
+Shakspeare's portrait.
+
+
+     SIR,
+
+     My Lord Howard hath sent me a letter, open to your Grace,
+     within one of mine, by the which ye shall see at length the
+     great victory that our Lord hath sent your subjects in your
+     absence: and for this cause, it is no need herein to trouble
+     your Grace with long writing; but to my thinking this battle
+     hath been to your Grace, and all your realm, the greatest
+     honor that could be, and more than ye should win all the
+     crown of France, thanked be God for it! And I am sure your
+     Grace forgetteth not to do this, which shall be cause to
+     send you many more such great victories, as I trust he shall
+     do. My husband, for haste, with Rougecross, I could not send
+     your Grace the piece of the king of Scots' coat, which John
+     Glyn now bringeth. In this your Grace shall see how I can
+     keep my promise, sending you for your banners a king's coat.
+     I thought to send himself unto you, but our Englishmen's
+     hearts would not suffer it. It should have been better for
+     him to have been in peace than have this reward, but all
+     that God sendeth is for the best. My Lord of Surrey, my
+     Henry, would fain know your pleasure in the burying of the
+     king of Scots' body, for he hath written to me so. With the
+     next messenger, your Grace's pleasure may be herein known.
+     And with this I make an end, praying God to send you home
+     shortly; for without this, no joy here can be
+     accomplished--and for the same I pray. And now go to our
+     Lady at Walsyngham, that I promised so long ago to see.
+
+     At Woburn, the 16th day of September, (1513.)
+
+     I send your Grace herein a bill, found in a Scottishman's
+     purse, of such things as the French king sent to the said
+     king of Scots, to make war against you, beseeching you to
+     send Mathew hither as soon as this messenger cometh with
+     tidings of your Grace.
+
+    Your humble wife and true servant,
+
+                KATHERINE.[99]
+
+The legality of the king's marriage with Katherine remained undisputed
+till 1527. In the course of that year, Anna Bullen first appeared at
+court, and was appointed maid of honor to the queen; and then, and not
+till then, did Henry's union with his brother's wife "creep too near his
+conscience." In the following year, he sent special messengers to Rome,
+with secret instructions: they were required to discover (among other
+"hard questions") whether, if the queen entered a religious life, the
+king might have the Pope's dispensation to marry again; and whether if
+the king (for the better inducing the queen thereto) would enter himself
+into a religious life, the Pope would dispense with the king's vow, and
+leave her there?
+
+Poor Katherine! we are not surprised to read that when she understood
+what was intended against her, "she labored with all those passions
+which jealousy of the king's affection, sense of her own honor, and the
+legitimation of her daughter, could produce, laying in conclusion the
+whole fault on the Cardinal." It is elsewhere said, that Wolsey bore the
+queen ill-will, in consequence of her reflecting with some severity on
+his haughty temper, and very unclerical life.
+
+The proceedings were pending for nearly six years, and one of the causes
+of this long delay, in spite of Henry's impatient and despotic
+character, is worth noting. The old Chronicle tells us, that though the
+men generally, and more particularly the priests and the nobles sided
+with Henry in this matter, yet all the ladies of England were against
+it. They justly felt that the honor and welfare of no woman was secure
+if, after twenty years of union, she might be thus deprived of all her
+rights as a wife; the clamor became so loud and general, that the king
+was obliged to yield to it for a time, to stop the proceedings, and to
+banish Anna Bullen from the court.
+
+Cardinal Campeggio, called by Shakspeare Campeius, arrived in England in
+October, 1528. He at first endeavored to persuade Katherine to avoid the
+disgrace and danger of contesting her marriage, by entering a religious
+house; but she rejected his advice with strong expressions of disdain.
+"I am," said she, "the king's true wife, and to him married; and if all
+doctors were dead, or law or learning far out of men's minds at the time
+of our marriage, yet I cannot think that the court of Rome, and the
+whole church of England, would have consented to a thing unlawful and
+detestable as you call it. Still I say I am his wife, and for him will I
+pray."
+
+About two years afterwards, Wolsey died, (in November, 1530;)--the king
+and queen met for the last time on the 14th of July, 1531. Until that
+period, some outward show of respect and kindness had been maintained
+between them; but the king then ordered her to repair to a private
+residence, and no longer to consider herself as his lawful wife. "To
+which the virtuous and mourning queen replied no more than this, that to
+whatever place she removed, nothing could remove her from being the
+king's wife. And so they bid each other farewell; and from this time the
+king never saw her more."[100] He married Anna Bullen in 1532, while the
+decision relating to his former marriage was still pending. The sentence
+of divorce to which Katherine never would submit, was finally pronounced
+by Cranmer in 1533; and the unhappy queen, whose health had been
+gradually declining through these troubles of heart, died January 29,
+1536, in the fiftieth year of her age.
+
+Thus the action of the play of Henry VIII. includes events which
+occurred from the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, to the
+death of Katherine in 1536. In making the death of Katherine precede the
+birth of Queen Elizabeth, Shakspeare has committed an anachronism, not
+only pardonable, but necessary. We must remember that the construction
+of the play required a happy termination; and that the birth of
+Elizabeth, before or after the death of Katherine, involved the question
+of her legitimacy. By this slight deviation from the real course of
+events, Shakspeare has not perverted historic facts, but merely
+sacrificed them to a higher principle; and in doing so has not only
+preserved dramatic propriety, and heightened the poetical interest, but
+has given a strong proof both of his delicacy and his judgment.
+
+If we also call to mind that in this play Katherine is properly the
+heroine, and exhibited from first to last as the very "queen of earthly
+queens;" that the whole interest is thrown round her and Wolsey--the one
+the injured rival, the other the enemy of Anna Bullen--and that it was
+written in the reign and for the court of Elizabeth, we shall yet
+farther appreciate the moral greatness of the poet's mind, which
+disdained to sacrifice justice and the truth of nature to any
+time-serving expediency.
+
+Schlegel observes somewhere, that in the literal accuracy and apparent
+artlessness with which Shakspeare has adapted some of the events and
+characters of history to his dramatic purposes, he has shown equally his
+genius and his wisdom. This, like most of Schlegel's remarks, is
+profound and true; and in this respect Katherine of Arragon may rank as
+the triumph of Shakspeare's genius and his wisdom. There is nothing in
+the whole range of poetical fiction in any respect resembling or
+approaching her; there is nothing comparable, I suppose, but Katherine's
+own portrait by Holbein, which, equally true to the life, is yet as far
+inferior as Katherine's person was inferior to her mind. Not only has
+Shakspeare given us here a delineation as faithful as it is beautiful,
+of a peculiar modification of character; but he has bequeathed us a
+precious moral lesson in this proof that virtue alone,--(by which I mean
+here the union of truth or conscience with benevolent affection--the
+one the highest law, the other the purest impulse of the soul,)--that
+such virtue is a sufficient source of the deepest pathos and power with
+out any mixture of foreign or external ornament: for who but Shakspeare
+would have brought before us a queen and a heroine of tragedy, stripped
+her of all pomp of place and circumstance, dispensed with all the usual
+sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding
+intellect; and without any appeal to our imagination, without any
+violation of historical truth, or any sacrifices of the other dramatic
+personages for the sake of effect, could depend on the moral principle
+alone, to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and
+elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses of our
+nature!
+
+The character, when analyzed, is, in the first place, distinguished by
+_truth_. I do not only mean its truth to nature, or its relative truth
+arising from its historic fidelity and dramatic consistency, but _truth_
+as a quality of the soul; this is the basis of the character. We often
+hear it remarked that those who are themselves perfectly true and
+artless, are in this world the more easily and frequently deceived--a
+common-place fallacy: for we shall ever find that truth is as undeceived
+as it is undeceiving, and that those who are true to themselves and
+others, may now and then be mistaken, or in particular instances duped
+by the intervention of some other affection or quality of the mind; but
+they are generally free from illusion, and they are seldom imposed upon
+in the long run by the shows of things and superfices of characters. It
+is by this integrity of heart and clearness of understanding, this light
+of truth within her own soul, and not through any acuteness of
+intellect, that Katherine detects and exposes the real character of
+Wolsey, though unable either to unravel his designs, or defeat them.
+
+              ... My lord, my lord,
+    I am a simple woman, much too weak
+    T' oppose your cunning.
+
+She rather intuitively feels than knows his duplicity, and in the
+dignity of her simplicity she towers above his arrogance as much as she
+scorns his crooked policy. With this essential truth are combined many
+other qualities, natural or acquired, all made out with the same
+uncompromising breadth of execution and fidelity of pencil, united with
+the utmost delicacy of feeling. For instance, the apparent contradiction
+arising from the contrast between Katherine's natural disposition and
+the situation in which she is placed; her lofty Castilian pride and her
+extreme simplicity of language and deportment; the inflexible resolution
+with which she asserts her right, and her soft resignation to unkindness
+and wrong; her warmth of temper breaking through the meekness of a
+spirit subdued by a deep sense of religion; and a degree of austerity
+tinging her real benevolence;--all these qualities, opposed yet
+harmonizing, has Shakspeare placed before us in a few admirable scenes.
+
+Katherine is at first introduced as pleading before the king in behalf
+of the commonalty, who had been driven by the extortions of Wolsey into
+some illegal excesses. In this scene, which is true to history, we have
+her upright reasoning mind, her steadiness of purpose, her piety and
+benevolence, placed in a strong light. The unshrinking dignity with
+which she opposes without descending to brave the Cardinal, the stern
+rebuke addressed to the Duke of Buckingham's surveyor, are finely
+characteristic; and by thus exhibiting Katherine as invested with all
+her conjugal rights and influence, and royal state, the subsequent
+situations are rendered more impressive. She is placed in the first
+instance on such a height in our esteem and reverence, that in the midst
+of her abandonment and degradation, and the profound pity she afterwards
+inspires, the first effect remains unimpaired, and she never falls
+beneath it.
+
+In the beginning of the second act we are prepared for the proceedings
+of the divorce, and our respect for Katherine heightened by the general
+sympathy for "the good queen," as she is expressively entitled, and by
+the following beautiful eulogium on her character uttered by the Duke of
+Norfolk:--
+
+
+    He (Wolsey) counsels a divorce--a loss of her
+    That like a jewel hath hung twenty years
+    About his neck, yet never lost her lustre.
+    Of her that loves him with that excellence
+    That angels love good men with; even of her,
+    That, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls,
+    Will bless the King!
+
+The scene in which Anna Bullen is introduced as expressing her grief and
+sympathy for her royal mistress, is exquisitely graceful.
+
+                      Here's the pang that pinches;
+    His highness having liv'd so long with her, and she
+    So good a lady, that no tongue could ever
+    Pronounce dishonor of her,--by my life
+    She never knew harm-doing. O now, after
+    So many courses of the sun enthron'd,
+    Still growing in a majesty and pomp,--the which
+    To leave is a thousand-fold more bitter, than
+    'Tis sweet at first to acquire,--after this process,
+    To give her the avaunt! it is a pity
+    Would move a monster.
+
+                        OLD LADY.
+
+                        Hearts of most hard temper
+    Melt and lament for her.
+
+                        ANNE.
+
+                            O, God's will! much better
+    She ne'er had known pomp: though it be temporal,
+    Yet if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce
+    It from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance, panging
+    As soul and body's severing.
+
+                        OLD LADY.
+
+                                Alas, poor lady!
+    She's a stranger now again.
+
+                        ANNE.
+
+                                So much the more
+    Must pity drop upon her. Verily,
+    I swear 'tis better to be lowly born,
+    And range with humble livers in content,
+    Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,
+    And wear a golden sorrow.
+
+How completely, in the few passages appropriated to Anna Bullen, is her
+character portrayed! with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she
+sketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, her levity, her extreme
+mobility, her sweetness of disposition, her tenderness of heart, and, in
+short, all her _femalities_! How nobly has Shakspeare done justice to
+the two women, and heightened our interest in both, by placing the
+praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen! and how characteristic
+of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her
+mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly
+pomp, thus betraying her own disposition:--
+
+    For she that had all the fair parts of woman,
+    Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet
+    Affected eminence, wealth, and sovereignty.
+
+That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed, "a
+sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should
+immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen--"No, good
+troth! not for all the riches under heaven!"--and not long afterwards
+ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal
+mistress had been so cruelly divorced!--how natural! The portrait is not
+less true and masterly than that of Katherine; but the character is
+overborne by the superior moral firmness and intrinsic excellence of the
+latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the
+beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Katherine's trial
+at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty
+at her coronation, is placed immediately before the dying scene of
+Katherine; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakspeare has
+constantly avoided all personal collision between the two characters;
+nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the
+procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed.
+
+To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial scene is given nearly
+verbatim from the old chronicles and records; but the dryness and
+harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the
+genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the
+historical authorities, that when the affair was first agitated in
+council, Katherine replied to the long expositions and theological
+sophistries of her opponents with resolute simplicity and composure: "I
+am a woman, and lack wit and learning to answer these opinions; but I am
+sure that neither the king's father nor my father would have
+condescended to our marriage, if it had been judged unlawful. As to your
+saying that I should put the cause to eight persons of this realm, for
+quietness of the king's conscience, I pray Heaven to send his Grace a
+quiet conscience and this shall be your answer, that I say I am his
+lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, though not worthy of it; and
+in this point I will abide, till the court of Rome, which was privy to
+the beginning, have made a final ending of it."[101]
+
+Katherine's appearance in the court at Blackfriars, attended by a noble
+troop of ladies and prelates of her counsel, and her refusal to answer
+the citation, are historical.[102] Her speech to the king--
+
+    Sir, I beseech you do me right and justice,
+    And to bestow your pity on me, &c. &c.
+
+is taken word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank
+verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy
+for Shakspeare to have exalted his own skill, by throwing a coloring of
+poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or
+sentiment; but by adhering to the calm argumentative simplicity of
+manner and diction natural to the woman, he has preserved the truth of
+character without lessening the pathos of the situation. Her challenging
+Wolsey as a "foe to truth," and her very expressions, "I utterly
+refuse,--yea, from my soul _abhor_ you for my judge," are taken from
+fact. The sudden burst of indignant passion towards the close of this
+scene,
+
+                      In one who ever yet
+    Had stood to charity, and displayed the effects
+    Of disposition gentle, and of wisdom
+    O'ertopping woman's power;
+
+is taken from nature, though it occurred on a different occasion.[103]
+
+Lastly, the circumstance of her being called back after she had appealed
+from the court, and angrily refusing to return, is from the life. Master
+Griffith, on whose arm she leaned, observed that she was called: "On,
+on," quoth she; "it maketh no matter, for it is no indifferent court for
+me, therefore I will not tarry. Go on your ways."[104]
+
+King Henry's own assertion, "I dare to say, my lords, that for her
+womanhood, wisdom, nobility, and gentleness, never prince had such
+another wife, and therefore if I would willingly change her I were not
+wise," is thus beautifully paraphrased by Shakspeare:--
+
+    That man i' the world, who shall report he has
+    A better wife, let him in nought be trusted,
+    For speaking false in that! Thou art, alone,
+    If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,
+    (Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,
+    Obeying in commanding; and thy parts,
+    Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,)
+    The queen of earthly queens. She is noble born,
+    And, like her true nobility, she has
+    Carried herself towards me.
+
+The annotators on Shakspeare have all observed the close resemblance
+between this fine passage--
+
+                                      Sir,
+    I am about to weep; but, thinking that
+    We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain
+    The daughter of a king--my drops of tears
+    I'll turn to sparks of fire.
+
+and the speech of Hermione--
+
+    I am not prone to weeping as our sex
+    Commonly are, the want of which vain dew
+    Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
+    That honorable grief lodged here, which burns
+    Worse than tears drown.
+
+But these verbal gentlemen do not seem to have felt that the resemblance
+is merely on the surface, and that the two passages could not possibly
+change places, without a manifest violation of the truth of character.
+In Hermione it is pride of sex merely: in Katherine it is pride of place
+and pride of birth. Hermione, though so superbly majestic, is perfectly
+independent of her regal state: Katherine, though so meekly pious, will
+neither forget hers, nor allow it to be forgotten by others for a
+moment. Hermione, when deprived of that "crown and comfort of her
+life," her husband's love, regards all things else with despair and
+indifference except her feminine honor: Katherine, divorced and
+abandoned, still with true Spanish pride stands upon respect, and will
+not bate one atom of her accustomed state
+
+              Though unqueened, yet like a queen
+    And daughter to a king, inter me!
+
+The passage--
+
+    A fellow of the royal bed, that owns
+    A moiety of the throne--a great king's daughter,
+                  ... here standing
+    To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore
+    Who please to come to hear,[105]
+
+would apply nearly to both queens, yet a single sentiment--nay, a single
+sentence--could not possibly be transferred from one character to the
+other. The magnanimity, the noble simplicity, the purity of heart, the
+resignation in each--how perfectly equal in degree! how diametrically
+opposite in kind![106]
+
+Once more to return to Katherine.
+
+We are told by Cavendish, that when Wolsey and Campeggio visited the
+queen by the king's order she was found at work among her women, and
+came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging
+about her neck; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she interrupted
+him, saying, "Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you;
+although I understand Latin." "Forsooth then," quoth my lord, "madam, if
+it please your grace, we come both to know your mind, how ye be disposed
+to do in this matter between the king and you, and also to declare
+secretly our opinions and our counsel unto you, which we have intended
+of very zeal and obedience that we bear to your grace." "My lords, I
+thank you then," quoth she, "of your good wills; but to make answer to
+your request I cannot so suddenly, for I was set among my maidens at
+work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a
+longer deliberation, and a better head than mine to make answer to so
+noble wise men as ye be. I had need of good counsel in this case, which
+toucheth me so near; and for any counsel or friendship that I can find
+in England, they are nothing to my purpose or profit. Think you, I pray
+you, my lords, will any Englishmen counsel, or be friendly unto me,
+against the king's pleasure, they being his subjects? Nay, forsooth, my
+lords! and for my counsel, in whom I do intend to put my trust, they be
+not here; they be in Spain, in my native country.[107] Alas! my lords, I
+am a poor woman lacking both wit and understanding sufficiently to
+answer such approved wise men as ye be both, in so weighty a matter. I
+pray you to extend your good and indifferent minds in your authority
+unto me, for I am a simple woman, destitute and barren of friendship and
+counsel, here in a foreign region; and as for your counsel, I will not
+refuse, but be glad to hear."
+
+It appears, also, that when the Archbishop of York and Bishop Tunstall
+waited on her at her house near Huntingdon, with the sentence of the
+divorce, signed by Henry, and confirmed by act of parliament, she
+refused to admit its validity, she being Henry's wife, and not his
+subject. The bishop describes her conduct in his letter: "She being
+therewith in great choler and agony, and always interrupting our words,
+declared that she would never leave the name of queen, but would persist
+in accounting herself the king's wife till death." When the official
+letter containing minutes of their conference was shown to her, she
+seized a pen, and dashed it angrily across every sentence in which she
+was styled _Princess-dowager_.
+
+If now we turn to that inimitable scene between Katherine and the two
+cardinals, (act iii. scene 1,) we shall observe how finely Shakspeare
+has condensed these incidents, and unfolded to us all the workings of
+Katherine's proud yet feminine nature. She is discovered at work with
+some of her women--she calls for music "to soothe her soul grown sad
+with troubles"--then follows the little song, of which the sentiment is
+so well adapted to the occasion, while its quaint yet classic elegance
+breathes the very spirit of those times, when Surrey loved and sung.
+
+                   SONG.
+
+    Orpheus with his lute-made trees,
+    And the mountain-tops that freeze,
+      Bow themselves when he did sing
+    To his music, plants and flowers
+    Ever sprung, as sun and showers
+      There had made a lasting spring.
+
+    Every thing that heard him play,
+    Even the billows of the sea,
+      Hung their heads and then lay by
+    In sweet music is such art,
+    Killing care, and grief of heart,
+      Fall asleep, on hearing, die.
+
+They are interrupted by the arrival of the two cardinals. Katherine's
+perception of their subtlety--her suspicion of their purpose--her sense
+of her own weakness and inability to contend with them, and her mild
+subdued dignity, are beautifully represented; as also the guarded
+self-command with which she eludes giving a definitive answer; but when
+they counsel her to that which she, who knows Henry, feels must end in
+her ruin, then the native temper is roused at once, or, to use
+Tunstall's expression, "the choler and the agony," burst forth in words.
+
+    Is this your christian counsel? Out upon ye!
+    Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge
+    That no king can corrupt.
+
+                        WOLSEY.
+
+            Your rage mistakes us.
+
+                        QUEEN KATHERINE.
+
+    The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye,
+    Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
+    But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye:
+    Mend them, for shame, my lords: is this your comfort
+    The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady?
+
+With the same force of language, and impetuous yet dignified feeling,
+she asserts her own conjugal truth and merit, and insists upon her
+rights.
+
+    Have I liv'd thus long, (let me speak myself,
+    Since virtue finds no friends,) a wife, a true one
+    A woman, (I dare say, without vain-glory,)
+    Never yet branded with suspicion?
+    Have I, with all my full affections,
+    Still met the king--lov'd him next heaven, obey'd him
+    Been out of fondness superstitious to him--
+    Almost forgot my prayers to content him,
+    And am I thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords, &c.
+
+    My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,
+    To give up willingly that noble title
+    Your master wed me to: nothing but death
+    Shall e'er divorce my dignities.
+
+And this burst of unwonted passion is immediately followed by the
+natural reaction; it subsides into tears, dejection, and a mournful
+self-compassion.
+
+    Would I had never trod this English ground,
+    Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it.
+    What will become of me now, wretched lady?
+    I am the most unhappy woman living.
+    Alas! poor wenches! where are now your fortunes?
+                    [_To her women_
+    Shipwrecked upon a kingdom, where no pity,
+    No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me!
+    Almost no grave allowed me! Like the lily that once
+    Was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,
+    I'll hang my head and perish.
+
+Dr. Johnson observes on this scene, that all Katherine's distresses
+could not save her from a quibble on the word _cardinal_.
+
+            Holy men I thought ye,
+    Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
+    But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye!
+
+When we read this passage in connection with the situation and
+sentiment, the scornful play upon the words is not only appropriate and
+natural, it seems inevitable. Katherine, assuredly, is neither an
+imaginative nor a witty personage; but we all acknowledge the truism,
+that anger inspires wit, and whenever there is passion there is poetry.
+In the instance just alluded to, the sarcasm springs naturally out from
+the bitter indignation of the moment. In her grand rebuke of Wolsey, in
+the trial scene, how just and beautiful is the gradual elevation of her
+language, till it rises into that magnificent image--
+
+    You have by fortune and his highness' favors,
+    Gone slightly o'er low steps, and now are mounted,
+    Where powers are your retainers, &c.
+
+In the depth of her affliction, the pathos as naturally clothes itself
+in poetry.
+
+                              Like the lily,
+    That was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,
+    I'll hang my head and perish.
+
+But these, I believe, are the only instances of imagery throughout; for,
+in general, her language is plain and energetic. It has the strength and
+simplicity of her character, with very little metaphor and less wit.
+
+In approaching the last scene of Katherine's life, I feel as if about to
+tread within a sanctuary, where nothing befits us but silence and tears;
+veneration so strives with compassion, tenderness with awe.[108]
+
+We must suppose a long interval to have elapsed since Katherine's
+interview with the two cardinals. Wolsey was disgraced, and poor Anna
+Bullen at the height of her short-lived prosperity. It was Wolsey's fate
+to be detested by both queens. In the pursuance of his own selfish and
+ambitious designs, he had treated both with perfidy; and one was the
+remote, the other the immediate, cause of his ruin.[109]
+
+The ruffian king, of whom one hates to think, was bent on forcing
+Katherine to concede her rights, and illegitimize her daughter, in favor
+of the offspring of Anna Bullen: she steadily refused, was declared
+contumacious, and the sentence of divorce pronounced in 1533. Such of
+her attendants as persisted in paying her the honors due to a queen were
+driven from her household; those who consented to serve her as
+princess-dowager, she refused to admit into her presence; so that she
+remained unattended, except by a few women, and her gentleman usher,
+Griffith. During the last eighteen months of her life, she resided at
+Kimbolton. Her nephew, Charles V., had offered her an asylum and
+princely treatment; but Katherine, broken in heart, and declining in
+health, was unwilling to drag the spectacle of her misery and
+degradation into a strange country: she pined in her loneliness,
+deprived of her daughter, receiving no consolation from the pope, and no
+redress from the emperor. Wounded pride, wronged affection, and a
+cankering jealousy of the woman preferred to her, (which though it never
+broke out into unseemly words, is enumerated as one of the causes of her
+death,) at length wore out a feeble frame. "Thus," says the chronicle,
+"Queen Katherine fell into her last sickness; and though the king sent
+to comfort her through Chapuys, the emperor's ambassador, she grew worse
+and worse; and finding death now coming, she caused a maid attending on
+her to write to the king to this effect:--
+
+"My most dear Lord, King, and Husband;
+
+"The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the
+love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to
+prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever; for
+which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many
+troubles: but I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise; for the
+rest, I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good
+father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must intreat you also to
+respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they
+being but three, and all my other servants a year's pay besides their
+due, lest otherwise they be unprovided for: lastly, I make this vow,
+that mine eyes desire you above all things.--Farewell!"[110]
+
+She also wrote another letter to the ambassador, desiring that he would
+remind the king of her dying request, and urge him to do her this last
+right.
+
+What the historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty
+of Katherine's closing scene we need not dwell; for that requires no
+illustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips,
+Shakspeare has given them added grace, and pathos, and tenderness,
+without injuring their truth and simplicity: the feelings, and almost
+the manner of expression, are Katherine's own. The severe justice with
+which she draws the character of Wolsey is extremely characteristic! the
+benign candor with which she listens to the praise of him "whom living
+she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious
+enthusiasm!--the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that
+sad music she called her knell; her awakening from the vision of
+celestial joy to find herself still on earth--
+
+    Spirits of peace! where are ye? are ye gone,
+    And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?
+
+how unspeakably beautiful! And to consummate all in one final touch of
+truth and nature, we see that consciousness of her own worth and
+integrity which had sustained her through all her trials of heart, and
+that pride of station for which she had contended through long
+years,--which had become more dear by opposition, and by the
+perseverance with which she had asserted it,--remaining the last strong
+feeling upon her mind, to the very last hour of existence.
+
+                 When I am dead, good wench,
+    Let me be used with honor: strew me over
+    With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
+    I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm me,
+    Then lay me forth: although unqueen'd, yet like
+    A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me
+    I can no more.--
+
+In the epilogue to this play,[111] it is recommended--
+
+    To the merciful construction of good women,
+    For _such a one_ we show'd them:
+
+alluding to the character of Queen Katherine. Shakspeare has, in fact,
+placed before us a queen and a heroine, who in the first place, and
+above all, is a _good_ woman; and I repeat, that in doing so, and in
+trusting for all his effect to truth and virtue, he has given a sublime
+proof of his genius and his wisdom;--for which, among many other
+obligations, we women remain his debtors.
+
+
+LADY MACBETH.
+
+I doubt whether the epithet _historical_ can properly apply to the
+character of Lady Macbeth; for though the subject of the play be taken
+from history, we never think of her with any reference to historical
+associations, as we do with regard to Constance, Volumnia, Katherine of
+Arragon, and others. I remember reading some critique, in which Lady
+Macbeth was styled the "_Scottish queen_;" and methought the title, as
+applied to _her_ sounded like a vulgarism. It appears that the real wife
+of Macbeth,--she who lives only in the obscure record of an obscure
+age, bore the very unmusical appellation of Graoch, and was instigated
+to the murder of Duncan, not only by ambition, but by motives of
+vengeance. She was the grand-daughter of Kenneth the Fourth, killed in
+1003, fighting against Malcolm the Second, the Father of Duncan. Macbeth
+reigned over Scotland from the year 1039 to 1056--but what is all this
+to the purpose? The sternly magnificent creation of the poet stands
+before us independent of all these aids of fancy: she is Lady Macbeth;
+as such she lives, she reigns, and is immortal in the world to
+imagination. What earthly title could add to her grandeur? what human
+record or attestation strengthen our impression of her reality?
+
+Characters in history move before us like a procession of figures in
+_basso relievo_: we see one side only, that which the artist chose to
+exhibit to us; the rest is sunk in the block: the same characters in
+Shakspeare are like the statues _cut out_ of the block, fashioned,
+finished, tangible in every part: we may consider them under every
+aspect, we may examine them on every side. As the classical times, when
+the garb did not make the man, were peculiarly favorable to the
+development and delineation of the human form, and have handed down to
+us the purest models of strength and grace--so the times in which
+Shakspeare lived were favorable to the vigorous delineation of natural
+character. Society was not then one vast conventional masquerade of
+manners. In his revelations, the accidental circumstances are to the
+individual character, what the drapery of the antique statue is to the
+statue itself; it is evident, that, though adapted to each other, and
+studied relatively, they were also studied separately. We trace through
+the folds the fine and true proportions of the figure beneath: they seem
+and are independent of each other to the practised eye, though carved
+together from the same enduring substance; at once perfectly distinct
+and eternally inseparable. In history we can but study character in
+relation to events, to situation and circumstances, which disguise and
+encumber it: we are left to imagine, to infer, what certain people must
+have been, from the manner in which they have acted or suffered.
+Shakspeare and nature bring us back to the true order of things; and
+showing us what the human being _is_, enable us to judge of the possible
+as well as the positive result in acting and suffering. Here, instead of
+judging the individual by his actions, we are enabled to judge of
+actions by a reference to the individual. When we can carry this power
+into the experience of real life, we shall perhaps be more just to one
+another, and not consider ourselves aggrieved, because we cannot gather
+figs from thistles and grapes from thorns.
+
+In the play or poem of Macbeth, the interest of the story is so
+engrossing, the events so rapid and so appalling, the accessories so
+sublimely conceived and so skilfully combined, that it is difficult to
+detach Lady Macbeth from the dramatic situation, or consider her apart
+from the terrible associations of our first and earliest impressions. As
+the vulgar idea of a Juliet--that all-beautiful and heaven-gifted child
+of the south--is merely a love-sick girl in white satin, so the
+common-place idea of Lady Macbeth, though endowed with the rarest
+powers, the loftiest energies, and the profoundest affections, is
+nothing but a fierce, cruel woman, brandishing a couple of daggers, and
+inciting her husband to butcher a poor old king.
+
+Even those who reflect more deeply are apt to consider rather the mode
+in which a certain character is manifested, than the combination of
+abstract qualities making up that individual human being; so what should
+be last, is first; effects are mistaken for causes, qualities are
+confounded with their results, and the perversion of what is essentially
+good, with the operation of positive evil. Hence it is, that those who
+can feel and estimate the magnificent conception and poetical
+development of the character, have overlooked the grand moral lesson it
+conveys; they forget that the crime of Lady Macbeth terrifies us in
+proportion as we sympathize with her; and that this sympathy is in
+proportion to the degree of pride, passion, and intellect, we may
+ourselves possess. It is good to behold and to tremble at the possible
+result of the noblest faculties uncontrolled or perverted. True it is,
+that the ambitious women of these civilized times do not murder sleeping
+kings: but are there, therefore, no Lady Macbeths in the world? no women
+who, under the influence of a diseased or excited appetite for power or
+distinction, would sacrifice the happiness of a daughter, the fortunes
+of a husband, the principles of a son, and peril their own souls?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The character of Macbeth is considered as one of the most complex in the
+whole range of Shakspeare's dramatic creations. He is represented in the
+course of the action under such a variety of aspects; the good and evil
+qualities of his mind are so poised and blended, and instead of being
+gradually and successively developed, evolve themselves so like shifting
+lights and shadows playing over the "unstable waters," that his
+character has afforded a continual and interesting subject of analysis
+and contemplation. None of Shakspeare's personages have been treated of
+more at large; none have been more minutely criticized and profoundly
+examined. A single feature in his character--the question, for instance,
+as to whether his courage be personal or constitutional, or excited by
+mere desperation--has been canvassed, asserted, and refuted, in two
+masterly essays.
+
+On the other hand, the character of Lady Macbeth resolves itself into
+few and simple elements. The grand features of her character are so
+distinctly and prominently marked, that, though acknowledged to be one
+of the poet's most sublime creations, she has been passed over with
+comparatively few words: generally speaking, the commentators seem to
+have considered Lady Macbeth rather with reference to her husband, and
+as influencing the action of the drama, than as an individual conception
+of amazing power, poetry, and beauty: or if they do individualize her,
+it is ever with those associations of scenic representation which Mrs.
+Siddons has identified with the character. Those who have been
+accustomed to see it arrayed in the form and lineaments of that
+magnificent woman, and developed with her wonder-working powers, seem
+satisfied to leave it there, as if nothing more could be said or
+added.[112]
+
+But the generation which beheld Mrs. Siddons in her glory is passing
+away, and we are again left to our own unassisted feelings, or to all
+the satisfaction to be derived from the sagacity of critics and the
+reflections of commentators. Let us turn to them for a moment.
+
+Dr. Johnson, who seems to have regarded her as nothing better than a
+kind of ogress, tells us, in so many words, that "Lady Macbeth is merely
+detested." Schlegel dismisses her in haste, as a species of female fury.
+In the two essays on Macbeth already mentioned, she is passed over with
+one or two slight allusions. The only justice that has yet been done to
+her is by Hazlitt, in the "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays." Nothing
+can be finer than his remarks as far as they go, but his plan did not
+allow him sufficient space to work out his own conception of the
+character, with the minuteness it requires. All that he says is just in
+sentiment, and most eloquent in the expression; but in leaving some of
+the finest points altogether untouched, he has also left us in doubt
+whether he even felt or perceived them; and this masterly criticism
+stops short of the _whole_ truth--it is a little superficial, and a
+little too harsh.
+
+In the mind of Lady Macbeth, ambition is represented as the ruling
+motive, an intense over-mastering passion, which is gratified at the
+expense of every just and generous principle, and every feminine
+feeling. In the pursuit of her object, she is cruel, treacherous, and
+daring. She is doubly, trebly dyed in guilt and blood; for the murder
+she instigates is rendered more frightful by disloyalty and ingratitude,
+and by the violation of all the most sacred claims of kindred and
+hospitality. When her husband's more kindly nature shrinks from the
+perpetration of the deed of horror, she, like an evil genius, whispers
+him on to his damnation. The full measure of her wickedness is never
+disguised, the magnitude and atrocity of her crime is never extenuated,
+forgotten, or forgiven, in the whole course of the play. Our judgment is
+not bewildered, nor our moral feeling insulted, by the sentimental
+jumble of great crimes and dazzling virtues, after the fashion of the
+German school and of some admirable writers of our own time. Lady
+Macbeth's amazing power of intellect, her inexorable determination of
+purpose, her superhuman strength of nerve, render her as fearful in
+herself as her deeds are hateful; yet she is not a mere monster of
+depravity, with whom we have nothing in common, nor a meteor whose
+destroying path we watch in ignorant affright and amaze. She is a
+terrible impersonation of evil passions and mighty powers, never so far
+removed from our own nature as to be cast beyond the pale of our
+sympathies; for the woman herself remains a woman to the last--still
+linked with her sex and with humanity.
+
+This impression is produced partly by the essential truth in the
+conception of the character, and partly by the manner in which it is
+evolved; by a combination of minute and delicate touches, in some
+instances by speech, in others by silence: at one time by what is
+revealed, at another by what we are left to infer. As in real life, we
+perceive distinctions in character we cannot always explain, and receive
+impressions for which we cannot always account, without going back to
+the beginning of an acquaintance, and recalling many and trifling
+circumstances--looks, and tones, and words: thus, to explain that hold
+which Lady Macbeth, in the midst of all her atrocities, still keeps upon
+our feelings, it is necessary to trace minutely the action of the play,
+as far as she is concerned in it, from its very commencement to its
+close.
+
+We must bear in mind, that the first idea of murdering Duncan is not
+suggested by Lady Macbeth to her husband: it springs within _his_ mind,
+and is revealed to us, before his first interview with his wife,--before
+she is introduced or even alluded to.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                         This supernatural soliciting
+    Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,
+    Why hath it given me earnest of success,
+    Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor--
+    If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,
+    Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
+    And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
+    Against the use of nature?
+
+It will be said, that the same "horrid suggestion" presents itself
+spontaneously to her, on the reception of his letter; or rather, that
+the letter itself acts upon her mind as the prophecy of the Weird
+Sisters on the mind of her husband, kindling the latent passion for
+empire into a quenchless flame. We are prepared to see the train of
+evil, first lighted by hellish agency, extend itself to _her_ through
+the medium of her husband; but we are spared the more revolting idea
+that it originated with her. The guilt is thus more equally divided than
+we should suppose, when we hear people pitying "the noble nature of
+Macbeth," bewildered and goaded on to crime, solely or chiefly by the
+instigation of his wife.
+
+It is true that she afterwards appears the more active agent of the two;
+but it is less through her preëminence in wickedness than through her
+superiority of intellect. The eloquence--the fierce, fervid eloquence
+with which she bears down the relenting and reluctant spirit of her
+husband, the dexterous sophistry with which she wards off his
+objections, her artful and affected doubts of his courage--the sarcastic
+manner in which she lets fall the word coward--a word which no man can
+endure from another, still less from a woman, and least of all from a
+woman he loves--and the bold address with which she removes all
+obstacles, silences all arguments, overpowers all scruples, and marshals
+the way before him, absolutely make us shrink before the commanding
+intellect of the woman, with a terror in which interest and admiration
+are strangely mingled.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+    He has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    Hath he ask'd for me?
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                   Know you not, he has?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    We will proceed no farther in this business;
+    He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
+    Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
+    Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
+    Not cast aside so soon.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                  Was the hope drunk,
+    Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since,
+    And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
+    At what it did so freely? From this time,
+    Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
+    To be the same in thine own act and valor,
+    As thou art in desire? Would'st thou have that
+    Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
+    And live a coward in thine own esteem;
+    Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
+    Like the poor cat i' the adage?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                                 Pr'ythee, peace
+    I dare do all that may become a man;
+    Who dares do more, is none.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                 What beast was it then,
+    That made you break this enterprise to me?
+    When you durst do it, then you were a man;
+    And, to be more than what you were, you would
+    Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place,
+    Did then adhere, and yet you would make both;
+    They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
+    Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
+    How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
+    I would, while it were smiling in my face,
+    Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
+    And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn, as you
+    Have done to this.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                                If we should fail.--
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                    We fail.[113]
+    But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
+    And we'll not fail.
+
+Again, in the murdering scene, the obdurate inflexibility of purpose
+with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of their project, and
+her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated
+disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is
+produced rather by the exertion of a strong power over herself, than by
+absolute depravity of disposition and ferocity of temper. This
+impression of her character is brought home at once to our very hearts
+with the most profound knowledge of the springs of nature within us, the
+most subtle mastery over their various operations, and a feeling of
+dramatic effect not less wonderful. The very passages in which Lady
+Macbeth displays the most savage and relentless determination, are so
+worded as to fill the mind with the idea of sex, and place the _woman_
+before us in all her dearest attributes, at once softening and refining
+the horror, and rendering it more intense. Thus, when she reproaches her
+husband for his weakness--
+
+                            From this time,
+    Such I account thy love!
+
+Again,
+
+
+                    Come to my woman's breasts,
+    And take my milk for gall, ye murdering ministers,
+    That no compunctions visitings of nature
+    Shake my fell purpose, &c.
+
+    I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis
+    To love the babe that milks me, &c.
+
+And lastly, in the moment of extremest horror comes that unexpected
+touch of feeling, so startling, yet so wonderfully true to nature--
+
+    Had he not resembled my father as he slept,
+    I had done it!
+
+Thus in one of Weber's or Beethoven's grand symphonies, some unexpected
+soft minor chord or passage will steal on the ear, heard amid the
+magnificent crash of harmony, making the blood pause, and filling the
+eye with unbidden tears.
+
+It is particularly observable, that in Lady Macbeth's concentrated,
+strong-nerved ambition, the ruling passion of her mind, there is yet a
+touch of womanhood: she is ambitious less for herself than for her
+husband. It is fair to think this, because we have no reason to draw
+any other inference either from her words or actions. In her famous
+soliloquy, after reading her husband's letter, she does not once refer
+to herself. It is of him she thinks: she wishes to see her husband on
+the throne, and to place the sceptre within _his_ grasp. The strength of
+her affections adds strength to her ambition. Although in the old story
+of Boethius we are told that the wife of Macbeth "burned with
+unquenchable desire to bear the name of queen," yet in the aspect under
+which Shakspeare has represented the character to us, the selfish part
+of this ambition is kept out of sight. We must remark also, that in Lady
+Macbeth's reflections on her husband's character, and on that milkiness
+of nature, which she fears "may impede him from the golden round," there
+is no indication of female scorn: there is exceeding pride, but no
+egotism in the sentiment or the expression;--no want of wifely and
+womanly respect and love for _him_, but on the contrary, a sort of
+unconsciousness of her own mental superiority, which she betrays rather
+than asserts, as interesting in itself as it is most admirably conceived
+and delineated.
+
+    Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
+    What thou art promised:--Yet do I fear thy nature;
+    It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,
+    To catch the nearest way. Thou would'st be great,
+    Art not without ambition; but without
+    The illness should attend it. What thou would'st highly
+    That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false.
+    And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'dst have, great Glamis,
+    That which cries, _Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
+    And that which rather thou dost fear to do,
+    Than wishest should be undone_. Hie thee hither,
+    That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
+    And chastise with the valor of my tongue
+    All that impedes thee from the golden round,
+    Which fate and metaphysical[114] aid doth seem
+    To have thee crowned withal
+
+Nor is there any thing vulgar in her ambition: as the strength of her
+affections lends to it something profound and concentrated, so her
+splendid imagination invests the object of her desire with its own
+radiance. We cannot trace in her grand and capacious mind that it is the
+mere baubles and trappings of royalty which dazzle and allure her: hers
+is the sin of the "star-bright apostate," and she plunges with her
+husband into the abyss of guilt, to procure for "all their days and
+nights sole sovereign sway and masterdom." She revels, she luxuriates in
+her dream of power. She reaches at the golden diadem, which is to sear
+her brain; she perils life and soul for its attainment, with an
+enthusiasm as perfect, a faith as settled, as that of the martyr, who
+sees at the stake, heaven and its crowns of glory opening upon him.
+
+    Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
+    Greater than both, by the all-hail _hereafter_!
+    Thy letters have transported me beyond
+    This ignorant present, and I feel now
+    The future in the instant!
+
+This is surely the very rapture of ambition! and those who have heard
+Mrs. Siddons pronounce the word _hereafter_, cannot forget the look, the
+tone, which seemed to give her auditors a glimpse of that awful
+_future_, which she, in her prophetic fury, beholds upon the instant.
+
+But to return to the text before us: Lady Macbeth having proposed the
+object to herself, and arrayed it with an ideal glory, fixes her eye
+steadily upon it, soars far above all womanish feelings and scruples to
+attain it, and stoops upon her victim with the strength and velocity of
+a vulture; but having committed unflinchingly the crime necessary for
+the attainment of her purpose, she stops there. After the murder of
+Duncan, we see Lady Macbeth, during the rest of the play, occupied in
+supporting the nervous weakness and sustaining the fortitude of her
+husband; for instance, Macbeth is at one time on the verge of frenzy,
+between fear and horror, and it is clear that if she loses her
+self-command, both must perish:--
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    One cried, _God bless us!_ and, _Amen!_ the other,
+    As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands.
+    Listening their fear, I could not say, _Amen!_
+    When they did say, _God bless us!_
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                          Consider it not so deeply!
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    But wherefore could not I pronounce, amen?
+    I had most need of blessing, and amen
+    Stuck in my throat.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                     These deeds must not be thought
+    After these ways: so, it will make us mad.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    Methought I heard a voice cry,
+    "Sleep no more," &c. &c.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+    What do you mean? who was it that thus cried?
+                 Why, worthy Thane,
+    You do unbend your noble strength, to think
+    So brainsickly of things.--Go, get some water, &c. &c.
+
+Afterwards, in act iii., she is represented as muttering to herself,
+
+                               Nought's had, all's spent,
+    When our desire is got without content;
+
+
+yet immediately addresses her moody and conscience-stricken husband--
+
+    How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,
+    Of sorriest fancies your companions making?
+    Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died
+    With them they think on? Things without remedy,
+    Should be without regard; what's done, is done.
+
+But she is nowhere represented as urging him on to new crimes, so far
+from it, that when Macbeth darkly hints his purposed assassination of
+Banquo, and she inquires his meaning, he replies,
+
+         Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
+    Till thou approve the deed.
+
+The same may be said of the destruction of Macduff's family. Every one
+must perceive how our detestation of the woman had been increased, if
+she had been placed before us as suggesting and abetting those
+additional cruelties into which Macbeth is hurried by his mental
+cowardice.
+
+If my feeling of Lady Macbeth's character be just to the conception of
+the poet, then she is one who could steel herself to the commission of a
+crime from necessity and expediency, and be daringly wicked for a great
+end, but not likely to perpetrate gratuitous murders from any vague or
+selfish fears. I do not mean to say that the perfect confidence existing
+between herself and Macbeth could possibly leave her in ignorance of his
+actions or designs: that heart-broken and shuddering allusion to the
+murder of Lady Macduff (in the sleeping scene) proves the contrary:--
+
+    The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?
+
+But she is nowhere brought before us in immediate connection with these
+horrors, and we are spared any flagrant proof of her participation in
+them. This may not strike us at first, but most undoubtedly has an
+effect on the general bearing of the character, considered as a whole.
+
+Another more obvious and pervading source of interest arises from that
+bond of entire affection and confidence which, through the whole of this
+dreadful tissue of crime and its consequences, unites Macbeth and his
+wife; claiming from us an involuntary respect and sympathy, and shedding
+a softening influence over the whole tragedy. Macbeth leans upon her
+strength, trusts in her fidelity, and throws himself on her tenderness.
+
+    O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
+
+She sustains him, calms him, soothes him--
+
+                                        Come on;
+    Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;
+    Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night.
+
+The endearing epithets, the terms of fondness in which he addresses her,
+and the tone of respect she invariably maintains towards him, even when
+most exasperated by his vacillation of mind and his brain-sick terrors,
+have, by the very force of contrast, a powerful effect on the fancy.
+
+By these tender redeeming touches we are impressed with a feeling that
+Lady Macbeth's influence over the affections of her husband, as a wife
+and a woman, is at least equal to her power over him as a superior mind.
+Another thing has always struck me. During the supper scene, in which
+Macbeth is haunted by the spectre of the murdered Banquo, and his reason
+appears unsettled by the extremity of his horror and dismay, her
+indignant rebuke, her low whispered remonstrance, the sarcastic
+emphasis with which she combats his sick fancies, and endeavors to
+recall him to himself, have an intenseness, a severity, a bitterness,
+which makes the blood creep.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                   Are you a man?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
+    Which might appall the devil.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                         O proper stuff!
+    This is the very painting of your fear:
+    This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,
+    Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts
+    (Impostors to true fear) would well become
+    A woman's story, at a winter's fire,
+    Authoriz'd by her grandam! Shame itself!
+    Why do you make such faces? When all's done
+    You look but on a stool.
+                   What! quite unmann'd in folly?
+
+Yet when the guests are dismissed, and they are left alone, she says no
+more, and not a syllable of reproach or scorn escapes her: a few words
+in submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose,
+are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and of
+tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond
+expression: it is one of the most masterly and most beautiful traits of
+character in the whole play.
+
+Lastly, it is clear that in a mind constituted like that of Lady
+Macbeth, and not utterly depraved and hardened by the habit of crime,
+conscience must wake some time or other, and bring with it remorse
+closed by despair, and despair by death. This great moral retribution
+was to be displayed to us--but how? Lady Macbeth is not a woman to start
+at shadows; she mocks at air-drawn daggers; she sees no imagined
+spectres rise from the tomb to appall or accuse her.[115] The towering
+bravery of _her_ mind disdains the visionary terrors which haunt her
+weaker husband. We know, or rather we feel, that she who could give a
+voice to the most direful intent, and call on the spirits that wait on
+mortal thoughts to "unsex her," and "stop up all access and passage of
+remorse"--to that remorse would have given nor tongue nor sound; and
+that rather than have uttered a complaint, she would have held her
+breath and died. To have given her a confidant, though in the partner of
+her guilt, would have been a degrading resource, and have disappointed
+and enfeebled all our previous impressions of her character; yet justice
+is to be done, and we are to be made acquainted with that which the
+woman herself would have suffered a thousand deaths of torture rather
+than have betrayed. In the sleeping scene we have a glimpse into the
+depths of that inward hell: the seared brain and broken heart are laid
+bare before us in the helplessness of slumber. By a judgment the most
+sublime ever imagined, yet the most unforced, natural, and inevitable,
+the sleep of her who murdered sleep is no longer repose, but a
+condensation of resistless horrors which the prostrate intellect and
+powerless will can neither baffle nor repel. We shudder and are
+satisfied; yet our human sympathies are again touched: we rather sigh
+over the ruin than exult in it; and after watching her through this
+wonderful scene with a sort of fascination, we dismiss the unconscious,
+helpless, despair-stricken murderess, with a feeling which Lady Macbeth,
+in her waking strength, with all her awe-commanding powers about her,
+could never have excited.
+
+It is here especially we perceive that sweetness of nature which in
+Shakspeare went hand in hand with his astonishing powers. He never
+confounds that line of demarcation which eternally separates good from
+evil, yet he never places evil before us without exciting in some way a
+consciousness of the opposite good which shall balance and relieve it.
+
+I do deny that he has represented in Lady Macbeth a woman "_naturally
+cruel_,"[116] "_invariably savage_,"[117] or endued with "_pure demoniac
+firmness_."[118] If ever there could have existed a woman to whom such
+phrases could apply--a woman without touch of modesty, pity or
+fear,--Shakspeare knew that a thing so monstrous was unfit for all the
+purposes of poetry. If Lady Macbeth had been _naturally_ cruel, she
+needed not so solemnly to have abjured all pity, and called on the
+spirits that wait on mortal thoughts to _unsex_ her; nor would she have
+been loved to excess by a man of Macbeth's character; for it is the
+sense of intellectual energy and strength of will overpowering her
+feminine nature, which draws from him that burst of intense admiration--
+
+                         Bring forth men children only,
+    For thy undaunted metal should compose
+    Nothing but males.
+
+If she had been _invariably_ savage, her love would not have comforted
+and sustained her husband in his despair, nor would her uplifted dagger
+have been arrested by a dear and venerable image rising between her soul
+and its fell purpose. If endued with _pure demoniac firmness_, her
+woman's nature would not, by the reaction, have been so horribly
+avenged, she would not have died of remorse and despair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We cannot but observe that through the whole of the dialogue
+appropriated to Lady Macbeth, there is something very peculiar and
+characteristic in the turn of expression: her compliments, when she is
+playing the hostess or the queen, are elaborately elegant and
+verbose: but, when in earnest, she speaks in short energetic
+sentences--sometimes abrupt, but always full of meaning; her thoughts
+are rapid and clear, her expressions forcible, and the imagery like
+sudden flashes of lightning: all the foregoing extracts exhibit this,
+but I will venture one more, as an immediate illustration.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                             My dearest love,
+    Duncan comes here to-night.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                             And when goes hence?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    To-morrow,--as he purposes.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                   O never
+    Shall sun that morrow see!
+    Thy face, my thane, is as a book, where men
+    May read strange matters;--to beguile the time,
+    Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye
+    Your tongue, your hand; look like the innocent flower,
+    But be the serpent under it.
+
+What would not the firmness, the self-command, the enthusiasm, the
+intellect, the ardent affections of this woman have performed, if
+properly directed? but the object being unworthy of the effort, the end
+is disappointment, despair, and death.
+
+The power of religion could alone have controlled such a mind; but it is
+the misery of a very proud, strong, and gifted spirit, without sense of
+religion, that instead of looking upward to find a superior, looks
+round and sees all things as subject to itself. Lady Macbeth is placed
+in a dark, ignorant, iron age; her powerful intellect is slightly tinged
+with its credulity and superstition, but she has no religious feeling to
+restrain the force of will. She is a stern fatalist in principle and
+action--"what is done, is done," and would be done over again under the
+same circumstances; her remorse is without repentance, or any reference
+to an offended Deity; it arises from the pang of a wounded conscience,
+the recoil of the violated feelings of nature: it is the horror of the
+past, not the terror of the future; the torture of self-condemnation,
+not the fear of judgment; it is strong as her soul, deep as her guilt,
+fatal as her resolve, and terrible as her crime.
+
+If it should be objected to this view of Lady Macbeth's character, that
+it engages our sympathies in behalf of a perverted being--and that to
+leave her so strong a power upon our feelings in the midst of such
+supreme wickedness, involves a moral wrong, I can only reply in the
+words of Dr. Channing, that "in this and the like cases our interest
+fastens on what is _not_ evil in the character--that there is something
+kindling and ennobling in the consciousness, however awakened, of the
+energy which resides in mind; and many a virtuous man has borrowed new
+strength from the force, constancy, and dauntless courage of evil
+agents."[119]
+
+This is true; and might he not have added, that many a powerful and
+gifted spirit has learnt humility and self-government, from beholding
+how far the energy which resides in mind may be degraded and perverted?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In general, when a woman is introduced into a tragedy to be the
+presiding genius of evil in herself, or the cause of evil to others, she
+is either too feebly or too darkly portrayed; either crime is heaped on
+crime, and horror on horror, till our sympathy is lost in incredulity,
+or the stimulus is sought in unnatural or impossible situations, or in
+situations that ought to be impossible, (as in the Myrrha or the Cenci,)
+or the character is enfeebled by a mixture of degrading propensities and
+sexual weakness, as in Vittoria Corombona. But Lady Macbeth, though so
+supremely wicked, and so consistently feminine, is still kept aloof from
+all base alloy. When Shakspeare created a female character purely
+detestable, he made her an accessory, never a principal. Thus Regan and
+Goneril are two powerful sketches of selfishness, cruelty, and
+ingratitude; we abhor them whenever we see or think of them, but we
+think very little about them, except as necessary to the action of the
+drama. They are to cause the madness of Lear, and to call forth the
+filial devotion of Cordelia, and their depravity is forgotten in its
+effects. A comparison has been made between Lady Macbeth and the Greek
+Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon of Eschylus. The Clytemnestra of
+Sophocles is something more in Shakspeare's spirit, for she is something
+less impudently atrocious; but, considered as a woman and an individual,
+would any one compare this shameless adulteress, cruel murderess, and
+unnatural mother, with Lady Macbeth? Lady Macbeth herself would
+certainly shrink from the approximation.[120]
+
+The Electra of Sophocles comes nearer to Lady Macbeth as a poetical
+conception, with this strong distinction, that she commands more respect
+and esteem, and less sympathy. The murder in which she participates is
+ordained by the oracle--is an act of justice, and therefore less a
+murder than a sacrifice. Electra is drawn with magnificent simplicity
+and intensity of feeling and purpose, but there is a want of light, and
+shade, and relief. Thus the scene in which Orestes stabs his mother
+within her chamber, and she is heard pleading for mercy, while Electra
+stands forward listening exultingly to her mother's cries, and urging
+her brother to strike again, "another blow! another!" &c. is terribly
+fine, but the horror is too shocking, too _physical_--if I may use such
+an expression: it will not surely bear a comparison with the murdering
+scene in Macbeth, where the exhibition of various passions--the
+irresolution of Macbeth, the bold determination of his wife, the deep
+suspense, the rage of the elements without, the horrid stillness within,
+and the secret feeling of that infernal agency which is ever present to
+the fancy, even when not visible on the scene--throw a rich coloring of
+poetry over the whole, which does not take from "the present horror of
+the time," and yet relieves it. Shakspeare's blackest shadows are like
+those of Rembrandt; so intense, that the gloom which brooded over Egypt
+in her day of wrath was pale in comparison--yet so transparent that we
+seem to see the light of heaven through their depth.
+
+In the whole compass of dramatic poetry, there is but one female
+character which can be placed near that of Lady Macbeth; the MEDEA. Not
+the vulgar, voluble fury of the Latin tragedy,[121] nor the Medea in a
+hoop petticoat of Corneille, but the genuine Greek Medea,--the Medea of
+Euripides.[122]
+
+There is something in the _Medea_ which seizes irresistibly on the
+imagination. Her passionate devotion to Jason, for whom she had left her
+parents and country--to whom she had given all, and
+
+    Would have drawn the spirit from her breast
+    Had he but asked it, sighing forth her soul
+    Into his bosom;[123]
+
+the wrongs and insults which drive her to desperation--the horrid
+refinement of cruelty with which she plans and executes her revenge upon
+her faithless husband--the gush of fondness with which she weeps over
+her children, whom in the next moment she devotes to destruction in a
+paroxysm of insane fury, carry the terror and pathos of tragic situation
+to their extreme height. But if we may be allowed to judge through the
+medium of a translation, there is a certain hardness in the manner of
+treating the character, which in some degree defeats the effect. Medea
+talks too much: her human feelings and superhuman power are not
+sufficiently blended. Taking into consideration the different impulses
+which actuate Medea and Lady Macbeth, as love, jealousy, and revenge on
+the one side, and ambition on the other, we expect to find more of
+female nature in the first than in the last: and yet the contrary is the
+fact: at least, my own impression as far as a woman may judge of a
+woman, is, that although the passions of Medea are more feminine, the
+character is less so; we seem to require more feeling in her
+fierceness, more passion in her frenzy; something less of poetical
+abstraction,--less art, fewer words: her delirious vengeance we might
+forgive, but her calmness and subtlety are rather revolting.
+
+These two admirable characters, placed in contrast to each other, afford
+a fine illustration of Schlegel's distinction between the ancient or
+Greek drama, which he compares to sculpture, and the modern or romantic
+drama, which he compares to painting. The gothic grandeur, the rich
+chiaroscuro, and deep-toned colors of Lady Macbeth, stand thus opposed
+to the classical elegance and mythological splendor, the delicate yet
+inflexible outline of the Medea. If I might be permitted to carry this
+illustration still further, I would add, that there exists the same
+distinction between the Lady Macbeth and the Medea, as between the
+Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci and the Medusa of the Greek gems and bas
+reliefs. In the painting, the horror of the subject is at once exalted
+and softened by the most vivid coloring, and the most magical contrast
+of light and shade. We gaze--until, from the murky depths of the
+background, the serpent hair seems to stir and glitter as if instinct
+with life, and the head itself, in all its ghastliness and brightness,
+appears to rise from the canvass with the glare of reality. In the
+Medusa of sculpture, how different is the effect on the imagination! We
+have here the snakes convolving round the winged and graceful head: the
+brows contracted with horror and pain; but every feature is chiselled
+into the most regular and faultless perfection; and amid the gorgon
+terrors, there rests a marbly, fixed, supernatural grace, which, without
+reminding us for a moment of common life or nature, stands before us a
+presence, a power, and an enchantment!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[66] Milton.
+
+[67] "That the treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, and the
+grief of Constance, had a real truth in history, sharpens the sense of
+pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination.
+Something whispers us that we have no right to make a mock of calamities
+like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and plaything
+of our fancies."--See Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.--To consider
+_thus_ is not to consider _too_ deeply, but not deeply _enough_.
+
+[68] _Grave_, in the sense of mighty or potent.
+
+[69] Fulvia, the first wife of Antony.
+
+[70] The well-known violence and coarseness of Queen Elizabeth's
+manners, in which she was imitated by the women about her, may in
+Shakspeare's time have rendered the image of a royal virago less
+offensive and less extraordinary.
+
+[71] She was as good as her word. See the life of Antony in Plutarch.
+
+[72] _i. e._ retinue.
+
+[73] _i. e._ silver coins, from the Spanish _plata_.
+
+[74] Cleopatra replies to the first word she hears on recovering her
+sense, "No more _an empress_, but a mere woman!"
+
+[75] _i. e._ sedate determination.--JOHNSON
+
+[76] The Cleopatra of Jodelle was the first regular French tragedy: the
+last French tragedy on the same subject was the Cléopatre of Marmontel.
+For the representation of this tragedy Vaucanson, the celebrated French
+mechanist, invented an automaton asp, which crawled and hissed to the
+life,--to the great delight of the Parisians. But it appears that
+neither Vaucanson's asp, nor Clairon, could save Cléopatre from a
+deserved fate. Of the English tragedies, one was written by the Countess
+of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sydney; and is, I believe, the
+first instance in our language, of original dramatic writing, by female.
+
+[77] "The sober eye of dull Octavia."--Act v. scene 2.
+
+[78] Octavia was never in Egypt.
+
+[79] "The Octavia of Dryden is a much more important personage than in
+the Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspeare. She is, however, more cold and
+unamiable, for in the very short scenes in which the Octavia of
+Shakspeare is introduced, she is placed in rather an interesting point
+of view. But Dryden has himself informed us that he was apprehensive
+that the justice of a wife's claim would draw the audience to her side,
+and lessen their interest in the lover and the mistress. He seems
+accordingly to have studiously lowered the character of the injured
+Octavia who, in her conduct to her husband, shows much duty and little
+love." Sir W. Scott (in the same fine piece of criticism prefixed to
+Dryden's All for Love) gives the preference to Shakspeare's Cleopatra.
+
+[80] In all, about two thousand pounds.
+
+[81] The corresponding passage in the old English Plutarch runs thus:
+"My son, why dost thou not answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether
+to give place unto thy choler and revenge, and thinkest thou it not
+honesty for thee to grant thy mother's request in so weighty a cause?
+Dost thou take it honorable for a nobleman to remember the wrongs and
+injuries done him, and dost not in like case think it an honest
+nobleman's part to be thankful for the goodness that parents do show to
+their children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear
+unto them? No man living is more bound to show himself thankful in all
+parts and respects than thyself, who so universally showest all
+ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken of thy country,
+exacting grievous payments upon them in revenge of the injuries offered
+thee; besides, thou hast not hitherto showed thy poor mother any
+courtesy. And, therefore, it is not only honest, but due unto me, that
+without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of
+thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade ye to it, to what purpose do
+I defer my last hope?" And with these words, herself, his wife, and
+children, fell down upon their knees before him.
+
+[82] _Vide_ Daru, Histoire de Bretagne.
+
+[83] _Vide_ Sir Peter Leycester's Antiquities of Chester.
+
+[84] By the treaty of Messina, 1190
+
+[85] Malone says, that "In expanding the character of the bastard,
+Shakspeare seems to have proceeded on the following slight hint in an
+old play on the story of King John:--
+
+     Next them a bastard of the king's deceased--
+     A hardy wild-head, rough and venturous."
+
+It is easy to _say_ this; yet who but Shakspeare could have expanded the
+last line into a Falconbridge?
+
+[86] The Greek Merope, which was esteemed one of the finest of the
+tragedies of Euripides, is unhappily lost; those of Maffei, Alfieri, and
+Voltaire, are well known. There is another Merope in Italian, which I
+have not seen: the English Merope is merely a bad translation from
+Voltaire.
+
+[87] "Queen Elinor saw that if he were king, how his mother Constance
+would look to bear the most rule in the realm of England, till her son
+should come of a lawful age to govern of himself."--HOLINSHED.
+
+[88] King John, Act iii, Scene 1.
+
+[89] Louis VII. of France, whom she was accustomed to call, in contempt,
+_the monk_. Elinor's adventures in Syria, whither she accompanied Louis
+on the second Crusade, would form a romance.
+
+[90] Henry II. of England. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the
+story of Fair Rosamond, as far as Elinor is concerned, is a mere
+invention of some ballad-maker of later times.
+
+[91] _Vide_ Mezerai.
+
+[92] When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the extreme
+point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of Nisida,
+and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretta which now deforms
+it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as
+it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses and fig-trees which embosom
+it, looks beautiful at a distance.
+
+[93] "The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster," in two
+parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about 1590.
+
+[94] I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc,
+as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in
+my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly, because in
+representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half
+sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and
+ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and
+common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character
+nobly: but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love,
+instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious
+error in judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madame de
+Staël's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion
+for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and
+spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast, with her
+religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her melancholy, her
+sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing in all her
+exploits, (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking,
+while death was all around her, she never struck a blow, nor stained her
+consecrated sword with blood,--another point in which Schiller has
+wronged her,) this heroine and martyr, over whose last moments we shed
+burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a
+Dramatic character, and I know but one person capable of doing this.
+
+[95] See Henry VI. Part III. Act. iii. sc. 3--
+
+               QUEEN MARGARET.
+
+     Warwick, these words have turned my hate to love,--
+     And I forgive and quite forget old faults,
+     And joy that thou becom'st King Henry's friend.
+
+
+[96] Horace Walpole observes, that "it is evident from the conduct of
+Shakspeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their Lancasterian
+prejudices even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In his play of Richard
+the Third, he seems to deduce the woes of the house of York from the
+curses which Queen Margaret had vented against them; and he could not
+give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right in her to
+utter them."
+
+[97] See her letters in Ellis's Collection.
+
+[98] Under similar circumstances, one of Katherine's predecessors,
+Philippe of Hainault, had gained in her husband's absence the battle of
+Neville Cross, in which David Bruce was taken prisoner.
+
+[99] Ellis's Collection. We must keep in mind that Katherine was a
+foreigner, and till after she was seventeen, never spoke or wrote a word
+of English.
+
+[100] Hall's Chronicle
+
+[101] Hall's Chronicle, p. 781.
+
+[102] The court at Blackfriars sat on the 28th of May, 1529. "The queen
+being called, accompanied by the four bishops and others of her counsel,
+and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following her; and after
+her obeisance, sadly and with great gravity, she appealed from them to
+the court of Rome."--_See Hall and Cavendish's Life of Wolsey._
+
+The account which Hume gives of this scene is very elegant; but after
+the affecting _naïveté_ of the old chroniclers, it is very cold and
+unsatisfactory.
+
+[103] "The queen answered the Duke of Suffolk very highly and
+obstinately, with many high words: and suddenly, in a fury she departed
+from him into her privy chamber."--_Vide Hall's Chronicle_.
+
+[104] _Vide_ Cavendish's Life of Wolsey.
+
+[105] Winter's Tale, act iii. scene 2.
+
+[106] I have constantly abstained from considering any of these
+characters with a reference to the theatre; yet I cannot help remarking,
+that if Mrs. Siddons, who excelled equally in Hermione and Katherine,
+and threw such majesty of demeanor, such power, such picturesque effect,
+into both, could likewise feel and convey the infinite contrast between
+the ideal grace, the classical repose and imaginative charm thrown round
+Hermione, and the matter-of-fact, artless, prosaic nature of Katherine;
+between the poetical grandeur of the former, and the moral dignity of
+the latter,--then she certainly exceeded all that I could have imagined
+possible, even to _her_ wonderful powers.
+
+[107] This affecting passage is thus rendered by Shakspeare:--
+
+     Nay, forsooth, my friends,
+     They that must weigh out my afflictions--
+     They that my trust must grow to, live not here--
+     They are, as all my other comforts, far hence,
+     In mine own country, lords.
+
+          _Henry VIII._ _act_ iii. _sc._ 1
+
+
+[108] Dr. Johnson is of opinion, that this scene "is above any other
+part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any other
+poet, tender and pathetic; without gods, or furies, or poisons, or
+precipices; without the help of romantic circumstances; without
+improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of
+tumultuous misery."
+
+I have already observed, that in judging of Shakspeare's characters as
+of persons we meet in real life, we are swayed unconsciously by our own
+habits and feelings, and our preference governed, more or less, by our
+individual prejudices or sympathies. Thus, Dr. Johnson, who has not a
+word to bestow on Imogen, and who has treated poor Juliet as if she had
+been in truth "the very beadle to an amorous sigh," does full justice to
+the character of Katherine, because the logical turn of his mind, his
+vigorous intellect, and his austere integrity, enabled him to appreciate
+its peculiar beauties: and, accordingly, we find that he gives it, not
+only unqualified, but almost exclusive admiration: he goes so far as to
+assert, that in this play the genius of Shakspeare comes in and goes out
+with Katherine.
+
+[109] It will be remembered, that in early youth Anna Bullen was
+betrothed to Lord Henry Percy, who was passionately in love with her.
+Wolsey, to serve the king's purposes, broke off this match, and forced
+Percy into an unwilling marriage with Lady Mary Talbot. "The stout Earl
+of Northumberland," who arrested Wolsey at York, was this very Percy; he
+was chosen for his mission by the interference of Anna Bullen--a piece
+of vengeance truly feminine in its mixture of sentiment and
+spitefulness; and every way characteristic of the individual woman.
+
+[110] The king is said to have wept on reading this letter, and her body
+being interred at Peterbro', in the monastery, for honor of her memory
+it was preserved at the dissolution, and erected into a bishop's
+see.--_Herbert's Life of Henry VIII._
+
+[111] Written, (as the commentators suppose,) not by Shakspeare, but by
+Ben Jonson.
+
+[112] Mrs. Siddons left among her papers an analysis of the character of
+Lady Macbeth, which I have never seen: but I have heard her say, that
+after playing the part for thirty years, she never read it without
+discovering in it something new. She had an idea that Lady Macbeth must
+from her Celtic origin have been a small, fair, blue-eyed woman.
+Bonduca, Fredegonde, Brunehault, and other Amazons of the gothic ages
+were of this complexion; yet I cannot help fancying Lady Macbeth dark,
+like Black Agnes of Douglas--a sort of Lady Macbeth in her way.
+
+[113] In her impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Siddons
+adopted successively three different intonations in giving the words _we
+fail_. At first a quick contemptuous interrogation--"_we fail?_"
+Afterwards with the note of admiration--_we fail!_ and an accent of
+indignant astonishment, laying the principal emphasis on the word
+_we_--_we_ fail! Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced is the true
+reading--we fail. with the simple period, modulating her voice to a
+deep, low, resolute tone, which settled the issue at once--as though she
+had said, "if we fail, why then we fail, and all is over." This is
+consistent with the dark fatalism of the character and the sense of the
+line following, and the effect was sublime, almost awful.
+
+[114] _Metaphysical_ is here used in the sense of spiritual or
+preternatural.
+
+[115] Mrs. Siddons, I believe, had an idea that Lady Macbeth beheld the
+spectre of Banquo in the supper scene, and that her self-control and
+presence of mind enabled her to surmount her consciousness of the
+ghastly presence. This would be superhuman, and I do not see that either
+the character or the text bear out this supposition.
+
+[116] Cumberland.
+
+[117] Professor Richardson.
+
+[118] Foster's Essays.
+
+[119] See Dr. Channing's remarks on Satan, in his essay "On the
+Character and Writings of Milton."--_Works_, p 181.
+
+[120] The vision of Clytemnestra the night before she is murdered, in
+which she dreams that she has given birth to a dragon, and that, in
+laying it to her bosom, it draws blood instead of milk, has been greatly
+admired; but I suppose that those who most admire it would not place it
+in comparison with Lady Macbeth's sleeping scene. Lady Ashton, in the
+Bride of Lammermoor, is a domestic Lady Macbeth; but the development
+being in the narrative, not the dramatic form, it follows hence that we
+have a masterly portrait, not a complete individual: and the relief of
+poetry and sympathy being wanting, the detestation she inspires is so
+unmixed as to be almost intolerable: consequently the character,
+considered in relation to the other personages of the story, is perfect;
+but abstractedly, it is imperfect; a basso relievo--not a statue.
+
+[121] Attributed to Seneca.
+
+[122] A comparison has already been made in an article in the
+"Reflector." It will be seen on a reference to that very masterly Essay,
+that I differ from the author in his conception of Lady Macbeth's
+character.
+
+[123] Appollonius Rhodius.--_Vide_ Elton's Specimens of the Classic
+Poets.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+Books by Mrs. Anna Jameson
+
+
+THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN: MORAL, POETICAL, AND HISTORICAL.
+
+THE DIARY OF AN ENNUYÉE.
+
+MEMOIRS OF THE LOVES OF THE POETS. Biographical Sketches of Women
+celebrated in Ancient and Modern Poetry.
+
+STUDIES, STORIES, AND MEMOIRS.
+
+SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. With a Steel Engraving of
+Raphael's Madonna del San Sisto.
+
+MEMOIRS OF THE EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS (Cimabue to Bassano).
+
+LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA as represented in the Fine Arts.
+
+SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. In two volumes.
+
+LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS as represented in the Fine Arts. Forming
+the Second Series of Sacred and Legendary Art.
+
+Each volume, 16mo, $1.25; the ten volumes, in box, $12.50; half calf,
+$25.00; tree calf, $35.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Houghton, Mifflin & Co., _Publishers_, BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Characteristics of Women
+       Moral, Poetical, and Historical
+
+Author: Anna Jameson
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2008 [EBook #26152]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN</h1>
+
+<h2>MORAL, POETICAL, AND HISTORICAL</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MRS. JAMESON</h2>
+
+<h4><i>From the last London Edition</i></h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="250" height="324" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">BOSTON AND NEW YORK <br />HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br /> <i>The Riverside Press,
+Cambridge</i><br /> 1889</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<h3>TO THE NEW EDITION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In preparing for the press a new edition of this little work, the author
+has endeavored to render it more worthy of the approbation and kindly
+feeling with which it has been received; she cannot better express her
+sense of both than by justifying, as far as it is in her power, the
+cordial and flattering tone of all the public criticisms. It is to the
+great name of <span class="smcap">Shakspeare</span>, that bond of sympathy among all who speak his
+language, and to the subject of the work, not to its own merits, that
+she attributes the success it has met with,&mdash;success the more
+delightful, because, in truth, it was from the very first, so entirely
+unlooked for, as to be a matter of surprise as well as of pleasure and
+gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>In this edition there are many corrections, and some additions which the
+author hopes may be deemed improvements. She has been induced to insert
+several quotations at length, which were formerly only referred to, from
+observing that however familiar they may be to the mind of the reader,
+they are always recognized with pleasure&mdash;like dear domestic faces; and
+if the memory fail at the moment to recall the lines or the sentiment to
+which the attention is directly required, few like to interrupt the
+course of thought, or undertake a journey from the sofa or garden-seat
+to the library, to hunt out the volume, the play, the passage, for
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>When the first edition was sent to press, the author contemplated
+writing the life of Mrs. Siddons, with a reference to her art; and
+deferred the complete development of the character of Lady Macbeth, till
+she should be able to illustrate it by the impersonation and commentary
+of that grand and gifted actress; but the task having fallen into other
+hands, the analysis of the character has been almost entirely rewritten,
+as at first conceived, or rather restored to its original form.</p>
+
+<p>This little work, as it now stands, forms only part of a plan which the
+author hopes, if life be granted her, to accomplish;&mdash;at all events,
+life, while it is spared, shall be devoted to its fulfilment.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<span class="tocnum">Page</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Introduction</span>                                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_8'>8</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.<br />
+Portia                                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_53'>53</a></span><br />
+Isabella                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_83'>83</a></span><br />
+Beatrice                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_99'>99</a></span><br />
+Rosalind                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_110'>110</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION.<br />
+Juliet                                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_119'>119</a></span><br />
+Helena                                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></span><br />
+Perdita                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_172'>172</a></span><br />
+Viola                                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_181'>181</a></span><br />
+Ophelia                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_187'>187</a></span><br />
+Miranda                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_207'>207</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS.<br />
+Hermione                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></span><br />
+Desdemona                                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_240'>240</a></span><br />
+Imogen                                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_259'>259</a></span><br />
+Cordelia                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_280'>280</a></span><br />
+<br />
+HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.<br />
+Cleopatra                                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_302'>302</a></span><br />
+Octavia                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_341'>341</a></span><br />
+Volumnia                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_345'>345</a></span><br />
+Constance of Bretagne                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_357'>357</a></span><br />
+Elinor of Guienne                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_387'>387</a></span><br />
+Blanche of Castile                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_389'>389</a></span><br />
+Margaret of Anjou                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_396'>396</a></span><br />
+Katharine of Arragon                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_407'>407</a></span><br />
+Lady Macbeth                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_437'>437</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3>
+
+
+<h4><i>Scene&mdash;A Library.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>You will not listen to me?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I do, with all the deference which befits a gentleman when a lady holds
+forth on the virtues of her own sex.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He is a parricide of his mother's name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with an impious hand murders her fame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wrongs the praise of women; that dares write<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The milk they lent us.<br /></span>
+<span class="i19">Yours was the nobler birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For you from man were made&mdash;man but of earth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The son of dust!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>What's this?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a rhyme I learned from one I talked withal;" 'tis a quotation from
+some old poet that has fixed itself in my memory&mdash;from Randolph, I
+think.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis very justly thought, and very politely quoted, and my best courtesy
+is due to him and to you:&mdash;but now will you listen to me?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>With most profound humility.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, then! I have done, unless you will lay aside these mock airs of
+gallantry, and listen to me for a moment! Is it fair to bring a
+second-hand accusation against me, and not attend to my defence?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I will be serious.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Do so, and let us talk like reasonable beings.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Then tell me, (as a reasonable woman you will not be affronted with the
+question,) do you really expect that any one will read this little book
+of yours?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I might answer, that it has been a great source of amusement and
+interest to me for several months, and that so far I am content: but no
+one writes a book without a hope of finding readers, and I shall find a
+few. Accident first made me an authoress; and not now, nor ever, have I
+written to flatter any prevailing fashion of the day for the sake of
+profit, though this is done, I know, by many who have less excuse for
+thus coining their brains. This little book was undertaken without a
+thought of fame or money: out of the fulness of my own heart and soul
+have I written it. In the pleasure it has given me, in the new and
+various views of human nature it has opened to me, in the beautiful and
+soothing images it has placed before me, in the exercise and improvement
+of my own faculties, I have already been repaid: if praise or profit
+come beside, they come as a surplus. I should be gratified and grateful,
+but I have not sought for them, nor worked for them. Do you believe
+this?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I do: in this I cannot suspect you of affectation, for the profession of
+disinterestedness is uncalled for, and the contrary would be too far
+countenanced by the custom of the day to be matter of reserve or
+reproach. But how could you (saving the reverence due to a
+lady-authoress, and speaking as one reasonable being to another) choose
+such a threadbare subject?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>What do you mean?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I presume you have written a book to maintain the superiority of your
+sex over ours; for so I judge by the names at the heads of some of your
+chapters; women fit indeed to inlay heaven with stars, but, pardon me,
+very unlike those who at present walk upon this earth.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Very unlike the fine ladies of your acquaintance, I grant you; but as to
+maintaining the superiority, or speculating on the rights of
+women&mdash;nonsense! why should you suspect me of such folly?&mdash;it is quite
+out of date. Why should there be competition or comparison?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Both are ill-judged and odious; but did you ever meet with a woman of
+the world, who did not abuse most heartily the whole race of men?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever talk with a man of the world, who did not speak with levity
+or contempt of the whole human race of women?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I might answer like Voltaire&mdash;"H&eacute;las<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> ils pourraient bien avoir
+raison tous deux." But do you thence infer that both are good for
+nothing?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Thence I infer that the men of the world and the women of the world are
+neither of them&mdash;good for much.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>And you have written a book to make them better?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven forbid! else I were only fit for the next lunatic asylum. Vanity
+run mad never conceived such an impossible idea.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in a few words, what is the subject, and what the object, of your
+book?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I have endeavoured to illustrate the various modifications of which the
+female character is susceptible, with their causes and results. My life
+has been spent in observing and thinking; I have had, as you well know,
+more opportunities for the first, more leisure for the last, than have
+fallen to the lot of most people. What I have seen, felt, thought,
+suffered, has led me to form certain opinions. It appears to me that the
+condition of women in society, as at present constituted, is false in
+itself, and injurious to them,&mdash;that the education<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> of women, as at
+present conducted, is founded in mistaken principles, and tends to
+increase fearfully the sum of misery and error in both sexes; but I do
+not choose presumptuously to fling these opinions in the face of the
+world, in the form of essays on morality, and treatises on education. I
+have rather chosen to illustrate certain positions by examples, and
+leave my readers to deduce the moral themselves, and draw their own
+inferences.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>And why have you not chosen your examples from real life? you might
+easily have done so. You have not been a mere spectator, or a mere
+actor, but a lounger behind the scenes of existence&mdash;have even assisted
+in preparing the puppets for the stage: you might have given us an
+epitome of your experience, instead of dreaming over Shakspeare.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I might so, if I had chosen to become a female satirist, which I will
+never be.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>You would, at least, stand a better chance of being read.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I am not sure of that. The vile taste for satire and personal gossip
+will not be eradicated, I suppose, while the elements of curiosity and
+malice remain in human nature; but as a fashion of literature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> I think
+it is passing away;&mdash;at all events it is not my <i>forte</i>. Long experience
+of what is called "the world," of the folly, duplicity, shallowness,
+selfishness, which meet us at every turn, too soon unsettles our
+youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it
+were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions and retire from
+the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys our
+belief&mdash;it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and
+happiness; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes
+us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of goodness; it teaches us to
+consider <i>self</i> as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which
+all motives are to be referred.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>But this being so, we must either revolve with these earthly natures,
+and round the same centre, or seek a sphere for ourselves, and dwell
+apart.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I trust it is not necessary to do either. While we are yet young, and
+the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us
+a world within, we cannot look fairly on the world without:&mdash;all things
+then are good. When first we throw ourselves forth, and meet burs and
+briars on every side, which stick in our very hearts;&mdash;and fair tempting
+fruits which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with
+impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> hour,
+when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern
+their true bearings; when the perception of evil, or sorrow, or sin,
+brings also the perception of some opposite good, which awakens our
+indulgence, or the knowledge of the cause which excites our pity. Thus
+it is with me. I can smile,&mdash;nay, I can laugh still, to see folly,
+vanity, absurdity, meanness, exposed by scornful wit, and depicted by
+others in fictions light and brilliant. But these very things, when I
+encounter the reality, rather make me sad than merry, and take away all
+the inclination, if I had the power, to hold them up to derision.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Unless, by doing so, you might correct them.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Correct them! Show me that one human being who has been made essentially
+better by satire! O no, no! there is something in human nature which
+hardens itself against the lash&mdash;something in satire which excites only
+the lowest and worst of our propensities. That avowal in Pope&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">I must be proud to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men not afraid of God, afraid of me!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;has ever filled me with terror and pity&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>From its truth perhaps?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>From its arrogance,&mdash;for the truth is, that a vice never corrected a
+vice. Pope might be proud of the terror he inspired in those who feared
+no God in whom vanity was stronger than conscience: but that terror made
+no individual man better; and while he indulged his own besetting sin,
+he administered to the malignity of others. Your professed satirists
+always send me to think upon the opposite sentiment in Shakspeare, on
+"the mischievous foul sin of chiding sin." I remember once hearing a
+poem of Barry Cornwall's, (he read it to me,) about a strange winged
+creature that, having the lineaments of a man, yet preyed on a man, and
+afterwards coming to a stream to drink, and beholding his own face
+therein, and that he had made his prey of a creature like himself, pined
+away with repentance. So should those do, who having made themselves
+mischievous mirth out of the sins and sorrows of others, remembering
+their own humanity, and seeing within themselves the same lineaments&mdash;so
+should <i>they</i> grieve and pine away, self-punished.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis an old allegory, and a sad one&mdash;and but too much to the purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I abhor the spirit of ridicule&mdash;I dread it and I despise it. I abhor it
+because it is in direct contradiction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> to the mild and serious spirit of
+Christianity; I fear it, because we find that in every state of society
+in which it has prevailed as a fashion, and has given the tone to the
+manners and literature, it marked the moral degradation and approaching
+destruction of that society; and I despise it, because it is the usual
+resource of the shallow and the base mind, and, when wielded by the
+strongest hand with the purest intentions, an inefficient means of good.
+The spirit of satire reversing the spirit of mercy which is twice
+blessed, seems to me twice accursed;&mdash;evil in those who indulge it&mdash;evil
+to those who are the objects of it.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>"Peut-&ecirc;tre fallait-il que la punition des imprudens et des faibles fut
+confi&eacute;e &agrave; la malignit&eacute;, car la pure vertu n'e&ucirc;t jamais &eacute;t&eacute; assez
+cruelle."</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>That is a woman's sentiment.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>True&mdash;it <i>was</i>; and I have pleasure in reminding you that a female
+satirist by profession is yet an anomaly in the history of our
+literature, as a female schismatic is yet unknown in the history of our
+religion. But to what do you attribute the number of satirical women we
+meet in society?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Not to our nature; but to a state of society in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> which the levelling
+spirit of <i>persiflage</i> has been long a fashion; to the perverse
+education which fosters it; to affections disappointed or unemployed,
+which embitter the temper; to faculties misdirected or wasted, which
+oppress and irritate the mind; to an utter ignorance of ourselves, and
+the common lot of humanity, combined with quick and refined perceptions
+and much superficial cultivation; to frivolous habits, which make
+serious thought a burden, and serious feeling a bane if suppressed, if
+betrayed, a ridicule. Women, generally speaking, are by nature too much
+subjected to suffering in many forms&mdash;have too much of fancy and
+sensibility, and too much of that faculty which some philosophers call
+<i>veneration</i>, to be naturally satirical. I have known but one woman
+eminently gifted in mind and person, who is also distinguished for
+powers of satire as bold as merciless; and she is such a compound of all
+that nature can give of good, and all that society can teach of evil&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>That she reminds us of the dragon of old, which was generated between
+the sunbeams from heaven and the slime of earth.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>No such thing. Rather of the powerful and beautiful fairy Melusina, who
+had every talent and every charm under heaven but once in so many hours
+was fated to become a serpent. No, I return<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> to my first position. It is
+not by exposing folly and scorning fools, that we make other people
+wiser, or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and
+examples of the kindly and generous affections&mdash;to show how the human
+soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering&mdash;to prove how much of
+possible good may exist in things evil and perverted&mdash;how much hope
+there is for those who despair&mdash;how much comfort for those whom a
+heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so
+put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit
+of the day&mdash;O would I could do this!</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>On the same principle, I suppose, that they have changed the treatment
+of lunatics; and whereas they used to condemn poor distempered wretches
+to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waistcoat, they now send
+them to sunshine and green fields, to wander in gardens among birds and
+flowers, and soothe them with soft music and kind flattering speech.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>You laugh at me! perhaps I deserve it.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>No, in truth; I am a little amused, but most honestly attentive: and
+perhaps wish I could think more like you. But to proceed: I allow that
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> this view of the case, you could not well have chosen your
+illustrations from real life; but why not from history?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>As far as history could guide me, I have taken her with me in one or two
+recent publications, which all tend to the same object. Nor have I here
+lost sight of her; but I have entered on a land where she alone is not
+to be trusted, and may make a pleasant companion but a most fallacious
+guide. To drop metaphor: history informs us that such things have been
+done or have occurred; but when we come to inquire into motives and
+characters, it is the most false and partial and unsatisfactory
+authority we can refer to. Women are illustrious in history, not from
+what they have been in themselves, but generally in proportion to the
+mischief they have done or caused. Those characters best fitted to my
+purpose are precisely those of which history never heard, or disdains to
+speak; of those which have been handed down to us by many different
+authorities under different aspects we cannot judge without prejudice;
+in others there occur certain chasms which it is difficult to supply;
+and hence inconsistencies we have no means of reconciling, though
+doubtless they <i>might</i> be reconciled if we knew the whole, instead of a
+part.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>But instance&mdash;instance!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Examples crowd upon me; but take the first that occurs. Do you remember
+that Duchesse de Longueville, whose beautiful picture we were looking at
+yesterday?&mdash;the heroine of the Fronde?&mdash;think of that woman&mdash;bold,
+intriguing, profligate, vain, ambitious, factious!&mdash;who made men rebels
+with a smile;&mdash;or if that were not enough, the lady was not scrupulous,
+apparently without principle as without shame, nothing was <i>too</i> much!
+And then think of the same woman protecting the virtuous philosopher
+Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned; and from motives which her
+worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even
+to her own servants&mdash;preparing his food herself, watching for his
+safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her
+discretion, her disinterested benevolence, not only defied danger, (that
+were little to a woman of her temper,) but endured a lengthened trial,
+all the ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continual
+self-control, and the thousand small daily sacrifices which, to a vain,
+dissipated, proud, impatient woman, must have been hard to bear. Now if
+Shakspeare had drawn the character of the Duchesse de Longueville, he
+would have shown us the same individual woman in both situations:&mdash;for
+the same being, with the same faculties, and passions, and powers, it
+surely was: whereas in history, we see in one case a fury of discord, a
+woman without modesty or pity; and in the other an angel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> of
+benevolence, and a worshipper of goodness; and nothing to connect the
+two extremes in our fancy.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>But these are contradictions which we meet on every page of history,
+which make us giddy with doubt, or sick with belief, and are the proper
+subjects of inquiry for the moralist and the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot say that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help
+<i>me</i> out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found
+solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight;
+the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I
+found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are
+complete individuals, whose hearts and souls are laid open before us:
+all may behold, and all judge for themselves.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>But all will not judge alike.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>No; and herein lies a part of their wonderful truth. We hear
+Shakspeare's men and women discussed, praised and dispraised, liked,
+disliked, as real human beings; and in forming our opinions of them, we
+are influenced by our own characters, habits of thought, prejudices,
+feelings, impulses, just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> as we are influenced with regard to our
+acquaintances and associates.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>But we are then as likely to misconceive and misjudge them.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, if we had only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we
+can do with them what we cannot do with real people: we can unfold the
+whole character before us, stripped of all pretensions of self-love, all
+disguises of manner. We can take leisure to examine, to analyze, to
+correct our own impressions, to watch the rise and progress of various
+passions&mdash;we can hate, love, approve, condemn, without offence to
+others, without pain to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect they may be compared to those exquisite anatomical
+preparations of wax, which those who could not without disgust and
+horror dissect a real specimen, may study, and learn the mysteries of
+our frame, and all the internal workings of the wondrous machine of
+life.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>And it is the safer and the better way&mdash;for us at least. But look&mdash;that
+brilliant rain-drop trembling there in the sunshine suggests to me
+another illustration. Passion, when we contemplate it through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> the
+medium of imagination, is like a ray of light transmitted through a
+prism; we can calmly, and with undazzled eye, study its complicate
+nature, and analyze its variety of tints; but passion brought home to us
+in its reality, through our own feelings and experience, is like the
+same ray transmitted through a lens,&mdash;blinding, burning, consuming where
+it falls.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Your illustration is the most poetical, I allow; but not the most just.
+But tell me, is the ground you have taken sufficiently large?&mdash;is the
+foundation you have chosen strong enough to bear the moral
+superstructure you raise upon it? You know the prevalent idea is, that
+Shakspeare's women are inferior to his men. This assertion is constantly
+repeated, and has been but tamely refuted.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Richardson?&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>He is as dry as a stick, and his refutation not successful even as a
+piece of logic. Then it is not sufficient for critics to assert this
+inferiority and want of variety: they first assume the fallacy, then
+argue upon it. Cibber accounts for it from the circumstance that all the
+female parts in Shakspeare's time were acted by boys&mdash;there were no
+women on the stage; and Mackenzie, who ought to have known better, says
+that he was not so happy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> in his delineations of love and tenderness, as
+of the other passions; because, forsooth, the majesty of his genius
+could not stoop to the refinements of delicacy;&mdash;preposterous!</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Stay! before we waste epithets of indignation, let us consider. If these
+people mean that Shakspeare's women are inferior in power to his men, I
+grant it at once; for in Shakspeare the male and female characters bear
+precisely the same relation to each other that they do in nature and in
+society&mdash;they are not equal in prominence or in power&mdash;they are
+subordinate throughout. Richardson remarks, that "if situation
+influences the mind, and if uniformity of conduct be frequently
+occasioned by uniformity of condition, there <i>must</i> be a greater
+diversity of male than of female characters,"&mdash;which is true; add to
+this our limited sphere of action, consequently of experience,&mdash;the
+habits of self-control rendering the outward distinctions of character
+and passion less striking and less strong&mdash;all this we see in Shakspeare
+as in nature: for instance, Juliet is the most impassioned of the female
+characters, but what are <i>her</i> passions compared to those which shake
+the soul of Othello?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Even as the dew-drop on the myrtle-leaf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the vex'd sea."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Look at Constance, frantic for the loss of her son&mdash;then look at Lear,
+maddened by the ingratitude of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> his daughters: why it is the west wind
+bowing those aspen tops that wave before our window, compared to the
+tropic hurricane, when forests crash and burn, and mountains tremble to
+their bases!</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>True; and Lady Macbeth, with all her soaring ambition, her vigor of
+intellect, her subtlety, her courage, and her cruelty&mdash;what is she,
+compared to Richard III.?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I will tell you what she is&mdash;she is a woman. Place Lady Macbeth in
+comparison with Richard III., and you see at once the essential
+distinction between masculine and feminine ambition&mdash;though both in
+extreme, and overleaping all restraints of conscience or mercy. Richard
+says of himself, that he has "neither pity, love, nor fear:" Lady
+Macbeth is susceptible of all three. You smile! but that remains to be
+proved. The reason that Shakspeare's wicked women have such a singular
+hold upon our fancy, is from the consistent preservation of the feminine
+character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and
+intelligible&mdash;not like those monstrous caricatures we meet with in
+history&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>In history?&mdash;this is new!</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Yes! I repeat, in history, where certain isolated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> facts and actions are
+recorded, without any relation to causes, or motives, or connecting
+feelings and pictures exhibited, from which the considerate mind turns
+in disgust, and the feeling heart has no relief but in positive, and I
+may add, reasonable incredulity. I have lately seen one of Correggio's
+finest pictures, in which the three Furies are represented, not as
+ghastly deformed hags, with talons and torches, and snaky hair, but as
+young women, with fine luxuriant forms and regular features, and a
+single serpent wreathing the tresses like a bandeau&mdash;but <i>such</i>
+countenances!&mdash;such a hideous expression of malice, cunning, and
+cruelty!&mdash;and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da
+Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where it is less the horror than the grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tis the melodious tints of beauty thrown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Athwart the hue of guilt and glare of pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That humanize and harmonize the strain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And Shakspeare, who understood all truth, worked out his conceptions on
+the same principle, having said himself, that "proper deformity shows
+not in the fiend so horrid as in women." Hence it is that whether he
+portrayed the wickedness founded in perverted power, as in Lady Macbeth;
+or the wickedness founded in weakness, as in Gertrude, Lady Anne, or
+Cressida, he is the more fearfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> impressive, because we cannot claim
+for ourselves an exemption from the same nature, before which, in its
+corrupted state, we tremble with horror or shrink with disgust.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Do you remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought
+it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the
+scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel
+on your sex?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>They might have spared themselves the trouble. Lady Anne is just one of
+those women whom we see walking in crowds through the drawing-rooms of
+the world&mdash;the puppets of habit, the fools of fortune, without any
+particular inclination for vice, or any steady principle of virtue;
+whose actions are inspired by vanity, not affection, and regulated by
+opinion, not by conscience: who are good while there is no temptation to
+be otherwise, and ready victims of the first soliciting to evil. In the
+case of Lady Anne, we are startled by the situation: not three months a
+widow, and following to the sepulchre the remains of a husband and a
+father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them.
+In such a case it required perhaps either Richard or the arch-fiend
+himself to tempt her successfully; but in a less critical moment, a far
+less subtle and audacious seducer would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> sufficed. Cressida is
+another modification of vanity, weakness, and falsehood, drawn in
+stronger colors. The world contains many Lady Annes and Cressidas,
+polished and refined externally, whom chance and vanity keep right, whom
+chance and vanity lead wrong, just as it may happen. When we read in
+history of the enormities of certain women, perfect scarecrows and
+ogresses, we can safely, like the Pharisee in Scripture, hug ourselves
+in our secure virtue, and thank God that we are not as others are&mdash;but
+the wicked women in Shakspeare are portrayed with such perfect
+consistency and truth, that they leave us no such resource&mdash;they
+frighten us into reflection&mdash;they make us believe and tremble. On the
+other hand, his amiable women are touched with such exquisite
+simplicity&mdash;they have so little external pretensions&mdash;and are so unlike
+the usual heroines of tragedy and romance, that they delight us more
+"than all the nonsense of the beau-ideal!" We are flattered by the
+perception of our own nature in the midst of so many charms and virtues:
+not only are they what we could wish to be, or ought to be, but what we
+persuade ourselves we might be, or would be, under a different and a
+happier state of things, and, perhaps, some time or other <i>may</i> be. They
+are not stuck up, like the cardinal virtues, all in a row, for us to
+admire and wonder at&mdash;they are not mere poetical abstractions&mdash;nor (as
+they have been termed) mere abstractions of the affections,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But common clay ta'en from the common earth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moulded by God, and tempered by the tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of angels, to the perfect form of&mdash;<i>woman</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful lines!&mdash;Where are they?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I quote from memory, and I am afraid inaccurately, from a poem of Alfred
+Tennyson's.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Well, between argument, and sentiment, and logic, and poetry, you are
+making out a very plausible case. I think with you that, in the
+instances you have mentioned, (as Lady Macbeth and Richard, Juliet, and
+Othello, and others,) the want of comparative power is only an
+additional excellence; but to go to an opposite extreme of delineation,
+we must allow that there is not one of Shakspeare's women that, as a
+dramatic character, can be compared to Falstaff.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>No; because any thing like Falstaff in the form of woman&mdash;any such
+compound of wit, sensuality, and selfishness, unchecked by the moral
+sentiments and the affections, and touched with the same vigorous
+painting, would be a gross and monstrous caricature. If it could exist
+in nature, we might find it in Shakspeare; but a moment's reflection
+shows us that it would be essentially an impossible combination of
+faculties in a female.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>It strikes me, however, that his humorous women are feebly drawn, in
+comparison with some of the female wits of other writers.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Because his women of wit and humor are not introduced for the sole
+purpose of saying brilliant things, and displaying the wit of the
+author; they are, as I will show you, real, natural women, in whom <i>wit</i>
+is only a particular and occasional modification of intellect. They are
+all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral
+agents; and <i>then</i> witty, as if by accident, or as the Duchesse de
+Chaulnes said of herself, "par la gr&acirc;ce de Dieu." As to humor, it is
+carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly; in the termagant Catherine;
+in Maria, in "Twelfth Night;" in Juliet's nurse; in Mrs. Ford and Mrs.
+Page. What can exceed in humorous na&iuml;vet&eacute;, Mrs. Quickly's upbraiding
+Falstaff, and her concluding appeal&mdash;"Didst thou not kiss me, and bid me
+fetch thee thirty shillings?" Is it not exquisite&mdash;irresistible? Mrs.
+Ford and Mrs. Page are both "merry wives," but how perfectly
+discriminated! Mrs. Ford has the most good nature&mdash;Mrs. Page is the
+cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief
+in her mirth. In all these instances I allow that the humor is more or
+less vulgar; but a humorous woman, whether in high or low life has
+always a tinge of vulgarity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to see that word <i>vulgar</i> properly defined, and its
+meaning limited&mdash;at present it is the most arbitrary word in the
+language.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, like the word romantic, it is a convenient "exploding word," and in
+its general application signifies nothing more than "see how much finer
+I am than other people!"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> but in literature and character I shall
+adhere to the definition of Madame de Sta&euml;l, who uses the word <i>vulgar</i>
+as the reverse of <i>poetical</i>. Vulgarity (as I wish to apply the word) is
+the <i>negative</i> in all things. In literature, it is the total absence of
+elevation and depth in the ideas, and of elegance and delicacy in the
+expression of them. In character, it is the absence of truth,
+sensibility, and reflection. The vulgar in manner, is the result of
+vulgarity of character; it is grossness, hardness, or affectation.&mdash;If
+you would see how Shakspeare has discriminated, not only different
+degrees, but different kinds of plebeian vulgarity in women, you have
+only to compare the nurse in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Quickly. On the
+whole, if there are people who, taking the strong and essential
+distinction of sex into consideration, still maintain that Shakspeare's
+female characters are not, in truth, in variety, in power,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> equal to his
+men, I think I shall prove the contrary.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I observe that you have divided your illustrations into classes; but
+shades of character so melt into each other, and the various faculties
+and powers are so blended and balanced, that all classification must be
+arbitrary. I am at a loss to conceive where you have drawn the line;
+here, at the head of your first chapter, I find "Characters of
+Intellect"&mdash;do you call Portia intellectual, and Hermione and Constance
+not so?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I know that Schlegel has said that it is impossible to arrange
+Shakspeare's characters in classes: yet some classification was
+necessary for my purpose. I have therefore divided them into characters
+in which intellect and wit predominate; characters in which fancy and
+passion predominate; and characters in which the moral sentiments and
+affections predominate. The historical characters I have considered
+apart, as requiring a different mode of illustration. Portia I regard as
+a perfect model of an intellectual woman, in whom wit is tempered by
+sensibility, and fancy regulated by strong reflection. It is objected to
+her, to Beatrice, and others of Shakspeare's women, that the display of
+intellect is tinged with a coarseness of manner belonging to the age in
+which he wrote. To remark that the conversation and letters of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+high-bred and virtuous women of that time were more bold and frank in
+expression than any part of the dialogue appropriated to Beatrice and
+Rosalind, may excuse it to our judgment, but does not reconcile it to
+our taste. Much has been said, and more might be said on this
+subject&mdash;but I would rather not discuss it. It is a mere difference of
+manner which is to be regretted, but has nothing to do with the essence
+of the character.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I think you have done well in avoiding the topic altogether; but between
+ourselves, do you really think that the refinement of manner, the
+censorious, hypocritical, verbal scrupulosity, which is carried so far
+in this "picked age" of ours, is a true sign of superior refinement of
+taste, and purity of morals? Is it not rather a whiting of the
+sepulchre? I will not even allude to individual instances whom we both
+know, but does it not remind you, on the whole, of the tone of French
+manners previous to the revolution&mdash;that "d&eacute;cence," which Horace Walpole
+so admired,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> veiling the moral degradation, the inconceivable
+profligacy of the higher classes?&mdash;Stay&mdash;I have not yet done&mdash;not to
+you, but <i>for</i> you, I will add thus much;&mdash;our modern idea of delicacy
+apparently attaches more importance to words than to things&mdash;to manners
+than to morals. You will hear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> people inveigh against the improprieties
+of Shakspeare, with Don Juan, or one of those infernal French novels&mdash;I
+beg your pardon&mdash;lying on their toilet table. Lady Florence is shocked
+at the sallies of Beatrice, and Beatrice would certainly stand aghast to
+see Lady Florence dressed for Almack's; so you see that in both cases
+the fashion makes the indecorum. Let her ladyship new model her gowns!</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Well, well, leave Lady Florence&mdash;I would rather hear you defend
+Shakspeare.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I think it is Coleridge who so finely observes that Shakspeare ever kept
+the high road of human life, whereon all travel, that he did not pick
+out by-paths of feeling and sentiment; in him we have no moral
+highwaymen, and sentimental thieves and rat-catchers, and interesting
+villains, and amiable, elegant adulteresses&mdash;<i>&agrave;-la-mode Germanorum</i>&mdash;no
+delicate entanglements of situation, in which the grossest images are
+presented to the mind disguised under the superficial attraction of
+style and sentiment. He flattered no bad passion, disguised no vice in
+the garb of virtue, trifled with with no just and generous principle. He
+can make us laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, yet still preserve our
+love for our fellow-beings, and our reverence for ourselves. He has a
+lofty and a fearless trust in his own powers, and in the beauty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> and
+excellence of virtue; and with his eye fixed on the lode-star of truth,
+steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other
+pilot we had been wrecked:&mdash;for instance, who but himself would have
+dared to bring into close contact two such characters as Iago and
+Desdemona? Had the colors in which he has arrayed Desdemona been one
+atom less transparently bright and pure, the charm had been lost; she
+could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the
+overpowering blackness of <i>his</i> character must have passed over the
+sun-bright purity of <i>hers</i>. For observe that Iago's disbelief in the
+virtue of Desdemona is not pretended, it is real. It arises from his
+total want of faith in all virtue; he is no more capable of conceiving
+goodness than she is capable of conceiving evil. To the brutish
+coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears
+only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection, which saw
+"Othello's visage in his mind," only a perversion of taste; her bashful
+modesty, only a cloak for evil propensities; so he represents them with
+all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to
+listen to him. He rips her to pieces before us&mdash;he would have bedeviled
+an angel! yet such is the unrivalled, though passive delicacy of the
+delineation, that it can stand it unhurt, untouched! It is
+wonderful!&mdash;yet natural as it is wonderful! After all, there are people
+in the world, whose opinions and feelings are tainted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> by an habitual
+acquaintance with the evil side of society, though in action and
+intention they remain right; and who, without the real depravity of
+heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the
+character and productions of others.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven bless me from such critics! yet if genius, youth, and innocence
+could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? I pity from my soul the
+persons you allude to&mdash;for to such minds there can exist few
+uncontaminated sources of pleasure either in nature or in art.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Ay&mdash;"the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them
+melancholy."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> You pity them, and they will sneer at you. But what have
+we here?&mdash;"Characters of Imagination&mdash;Juliet&mdash;Viola;" are these romantic
+young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are
+they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this
+enlightened age?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>As warnings, of course&mdash;what else?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Against the dangers of romance?&mdash;but where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> are they? "Vraiment," as B.
+Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit &agrave;
+la maison." Where are they&mdash;these disciples of poetry and romance, these
+victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown
+roses&mdash;all conscience and tenderness&mdash;whom it is so necessary to guard
+against too much confidence in others, and too little in
+themselves&mdash;where are they?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young
+gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too
+enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too violent in their hatred
+of vice, too sincere in friendship, too faithful in love, too active and
+disinterested in the cause of truth&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young
+people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of
+sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the
+romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought?
+Do <i>you</i> bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm?
+Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed
+to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite
+philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to
+the few who are in danger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> of being misled by an excess of the generous
+impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be proclaimed
+by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no; there are young
+women in these days, but there is no such thing as youth&mdash;the bloom of
+existence is sacrificed to a fashionable education, and where we should
+find the rose-buds of the spring, we see only the fullblown, flaunting,
+precocious roses of the hot-bed.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Blame then that <i>forcing</i> system of education, the most pernicious, the
+most mistaken, the most far-reaching in its miserable and mischievous
+effects, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up
+women in convents till they were married, and then launched them
+innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough; but not worse than a
+system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated
+girls, trained by knowing mothers, and all-accomplished governesses,
+with whom vanity and expediency take place of conscience and
+affection&mdash;(in other words, of romance)&mdash;"frutto senile in sul giovenil
+fiore;" with feelings and passions suppressed or contracted, not
+governed by higher faculties and purer principles; with whom
+opinion&mdash;the same false honor which sends men out to fight duels&mdash;stands
+instead of the strength and the light of virtue within their own souls.
+Hence the strange anomalies of artificial society&mdash;girls of sixteen who
+are models of manner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> miracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who
+sneer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and
+matrons of forty, who, when the passions should be tame and wait upon
+the judgment, amaze the world and put us to confusion with their doings.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Or turn politicians to vary the excitement&mdash;How I hate political women!</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Why do you hate them?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Because they are mischievous.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>But why are they mischievous?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Why!&mdash;why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all
+mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs
+in this world, than a woman run mad with politics. The number of
+political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and
+drawing-rooms are the <i>foyers</i> of party-spirit, is another trait of
+resemblance between the state of society now, and that which existed at
+Paris before the revolution.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>And do you think, like some interesting young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> lady in Miss Edgeworth's
+tales, that "women have nothing to do with politics?" Do you mean to say
+that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of
+legislation, or of feeling an interest in the government and welfare of
+their country, or of perceiving and sympathizing in the progress of
+great events?&mdash;That they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do
+feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer
+source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of
+egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of the
+noblest kind.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I agree in all this; and all this does not mitigate my horror of
+political women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and
+absurd. If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine
+coteries!&mdash;but you never talk politics.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me; but I prefer
+listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect
+education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads
+the memory, while it fetters the judgment. Women, however well read in
+history, never generalize in politics; never argue on any broad or
+general principle; never reason from a consideration of past events,
+their causes and consequences. But they are always political through
+their affections,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> their prejudices, their personal <i>liaisons</i>, their
+hopes, their fears.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>If it were no worse, I could stand it; for that is at least feminine.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partisans,
+such violent party women, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a
+woman <i>talk</i> politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once
+the motive, the affection, the secret bias which swayed her opinions and
+inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so "difficult
+for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but
+justice only?"&mdash;how much more for woman!</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles,
+would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them
+some right to meddle with politics?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>It would cease in that case to be <i>meddling</i>, as you term it, for it
+would be legitimized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical
+ladies, and quote Lord Byron&mdash;but O leave those angry common-places to
+others!&mdash;they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you,
+that women have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> achieved enough to silence them forever,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and how
+often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments
+which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her
+qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will
+be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers
+and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation of their
+powers of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery
+by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Well&mdash;till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the
+province of politics to ourselves. I see here you have treated of a very
+different class of beings, "<i>women in whom the affections and the moral
+sentiments predominate</i>." Are there many such, think you, in the world?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, many such; the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet
+and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect, and less observed;
+it is more common, too, therefore less remarked; but in women it
+generally gives the prevailing tone to the character, except where
+vanity has been made the ruling motive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Except! I admire your exception! You make in this case the rule the
+exception. Look round the world.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>You are not one of those with whom that common phrase "the world"
+signifies the circle, whatever and wherever that may be, which limits
+our individual experience&mdash;as a child considers the visible horizon as
+the bounds which shut in the mighty universe. Believe me, it is a sorry,
+vulgar kind of wisdom, if it be wisdom&mdash;a shallow and confined
+philosophy, if it be philosophy&mdash;which resolves all human motives and
+impulses into egotism in one sex, and vanity in the other. Such may be
+the way of <i>the world</i>, as it is called&mdash;the result of a very artificial
+and corrupt state of society, but such is not general nature, nor female
+nature. Would you see the kindly, self-sacrificing affections developed
+under their most honest but least poetical guise&mdash;displayed without any
+mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being
+thought vain?&mdash;you will see it, not among the prosperous, the high-born,
+the educated, "far, far removed from want, and grief, and fear," but
+among the poor, the miserable, the perverted&mdash;among those habitually
+exposed to all influences that harden and deprave.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I believe it&mdash;nay, I know it; but how should <i>you</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> know it, or anything
+of the strange places of refuge which truth and nature have found in the
+two extremes of society?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>It is no matter what I have seen or known; and for the two extremes of
+society, I leave them to the author of Paul Clifford, and that most
+exquisite painter of living manners, Mrs. Gore. St. Giles's is no more
+<i>nature</i> than St. James's. I wanted character in its essential truth,
+not mortified by particular customs, by fashion, by situation. I wished
+to illustrate the manner in which the affections would naturally display
+themselves in women&mdash;whether combined with high intellect, regulated by
+reflection, and elevated by imagination, or existing with perverted
+dispositions, or purified by the moral sentiments. I found all these in
+Shakspeare; his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm
+affections predominate, and triumph over shame, fear, pride, resentment,
+vanity, jealousy,&mdash;are particularly worthy of consideration, and perfect
+in their kind, because so quiet in their effect.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Several critics have remarked in general terms on those beautiful
+pictures of female friendship, and of the generous affection of women
+for each other, which we find in Shakspeare. Other writers, especially
+dramatic writers, have found ample food for wit and satiric delineation
+in the littleness of feminine spite and rivalry, in the mean spirit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+competition, the petty jealousy of superior charms, the mutual slander
+and mistrust, the transient leagues of folly or selfishness miscalled
+friendship&mdash;the result of an education which makes vanity the ruling
+principle, and of a false position in society. Shakspeare, who looked
+upon women with the spirit of humanity, wisdom, and deep love, has done
+justice to their natural good tendencies and kindly sympathies. In the
+friendship of Beatrice and Hero, of Rosalind and Celia; in the
+description of the girlish attachment of Helena and Hermia, he has
+represented truth and generous affection rising superior to all the
+usual sources of female rivalry and jealousy; and with such force and
+simplicity, and obvious self-conviction, that he absolutely forces the
+same conviction on us.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Add to these the generous feeling of Viola for her rival Olivia; of
+Julia for her rival Sylvia; of Helena for Diana; of the old Countess for
+Helena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in
+Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought&mdash;(and
+when did he ever think other than the truth?)&mdash;that women have by nature
+"virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their
+sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satirists and
+fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is
+another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully
+represented&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> distinction between masculine and feminine <i>courage</i>.
+A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated
+form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because
+it is not required of us, it is not one of the means through which we
+seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through
+our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our
+strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you
+remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his "blue thrum
+cap," and standing at her husband's side, unknown to him during a
+sea-fight? There she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot.
+Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her&mdash;"Good God,
+that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the
+acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage
+of Juliet, when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her
+own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the
+sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in
+piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel
+and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications
+of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My hands are of your color, but I shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wear a heart so white.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A little water clears us of this deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How easy is it then!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere
+firmness of nerve, what is it?</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Not <i>that</i>, at least, which apparently you deem it; you will find, if
+you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth
+very differently. Take these frightful passages with the context&mdash;take
+the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend
+of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian without any
+qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and
+tremble; but that which quenched <i>him</i> lent her fire. The absolute
+necessity for self-command, the strength of her reason, and her love for
+her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the
+fear of detection, leaving her the full possession of her faculties.
+Recollect that the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference
+of a little water clearing the blood-stain from her hand, sees in
+imagination that hand forever reeking, forever polluted: and when reason
+is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature
+and womanhood, we behold her making unconscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> efforts to wash out
+that "damned spot," and sighing, heart-broken, over that little hand
+which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>I hope you have given her a place among the women in whom the tender
+affections and moral sentiments predominate.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more
+accurate classification than placing her among the historical
+characters.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Apropos to the historical characters, I hope you have refuted that
+<i>insolent</i> assumption, (shall I call it?) that Shakspeare tampered
+inexcusably with the truth of history. He is the truest of all
+historians. His anachronisms always remind me of those in the fine old
+Italian pictures; either they are insignificant, or, if properly
+considered, are really beauties; for instance, every one knows that
+Correggio's St. Jerome presenting his books to the Virgin, involves
+half-a-dozen anachronisms,&mdash;to say nothing of that heavenly figure of
+the Magdalen, in the same picture, kissing the feet of the infant
+Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination
+of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment
+and poetry that ever breathed and glowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> from the canvas? You remember
+too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount
+Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the background? In these and a hundred
+other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity
+involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented,
+if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under every
+aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with
+Shakspeare and his anachronisms. The learned scorn of Johnson and some
+of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of
+Schlegel, seem in this case superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic
+oracle and Julio Romano contemporary&mdash;what does it signify? he committed
+no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a
+turtle-dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is
+true to the spirit and even to the <i>letter</i> of history; where he
+deviates from the latter, the reason may be found in some higher beauty
+and more universal truth.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic
+character all the historic testimony I could collect relative to
+Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Analyzing the character of Cleopatra must have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> been something like
+catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more
+embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like
+intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and
+subjecting it to a chemical process.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette.
+What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that
+ever were&mdash;or are? She would put Lady &mdash;&mdash; herself to school. But now
+for the moral.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>The moral!&mdash;of what?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>Of your book. It has a moral, I suppose.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALDA.</p>
+
+<p>It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I
+have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently
+explained my own views, may I proceed?</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEDON.</p>
+
+<p>If you please&mdash;I am prepared to listen in earnest.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Foster's Essay on the application of the word
+<i>romantic</i>&mdash;<i>Essays</i>, vol. I</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Correspondence, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> An Oriental proverb</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> In our own time, Madame de Sta&euml;l, Mrs. Somerville, Harriet
+Martineau, Mrs. Marcet; we need not go back to the Rolands and Agnesi,
+nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinson.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>PORTIA.</h3>
+
+<p>We hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that
+intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are
+common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it
+appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of
+woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical
+organization;&mdash;it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That
+certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or
+intellectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded
+in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this:
+in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and
+self-directed&mdash;more independent of the rest of the character, than we
+ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a
+much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.</p>
+
+<p>In thinking over all the distinguished women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> can at this moment call to
+mind, I recollect but one, who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied
+her sex, but the moral qualities had been first perverted.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> It is from
+not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men of genius
+have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us exquisite and
+just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of women, as
+modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted to portray them
+with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they
+have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of
+intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have either suppressed
+the feminine attributes altogether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they
+have made them completely artificial.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Women distinguished for wit may
+sometimes appear masculine and flippant, but the cause must be sought
+elsewhere than in nature, who disclaims all such. Hence the witty and
+intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of
+some particular time; they are like some old portraits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> which can still
+amuse and please by the beauty of the workmanship, in spite of the
+graceless costume or grotesque accompaniments, but from which we turn to
+worship with ever new delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian&mdash;the
+saints and the virgins of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Millamants
+and Belindas, the Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles are out of date, while
+Portia and Rosalind, in whom nature and the feminine character are
+paramount, remain bright and fresh to the fancy as when first created.</p>
+
+<p>Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, and Rosalind, may be classed together, as
+characters of intellect, because, when compared with others, they are at
+once distinguished by their mental superiority. In Portia, it is
+intellect kindled into romance by a poetical imagination; in Isabel, it
+is intellect elevated by religious principle; in Beatrice, intellect
+animated by spirit; in Rosalind, intellect softened by sensibility. The
+wit which is lavished on each is profound, or pointed, or sparkling, or
+playful&mdash;but always feminine; like spirits distilled from flowers, it
+always reminds us of its origin; it is a volatile essence, sweet as
+powerful; and to pursue the comparison a step further the wit of Portia
+is like ottar of roses, rich and concentrated; that of Rosalind, like
+cotton dipped in aromatic vinegar; the wit of Beatrice is like sal
+volatile; and that of Isabel, like the incense wafted to heaven. Of
+these four exquisite characters, considered as dramatic and poetical
+conceptions, it is difficult to pronounce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> which is most perfect in its
+way, most admirably drawn, most highly finished. But if considered in
+another point of view, as women and individuals, as breathing realities,
+clothed in flesh and blood, I believe we must assign the first rank to
+Portia, as uniting in herself in a more eminent degree than the others,
+all the noblest and most lovable qualities that ever met together in
+woman; and presenting a complete personification of Petrarch's exquisite
+epitome of female perfection:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Il vago spirito ardento,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E'n alto intelletto, un puro core.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is singular, that hitherto no critical justice has been done to the
+character of Portia; it is yet more wonderful, that one of the finest
+writers on the eternal subject of Shakspeare and his perfections, should
+accuse Portia of pedantry and affectation, and confess she is not a
+great favorite of his&mdash;a confession quite worthy of him, who avers his
+predilection for servant-maids, and his preference of the Fannys and the
+Pamelas over the Clementinas and Clarissas.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Schlegel, who has given
+several pages to a rapturous eulogy on the Merchant of Venice, simply
+designates Portia as a "rich, beautiful, clever heiress:"&mdash;whether the
+fault lie in the writer or translator, I do protest against the word
+clever.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Portia <i>clever!</i> what an epithet to apply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> to this heavenly
+compound of talent, feeling, wisdom, beauty, and gentleness! Now would
+it not be well, if this common and comprehensive word were more
+accurately defined, or at least more accurately used? It signifies
+properly, not so much the possession of high powers, as dexterity in the
+adaptation of certain faculties (not necessarily of a high order) to a
+certain end or aim&mdash;not always the worthiest. It implies something
+common-place, inasmuch as it speaks the presence of the <i>active</i> and
+<i>perceptive</i>, with a deficiency of the <i>feeling</i> and <i>reflective</i>
+powers; and applied to a woman, does it not almost invariably suggest
+the idea of something we should distrust or shrink from, if not allied
+to a higher nature? The profligate French women, who ruled the councils
+of Europe in the middle of the last century, were clever women; and that
+<i>philosopheress</i> Madame du Ch&acirc;telet, who managed, at one and the same
+moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a
+calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman! If Portia had been
+created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe&mdash;if
+she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a
+means to baffle the Jew, she might have been pronounced a clever woman.
+But what Portia does, is forgotten in what she <i>is</i>. The rare and
+harmonious blending of energy, reflection, and feeling, in her fine
+character, make the epithet <i>clever</i> sound like a discord as applied to
+<i>her</i>, and place her infinitely beyond the slight praise of Richardson<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+and Schlegel, neither of whom appear to have fully comprehended her.</p>
+
+<p>These and other critics have been apparently so dazzled and engrossed by
+the amazing character of Shylock, that Portia has received less than
+justice at their hands; while the fact is, that Shylock is not a finer
+or more finished character in his way, than Portia is in hers. These two
+splendid figures are worthy of each other; worthy of being placed
+together within the same rich framework of enchanting poetry, and
+glorious and graceful forms. She hangs beside the terrible, inexorable
+Jew, the brilliant lights of her character set off by the shadowy power
+of his, like a magnificent beauty-breathing Titian by the side of a
+gorgeous Rembrandt.</p>
+
+<p>Portia is endued with her own share of those delightful qualities, which
+Shakspeare has lavished on many of his female characters; but besides
+the dignity, the sweetness, and tenderness which should distinguish her
+sex generally, she is individualized by qualities peculiar to herself;
+by her high mental powers, her enthusiasm of temperament, her decision
+of purpose, and her buoyancy of spirit. These are innate; she has other
+distinguishing qualities more external, and which are the result of the
+circumstances in which she is placed. Thus she is the heiress of a
+princely name and countless wealth; a train of obedient pleasures have
+ever waited round her; and from infancy she has breathed an atmosphere
+redolent of perfume and blandishment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> Accordingly there is a commanding
+grace, a highbred, airy elegance, a spirit of magnificence in all that
+she does and says, as one to whom splendor had been familiar from her
+very birth. She treads as though her footsteps had been among marble
+palaces, beneath roofs of fretted gold, o'er cedar floors and pavements
+of jasper and porphyry&mdash;amid gardens full of statues, and flowers, and
+fountains, and haunting music. She is full of penetrative wisdom, and
+genuine tenderness, and lively wit; but as she has never known want, or
+grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the
+sombre or the sad; her affections are all mixed up with faith, hope and
+joy; and her wit has not a particle of malevolence or causticity.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known that the Merchant of Venice is founded on two different
+tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner,
+Shakspeare has rejected altogether the character of the astutious Lady
+of Belmont with her magic potions, who figures in the Italian novel.
+With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licentious part of
+the story, which some of his contemporary dramatists would have seized
+on with avidity, and made the best or worst of it possible; and he has
+substituted the trial of the caskets from another source.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> We are not
+told expressly where Belmont<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> is situated; but as Bassanio takes ship to
+go thither from Venice, and as we find them afterwards ordering horses
+from Belmont to Padua, we will imagine Portia's hereditary palace as
+standing on some lovely promontory between Venice and Trieste,
+overlooking the blue Adriatic, with the Friuli mountains or the Euganean
+hills for its background, such as we often see in one of Claude's or
+Poussin's elysian landscapes. In a scene, in a home like this,
+Shakspeare, having first exorcised the original possessor, has placed
+his Portia; and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and moving
+circumstances of the story, become natural, probable, and necessary in
+connexion with her. That such a woman should be chosen by the solving of
+an enigma, is not surprising: herself and all around her, the scene, the
+country, the age in which she is placed, breathe of poetry, romance, and
+enchantment.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From the four quarters of the earth they come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Hyrcanian desert, and the vasty wilds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of wide Arabia, are as thoroughfares now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For princes to come view fair Portia;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spits in the face of heaven is no bar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stop the foreign spirits; but they come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As o'er a brook to see fair Portia.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sudden plan which she forms for the release of her husband's friend,
+her disguise, and her deportment as the young and learned doctor, would
+appear forced and improbable in any other woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> but in Portia are the
+simple and natural result of her character.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The quickness with which
+she perceives the legal advantage which may be taken of the
+circumstances; the spirit of adventure with which she engages in the
+masquerading, and the decision, firmness, and intelligence with which
+she executes her generous purpose, are all in perfect keeping, and
+nothing appears forced&mdash;nothing as introduced merely for theatrical
+effect.</p>
+
+<p>But all the finest parts of Portia's character are brought to bear in
+the trial scene. There she shines forth all her divine self. Her
+intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honorable
+principles, her best feelings as a woman, are all displayed. She
+maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her
+point in the end; yet the painful heart-thrilling uncertainty in which
+she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not
+contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two
+objects in view; to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her
+husband's honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of
+her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe
+the safety of Antonio to any thing rather than the legal quibble with
+which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> reserves as a
+last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock in the first
+instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and
+feelings. She must be understood from the beginning to the end as
+examining, with intense anxiety, the effect of her own words on his mind
+and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit, which she hopes
+to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to his
+mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence, which, with an irresistible
+and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from
+heaven:"&mdash;but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and
+unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these heavenly words
+upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks his avarice:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shylock, there's <i>thrice</i> thy money offered thee!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to his avarice and his pity:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">Be merciful!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All that she says afterwards&mdash;her strong expressions, which are
+calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves&mdash;the
+reflections she interposes&mdash;her delays and circumlocution to give time
+for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself&mdash;all, all are
+premeditated and tend in the same manner to the object she has in view.
+Thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You must prepare your bosom for his knife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore lay bare your bosom!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>These two speeches, though addressed apparently to Antonio, are spoken
+<i>at</i> Shylock, and are evidently intended to penetrate <i>his</i> bosom. In
+the same spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh;
+and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">SHYLOCK.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is it so nominated in the bond?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is not so expressed&mdash;but what of that?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twere good you do so much, for <i>charity</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or
+to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew,
+that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His
+gentle, yet manly resignation&mdash;the deep pathos of his farewell, and the
+affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Commend me to your honorable wife;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>are well calculated to swell that emotion, which through the whole scene
+must have been laboring suppressed within her heart.</p>
+
+<p>At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no
+longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent "to the last hour of
+act," springs on his victim&mdash;"A sentence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> come, prepare!" then the
+smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust, burst forth with an
+impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had at
+first affected;&mdash;particularly in the speech&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But just the pound of flesh; if thou tak'st more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or less than a just pound,&mdash;be it but so much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or the division of the twentieth part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in the estimation of a hair,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler
+scorn and a more self-possessed exultation.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of this
+marvellous scene, we must go along with Portia as well as with Shylock;
+we must understand her concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble
+motives, and pursue in our fancy the under current of feeling, working
+in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of Shylock's
+character,&mdash;his deadly and inexorable malice,&mdash;would be too oppressive;
+the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue
+too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this
+double source of interest and contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>I come now to that capacity for warm and generous affection, that
+tenderness of heart, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> render Portia not less lovable as a woman,
+than admirable for her mental endowments. The affections are to the
+intellect, what the forge is to the metal; it is they which temper and
+shape it to all good purposes, and soften, strengthen, and purify it.
+What an exquisite stroke of judgment in the poet, to make the mutual
+passion of Portia and Bassanio, though unacknowledged to each other,
+anterior to the opening of the play! Bassanio's confession very properly
+comes first:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BASSANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In Belmont is a lady richly left,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she is fair, and fairer than that word,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of wond'rous virtues: sometimes from her eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I did receive fair speechless messages;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and prepares us for Portia's half betrayed, unconscious election of this
+most graceful and chivalrous admirer&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">NERISSA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Venetian, a scholar, and a soldier, that came hither in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">company of the Marquis of Montferrat?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, so he was called.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">NERISSA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">True, madam; he of all the men that ever my foolish<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">lady.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I remember him well; and I remember him worthy of<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">thy praise.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Our interest is thus awakened for the lovers from the very first; and
+what shall be said of the casket-scene with Bassanio, where every line
+which Portia speaks is so worthy of herself, so full of sentiment and
+beauty, and poetry and passion? Too naturally frank for disguise, too
+modest to confess her depth of love while the issue of the trial remains
+in suspense, the conflict between love and fear, and maidenly dignity,
+cause the most delicious confusion that ever tinged a woman's cheek, or
+dropped in broken utterance from her lips.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I pray you, tarry, pause a day or two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before you hazard; for in choosing wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I lose your company; therefore, forbear awhile;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's something tells me, (but it is not love,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not lose you; and you know yourself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hate counsels not in such a quality:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But lest you should not understand me well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would detain you here some month or two<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before you venture for me. I could teach you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How to choose right,&mdash;but then I am forsworn;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So will I never be: so you may miss me;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have o'erlooked me, and divided me:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One half of me is yours, the other half yours,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so all yours!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The short dialogue between the lovers is exquisite.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BASSANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i7">Let me choose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, as I am, I live upon the rack.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What treason there is mingled with your love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BASSANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">None, but that ugly treason of mistrust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There may as well be amity and life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay! but I fear you speak upon the rack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where men enforced do speak any thing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BASSANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well then, confess, and live.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BASSANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">Confess and love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had been the very sum of my confession!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O happy torment, when my torturer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doth teach me answers for deliverance!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A prominent feature in Portia's character is that confiding, buoyant
+spirit, which mingles with all her thoughts and affections. And here let
+me observe, that I never yet met in real life, nor ever read in tale or
+history, of any woman, distinguished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> for intellect of the highest
+order, who was not also remarkable for this trusting spirit, this
+hopefulness and cheerfulness of temper, which is compatible with the
+most serious habits of thought, and the most profound sensibility. Lady
+Wortley Montagu was one instance; and Madame de Sta&euml;l furnishes another
+much more memorable. In her Corinne, whom she drew from herself, this
+natural brightness of temper is a prominent part of the character. A
+disposition to doubt, to suspect, and to despond, in the young, argues,
+in general, some inherent weakness, moral or physical, or some miserable
+and radical error of education; in the old, it is one of the first
+symptoms of age; it speaks of the influence of sorrow and experience,
+and foreshows the decay of the stronger and more generous powers of the
+soul. Portia's strength of intellect takes a natural tinge from the
+flush and bloom of her young and prosperous existence, and from her
+fervent imagination. In the casket-scene, she fears indeed the issue of
+the trial; on which more than her life is hazarded but while she
+trembles, her hope is stronger than her fear. While Bassanio is
+contemplating the caskets, she suffers herself to dwell for one moment
+on the possibility of disappointment and misery.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let music sound while he doth make his choice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fading in music: that the comparison<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And watery death-bed for him.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Then, immediately follows that revulsion of feeling, so beautifully
+characteristic of the hopeful, trusting, mounting spirit of this noble
+creature.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">But he may win!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what is music then?&mdash;then music is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even as the flourish, when true subjects bow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a new-crowned monarch: such it is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As are those dulcet sounds at break of day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And summon him to marriage. Now he goes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With no less presence, but with much more love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than young Alcides, when he did redeem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the sea monster. I stand here for sacrifice.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here, not only the feeling itself, born of the elastic and sanguine
+spirit which had never been touched by grief, but the images in which it
+comes arrayed to her fancy,&mdash;the bridegroom waked by music on his
+wedding-morn,&mdash;the new-crowned monarch,&mdash;the comparison of Bassanio to
+the young Alcides, and of herself to the daughter of Laomedon,&mdash;are all
+precisely what would have suggested themselves to the fine poetical
+imagination of Portia in such a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Her passionate exclamations of delight, when Bassanio has fixed on the
+right casket, are as strong as though she had despaired before. Fear and
+doubt she could repel; the native elasticity of her mind bore up against
+them; yet she makes us feel, that, as the sudden joy overpowers her
+almost to fainting, the disappointment would as certainly have killed
+her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How all the other passions fleet to air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shudd'ring fear, and green-eyed jealousy?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O love! be moderate, allay thy ecstasy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In measure rain thy joy scant this excess;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I feel too much thy blessing: make it less,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fear I surfeit!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her subsequent surrender of herself in heart and soul, of her maiden
+freedom, and her vast possessions, can never be read without deep
+emotions; for not only all the tenderness and delicacy of a devoted
+woman, are here blended with all the dignity which becomes the princely
+heiress of Belmont, but the serious, measured self-possession of her
+address to her lover, when all suspense is over, and all concealment
+superfluous, is most beautifully consistent with the character. It is,
+in truth, an awful moment, that in which a gifted woman first discovers,
+that besides talents and powers, she has also passions and affections;
+when she first begins to suspect their vast importance in the sum of her
+existence; when she first confesses that her happiness is no longer in
+her own keeping, but is surrendered forever and forever into the
+dominion of another! The possession of uncommon powers of mind are so
+far from affording relief or resource in the first intoxicating
+surprise&mdash;I had almost said terror&mdash;of such a revolution, that they
+render it more intense. The sources of thought multiply beyond
+calculation the sources of feeling; and mingled, they rush together, a
+torrent deep as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> strong. Because Portia is endued with that enlarged
+comprehension which looks before and after, she does not feel the less,
+but the more: because from the height of her commanding intellect she
+can contemplate the force, the tendency, the consequences of her own
+sentiments&mdash;because she is fully sensible of her own situation, and the
+value of all she concedes&mdash;the concession is not made with less
+entireness and devotion of heart, less confidence in the truth and worth
+of her lover, than when Juliet, in a similar moment, but without any
+such intrusive reflections&mdash;any check but the instinctive delicacy of
+her sex, flings herself and her fortunes at the feet of her lover:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And follow thee, my lord, through all the world.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In Portia's confession, which is not breathed from a moonlit balcony,
+but spoken openly in the presence of her attendants and vassals, there
+is nothing of the passionate self-abandonment of Juliet, nor of the
+artless simplicity of Miranda, but a consciousness and a tender
+seriousness, approaching to solemnity, which are not less touching.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as I am: though for myself alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not be ambitious in my wish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wish myself much better; yet, for you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would be trebled twenty times myself;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More rich; that only to stand high in your account,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exceed account; but the full sum of me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is sum of something; which to term in gross,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happy in this, she is not yet so old<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she may learn; and happier than this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is not bred so dull but she can learn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commits itself to yours to be directed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As from her lord, her governor, her king.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Myself and what is mine, to you and yours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is now converted. But now, I was the lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This house, these servants, and this same myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are yours, my lord.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We must also remark that the sweetness, the solicitude, the subdued
+fondness which she afterwards displays, relative to the letter, are as
+true to the softness of her sex, as the generous self-denial with which
+she urges the departure of Bassanio, (having first given him a husband's
+right over herself and all her countless wealth,) is consistent with a
+reflecting mind, and a spirit at once tender, reasonable, and
+magnanimous.</p>
+
+<p>It is not only in the trial scene that Portia's acuteness, eloquence,
+and lively intelligence are revealed to us; they are displayed in the
+first instance, and kept up consistently to the end. Her reflections,
+arising from the most usual aspects of nature, and from the commonest
+incidents of life are in such a poetical spirit, and are at the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+time so pointed, so profound, that they have passed into familiar and
+daily application, with all the force of proverbs.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do,
+chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes'
+palaces.</p>
+
+<p>I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be
+one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When neither is attended; and, I think,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The nightingale, if she should sing by day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When every goose is cackling, would be thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No better a musician than the wren.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How many things by season, seasoned are<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To their right praise and true perfection!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How far that little candle throws his beams!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So shines a good deed in a naughty world.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A substitute shines as brightly as a king,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until a king be by; and then his state<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Empties itself, as doth an inland brook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the main of waters.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her reflections on the friendship between her husband and Antonio are as
+full of deep meaning as of tenderness; and her portrait of a young
+coxcomb, in the same scene, is touched with a truth and spirit which
+show with what a keen observing eye she has looked upon men and things.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;I'll hold thee any wager,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we are both accouter'd like young men.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wear my dagger with the braver grace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And speak, between the change of man and boy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into a manly stride; and speak of frays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How honorable ladies sought my love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which I denying, they fell sick and died;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could not do withal: then I'll repent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wish, for all that, that I had not killed them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That men should swear, I have discontinued school<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above a twelvemonth!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And in the description of her various suitors, in the first scene with
+Nerissa, what infinite power, wit, and vivacity! She half checks herself
+as she is about to give the reins to her sportive humor: "In truth, I
+know it is a sin to be a mocker."&mdash;But if it carries her away, if is so
+perfectly good-natured, so temperately bright, so lady-like, it is ever
+without offence; and so far, most unlike the satirical, poignant,
+unsparing wit of Beatrice, "misprising what she looks on." In fact, I
+can scarce conceive a greater contrast than between the vivacity of
+Portia and the vivacity of Beatrice. Portia, with all her airy
+brilliance, is supremely soft and dignified; every thing she says or
+does, displays her capability for profound thought and feeling, as well
+as her lively and romantic disposition; and as I have seen in an Italian
+garden a fountain flinging round its wreaths of showery light, while the
+many-colored Iris hung brooding above it, in its calm and soul-felt
+glory; so in Portia the wit is ever kept subordinate to the poetry, and
+we still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> feel the tender, the intellectual, and the imaginative part of
+the character, as superior to, and presiding over its spirit and
+vivacity.</p>
+
+<p>In the last act, Shylock and his machinations being dismissed from our
+thoughts, and the rest of the <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i> assembled together at
+Belmont, all our interest and all our attention are riveted on Portia,
+and the conclusion leaves the most delightful impression on the fancy.
+The playful equivoque of the rings, the sportive trick she puts on her
+husband, and her thorough enjoyment of the jest, which she checks just
+as it is proceeding beyond the bounds of propriety, show how little she
+was displeased by the sacrifice of her gift, and are all consistent with
+her bright and buoyant spirit. In conclusion; when Portia invites her
+company to enter her palace to refresh themselves after their travels,
+and talk over "these events at full," the imagination, unwilling to lose
+sight of the brilliant group, follows them in gay procession from the
+lovely moonlight garden to marble halls and princely revels, to splendor
+and festive mirth, to love and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Many women have possessed many of those qualities which render Portia so
+delightful. She is in herself a piece of reality, in whose possible
+existence we have no doubt: and yet a human being, in whom the moral,
+intellectual, and sentient faculties should be so exquisitely blended
+and proportioned to each other; and these again, in harmony with all
+outward aspects and influences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> probably never existed&mdash;certainly could
+not now exist. A woman constituted like Portia, and placed in this age,
+and in the actual state of society, would find society armed against
+her; and instead of being like Portia, a gracious, happy, beloved, and
+loving creature, would be a victim, immolated in fire to that
+multitudinous Moloch termed Opinion. With her, the world without would
+be at war with the world within; in the perpetual strife, either her
+nature would "be subdued to the element it worked in," and bending to a
+necessity it could neither escape nor approve, lose at last something of
+its original brightness; or otherwise&mdash;a perpetual spirit of resistance,
+cherished as a safeguard, might perhaps in the end destroy the
+equipoise; firmness would become pride and self-assurance; and the soft,
+sweet, feminine texture of the mind, settle into rigidity. Is there then
+no sanctuary for such a mind?&mdash;Where shall it find a refuge from the
+world?&mdash;Where seek for strength against itself? Where, but in heaven?</p>
+
+<p>Camiola, in Massinger's Maid of Honor, is said to emulate Portia; and
+the real story of Camiola (for she is an historical personage) is very
+beautiful. She was a lady of Messina, who lived in the beginning of the
+fourteenth century; and was the contemporary of Queen Joanna, of
+Petrarch and Boccaccio. It fell out in those days, that Prince Orlando
+of Arragon, the younger brother of the King of Sicily, having taken the
+command of a naval armament against the Neapolitans, was defeated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+wounded, taken prisoner, and confined by Robert of Naples (the father of
+Queen Joanna) in one of his strongest castles. As the prince had
+distinguished himself by his enmity to the Neapolitans, and by many
+exploits against them, his ransom was fixed at an exorbitant sum, and
+his captivity was unusually severe; while the King of Sicily, who had
+some cause of displeasure against his brother, and imputed to him the
+defeat of his armament, refused either to negotiate for his release, or
+to pay the ransom demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Orlando, who was celebrated for his fine person and reckless valour, was
+apparently doomed to languish away the rest of his life in a dungeon,
+when Camiola Turinga, a rich Sicilian heiress, devoted the half of her
+fortune to release him. But as such an action might expose her to evil
+comments, she made it a condition, that Orlando should marry her. The
+prince gladly accepted the terms, and sent her the contract of marriage,
+signed by his hand; but no sooner was he at liberty, than he refused to
+fulfil it, and even denied all knowledge of his benefactress.</p>
+
+<p>Camiola appealed to the tribunal of state, produced the written
+contract, and described the obligations she had heaped on this
+ungrateful and ungenerous man; sentence was given against him, and he
+was adjudged to Camiola, not only as her rightful husband, but as a
+property which, according to the laws of war in that age, she had
+purchased with her gold. The day of marriage was fixed;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> Orlando
+presented himself with a splendid retinue; Camiola also appeared,
+decorated as for her bridal; but instead of bestowing her hand on the
+recreant, she reproached him in the presence of all with his breach of
+faith, declared her utter contempt for his baseness; and then freely
+bestowing on him the sum paid for his ransom, as a gift worthy of his
+mean soul, she turned away, and dedicated herself and her heart to
+heaven. In this resolution she remained inflexible, though the king and
+all the court united in entreaties to soften her. She took the veil; and
+Orlando, henceforth regarded as one who had stained his knighthood, and
+violated his faith, passed the rest of his life as a dishonored man, and
+died in obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>Camiola, in "The Maid of Honor," is, like Portia, a wealthy heiress,
+surrounded by suitors, and "queen o'er herself:" the character is
+constructed upon the same principles, as great intellectual power,
+magnanimity of temper, and feminine tenderness; but not only do pain and
+disquiet, and the change induced by unkind and inauspicious influences,
+enter into this sweet picture to mar and cloud its happy beauty,&mdash;but
+the portrait itself may be pronounced out of drawing;&mdash;for Massinger
+apparently had not sufficient delicacy of sentiment to work out his own
+conception of the character with perfect consistency. In his adaptation
+of the story he represents the mutual love of Orlando and Camiola as
+existing previous to the captivity of the former, and on his part
+declared with many vows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> of eternal faith, yet she requires a written
+contract of marriage before she liberates him. It will perhaps be said
+that she has penetrated his weakness, and anticipates his falsehood:
+miserable excuse!&mdash;how could a magnanimous woman love a man, whose
+falsehood she believes but <i>possible</i>?&mdash;or loving him, how could she
+deign to secure herself by such means against the consequences?
+Shakspeare and Nature never committed such a solecism. Camiola doubts
+before she has been wronged; the firmness and assurance in herself
+border on harshness. What in Portia is the gentle wisdom of a noble
+nature, appears, in Camiola, too much a spirit of calculation: it savors
+a little of the counting house. As Portia is the heiress of Belmont, and
+Camiola a merchant's daughter, the distinction may be proper and
+characteristic, but it is not in favor of Camiola. The contrast may be
+thus illustrated:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">CAMIOLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">You have heard of Bertoldo's captivity and the king's<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">neglect, the greatness of his ransom; <i>fifty thousand</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>crowns</i>, Adorni! <i>Two parts of my estate!</i> Yet I so love the<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">gentleman, for to you I will confess my weakness, that I<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">purpose now, when he is forsaken by the king and his own<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">hopes, to ransom him.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16"><i>Maid of Honor</i>, <i>Act. 3</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What sum owes he the Jew?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BASSANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For me&mdash;three thousand ducats.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What! <i>no more!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pay him six thousand and deface the bond,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Double six thousand, and then treble that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before a friend of this description<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall lose a hair thro' my Bassanio's fault.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">&mdash;&mdash;You shall have gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pay the <i>petty debt</i> twenty times o'er.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16"><i>Merchant of Venice.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Camiola, who is a Sicilian, might as well have been born at Amsterdam:
+Portia could have only existed in Italy. Portia is profound as she is
+brilliant; Camiola is sensible and sententious; she asserts her dignity
+very successfully; but we cannot for a moment imagine Portia as reduced
+to the necessity of asserting hers. The idiot Sylli, in "The Maid of
+Honor," who follows Camiola like one of the deformed dwarfs of old time,
+is an intolerable violation of taste and propriety, and it sensibly
+lowers our impression of the principal character. Shakspeare would never
+have placed Sir Andrew Aguecheek in constant and immediate approximation
+with such a woman as Portia.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the charm of the poetical coloring is wholly wanting in Camiola,
+so that when she is placed in contrast with the glowing eloquence, the
+luxuriant grace, the buoyant spirit of Portia, the effect is somewhat
+that of coldness and formality. Notwithstanding the dignity and the
+beauty of Massinger's delineation, and the noble self-devotion of
+Camiola, which I acknowledge and admire, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> two characters will admit
+of no comparison as sources of contemplation and pleasure.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is observable that something of the intellectual brilliance of Portia
+is reflected on the other female characters of the "Merchant of Venice,"
+so as to preserve in the midst of contrast a certain harmony and
+keeping. Thus Jessica, though properly kept subordinate, is certainly</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A most beautiful pagan&mdash;a most sweet Jew.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She cannot be called a sketch&mdash;or if a sketch, she is like one of those
+dashed off in glowing colors from the rainbow pallette of a Rubens; she
+has a rich tinge of orientalism shed over her, worthy of her eastern
+origin. In any other play, and in any other companionship than that of
+the matchless Portia, Jessica would make a very beautiful heroine of
+herself. Nothing can be more poetically, more classically fanciful and
+elegant, than the scenes between her and Lorenzo;&mdash;the celebrated
+moonlight dialogue, for instance, which we all have by heart. Every
+sentiment she utters interests us for her:&mdash;more particularly her
+bashful self-reproach, when flying in the disguise of a page;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am glad 'tis night, you do not look upon me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I am much asham'd of my exchange;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But love is blind, and lovers cannot see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pretty follies that themselves commit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For if they could, Cupid himself would blush<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see me thus transformed to a boy.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the enthusiastic and generous testimony to the superior graces and
+accomplishments of Portia comes with a peculiar grace from her lips.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on the wager lay two earthly women,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Portia one, there must be something else<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pawned with the other; for the poor rude world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath not her fellow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We should not, however, easily pardon her for cheating her father with
+so much indifference, but for the perception that Shylock values his
+daughter far beneath his wealth.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in
+her ear!&mdash;would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats
+in her coffin!</p></div>
+
+<p>Nerissa is a good specimen of a common genus of characters; she is a
+clever confidential waiting-woman, who has caught a little of her lady's
+elegance and romance; she affects to be lively and sententious, falls in
+love, and makes her favor conditional on the fortune of the caskets, and
+in short mimics her mistress with good emphasis and discretion. Nerissa
+and the gay talkative Gratiano are as well matched as the incomparable
+Portia and her magnificent and captivating lover.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>ISABELLA.</h3>
+
+<p>The character of Isabella, considered as a poetical delineation, is less
+mixed than that of Portia; and the dissimilarity between the two
+appears, at first view, so complete that we can scarce believe that the
+same elements enter into the composition of each. Yet so it is; they are
+portrayed as equally wise, gracious, virtuous, fair, and young; we
+perceive in both the same exalted principle and firmness of character;
+the same depth of reflection and persuasive eloquence; the same
+self-denying generosity and capability of strong affections; and we must
+wonder at that marvellous power by which qualities and endowments,
+essentially and closely allied, are so combined and modified as to
+produce a result altogether different. "O Nature! O Shakespeare! which
+of ye drew from the other?"</p>
+
+<p>Isabella is distinguished from Portia, and strongly individualized by a
+certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and
+purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is
+"severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have
+placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in
+such a man as Angelo&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With saints dost bait thy hook!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>This impression of her character is conveyed from the very first, when
+Lucio, the libertine jester, whose coarse audacious wit checks at every
+feather, thus expresses his respect for her,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I would not&mdash;though 'tis my familiar sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tongue far from heart&mdash;play with all virgins so.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hold you as a thing enskyed, and sainted;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By your renouncement an immortal spirit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to be talked with in sincerity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As with a saint.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A strong distinction between Isabella and Portia is produced by the
+circumstances in which they are respectively placed. Portia is a
+high-born heiress, "Lord of a fair mansion, master of her servants,
+queen o'er herself;" easy and decided, as one born to command, and used
+to it. Isabella has also the innate dignity which renders her "queen
+o'er herself," but she has lived far from the world and its pomps and
+pleasures; she is one of a consecrated sisterhood&mdash;a novice of St.
+Clare; the power to command obedience and to confer happiness are to her
+unknown. Portia is a splendid creature, radiant with confidence, hope,
+and joy. She is like the orange-tree, hung at once with golden fruit and
+luxuriant flowers, which has expanded into bloom and fragrance beneath
+favoring skies, and has been nursed into beauty by the sunshine and the
+dews of heaven. Isabella is like a stately and graceful cedar, towering
+on some alpine cliff, unbowed and unscathed amid the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> storm. She gives
+us the impression of one who has passed under the ennobling discipline
+of suffering and self-denial: a melancholy charm tempers the natural
+vigor of her mind: her spirit seems to stand upon an eminence, and look
+down upon the world as if already enskyed and sainted; and yet when
+brought in contact with that world which she inwardly despises, she
+shrinks back with all the timidity natural to her cloistral education.</p>
+
+<p>This union of natural grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments
+of a recluse,&mdash;of austerity of life with gentleness of manner,&mdash;of
+inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashfulness of
+deportment, is delineated with the most beautiful and wonderful
+consistency. Thus when her brother sends to her, to entreat her
+mediation, her first feeling is fear, and a distrust in her own powers:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">... Alas! what poor ability's in me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To do him good?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LUCIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Essay the power you have.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My power, alas! I doubt.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the first scene with Angelo she seems divided between her love for
+her brother and her sense of his fault; between her self-respect and her
+maidenly bashfulness. She begins with a kind of hesitation "at war
+'twixt will and will not:" and when Angelo quotes the law, and insists
+on the justice of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> his sentence, and the responsibility of his station,
+her native sense of moral rectitude and severe principles takes the
+lead, and she shrinks back:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">O just, but severe law!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I <i>had</i> a brother then&mdash;Heaven keep your honor!<br /></span>
+<span class="i30">[<i>Retiring.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Excited and encouraged by Lucio, and supported by her own natural
+spirit, she returns to the charge,&mdash;she gains energy and self-possession
+as she proceeds, grows more earnest and passionate from the difficulty
+she encounters, and displays that eloquence and power of reasoning for
+which we had been already prepared by Claudio's first allusion to her:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">... In her youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is a prone and speechless dialect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When she will play with reason and discourse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And well she can persuade.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is a curious coincidence that Isabella, exhorting Angelo to mercy,
+avails herself of precisely the same arguments, and insists on the
+self-same topics which Portia addresses to Shylock in her celebrated
+speech; but how beautifully and how truly is the distinction marked! how
+like, and yet how unlike! Portia's eulogy on mercy is a piece of
+heavenly rhetoric; it falls on the ear with a solemn measured harmony;
+it is the voice of a descended angel addressing an inferior nature: if
+not premeditated, it is at least part of a preconcerted scheme; while
+Isabella's pleadings are poured from the abundance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> of her heart in
+broken sentences, and with the artless vehemence of one who feels that
+life and death hang upon her appeal. This will be best understood by
+placing the corresponding passages in immediate comparison with each
+other.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The quality of mercy is not strain'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The throned monarch better than his crown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The attribute to awe and majesty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But mercy is above this sceptred sway&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is enthron'd in the hearts of kings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Well, believe this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Become them with one half so good a grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As mercy does.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Consider this&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in the course of justice, none of us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that same prayer doth teach us all to render<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The deeds of mercy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">... Alas! alas!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And He, that might the 'vantage best have took,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Found out the remedy. How would you be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If He, which is the top of judgment, should<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But judge you as you are? O, think on that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mercy then will breathe within your lips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like man new made!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The beautiful things which Isabella is made to utter, have, like the
+sayings of Portia, become proverbial; but in spirit and character they
+are as distinct as are the two women. In all that Portia says, we
+confess the power of a rich poetical imagination, blended with a quick
+practical spirit of observation, familiar with the surfaces of things;
+while there is a profound yet simple morality, a depth of religious
+feeling, a touch of melancholy, in Isabella's sentiments, and something
+earnest and authoritative in the manner and expression, as though they
+had grown up in her mind from long and deep meditation in the silence
+and solitude of her convent cell:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">O it is excellent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To use it like a giant.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Could great men thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For every pelting, petty officer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Merciful Heaven!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than the soft myrtle. O but man, proud man!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drest in a little brief authority,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most ignorant of what he's most assured,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His glassy essence, like an angry ape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As make the angels weep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in the less, foul profanation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in the captain's but a choleric word,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Authority, although it err like others,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That skins the vice o' the top. Go to you, bosom;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's like my brother's fault: if it confess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A natural guiltiness such as his is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against my brother's life.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But graciously to know I am no better.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sense of death is most in apprehension;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the poor beetle that we tread upon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As when a giant dies.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">'Tis not impossible<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Angelo; even so may Angelo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be an arch villain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her fine powers of reasoning, and that natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> uprightness and purity
+which no sophistry can warp, and no allurement betray, are farther
+displayed in the second scene with Angelo.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANGELO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What would you do?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As much for my poor brother as myself;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is, were I under the terms of death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strip myself to death as to a bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, longing, I have been sick for, ere I'd yield<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My body up to shame.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANGELO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then must your brother die.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And 'twere the cheaper way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better it were a brother died at once,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than that a sister, by redeeming him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should die forever.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANGELO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Were you not then cruel as the sentence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you have slander'd so!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ignominy in ransom, and free pardon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are of two houses: lawful mercy is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing akin to foul redemption.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANGELO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rather proved the sliding of your brother<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A merriment than a vice.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I something do excuse the thing I hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For his advantage that I dearly love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Towards the conclusion of the play we have another instance of that
+rigid sense of justice, which is a prominent part of Isabella's
+character, and almost silences her earnest intercession for her brother,
+when his fault is placed between her plea and her conscience. The Duke
+condemns the villain Angelo to death, and his wife Mariana entreats
+Isabella to plead for him.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Sweet Isabel, take my part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lend me your knees, and all my life to come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll lend you all my life to do you service.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Isabella remains silent, and Mariana reiterates her prayer.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MARIANA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak all!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Isabel! will you not lend a knee?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Isabella, thus urged, breaks silence and appeals to the Duke, not with
+supplication, or persuasion, but with grave argument, and a kind of
+dignified humility and conscious power, which are finely characteristic
+of the individual woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Most bounteous Sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if my brother liv'd; I partly think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A due sincerity govern'd his deeds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till he did look on me; since it is so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let him not die. My brother had but justice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that he did the thing for which he died.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Angelo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His art did not o'ertake his bad intent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intents, but merely thoughts.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In this instance, as in the one before mentioned, Isabella's
+conscientiousness is overcome by the only sentiment which ought to
+temper justice into mercy, the power of affection and sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Isabella's confession of the general frailty of her sex, has a peculiar
+softness, beauty, and propriety. She admits the imputation with all the
+sympathy of woman for woman; yet with all the dignity of one who felt
+her own superiority to the weakness she acknowledges.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANGELO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, women are frail too.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which are as easy broke as they make forms.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Women! help heaven! men their creation mar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we are soft as our complexions are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And credulous to false prints.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor should we fail to remark the deeper interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> which is thrown round
+Isabella, by one part of her character, which is betrayed rather than
+exhibited in the progress of the action; and for which we are not at
+first prepared, though it is so perfectly natural. It is the strong
+under-current of passion and enthusiasm flowing beneath this calm and
+saintly self-possession; it is the capacity for high feeling and
+generous and strong indignation, veiled beneath the sweet austere
+composure of the religious recluse, which, by the very force of
+contrast, powerfully impress the imagination. As we see in real life
+that where, from some external or habitual cause, a strong control is
+exercised over naturally quick feelings and an impetuous temper, they
+display themselves with a proportionate vehemence when that restraint is
+removed; so the very violence with which her passions burst forth, when
+opposed or under the influence of strong excitement, is admirably
+characteristic.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in her exclamation, when she first allows herself to perceive
+Angelo's vile design&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ha! little honor to be much believed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And most pernicious purpose;&mdash;seeming!&mdash;seeming<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will proclaim thee, Angelo: look for it!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sign me a present pardon for my brother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or with an outstretched throat I'll tell the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aloud, what man thou art!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again, where she finds that the "outward tainted deputy," has
+deceived her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O I will to him, and pluck out his eyes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Injurious world! most damned Angelo!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She places at first a strong and high-souled confidence in her brother's
+fortitude and magnanimity, judging him by her own lofty spirit:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">I'll to my brother;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet hath he in him such a mind of honor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That had he twenty heads to tender down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before his sister should her body stoop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To such abhorr'd pollution.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But when her trust in his honor is deceived by his momentary weakness,
+her scorn has a bitterness, and her indignation a force of expression
+almost fearful; and both are carried to an extreme, which is perfectly
+in character:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is't not a kind of incest to take life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven shield, my mother play'd my father fair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For such a warped slip of wilderness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Die! perish! might but my bending down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No word to save thee.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>The whole of this scene with Claudio is inexpressibly grand in the
+poetry and the sentiment; and the entire play abounds in those passages
+and phrases which must have become trite from familiar and constant use
+and abuse, if their wisdom and unequalled beauty did not invest them
+with an immortal freshness and vigor, and a perpetual charm.</p>
+
+<p>The story of Measure for Measure is a tradition of great antiquity, of
+which there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible
+tragedy, the <i>Promos and Cassandra</i> of George Whetstone, is supposed,
+from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the
+groundwork of the play; but the character of Isabella is, in conception
+and execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with
+infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation
+of Isabella, they award either silence or worse than silence. Johnson
+and the rest of the black-letter crew, pass over her without a word. One
+critic, a lady-critic too, whose name I will be so merciful as to
+suppress, treats Isabella as a coarse vixen. Hazlitt, with that strange
+perversion of sentiment and want of taste which sometimes mingle with
+his piercing and powerful intellect, dismisses Isabella with a slight
+remark, that "we are not greatly enamoured of her rigid chastity, nor
+can feel much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at
+another's expense." What shall we answer to such criticism? Upon what
+ground can we read the play from beginning to end, and doubt the
+angel-purity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> of Isabella, or contemplate her possible lapse from
+virtue? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a sin against the light of
+heaven.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Having waste ground enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pitch our evils there?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Professor Richardson is more just, and truly sums up her character as
+"amiable, pious, sensible, resolute, determined, and eloquent:" but his
+remarks are rather superficial.</p>
+
+<p>Schlegel's observations are also brief and general, and in no way
+distinguish Isabella from many other characters; neither did his plan
+allow him to be more minute. Of the play altogether, he observes very
+beautifully, "that the title Measure for Measure is in reality a
+misnomer, the sense of the whole being properly the triumph of mercy
+over strict justice:" but it is also true that there is "an original sin
+in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial
+interest in it."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Of all the characters, Isabella alone has our
+sympathy. But though she triumphs in the conclusion, her triumph is not
+produced in a pleasing manner. There are too many disguises and tricks,
+too many "by-paths and indirect crooked ways," to conduct us to the
+natural and foreseen catastrophe, which the Duke's presence throughout
+renders inevitable. This Duke seems to have a predilection for bringing
+about justice by a most unjustifiable succession<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> of falsehoods and
+counterplots. He really deserves Lucio's satirical designation, who
+somewhere styles him "The Fantastical Duke of Dark Corners." But
+Isabella is ever consistent in her pure and upright simplicity, and in
+the midst of this simulation, expresses a characteristic disapprobation
+of the part she is made to play,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To speak so indirectly I am loth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would say the truth.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She yields to the supposed Friar with a kind of forced docility, because
+her situation as a religious novice, and his station, habit, and
+authority, as her spiritual director, demand this sacrifice. In the end
+we are made to feel that her transition from the convent to the throne
+has but placed this noble creature in her natural sphere: for though
+Isabella, as Duchess of Vienna, could not more command our highest
+reverence than Isabella, the novice of Saint Clare, yet a wider range of
+usefulness and benevolence, of trial and action, was better suited to
+the large capacity, the ardent affections, the energetic intellect, and
+firm principle of such a woman as Isabella, than the walls of a
+cloister. The philosophical Duke observes in the very first scene&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Spirits are not finely touched,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But to fine issues: nor nature never lends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The smallest scruple of her excellence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But like a thrifty goddess she determines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Herself the glory of a creditor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both thanks and use.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+<p>This profound and beautiful sentiment is illustrated in the character
+and destiny of Isabella. She says, of herself, that "she has spirit to
+act whatever her heart approves;" and what her heart approves we know.</p>
+
+<p>In the convent, (which may stand here poetically for any narrow and
+obscure situation in which such a woman might be placed,) Isabella would
+not have been unhappy, but happiness would have been the result of an
+effort, or of the concentration of her great mental powers to some
+particular purpose; as St. Theresa's intellect, enthusiasm, tenderness,
+restless activity, and burning eloquence, governed by one overpowering
+sentiment of devotion, rendered her the most extraordinary of saints.
+Isabella, like St. Theresa, complains that the rules of her order are
+not sufficiently severe, and from the same cause,&mdash;that from the
+consciousness of strong intellectual and imaginative power, and of
+overflowing sensibility, she desires a more "strict restraint," or, from
+the continual, involuntary struggle against the trammels imposed, feels
+its necessity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And have you nuns no further privileges?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FRANCISCA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Are not these large enough?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ISABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes, truly; I speak, not as desiring more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But rather wishing a more strict restraint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the sisterhood!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Such women as Desdemona and Ophelia would have passed their lives in the
+seclusion of a nunnery, without wishing, like Isabella, for stricter
+bonds, or planning, like St. Theresa, the reformation of their order,
+simply, because any restraint would have been efficient, as far as
+<i>they</i> were concerned. Isabella, "dedicate to nothing temporal," might
+have found resignation through self government, or have become a
+religious enthusiast: while "place and greatness" would have appeared to
+her strong and upright mind, only a more extended field of action, a
+trust and a trial. The mere trappings of power and state, the gemmed
+coronal, the ermined robe, she would have regarded as the outward
+emblems of her earthly profession; and would have worn them with as much
+simplicity as her novice's hood and scapular; still, under whatever
+guise she might tread this thorny world&mdash;the same "angel of light."</p>
+
+
+<h3>BEATRICE.</h3>
+
+<p>Shakspeare has exhibited in Beatrice a spirited and faithful portrait of
+the fine lady of his own time. The deportment, language, manners, and
+allusions, are those of a particular class in a particular age; but the
+individual and dramatic character which forms the groundwork, is
+strongly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> discriminated; and being taken from general nature, belongs to
+every age. In Beatrice, high intellect and high animal spirits meet, and
+excite each other like fire and air. In her wit (which is brilliant
+without being imaginative) there is a touch of insolence, not unfrequent
+in women when the wit predominates over reflection and imagination. In
+her temper, too, there is a slight infusion of the termagant; and her
+satirical humor plays with such an unrespective levity over all subjects
+alike, that it required a profound knowledge of women to bring such a
+character within the pale of our sympathy. But Beatrice, though wilful,
+is not wayward; she is volatile, not unfeeling. She has not only an
+exuberance of wit and gayety, but of heart, and soul, and energy of
+spirit; and is no more like the fine ladies of modern comedy,&mdash;whose wit
+consists in a temporary allusion, or a play upon words, and whose
+petulance is displayed in a toss of the head, a flirt of the fan, or a
+flourish of the pocket handkerchief,&mdash;than one of our modern dandies is
+like Sir Philip Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>In Beatrice, Shakspeare has contrived that the poetry of the character
+shall not only soften, but heighten its comic effect. We are not only
+inclined to forgive Beatrice all her scornful airs, all her biting
+jests, all her assumption of superiority; but they amuse and delight us
+the more, when we find her, with all the headlong simplicity of a child,
+falling at once into the snare laid for her affections; when we see
+<i>her</i>, who thought a man of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> God's making not good enough for her, who
+disdained to be o'ermastered by "a piece of valiant dust," stooping like
+the rest of her sex, vailing her proud spirit, and taming her wild heart
+to the loving hand of him whom she had scorned, flouted, and misused,
+"past the endurance of a block." And we are yet more completely won by
+her generous enthusiastic attachment to her cousin. When the father of
+Hero believes the tale of her guilt; when Claudio, her lover, without
+remorse or a lingering doubt, consigns her to shame; when the Friar
+remains silent, and the generous Benedick himself knows not what to say,
+Beatrice, confident in her affections, and guided only by the impulses
+of her own feminine heart, sees through the inconsistency, the
+impossibility of the charge, and exclaims, without a moment's
+hesitation,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Schlegel, in his remarks on the play of "Much Ado about nothing," has
+given us an amusing instance of that sense of reality with which we are
+impressed by Shakspeare's characters. He says of Benedick and Beatrice,
+as if he had known them personally, that the exclusive direction of
+their pointed raillery against each other "is a proof of a growing
+inclination." This is not unlikely; and the same inference would lead us
+to suppose that this mutual inclination had commenced before the opening
+of the play. The very first words uttered by Beatrice are an inquiry
+after Benedick, though expressed with her usual arch impertinence:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I pray you, is Signior Montanto returned from the wars, or
+no?</p>
+
+<p>I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars?
+But how many hath he killed? for indeed I promised to eat
+all of his killing.</p></div>
+
+<p>And in the unprovoked hostility with which she falls upon him in his
+absence, in the pertinacity and bitterness of her satire, there is
+certainly great argument that he occupies much more of her thoughts than
+she would have been willing to confess, even to herself. In the same
+manner Benedick betrays a lurking partiality for his fascinating enemy;
+he shows that he has looked upon her with no careless eye, when he says,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>There's her cousin, (meaning Beatrice,) an' she were not
+possessed with a fury, excels her as much in beauty as the
+first of May does the last of December.</p></div>
+
+<p>Infinite skill, as well as humor, is shown in making this pair of airy
+beings the exact counterpart of each other; but of the two portraits,
+that of Benedick is by far the most pleasing, because the independence
+and gay indifference of temper, the laughing defiance of love and
+marriage, the satirical freedom of expression, common to both, are more
+becoming to the masculine than to the feminine character. Any woman
+might love such a cavalier as Benedick, and be proud of his affection;
+his valor, his wit, and his gayety sit so gracefully upon him! and his
+light scoffs against the power of love are but just sufficient to render
+more piquant the conquest of this "heretic in despite of beauty."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> But a
+man might well be pardoned who should shrink from encountering such a
+spirit as that of Beatrice, unless, indeed, he had "served an
+apprenticeship to the taming school." The wit of Beatrice is less
+good-humored than that of Benedick; or, from the difference of sex,
+appears so. It is observable that the power is throughout on her side,
+and the sympathy and interest on his: which, by reversing the usual
+order of things, seems to excite us <i>against the grain</i>, if I may use
+such an expression. In all their encounters she constantly gets the
+better of him, and the gentleman's wits go off halting, if he is not
+himself fairly <i>hors de combat</i>. Beatrice, woman-like, generally has the
+first word, and will have the last. Thus, when they first meet, she
+begins by provoking the merry warfare:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">nobody marks you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BENEDICK.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BEATRICE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Is it possible Disdain should die, while she hath such meet<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is clear that she cannot for a moment endure his neglect, and he can
+as little tolerate her scorn. Nothing that Benedick addresses to
+Beatrice personally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> can equal the malicious force of some of her
+attacks upon him: he is either restrained by a feeling of natural
+gallantry, little as she deserves the consideration due to her sex, (for
+a female satirist ever places herself beyond the pale of such
+forbearance,) or he is subdued by her superior volubility. He revenges
+himself, however, in her absence: he abuses her with such a variety of
+comic invective, and pours forth his pent-up wrath with such a ludicrous
+extravagance and exaggeration, that he betrays at once how deep is his
+mortification, and how unreal his enmity.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of all this tilting and sparring of their nimble and fiery
+wits, we find them infinitely anxious for the good opinion of each
+other, and secretly impatient of each other's scorn: but Beatrice is the
+most truly indifferent of the two; the most assured of herself. The
+comic effect produced by their mutual attachment, which, however natural
+and expected, comes upon us with all the force of a surprise, cannot be
+surpassed: and how exquisitely characteristic the mutual avowal!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BENEDICK.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BEATRICE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Do not swear by it, and eat it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BENEDICK.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make him eat<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">it, that says, I love not you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BEATRICE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Will you not eat your word?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BENEDICK.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">With no sauce that can be devised to it: I protest, I love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BEATRICE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Why, then, God forgive me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BENEDICK.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">What offence, sweet Beatrice?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BEATRICE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">You stayed me in a happy hour. I was about to protest, I<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">loved you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BENEDICK.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">And do it with all thy heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">BEATRICE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">I love you with so much of my heart, that there is none left<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">to protest.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But here again the dominion rests with Beatrice, and she appears in a
+less amiable light than her lover. Benedick surrenders his whole heart
+to her and to his new passion. The revulsion of feeling even causes it
+to overflow in an excess of fondness; but with Beatrice temper has still
+the mastery. The affection of Benedick induces him to challenge his
+intimate friend for her sake, but the affection of Beatrice does not
+prevent her from risking the life of her lover.</p>
+
+<p>The character of Hero is well contrasted with that of Beatrice, and
+their mutual attachment is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> very beautiful and natural. When they are
+both on the scene together, Hero has but little to say for herself:
+Beatrice asserts the rule of a master spirit, eclipses her by her mental
+superiority, abashes her by her raillery, dictates to her, answers for
+her, and would fain inspire her gentle-hearted cousin with some of her
+own assurance.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make a curtsey, and
+say, "Father, as it please you;" but yet, for all that,
+cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another
+curtsey, and, "Father, as it please me."</p></div>
+
+<p>But Shakspeare knew well how to make one character subordinate to
+another, without sacrificing the slightest portion of its effect; and
+Hero, added to her grace and softness, and all the interest which
+attaches to her as the sentimental heroine of the play, possesses an
+intellectual beauty of her own. When she has Beatrice at an advantage,
+she repays her with interest, in the severe, but most animated and
+elegant picture she draws of her cousin's imperious character and
+unbridled levity of tongue. The portrait is a little overcharged,
+because administered as a corrective, and intended to be overheard.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But nature never fram'd a woman's heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Misprising what they look on; and her wit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Values itself so highly, that to her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All matter else seems weak; she cannot love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor take no shape nor project of affection,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is so self-endeared.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">URSULA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HERO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No: not to be so odd, and from all fashions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Beatrice is cannot be commendable:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She'd mock me into air: O she would laugh me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of myself, press me to death with wit.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore let Benedick, like cover'd fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It were a better death than die with mocks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which is as bad as die with tickling.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Beatrice never appears to greater advantage than in her soliloquy after
+leaving her concealment "in the pleached bower where honeysuckles,
+ripened by the sun, forbid the sun to enter;" she exclaims, after
+listening to this tirade against herself,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sense of wounded vanity is lost in bitter feelings, and she is
+infinitely more struck by what is said in praise of Benedick, and the
+history of his supposed love for her than by the dispraise of herself.
+The immediate success of the trick is a most natural consequence of the
+self-assurance and magnanimity of her character; she is so accustomed to
+assert dominion over the spirits of others, that she cannot suspect the
+possibility of a plot laid against herself.</p>
+
+<p>A haughty, excitable, and violent temper is another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> of the
+characteristics of Beatrice; but there is more of impulse than of
+passion in her vehemence. In the marriage scene where she has beheld her
+gentle-spirited cousin,&mdash;whom she loves the more for those very
+qualities which are most unlike her own,&mdash;slandered, deserted, and
+devoted to public shame, her indignation, and the eagerness with which
+she hungers and thirsts after revenge, are, like the rest of her
+character, open, ardent, impetuous, but not deep or implacable. When she
+bursts into that outrageous speech&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Is he not approved in the height a villain that hath
+slandered, scorned, dishonored my kinswoman? O that I were a
+man! What! bear her in hand until they come to take hands;
+and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander,
+unmitigated rancor&mdash;O God, that I were a man! I would eat
+his heart in the market-place!</p></div>
+
+<p>And when she commands her lover, as the first proof of his affection,
+"to kill Claudio," the very consciousness of the exaggeration,&mdash;of the
+contrast between the real good-nature of Beatrice and the fierce tenor
+of her language, keeps alive the comic effect, mingling the ludicrous
+with the serious. It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the point and
+vivacity of the dialogue, few of the speeches of Beatrice are capable of
+a general application, or engrave themselves distinctly on the memory;
+they contain more mirth than matter; and though wit be the predominant
+feature in the dramatic portrait, Beatrice more charms and dazzles us by
+what she is than by what she <i>says</i>. It is not merely her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> sparkling
+repartees and saucy jests, it is the soul of wit, and the spirit of
+gayety in forming the whole character,&mdash;looking out from her brilliant
+eyes, and laughing on her full lips that pout with scorn,&mdash;which we have
+before us, moving and full of life. On the whole, we dismiss Benedick
+and Beatrice to their matrimonial bonds rather with a sense of amusement
+than a feeling of congratulation or sympathy; rather with an
+acknowledgment that they are well-matched, and worthy of each other than
+with any well-founded expectation of their domestic tranquillity. If, as
+Benedick asserts, they are both "too wise to woo peaceably," it may be
+added that both are too wise, too witty, and too wilful to live
+peaceably together. We have some misgivings about Beatrice&mdash;some
+apprehensions that poor Benedick will not escape the "predestinated
+scratched face," which he had foretold to him who should win and wear
+this quick-witted and pleasant-spirited lady; yet when we recollect that
+to the wit and imperious temper of Beatrice is united a magnanimity of
+spirit which would naturally place her far above all selfishness, and
+all paltry struggles for power&mdash;when we perceive, in the midst of her
+sarcastic levity and volubility of tongue, so much of generous
+affection, and such a high sense of female virtue and honor, we are
+inclined to hope the best. We think it possible that though the
+gentleman may now and then swear, and the lady scold, the native
+good-humor of the one, the really fine understanding of the other, and
+the value<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> they so evidently attach to each other's esteem, will ensure
+them a tolerable portion of domestic felicity, and in this hope we leave
+them.</p>
+
+
+<h3>ROSALIND.</h3>
+
+<p>I come now to Rosalind, whom I should have ranked before Beatrice,
+inasmuch as the greater degree of her sex's softness and sensibility,
+united with equal wit and intellect, give her the superiority as a
+woman; but that, as a dramatic character, she is inferior in force. The
+portrait is one of infinitely more delicacy and variety, but of less
+strength and depth. It is easy to seize on the prominent features in the
+mind of Beatrice, but extremely difficult to catch and fix the more
+fanciful graces of Rosalind. She is like a compound of essences, so
+volatile in their nature, and so exquisitely blended, that on any
+attempt to analyze them, they seem to escape us. To what else shall we
+compare her, all-enchanting as she is?&mdash;to the silvery summer clouds
+which, even while we gaze on them, shift their hues and forms dissolving
+into air, and light, and rainbow showers?&mdash;to the May-morning, flush
+with opening blossoms and roseate dews, and "charm of earliest
+birds?"&mdash;to some wild and beautiful melody, such as some shepherd boy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+might "pipe to Amarillis in the shade?"&mdash;to a mountain streamlet, now
+smooth as a mirror in which the skies may glass themselves, and anon
+leaping and sparkling in the sunshine&mdash;or rather to the very sunshine
+itself? for so her genial spirit touches into life and beauty whatever
+it shines on!</p>
+
+<p>But this impression, though produced by the complete development of the
+character, and in the end possessing the whole fancy, is not immediate.
+The first introduction of Rosalind is less striking than interesting; we
+see her a dependant, almost a captive, in the house of her usurping
+uncle; her genial spirits are subdued by her situation, and the
+remembrance of her banished father her playfulness is under a temporary
+eclipse.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>is</i> an adjuration which Rosalind needed not when once at liberty, and
+sporting "under the greenwood tree." The sensibility and even
+pensiveness of her demeanor in the first instance, render her archness
+and gayety afterwards, more graceful and more fascinating.</p>
+
+<p>Though Rosalind is a princess, she is a princess of Arcady; and
+notwithstanding the charming effect produced by her first scenes, we
+scarcely ever think of her with a reference to them, or associate her
+with a court, and the artificial appendages of her rank. She was not
+made to "lord it o'er a fair mansion," and take state upon her like the
+all-accomplished Portia; but to breathe the free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> air of heaven, and
+frolic among green leaves. She was not made to stand the siege of daring
+profligacy, and oppose high action and high passion to the assaults of
+adverse fortune, like Isabel; but to "fleet the time carelessly as they
+did i' the golden age." She was not made to bandy wit with lords, and
+tread courtly measures with plumed and warlike cavaliers, like Beatrice;
+but to dance on the green sward, and "murmur among living brooks a music
+sweeter than their own."</p>
+
+<p>Though sprightliness is the distinguishing characteristic of Rosalind,
+as of Beatrice, yet we find her much more nearly allied to Portia in
+temper and intellect. The tone of her mind is, like Portia's, genial and
+buoyant: she has something, too, of her softness and sentiment; there is
+the same confiding abandonment of self in her affections; but the
+characters are otherwise as distinct as the situations are dissimilar.
+The age, the manners, the circumstance in which Shakspeare has placed
+his Portia, are not beyond the bounds of probability; nay, have a
+certain reality and locality. We fancy her a contemporary of the
+Raffaelles and the Ariostos; the sea-wedded Venice, its merchants and
+Magnificos,&mdash;the Rialto, and the long canals,&mdash;rise up before us when we
+think of her. But Rosalind is surrounded with the purely ideal and
+imaginative; the reality is in the characters and in the sentiments, not
+in the circumstances or situation. Portia is dignified, splendid, and
+romantic; Rosalind is playful, pastoral, and picturesque: both are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> in
+the highest degree poetical, but the one is epic and the other lyric.</p>
+
+<p>Every thing about Rosalind breathes of "youth and youth's sweet prime."
+She is fresh as the morning, sweet as the dew-awakened blossoms, and
+light as the breeze that plays among them. She is as witty, as voluble,
+as sprightly as Beatrice; but in a style altogether distinct. In both,
+the wit is equally unconscious; but in Beatrice it plays about us like
+the lightning, dazzling but also alarming; while the wit of Rosalind
+bubbles up and sparkles like the living fountain, refreshing all around.
+Her volubility is like the bird's song; it is the outpouring of a heart
+filled to overflowing with life, love, and joy, and all sweet and
+affectionate impulses. She has as much tenderness as mirth, and in her
+most petulant raillery there is a touch of softness&mdash;"By this hand, it
+will not hurt a fly!" As her vivacity never lessens our impression of
+her sensibility, so she wears her masculine attire without the slightest
+impugnment of her delicacy. Shakspeare did not make the modesty of his
+women depend on their dress, as we shall see further when we come to
+Viola and Imogen. Rosalind has in truth "no doublet and hose in her
+disposition." How her heart seems to throb and flutter under her page's
+vest! What depth of love in her passion for Orlando! whether disguised
+beneath a saucy playfulness, or breaking forth with a fond impatience,
+or half betrayed in that beautiful scene where she faints at the sight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+of his 'kerchief stained with his blood! Here her recovery of her
+self-possession&mdash;her fears lest she should have revealed her sex&mdash;her
+presence of mind, and quick-witted excuse&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I pray you, tell your brother how well I counterfeited.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the characteristic playfulness which seems to return so naturally
+with her recovered senses,&mdash;are all as amusing as consistent. Then how
+beautifully is the dialogue managed between herself and Orlando! how
+well she assumes the airs of a saucy page, without throwing off her
+feminine sweetness! How her wit flutters free as air over every subject!
+With what a careless grace, yet with what exquisite propriety!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For innocence hath a privilege in her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To dignify arch jests and laughing eyes.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And if the freedom of some of the expressions used by Rosalind or
+Beatrice be objected to, let it be remembered that this was not the
+fault of Shakspeare or the women, but generally of the age. Portia,
+Beatrice, Rosalind, and the rest lived in times when more importance was
+attached to things than to words; now we think more of words than of
+things; and happy are we in these later days of super-refinement, if we
+are to be saved by our verbal morality. But this is meddling with the
+province of the melancholy Jaques, and our argument is Rosalind.</p>
+
+<p>The impression left upon our hearts and minds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> by the character of
+Rosalind&mdash;by the mixture of playfulness, sensibility, and what the
+French (and we for lack of a better expression) call <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>&mdash;is like
+a delicious strain of music. There is a depth of delight, and a subtlety
+of words to express that delight, which is enchanting. Yet when we call
+to mind particular speeches and passages, we find that they have a
+relative beauty and propriety, which renders it difficult to separate
+them from the context without injuring their effect She says some of the
+most charming things in the world, and some of the most humorous: but we
+apply them as phrases rather than as maxims, and remember them rather
+for their pointed felicity of expression and fanciful application, than
+for their general truth and depth of meaning. I will give a few
+instances:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time&mdash;that I was
+an Irish rat&mdash;which I can hardly remember.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>Good, my complexion! Dost thou think, though I am
+caparisoned like a man, that I have a doublet and hose in my
+disposition?</p>
+
+<p>We dwell here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon
+a petticoat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well
+a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why
+they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so
+ordinary that the whippers are in love too.</p>
+
+<p>A traveller! By my faith you have great reason to be sad. I
+fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then
+to have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes
+and poor hands.</p>
+
+<p>Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you lisp, and wear
+strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country;
+be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for
+making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think
+you have swam in a gondola.</p>
+
+<p>Break an hour's promise in love! He that will divide a
+minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the
+thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may
+be said of him that Cupid hath clapp'd him o' the shoulder,
+but I warrant him heart-whole.</p>
+
+<p>Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten
+them&mdash;but not for love.</p>
+
+<p>I could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel, and
+to cry like a woman; but I must comfort the weaker vessel,
+as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to
+petticoat.</p></div>
+
+<p>Rosalind has not the impressive eloquence of Portia, nor the sweet
+wisdom of Isabella. Her longest speeches are not her best; nor is her
+taunting address to Phebe, beautiful and celebrated as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> it is, equal to
+Phebe's own description of her. The latter, indeed, is more in
+earnest.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>Celia is more quiet and retired: but she rather yields to Rosalind, than
+is eclipsed by her. She is as full of sweetness, kindness, and
+intelligence, quite as susceptible, and almost as witty, though she
+makes less display of wit. She is described as less fair and less
+gifted; yet the attempt to excite in her mind a jealousy of her lovelier
+friend, by placing them in comparison&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When she is gone&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>fails to awaken in the generous heart of Celia any other feeling than an
+increased tenderness and sympathy for her cousin. To Celia, Shakspeare
+has given some of the most striking and animated parts of the dialogue;
+and in particular, that exquisite description of the friendship between
+her and Rosalind&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">If she be a traitor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, so am I; we have still slept together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still we were coupled and inseparable.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+<p>The feeling of interest and admiration thus excited for Celia at the
+first, follows her through the whole play. We listen to her as to one
+who has made herself worthy of our love; and her silence expresses more
+than eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>Phebe is quite an Arcadian coquette; she is a piece of pastoral poetry.
+Audrey is only rustic. A very amusing effect is produced by the contrast
+between the frank and free bearing of the two princesses in disguise,
+and the scornful airs of the real Shepherdess. In the speeches of Phebe,
+and in the dialogue between her and Sylvius, Shakspeare has anticipated
+all the beauties of the Italian pastoral, and surpassed Tasso and
+Guarini. We find two among the most poetical passages of the play
+appropriated to Phebe; the taunting speech to Sylvius, and the
+description of Rosalind in her page's costume;&mdash;which last is finer than
+the portrait of Bathyllus in Anacreon.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist of the seventeenth
+century, painted one or two pictures, considered admirable as works of
+art, of which the subjects are the most vicious and barbarous
+conceivable. I remember one of these in the gallery of Florence, which I
+looked at once, but once, and wished then, as I do now, for the
+privilege of burning it to ashes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Lucy Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, may be placed next
+to Desdemona; Diana Vernon is (comparatively) a failure as every woman
+will allow; while the masculine lady Geraldine in Miss Edgeworth's tale
+of Ennui, and the intellectual Corinne are consistent, essential women;
+the distinction is more easily felt than analyzed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Hazlitt's Essays, vol. ii. p. 167.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> I am informed that the original German word is
+<i>geistreiche</i> literally, <i>rich in soul or spirit</i>, a just and beautiful
+epithet. 2d. <i>Edit.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> In the "Mercatante di Venezia" of Ser. Giovanni, we have
+the whole story of Antonio and Bassanio, and part of the story but not
+the character of Portia. The incident of the caskets is from the Gesta
+Romanorum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> In that age, delicate points of law were not determined by
+the ordinary judges of the provinces, but by doctors of law, who were
+called from Bologna, Padua, and other places celebrated for their legal
+colleges.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Scene 2</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Act iv. Scene 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Use</i>, i. e. usury, interest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> In Shakspeare's time, there were people In Ireland, (there
+may be so still, for aught I know,) who undertook to charm rats to
+death, by chanting certain verses which acted as a spell. "Rhyme them to
+death, as they do rats in Ireland," is a line in one of Ben Jonson's
+comedies; this will explain Rosalind's humorous allusion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Rousseau could describe such a character as Rosalind, but
+failed to represent it consistently. "N'est-ce pas de ton c&oelig;ur que
+viennent les graces de ton enjouement? Tes railleries sont des signes
+d'int&eacute;r&ecirc;t plus touchants que les compliments d'un autre. Tu caresses
+quand tu fol&acirc;tres. Tu ris, mais ton rire p&eacute;n&egrave;tre l'&acirc;me; tu ris, mais tu
+fais pleurer de tendresse et je te vois presque toujours s&eacute;rieuse avec
+les indiff&eacute;rents" <i>H&eacute;lo&iuml;se.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>JULIET.</h3>
+
+<p>O Love! thou teacher'&mdash;O Grief! thou tamer&mdash;and Time, thou healer of
+human hearts!&mdash;bring hither all your deep and serious revelations!&mdash;And
+ye too, rich fancies of unbruised, unbowed youth&mdash;ye visions of long
+perished hopes&mdash;shadows of unborn joys&mdash;gay colorings of the dawn of
+existence! whatever memory hath treasured up of bright and beautiful in
+nature or in art; all soft and delicate images&mdash;all lovely
+forms&mdash;divinest voices and entrancing melodies&mdash;gleams of sunnier skies
+and fairer climes,&mdash;Italian moonlights and airs that "breathe of the
+sweet south,"&mdash;now, if it be possible, revive to my imagination&mdash;live
+once more to my heart! Come, thronging around me, all inspirations that
+wait on passion, on power, on beauty; give me to tread, not bold, and
+yet unblamed, within the inmost sanctuary of Shakspeare's genius, in
+Juliet's moonlight bower, and Miranda's enchanted isle!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is not without emotion, that I attempt to touch on the character of
+Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her&mdash;only to be
+exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them!&mdash;it is impossible
+to say any thing better; but it is possible to say something more. Such
+in fact is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet's
+character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth,
+and its variety. There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of
+purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a
+whole; and to attempt to analyze the impression thus conveyed at once to
+soul and sense, is as if while hanging over a half-blown rose, and
+revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder,
+leaflet by leaflet, the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet
+how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do
+justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in
+its beauty?</p>
+
+<p>Love, as a passion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting
+the axiom of Rochefoucauld, that there is but one love, though a
+thousand different copies, yet the true sentiment itself has as many
+different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not
+only modified by the individual character and temperament, but it is
+under the influence of climate and circumstance. The love that is calm
+in one moment, shall show itself vehement and tumultuous at another. The
+love that is wild and passionate in the south, is deep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> and
+contemplative in the north; as the Spanish or Roman girl perhaps poisons
+a rival, or stabs herself for the sake of a living lover, and the German
+or Russian girl pines into the grave for love of the false, the absent,
+or the dead. Love is ardent or deep, bold or timid, jealous or
+confiding, impatient or humble, hopeful or desponding&mdash;and yet there are
+not many loves, but one love.</p>
+
+<p>All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love or have
+loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The passion
+is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence. It is the
+soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life-blood along
+her veins, "blending with every atom of her frame." The love that is so
+chaste and dignified in Portia&mdash;so airy-delicate and fearless in
+Miranda&mdash;so sweetly confiding in Perdita&mdash;so playfully fond in
+Rosalind&mdash;so constant in Imogen&mdash;so devoted in Desdemona&mdash;so fervent in
+Helen&mdash;so tender in Viola,&mdash;is each and all of these in Juliet. All
+these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet
+self; or if she does, it is of the Gismunda, or the Lisetta, or the
+Fiammetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not in the character or
+circumstances, but in the truly Italian spirit, the glowing, national
+complexion of the portrait.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+<p>There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect in
+color consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How perfectly
+did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect! and how beautifully he
+has exemplified it in Juliet?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are
+all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all
+discord: all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial life.
+Juliet, like Portia, is the foster child of opulence and splendor; she
+dwells in a fair city&mdash;she has been nurtured in a palace&mdash;she clasps her
+robe with jewels&mdash;she braids her hair with rainbow-tinted pearls; but in
+herself she has no more connection with the trappings around her, than
+the lovely exotic, transplanted from some Eden-like climate, has with
+the carved and gilded conservatory which has reared and sheltered its
+luxuriant beauty.</p>
+
+<p>But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or
+harsh. A tissue of beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> poetry weaves together the principal
+figures, and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the
+costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most
+opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet
+are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are they,
+like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the
+darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of
+humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade
+of character in each, tends to the development of the sentiment which is
+the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly
+be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the splendid
+imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of genius, and
+the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as
+though Shakspeare had really transported himself into Italy, and had
+drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been
+said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not
+love-sick!" What a false idea would anything of the mere whining
+amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare&mdash;the
+noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet&mdash;with even less
+truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in "Twelfth
+Night" of the wan girl dying of love, "who pined in thought, and with a
+green and yellow melancholy," would never surely occur to us, when
+thinking on the enamored and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love
+keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm
+into passion, passion into heroism! No, the whole sentiment of the play
+is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit of the
+south: it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of life, and of
+the very sap of life.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> We have indeed the struggle of love against
+evil destinies, and a thorny world; the pain, the grief, the anguish,
+the terror, the despair; the aching adieu; the pang unutterable of
+parted affection; and rapture, truth, and tenderness trampled into an
+early grave: but still an Elysian grace lingers round the whole, and the
+blue sky of Italy bends over all!</p>
+
+<p>In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the
+drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its
+inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the passion which has
+taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity,
+the resistless violence of the torrent: but she is herself as "moving
+delicate," as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over
+it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which
+hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment
+is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughout, the
+individual part of the character in all its variety is developed, and
+marked with the nicest discrimination. For instance,&mdash;the simplicity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> of
+Juliet is very different from the simplicity of Miranda: her innocence
+is not the innocence of a desert island. The energy she displays does
+not once remind us of the moral grandeur of Isabel, or the intellectual
+power of Portia;&mdash;it is founded in the strength of passion, not in the
+strength of character:&mdash;it is accidental rather than inherent, rising
+with the tide of feeling or temper, and with it subsiding. Her romance
+is not the pastoral romance of Perdita, nor the fanciful romance of
+Viola; it is the romance of a tender heart and a poetical imagination.
+Her inexperience is not ignorance: she has heard that there is such a
+thing as falsehood, though she can scarcely conceive it. Her mother and
+her nurse have perhaps warned her against flattering vows and man's
+inconstancy; or she has even</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;Turned the tale by Ariosto told,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Ah, gentle Romeo!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That conscious shrinking from her own confession&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What I have spoke!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The ingenuous simplicity of her avowal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So thou wilt woo&mdash;but else, not for the world!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And therefore thou may'st think my 'havior light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than those who have more cunning to be strange.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which she throws herself for
+forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for
+the love she bears him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Therefore pardon me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not impute this yielding to light love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which the dark night hath so discovered.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with
+such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity,
+there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have
+infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the
+slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment: for she does not even wait
+to hear his asseverations;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ROMEO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So thrive my soul&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">JULIET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A thousand times, good night!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>But all these flutterings between native impulses and maiden fears
+become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up in the
+depth and enthusiasm of confiding love.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My bounty is as boundless as the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My love as deep; the more I give to you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The more I have&mdash;for both are <i>infinite</i>!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no
+end to its affections! For "what was to hinder the thrilling tide of
+pleasure which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without
+stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without? What was to
+abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure which her heart
+had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger? What
+was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just
+rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet
+felt?"<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron's Haid&eacute;e is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the
+development is epic, not dramatic.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p><p>I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of
+singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla
+of Schiller's Wallenstein; she is the German Juliet; far unequal,
+indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I know not if
+critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have
+had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he
+portrayed Thekla; but there are some striking points of coincidence,
+while the national distinction in the character of the passion leaves to
+Thekla a strong cast of originality.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> <i>Princess</i> Thekla is, like
+Juliet, the heiress of rank and opulence; her first introduction to us,
+in her full dress and diamonds, does not impair the impression of her
+softness and simplicity. We do not think of them, nor do we sympathize
+with the complaint of her lover,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The dazzle of the jewels which played round you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hid the beloved from me.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We almost feel the reply of Thekla before she utters it,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Then you saw me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not with your heart, but with your eyes!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The timidity of Thekla in her first scene, her trembling silence in the
+commencement, and the few words she addresses to her mother, remind us
+of the unobtrusive simplicity of Juliet's first appearance; but the
+impression is different; the one is the shrinking violet, the other the
+unexpanded rose-bud. Thekla and Max Piccolomini are, like Romeo and
+Juliet, divided by the hatred of their fathers. The death of Max, and
+the resolute despair of Thekla, are also points of resemblance; and
+Thekla's complete devotion, her frank yet dignified abandonment of all
+disguise, and her apology for her own unreserve, are quite in Juliet's
+style,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I ought to be less open, ought to hide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart more from thee&mdash;so decorum dictates:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But where in this place wouldst thou seek for truth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If in my mouth thou didst not find it?<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>The same confidence, innocence, and fervor of affection, distinguish
+both heroines; but the love of Juliet is more vehement, the love of
+Thekla is more calm, and reposes more on itself; the love of Juliet
+gives us the idea of infinitude, and that of Thekla of eternity: the
+love of Juliet flows on with an increasing tide, like the river pouring
+to the ocean; and the love of Thekla stands unalterable, and enduring as
+the rock. In the heart of Thekla love shelters as in a home; but in the
+heart of Juliet he reigns a crowned king,&mdash;"he rides on its pants
+triumphant!" As women, they would divide the loves and suffrages of
+mankind, but not as dramatic characters: the moment we come to look
+nearer, we acknowledge that it is indeed "rashness and ignorance to
+compare Schiller with Shakspeare."<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Thekla is a fine conception in
+the German spirit, but Juliet is a lovely and palpable creation. The
+coloring in which Schiller has arrayed his Thekla is pale, sombre,
+vague, compared with the strong individual marking, the rich glow of
+life and reality, which distinguish Juliet. One contrast in particular
+has always struck me; the two beautiful speeches in the first interview
+between Max and Thekla, that in which she describes her father's
+astrological chamber, and that in which he replies with reflections on
+the influence of the stars, are said to "form in themselves a fine
+poem." They do so; but never would Shakspeare have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> placed such
+extraneous description and reflection in the mouths of <i>his</i> lovers.
+Romeo and Juliet speak of themselves only; they see only themselves in
+the universe, all things else are as an idle matter. Not a word they
+utter, though every word is poetry&mdash;not a sentiment or description,
+though dressed in the most luxuriant imagery, but has a direct relation
+to themselves, or to the situation in which they are placed, and the
+feelings that engross them: and besides, it may be remarked of Thekla,
+and generally of all tragedy heroines in love, that, however beautifully
+and distinctly characterized, we see the passion only under one or two
+aspects at most, or in conflict with some one circumstance or contending
+duty or feeling. In Juliet alone we find it exhibited under every
+variety of aspect, and every gradation of feeling it could possibly
+assume in a delicate female heart: as we see the rose, when passed
+through the colors of the prism, catch and reflect every tint of the
+divided ray, and still it is the same sweet rose.</p>
+
+<p>I have already remarked the quiet manner in which Juliet steals upon us
+in her first scene, as the serene, graceful girl, her feelings as yet
+unawakened, and her energies all unknown to herself, and unsuspected by
+others. Her silence and her filial deference are charming:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I'll look to like, if looking liking move;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But no more deep will I endart mine eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than your consent shall give it strength to fly<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Much in the same unconscious way we are impressed with an idea of her
+excelling loveliness:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and which could make the dark vault of death "a feasting presence full
+of light." Without any elaborate description, we behold Juliet, as she
+is reflected in the heart of her lover, like a single bright star
+mirrored in the bosom of a deep, transparent well. The rapture with
+which he dwells on the "white wonder of her hand;" on her lips,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That even in pure and vestal modesty<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And then her eyes, "two of the fairest stars in all the heavens!" In his
+exclamation in the sepulchre,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>there is life and death, beauty and horror, rapture and anguish
+combined. The Friar's description of her approach,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i23">O, so light a step<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and then her father's similitude,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death lies on her, like an untimely frost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the sweetest flower of all the field;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>all these mingle into a beautiful picture of youthful, airy, delicate
+grace, feminine sweetness, and patrician elegance.</p>
+
+<p>And our impression of Juliet's loveliness and sensibility is enhanced,
+when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+another. His visionary passion for the cold, inaccessible Rosaline,
+forms but the prologue, the threshold, to the true&mdash;the real sentiment
+which succeeds to it. This incident, which is found in the original
+story, has been retained by Shakspeare with equal feeling and judgment;
+and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from prejudicing
+us against Romeo, by casting on him, at the outset of the piece, the
+stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in
+the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the portrait of the
+lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend
+Juliet herself? for in the original story we find that her attention is
+first attracted towards Romeo, by seeing him "fancy sick and pale of
+cheer," for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times
+every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first
+entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was
+selected to be his fancy's queen; and the more rigorous the beauty, and
+the more hopeless the love, the more honorable the slavery. To go about
+"metamorphosed by a mistress," as Speed humorously expresses it,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>&mdash;to
+maintain her supremacy in charms at the sword's point; to sigh; to walk
+with folded arms; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show a careless
+desolation, was the fashion of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the
+Bayards, the Herberts of the time&mdash;all those who were the mirrors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> "in
+which the noble youth did dress themselves," were of this fantastic
+school of gallantry&mdash;the last remains of the age of chivalry; and it was
+especially prevalent in Italy. Shakspeare has ridiculed it in many
+places with exquisite humor; but he wished to show us that it has its
+serious as well as its comic aspect. Romeo, then, is introduced to us
+with perfect truth of costume, as the thrall of a dreaming, fanciful
+passion for the scornful Rosaline, who had forsworn to love; and on her
+charms and coldness, and on the power of love generally, he descants to
+his companions in pretty phrases, quite in the style and taste of the
+day.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O any thing, of nothing first create!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O heavy lightness, serious vanity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lover's eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lover's tears.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>But when once he has beheld Juliet, and quaffed intoxicating draughts of
+hope and love from her soft glance, how all these airy fancies fade
+before the soul-absorbing reality! The lambent fire that played round
+his heart, burns to that heart's very core. We no longer find him
+adorning his lamentations in picked phrases, or making a confidant of
+his gay companions: he is no longer "for the numbers that Petrarch
+flowed in;" but all is consecrated, earnest, rapturous, in the feeling
+and the expression. Compare, for instance, the sparkling antithetical
+passages just quoted, with one or two of his passionate speeches to or
+of Juliet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Heaven is here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Juliet lives! &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah Juliet! if the measure of thy joy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unfold the imagin'd happiness, that both<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Receive in either by this dear encounter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come what sorrow may,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It cannot countervail the exchange of joy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That one short minute gives me in her sight.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How different! and how finely the distinction is drawn! His first
+passion is indulged as a waking dream, a reverie of the fancy; it is
+depressing, indolent, fantastic; his second elevates him to the third
+heaven, or hurries him to despair. It rushes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> to its object through all
+impediments, defies all dangers, and seeks at last a triumphant grave,
+in the arms of her he so loved. Thus Romeo's previous attachment to
+Rosaline is so contrived as to exhibit to us another variety in that
+passion, which is the subject of the poem, by showing us the distinction
+between the fancied and the real sentiment. It adds a deeper effect to
+the beauty of Juliet; it interests us in the commencement for the tender
+and romantic Romeo; and gives an individual reality to his character, by
+stamping him like an historical, as well as a dramatic portrait, with
+the very spirit of the age in which he lived.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>It may be remarked of Juliet as of Portia, that we not only trace the
+component qualities in each as they expand before us in the course of
+the action, but we seem to have known them previously, and mingle a
+consciousness of their past, with the interest of their present and
+their future. Thus, in the dialogue between Juliet and her parents, and
+in the scenes with the Nurse, we seem to have before us the whole of her
+previous education and habits: we see her, on the one hand, kept in
+severe subjection by her austere parents; and on the other, fondled and
+spoiled by a foolish old nurse&mdash;a situation perfectly accordant with the
+manners of the time. Then Lady Capulet comes sweeping by with her train
+of velvet, her black hood, her fan,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> and her rosary&mdash;the very
+<i>beau-id&eacute;al</i> of a proud Italian matron of the fifteenth century, whose
+offer to poison Romeo in revenge for the death of Tybalt, stamps her
+with one very characteristic trait of the age and country. Yet she loves
+her daughter; and there is a touch of remorseful tenderness in her
+lamentation over her, which adds to our impression of the timid softness
+of Juliet, and the harsh subjection in which she has been kept:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But one, poor one!&mdash;one poor and loving child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But one thing to rejoice and solace in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cruel death hath catched it from my sight!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Capulet, as the jovial, testy old man, the self willed, violent,
+tyrannical father,&mdash;to whom his daughter is but a property, the appanage
+of his house, and the object of his pride,&mdash;is equal as a portrait: but
+both must yield to the Nurse, who is drawn with the most wonderful power
+and discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the
+magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the
+marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coarseness, we
+start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity,
+mixed with the dotage and petulance of age&mdash;her subserviency, her
+secrecy, and her total want of elevated principle, or even common
+honesty&mdash;are brought before us like a living and palpable truth.</p>
+
+<p>Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty
+parents, and her plebeian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> nurse, not only throw into beautiful relief
+her own native softness and elegance, but are at once the cause and the
+excuse of her subsequent conduct. She trembles before her stern mother
+and her violent father: but, like a petted child, alternately cajoles
+and commands her nurse. It is her old foster-mother who is the
+confidante of her love. It is the woman who cherished her infancy, who
+aids and abets her in her clandestine marriage. Do we not perceive how
+immediately our impression of Juliet's character would have been
+lowered, if Shakspeare had placed her in connection with any
+common-place dramatic waiting-woman?&mdash;even with Portia's adroit Nerissa,
+or Desdemona's Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the
+sweetness and dignity of Juliet's character are preserved inviolate to
+the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is
+exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We
+behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and
+weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action
+of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged
+girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves"
+had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those
+bursts of vehement feeling, which prepare us for the climax of passion
+at the catastrophe; in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> invectives against Romeo, when she hears of
+the death of Tybalt; in her indignation when the nurse echoes those
+reproaches, and the rising of her temper against unwonted
+contradiction:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">NURSE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shame come to Romeo!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">JULIET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Blistered be thy tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For such a wish! he was not born to shame.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent
+exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Upon <i>his</i> brow Shame is ashamed to sit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For 'tis a throne where Honor may be crown'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sole monarch of the universal earth!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to
+the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and
+self-reproach&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at
+first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse
+is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose
+energies are yet untried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon so soft a subject as myself.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompass her, she
+clings to it. She appeals to her father&mdash;to her mother&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good father, I beseech you on my knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear me with patience but to speak one word!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delay this marriage for a month,&mdash;a week!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the
+helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual
+dependence&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some comfort, nurse!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these
+events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry
+Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness
+of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does
+not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous
+amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which
+take possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own
+superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">JULIET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Speakest thou from thy heart?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">NURSE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aye, and from my soul too;&mdash;or else<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beshrew them both!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">JULIET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">Amen!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Go, counsellor!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the calm, concentrated force of her resolve,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If all else fail,&mdash;myself have power to die;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>have a sublime pathos. It appears to me also an admirable touch of
+nature, considering the master-passion which, at this moment, rules in
+Juliet's soul, that she is as much shocked by the nurse's dispraise of
+her lover, as by her wicked, time-serving advice.</p>
+
+<p>This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet
+assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl, puts on the wife
+and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from
+oppression. It is idle to criticize her dissembling submission to her
+father and mother; a higher duty has taken place of that which she owed
+to them; a more sacred tie has severed all others. Her parents are
+pictured as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> they are, that no feeling for them may interfere in the
+slightest degree with our sympathy for the lovers. In the mind of Juliet
+there is no struggle between her filial and her conjugal duties, and
+there ought to be none. The Friar, her spiritual director, dismisses her
+with these instructions:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Go home,&mdash;be merry,&mdash;give consent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To marry Paris;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and she obeys him. Death and suffering in every horrid form she is ready
+to brave, without fear or doubt, "to live an unstained wife:" and the
+artifice to which she has recourse, which she is even instructed to use,
+in no respect impairs the beauty of the character; we regard it with
+pain and pity; but excuse it, as the natural and inevitable consequence
+of the situation in which she is placed. Nor should we forget, that the
+dissimulation, as well as the courage of Juliet, though they spring from
+passion, are justified by principle:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How shall my faith return again to earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless that husband send it me from heaven?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In her successive appeals to her father, her mother, her nurse, and the
+Friar, she seeks those remedies which would first suggest themselves to
+a gentle and virtuous nature, and grasps her dagger only as the last
+resource against dishonor and violated faith;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">God join'd my heart with Romeo's,&mdash;thou our hands.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall be the label to another deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or my true heart with treacherous revolt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn to another,&mdash;<i>this</i> shall slay them both!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus, in the very tempest and whirlwind of passion and terror,
+preserving, to a certain degree, that moral and feminine dignity which
+harmonizes with our best feelings, and commands our unreproved sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>I reserve my remarks on the catastrophe, which demands separate
+consideration; and return to trace from the opening, another and
+distinguishing trait in Juliet's character.</p>
+
+<p>In the extreme vivacity of her imagination, and its influence upon the
+action, the language, the sentiments of the drama, Juliet resembles
+Portia; but with this striking difference. In Portia, the imaginative
+power, though developed in a high degree, is so equally blended with the
+other intellectual and moral faculties, that it does not give us the
+idea of excess. It is subject to her nobler reason; it adorns and
+heightens all her feelings; it does not overwhelm or mislead them. In
+Juliet, it is rather a part of her southern temperament, controlling and
+modifying the rest of her character; springing from her sensibility,
+hurried along by her passions, animating her joys, darkening her
+sorrows, exaggerating her terrors, and, in the end, overpowering her
+reason. With Juliet, imagination is, in the first instance, if not the
+source, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> medium of passion; and passion again kindles her
+imagination. It is through the power of imagination that the eloquence
+of Juliet is so vividly poetical; that every feeling, every sentiment
+comes to her, clothed in the richest imagery, and is thus reflected from
+her mind to ours. The poetry is not here the mere adornment, the outward
+garnishing of the character; but its result, or rather blended with its
+essence. It is indivisible from it, and interfused through it like
+moonlight through the summer air. To particularize is almost impossible,
+since the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Juliet is one rich
+stream of imagery: she speaks in pictures and sometimes they are crowded
+one upon another&mdash;thus in the balcony scene&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have no joy of this contract to-night:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too like the lightning which doth cease to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere one can say it lightens.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Again,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">O for a falconer's voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To lure this tassel-gentle back again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With repetition of my Romeo's name.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here there are three images in the course of six<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> lines. In the same
+scene, the speech of twenty-two lines, beginning,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>contains but one figurative expression, <i>the mask of night</i>; and every
+one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar
+propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause
+of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the
+situation and in the feeling of the moment; where confusion, and
+anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play
+of the imagination would be checked and subdued for the time.</p>
+
+<p>In the soliloquy of the second act, where she is chiding at the nurse's
+delay:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Driving back shadows over low'ring hills:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How beautiful! how the lines mount and float responsive to the sense!
+She goes on&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Had she affections, and warm youthful blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She'd be as swift in motion as a ball;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My words should bandy her to my sweet love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his to me!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The famous soliloquy, "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds," teems with
+luxuriant imagery. The fond adjuration, "Come night! come Romeo! <i>come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+thou day in night</i>!" expresses that fulness of enthusiastic admiration
+for her lover, which possesses her whole soul; but expresses it as only
+Juliet could or would have expressed it,&mdash;in a bold and beautiful
+metaphor. Let it be remembered, that, in this speech, Juliet is not
+supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidante; and I
+confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in
+those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery, yet more
+gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful "Hymn to the
+Night," breathed out by Juliet in the silence and solitude of her
+chamber. She is thinking aloud; it is the young heart "triumphing to
+itself in words." In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls
+upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost
+infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the
+imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is
+thrown over the whole; and her impatience, to use her own expression, is
+truly that of "a child before a festival, that hath new robes and may
+not wear them." It is at the very moment too that her whole heart and
+fancy are abandoned to blissful anticipation, that the nurse enters with
+the news of Romeo's banishment; and the immediate transition from
+rapture to despair has a most powerful effect.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same shaping spirit of imagination which, in the scene with
+the Friar, heaps together all images of horror that ever hung upon a
+troubled dream.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From off the battlements of yonder tower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where serpents are&mdash;chain me with roaring bears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or bid me go into a new made grave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or hide me with a dead man in his shroud;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things that to hear them told have made me tremble<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But she immediately adds,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I will do it without fear or doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To live an unstained wife to my sweet love!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the scene where she drinks the sleeping potion, although her spirit
+does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid
+fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till
+gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise,
+the horror rises to frenzy&mdash;her imagination realizes its own hideous
+creations, and she <i>sees</i> her cousin Tybalt's ghost.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>In particular passages this luxuriance of fancy may seem to wander into
+excess. For instance,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dove-feather'd raven! wolfish ravening lamb, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Yet this highly figurative and antithetical exuberance of language is
+defended by Schlegel on strong and just grounds; and to me also it
+appears natural, however critics may argue against its taste or
+propriety.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> The warmth and vivacity of Juliet's fancy, which plays
+like a light over every part of her character&mdash;which animates every line
+she utters&mdash;which kindles every thought into a picture, and clothes her
+emotions in visible images, would naturally, under strong and unusual
+excitement, and in the conflict of opposing sentiments, run into some
+extravagance of diction.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>With regard to the termination of the play, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> has been a subject of
+much critical argument, it is well known that Shakspeare, following the
+old English versions, has departed from the original story of Da
+Porta;<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> and I am inclined to believe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> that Da Porta, in making Juliet
+waken from her trance while Romeo yet lives, and in his terrible final
+scene between the lovers, has himself departed from the old tradition,
+and, as a romance, has certainly improved it; but that which is
+effective in a narrative, is not always calculated for the drama, and I
+cannot but agree with Schlegel, that Shakspeare has done well and wisely
+in adhering to the old story. Can we doubt for a moment that he who has
+given us the catastrophe of Othello, and the tempest scene in Lear,
+might also have adopted these additional circumstances of horror in the
+fate of the lovers, and have so treated them as to harrow up our very
+soul&mdash;had it been his object to do so? But apparently it was <i>not</i>. The
+tale is one,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Such as, once heard, in gentle heart destroys<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All pain but pity.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is in truth a tale of love and sorrow, not of anguish and terror. We
+behold the catastrophe afar off with scarcely a wish to avert it. Romeo
+and Juliet <i>must</i> die; their destiny is fulfilled; they have quaffed off
+the cup of life, with all its infinite of joys and agonies, in one
+intoxicating draught. What have they to do more upon this earth?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> Young,
+innocent, loving and beloved, they descend together into the tomb: but
+Shakspeare has made that tomb a shrine of martyred and sainted affection
+consecrated for the worship of all hearts,&mdash;not a dark charnel vault,
+haunted by spectres of pain, rage, and desperation. Romeo and Juliet are
+pictured lovely in death as in life; the sympathy they inspire does not
+oppress us with that suffocating sense of horror, which in the altered
+tragedy makes the fall of the curtain a relief; but all pain is lost in
+the tenderness and poetic beauty of the picture. Romeo's last speech
+over his bride is not like the raving of a disappointed boy: in its deep
+pathos, its rapturous despair, its glowing imagery, there is the very
+luxury of life and love. Juliet, who had drunk off the sleeping potion
+in a fit of frenzy, wakes calm and collected&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I do remember well where I should be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there I am&mdash;Where is my Romeo?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The profound slumber in which her senses have been steeped for so many
+hours has tranquillized her nerves, and stilled the fever in her blood;
+she wakes "like a sweet child who has been dreaming of something
+promised to it by its mother," and opens her eyes to ask for it&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">... Where is my Romeo?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she is answered at once,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy husband in thy bosom here lies dead.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>This is enough: she sees at once the whole horror of her situation&mdash;she
+sees it with a quiet and resolved despair&mdash;she utters no reproach
+against the Friar&mdash;makes no inquiries, no complaints, except that
+affecting remonstrance&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O churl&mdash;drink all, and leave no friendly drop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To help me after!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All that is left to her is to die, and she dies. The poem, which opened
+with the enmity of the two families, closes with their reconciliation
+over the breathless remains of their children; and no violent,
+frightful, or discordant feeling is suffered to mingle with that soft
+impression of melancholy left within the heart, and which Schlegel
+compares to one long, endless sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"A youthful passion," says Go&euml;the, (alluding to one of his own early
+attachments,) "which is conceived and cherished without any certain
+object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it
+rises calmly in a brilliant track, and seems to mix, and even to dwell
+for a moment, with the stars of heaven; but at length it falls&mdash;it
+bursts&mdash;consuming and destroying all around, even as itself expires."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To conclude: love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of
+passion and imagination and accordingly, to one of these, or to both,
+all the qualities of Juliet's mind and heart (unfolding and varying as
+the action of the drama proceeds) may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> be finally traced; the former
+concentrating all those natural impulses, fervent affections and high
+energies, which lend the character its internal charm, its moral power
+and individual interest: the latter diverging from all those splendid
+and luxuriant accompaniments which invest it with its external glow, its
+beauty, its vigor, its freshness, and its truth.</p>
+
+<p>With all this immense capacity of affection and imagination, there is a
+deficiency of reflection and of moral energy arising from previous habit
+and education: and the action of the drama, while it serves to develope
+the character, appears but its natural and necessary result. "Le myst&egrave;re
+de l'existence," said Madame de Sta&euml;l to her daughter, "c'est le rapport
+de nos erreurs avec nos peines."</p>
+
+
+<h3>HELENA.</h3>
+
+<p>In the character of Juliet we have seen the passionate and the
+imaginative blended in an equal degree, and in the highest conceivable
+degree as combined with delicate female nature. In Helena we have a
+modification of character altogether distinct; allied, indeed, to Juliet
+as a picture of fervent, enthusiastic, self-forgetting love, but
+differing wholly from her in other respects; for Helen is the union of
+strength of passion with strength of character.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions, and yet be able to
+preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable
+heart amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is
+perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and
+rarest endowment of humanity."<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> Such a character, almost as difficult
+to delineate in fiction as to find in real life, has Shakspeare given us
+in Helena; touched with the most soul-subduing pathos, and developed
+with the most consummate skill.</p>
+
+<p>Helena, as a woman, is more passionate than imaginative; and, as a
+character, she bears the same relation to Juliet that Isabel bears to
+Portia. There is equal unity of purpose and effect, with much less of
+the glow of imagery and the external coloring of poetry in the
+sentiments, language, and details. It is passion developed under its
+most profound and serious aspect; as in Isabella, we have the serious
+and the thoughtful, not the brilliant side of intellect. Both Helena and
+Isabel are distinguished by high mental powers, tinged with a melancholy
+sweetness; but in Isabella the serious and energetic part of the
+character is founded in religious principle; in Helena it is founded in
+deep passion.</p>
+
+<p>There never was, perhaps, a more beautiful picture of a woman's love,
+cherished in secret, not self-consuming in silent languishment&mdash;not
+pining in thought&mdash;not passive and "desponding over its idol"&mdash;but
+patient and hopeful, strong in its own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> intensity, and sustained by its
+own fond faith. The passion here reposes upon itself for all its
+interest; it derives nothing from art or ornament or circumstance; it
+has nothing of the picturesque charm or glowing romance of Juliet;
+nothing of the poetical splendor of Portia, or the vestal grandeur of
+Isabel. The situation of Helena is the most painful and degrading in
+which a woman can be placed. She is poor and lowly; she loves a man who
+is far her superior in rank, who repays her love with indifference, and
+rejects her hand with scorn. She marries him against his will; he leaves
+her with contumely on the day of their marriage, and makes his return to
+her arms depend on conditions apparently impossible.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> All the
+circumstances and details with which Helena is surrounded, are shocking
+to our feelings and wounding to our delicacy: and yet the beauty of the
+character is made to triumph over all: and Shakspeare, resting for all
+his effect on its internal resources and its genuine truth and
+sweetness, has not even availed himself of some extraneous advantages
+with which Helen is represented in the original story. She is the
+Giletta di Narbonna of Boccaccio. In the Italian tale, Giletta is the
+daughter of a celebrated physician attached to the court of Roussillon;
+she is represented as a rich heiress, who rejects many suitors of worth
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> rank, in consequence of her secret attachment to the young Bertram
+de Roussillon. She cures the King of France of a grievous distemper, by
+one of her fathers prescriptions; and she asks and receives as her
+reward the young Count of Roussillon as her wedded husband. He forsakes
+her on their wedding day, and she retires, by his order, to his
+territory of Roussillon. There she is received with honor, takes state
+upon her in her husband's absence as the "lady of the land," administers
+justice, and rules her lord's dominions so wisely and so well, that she
+is universally loved and reverenced by his subjects. In the mean time,
+the Count, instead of rejoining her, flies to Tuscany, and the rest of
+the story is closely followed in the drama. The beauty, wisdom, and
+royal demeanor of Giletta are charmingly described, as well as her
+fervent love for Bertram. But Helena, in the play, derives no dignity or
+interest from place or circumstance, and rests for all our sympathy and
+respect solely upon the truth and intensity of her affections. She is
+indeed represented to us as one</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whose beauty did astonish the survey<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of richest eyes: whose words all ears took captive;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose dear perfection, hearts that scorn'd to serve.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Humbly called mistress.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As her dignity is derived from mental power, without any alloy of pride,
+so her humility has a peculiar grace. If she feels and repines over her
+lowly birth, it is merely as an obstacle which separates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> her from the
+man she loves. She is more sensible to his greatness than her own
+littleness: she is continually looking from herself up to him, not from
+him down to herself. She has been bred up under the same roof with him;
+she has adored him from infancy. Her love is not "th' infection taken in
+at the eyes," nor kindled by youthful romance: it appears to have taken
+root in her being; to have grown with her years; and to have gradually
+absorbed all her thoughts and faculties, until her fancy "carries no
+favor in it but Bertram's," and "there is no living, none, if Bertram be
+away."</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not
+justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him
+with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr.
+Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena
+like a coward, and leaves her like a profligate. This is much too
+severe; in the first place, there is no necessity that we <i>should</i>
+reconcile ourselves to him. In this consists a part of the wonderful
+beauty of the character of Helena&mdash;a part of its womanly truth, which
+Johnson, who accuses Bertram, and those who so plausibly defend him, did
+not understand. If it never happened in real life, that a woman, richly
+endued with heaven's best gifts, loved with all her heart, and soul, and
+strength, a man unequal to or unworthy of her, and to whose faults
+herself alone was blind&mdash;I would give up the point: but if it be in
+nature, why should it not be in Shakspeare?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> We are not to look into
+Bertram's character for the spring and source of Helena's love for him,
+but into her own. She loves Bertram,&mdash;because she loves him!&mdash;a woman's
+reason,&mdash;but here, and sometimes elsewhere, all-sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>And although Helena tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction
+stronger than reason tells her that she does not: her love is like a
+religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted
+her thoughts is forever before her; to despair would be a crime,&mdash;it
+would be to cast herself away and die. The faith of her affection,
+combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things
+possible makes them so. It could say to the mountain of pride which
+stands between her and her hopes, "Be thou removed!" and it is removed.
+This is the solution of her behavior in the marriage scene, where
+Bertram, with obvious reluctance and disdain, accepts her hand, which
+the king, his feudal lord and guardian, forces on him. Her maidenly
+feeling is at first shocked, and she shrinks back&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That you are well restor'd, my lord, I am glad:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the rest go.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity, and dash the cup
+from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the
+treasure for which she has ventured both life and honor, when it is just
+within her grasp? Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> public disclosure of her preference, be thrust back into shame, "to
+blush out the remainder of her life," and die a poor, lost, scorned
+thing? This would be very pretty and interesting and characteristic in
+Viola or Ophelia, but not at all consistent with that high determined
+spirit, that moral energy, with which Helena is portrayed. Pride is the
+only obstacle opposed to her. She is not despised and rejected as a
+woman, but as a poor physician's daughter; and this, to an understanding
+so clear, so strong, so just as Helena's, is not felt as an unpardonable
+insult. The mere pride of rank and birth is a prejudice of which she
+cannot comprehend the force, because her mind towers so immeasurably
+above it; and, compared to the infinite love which swells within her own
+bosom, it sinks into nothing. She cannot conceive that he, to whom she
+has devoted her heart and truth, her soul, her life, her service, must
+not one day love her in return; and once her own beyond the reach of
+fate, that her cares, her caresses, her unwearied patient tenderness,
+will not at last "win her lord to look upon her"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">... For time will bring on summer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be as sweet as sharp.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is this fond faith which, hoping all things, enables her to endure
+all things:&mdash;which hallows and dignifies the surrender of her woman's
+pride, making it a sacrifice on which virtue and love throw a mingled
+incense.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The scene in which the Countess extorts from Helen the confession of her
+love, must, as an illustration, be given here. It is perhaps, the finest
+in the whole play, and brings out all the striking points of Helen's
+character, to which I have already alluded. We must not fail to remark,
+that though the acknowledgment is wrung from her with an agony which
+seems to convulse her whole being, yet when once she has given it solemn
+utterance, she recovers her presence of mind, and asserts her native
+dignity. In her justification of her feelings and her conduct, there is
+neither sophistry, nor self-deception, nor presumption, but a noble
+simplicity, combined with the most impassioned earnestness; while the
+language naturally rises in its eloquent beauty, as the tide of feeling,
+now first let loose from the bursting heart, comes pouring forth in
+words. The whole scene is wonderfully beautiful.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What is your pleasure, madam?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You know, Helen, I am a mother to you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mine honorable mistress.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">Nay, a mother;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why not a mother? When I said a mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methought you saw a serpent: what's in mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you start at it? I say, I am your mother:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And put you in the catalogue of those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That were enwombed mine: 'tis often seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A native slip to us from foreign seeds.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet I express to you a mother's care;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say, I am thy mother? What's the matter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That this distempered messenger of wet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The many-color'd Iris, rounds thine eye?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why?&mdash;that you are my daughter?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">That I am not.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I say, I am your mother.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Pardon, madam:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Count Roussillon cannot be my brother:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am from humble, he from honor'd name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No note upon my parents, his all noble:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My master, my dear lord he is: and I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His servant live, and will his vassal die:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He must not be my brother.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Nor I your mother?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You are my mother, madam; would you were<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indeed my mother, or, were you both our mothers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I care no more for, than I do for Heaven,<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So I were not his sister; can't no other,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I, your daughter, he must be my brother?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God shield, you mean it not! daughter and mother<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So strive upon your pulse: what, pale again?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My fear hath catch'd your fondness: now I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mystery of your loneliness, and find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 'tis gross<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You love my son; invention is asham'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the proclamation of thy passion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But tell me, then, 'tis so:&mdash;for, look, thy cheeks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confess it, one to the other.<br /></span>
+<span class="i27">Speak, is't so?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As heaven shall work in me for thy avail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To tell me truly.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i11">Good madam, pardon me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do you love my son?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Your pardon, noble mistress!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love you my son?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">Do not you love him, madam?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COUNTESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Go not about; my love hath in't a bond,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The state of your affection; for your passions<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have to the full appeach'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HELENA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Then I confess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That before you, and next unto high heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I love your son:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be not offended; for it hurts not him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he is loved of me; I follow him not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By any token of presumptuous suit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor would I have him till I do deserve him:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet never know how that desert should be.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know I love in vain; strive against hope;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I still pour in the waters of my love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Religious in mine error, I adore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun that looks upon his worshipper,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let not your hate encounter with my love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For loving where you do: but, if yourself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose aged honor cites a virtuous youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did ever in so true a flame of liking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was both herself and love; O then give pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her, whose state is such, that cannot choose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But lend and give, where she is sure to lose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That seeks not to find that her search implies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This old Countess of Roussillon is a charming sketch. She is like one of
+Titian's old women, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> still, amid their wrinkles, remind us of that
+soul of beauty and sensibility, which must have animated them when
+young. She is a fine contrast to Lady Capulet&mdash;benign, cheerful, and
+affectionate; she has a benevolent enthusiasm, which neither age, nor
+sorrow, nor pride can wear away. Thus, when she is brought to believe
+that Helen nourishes a secret attachment for her son, she observes&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even so it was with me when I was young!<br /></span>
+<span class="i28">This thorn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is the show and seal of nature's truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When love's strong passion is impress'd in youth.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her fond, maternal love for Helena, whom she has brought up: her pride
+in her good qualities overpowering all her own prejudices of rank and
+birth, are most natural in such a mind; and her indignation against her
+son, however strongly expressed, never forgets the mother.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">What angel shall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless <i>her</i> prayers, whom heaven delights to hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of greatest justice.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">Which of them both<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is dearest to me&mdash;I have no skill in sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make distinction.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is very skilfully, as well as delicately conceived. In rejecting
+those poetical and accidental advantages which Giletta possesses in the
+original<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> story, Shakspeare has substituted the beautiful character of
+the Countess; and he has contrived, that, as the character of Helena
+should rest for its internal charm on the depth of her own affections,
+so it should depend for its <i>external</i> interest on the affection she
+inspires. The enthusiastic tenderness of the old Countess, the
+admiration and respect of the King, Lafeu, and all who are brought in
+connection with her, make amends for the humiliating neglect of Bertram;
+and cast round Helen that collateral light, which Giletta in the story
+owes to other circumstances, striking indeed, and well imagined, but not
+(I think) so finely harmonizing with the character.</p>
+
+<p>It is also very natural that Helen, with the intuitive discernment of a
+pure and upright mind, and the penetration of a quick-witted woman,
+should be the first to detect the falsehood and cowardice of the boaster
+Parolles, who imposes on every one else.</p>
+
+<p>It has been remarked, that there is less of poetical imagery in this
+play than in many of the others. A certain solidity in Helen's character
+takes place of the ideal power; and with consistent truth of keeping,
+the same predominance of feeling over fancy, of the reflective over the
+imaginative faculty, is maintained through the whole dialogue. Yet the
+finest passages in the serious scenes are those appropriated to her;
+they are familiar and celebrated as quotations, but fully to understand
+their beauty and truth, they should be considered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> relatively to her
+character and situation; thus, when in speaking of Bertram, she says,
+"that he is one to whom she wishes well," the consciousness of the
+disproportion between her words and her feelings draws from her this
+beautiful and affecting observation, so just in itself, and so true to
+her situation, and to the sentiment which fills her whole heart:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">'Tis pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wishing well had not a body in't<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which might be felt: that we the poorer born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might with effects of them follow our friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And act what we must only think, which never<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Returns us thanks.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Some of her general reflections have a sententious depth and a
+contemplative melancholy, which remind us of Isabella:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our remedies oft in themselves do lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Impossible be strange events to those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What hath been cannot be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He that of greatest works is finisher,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft does them by the weakest minister;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When judges have been babes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oft expectation fails, and most oft there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where most it promises; and oft it hits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her sentiments in the same manner are remarkable for the union of
+profound sense with the most passionate feeling; and when her language
+is figurative, which is seldom, the picture presented to us is
+invariably touched either with a serious, a lofty, or a melancholy
+beauty. For instance:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">It were all one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I should love a bright particular star,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And think to wed it&mdash;he's so far above me.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And when she is brought to choose a husband from among the young lords
+at the court, her heart having already made its election, the
+strangeness of that very privilege for which she had ventured all,
+nearly overpowers her, and she says beautifully:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The blushes on my cheeks thus whisper me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"We blush that thou shouldst choose;&mdash;but be refused,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the white death sit on that cheek for ever<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'll ne'er come there again!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In her soliloquy after she has been forsaken by Bertram, the beauty lies
+in the intense feeling, the force and simplicity of the expressions.
+There is little imagery, and wherever it occurs, it is as bold as it is
+beautiful, and springs out of the energy of the sentiment, and the
+pathos of the situation. She has been reading his cruel letter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Till I have no wife I have nothing in France.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis bitter!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing in France, until he has no wife!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt have none, Roussillon, none in France,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That chase thee from thy country, and expose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those tender limbs of thine to the event<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the none-sparing war? And is it I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ride upon the violent speed of fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fly with false aim! move the still-piercing air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whoever charges on his forward breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am the caitiff that do hold him to it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though I kill him not, I am the cause<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His death was so effected; better 'twere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I met the ravin lion when he roared<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That all the miseries which nature owes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were mine at once.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">No, no, although<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The air of paradise did fan the house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And angels officed all; I will be gone.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Though I cannot go the length of those who have defended Bertram on
+almost every point, still I think the censure which Johnson has passed
+on the character is much too severe. Bertram is certainly not a pattern
+hero of romance, but full of faults such as we meet with every day in
+men of his age and class. He is a bold, ardent, self-willed youth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>, just
+dismissed into the world from domestic indulgence, with an excess of
+aristocratic and military pride, but not without some sense of true
+honor and generosity. I have lately read a defence of Bertram's
+character, written with much elegance and plausibility. "The young
+Count," says this critic, "comes before us possessed of a good heart,
+and of no mean capacity, but with a haughtiness which threatens to dull
+the kinder passions, and to cloud the intellect. This is the inevitable
+consequence of an illustrious education. The glare of his birthright has
+dazzled his young faculties. Perhaps the first words he could
+distinguish were from the important nurse, giving elaborate directions
+about his lordship's pap. As soon as he could walk, a crowd of
+submissive vassals doffed their caps, and hailed his first appearance on
+his legs. His spelling book had the arms of the family emblazoned on the
+cover. He had been accustomed to hear himself called the great, the
+mighty son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A
+succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion;
+and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in
+his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible.
+To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win
+fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the
+great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality
+with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them
+alone for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> world's observance. Thus in his own person he discovers
+there is something better than mere hereditary honors; and his heart is
+prepared to acknowledge that the entire devotion of a Helen's love is of
+more worth than the court-bred smiles of a princess."<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should
+revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or
+that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose
+despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens
+him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit
+himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the
+time to be called <i>cowardice</i>. Such forced marriages were not uncommon
+even in our own country, when the right of wardship, now vested in the
+Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel
+despotism by the sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old ballad, in which the king bestows a maid of low degree
+on a noble of his court, and the undisguised scorn and reluctance of the
+knight and the pertinacity of the lady, are in point.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He brought her down full forty pound<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tyed up within a glove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Fair maid, I'll give the same to thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Go seek another love."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O I'll have none of your gold," she said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Nor I'll have none of your fee;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But your fair bodye I must have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The king hath granted me."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir William ran and fetched her then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Five hundred pounds in gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saying, "Fair maid, take this to thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My fault will ne'er be told."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Tis not the gold that shall me tempt,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">These words then answered she;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"But your own bodye I must have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The king hath granted me."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Would I had drank the water clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When I did drink the wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather than my shepherd's brat<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Should be a ladye of mine!"<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Bertram's disgust at the tyranny which has made his freedom the payment
+of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not
+towards him&mdash;whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown
+and untried&mdash;might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her
+on the very day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry
+boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily
+defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him.
+The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not,
+indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his
+misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> withstanding the
+clever defence that has been made for him, he has our pardon rather than
+our sympathy; and for mine own part, I could find it easier to love
+Bertram as Helena does, than to excuse him; her love for him is his best
+excuse.</p>
+
+
+<h3>PERDITA.</h3>
+
+<p>In Viola and Perdita the distinguishing traits are the same&mdash;sentiment
+and elegance; thus we associate them together, though nothing can be
+more distinct to the fancy than the Doric grace of Perdita, compared to
+the romantic sweetness of Viola. They are created out of the same
+materials, and are equal to each other in the tenderness, delicacy, and
+poetical beauty of the conception. They are both more imaginative than
+passionate; but Perdita is the more imaginative of the two. She is the
+union of the pastoral and romantic with the classical and poetical, as
+if a dryad of the woods had turned shepherdess. The perfections with
+which the poet has so lavishly endowed her, sit upon her with a certain
+careless and picturesque grace, "as though they had fallen upon her
+unawares." Thus Belph&oelig;be, in the Fairy Queen, issues from the
+flowering forest with hair and garments all besprinkled with the leaves
+and blossoms they had entangled in their flight; and so arrayed by
+chance and "heedless hap," takes all hearts with "stately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> presence and
+with princely port,"&mdash;most like to Perdita!</p>
+
+<p>The story of Florizel and Perdita is but an episode in the "Winter's
+Tale;" and the character of Perdita is properly kept subordinate to that
+of her mother, Hermione: yet the picture is perfectly finished in every
+part;&mdash;Juliet herself is not more firmly and distinctly drawn. But the
+coloring in Perdita is more silvery light and delicate; the pervading
+sentiment more touched with the ideal; compared with Juliet, she is like
+a Guido hung beside a Georgione, or one of Paesiello's airs heard after
+one of Mozart's.</p>
+
+<p>The qualities which impart to Perdita her distinct individuality, are
+the beautiful combination of the pastoral with the elegant&mdash;of
+simplicity with elevation&mdash;of spirit with sweetness. The exquisite
+delicacy of the picture is apparent. To understand and appreciate its
+effective truth and nature, we should place Perdita beside some of the
+nymphs of Arcadia, or the Chloris' and Sylvias of the Italian pastorals,
+who, however graceful in themselves, when opposed to Perdita, seem to
+melt away into mere poetical abstractions;&mdash;as, in Spenser, the fair but
+fictitious Florimel, which the subtle enchantress had moulded out of
+snow, "vermeil tinctured," and informed with an airy spirit, that knew
+"all wiles of woman's wits," fades and dissolves away, when placed next
+to the real Florimel, in her warm, breathing, human loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>Perdita does not appear till the fourth act, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> the whole of the
+character is developed in the course of a single scene, (the third,)
+with a completeness of effect which leaves nothing to be
+required&mdash;nothing to be supplied. She is first introduced in the
+dialogue between herself and Florizel, where she compares her own lowly
+state to his princely rank, and expresses her fears of the issue of
+their unequal attachment. With all her timidity and her sense of the
+distance which separates her from her lover, she breathes not a single
+word which could lead us to impugn either her delicacy or her dignity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FLORIZEL.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These your unusual weeds to each part of you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do give a life&mdash;no shepherdess, but Flora<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peering in April's front; this your sheep-shearing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is as the meeting of the petty gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you the queen on't.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PERDITA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir, my gracious lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To chide at your extremes it not becomes me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O pardon that I name them: your high self,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a swain's bearing; and me, poor lowly maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most goddess-like prank'd up:&mdash;but that our feasts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every mess have folly, and the feeders<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Digest it with a custom, I should blush<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see you so attired; sworn, I think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To show myself a glass.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The impression of her perfect beauty and airy elegance of demeanor is
+conveyed in two exquisite passages:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">What you do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd have you do it ever. When you sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray so, and for the ordering your affairs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No other function.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">I take thy hand; this hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As soft as dove's down, and as white as it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The artless manner in which her innate nobility of soul shines forth
+through her pastoral disguise, is thus brought before us at once:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But smacks of something greater than herself;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too noble for this place.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her natural loftiness of spirit breaks out where she is menaced and
+reviled by the King, as one whom his son has degraded himself by merely
+looking on; she bears the royal frown without quailing; but the moment
+he is gone, the immediate recollection of herself, and of her humble
+state, of her hapless love, is full of beauty, tenderness, and nature:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Even here undone!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was much afeard: for once or twice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was about to speak; and tell him plainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The self-same sun, that shines upon his court<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hides not his visage from our cottage, but<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looks on alike.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Will't please, you Sir, be gone?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of your own state take care; this dream of mine&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being now awake&mdash;I'll queen it no inch further,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But milk my ewes, and weep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i9">How often have I told you 'twould be thus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How often said, my dignity would last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But till 'twere known!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FLORIZEL.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">It cannot fail, but by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The violation of my faith; and then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be thereat glean'd! for all the sun sees, or<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To thee, my fair beloved!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Perdita has another characteristic, which lends to the poetical delicacy
+of the delineation a certain strength and moral elevation, which is
+peculiarly striking. It is that sense of truth and rectitude, that
+upright simplicity of mind, which disdains all crooked and indirect
+means, which would not stoop for an instant to dissemblance, and is
+mingled with a noble confidence in her love and in her lover. In this
+spirit is her answer to Camilla, who says, courtier like,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Besides, you know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prosperity's the very bond of love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose fresh complexion, and whose heart together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Affliction alters.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To which she replies,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">One of these is true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I think, affliction may subdue the cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But not take in the mind.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In that elegant scene where she receives the guests at the
+sheep-shearing, and distributes the flowers, there is in the full flow
+of the poetry, a most beautiful and striking touch of individual
+character: but here it is impossible to mutilate the dialogue.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Reverend sirs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeming and savor all the winter long;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grace and remembrance be to you both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And welcome to our shearing!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLIXENES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Shepherdess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(A fair one are you,) well you fit our ages<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With flowers of winter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PERDITA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Sir, the year growing ancient,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are our carnations, and streaked gilliflowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To get slips of them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLIXENES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Wherefore, gentle maiden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do you neglect them?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PERDITA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">For I have heard it said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is an art, which in their piedness, shares<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With great creating nature.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLIXENES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i11">Say there be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet nature is made better by no mean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A gentle scion to the wildest stock;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make conceive a bark of baser kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By bud of nobler race. This is an art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which does mend nature, change it rather; but<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The art itself is nature.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PERDITA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">So it is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLIXENES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And do not call them bastards.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PERDITA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">I'll not put<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more than were I painted, I would wish<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This youth should say 'twere well.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It has been well remarked of this passage, that Perdita does not attempt
+to answer the reasoning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> of Polixenes: she gives up the argument, but,
+woman-like, retains her own opinion, or rather, her sense of right,
+unshaken by his sophistry. She goes on in a strain of poetry, which
+comes over the soul like music and fragrance mingled: we seem to inhale
+the blended odors of a thousand flowers, till the sense faints with
+their sweetness; and she concludes with a touch of passionate sentiment,
+which melts into the very heart:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i17">O Proserpina!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Dis's wagon! daffodils,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That come before the swallow dares, and take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That die unmarried, ere they can behold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright Ph&oelig;bus in his strength, a malady<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To strew him o'er and o'er.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FLORIZEL.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">What! like a corse?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PERDITA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No, like a bank, for Love to lie and play on;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not like a corse: or if,&mdash;not to be buried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But quick, and in mine arms!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This love of truth, this <i>conscientiousness</i>, which forms so distinct a
+feature in the character of Perdita,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> and mingles with its picturesque
+delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, is maintained consistently to
+the last. When the two lovers fly together from Bohemia, and take refuge
+in the court of Leontes, the real father of Perdita, Florizel presents
+himself before the king with a feigned tale, in which he has been
+artfully instructed by the old counsellor Camillo. During this scene,
+Perdita does not utter a word. In the strait in which they are placed,
+she cannot deny the story which Florizel relates&mdash;she will not confirm
+it. Her silence, in spite of all the compliments and greetings of
+Leontes, has a peculiar and characteristic grace and, at the conclusion
+of the scene, when they are betrayed, the truth bursts from her as if
+instinctively, and she exclaims, with emotion,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The heavens set spies upon us&mdash;will not have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our contract celebrated.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After this scene, Perdita says very little. The description of her
+grief, while listening to the relation of her mother's death,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"One of the prettiest touches of all, was, when at the
+relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came
+by it, how attentiveness wounded her daughter: till from one
+sign of dolor to another, she did, with an <i>alas</i>! I would
+fain say, bleed  tears:"&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p>her deportment too as she stands gazing on the statue of Hermione, fixed
+in wonder, admiration and sorrow, as if she too were marble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">O royal piece!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's magic in thy majesty, which has<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy admiring daughter ta'en the spirits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Standing like stone beside thee!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>are touches of character conveyed indirectly, and which serve to give a
+more finished effect to this beautiful picture.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VIOLA.</h3>
+
+<p>As the innate dignity of Perdita pierces through her rustic disguise, so
+the exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs over her masculine attire.
+Viola is, perhaps, in a degree less elevated and ideal than Perdita, but
+with a touch of sentiment more profound and heart-stirring; she is
+"deep-learned in the lore of love,"&mdash;at least theoretically,&mdash;and speaks
+as masterly on the subject as Perdita does of flowers.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DUKE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">How dost thou like this tune?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VIOLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It gives a very echo to the seat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where love is thron'd.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If I did love you in my master's flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With such a suffering, such a deadly life&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">in your denial I would find no sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not understand it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OLIVIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Why, what would you do?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VIOLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Make me a willow cabin at your gate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And call upon my soul within the house;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Write loyal cantons<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> of contemned love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sing them loud even in the dead of night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holla your name to the reverberate hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make babbling gossip of the air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cry out, Olivia! O you should not rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the elements of air and earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But you should pity me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OLIVIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i17">You might do much.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The situation and the character of Viola have been censured for their
+want of consistency and probability; it is therefore worth while to
+examine how far this criticism is true. As for her situation in the
+drama, (of which she is properly the heroine,) it is shortly this. She
+is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria: she is alone and without
+protection in a strange country. She wishes to enter into the service of
+the Countess Olivia; but she is assured that this is impossible; "for
+the lady having recently lost an only and beloved brother, has abjured
+the sight of men, has shut herself up in her palace, and will admit no
+kind of suit." In this perplexity Viola remembers to have heard her
+father speak with praise and admiration of Orsino, the Duke of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> the
+country; and having ascertained that he is not married, and that
+therefore his court is not a proper asylum for her in her feminine
+character, she attires herself in the disguise of a page, as the best
+protection against uncivil comments, till she can gain some tidings of
+her brother.</p>
+
+<p>If we carry our thoughts back to a romantic and chivalrous age, there is
+surely sufficient probability here for all the purposes of poetry. To
+pursue the thread of Viola's destiny;&mdash;she is engaged in the service of
+the Duke, whom she finds "fancy-sick" for the love of Olivia. We are
+left to infer, (for so it is hinted in the first scene,) that this
+Duke&mdash;who with his accomplishments, and his personal attractions, his
+taste for music, his chivalrous tenderness, and his unrequited love, is
+really a very fascinating and poetical personage, though a little
+passionate and fantastic&mdash;had already made some impression on Viola's
+imagination; and when she comes to play the confidante, and to be loaded
+with favors and kindness in her assumed character, that she should be
+touched by a passion made up of pity, admiration, gratitude, and
+tenderness, does not, I think, in any way detract from the genuine
+sweetness and delicacy of her character, for "<i>she never told her
+love</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Now all this, as the critic wisely observes, may not present a very just
+picture of life; and it may also fail to impart any moral lesson for the
+especial profit of well-bred young ladies; but is it not in truth and in
+nature? Did it ever fail to charm or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> to interest, to seize on the
+coldest fancy, to touch the most insensible heart?</p>
+
+<p>Viola then is the chosen favorite of the enamoured Duke, and becomes his
+messenger to Olivia, and the interpreter of his sufferings to that
+inaccessible beauty. In her character of a youthful page, she attracts
+the favor of Olivia, and excites the jealousy of her lord. The situation
+is critical and delicate; but how exquisitely is the character of Viola
+fitted to her part, carrying her through the ordeal with all the inward
+and spiritual grace of modesty. What beautiful propriety in the
+distinction drawn between Rosalind and Viola! The wild sweetness, the
+frolic humor which sports free and unblamed amid the shades of Ardennes,
+would ill become Viola, whose playfulness is assumed as part of her
+disguise as a court-page, and is guarded by the strictest delicacy. She
+has not, like Rosalind, a saucy enjoyment in her own incognito; her
+disguise does not sit so easily upon her; her heart does not beat freely
+under it. As in the old ballad, where "Sweet William" is detected
+weeping in secret over her "man's array,"<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> so in Viola, a sweet
+consciousness of her feminine nature is for ever breaking through her
+masquerade:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And on her cheek is ready with a blush<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The youthful Ph&oelig;bus.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+<p>She plays her part well, but never forgets nor allows us to forget, that
+she is playing a part.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OLIVIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Are you a comedian?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VIOLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No, my profound heart! and yet by the very fangs of<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">malice I swear, I am not that I play!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And thus she comments on it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Disguise, I see thou art wickedness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein the pregnant enemy does much;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How easy is it for the proper false<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The feminine cowardice of Viola, which will not allow her even to affect
+a courage becoming her attire,&mdash;her horror at the idea of drawing a
+sword, is very natural and characteristic; and produces a most humorous
+effect, even at the very moment it charms and interests us.</p>
+
+<p>Contrasted with the deep, silent, patient love of Viola for the Duke, we
+have the lady-like wilfulness of Olivia; and her sudden passion, or
+rather fancy, for the disguised page, takes so beautiful a coloring of
+poetry and sentiment, that we do not think her forward. Olivia is like a
+princess of romance, and has all the privileges of one; she is, like
+Portia, high born and high bred, mistress over her servants&mdash;but not
+like Portia, "queen o'er herself." She has never in her life been
+opposed; the first contradiction, therefore, rouses all the woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> in
+her, and turns a caprice into a headlong passion; yet she apologizes for
+herself.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have said too much unto a heart of stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And laid mine honor too unchary out;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's something in me that reproves my fault;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But such a headstrong potent fault it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it but mocks reproof!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And in the midst of her self-abandonment, never allows us to contemn,
+even while we pity her:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What shall you ask of me that I'll deny.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That honor, saved, may upon asking give?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The distance of rank which separates the Countess from the youthful
+page&mdash;the real sex of Viola&mdash;the dignified elegance of Olivia's
+deportment, except where passion gets the better of her pride&mdash;her
+consistent coldness towards the Duke&mdash;the description of that "smooth,
+discreet, and stable bearing" with which she rules her household&mdash;her
+generous care for her steward Malvolio, in the midst of her own
+distress,&mdash;all these circumstances raise Olivia in our fancy, and render
+her caprice for the page a source of amusement and interest, not a
+subject of reproach. <i>Twelfth Night</i> is a genuine comedy;&mdash;a perpetual
+spring of the gayest and the sweetest fancies. In artificial society men
+and women are divided into castes and classes, and it is rarely that
+extremes in character or manners can approximate. To blend into one
+harmonious picture the utmost grace and refinement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> of sentiment, and
+the broadest effects of humor; the most poignant wit, and the most
+indulgent benignity;&mdash;in short, to bring before us in the same scene,
+Viola and Olivia, with Malvolio and Sir Toby, belonged only to Nature
+and to Shakspeare.</p>
+
+
+<h3>OPHELIA.</h3>
+
+<p>A woman's affections, however strong, are sentiments, when they run
+smooth; and become passions only when opposed.</p>
+
+<p>In Juliet and Helena, love is depicted as a passion, properly so called;
+that is, a natural impulse, throbbing in the heart's blood, and mingling
+with the very sources of life;&mdash;a sentiment more or less modified by the
+imagination; a strong abiding principle and motive, excited by
+resistance, acting upon the will, animating all the other faculties, and
+again influenced by them. This is the most complex aspect of love, and
+in these two characters, it is depicted in colors at once the most
+various, the most intense, and the most brilliant.</p>
+
+<p>In Viola and Perdita, love, being less complex, appears more refined;
+more a sentiment than a passion&mdash;a compound of impulse and fancy, while
+the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The
+same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer
+Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, love
+takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the whole piece; it
+is scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a
+reverie, which a fairy spell dissolves or fixes at pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as
+combined with female nature; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has
+portrayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a
+manner latent, if existing; in whom love is an unconscious impulse, and
+imagination lends the external charm and hue, not the internal power; in
+whom the feminine character appears resolved into its very elementary
+principles&mdash;as modesty, grace,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> tenderness. <i>Without</i> these a woman
+is no woman, but a thing which, luckily, wants a name yet; <i>with</i> these,
+though every other faculty were passive or deficient, she might still be
+herself. These are the inherent qualities with which God sent us into
+the world: they may be perverted by a bad education&mdash;they may be
+obscured by harsh and evil destinies&mdash;they may be overpowered by the
+development of some particular mental power, the predominance of some
+passion&mdash;but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> they are never wholly crushed out of the woman's soul,
+while it retains those faculties which render it responsible to its
+Creator. Shakspeare then has shown us that these elemental feminine
+qualities, modesty, grace, tenderness, when expanded under genial
+influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature:
+such is Miranda. When thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and
+amid the trammels and corruptions of society, without energy to resist,
+or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation.</p>
+
+<p>Ophelia&mdash;poor Ophelia! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast
+among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the
+thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before
+her! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the
+wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear&mdash;like the
+exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms&mdash;like the
+snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth&mdash;like
+the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses&mdash;such
+is the character of Ophelia: so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a
+touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and
+worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply.
+The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret
+which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as
+upon her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> own. Her sorrows ask not words but tears; and her madness has
+precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of
+real insanity, if brought before us: we feel inclined to turn away, and
+veil our eyes in reverential pity and too painful sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond every character that Shakspeare has drawn, (Hamlet alone
+excepted,) that of Ophelia makes us forget the poet in his own creation.
+Whenever we bring her to mind, it is with the same exclusive sense of
+her real existence, without reference to the wondrous power which called
+her into life. The effect (and what an effect!) is produced by means so
+simple, by strokes so few, and so unobtrusive, that we take no thought
+of them. It is so purely natural and unsophisticated, yet so profound in
+its pathos, that, as Hazlitt observes, it takes us back to the old
+ballads; we forget that, in its perfect artlessness, it is the supreme
+and consummate triumph of art.</p>
+
+<p>The situation of Ophelia in the story,<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> is that of a young girl who,
+at an early age, is brought from a life of privacy into the circle of a
+court&mdash;a court such as we read of in those early times, at once rude,
+magnificent, and corrupted. She is placed immediately about the person
+of the queen, and is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> apparently her favorite attendant. The affection
+of the wicked queen for this gentle and innocent creature, is one of
+those beautiful redeeming touches, one of those penetrating glances into
+the secret springs of natural and feminine feeling which we find only in
+Shakspeare. Gertrude, who is not so wholly abandoned but that there
+remains within her heart some sense of the virtue she has forfeited,
+seems to look with a kind yet melancholy complacency on the lovely being
+she has destined for the bride of her son; and the scene in which she is
+introduced as scattering flowers on the grave of Ophelia, is one of
+those effects of contrast in poetry, in character and in feeling, at
+once natural and unexpected; which fill the eye, and make the heart
+swell and tremble within itself&mdash;like the nightingales singing in the
+grove of the Furies in Sophocles.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>Again, in the father of Ophelia, the Lord Chamberlain Polonius&mdash;the
+shrewd, wary, subtle, pompous, garrulous old courtier&mdash;have we not the
+very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it
+could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as
+possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when
+she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect
+purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed
+on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it
+necessary to warn her simplicity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> give her lessons of worldly wisdom,
+and instruct her "to be scanter of her maiden presence," for that
+Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the
+better to beguile," we feel at once that it comes too late; for from the
+moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and
+vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny.
+Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young,
+and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct
+which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it was&mdash;and I watched
+it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird hither and thither, with its
+silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a
+few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewildered, into the
+turbid wave beneath, and was swallowed up forever. It reminded me then
+of the fate of Ophelia; and now when I think of her, I see again before
+me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm.
+It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence,
+and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with
+such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her
+person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own
+feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she
+has strength to bear them; and love and grief together rend and shatter
+the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a
+crystal vase.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> She says very little, and what she does say seems rather
+intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart; yet in those
+few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and
+with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul
+with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems
+innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the
+cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and
+Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as
+distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of the north,
+whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more
+conscious of being loved than of loving; and yet, alas! loving in the
+silent depths of her young heart far more than she is loved.</p>
+
+<p>When her brother warns her against Hamlet's importunities&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hold it a fashion, and a toy of blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A violet in the youth of primy nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The perfume and the suppliance of a minute&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she replies with a kind of half consciousness&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i9">No more but so?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LAERTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i5">Think it no more.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>He concludes his admonition with that most beautiful passage, in which
+the soundest sense, the most excellent advice, is conveyed in a strain
+of the most exquisite poetry.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The chariest maid is prodigal enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If she unmask her beauty to the moon:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The canker galls the infants of the spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Contagious blastments are most imminent.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She answers with the same modesty, yet with a kind of involuntary
+avowal, that his fears are not altogether without cause:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall the effect of this good lesson keep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And recks not his own read.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When her father, immediately afterwards, catechizes her on the same
+subject, he extorts from her, in short sentences, uttered with bashful
+reluctance, the confession of Hamlet's love for her, but not a word of
+her love for him. The whole scene is managed with inexpressible
+delicacy: it is one of those instances, common in Shakspeare, in which
+we are allowed to perceive what is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> passing in the mind of a person,
+without any consciousness on their part. Only Ophelia herself is unaware
+that while she is admitting the extent of Hamlet's courtship, she is
+also betraying how deep is the impression it has made, how entire the
+love with which it is returned.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLONIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What is between you? give me up the truth!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OPHELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his affection to me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLONIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Affection! poh! you speak like a green girl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unsifted in such perilous circumstances.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OPHELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I do not know, my lord, what I should think.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLONIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you have taken these tenders for true pay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wronging it thus) you'll tender me a fool.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OPHELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My lord, he hath importun'd me with love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In honorable fashion.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLONIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OPHELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With almost all the holy vows of heaven.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLONIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">This is for all:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">would not, in plain terms, from this time forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you so slander any moment's leisure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OPHELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall obey, my lord.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Besides its intrinsic loveliness, the character of Ophelia has a
+relative beauty and delicacy when considered in relation to that of
+Hamlet, which is the delineation of a man of genius in contest with the
+powers of this world. The weakness of volition, the instability of
+purpose, the contemplative sensibility, the subtlety of thought, always
+shrinking from action, and always occupied in "thinking too precisely on
+the event," united to immense intellectual power, render him unspeakably
+interesting: and yet I doubt whether any woman, who would have been
+capable of understanding and appreciating such a man, would have
+passionately loved him. Let us for a moment imagine any one of
+Shakspeare's most beautiful and striking female characters in immediate
+connection with Hamlet. The gentle Desdemona would never have despatched
+her household cares in haste, to listen to his philosophical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+speculations, his dark conflicts with his own spirit. Such a woman as
+Portia would have studied him; Juliet would have pitied him; Rosalind
+would have turned him over with a smile to the melancholy Jacques;
+Beatrice would have laughed at him outright; Isabel would have reasoned
+with him; Miranda could but have wondered at him: but Ophelia loves him.
+Ophelia, the young, fair, inexperienced girl, facile to every
+impression, fond in her simplicity, and credulous in her innocence,
+loves Hamlet; not from what he is in himself, but for that which appears
+to her&mdash;the gentle, accomplished prince, upon whom she has been
+accustomed to see all eyes fixed in hope and admiration, "the expectancy
+and rose of the fair state," the star of the court in which she moves,
+the first who has ever whispered soft vows in her ear: and what can be
+more natural?</p>
+
+<p>But it is not singular, that while no one entertains a doubt of
+Ophelia's love for Hamlet&mdash;though never once expressed by herself, or
+asserted by others, in the whole course of the drama&mdash;yet it is a
+subject of dispute whether Hamlet loves Ophelia, though she herself
+allows that he had importuned her with love, and "had given countenance
+to his suit with almost all the holy vows of heaven;" although in the
+letter which Polonius intercepted, Hamlet declares that he loves her
+"best, O most best!"&mdash;though he asserts himself, with the wildest
+vehemence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I lov'd Ophelia; forty thousand brothers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could not, with all their quantity of love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make up my sum:<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;still I have heard the question canvassed; I have even heard it denied
+that Hamlet did love Ophelia. The author of the finest remarks I have
+yet seen on the play and character of Hamlet, leans to this opinion. As
+the observations I allude to are contained in a periodical publication,
+and may not be at hand for immediate reference, I shall indulge myself
+(and the reader no less) by quoting the opening paragraphs of this noble
+piece of criticism, upon the principle, and for the reason I have
+already stated in the introduction.</p>
+
+<p>"We take up a play, and ideas come rolling in upon us, like waves
+impelled by a strong wind. There is in the ebb and flow of Shakspeare's
+soul all the grandeur of a mighty operation of nature; and when we think
+or speak of him, it should be with humility where we do not understand,
+and a conviction that it is rather to the narrowness of our own mind
+than to any failing in the art of the great magician, that we ought to
+attribute any sense of weakness, which may assail us during the
+contemplation of his created worlds.</p>
+
+<p>"Shakspeare himself, had he even been as great a critic as a poet, could
+not have written a regular dissertation upon Hamlet. So ideal, and yet
+so real an existence, could have been shadowed out only in the colors of
+poetry. When a character deals solely or chiefly with this world and its
+events<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> when it acts and is acted upon by objects that have a palpable
+existence, we see it distinctly, as if it were cast in a material mould,
+as if it partook of the fixed and settled lineaments of the things on
+which it lavishes its sensibilities and its passions. We see in such
+cases the vision of an individual soul, as we see the vision of an
+individual countenance. We can describe both, and can let a stranger
+into our knowledge. But how tell in words, so pure, so fine, so ideal an
+abstraction as Hamlet? We can, indeed, figure to ourselves generally his
+princely form, that outshone all others in manly beauty, and adorn it
+with the consummation of all liberal accomplishment. We can behold in
+every look, every gesture, every motion, the future king,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' observ'd of all observers.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"But when we would penetrate into his spirit, meditate on those things
+on which he meditates, accompany him even unto the brink of eternity,
+fluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, soar with him into the
+purest and serenest regions of human thought, feel with him the curse of
+beholding iniquity, and the troubled delight of thinking on innocence,
+and gentleness, and beauty; come with him from all the glorious dreams
+cherished by a noble spirit in the halls of wisdom and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> philosophy, of a
+sudden into the gloomy courts of sin, and incest, and murder; shudder
+with him over the broken and shattered fragments of all the fairest
+creations of his fancy,&mdash;be borne with him at once, from calm, and
+lofty, and delighted speculations, into the very heart of fear, and
+horror, and tribulations,&mdash;have the agonies and the guilt of our mortal
+world brought into immediate contact with the world beyond the grave,
+and the influence of an awful shadow hanging forever on our
+thoughts,&mdash;be present at a fearful combat between all the stirred-up
+passions of humanity in the soul of man, a combat in which one and all
+of these passions are alternately victorious and overcome; I say, that
+when we are thus placed and acted upon, how is it possible to draw a
+character of this sublime drama, or of the mysterious being who is its
+moving spirit? In him, his character and situation, there is a
+concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity. There is
+scarcely a trait of frailty or of grandeur, which may have endeared to
+us our most beloved friends in real life, that is not to be found in
+Hamlet. Undoubtedly Shakspeare loved him beyond all his other creations.
+Soon as he appears on the stage we are satisfied: when absent we long
+for his return. This is the only play which exists almost altogether in
+the character of one single person. Who ever knew a Hamlet in real life?
+yet who, ideal as the character is, feels not its reality? This is the
+wonder. We love him not, we think of him, not because he is witty,
+because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> he was melancholy, because he was filial; but we love him
+because he existed, and was himself. This is the sum total of the
+impression. I believe that, of every other character either in tragic or
+epic poetry, the story makes part of the conception; but of Hamlet, the
+deep and permanent interest is the conception of himself. This seems to
+belong, not to the character being more perfectly drawn, but to there
+being a more intense conception of individual human life than perhaps
+any other human composition. Here is a being with springs of thought,
+and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search. These springs rise
+from an unknown depth, and in that depth there seems to be a oneness of
+being which we cannot distinctly behold, but which we believe to be
+there; and thus irreconcilable circumstances, floating on the surface of
+his actions, have not the effect of making us doubt the truth of the
+general picture."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is all most admirable, most eloquent, most true! but the critic
+subsequently declares, that "there is nothing in Ophelia which could
+make her the object of an engrossing passion to so majestic a spirit as
+Hamlet."</p>
+
+<p>Now, though it be with reluctance, and even considerable mistrust of
+myself, that I differ from a critic who can thus feel and write, I do
+not think so:&mdash;I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for
+Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> the kind of love which such
+a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia.</p>
+
+<p>When the heathen would represent their Jove as clothed in all his
+Olympian terrors, they mounted him on the back of an eagle, and armed
+him with the lightnings; but when in Holy Writ the Supreme Being is
+described as coming in his glory, He is upborne on the wings of
+cherubim, and his emblem is the dove. Even so our blessed religion,
+which has revealed deeper mysteries in the human soul than ever were
+dreamt of by philosophy till she went hand-in-hand with faith, has
+taught us to pay that worship to the symbols of purity and innocence,
+which in darker times was paid to the manifestations of power: and
+therefore do I think that the mighty intellect, the capacious, soaring,
+penetrating genius of Hamlet may be represented, without detracting from
+its grandeur, as reposing upon the tender virgin innocence of Ophelia,
+with all that deep delight with which a superior nature contemplates the
+goodness which is at once perfect in itself, and of itself unconscious.
+That Hamlet regards Ophelia with this kind of tenderness,&mdash;that he loves
+her with a love as intense as can belong to a nature in which there is,
+(I think,) much more of contemplation and sensibility than action or
+passion&mdash;is the feeling and conviction with which I have always read the
+play of Hamlet.</p>
+
+<p>As to whether the mind of Hamlet be, or be not, touched with
+madness&mdash;this is another point at issue among critics, philosophers, ay,
+and physicians.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> To me it seems that he is not so far disordered as to
+cease to be a responsible human being&mdash;that were too pitiable: but
+rather that his mind is shaken from its equilibrium, and bewildered by
+the horrors of his situation&mdash;horrors which his fine and subtle
+intellect, his strong imagination, and his tendency to melancholy, at
+once exaggerate, and take from him the power either to endure, or "by
+opposing, end them." We do not see him as a lover, nor as Ophelia first
+beheld him; for the days when he importuned her with love were before
+the opening of the drama&mdash;before his father's spirit revisited the
+earth; but we behold him at once in a sea of troubles, of perplexities,
+of agonies, of terrors. Without remorse, he endures all its horrors;
+without guilt, he endures all its shame. A loathing of the crime he is
+called on to revenge, which revenge is again abhorrent to his nature,
+has set him at strife with himself; the supernatural visitation has
+perturbed his soul to its inmost depths; all things else, all interests,
+all hopes, all affections, appear as futile, when the majestic shadow
+comes lamenting from its place of torment "to shake him with thoughts
+beyond the reaches of his soul!" His love for Ophelia is then ranked by
+himself among those trivial, fond records which he has deeply sworn to
+erase from his heart and brain. He has no thought to link his terrible
+destiny with hers: he cannot marry her: he cannot reveal to her, young,
+gentle, innocent as she is, the terrific influences which have changed
+the whole current<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> of his life and purposes. In his distraction he
+overacts the painful part to which he had tasked himself; he is like
+that judge of the Areopagus, who being occupied with graver matters,
+flung from him the little bird which had sought refuge in his bosom, and
+with such angry violence, that unwittingly he killed it.</p>
+
+<p>In the scene with Hamlet,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> in which he madly outrages her and
+upbraids himself, Ophelia says very little: there are two short
+sentences in which she replies to his wild, abrupt discourse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">HAMLET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">I did love you once.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">OPHELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">HAMLET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">inocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">you not.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">OPHELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">I was the more deceived.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Those who ever heard Mrs. Siddons read the play of Hamlet, cannot forget
+the world of meaning, of love, of sorrow, of despair, conveyed in these
+two simple phrases. Here, and in the soliloquy afterwards, where she
+says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I of ladies most deject and wretched,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sucked the honey of his music vows,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>are the only allusions to herself and her own feelings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> in the course of
+the play; and these, uttered almost without consciousness on her own
+part, contain the revelation of a life of love, and disclose the secret
+burthen of a heart bursting with its own unuttered grief. She believes
+Hamlet crazed; she is repulsed, she is forsaken, she is outraged, where
+she had bestowed her young heart, with all its hopes and wishes; her
+father is slain by the hand of her lover, as it is supposed, in a
+paroxysm of insanity: she is entangled inextricably in a web of horrors
+which she cannot even comprehend, and the result seems inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Of her subsequent madness, what can be said? What an affecting&mdash;what an
+astonishing picture of a mind utterly, hopelessly wrecked!&mdash;past
+hope&mdash;past cure! There is the frenzy of excited passion&mdash;there is the
+madness caused by intense and continued thought&mdash;there is the delirium
+of fevered nerves; but Ophelia's madness is distinct from these: it is
+not the suspension, but the utter destruction of the reasoning powers;
+it is the total imbecility which, as medical people well know,
+frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance is
+frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is <i>insane</i>. Her sweet mind lies in
+fragments before us&mdash;a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies;
+her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to
+sadness&mdash;each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old
+ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her
+infancy&mdash;are all so true to the life, that we forget to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> wonder, and can
+only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture
+that we can endure to dwell upon it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She turns to favor and to prettiness.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That in her madness she should exchange her bashful silence for empty
+babbling, her sweet maidenly demeanor for the impatient restlessness
+that spurns at straws, and say and sing precisely what she never would
+or could have uttered had she been in possession of her reason, is so
+far from being an impropriety, that it is an additional stroke of
+nature. It is one of the symptoms of this species of insanity, as we are
+assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance in the case of a
+young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, and whose
+malady arose from a similar cause.</p>
+
+<p>The whole action of this play sweeps past us like a torrent, which
+hurries along in its dark and resistless course all the personages of
+the drama towards a catastrophe that is not brought about by human will,
+but seems like an abyss ready dug to receive them, where the good and
+the wicked are whelmed together.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> As the character of Hamlet has been
+compared, or rather contrasted, with the Greek Orestes, being like him,
+called on to avenge a crime by a crime, tormented by remorseful doubts,
+and pursued by distraction, so, to me, the character<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> of Ophelia bears a
+certain relation to that of the Greek Iphigenia,<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> with the same
+strong distinction between the classical and the romantic conception of
+the portrait. Iphigenia led forth to sacrifice, with her unresisting
+tenderness, her mournful sweetness, her virgin innocence, is doomed to
+perish by that relentless power, which has linked her destiny with
+crimes and contests, in which she has no part but as a sufferer; and
+even so, poor Ophelia, "divided from herself and her fair judgment,"
+appears here like a spotless victim offered up to the mysterious and
+inexorable fates.</p>
+
+<p>"For it is the property of crime to extend its mischiefs over innocence,
+as it is of virtue to extend its blessings over many that deserve them
+not, while frequently the author of one or the other is not, as far as
+we can see, either punished or rewarded."<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> But there's a heaven above
+us!</p>
+
+
+<h3>MIRANDA.</h3>
+
+<p>We might have deemed it impossible to go beyond Viola, Perdita, and
+Ophelia, as pictures of feminine beauty; to exceed the one in tender
+delicacy, the other in ideal grace, and the last in simplicity,&mdash;if
+Shakspeare had not done this; and he alone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> could have done it. Had he
+never created a Miranda, we should never have been made to feel how
+completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of
+womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these only;
+they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She is so
+perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but
+ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda&mdash;even one
+of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations&mdash;there is not one
+of them that could sustain the comparison for a moment; not one that
+would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into
+immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this "Eve of an
+enchanted Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>What, then, has Shakspeare done?&mdash;"O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the
+man!"&mdash;he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex;
+he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate
+spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural; and the
+only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is
+Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature
+of elemental light and air, that "ran upon the winds, rode the curl'd
+clouds, and in the colors of the rainbow lived," Miranda herself appears
+a palpable reality; a woman, "breathing thoughtful breath," a woman,
+walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> heart as
+frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of
+womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar
+grace. She resembles nothing upon earth; but do we therefore compare
+her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the
+fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain or the
+ocean?&mdash;oread or dryad fleet, sea-maid, or naiad of the stream? We
+cannot think of them together. Miranda is a consistent, natural, human
+being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace, and
+purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only is she
+exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she
+<i>could</i> not possibly be otherwise than as she is portrayed. She has
+never beheld one of her own sex; she has never caught from society one
+imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in
+her enchanted solitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and
+its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her
+father, the princely magician; her companions have been the rocks and
+woods, the many-shaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars; her
+playmates the ocean billows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran
+rippling to kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over
+her head, ministered duteous to her every wish, and presented before
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> pageants of beauty and grandeur. The very air, made vocal by her
+father's art, floated in music around her. If we can presuppose such a
+situation with all its circumstances, do we not behold in the character
+of Miranda not only the credible, but the natural, the necessary results
+of such a situation? She retains her woman's heart, for that is
+unalterable and inalienable, as a part of her being; but her deportment,
+her looks, her language, her thoughts&mdash;all these, from the supernatural
+and poetical circumstances around her, assume a cast of the pure ideal;
+and to us, who are in the secret of her human and pitying nature,
+nothing can be more charming and consistent than the effect which she
+produces upon others, who never having beheld any thing resembling her,
+approach her as "a wonder," as something celestial:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Be sure! the goddess on whom these airs attend!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">What is this maid?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is she the goddess who hath severed us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brought us thus together?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And Ferdinand exclaims, while gazing on her,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My spirits as in a dream are all bound up!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My father's loss, the weakness that I feel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To whom I am subdued, are but light to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might I but through my prison once a day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let liberty make use of, space enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I in such a prison.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Contrasted with the impression of her refined and dignified beauty, and
+its effect on all beholders, is Miranda's own soft simplicity, her
+virgin innocence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and
+language of society. It is most natural that in a being thus
+constituted, the first tears should spring from compassion, "suffering
+with those that she saw suffer:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">O the cry did knock<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perished.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had I been any god of power, I would<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It should the good ship so have swallowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the freighting souls within her;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and that her first sigh should be offered to a love at once fearless and
+submissive, delicate and fond. She has no taught scruples of honor like
+Juliet; no coy concealments like Viola; no assumed dignity standing in
+its own defence. Her bashfulness is less a quality than an instinct; it
+is like the self-folding of a flower, spontaneous and unconscious. I
+suppose there is nothing of the kind in poetry equal to the scene
+between Ferdinand and Miranda. In Ferdinand, who is a noble creature, we
+have all the chivalrous magnanimity with which man, in a high state of
+civilization, disguises his real superiority, and does humble homage to
+the being of whose destiny he disposes; while Miranda, the mere child of
+nature, is struck with wonder at her own new emotions. Only conscious of
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> own weakness as a woman, and ignorant of those usages of society
+which teach us to dissemble the real passion, and assume (and sometimes
+abuse) an unreal and transient power, she is equally ready to place her
+life, her love, her service beneath his feet.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Alas, now! pray you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Work not so hard: I would the lightning had<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoined to pile!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray set it down and rest you: when this burns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twill weep for having weary'd you. My father<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He's safe for these three hours.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">O most dear mistress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun will set before I shall discharge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What I must strive to do.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">If you'll sit down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll carry it to the pile.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">No, precious creature;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than you should such dishonor undergo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While I sit lazy by.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">It would become me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As well as it does you; and I should do it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With much more ease; for my good will is to it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yours against.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i23">You look wearily.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When you are by at night. I do beseech you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What is your name?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Miranda. O my father<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have broke your 'hest to say so!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Admir'd Miranda!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indeed the top of admiration; worth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have eyed with best regard: and many a time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I liked several women; never any<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With so full soul, but some defect in her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And put it to the foil. But you, O you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So perfect and so peerless, are created<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of every creature's best!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">I do not know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One of my sex: no woman's face remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mere that I may call men, than you, good friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my dear father. How features are abroad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(The jewel in my dower,) I would not wish<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any companion in the world but you;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor can imagination form a shape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Besides yourself, to like of&mdash;But I prattle<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Something too wildly, and my father's precepts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therein forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">I am, in my condition<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A prince, Miranda&mdash;I do think a king&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(I would, not so!) and would no more endure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This wooden slavery, than I would suffer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The very instant that I saw you, did<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart fly to your service; there resides,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make me slave to it; and for your sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Am I this patient log-man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">Do you love me?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And crown what I profess with kind event,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I speak true: if hollowly, invert<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What best is boded me, to mischief! I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do love, prize, honor you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">I am a fool,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To weep at what I am glad of.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">Wherefore weep you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What I desire to give; and much less take,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What I shall die to want&mdash;But this is trifling:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the more it seeks to hide itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am your wife, if you will marry me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You may deny me; but I'll be your servant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether you will or no!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /><br /></span>
+<span class="i26">My mistress, dearest!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I thus humble ever.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">My husband, then?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FERDINAND.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, with a heart as willing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MIRANDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till half an hour hence.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a
+lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with
+propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly
+claims her as "a thread of his own life&mdash;nay, that for which he lives."
+Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral
+worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> is one of the most sublime
+visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand,
+before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works
+through the agency of spirits: not by any evil and forbidden compact,
+but solely by superior might of intellect&mdash;by potent spells gathered
+from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with
+his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and
+astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagined:<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>
+and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and St. Leon, sink
+into common-places before the princely, the philosophic, the benevolent
+Prospero.</p>
+
+<p>The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the
+Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his
+companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> brought
+back a most fearful account of those unknown islands, which they
+described as "a land of devils&mdash;a most prodigious and enchanted place,
+subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings." Such was the
+idea entertained of the "still-vext Bermoothes" in Shakspeare's age; but
+later travellers describe them as perfect regions of enchantment in a
+far different sense; as so many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> fairy Edens, clustered like a knot of
+gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish
+luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round
+with groves of coral; in short, each island a tiny paradise, rich with
+perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and
+ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed:
+so that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked
+mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however
+lovely in nature and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize
+with the beautiful and wondrous reality.</p>
+
+<p>There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is
+rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon
+the occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest
+daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly
+necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most
+unhappy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was
+one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The characters which I have here classed together, as principally
+distinguished by the predominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to
+rise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda;
+the last being in comparison so refined, so elevated above all stain of
+earth, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> we can only acknowledge her in connection with it through
+the emotions of sympathy she feels and inspires.</p>
+
+<p>I remember, when I was in Italy, standing "at evening on the top of
+Fiesole," and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val
+d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive
+grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation,
+which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving
+with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth
+seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple
+shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in
+the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint
+perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted
+upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the
+earth to the sky, and immediately above this scene hung the soft
+crescent moon&mdash;alone, with all the bright heaven to herself; and as that
+sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of
+Miranda compared to that of Juliet.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Lord Byron remarked of the Italian women, (and he could
+speak <i>avec connaissance de fait</i>,) that they are the only women in the
+world capable of impressions, at once very sudden and very durable;
+which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes
+afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her
+social position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among
+ourselves, and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to
+reserve the whole strength of her character for a display of constancy
+and devotedness afterwards.&mdash;Both these traits of national character are
+exemplified in Juliet&mdash;<i>Moore's Life of Byron</i>, vol. ii. pp. 303, 338.
+4to edit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>La s&egrave;ve de la vie</i>, is an expression used somewhere by
+Madame de Sta&euml;l.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character,
+which I have heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as the heroine
+<i>par excellence</i> of amatory fiction&mdash;I mean the Julie of Rousseau's
+Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se; I protest against her altogether. As a creation of
+fancy the portrait is a compound of the most gross and glaring
+inconsistencies; as false and impossible to the reflecting and
+philosophical mind, as the fabled Syrens, Hamatryads and Centaurs to the
+eye of the anatomist. As a woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to
+artificial society; and if the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence
+in which Rousseau has garnished out his idol did not blind and
+intoxicate us, as the incense and the garlands did the votaries of Isis,
+we should be disgusted. Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the
+commonest clay of the earth, does not animate her with fire from heaven,
+but breathes his own spirit into her, and then calls the "impetticoated"
+paradox a <i>woman</i>. He makes her a peg on which to hang his own visions
+and sentiments&mdash;and what sentiments! but that I fear to soil my pages, I
+would pick out a few of them, and show the difference between this
+strange combination of youth and innocence, philosophy and pedantry,
+sophistical prudery, and detestable <i>grossi&egrave;ret&eacute;</i>, and our own Juliet.
+No! if we seek a French Juliet, we must go far&mdash;far back to the real
+H&eacute;lo&iuml;se, to her eloquence, her sensibility, her fervor of passion, her
+devotedness of truth. She, at least, married the man she loved, and
+loved the man she married, and more than died for him; but enough of
+both.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Constant describes her beautifully&mdash;"Sa voix si douce au
+travers le bruit des armes, sa forme d&eacute;licate au milieu de cet hommes
+tous couverts de fer, la puret&eacute; de son &acirc;me oppos&eacute;e leurs calculs avides,
+son calme c&eacute;leste qui contraste avec leurs agitations, remplissent le
+spectateur d'une &eacute;motion constante et m&eacute;lancolique, telle que ne la fait
+ressentir nulle trag&eacute;die ordinaire."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Coleridge&mdash;preface to Wallenstein.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> There is an allusion to this court language of love in
+"All Well that Ends Well," where Helena says,&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There shall your master have a thousand loves&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His humble ambition, proud humility,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His jarring concord, and his discord dulcut,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of pretty fond adoptious Christendoms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That blinking Cupid gossips.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Act i Scene</span> 1<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+The courtly poets of Elizabeth's time, who copied the Italian
+sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint
+conceits.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Since this was written, I have met with some remarks of a
+similar tendency in that most interesting book, "The Life of Lord E.
+Fitzgerald."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she
+has placed before herself in the most fearful colors all its possible
+consequences, is compared by Schlegel to the famous story of Alexander
+and his physician.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thoughts so all unlike each other;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mutter and mock a broken charm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To dally with wrong that does no harm!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At each wild word to feel within<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sweet recoil of love and pity.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what if in a world of sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such giddiness of heart and brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes seldom save from rage and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So talks as it's most used to do?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Coleridge.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet's wild
+exclamations against Romeo.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> "The censure," observes Schlegel, "originates in a
+fanciless way of thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that
+does not suit its tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of
+simple and natural pathos which consists in exclamations destitute of
+imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day life; but energetic
+passions electrify the whole mental powers and will, consequently, in
+highly-favored natures, express themselves in an ingenious and
+figurative manner."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520.
+In a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before
+Shakspeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of
+faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. "Juliet, a
+noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of
+the Lord Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last
+poisoned himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew
+herself with his dagger." This note, which furnishes, in brief, the
+whole argument of Shakspeare's play, might possibly have made the first
+impression on his fancy. In the novel of Da Porta the catastrophe is
+altogether different. After the death of Romeo, the Friar Lorenzo
+endeavors to persuade Juliet to leave the fatal monument. She refuses;
+and throwing herself back on the dead body of her husband, she
+resolutely holds her breath and dies.&mdash;"E voltatasi al giacente corpo di
+Romeo, il cui capo sopra un origliere, che con lei uell' arca era stato
+lasciato, posto aveva; gli occhi meglio rinchiusi avendogli, e di
+lagrime il freddo volto bagnandogli, disse;" Che debbo senza di te in
+vita pi&ugrave; fare, signor mio? e che altro mi resta verso te se non colla
+mia morte seguirti? "E detto questo, la sua gran sciagura nell' animo
+recatasi, e la perdita del caro amante ricordandosi, deliberando di pi&ugrave;
+non vivere, raccolto a se il fiato, e per buono spazio tenutolo, e
+poscia con un gran grido fuori mandandolo, sopra il morto corpo, morta
+ricadde."
+</p><p>
+There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to
+make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says
+Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a
+degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the
+date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed
+sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate
+conventual garden&mdash;once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The
+situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as
+their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its
+amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the
+very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory of Juliet.
+</p><p>
+When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "<i>dans le genre
+romantique</i>," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Foster's Essays</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> I have read somewhere that the play of which Helena is the
+heroine, (All's Well that Ends Well,) was at first entitled by
+Shakspeare "Love's Labor Won." Why the title was altered or by whom I
+cannot discover.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> i. e. I care as much for as I do for heaven.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> New Monthly Magazine, vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Percy's Reliques.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> i. e. <i>canzons</i>, songs</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Percy's Reliques, vol. iii.&mdash;see the ballad of the "Lady
+turning Serving Man."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> By this word, as used here, I would be understood to mean
+that inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to the good,
+the beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar, the
+violent, and the false;&mdash;that which we see diffused externally over the
+form and movements, where there is perfect innocence and
+unconsciousness, as in children.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>i. e.</i> In the story of the drama; for in the original
+"History of Amleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his materials,
+there is a woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce
+Amleth, but not even the germ of the character of Ophelia.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> In the &#338;dipus Coloneus</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> "And recks not his own read," <i>i. e.</i> heeds not his own
+lesson.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Act iii. scene 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Go&euml;the. See the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> The Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Go&euml;the</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Such as Cornelius Agrippa, Michael Scott, Dr. Dee. The
+last was the contemporary of Shakspeare.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> In 1609, about three years before Shakspeare produced the
+Tempest, which, though placed first in all the editions of his works,
+was one of the last of his dramas.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS</h2>
+
+
+<h3>HERMIONE.</h3>
+
+<p>Characters in which the affections and the moral qualities predominate
+over fancy and all that bears the name of passion, are not, when we meet
+with them in real life, the most striking and interesting, nor the
+easiest to be understood and appreciated; but they are those on which,
+in the long run, we repose with increasing confidence and ever-new
+delight. Such characters are not easily exhibited in the colors of
+poetry, and when we meet with them there, we are reminded of the effect
+of Raffaelle's pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds assures us, that it took
+him three weeks to discover the beauty of the frescos in the Vatican;
+and many, if they spoke the truth, would prefer one of Titian's or
+Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less
+there is of marked expression or vivid color in a countenance or
+character, the more difficult to delineate it in such a manner as to
+captivate and interest us: but when this is done, and done to
+perfection, it is the miracle of poetry in painting, and of painting in
+poetry. Only Raffaelle and Correggio have achieved it in one case, and
+only Shakspeare in the other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When, by the presence or the agency of some predominant and exciting
+power, the feelings and affections are upturned from the depths of the
+heart, and flung to the surface, the painter or the poet has but to
+watch the workings of the passions, thus in a manner made visible, and
+transfer them to his page or his canvas, in colors more or less
+vigorous: but where all is calm without and around, to dive into the
+profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie
+hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions
+of the heart, patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few
+graceful touches place before us the distinct and visible result,&mdash;to do
+this demanded power of another and a rarer kind.</p>
+
+<p>There are several of Shakspeare's characters which are especially
+distinguished by this profound feeling in the conception, and subdued
+harmony of tone in the delineation. To them may be particularly applied
+the ingenious simile which Go&euml;the has used to illustrate generally all
+Shakspeare's characters, when he compares them to the old-fashioned
+batches in glass cases, which not only showed the index pointing to the
+hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index in motion.</p>
+
+<p>Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations
+nearly similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can
+render that situation striking and interesting. They are all gentle,
+beautiful, and innocent; all are models of conjugal submission, truth,
+and tenderness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> and all are victims of the unfounded jealousy of their
+husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance ceases;
+the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and
+the characters, which are as different as it is possible to imagine,
+conceived and discriminated with a power of truth and a delicacy of
+feeling yet more astonishing.</p>
+
+<p>Critically speaking, the character of Hermione is the most simple in
+point of dramatic effect, that of Imogen is the most varied and complex.
+Hermione is most distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude,
+Desdemona by her gentleness and refined grace, while Imogen combines all
+the best qualities of both, with others which they do not possess;
+consequently she is, as a character, superior to either; but considered
+as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual taste.</p>
+
+<p>Hermione is the heroine of the first three acts of the Winter's Tale.
+She is the wife of Leontes, king of Sicilia, and though in the prime of
+beauty and womanhood, is not represented in the first bloom of youth.
+Her husband on slight grounds suspects her of infidelity with his friend
+Polixenes, king of Bohemia; the suspicion once admitted, and working on
+a jealous, passionate, and vindictive mind, becomes a settled and
+confirmed opinion. Hermione is thrown into a dungeon; her new-born
+infant is taken from her, and by the order of her husband, frantic with
+jealousy, exposed to death on a desert shore; she is herself brought to
+a public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> trial for treason and incontinency, defends herself nobly, and
+is pronounced innocent by the oracle. But at the very moment that she is
+acquitted, she learns the death of the prince her son, who</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Conceiving the dishonor of his mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had straight declined, drooped, took it deeply,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Threw off his spirit, appetite, and sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And downright languished.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She swoons away with grief, and her supposed death concludes the third
+act. The last two acts are occupied with the adventures of her daughter
+Perdita; and with the restoration of Perdita to the arms of her mother,
+and the reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes, the piece concludes.</p>
+
+<p>Such, in few words, is the dramatic situation. The character of Hermione
+exhibits what is never found in the other sex, but rarely in our
+own&mdash;yet sometimes;&mdash;dignity without pride, love without passion, and
+tenderness without weakness. To conceive a character in which there
+enters so much of the negative, required perhaps no rare and astonishing
+effort of genius, such as created a Juliet, a Miranda, or a Lady
+Macbeth; but to delineate such a character in the poetical form, to
+develop it through the medium of action and dialogue, without the aid of
+description: to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious beauty, its
+unimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon
+our sympathy and our imagination;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> and out of this exterior calm,
+produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and
+internal power:&mdash;it is this which renders the character of Hermione one
+of Shakspeare's masterpieces.</p>
+
+<p>Hermione is a queen, a matron, and a mother: she is good and beautiful,
+and royally descended. A majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious
+simplicity, an easy, unforced, yet dignified self-possession, are in all
+her deportment, and in every word she utters. She is one of those
+characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, that "still waters
+run deep." Her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind the
+sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment, are like the springs
+that feed the mountain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and
+inexhaustible.</p>
+
+<p>Shakspeare has conveyed (as is his custom) a part of the character of
+Hermione in scattered touches and through the impressions which she
+produces on all around her. Her surpassing beauty is alluded to in few
+but strong terms:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">This jealousy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is for a precious creature; as she is rare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must it be great.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Praise her but for this her out-door form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Which, on my faith, deserves high speech&mdash;'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If one by one you wedded all the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or from the all that are, took something good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make a perfect woman; she you killed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would be unparalleled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have taken treasure from her lips&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">&mdash;and left them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More rich for what they yielded.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The expressions "most sacred lady," "dread mistress," "sovereign," with
+which she is addressed or alluded to, the boundless devotion and respect
+of those around her, and their confidence in her goodness and innocence,
+are so many additional strokes in the portrait.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">For her, my lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I dare my life lay down, and will do't, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Please you t' accept it, that the queen is spotless<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I' the eyes of heaven, and to you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Every inch of woman in the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If she be so.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not be a stander-by to hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sovereign mistress clouded so, without<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My present vengeance taken!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The mixture of playful courtesy, queenly dignity, and lady-like
+sweetness, with which she prevails on Polixenes to prolong his visit, is
+charming.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HERMIONE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">You'll stay!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLIXENES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No, madam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HERMIONE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Nay, but you will.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POLIXENES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I may not, verily.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HERMIONE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Verily!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You put me off with limber vows; but I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tho' you would seek t' unsphere the stars with oaths<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should still say, "Sir, no going!" Verily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You shall <i>not</i> go! A lady's verily is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Force me to keep you as a prisoner,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not like a guest?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And though the situation of Hermione admits but of few general
+reflections, one little speech, inimitably beautiful and characteristic,
+has become almost proverbial from its truth. She says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">One good deed, dying tongueless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our praises are our wages; you may ride us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With spur we heat an acre.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She receives the first intimation of her husband's jealous suspicions
+with incredulous astonishment. It is not that, like Desdemona, she does
+not or cannot understand; but she <i>will</i> not. When he accuses her more
+plainly, she replies with a calm dignity:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Should a villain say so&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The most replenished villain in the world&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He were as much more villain: you, my lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do but mistake.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>This characteristic composure of temper never forsakes her; and yet it
+is so delineated that the impression is that of grandeur, and never
+borders upon pride or coldness: it is the fortitude of a gentle but a
+strong mind, conscious of its own innocence. Nothing can be more
+affecting than her calm reply to Leontes, who, in his jealous rage,
+heaps insult upon insult, and accuses her before her own attendants, as
+no better "than one of those to whom the vulgar give bold titles."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">How will this grieve you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have thus published me! Gentle my lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You scarce can right me thoroughly then, to say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You <i>did</i> mistake.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her mild dignity and saint-like patience, combined as they are with the
+strongest sense of the cruel injustice of her husband, thrill us with
+admiration as well as pity; and we cannot but see and feel, that for
+Hermione to give way to tears and feminine complaints under such a blow,
+would be quite incompatible with the character. Thus she says of
+herself, as she is led to prison:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">There's some ill planet reigns:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I must be patient till the heavens look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With an aspect more favorable. Good my lords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not prone to weeping, as our sex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commonly are; the want of which vain dew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That honorable grief lodged here, that burns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lords<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thought so qualified as your charities<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The king's will be performed.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When she is brought to trial for supposed crimes, called on to defend
+herself, "standing to prate and talk for life and honor, before who
+please to come and hear," the sense of her ignominious situation&mdash;all
+its shame and all its horror press upon her, and would apparently crush
+even <i>her</i> magnanimous spirit, but for the consciousness of her own
+worth and innocence, and the necessity that exists for asserting and
+defending both.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">If powers divine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behold our human actions, (as they do),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">False accusation blush, and tyranny<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tremble at patience.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">For life, I prize it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I weigh grief, which I would spare. For honor&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis a derivative from me to mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And only that I stand for.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her earnest, eloquent justification of herself, and her lofty sense of
+female honor, are rendered more affecting and impressive by that
+chilling despair that contempt for a life which has been made bitter to
+her through unkindness, which is betrayed in every word of her speech,
+though so calmly characteristic. When she enumerates the unmerited
+insults which have been heaped upon her, it is without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> asperity or
+reproach, yet in a tone which shows how completely the iron has entered
+her soul. Thus, when Leontes threatens her with death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Sir, spare your threats;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bug which you would fright me with, I seek.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me can life be no commodity;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The crown and comfort of my life, your favor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But know not how it went. My second joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first-fruits of my body, from his presence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Starr'd most unluckily!&mdash;is from my breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Haled out to murder. Myself on every post<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The childbed privilege denied, which 'longs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To women of all fashion. Lastly, hurried<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here to this place, i' the open air, before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell me what blessings I have here alive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But yet hear this; mistake me not. No! life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I prize it not a straw:&mdash;but for mine honor.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Which I would free,) if I shall be condemned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon surmises; all proof sleeping else,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what your jealousies awake; I tell you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis rigor and not law.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The character of Hermione is considered open to criticism on one point.
+I have heard it remarked that when she secludes herself from the world
+for sixteen years, during which time she is mourned as dead by her
+repentant husband, and is not won to relent from her resolve by his
+sorrow, his remorse,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> his constancy to her memory; such conduct, argues
+the critic, is unfeeling as it is inconceivable in a tender and virtuous
+woman. Would Imogen have done so, who is so generously ready to grant a
+pardon before it be asked? or Desdemona, who does not forgive because
+she cannot even resent? No, assuredly; but this is only another proof of
+the wonderful delicacy and consistency with which Shakspeare has
+discriminated the characters of all three. The incident of Hermione's
+supposed death and concealment for sixteen years, is not indeed very
+probable in itself, nor very likely to occur in every-day life. But
+besides all the probability necessary for the purposes of poetry, it has
+all the likelihood it can derive from the peculiar character of
+Hermione, who is precisely the woman who could and would have acted in
+this manner. In such a mind as hers, the sense of a cruel injury,
+inflicted by one she had loved and trusted, without awakening any
+violent anger or any desire of vengeance, would sink deep&mdash;almost
+incurably and lastingly deep. So far she is most unlike either Imogen or
+Desdemona, who are portrayed as much more flexible in temper; but then
+the circumstances under which she is wronged are very different, and far
+more unpardonable. The self-created, frantic jealousy of Leontes is very
+distinct from that of Othello, writhing under the arts of Iago: or that
+of Posthumus, whose understanding has been cheated by the most damning
+evidence of his wife's infidelity. The jealousy which in Othello and
+Posthumus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> is an error of judgment, in Leontes is a vice of the blood;
+he suspects without cause, condemns without proof; he is without
+excuse&mdash;unless the mixture of pride, passion, and imagination, and the
+predisposition to jealousy with which Shakspeare has portrayed him, be
+considered as an excuse. Hermione has been openly insulted: he to whom
+she gave herself, her heart, her soul, has stooped to the weakness and
+baseness of suspicion; has doubted her truth, has wronged her love, has
+sunk in her esteem, and forfeited her confidence. She has been branded
+with vile names; her son, her eldest hope, is dead&mdash;dead through the
+false accusation which has stuck infamy on his mother's name; and her
+innocent babe, stained with illegitimacy, disowned and rejected, has
+been exposed to a cruel death. Can we believe that the mere tardy
+acknowledgment of her innocence could make amends for wrongs and agonies
+such as these? or heal a heart which must have bled inwardly, consumed
+by that untold grief, "which burns worse than tears drown?" Keeping in
+view the peculiar character of Hermione, such as she is delineated, is
+she one either to forgive hastily or forget quickly? and though she
+might, in her solitude, mourn over her repentant husband, would his
+repentance suffice to restore him at once to his place in her heart: to
+efface from her strong and reflecting mind the recollection of his
+miserable weakness? or can we fancy this high-souled woman&mdash;left
+childless through the injury which has been inflicted on her, widowed in
+heart by the unworthness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> of him she loved, a spectacle of grief to
+all&mdash;to her husband a continual reproach and humiliation&mdash;walking
+through the parade of royalty in the court which had witnessed her
+anguish, her shame, her degradation, and her despair? Methinks that the
+want of feeling, nature, delicacy, and consistency, would lie in such an
+exhibition as this. In a mind like Hermione's, where the strength of
+feeling is founded in the power of thought, and where there is little of
+impulse or imagination,&mdash;"the depth, but not the tumult of the
+soul,"<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>&mdash;there are but two influences which predominate over the
+will,&mdash;time and religion. And what then remained, but that, wounded in
+heart and spirit, she should retire from the world?&mdash;not to brood over
+her wrongs, but to study forgiveness, and wait the fulfilment of the
+oracle which had promised the termination of her sorrows. Thus a
+premature reconciliation would not only have been painfully inconsistent
+with the character; it would also have deprived us of that most
+beautiful scene, in which Hermione is discovered to her husband as the
+statue or image of herself. And here we have another instance of that
+admirable art, with which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> dramatic character is fitted to the
+circumstances in which it is placed: that perfect command over her own
+feelings, that complete self-possession necessary to this extraordinary
+situation, is consistent with all that we imagine of Hermione: in any
+other woman it would be so incredible as to shock all our ideas of
+probability.</p>
+
+<p>This scene, then, is not only one of the most picturesque and striking
+instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama,
+but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as
+it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love,
+the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the
+astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her
+mother like one entranced, looks as if she were also turned to marble.
+There is here one little instance of tender remembrance in Leontes,
+which adds to the charming impression of Hermione's character.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Chide me, dear stone! that I may say indeed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art Hermione; or rather thou art she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In thy not chiding, for she was as tender<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As infancy and grace.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i17">Thus she stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even with such life of majesty&mdash;warm life&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As now it coldly stands&mdash;when first I woo'd her!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The effect produced on the different persons of the drama by this living
+statue&mdash;an effect which at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> same moment is, and is <i>not</i>
+illusion&mdash;the manner in which the feelings of the spectators become
+entangled between the conviction of death and the impression of life,
+the idea of a deception and the feeling of a reality; and the exquisite
+coloring of poetry and touches of natural feeling with which the whole
+is wrought up, till wonder, expectation, and intense pleasure, hold our
+pulse and breath suspended on the event,&mdash;are quite inimitable.</p>
+
+<p>The expressions used here by Leontes,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Thus she stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even with such life of majesty&mdash;<i>warm life</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fixture of her eye has motion in't.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And we are mock'd by art!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And by Polixines,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The very life seems warm upon her lip,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>appear strangely applied to a statue, such as we usually imagine it&mdash;of
+the cold colorless marble; but it is evident that in this scene Hermione
+personates one of those images or effigies, such as we may see in the
+old gothic cathedrals, in which the stone, or marble, was colored after
+nature. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these effigies, either at
+Basle or at Fribourg, which made me start: the figure was large as life;
+the drapery of crimson, powdered with stars of gold; the face and eyes,
+and hair, tinted after nature, though faded by time: it stood in a
+gothic niche, over a tomb, as I think, and in a kind of dim uncertain
+light. It would have been very easy for a living<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> person to represent
+such an effigy, particularly if it had been painted by that "rare
+Italian master, Julio Romano,"<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> who, as we are informed, was the
+reputed author of this wonderful statue.</p>
+
+<p>The moment when Hermione descends from her pedestal, to the sound of
+soft music, and throws herself without speaking into her husband's arms,
+is one of inexpressible interest. It appears to me that her silence
+during the whole of this scene (except where she invokes a blessing on
+her daughter's head) is in the finest taste as a poetical beauty,
+besides being an admirable trait of character. The misfortunes of
+Hermione, her long religious seclusion, the wonderful and almost
+supernatural part she has just enacted, have invested her with such a
+sacred and awful charm, that any words put into her mouth, must, I
+think, have injured the solemn and profound pathos of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>There are several among Shakspeare's characters which exercise a far
+stronger power over our feelings, our fancy, our understanding, than
+that of Hermione; but not one,&mdash;unless perhaps Cordelia,&mdash;constructed
+upon so high and pure a principle. It is the union of gentleness with
+power which constitutes the perfection of mental grace. Thus among the
+ancients, with whom the <i>graces</i> were also the <i>charities</i>, (to show,
+perhaps, that while form alone may constitute beauty, sentiment is
+necessary to grace,) one and the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> word signified equally <i>strength</i>
+and <i>virtue</i>. This feeling, carried into the fine arts, was the secret
+of the antique grace&mdash;the grace of repose. The same eternal nature&mdash;the
+same sense of immutable truth and beauty, which revealed this sublime
+principle of art to the ancient Greeks, revealed it to the genius of
+Shakspeare; and the character of Hermione, in which we have the same
+largeness of conception and delicacy of execution,&mdash;the same effect of
+suffering without passion, and grandeur without effort, is an instance,
+I think, that he felt within himself, and by intuition, what we study
+all our lives in the remains of ancient art. The calm, regular,
+classical beauty of Hermione's character is the more impressive from the
+wild and gothic accompaniments of her story, and the beautiful relief
+afforded by the pastoral and romantic grace which is thrown around her
+daughter Perdita.</p>
+
+<p>The character of Paulina, in the Winter's Tale, though it has obtained
+but little notice, and no critical remark, (that I have seen,) is yet
+one of the striking beauties of the play: and it has its moral too. As
+we see running through the whole universe that principle of contrast
+which may be called the life of nature, so we behold it every where
+illustrated in Shakspeare: upon this principle he has placed Emilia
+beside Desdemona, the nurse beside Juliet; the clowns and dairy-maids,
+and the merry peddler thief Autolycus round Florizel and Perdita;&mdash;and
+made Paulina the friend of Hermione.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Paulina does not fill any ostensible office near the person of the
+queen, but is a lady of high rank in the court&mdash;the wife of the Lord
+Antigones. She is a character strongly drawn from real and common
+life&mdash;a clever, generous, strong-minded, warmhearted woman, fearless in
+asserting the truth, firm in her sense of right, enthusiastic in all her
+affections: quick in thought, resolute in word, and energetic in action;
+but heedless, hot-tempered, impatient, loud, bold, voluble, and
+turbulent of tongue; regardless of the feelings of those for whom she
+would sacrifice her life, and injuring from excess of zeal those whom
+she most wishes to serve. How many such are there in the world! But
+Paulina, though a very termagant, is yet a poetical termagant in her
+way; and the manner in which all the evil and dangerous tendencies of
+such a temper are placed before us, even while the individual character
+preserves the strongest hold upon our respect and admiration, forms an
+impressive lesson, as well as a natural and delightful portrait.</p>
+
+<p>In the scene, for instance, where she brings the infant before Leontes,
+with the hope of softening him to a sense of his injustice&mdash;"an office
+which," as she observes, "becomes a woman best"&mdash;her want of
+self-government, her bitter, inconsiderate reproaches, only add, as we
+might easily suppose, to his fury.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">I say I come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From your good queen!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good queen!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good queen, my lord, good queen: I say good queen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And would by combat make her good, so were I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A man, the worst about you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Force her hence.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First hand me: on mine own accord I'll off;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But first I'll do mine errand. The good queen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(For she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here 'tis; commends it to your blessing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">Traitors!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will you not push her out! Give her the bastard.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">Forever<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tak'st up the princess by that forced baseness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which he has put upon't!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He dreads his wife.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, I would <i>you</i> did; then 'twere past all doubt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You'd call your children your's.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">A callat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now baits me!&mdash;this brat is none of mine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i32">It is yours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So like you, 'tis the worse.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i34">A gross hag!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wilt not stay her tongue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTIGONES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Hang all the husbands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hardly one subject.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once more, take her hence.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A most unworthy and unnatural lord<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can do no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I'll have thee burn'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i29">I care not:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is an heretic that makes the fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not she which burns in't.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here, while we honor her courage and her affection, we cannot help
+regretting her violence. We see, too, in Paulina, what we so often see
+in real life, that it is not those who are most susceptible in their own
+temper and feelings, who are most delicate and forbearing towards the
+feelings of others. She does not comprehend, or will not allow for the
+sensitive weakness of a mind less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> firmly tempered than her own. There
+is a reply of Leontes to one of her cutting speeches, which is full of
+feeling, and a lesson to those, who, with the best intentions in the
+world, force the painful truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated
+heart.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PAULINA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If, one by one, you wedded all the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, from the all that are, took something good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would be unparallel'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEONTES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I think so. Kill'd!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She I kill'd? I did so: but thou strik'st me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon thy tongue, as in my thought. Now, good now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say so but seldom.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOMENES.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not at all, good lady:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You might have spoken a thousand things that would<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your kindness better.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We can only excuse Paulina by recollecting that it is a part of her
+purpose to keep alive in the heart of Leontes the remembrance of his
+queen's perfections, and of his own cruel injustice. It is admirable,
+too, that Hermione and Paulina, while sufficiently approximated to
+afford all the pleasure of contrast, are never brought too nearly in
+contact on the scene or in the dialogue;<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> for this would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> have been a
+fault in taste, and have necessarily weakened the effect of both
+characters:&mdash;either the serene grandeur of Hermione would have subdued
+and overawed the fiery spirit of Paulina, or the impetuous temper of the
+latter must have disturbed in some respect our impression of the calm,
+majestic, and somewhat melancholy beauty of Hermione.</p>
+
+
+<h3>DESDEMONA.</h3>
+
+<p>The character of Hermione is addressed more to the imagination; that of
+Desdemona to the feelings. All that can render sorrow majestic is
+gathered round Hermione; all that can render misery heart-breaking is
+assembled round Desdemona. The wronged but self-sustained virtue of
+Hermione commands our veneration; the injured and defenceless innocence
+of Desdemona so wrings the soul, "that all for pity we could die."</p>
+
+<p>Desdemona, as a character, comes nearest to Miranda, both in herself as
+a woman, and in the perfect simplicity and unity of the delineation; the
+figures are differently draped&mdash;the proportions are the same. There is
+the same modesty, tenderness, and grace; the same artless devotion in
+the affections, the same predisposition to wonder, to pity, to admire;
+the same almost ethereal refinement and delicacy; but all is pure poetic
+nature within Miranda and around her: Desdemona is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> more associated with
+the palpable realities of every-day existence, and we see the forms and
+habits of society tinting her language and deportment; no two beings can
+be more alike in character&mdash;nor more distinct as individuals.</p>
+
+<p>The love of Desdemona for Othello appears at first such a violation of
+all probabilities, that her father at once imputes it to magic, "to
+spells and mixtures powerful o'er the blood."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">She, in spite of nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of years, of country, credit, every thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fall in love with what she feared to look on!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the devilish malignity of Iago, whose coarse mind cannot conceive an
+affection founded purely in sentiment, derives from her love itself a
+strong argument against her.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, there's the point, as to be bold with you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to affect any proposed matches<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends,<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this disparity of age, character, country, complexion,
+we, who are admitted into the secret, see her love rise naturally and
+necessarily out of the leading propensities of her nature.</p>
+
+<p>At the period of the story a spirit of wild adventure had seized all
+Europe. The discovery of both Indies was yet recent; over the shores of
+the western hemisphere still fable and mystery hung,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> with all their dim
+enchantments, visionary terrors, and golden promises! perilous
+expeditions and distant voyages were every day undertaken from hope of
+plunder, or mere love of enterprise; and from these the adventurers
+returned with tales of "Antres vast and desarts wild&mdash;of cannibals that
+did each other eat&mdash;of Anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow
+beneath their shoulders." With just such stories did Raleigh and
+Clifford, and their followers return from the New World: and thus by
+their splendid or fearful exaggerations, which the imperfect knowledge
+of those times could not refute, was the passion for the romantic and
+marvellous nourished at home, particularly among the women. A cavalier
+of those days had no nearer no surer way to his mistress's heart, than
+by entertaining her with these wondrous narratives. What was a general
+feature of his time, Shakspeare seized and adapted to his purpose with
+the most exquisite felicity of effect. Desdemona, leaving her household
+cares in haste, to hang breathless on Othello's tales, was doubtless a
+picture from the life; and her inexperience and her quick imagination
+lend it an added propriety: then her compassionate disposition is
+interested by all the disastrous chances, hair-breadth 'scapes, and
+moving accidents by flood and field, of which he has to tell; and her
+exceeding gentleness and timidity, and her domestic turn of mind, render
+her more easily captivated by the military renown, the valor, and lofty
+bearing of the noble Moor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And to his honors and his valiant parts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does she her soul and fortunes consecrate.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The confession and the excuse for her love is well placed in the mouth
+of Desdemona, while the history of the rise of that love, and of his
+course of wooing, is, with the most graceful propriety, as far as she is
+concerned, spoken by Othello, and in her absence. The last two lines
+summing up the whole&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She loved me for the dangers I had passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I loved her that she did pity them&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>comprise whole volumes of sentiment and metaphysics.</p>
+
+<p>Desdemona displays at times a transient energy, arising from the power
+of affection, but gentleness gives the prevailing tone to the
+character&mdash;gentleness in its excess&mdash;gentleness verging on
+passiveness&mdash;gentleness, which not only cannot resent,&mdash;but cannot
+resist.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then of so gentle a condition!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IAGO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay! too gentle.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, that's certain<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here the exceeding softness of Desdemona's temper is turned against her
+by Iago, so that it suddenly strikes Othello in a new point of view,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> as
+the inability to resist temptation; but to us who perceive the character
+as a whole, this extreme gentleness of nature is yet delineated with
+such exceeding refinement, that the effect never approaches to
+feebleness. It is true that <i>once</i> her extreme timidity leads her in a
+moment of confusion and terror to prevaricate about the fatal
+handkerchief. This handkerchief, in the original story of Cinthio, is
+merely one of those embroidered handkerchiefs which were as fashionable
+in Shakspeare's time as in our own; but the minute description of it as
+"lavorato alla morisco sottilissimamente,"<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> suggested to the poetical
+fancy of Shakspeare one of the most exquisite and characteristic
+passages in the whole play. Othello makes poor Desdemona believe that
+the handkerchief was a talisman.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">There's magic in the web of it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sibyl, that had numbered in the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun to make two hundred compasses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her prophetic fury sew'd the work:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conserv'd of maidens' hearts.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Indeed! is't true?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Most veritable, therefore look to't well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then would to heaven that I had never seen it!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ha! wherefore!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why do you speak so startingly and rash?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is't lost,&mdash;Is't gone? Speak, is it out of the way?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heavens bless us!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Say you?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is not lost&mdash;but what an' if it were?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ha!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I say it is not lost.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OTHELLO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fetch it, let me see it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why so I can, sir, but I will not now, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Desdemona, whose soft credulity, whose turn for the marvellous, whose
+susceptible imagination had first directed her thoughts and affections
+to Othello, is precisely the woman to be frightened out of her senses by
+such a tale as this, and betrayed by her fears into a momentary
+tergiversation. It is most natural in such a being, and shows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> us that
+even in the sweetest natures there can be no completeness and
+consistency without moral energy.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p>With the most perfect artlessness, she has something of the instinctive,
+unconscious address of her sex; as when she appeals to her father&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So much duty as my mother show'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To you, preferring you before her father,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much I challenge, that I may profess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Due to the Moor, my lord.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And when she is pleading for Cassio&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">What! Michael Cassio!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That came a wooing with you; and many a time.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I have spoken of you disparagingly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath ta'en your part?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In persons who unite great sensibility and lively fancy, I have often
+observed this particular species of address, which is always unconscious
+of itself, and consists in the power of placing ourselves in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> the
+position of another, and imagining, rather than perceiving, what is in
+their hearts. We women have this <i>address</i> (if so it can be called)
+naturally, but I have seldom met with it in men. It is not inconsistent
+with extreme simplicity of character, and quite distinct from that kind
+of art which is the result of natural acuteness and habits of
+observation&mdash;quick to perceive the foibles of others, and as quick to
+turn them to its own purposes; which is always conscious of itself, and,
+if united with strong intellect, seldom perceptible to others. In the
+mention of her mother, and the appeal to Othello's self-love, Desdemona
+has no design formed on conclusions previously drawn; but her intuitive
+quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, lead her more safely to
+the same results, and the distinction is as truly as it is delicately
+drawn.</p>
+
+<p>When Othello first outrages her in a manner which appears inexplicable,
+she seeks and finds excuses for him. She is so innocent that not only
+she cannot believe herself suspected, but she cannot conceive the
+existence of guilt in others.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Something, sure, of state,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Either from Venice, or some unhatch'd practice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath puddled his clear spirit.<br /></span>
+<span class="i18">'Tis even so&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, we must think, men are not gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor of them look for such observances<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fit the bridal.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And when the direct accusation of crime is flung<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> on her in the vilest
+terms, it does not anger but stun her, as if it transfixed her whole
+being; she attempts no reply, no defence; and reproach or resistance
+never enters her thought.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good friend, go to him&mdash;for by this light of heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know not how I lost him: here I kneel:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Either in discourse of thought or actual deed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delighted them in any other form;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that I do not yet, and ever did,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ever will, though he do shake me off<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his unkindness may defeat my life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never taint my love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And there is one stroke of consummate delicacy surprising, when we
+remember the latitude of expression prevailing in Shakspeare's time, and
+which he allowed to his other women generally: she says, on recovering
+from her stupefaction&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Am I that name, Iago?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IAGO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What name, sweet lady?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That which she says my lord did say I was.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So completely did Shakspeare enter into the angelic refinement of the
+character.</p>
+
+<p>Endued with that temper which is the origin of superstition in love as
+in religion,&mdash;which, in fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> makes love itself a religion,&mdash;she not
+only does not utter an upbraiding, but nothing that Othello does or
+says, no outrage, no injustice, can tear away the charm with which her
+imagination had invested him, or impair her faith in his honor; "Would
+you had never seen him!" exclaims Emilia.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DESDEMONA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So would not I!&mdash;my love doth so approve him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That even his stubbornness, his checks and frowns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have grace and favor in them.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is another peculiarity, which, in reading the play of Othello, we
+rather feel than perceive: through the whole of the dialogue
+appropriated to Desdemona, there is not one general observation. Words
+are with her the vehicle of sentiment, and never of reflection; so that
+I cannot find throughout a sentence of general application. The same
+remark applies to Miranda: and to no other female character of any
+importance or interest; not even to Ophelia.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of what I wished to say of Desdemona, has been anticipated by
+an anonymous critic, and so beautifully, so justly, so eloquently
+expressed, that I with pleasure erase my own page, to make room for his.</p>
+
+<p>"Othello," observes this writer, "is no love story; all that is below
+tragedy in the passion of love, is taken away at once, by the awful
+character of Othello; for such he seems to us to be designed to be. He
+appears never as a lover, but at once as a husband: and the relation of
+his love made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> dignified, as it is a husband's justification of his
+marriage, is also dignified, as it is a soldier's relation of his stern
+and perilous life. His love itself, as long as it is happy, is perfectly
+calm and serene&mdash;the protecting tenderness of a husband. It is not till
+it is disordered, that it appears as a passion: then is shown a power in
+contention with itself&mdash;a mighty being struck with death, and bringing
+up from all the depths of life convulsions and agonies. It is no
+exhibition of the power of the passion of love, but of the passion of
+life, vitally wounded, and self over-mastering. If Desdemona had been
+really guilty, the greatness would have been destroyed, because his love
+would have been unworthy, false. But she is good, and his love is most
+perfect, just, and good. That a man should place his perfect love on a
+wretched thing, is miserably debasing, and shocking to thought; but that
+loving perfectly and well, he should by hellish human circumvention be
+brought to distrust and dread, and abjure his own perfect love, is most
+mournful indeed&mdash;it is the infirmity of our good nature wrestling in
+vain with the strong powers of evil. Moreover, he would, had Desdemona
+been false, have been the mere victim of fate; whereas he is now in a
+manner his own victim. His happy love was heroic tenderness; his injured
+love is terrible passion, and disordered power, engendered within itself
+to its own destruction, is the height of all tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"The character of Othello is perhaps the most greatly drawn, the most
+heroic of any of Shakspeare's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> actors; but it is, perhaps, that one also
+of which his reader last acquires the intelligence. The intellectual and
+warlike energy of his mind&mdash;his tenderness of affection&mdash;his loftiness
+of spirit&mdash;his frank, generous magnanimity&mdash;impetuosity like a
+thunderbolt&mdash;and that dark, fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting
+even his imagination,&mdash;compose a character entirely original, most
+difficult to delineate, but perfectly delineated."</p>
+
+<p>Emilia in this play is a perfect portrait from common life, a
+masterpiece in the Flemish style: and though not necessary as a
+contrast, it cannot be but that the thorough vulgarity, the loose
+principles of this plebeian woman, united to a high degree of spirit,
+energetic feeling, strong sense and low cunning, serve to place in
+brighter relief the exquisite refinement, the moral grace, the
+unblemished truth, and the soft submission of Desdemona.</p>
+
+<p>On the other perfections of this tragedy, considered as a production of
+genius&mdash;on the wonderful characters of Othello and Iago&mdash;on the skill
+with which the plot is conducted, and its simplicity which a
+word unravels,<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> and on the overpowering horror of the
+catastrophe&mdash;eloquence and analytical criticism have been exhausted; I
+will only add, that the source of the pathos throughout&mdash;of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> pathos
+which at once softens and deepens the tragic effect&mdash;lies in the
+character of Desdemona. No woman differently constituted could have
+excited the same intense and painful compassion, without losing
+something of that exalted charm, which invests her from beginning to
+end, which we are apt to impute to the interest of the situation, and to
+the poetical coloring, but which lies, in fact, in the very essence of
+the character. Desdemona, with all her timid flexibility and soft
+acquiescence, is not weak; for the negative alone is weak; and the mere
+presence of goodness and affection implies in itself a species of power;
+power without consciousness, power without effort, power with
+repose&mdash;that soul of grace!</p>
+
+<p>I know a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the absence of intellectual
+power is never felt as a deficiency, nor the absence of energy of will
+as impairing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity, as a want
+of feeling: one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the sentiment of
+rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a
+necessary state of being, than an imposed law. No shade of sin or vanity
+has yet stolen over that bright innocence. No discord within has marred
+the loveliness without&mdash;no strife of the factitious world without has
+disturbed the harmony within. The comprehension of evil appears forever
+shut out, as if goodness had converted all things to itself; and all to
+the pure in heart must necessarily be pure. The impression produced is
+exactly that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> of the character of Desdemona; genius is a rare thing, but
+abstract goodness is rarer. In Desdemona, we cannot but feel that the
+slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have
+injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the
+first,&mdash;"an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final
+sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all
+truth! But, alas! to see her fluttering like a cherub in the talons of a
+fiend!&mdash;to see her&mdash;O poor Desdemona!</p>
+
+
+<h3>IMOGEN.</h3>
+
+<p>We come to Imogen. Others of Shakspeare's characters are, as dramatic
+and poetical conceptions, more striking, more brilliant, more powerful;
+but of all his women, considered as individuals rather than as heroines,
+Imogen is the most perfect. Portia and Juliet are pictured to the fancy
+with more force of contrast, more depth of light and shade; Viola and
+Miranda, with more aerial delicacy of outline; but there is no female
+portrait that can be compared to Imogen as a woman&mdash;none in which so
+great a variety of tints are mingled together into such perfect harmony.
+In her, we have all the fervor of youthful tenderness, all the romance
+of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of ideal grace,&mdash;the bloom of
+beauty, the brightness of intellect and the dignity of rank, taking a
+peculiar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> hue from the conjugal character which is shed over all, like a
+consecration and a holy charm. In Othello and the Winter's Tale, the
+interest excited for Desdemona and Hermione is divided with others: but
+in Cymbeline, Imogen is the angel of light, whose lovely presence
+pervades and animates the whole piece. The character altogether may be
+pronounced finer, more complex in its elements, and more fully developed
+in all its parts, than those of Hermione and Desdemona; but the position
+in which she is placed is not, I think, so fine&mdash;at least, not so
+effective, as a tragic situation.</p>
+
+<p>Shakspeare has borrowed the chief circumstances of Imogen's story from
+one of Boccaccio's tales.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<p>A company of Italian merchants who are assembled in a tavern at Paris,
+are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives: all of them
+express themselves with levity, or skepticism, or scorn, on the virtue
+of women, except a young Genoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains,
+that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste
+than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments and the
+coarse raillery of another young merchant, Ambrogiolo, Bernabo proceeds
+to enumerate the various perfections and accomplishments of his Zinevra.
+He praises her loveliness, her submission, and her discretion&mdash;her skill
+in embroidery, her graceful service, in which the best trained page of
+the court could not exceed her; and he adds, as rarer accomplishments,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+that she could mount a horse, fly a hawk, write and read, and cast up
+accounts, as well as any merchant of them all. His enthusiasm only
+excites the laughter and mockery of his companions, particularly of
+Ambrogiolo, who, by the most artful mixture of contradiction and
+argument, rouses the anger of Bernabo, and he at length exclaims, that
+he would willingly stake his life, his head, on the virtue of his wife.
+This leads to the wager which forms so important an incident in the
+drama. Ambrogiolo bets one thousand florins of gold against five
+thousand, that Zinevra, like the rest of her sex, is accessible to
+temptation&mdash;that in less than three months he will undermine her virtue,
+and bring her husband the most undeniable proofs of her falsehood. He
+sets off for Genoa, in order to accomplish his purpose; but on his
+arrival, all that he learns, and all that he beholds with his own eyes,
+of the discreet and noble character of the lady, make him despair of
+success by fair means; he therefore has recourse to the basest
+treachery. By bribing an old woman in the service of Zinevra, he is
+conveyed to her sleeping apartment, concealed in a trunk, from which he
+issues in the dead of the night; he takes note of the furniture of the
+chamber, makes himself master of her purse, her morning robe, or cymar,
+and her girdle, and of a certain mark on her person. He repeats these
+observations for two nights, and, furnished with these evidences of
+Zinevra's guilt, he returns to Paris, and lays them before the wretched
+husband. Bernabo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> rejects every proof of his wife's infidelity except
+that which finally convinces Posthumus. When Ambrogiolo mentions the
+"mole, cinque-spotted," he stands like one who has received a poniard in
+his heart; without further dispute he pays down the forfeit, and filled
+with rage and despair both at the loss of his money and the falsehood of
+his wife, he returns towards Genoa; he retires to his country house, and
+sends a messenger to the city with letters to Zinevra, desiring that she
+would come and meet him, but with secret orders to the man to despatch
+her by the way. The servant prepares to execute his master's command,
+but overcome by her entreaties for mercy, and his own remorse, he spares
+her life, on condition that she will fly from the country forever. He
+then disguises her in his own cloak and cap, and brings back to her
+husband the assurance that she is killed, and that her body has been
+devoured by the wolves. In the disguise of a mariner, Zinevra then
+embarks on board a vessel bound to the Levant, and on arriving at
+Alexandria, she is taken into the service of the Sultan of Egypt, under
+the name of Sicurano; she gains the confidence of her master, who, not
+suspecting her sex, sends her as captain of the guard which was
+appointed for the protection of the merchants at the fair of Acre. Here
+she accidentally meets Ambrogiolo, and sees in his possession the purse
+and girdle, which she immediately recognizes as her own. In reply to her
+inquiries, he relates with fiendish exultation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> the manner in which he
+had obtained possession of them, and she persuades him to go back with
+her to Alexandria. She then sends a messenger to Genoa in the name of
+the Sultan, and induces her husband to come and settle in Alexandria. At
+a proper opportunity, she summons both to the presence of the Sultan,
+obliges Ambrogiolo to make a full confession of his treachery, and
+wrings from her husband the avowal of his supposed murder of herself:
+then falling at the feet of the Sultan discovers her real name and sex,
+to the great amazement of all. Bernabo is pardoned at the prayer of his
+wife, and Ambrogiolo is condemned to be fastened to a stake, smeared
+with honey, and left to be devoured by the flies and locusts. This
+horrible sentence is executed; while Zinevra, enriched by the presents
+of the Sultan, and the forfeit wealth of Ambrogiolo, returns with her
+husband to Genoa, where she lives in great honor and happiness, and
+maintains her reputation of virtue to the end of her life.</p>
+
+<p>These are the materials from which Shakspeare has drawn the dramatic
+situation of Imogen. He has also endowed her with several of the
+qualities which are attributed to Zinevra; but for the essential truth
+and beauty of the individual character, for the sweet coloring of
+pathos, and sentiment, and poetry interfused through the whole, he is
+indebted only to nature and himself.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a waste of words to refute certain critics who have accused
+Shakspeare of a want of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> judgment in the adoption of the story; of
+having transferred the manners of a set of intoxicated merchants and a
+merchant's wife to heroes and princesses, and of having entirely
+destroyed the interest of the catastrophe.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> The truth is, that
+Shakspeare has wrought out the materials before him with the most
+luxuriant fancy and the most wonderful skill. As for the various
+anachronisms, and the confusion of names, dates, and manners, over which
+Dr. Johnson exults in no measured terms, the confusion is nowhere but in
+his own heavy obtuseness of sentiment and perception, and his want of
+poetical faith. Look into the old Italian poets, whom we read
+continually with still increasing pleasure; does any one think of
+sitting down to disprove the existence of Ariodante, king of Scotland?
+or to prove that the mention of Proteus and Pluto, baptism and the
+Virgin Mary, in a breath, amounts to an anachronism? Shakspeare, by
+throwing his story far back into a remote and uncertain age, has
+blended, by his "own omnipotent will," the marvellous, the heroic, the
+ideal, and the classical,&mdash;the extreme of refinement and the extreme of
+simplicity,&mdash;into one of the loveliest fictions of romantic poetry; and,
+to use Schlegel's expression, "has made the social manners of the latest
+times harmonize with heroic deeds, and even with the appearances of the
+gods."<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>But, admirable as is the conduct of the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> play, rich in variety of
+character and in picturesque incident, its chief beauty and interest is
+derived from Imogen.</p>
+
+<p>When Ferdinand tells Miranda that she was "created of every creature's
+best," he speaks like a lover, or refers only to her personal charms:
+the same expression might be applied critically to the character of
+Imogen; for, as the portrait of Miranda is produced by resolving the
+female character into its original elements, so that of Imogen unites
+the greatest number of those qualities which we imagine to constitute
+excellency in woman.</p>
+
+<p>Imogen, like Juliet, conveys to our mind the impression of extreme
+simplicity in the midst of the most wonderful complexity. To conceive
+her aright, we must take some peculiar tint from many characters, and so
+mingle them, that, like the combination of hues in a sunbeam, the effect
+shall be as one to the eye. We must imagine something of the romantic
+enthusiasm of Juliet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the
+dignified purity of Isabel, of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the
+self-possession and intellect of Portia&mdash;combined together so equally
+and so harmoniously, that we can scarcely say that one quality
+predominates over the other. But Imogen is less imaginative than Juliet,
+less spirited and intellectual than Portia, less serious than Helen and
+Isabel; her dignity is not so imposing as that of Hermione, it stands
+more on the defensive; her submission, though unbounded, is not so
+passive as that of Desdemona; and thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> while she resembles each of
+these characters individually, she stands wholly distinct from all.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, that the conjugal tenderness of Imogen is at once the chief
+subject of the drama, and the pervading charm of her character; but it
+is not true, I think, that she is merely interesting from her tenderness
+and constancy to her husband. We are so completely let into the essence
+of Imogen's nature, that we feel as if we had known and loved her before
+she was married to Posthumus, and that her conjugal virtues are a charm
+superadded, like the color laid upon a beautiful groundwork. Neither
+does it appear to me, that Posthumus is unworthy of Imogen, or only
+interesting on Imogen's account. His character, like those of all the
+other persons of the drama, is kept subordinate to hers: but this could
+not be otherwise, for she is the proper subject&mdash;the heroine of the
+poem. Every thing is done to ennoble Posthumus, and justify her love for
+him; and though we certainly approve him more for her sake than for his
+own, we are early prepared to view him with Imogen's eyes; and not only
+excuse, but sympathize in her admiration of one</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who sat 'mongst men like a descended god.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who lived in court, which it is rare to do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most praised, most loved:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sample to the youngest; to the more mature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A glass that feated them.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And with what beauty and delicacy is her conjugal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> and matronly
+character discriminated! Her love for her husband is as deep as Juliet's
+for her lover, but without any of that headlong vehemence, that
+fluttering amid hope, fear, and transport&mdash;that giddy intoxication of
+heart and sense, which belongs to the novelty of passion, which we feel
+once, and but once, in our lives. We see her love for Posthumus acting
+upon her mind with the force of an habitual feeling, heightened by
+enthusiastic passion, and hallowed by the sense of duty. She asserts and
+justifies her affection with energy indeed, but with a calm and
+wife-like dignity:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CYMBELINE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou took'st a beggar, would'st have made my throne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A seat for baseness.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">No, I rather added a lustre to it<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CYMBELINE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">O thou vile one!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i34">Sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is your fault that I have loved Posthumus;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You bred him as my playfellow, and he is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A man worth any woman; overbuys me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Almost the sum he pays.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Compare also, as examples of the most delicate discrimination of
+character and feeling, the parting scene between Imogen and Posthumus,
+that between Romeo and Juliet, and that between Troilus and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Cressida:
+compare the confiding matronly tenderness, the deep but resigned sorrow
+of Imogen, with the despairing agony of Juliet, and the petulant grief
+of Cressida.</p>
+
+<p>When Posthumus is driven into exile, he comes to take a last farewell of
+his wife:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">My dearest husband,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I something fear my father's wrath, but nothing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Always reserved my holy duty) what<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His rage can do on me. You must be gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I shall here abide the hourly shot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of angry eyes: not comforted to live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that there is this jewel in the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may see again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">POSTHUMUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">My queen! my mistress!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, lady, weep no more! lest I give cause<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be suspected of more tenderness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than doth become a man. I will remain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Should we be taking leave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As long a term as yet we have to live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The loathness to depart would grow&mdash;Adieu!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, stay a little:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were you but riding forth to air yourself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such parting were too petty. Look here, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This diamond was my mother's; take it, heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But keep it till you woo another wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Imogen is dead!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Imogen, in whose tenderness there is nothing jealous or fantastic, does
+not seriously apprehend that her husband will woo another wife when she
+is dead. It is one of those fond fancies which women are apt to express
+in moments of feeling, merely for the pleasure of hearing a protestation
+to the contrary. When Posthumus leaves her, she does not burst forth in
+eloquent lamentation; but that silent, stunning, overwhelming sorrow,
+which renders the mind insensible to all things else, is represented
+with equal force and simplicity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There cannot be a pinch in death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More sharp than this is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CYMBELINE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">O disloyal thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That should'st repair my youth; thou heapeat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A year's age on me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">I beseech you, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Harm not yourself with your vexation; I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Subdues all pangs, all fears.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CYMBELINE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Past grace? obedience?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Past hope and in despair&mdash;that way past grace.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the same circumstances, the impetuous excited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> feelings of Juliet,
+and her vivid imagination, lend something far more wildly agitated, more
+intensely poetical and passionate to her grief.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">JULIET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Art thou gone so? My love, my lord, my friend!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I must hear from thee every day i' the hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For in a minute there are many days&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O by this count I shall be much in years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere I again behold my Romeo!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ROMEO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Farewell! I will omit no opportunity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">JULIET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O! think'st thou we shall ever meet again?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ROMEO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sweet discourses in our time to come.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">JULIET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O God! I have an ill-divining soul:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one dead in the bottom of a tomb:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Either my eye-sight fails, or thou look'st pale.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We have no sympathy with the pouting disappointment of Cressida, which
+is just like that of a spoilt child which has lost its sugar-plum,
+without tenderness, passions, or poetry: and, in short, perfectly
+characteristic of that vain, fickle, dissolute, heartless
+woman,&mdash;"unstable as water."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And is it true that I must go from Troy?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">TROILUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A hateful truth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">What, and from Troilus too?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">TROILUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Troy and Troilus.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Is it possible?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">TROILUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And suddenly.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I must then to the Greeks?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">TROILUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">No remedy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A woeful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When shall we see again?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">TROILUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hear me, my love. Be thou but true of heart&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I true! How now? what wicked deem is this?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">TROILUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For it is parting from us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I speak not, be thou true, as fearing thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I will throw my glove to Death himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That there's no maculation in thy heart:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But be thou true, say I, to fashion in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sequent protestation. Be thou true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I will see thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">O heavens! be true again&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O heavens! you love me not.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">TROILUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Die I a villain, then!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In this I do not call your faith in question,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So mainly as my merit&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">&mdash;But be not tempted.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CRESSIDA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do you think I will?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the eagerness of Imogen to meet her husband there is all a wife's
+fondness, mixed up with the breathless hurry arising from a sudden and
+joyful surprise; but nothing of the picturesque eloquence, the ardent,
+exuberant, Italian imagination of Juliet, who, to gratify her
+impatience, would have her heralds thoughts;&mdash;press into her service the
+nimble pinioned doves, and wind-swift Cupids,&mdash;change the course of
+nature, and lash the steeds of Ph&oelig;bus to the west. Imogen only thinks
+"one score of miles, 'twixt sun and sun," slow travelling for a lover,
+and wishes for a horse with wings&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O for a horse with wings! Hear'st thou, Pisanio?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May plod it in a week, why may not I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Who long'st like me, to see thy lord&mdash;who long'st&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O let me bate, but not like me&mdash;yet long'st,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in a fainter kind&mdash;O not like me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For mine's beyond beyond,) say, and speak thick&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the smothering of the sense)&mdash;how far is it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this same blessed Milford? And by the way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell me how Wales was made so happy, as<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To inherit such a haven. But, first of all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How we may steal from hence; and for the gap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we shall make in time, from our hence going<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our return, to excuse. But first, how get hence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should excuse be born, or e'er begot?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'll talk of that hereafter. Pr'ythee speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How many score of miles may we well ride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twixt hour and hour?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PISANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">One score, 'twixt sun and sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Madam, 's enough for you; and too much too.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why, one that rode to his execution, man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could never go so slow!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are two or three other passages bearing on the conjugal tenderness
+of Imogen, which must be noticed for the extreme intensity of the
+feeling, and the unadorned elegance of the expression.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I would thou grew'st unto the shores o' the haven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And question'dst every sail: if he should write,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I not have it, 'twere a paper lost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As offer'd mercy is. What was the last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he spake to thee?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PISANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">'Twas, His queen! his queen!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then wav'd his hankerchief?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PISANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">And kiss'd it, madam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Senseless linen! happier therein than I!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that was all?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PISANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">No, madam; for so long<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he could make me with this eye or ear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinguish him from others, he did keep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could best express how slow his soul sail'd on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How swift his ship.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Thou should'st have made him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As little as a crow, or less, ere left<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To after-eye him.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PISANIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Madam, so I did.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I would have broke my eye-strings; cracked them, but<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To look upon him; till the diminution<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, followed him, till he had melted from<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The smallness of a gnat to air; and then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have turn'd mine eye, and wept.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Two little incidents, which are introduced with the most unobtrusive
+simplicity, convey the strongest impression of her tenderness for her
+husband, and with that perfect unconsciousness on her part, which adds
+to the effect. Thus when she has lost her bracelet&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Go, bid my woman<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Search for a jewel, that too casually,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath left my arm. It was thy master's: 'shrew me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I would lose it for a revenue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of any king in Europe. I do think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I saw't this morning; confident I am,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last night 'twas on mine arm&mdash;<i>I kiss'd it.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I hope it has not gone to tell my lord</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That I kiss aught but he.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It has been well observed, that our consciousness that the bracelet is
+really gone to bear false witness against her, adds an inexpressibly
+touching effect to the simplicity and tenderness of the sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>And again, when she opens her bosom to meet the death to which her
+husband has doomed her, she finds his letters preserved next her heart</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i33">What's here!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The letters of the loyal Leonatus?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft, we'll no defence.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The scene in which Posthumus stakes his ring on the virtue of his wife,
+and gives Iachimo permission to tempt her, is taken from the story. The
+baseness and folly of such conduct have been justly censured; but
+Shakspeare, feeling that Posthumus needed every excuse, has managed the
+quarrelling scene between him and Iachimo with the most admirable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+skill. The manner in which his high spirit is gradually worked up by the
+taunts of this Italian fiend, is contrived with far more probability,
+and much less coarseness, than in the original tale. In the end he is
+not the challenger, but the challenged; and could hardly (except on a
+moral principle, much too refined for those rude times) have declined
+the wager without compromising his own courage and his faith in the
+honor of Imogen.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">IACHIMO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">I durst attempt it against any lady in the world.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">POSTHUMUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">You are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion; and I<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">doubt not you sustain what you're worthy of, by your<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">attempt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">IACHIMO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">What's that?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">POSTHUMUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">A repulse: though your <i>attempt</i>, as you call it, deserve<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">more&mdash;a punishment too.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">PHILARIO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Gentlemen, enough of this. It came in too suddenly; let it<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">die as it was born, and I pray you be better acquainted.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">IACHIMO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Would I had put my estate and my neighbor's on the<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">approbation of what I have said!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">POSTHUMUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">What lady would you choose to assail?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">IACHIMO.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Yours, whom in constancy you think stands so safe<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>In the interview between Imogen and Iachimo, he does not begin his
+attack on her virtue by a direct accusation against Posthumus; but by
+dark hints and half-uttered insinuations, such as Iago uses to madden
+Othello, he intimates that her husband, in his absence from her, has
+betrayed her love and truth, and forgotten her in the arms of another.
+All that Imogen says in this scene is comprised in a few lines&mdash;a brief
+question, or a more brief remark. The proud and delicate reserve with
+which she veils the anguish she suffers, is inimitably beautiful. The
+strongest expression of reproach he can draw from her, is only, "My
+lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." When he continues in the same strain,
+she exclaims in an agony, "Let me hear no more." When he urges her to
+revenge, she asks, with all the simplicity of virtue, "How should I be
+revenged?" And when he explains to her how she is to be avenged, her
+sudden burst of indignation, and her immediate perception of his
+treachery, and the motive for it, are powerfully fine: it is not only
+the anger of a woman whose delicacy has been shocked, but the spirit of
+a princess insulted in her court.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Away! I do condemn mine ears, that have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So long attended thee. If thou wert honorable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou would'st have told this tale for virtue not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For such an end thou seek'st, as base as strange<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou wrong'st a gentleman, who is as far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy report as thou from honor; and<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Solicit'st here a lady that disdains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thee and the devil alike.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>It has been remarked, that "her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false
+imputation, and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes,
+and may show that where there is a real attachment to virtue, there is
+no need of an outrageous antipathy to vice."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is true; but can we fail to perceive that the instant and ready
+forgiveness of Imogen is accounted for, and rendered more graceful and
+characteristic by the very means which Iachimo employs to win it? He
+pours forth the most enthusiastic praises of her husband, professes that
+he merely made this trial of her out of his exceeding love for
+Posthumus, and she is pacified at once; but, with exceeding delicacy of
+feeling, she is represented as maintaining her dignified reserve and her
+brevity of speech to the end of the scene.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p>We must also observe how beautifully the character of Imogen is
+distinguished from those of Desdemona and Hermione. When she is made
+acquainted with her husband's cruel suspicions, we see in her deportment
+neither the meek submission of the former, nor the calm resolute dignity
+of the latter. The first effect produced on her by her husband's letter
+is conveyed to the fancy by the exclamation of Pisanio, who is gazing on
+her as she reads.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has cut her throat already! No, 'tis slander,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose edge is sharper than the sword!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And in her first exclamations we trace, besides astonishment and
+anguish, and the acute sense of the injustice inflicted on her, a flash
+of indignant spirit, which we do not find in Desdemona or Hermione</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">False to his bed!&mdash;What is it to be false?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To lie in watch there, and to think of him?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To weep 'twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To break it with a fearful dream of him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cry myself awake?&mdash;that's false to his bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is followed by that affecting lamentation over the falsehood and
+injustice of her husband, in which she betrays no atom of jealousy or
+wounded self-love, but observes in the extremity of her anguish, that
+after <i>his</i> lapse from truth, "all good seeming would be discredited,"
+and she then resigns herself to his will with the most entire
+submission.</p>
+
+<p>In the original story, Zinevra prevails on the servant to spare her, by
+her exclamations and entreaties for mercy. "The lady, seeing the
+poniard, and hearing those words, exclaimed in terror, 'Alas! have pity
+on me for the love of Heaven! do not become the slayer of one who never
+offended thee, only to pleasure another. God, who knows all things,
+knows that I have never done that which could merit such a reward from
+my husband's hand.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now let us turn to Shakspeare. Imogen says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Come, fellow, be thou honest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do thou thy master's bidding: when thou seest him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little witness my obedience. Look!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I draw the sword myself; take it, and hit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The innocent mansion of my love, my heart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear not; 'tis empty of all things but grief:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy master is not there, who was, indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The riches of it. Do his bidding; strike!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The devoted attachment of Pisanio to his royal mistress, all through the
+piece, is one of those side touches by which Shakspeare knew how to give
+additional effect to his characters.</p>
+
+<p>Cloten is odious;<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> but we must not overlook the peculiar fitness and
+propriety of his character, in connection with that of Imogen. He is
+precisely the kind of man who would be most intolerable to such a woman.
+He is a fool,&mdash;so is Slender, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> Sir Andrew Aguecheek: but the folly
+of Cloten is not only ridiculous, but hateful; it arises not so much
+from a want of understanding as a total want of heart; it is the
+perversion of sentiment, rather than the deficiency of intellect; he has
+occasional gleams of sense, but never a touch of feeling. Imogen
+describes herself not only as "sprighted with a fool," but as "frighted
+and anger'd worse." No other fool but Cloten&mdash;a compound of the booby
+and the villain&mdash;could excite in such a mind as Imogen's the same
+mixture of terror, contempt, and abhorrence. The stupid, obstinate
+malignity of Cloten, and the wicked machinations of the queen&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A father cruel, and a step-dame false,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A foolish suitor to a wedded lady&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>justify whatever might need excuse in the conduct of Imogen&mdash;as her
+concealed marriage and her flight from her father's court&mdash;and serve to
+call out several of the most beautiful and striking parts of her
+character: particularly that decision and vivacity of temper, which in
+her harmonize so beautifully with exceeding delicacy, sweetness, and
+submission.</p>
+
+<p>In the scene with her detested suitor, there is at first a careless
+majesty of disdain, which is admirable.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">I am much sorry, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You put me to forget a lady's manners,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By being so verbal;<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> and learn now, for all,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the very truth of it, I care not for you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And am so near the lack of charity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(T' accuse myself,) I hate you; which I had rather<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You felt, than make 't my boast.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But when he dares to provoke her, by reviling the absent Posthumus, her
+indignation heightens her scorn, and her scorn sets a keener edge on her
+indignation.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLOTEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For the contract you pretend with that base wretch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One bred of alms, and fostered with cold dishes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With scraps o' the court; it is no contract, none.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IMOGEN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Profane fellow!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what thou art, besides, thou wert too base<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be his groom; thou wert dignified enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even to the point of envy, if 'twere made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comparative for your virtues, to be styl'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The under hangman of his kingdom; and hated<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For being preferr'd so well.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He never can meet more mischance than come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be but nam'd of thee. His meanest garment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In my respect, than all the hairs above thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were they all made such men.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>One thing more must be particularly remarked because it serves to
+individualize the character from the beginning to the end of the poem.
+We are constantly sensible that Imogen, besides being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> a tender and
+devoted woman, is a princess and a beauty, at the same time that she is
+ever superior to her position and her external charms. There is, for
+instance, a certain airy majesty of deportment&mdash;a spirit of accustomed
+command breaking out every now and then&mdash;the dignity, without the
+assumption of rank and royal birth, which is apparent in the scene with
+Cloten and elsewhere; and we have not only a general impression that
+Imogen, like other heroines, is beautiful, but the peculiar style and
+character of her beauty is placed before us: we have an image of the
+most luxuriant loveliness, combined with exceeding delicacy, and even
+fragility of person: of the most refined elegance, and the most
+exquisite modesty, set forth in one or two passages of description; as
+when Iachimo is contemplating her asleep:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i29">Cytherea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whiter than the sheets.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">'Tis her breathing that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bows toward her; and would underpeep her lids<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see the enclos'd lights, now canopied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With blue of heaven's own tinct!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The preservation of her feminine character under her masculine attire;
+her delicacy, her modesty, and her timidity, are managed with the same
+perfect consistency and unconscious grace as in Viola. And we must not
+forget that her "neat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> cookery," which is so prettily eulogized by
+Guiderius:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He cuts out roots in characters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sauc'd our broths, as Juno had been sick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he her dieter,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>formed part of the education of a princess in those remote times.</p>
+
+<p>Few reflections of a general nature are put into the mouth of Imogen;
+and what she says is more remarkable for sense, truth, and tender
+feeling, than for wit, or wisdom, or power of imagination. The following
+little touch of poetry reminds us of Juliet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">Ere I could<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give him that parting kiss, which I had set<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between two charming words, comes in my father;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shakes all our buds from growing.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her exclamation on opening her husband's letter reminds us of the
+profound and thoughtful tenderness of Helen:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O learned indeed were that astronomer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That knew the stars, as I his characters!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He'd lay the future open.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The following are more in the manner of Isabel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">Most miserable<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the desire that's glorious: bless'd be those,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How mean soe'er, that have their honest wills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That seasons comfort,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i14">Against self-slaughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is a prohibition so divine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That cravens my weak hand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus may poor fools<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Believe false teachers; though those that are betray'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do feel the reason sharply, yet the traitor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stands in worse case of woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are we not brothers?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">So man and man should be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But clay and clay differs in dignity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose dust is both alike.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Will poor folks lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That have afflictions on them, knowing 'tis<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A punishment or trial? Yes: no wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When rich ones scarce tell true: to lapse in fulness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is worse in kings than beggars.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sentence which follows, and which I believe has become proverbial,
+has much of the manner of Portia, both in the thought and the
+expression:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a great pool, a swan's nest; pr'ythee, think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's livers out of Britain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The catastrophe of this play has been much admired for the peculiar
+skill with which all the various threads of interest are gathered
+together at last, and entwined with the destiny of Imogen. It may be
+added, that one of its chief beauties is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> the manner in which the
+character of Imogen is not only preserved, but rises upon us to the
+conclusion with added grace: her instantaneous forgiveness of her
+husband before he even asks it, when she flings herself at once into his
+arms&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and her magnanimous reply to her father, when he tells her, that by the
+discovery of her two brothers she has lost a kingdom&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No&mdash;I have gain'd two worlds by it&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>clothing a noble sentiment in a noble image, give the finishing touches
+of excellence to this most enchanting portrait.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, Imogen is a lovely compound of goodness, truth, and
+affection, with just so much of passion and intellect and poetry, as
+serve to lend to the picture that power and glowing richness of effect
+which it would otherwise have wanted; and of her it might be said, if we
+could condescend to quote from any other poet with Shakespeare open
+before us, that "her person was a paradise, and her soul the cherub to
+guard it."<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>CORDELIA.</h3>
+
+<p>There is in the beauty of Cordelia's character an effect too sacred for
+words, and almost too deep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> for tears; within her heart is a fathomless
+well of purest affection, but its waters sleep in silence and
+obscurity,&mdash;never failing in their depth and never overflowing in their
+fulness. Every thing in her seems to lie beyond our view, and affects us
+in a manner which we feel rather than perceive. The character appears to
+have no surface, no salient points upon which the fancy can readily
+seize: there is little external development of intellect, less of
+passion, and still less of imagination. It is completely made out in the
+course of a few scenes, and we are surprised to find that in those few
+scenes there is matter for a life of reflection, and materials enough
+for twenty heroines. If Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies,
+Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and
+holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of
+selfishness and passion, approaches near to perfection; and in her
+adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action,
+may be pronounced altogether perfect. The character, to speak of it
+critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be comprehended
+at once, or easily; and in the same manner Cordelia, as a woman, is one
+whom we must have loved before we could have known her, and known her
+long before we could have known her truly.</p>
+
+<p>Most people, I believe, have heard the story of the young German artist
+M&uuml;ller, who, while employed in copying and engraving Raffaelle's Madonna
+del Sisto, was so penetrated by its celestial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> beauty, so distrusted his
+own power to do justice to it, that between admiration and despair he
+fell into a sadness; thence through the usual gradations, into a
+melancholy, thence into madness; and died just as he had put the
+finishing stroke to his own matchless work, which had occupied him for
+eight years. With some slight tinge of this concentrated kind of
+enthusiasm I have learned to contemplate the character of Cordelia; I
+have looked into it till the revelation of its hidden beauty, and an
+intense feeling of the wonderful genius which created it, have filled me
+at once with delight and despair. Like poor M&uuml;ller, but with more
+reason, I <i>do</i> despair of ever conveying, through a different and
+inferior medium, the impression made on my own mind to the mind of
+another.</p>
+
+<p>Schlegel, the most eloquent of critics, concludes his remarks on King
+Lear with these words: "Of the heavenly beauty of soul of Cordelia, I
+will not venture to speak." Now if I attempt what Schlegel and others
+have left undone, it is because I feel that this general acknowledgment
+of her excellence can neither satisfy those who have studied the
+character, nor convey a just conception of it to the mere reader. Amid
+the awful, the overpowering interest of the story, amid the terrible
+convulsions of passion and suffering, and pictures of moral and physical
+wretchedness which harrow up the soul, the tender influence of Cordelia,
+like that of a celestial visitant, is felt and acknowledged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> without
+being quite understood. Like a soft star that shines for a moment from
+behind a stormy cloud and the next is swallowed up in tempest and
+darkness, the impression it leaves is beautiful and deep,&mdash;but vague.
+Speak of Cordelia to a critic or to a general reader, all agree in the
+beauty of the portrait, for all must feel it; but when we come to
+details, I have heard more various and opposite opinions relative to her
+than any other of Shakspeare's characters&mdash;a proof of what I have
+advanced in the first instance, that from the simplicity with which the
+character is dramatically treated, and the small space it occupies, few
+are aware of its internal power, or its wonderful depth of purpose.</p>
+
+<p>It appears to me that the whole character rests upon the two sublimest
+principles of human action, the love of truth and the sense of duty; but
+these, when they stand alone, (as in the Antigone,) are apt to strike us
+as severe and cold. Shakspeare has, therefore, wreathed them round with
+the dearest attributes of our feminine nature, the power of feeling and
+inspiring affection. The first part of the play shows us how Cordelia is
+loved, the second part how she can love. To her father she is the object
+of a secret preference, his agony at her supposed unkindness draws from
+him the confession, that he had loved her most, and "thought to set his
+rest on her kind nursery." Till then she had been "his best object, the
+argument of his praise, balm of his age, most best, most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> dearest!" The
+faithful and worthy Kent is ready to brave death and exile in her
+defence: and afterwards a farther impression of her benign sweetness is
+conveyed in a simple and beautiful manner, when we are told that "since
+the lady Cordelia went to France, her father's poor fool had much pined
+away." We have her sensibility "when patience and sorrow strove which
+should express her goodliest:" and all her filial tenderness when she
+commits her poor father to the care of the physician, when she hangs
+over him as he is sleeping, and kisses him as she contemplates the wreck
+of grief and majesty.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O my dear father! restoration hang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its medicine on my lips: and let this kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Repair those violent harms that my two sisters<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have in thy reverence made!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had you not been their father, these white flakes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had challenged pity of them! Was this a face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be exposed against the warring winds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the most terrible and nimble stroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of quick cross lightning? to watch, (poor perdu!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thin helm? mine enemy's dog,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though he had bit me, should have stood that night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against my fire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her mild magnanimity shines out in her farewell to her sisters, of whose
+real character she is perfectly aware:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye jewels of our father! with washed eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cordelia leaves you! I know ye what ye are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like a sister, am most loath to call<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your faults as they are nam'd. Use well our father,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To your professed bosoms I commit him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would commend him to a better place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So farewell to you both.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">GONERIL.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Prescribe not us our duties!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The modest pride with which she replies to the Duke of Burgundy is
+admirable; this whole passage is too illustrative of the peculiar
+character of Cordelia, as well as too exquisite, to be mutilated</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">I yet beseech your majesty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(If, for I want that glib and oily heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No unchaste action, or dishonored step<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That hath deprived me of your grace and favor;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But even for want of that, for which I am richer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am glad I have not, tho' not to have it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath lost me in your liking.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">Better thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FRANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is it but this? a tardiness of nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That often leaves the history unspoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which it intends to do?&mdash;My lord of Burgundy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What say you to the lady? love is not love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When it is mingled with respects that stand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is herself a dowry.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BURGUNDY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Royal Lear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give but that portion which yourself proposed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here I take Cordelia by the hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Duchess of Burgundy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BURGUNDY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am sorry, then, you have lost a father<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you must lose a husband.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">Peace be with Burgundy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since that respects of fortune are his love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall not be his wife.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">FRANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fairest Cordelia! thou art more rich, being poor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most choice, forsaken, and most lov'd, despised!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She takes up arms, "not for ambition, but a dear father's right." In her
+speech after her defeat, we have a calm fortitude and elevation of soul,
+arising from the consciousness of duty, and lifting her above all
+consideration of self. She observes,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">We are not the first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who with best meaning have incurred the worst!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She thinks and fears only for her father.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Myself would else out-frown false fortune's frown.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To complete the picture, her very voice is characteristic, "ever soft,
+gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman."</p>
+
+<p>But it will be said, that the qualities here exemplified&mdash;as
+sensibility, gentleness, magnanimity, fortitude, generous affection&mdash;are
+qualities which belong, in their perfection, to others of Shakspeare's
+characters&mdash;to Imogen, for instance, who unites them all; and yet Imogen
+and Cordelia are wholly unlike each other. Even though we should reverse
+their situations, and give to Imogen the filial devotion of Cordelia,
+and to Cordelia the conjugal virtues of Imogen, still they would remain
+perfectly distinct as women. What is it, then, which lends to Cordelia
+that peculiar and individual truth of character, which distinguishes her
+from every other human being?</p>
+
+<p>It is a natural reserve, a tardiness of disposition, "which often leaves
+the history unspoke which it intends to do;" a subdued quietness of
+deportment and expression, a veiled shyness thrown over all her
+emotions, her language and her manner; making the outward demonstration
+invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. Not only
+is the portrait singularly beautiful and interesting in itself, but the
+conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of
+the story, is rendered consistent and natural by the wonderful truth and
+delicacy with which this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> peculiar disposition is sustained throughout
+the play.</p>
+
+<p>In early youth, and more particularly if we are gifted with a lively
+imagination, such a character as that of Cordelia is calculated above
+every other to impress and captivate us. Any thing like mystery, any
+thing withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by
+awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half perceive
+and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed.
+But this feeling is a part of our young life: when time and years have
+chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor
+from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out
+of which we build a shrine for our idol&mdash;then do we seek, we ask, we
+thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness, which revives in
+us the withered affections and feelings, buried but not dead. Then the
+excess of love is welcomed, not repelled: it is gracious to us as the
+sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk, with its few green leaves.
+Lear is old&mdash;"fourscore and upward"&mdash;but we see what he has been in
+former days: the ardent passions of youth have turned to rashness and
+wilfulness: he is long passed that age when we are more blessed in what
+we bestow than in what we receive. When he says to his daughters, "I
+gave ye all!" we feel that he requires all in return, with a jealous,
+restless, exacting affection which defeats its own wishes. How many such
+are there in the world! How many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> to sympathize with the fiery, fond old
+man, when he shrinks as if petrified from Cordelia's quiet calm reply!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Now our joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Although the last not least&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What can you say to draw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A third more opulent than your sisters'? Speak!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nothing, my lord.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nothing!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i9">Nothing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nothing can come of nothing: speak again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Unhappy that I am! I cannot heave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">According to my bond; nor more, nor less.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now this is perfectly natural. Cordelia has penetrated the vile
+characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious, that, in proportion as her
+own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross
+hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their "plaited
+cunning;" and would retire from all competition with what she so
+disdains and abhors,&mdash;even into the opposite extreme? In such a case, as
+she says herself&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What should Cordelia do?&mdash;love and be silent?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>For the very expressions of Lear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i11">What can you say to draw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A third more opulent than your sisters'?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>are enough to strike dumb forever a generous, delicate, but shy
+disposition, such as Cordelia's, by holding out a bribe for professions.</p>
+
+<p>If Cordelia were not thus portrayed, this deliberate coolness would
+strike us as verging on harshness or obstinacy; but it is beautifully
+represented as a certain modification of character, the necessary result
+of feelings habitually, if not naturally, repressed: and through the
+whole play we trace the same peculiar and individual disposition&mdash;the
+same absence of all display&mdash;the same sobriety of speech veiling the
+most profound affections&mdash;the same quiet steadiness of purpose&mdash;the same
+shrinking from all exhibition of emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Tous les sentimens naturels ont leur pudeur," was a <i>viv&acirc; voce</i>
+observation of Madame de Sta&euml;l, when disgusted by the sentimental
+affectation of her imitators. This "pudeur," carried to an excess,
+appears to me the peculiar characteristic of Cordelia. Thus, in the
+description of her deportment when she receives the letter of the Earl
+of Kent, informing her of the cruelty of her sisters and the wretched
+condition of Lear, we seem to have her before us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">KENT.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">GENTLEMAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, sir, she took them, and read them in my presence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now and then an ample tear stole down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over her passion; who, most rebel-like<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought to be king over her.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">KENT.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O then it moved her!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">GENTLEMAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Not to a rage.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried, <i>Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! Sisters!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>What, i' the storm? i' the night?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Let pity not be believed.</i> Then she shook<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The holy water from her heavenly eyes;</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18"><i>*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18"><i>Then away she started,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To deal with grief alone.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here the last line&mdash;the image brought before us of Cordelia starting
+away from observation, "to deal with grief alone," is as exquisitely
+beautiful as it is characteristic.</p>
+
+<p>But all the passages hitherto quoted must yield in beauty and power to
+that scene, in which her poor father recognizes her, and in the
+intervals of distraction asks forgiveness of his wronged child. The
+subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's character, her quiet but
+intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man,
+are brought before us in so few words, and at the same time sustained
+with such a deep intuitive knowledge of the innermost workings of the
+human heart, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> as there is nothing surpassing this scene in
+Shakspeare himself, so there is nothing that can be compared to it in
+any other writer.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do scald like molten lead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">Sir, do you know me?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You are a spirit, I know: when did you die?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still, still far wide!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PHYSICIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see another thus. I know not what to say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not swear these are my hands: Let's see.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of my condition.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">O look upon me, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hold your hands in benediction o'er me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, sir, you must not kneel.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Pray, do not mock me:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am a very foolish, fond old man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fourscore and upwards; and to deal plainly with you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fear I am not in my perfect mind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methinks I should know you, and know this man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What place this is; and all the skill I have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remembers not these garments; nor I know not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For as I am a man, I think this lady<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be my child Cordelia.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">And so I am, I am.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LEAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray you weep not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you have poison for me I will drink it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know you do not love me; for your sisters<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have some cause, they have not.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORDELIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No cause, no cause!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As we do not estimate Cordelia's affection for her father by the
+coldness of her language, so neither should we measure her indignation
+against her sisters by the mildness of her expressions. What, in fact,
+can be more eloquently significant, and at the same time more
+characteristic of Cordelia, than the single line when she and her father
+are conveyed to their prison:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall we not see these <i>daughters</i> and these <i>sisters</i>?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The irony here is so bitter and intense, and at the same time so quiet,
+so feminine, so dignified in the expression, that who but Cordelia would
+have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> uttered it in the same manner, or would have condensed such ample
+meaning into so few and simple words?</p>
+
+<p>We lose sight of Cordelia during the whole of the second and third, and
+great part of the fourth act; but towards the conclusion she reappears.
+Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness being carried to its
+extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, "like an engine wrenching
+our frame of nature from its fixed place," then, like a redeeming angel,
+she descends to mingle in the scene, "loosening the springs of pity in
+our eyes," and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of
+admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed
+terrible! wondrous terrible! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his
+arms, compassion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are left
+only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own
+sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the
+catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of
+absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for
+heaven&mdash;our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!&mdash;O who, after
+sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life
+prolonged? What replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?&mdash;a crown upon
+that old gray head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath?&mdash;on
+which the deep dread bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent
+their fury? O never, never!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let him pass! he hates him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That would upon the rack of this rough world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stretch him out longer.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the story of King Lear and his three daughters, as it is related in
+the "delectable and mellifluous" romance of Perceforest, and in the
+Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the conclusion is fortunate. Cordelia
+defeats her sisters, and replaces her father on his throne. Spenser, in
+his version of the story, has followed these authorities. Shakspeare has
+preferred the catastrophe of the old ballad, founded apparently on some
+lost tradition. I suppose it is by way of amending his errors, and
+bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been
+thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have
+altered Romeo and Juliet: they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia
+into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of
+the play&mdash;exit with drums and colors flying&mdash;to be married to Edgar. Now
+any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous
+impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be
+imagined. "I cannot conceive," says Schlegel, "what ideas of art and
+dramatic connection those persons have, who suppose we can at pleasure
+tack a double conclusion to a tragedy&mdash;a melancholy one for hard-hearted
+spectators, and a merry one for those of softer mould." The fierce
+manners depicted in this play, the extremes of virtue and vice in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+persons, belong to the remote period of the story.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> There is no
+attempt at character in the old narratives; Regan and Goneril are
+monsters of ingratitude, and Cordelia merely distinguished by her filial
+piety; whereas, in Shakspeare, this filial piety is an affection quite
+distinct from the qualities which serve to individualize the human
+being; we have a perception of innate character apart from all
+accidental circumstance: we see that if Cordelia had never known her
+father, had never been rejected from his love, had never been a born
+princess or a crowned queen, she would not have been less Cordelia; less
+distinctly <i>herself</i>; that is, a woman of a steady mind, of calm but
+deep affections, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved
+deportment.</p>
+
+<p>As to Regan and Goneril&mdash;"tigers, not daughters"&mdash;we might wish to
+regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable;
+but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for
+the prototype of Cordelia: there was a Julia Alpinula, the young
+priestess of Aventicum,<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> who, unable to save her father's life by the
+sacrifice of her own, died with him&mdash;"<i>infelix patris, infelix
+proles</i>"&mdash;but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter,
+too. I remember<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> seeing at Genoa, Guido's "Pieta Romana," in which the
+expression of the female bending over the aged parent, who feeds from
+her bosom, is perfect,&mdash;but it is not a Cordelia: only Raffaelle could
+have painted Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>But the character which at once suggests itself in comparison with
+Cordelia, as the heroine of filial tenderness and piety, is certainly
+the Antigone of Sophocles. As poetical conceptions, they rest on the
+same basis: they are both pure abstractions of truth, piety, and natural
+affection; and in both, love, as a passion, is kept entirely out of
+sight: for though the womanly character is sustained, by making them the
+objects of devoted attachment, yet to have portrayed them as influenced
+by passion, would have destroyed that unity of purpose and feeling which
+is one source of power; and, besides, have disturbed that serene purity
+and grandeur of soul, which equally distinguishes both heroines. The
+spirit, however, in which the two characters are conceived, is as
+different as possible; and we must not fail to remark, that Antigone,
+who plays a principal part in two fine tragedies, and is distinctly and
+completely made out, is considered as a masterpiece, the very triumph of
+the ancient classical drama; whereas, there are many among Shakspeare's
+characters which are equal to Cordelia as dramatic conceptions, and
+superior to her in finishing of outline, as well as in the richness of
+the poetical coloring.</p>
+
+<p>When &#338;dipus, pursued by the vengeance of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> gods, deprived of sight
+by his own mad act, and driven from Thebes by his subjects and his sons,
+wanders forth, abject and forlorn, he is supported by his daughter
+Antigone; who leads him from city to city, begs for him, and pleads for
+him against the harsh, rude men, who, struck more by his guilt than his
+misery, would drive him from his last asylum. In the opening of the
+"&#338;dipus Coloneus," where the wretched old man appears leaning on his
+child, and seats himself in the consecrated Grove of the Furies, the
+picture presented to us is wonderfully solemn and beautiful. The
+patient, duteous tenderness of Antigone; the scene in which she pleads
+for her brother Polynices, and supplicates her father to receive his
+offending son; her remonstrance to Polynices, when she entreats him not
+to carry the threatened war into his native country, are finely and
+powerfully delineated; and in her lamentation over &#338;dipus, when he
+perishes in the mysterious grove, there is a pathetic beauty, apparent
+even through the stiffness of the translation.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas! I only wished I might have died<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With my poor father; wherefore should I ask<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For longer life?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O I was fond of misery with him;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When he was with me. O my dearest father,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wert dear, and shalt be ever.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Even as he wished he died,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a strange land&mdash;for such was his desire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shady turf covered his lifeless limbs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor unlamented fell! for O these eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My father, still shall weep for thee, nor time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E'er blot thee from my memory.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The filial piety of Antigone is the most affecting part of the tragedy
+of "&#338;dipus Coloneus:" her sisterly affection, and her heroic
+self-devotion to a religious duty, form the plot of the tragedy called
+by her name. When her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had slain
+each other before the walls of Thebes, Creon issued an edict forbidding
+the rites of sepulture to Polynices, (as the invader of his country,)
+and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know
+the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as
+alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon
+hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave,
+enters in the first scene, announcing her fixed resolution to brave the
+threatened punishment: her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril
+of such an undertaking, and endeavors to dissuade her from it, on which
+Antigone replies:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wert thou to proffer what I do not ask&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy poor assistance&mdash;I would scorn it now;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Act as thou wilt, I'll bury him myself:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me perform but that, and death is welcome.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll do the pious deed, and lay me down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By my dear brother; loving and beloved,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'll rest together.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She proceeds to execute her generous purpose;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> she covers with earth the
+mangled corse of Polynices, pours over it the accustomed libations, is
+detected in her pious office, and after nobly defending her conduct, is
+led to death by command of the tyrant: her sister Ismene, struck with
+shame and remorse, now comes forward to accuse herself as a partaker in
+the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and
+scornfully rejects her; and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation
+on the misery of perishing "without the nuptial song&mdash;a virgin and a
+slave," she dies <i>&agrave; l'antique</i>&mdash;she strangles herself to avoid a
+lingering death.</p>
+
+<p>Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her
+grave: but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether
+Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it will be seen that in the Antigone there is a great deal of what
+may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry
+and character: she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs
+the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed
+before us as to <i>command</i> our admiration. According to the classical
+ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the
+delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace,
+a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste and our
+understanding, while they fill and exalt the imagination: but in
+Cordelia it is not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> external coloring or form, it is not what she
+says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and
+suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism
+of Cordelia is more passive and tender&mdash;it melts into our heart; and in
+the veiled loveliness and unostentatious delicacy of her character,
+there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and
+less elaborate than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our
+admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her
+austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the
+Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of
+the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath
+th' almighty dove?" and as that heavenly form is connected with our
+human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or
+maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she
+not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her
+filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">&mdash;&mdash;The gods approve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The depth, and not the tumult of the soul.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+"Il pouvait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de l'orage sans son
+c&oelig;ur," was finely observed of Madame de Sta&euml;l in her maturer years;
+it would have been true of Hermione at any period of her life.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Winter's Tale, act v scene 11</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Only in the last scene, when, with solemnity befitting the
+occasion, Paulina invokes the majestic figure to "descend, and be stone
+no more," and where she presents her daughter to her. "Turn, good lady!
+our Perdita is found."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Act iii, scene 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Which being interpreted into modern English, means, I
+believe, nothing more than that the pattern was what we now call
+<i>arabesque</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> There is an incident in the original tale, "Il Moro di
+Venezia," which could not well be transferred to the drama, but which is
+very effective, and adds, I think, to the circumstantial horrors of the
+story. Desdemona does not accidentally drop the handkerchief; it is
+stolen from her by Iago's little child, an infant of three years old,
+whom he trains and bribes to the theft. The love of Desdemona for this
+child, her little playfellow&mdash;the pretty description of her taking it in
+her arms and caressing it, while it profits by its situation to steal
+the handkerchief from her bosom, are well imagined, and beautifully
+told; and the circumstance of Iago employing his own innocent child as
+the instrument of his infernal villany, adds a deeper, and, in truth an
+unnecessary touch of the fiend, to his fiendish character.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Consequences are so linked together, that the exclamation
+of Emilia,
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O thou dull Moor!&mdash;That handkerchief thou speakest of<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I found by fortune, and did give my husband!&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+is sufficient to reveal to Othello the whole history of his ruin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Giornata, 2do.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> Dr. Johnson, and Dunlop's History of Fiction.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> See Hazlitt and Schlegel on the catastrophe of Cymbeline.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> More rare&mdash;<i>i. e.</i> more exquisitely poignant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> act 1. scene 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> The character of Cloten has been pronounced by some
+unnatural, by others inconsistent, and by others obsolete. The following
+passage occurs in one of Miss Seward's letters, vol. iii p. 246: "It is
+curious that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten,
+have given the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The
+unmeaning frown of countenance, the shuffling gait, the burst of voice,
+the bustling insignificance, the fever and ague fits of valor, the
+froward tetchiness, the unprincipled malice, and, what is more curious,
+those occasional gleams of good sense amidst the floating clouds of
+folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which,
+in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity
+in character; but in the some-time Captain C&mdash;&mdash;, I saw that the
+portrait of Cloten was not out of nature."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> i. e. <i>full of words</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Dryden.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> King Lear may be supposed to have lived about one thousand
+years before the Christian era, being the forth or fifth in descent from
+King Brut, the great-grandson of &AElig;neas, and the fabulous founder of the
+kingdom of Britain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> She is commemorated by Lord Byron. <i>Vide</i> Childe Harold
+Canto iii.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+<h2>HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CLEOPATRA.</h3>
+
+<p>I cannot agree with one of the most philosophical of Shakspeare's
+critics, who has asserted "that the actual truth of particular events,
+in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure
+as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all,
+it is equally just with regard to characters: and in either case can we
+admit it? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which
+Shakspeare has treated the received and admitted truths of history&mdash;I
+mean according to the imperfect knowledge of his time&mdash;is admirable; his
+inaccuracies are few: his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction
+between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be
+wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury of
+history, to debase its purity,&mdash;new-stamp it arbitrarily with effigies
+and legends of his own devising and then attempt to pass it current,
+like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners: he only
+rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened it, so that history herself
+has been known to receive it back as sterling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Truth, wherever manifested, should be sacred: so Shakspeare deemed, and
+laid no profane hand upon her altars. But tragedy&mdash;majestic tragedy, is
+worthy to stand before the sanctuary of Truth, and to be the priestess
+of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue
+amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the
+changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily
+subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within;"<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a>&mdash;whatever is
+pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the
+perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl
+and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the
+interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the
+serious sorrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived,
+suffered and acted upon this earth, to array them in her rich and
+stately robes, and present them before us as powers evoked from dust and
+darkness, to awaken the generous sympathies, the terror or the pity of
+mankind. It does not add to the pain, as far as tragedy is a source of
+emotion, that the wrongs and sufferings represented, the guilt of Lady
+Macbeth, the despair of Constance, the arts of Cleopatra, and the
+distresses of Katherine, had a real existence; but it adds infinitely to
+the moral effect, as a subject of contemplation and a lesson of
+conduct.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>I shall be able to illustrate these observations more fully in the
+course of this section, in which we will consider those characters which
+are drawn from history; and first, Cleopatra.</p>
+
+<p>Of all Shakspeare's female characters, Miranda and Cleopatra appear to
+me the most wonderful. The first, unequalled as a poetic conception; the
+latter, miraculous as a work of art. If we could make a regular
+classification of his characters, these would form the two extremes of
+simplicity and complexity; and all his other characters would be found
+to fill up some shade or gradation between these two.</p>
+
+<p>Great crimes, springing from high passions, grafted on high qualities,
+are the legitimate source of tragic poetry. But to make the extreme of
+littleness produce an effect like grandeur&mdash;to make the excess of
+frailty produce an effect like power&mdash;to heap up together all that is
+most unsubstantial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till
+the worthlessness be lost in the magnitude, and a sense of the sublime
+spring from the very elements of littleness,&mdash;to do this, belonged only
+to Shakspeare that worker of miracles. Cleopatra is a brilliant
+antithesis, a compound of contradictions, of all that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> we most hate,
+with what we most admire. The whole character is the triumph of the
+external over the innate; and yet like one of her country's
+hieroglyphics, though she present at first view a splendid and
+perplexing anomaly, there is deep meaning and wondrous skill in the
+apparent enigma, when we come to analyze and decipher it. But how are we
+to arrive at the solution of this glorious riddle, whose dazzling
+complexity continually mocks and eludes us? What is most astonishing in
+the character of Cleopatra is its antithetical construction&mdash;its
+<i>consistent inconsistency</i>, if I may use such an expression&mdash;which
+renders it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles.
+It will, perhaps, be found on the whole, that vanity and the love of
+power predominate; but I dare not say it <i>is</i> so, for these qualities
+and a hundred others mingle into each other, and shift and change, and
+glance away, like the colors in a peacock's train.</p>
+
+<p>In some others of Shakspeare's female characters, also remarkable for
+their complexity, (Portia and Juliet, for instance,) we are struck with
+the delightful sense of harmony in the midst of contrast, so that the
+idea of unity and simplicity of effect is produced in the midst of
+variety; but in Cleopatra it is the absence of unity and simplicity
+which strikes us; the impression is that of perpetual and irreconcilable
+contrast. The continual approximation of whatever is most opposite in
+character, in situation, in sentiment, would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> fatiguing, were it not
+so perfectly natural: the woman herself would be distracting, if she
+were not so enchanting.</p>
+
+<p>I have not the slightest doubt that Shakspeare's Cleopatra is the real
+historical Cleopatra&mdash;the "Rare Egyptian"&mdash;individualized and placed
+before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's
+wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of
+irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of
+imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her
+tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her
+magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of
+the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized,
+mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant
+impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy
+sorcery.</p>
+
+<p>What better proof can we have of the individual truth of the character
+than the admission that Shakspeare's Cleopatra produces exactly the same
+effect on us that is recorded of the real Cleopatra? She dazzles our
+faculties, perplexes our judgment, bewilders and bewitches our fancy;
+from the beginning to the end of the drama, we are conscious of a kind
+of fascination against which our moral sense rebels, but from which
+there is no escape. The epithets applied to her perpetually
+by Antony and others confirm this impression: "enchanting
+queen!"&mdash;"witch"&mdash;"spell"&mdash;"great fairy"&mdash;"cockatrice"&mdash;"serpent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> of old
+Nile"&mdash;"thou grave charm!"<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> are only a few of them; and who does not
+know by heart the famous quotations in which this Egyptian Circe is
+described with all her infinite seductions?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">Fie! wrangling queen!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom every thing becomes&mdash;to chide, to laugh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To weep; whose every passion fully strives<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make itself, in thee, fair and admired.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her infinite variety:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i22">For vilest things<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Become themselves in her.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the pungent irony of Enobarbus has well exposed her feminine arts,
+when he says, on the occasion of Antony's intended departure,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">instantly: I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">moment.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">She is cunning past man's thought.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">ENOBARBUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Alack, sir, no! her passions are made of nothing but the<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">tempests than almanacs can report; this cannot be cunning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i1">in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Jove.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The whole secret of her absolute dominion over the facile Antony may be
+found in one little speech:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">See where he is&mdash;who's with him&mdash;what he does&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(I did not send you.) If you find him sad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I am sudden sick! Quick! and return.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Madam, methinks if you did love him dearly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You do not hold the method to enforce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The like from him.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What should I do, I do not?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tempt him not too far.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But Cleopatra is a mistress of her art, and knows better: and what a
+picture of her triumphant petulance, her imperious and imperial
+coquetry, is given in her own words!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">That time&mdash;O times!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I laughed him into patience: and next morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then put my tires and mantles on, whilst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wore his sword, Philippan.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When Antony enters full of some serious purpose which he is about to
+impart, the woman's perverseness, and the tyrannical waywardness with
+which she taunts him and plays upon his temper, are admirably depicted.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I know, by that same eye, there's some good news.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What says the married woman?<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> You may go;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would she had never given you leave to come!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let her not say, 'tis I that keep you here;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have no power upon you; hers you are.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The gods best know&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i11">O, never was there queen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So mightily betray'd! Yet at the first,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I saw the treasons planted.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Cleopatra!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why should I think you can be mine, and true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which break themselves in swearing!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Most sweet queen!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, pray you, seek no color for your going,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But bid farewell, and go.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She recovers her dignity for a moment at the news of Fulvia's death, as
+if roused by a blow:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though age from folly could not give me freedom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And then follows the artful mockery with which she tempts and provokes
+him, in order to discover whether he regrets his wife.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">O most false love!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Fulvia's death, how mine receiv'd shall be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quarrel no more; but be prepared to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The purposes I bear: which are, or cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As you shall give th' advice. Now, by the fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That quickens Nilus' shrine, I go from hence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou affectest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Cut my lace, Charmian, come&mdash;But<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">let it be. I am quickly ill, and well.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So Antony loves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">My precious queen, forbear:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And give true evidence to his love which stands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An honorable trial.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">So Fulvia told me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pr'ythee turn aside, and weep for her:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then bid adieu to me, and say, the tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of excellent dissembling; and let it look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like perfect honor.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">You'll heat my blood&mdash;no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You can do better yet; but this is meetly.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, by my sword&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">And target&mdash;still he mends:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But this is not the best. Look, pr'ythee, Charmian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How this Herculean Roman does become<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The carriage of his chafe!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is, indeed, most "excellent dissembling;" but when she has fooled
+and chafed the Herculean Roman to the verge of danger, then comes that
+return of tenderness which secures the power she has tried to the
+utmost, and we have all the elegant, the poetical Cleopatra in her
+beautiful farewell.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">Forgive me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since my becomings kill me when they do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eye well to you. Your honor calls you hence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sit laurell'd victory; and smooth success<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be strew'd before your feet!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Finer still are the workings of her variable mind and lively
+imagination, after Antony's departure; her fond repining at his absence,
+her violent spirit, her right royal wilfulness and impatience, as if it
+were a wrong to her majesty, an insult to her sceptre, that there should
+exist in her despite such things as space and time; and high treason to
+her sovereign power, to dare to remember what she chooses to forget</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Give me to drink mandragora,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I might sleep out this great gap of time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Antony is away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">O Charmian!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The demi-Atlas of this earth&mdash;the arm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And burgonet of men. He's speaking now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For so he calls me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">Met'st thou my posts?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ALEXAS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, madam, twenty several messengers:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why do you send so thick?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">Who's born that day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I forget to send to Antony,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever love C&aelig;sar so?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">O that brave C&aelig;sar!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Be chok'd with such another emphasis!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say, the brave Antony.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">The valiant C&aelig;sar!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If thou with C&aelig;sar paragon again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My man of men!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">By your most gracious pardon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sing but after you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">My salad days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say as I said then. But, come away&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Get me some ink and paper: he shall have every day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A several greeting, or I'll unpeople Egypt.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We learn from Plutarch, that it was a favorite amusement with Antony and
+Cleopatra to ramble through the streets at night, and bandy ribald jests
+with the populace of Alexandria. From the same authority, we know that
+they were accustomed to live on the most familiar terms with their
+attendants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> and the companions of their revels. To these traits we must
+add, that with all her violence, perverseness, egotism, and caprice,
+Cleopatra mingled a capability for warm affections and kindly feeling,
+or rather what we should call in these days, a constitutional
+<i>good-nature</i>; and was lavishly generous to her favorites and
+dependents. These characteristics we find scattered through the play;
+they are not only faithfully rendered by Shakspeare, but he has made the
+finest use of them in his delineation of manners. Hence the occasional
+freedom of her women and her attendants, in the midst of their fears and
+flatteries, becomes most natural and consistent: hence, too, their
+devoted attachment and fidelity, proved even in death. But as
+illustrative of Cleopatra's disposition, perhaps the finest and most
+characteristic scene in the whole play, is that in which the messenger
+arrives from Rome with the tidings of Antony's marriage with Octavia.
+She perceives at once with quickness that all is not well, and she
+hastens to anticipate the worst, that she may have the pleasure of being
+disappointed. Her impatience to know what she fears to learn, the
+vivacity with which she gradually works herself up into a state of
+excitement, and at length into fury, is wrought out with a force of
+truth which makes us recoil.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Antony's dead!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If thou say so, villain, thou kill'st thy mistress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But well and free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have lipp'd, and trembled kissing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">First, madam, he is well.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why, there's more gold. But, sirrah, mark! we use<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say, the dead are well: bring it to that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gold I give thee will I melt, and pour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down thy ill-uttering throat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good madam, hear me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Well, go to, I will.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there's no goodness in thy face. If Antony<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be free and healthful, why so tart a favor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To trumpet such good tidings? If not well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou should'st come like a fury crown'd with snakes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wil't please you hear me?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak'st;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or friends with C&aelig;sar, or not captive to him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rich pearls upon thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Madam, he's well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i17">Well said.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And friends with C&aelig;sar.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">Thou art an honest man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">C&aelig;sar and he are greater friends than ever.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Make thee a fortune from me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i23">But yet, madam&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I do not like <i>but yet</i>&mdash;it does allay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The good precedence. Fie upon <i>but yet</i>:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>But yet</i> is as a gaoler to bring forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some monstrous malefactor. Pr'ythee, friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pour out thy pack of matter to mine ear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The good and bad together. He's friends with C&aelig;sar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In state of health, thou say'st; and thou say'st free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Free, madam! No: I made no such report,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He's bound unto Octavia.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For what good turn?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Madam he's married to Octavia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The most infectious pestilence upon thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">[<i>Strikes him down.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good madam, patience.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">What say you? [<i>Strikes him again.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hence horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like balls before me&mdash;I'll unhair thine head&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stewed in brine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smarting in ling'ring pickle.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">Gracious madam!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, that do bring the news, made not the match.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Say 'tis not so, a province I will give thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make thy fortunes proud: the blow thou hadst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I will boot thee with what gift beside<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy modesty can beg.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">He's married, madam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rogue, thou hast lived too long. [<i>Draws a dagger.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MESSENGER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay then I'll run.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What mean you, madam? I have made no fault. [<i>Exit.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good madam, keep yourself within yourself;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The man is innocent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though I am mad, I will not bite him&mdash;Call!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He is afraid to come.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">I will not hurt him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These hands do lack nobility, that they strike<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A meaner than myself.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In praising Antony I have dispraised C&aelig;sar.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Many times, madam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i17">I am paid for't now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lead me from hence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I faint. O Iras, Charmian&mdash;'tis no matter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Report the features of Octavia, her years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her inclination&mdash;let him not leave out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The color of her hair. Bring me word quickly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i24">[<i>Exit Alex.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let him forever go&mdash;let him not&mdash;Charmian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">T'other way he's a Mars. Bid you Alexas<br /></span>
+<span class="i24">[<i>To Mardian.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bring me word how tall she is. Pity me, Charmian.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>I have given this scene entire because I know nothing comparable to it
+The pride and arrogance of the Egyptian queen, the blandishment of the
+woman, the unexpected but natural transitions of temper and feeling, the
+contest of various passions, and at length&mdash;when the wild hurricane has
+spent its fury&mdash;the melting into tears, faintness, and languishment, are
+portrayed with the most astonishing power, and truth, and skill in
+feminine nature. More wonderful still is the splendor and force of
+coloring which is shed over this extraordinary scene. The mere idea of
+an angry woman beating her menial, presents something ridiculous or
+disgusting to the mind; in a queen or a tragedy heroine it is still more
+indecorous;<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> yet this scene is as far as possible from the vulgar or
+the comic. Cleopatra seems privileged to "touch the brink of all we
+hate" with impunity. This imperial termagant, this "wrangling queen,
+whom every thing becomes," becomes even her fury. We know not by what
+strange power it is, that in the midst of all these unruly passions and
+childish caprices, the poetry of the character, and the fanciful and
+sparkling grace of the delineation are sustained and still rule in the
+imagination; but we feel that it is so.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly observe, that we have historical authority for the
+excessive violence of Cleopatra's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> temper. Witness the story of her
+boxing the ears of her treasurer, in presence of Octavius, as related by
+Plutarch. Shakspeare has made a fine use of this anecdote also towards
+the conclusion of the drama, but it is not equal in power to this scene
+with the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>The man is afterwards brought back, almost by force, to satisfy
+Cleopatra's jealous anxiety, by a description of Octavia:&mdash;but this
+time, made wise by experience, he takes care to adapt his information to
+the humors of his imperious mistress, and gives her a satirical picture
+of her rival. The scene which follows, in which Cleopatra&mdash;artful,
+acute, and penetrating as she is&mdash;becomes the dupe of her feminine spite
+and jealousy, nay, assists in duping herself; and after having cuffed
+the messenger for telling her truths which are offensive, rewards him
+for the falsehood which flatters her weakness&mdash;is not only an admirable
+exhibition of character, but a fine moral lesson.</p>
+
+<p>She concludes, after dismissing the messenger with gold and thanks,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">I repent me much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I so harry'd him. Why, methinks by him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This creature's no such thing?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CHARMIAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O nothing, madam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The man hath seen some majesty, and should know!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Do we not fancy Cleopatra drawing herself up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> with all the vain
+consciousness of rank and beauty as she pronounces this last line? and
+is not this the very woman who celebrated her own apotheosis,&mdash;who
+arrayed herself in the robe and diadem of the goddess Isis, and could
+find no titles magnificent enough for her children but those of <i>the
+Sun</i> and <i>the Moon</i>?</p>
+
+<p>The despotism and insolence of her temper are touched in some other
+places most admirably. Thus, when she is told that the Romans libel and
+abuse her, she exclaims,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sink Rome, and their tongues rot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That speak against us!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And when one of her attendants observes, that "Herod of Jewry dared not
+look upon her but when she were well pleased," she immediately replies,
+"That Herod's head I'll have."<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
+
+<p>When Proculeius surprises her in her monument, and snatches her poniard
+from her, terror, and fury, pride, passion, and disdain, swell in her
+haughty soul, and seem to shake her very being.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">Where art thou, death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come hither, come! come, come and take a queen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worth many babes and beggars!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PROCULEIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O temperance, lady?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir, I will eat no meat; I'll not drink, sir:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If idle talk will once be necessary.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll not sleep neither; this mortal house I'll ruin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do C&aelig;sar what he can! Know, sir, that I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor once be chastis'd with the sober eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And show me to the shouting varletry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be gentle grave to me! Rather on Nilus' mud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blow me into abhorring! Rather make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My country's high pyramids my gibbet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hang me up in chains!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the same spirit of royal bravado, but finer still, and worked up with
+a truly Oriental exuberance of fancy and imagery, is her famous
+description of Antony, addressed to Dolabella:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Most noble empress you have heard of me?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I cannot tell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DOLABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Assuredly, you know me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You laugh when boys, or women, tell their dreams<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is't not your trick?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DOLABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I understand not, madam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I dream'd there was an emperor Antony;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O such another sleep, that I might see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But such another man!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DOLABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If it might please you&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sun and moon; which kept their course, and lighted<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little O, the earth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DOLABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Most sovereign creature&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His legs bestrid the ocean: his reared arm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crested the world; his voice was propertied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when he meant to quail or shake the orb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That grew the more by reaping. His delights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were dolphin like; they show'd his back above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The element they liv'd in. In his livery<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Walk'd crowns and coronets; realms and islands were<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As plates<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> dropp'd from his pocket.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DOLABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cleopatra!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Think you there was, or might be, such a man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As this I dream'd of?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">DOLABELLA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gentle madam, no.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You lie,&mdash;up to the hearing of the gods!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There was no room left in this amazing picture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> for the display of that
+passionate maternal tenderness, which was a strong and redeeming feature
+in Cleopatra's historical character; but it is not left untouched, for
+when she is imprecating mischiefs on herself, she wishes, as the last
+and worst of possible evils, that "thunder may smite C&aelig;sarion!"</p>
+
+<p>In representing the mutual passion of Antony and Cleopatra as real and
+fervent, Shakspeare has adhered to the truth of history as well as to
+general nature. On Antony's side it is a species of infatuation, a
+single and engrossing feeling: it is, in short, the love of a man
+declined in years for a woman very much younger than himself, and who
+has subjected him to every species of female enchantment. In Cleopatra
+the passion is of a mixed nature, made up of real attachment, combined
+with the love of pleasure, the love of power, and the love of self. Not
+only is the character most complicated, but no one sentiment could have
+existed pure and unvarying in such a mind as hers; her passion in itself
+is true, fixed to one centre; but like the pennon streaming from the
+mast, it flutters and veers with every breath of her variable temper:
+yet in the midst of all her caprices, follies, and even vices, womanly
+feeling is still predominant in Cleopatra: and the change which takes
+place in her deportment towards Antony, when their evil fortune darkens
+round them, is as beautiful and interesting in itself as it is striking
+and natural. Instead of the airy caprice and provoking petulance she
+displays in the first scenes, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> have a mixture of tenderness, and
+artifice, and fear, and submissive blandishment. Her behavior, for
+instance, after the battle of Actium, when she quails before the noble
+and tender rebuke of her lover, is partly female subtlety and partly
+natural feeling.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i17">O my lord, my lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You would have follow'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Egypt, thou know'st too well<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart was to the rudder tied by the strings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou should'st tow me after. O'er my spirit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy full supremacy thou know'st; and that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Command me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, my pardon?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Now I must<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the young man send humble treaties, dodge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And palter in the shifts of lowness; who<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With half the bulk o' the world play'd as I pleas'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making and marring fortunes. You did know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How much you were my conqueror; and that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sword, made weak by my affection, would<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Obey it on all cause.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O pardon, pardon!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANTONY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even this repays me.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>It is perfectly in keeping with the individual character, that
+Cleopatra, alike destitute of moral strength and physical courage,
+should cower terrified and subdued before the masculine spirit of her
+lover, when once she has fairly roused it. Thus Tasso's Armida, half
+siren, half sorceress, in the moment of strong feeling, forgets her
+incantations, and has recourse to persuasion, to prayers, and to tears.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lascia gl' incanti, e vuol provar se vaga<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E supplice belta sia miglior maga.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Though the poet afterwards gives us to understand that even in this
+relinquishment of art there was a more refined artifice.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i5">Nella doglia amara<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gi&agrave; tutte non oblia l' arti e le frodi.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And something like this inspires the conduct of Cleopatra towards Antony
+in his fallen fortunes. The reader should refer to that fine scene,
+where Antony surprises Thyreus kissing her hand, "that kingly seal and
+plighter of high hearts," and rages like a thousand hurricanes.</p>
+
+<p>The character of Mark Antony, as delineated by Shakspeare, reminds me of
+the Farnese Hercules. There is an ostentatious display of power, an
+exaggerated grandeur, a colossal effect in the whole conception,
+sustained throughout in the pomp of the language, which seems, as it
+flows along, to resound with the clang of arms and the music of the
+revel. The coarseness and violence of the historic portrait are a little
+kept down; but every word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> which Antony utters is characteristic of the
+arrogant but magnanimous Roman, who "with half the bulk o' the world
+played as he pleased," and was himself the sport of a host of mad (and
+bad) passions, and the slave of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>History is followed closely in all the details of the catastrophe, and
+there is something wonderfully grand in the hurried march of events
+towards the conclusion. As disasters hem her round, Cleopatra gathers up
+her faculties to meet them, not with the calm fortitude of a great soul,
+but the haughty, tameless spirit of a wilful woman, unused to reverse or
+contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>Her speech, after Antony has expired in her arms, I have always regarded
+as one of the most wonderful in Shakspeare. Cleopatra is not a woman to
+grieve silently. The contrast between the violence of her passions and
+the weakness of her sex, between her regal grandeur and her excess of
+misery, her impetuous, unavailing struggles with the fearful destiny
+which has compassed her, and the mixture of wild impatience and pathos
+in her agony, are really magnificent. She faints on the body of Antony,
+and is recalled to life by the cries of her women:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IRAS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Royal Egypt&mdash;empress!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more, but e'en a woman!<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> and commanded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By such poor passion as the maid that milks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And does the meanest chares.&mdash;It were for me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To tell them that our world did equal theirs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Patience is sottish, and impatience does<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To rush into the secret house of death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What, what? good cheer! why how now, Charmian?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My noble girls!&mdash;ah, women, women! look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our lamp is spent, is out.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'll bury him, and then what's brave, what's noble,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make death proud to take us.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But although Cleopatra talks of dying "after the high Roman fashion" she
+fears what she most desires, and cannot perform with simplicity what
+costs her such an effort. That extreme physical cowardice, which was so
+strong a trait in her historical character, which led to the defeat of
+Actium, which made her delay the execution of a fatal resolve, till she
+had "tried conclusions infinite of <i>easy</i> ways to die," Shakspeare has
+rendered with the finest possible effect, and in a manner which
+heightens instead of diminishing our respect and interest. Timid by
+nature, she is courageous by the mere force of will, and she lashes
+herself up with high-sounding words into a kind of false daring. Her
+lively imagination suggests every incentive which can spur her on to the
+deed she has resolved, yet trembles to contemplate. She pictures to
+herself all the degradations which must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> attend her captivity, and let
+it be observed, that those which she anticipates are precisely such as a
+vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would especially dread, and which
+only true virtue and magnanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have
+endured the loss of freedom; but to be led in triumph through the
+streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to C&aelig;sar with
+dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art; but "to be
+chastised" by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured
+Octavia&mdash;"rather a ditch in Egypt!"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If knife, drugs, serpents, have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your wife, Octavia, with her modest eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still conclusion,<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> shall acquire no honor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Demurring upon me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">Now Iras, what think'st thou?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shall be shown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And forc'd to drink their vapor.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">IRAS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i32">The gods forbid!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, 'tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will catch at us like strumpets; and scald rhymers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ballad us out o' tune. The quick comedians<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Extemporally will stage us, and present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our Alexandrian revels. Antony<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall be brought drunken forth; and I shall see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She then calls for her diadem, her robes of state, and attires herself
+as if "again for Cydnus, to meet Mark Antony." Coquette to the last, she
+must make Death proud to take her, and die, "ph&oelig;nix like," as she had
+lived, with all the pomp of preparation&mdash;luxurious in her despair.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Lucretia, of Portia, of Arria, and others who died "after
+the high Roman fashion," is sublime according to the Pagan ideas of
+virtue, and yet none of them so powerfully affect the imagination as the
+catastrophe of Cleopatra. The idea of this frail, timid, wayward woman,
+dying with heroism from the mere force of passion and will, takes us by
+surprise. The Attic elegance of her mind, her poetical imagination, the
+pride of beauty and royalty predominating to the last, and the sumptuous
+and picturesque accompaniments with which she surrounds herself in
+death, carry to its extreme height that effect of contrast which
+prevails through her life and character. No arts, no invention could add
+to the real circumstances of Cleopatra's closing scene. Shakspeare has
+shown profound judgment and feeling in adhering closely to the classical
+authorities; and to say that the language and sentiments worthily fill
+up the outline, is the most magnificent praise that can be given. The
+magical play of fancy and the overpowering fascination of the character
+are kept up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> to the last, and when Cleopatra, on applying the asp,
+silences the lamentations of her women:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Peace! peace!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sucks the nurse to sleep?&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These few words&mdash;the contrast between the tender beauty of the image and
+the horror of the situation&mdash;produce an effect more intensely mournful
+than all the ranting in the world. The generous devotion of her women
+adds the moral charm which alone was wanting: and when Octavius hurries
+in too late to save his victim, and exclaims, when gazing on her&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">She looks like sleep&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As she would catch another Antony<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her strong toil of grace,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the image of her beauty and her irresistible arts, triumphant even in
+death, is at once brought before us, and one masterly and comprehensive
+stroke consummates this most wonderful, most dazzling delineation.</p>
+
+<p>I am not here the apologist of Cleopatra's historical character, nor of
+such women as resemble her: I am considering her merely as a dramatic
+portrait of astonishing beauty, spirit, and originality. She has
+furnished the subject of two Latin, sixteen French, six English, and at
+least four Italian tragedies;<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> yet Shakspeare alone has availed
+himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> of all the interest of the story, without falsifying the
+character. He alone has dared to exhibit the Egyptian queen with all her
+greatness and all her littleness&mdash;all her frailties of temper&mdash;all her
+paltry arts and dissolute passions&mdash;yet preserved the dramatic propriety
+and poetical coloring of the character, and awakened our pity for fallen
+grandeur, without once beguiling us into sympathy with guilt and error.
+Corneille has represented Cleopatra as a model of chaste propriety,
+magnanimity, constancy, and every female virtue; and the effect is
+almost ludicrous. In our own language, we have two very fine tragedies
+on the story of Cleopatra: in that of Dryden, which is in truth a noble
+poem, and which he himself considered his masterpiece, Cleopatra is a
+mere common-place "all-for-love" heroine, full of constancy and fine
+sentiments. For instance:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">My love's so true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I can neither hide it where it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor show it where it is not. Nature meant me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wife&mdash;a silly, harmless, household dove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fond without art, and kind without deceit.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But fortune, that has made a mistress of me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has thrust me out to the wild world, unfurnished<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of falsehood to be happy.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+<p>Is this Antony's Cleopatra&mdash;the Circe of the Nile&mdash;the Venus of the
+Cydnus? <i>She</i> never uttered any thing half so mawkish in her life.</p>
+
+<p>In Fletcher's "False One," Cleopatra is represented at an earlier period
+of her history: and to give an idea of the aspect under which the
+character is exhibited, (and it does not vary throughout the play,) I
+shall give one scene; if it be considered out of place, its extreme
+beauty will form its best apology.</p>
+
+<p>Ptolemy and his council having exhibited to C&aelig;sar all the royal
+treasures in Egypt, he is so astonished and dazzled at the view of the
+accumulated wealth, that he forgets the presence of Cleopatra, and
+treats her with negligence. The following scene between her and her
+sister Arsinoe occurs immediately afterwards.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ARSINOE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You're so impatient!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Have I not cause?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Women of common beauties and low births,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When they are slighted, are allowed their angers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should not I, a princess, make him know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The baseness of his usage?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ARSINOE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Yes, 'tis fit:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But then again you know what man&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">He's no man!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shadow of a greatness hangs upon him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not the virtue; he is no conqueror,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has suffered under the base dross of nature;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poorly deliver'd up his power to wealth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The god of bed-rid men taught his eyes treason.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the truth of love he has rais'd rebellion<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Defied his holy flames.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">EROS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">He will fall back again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And satisfy your grace.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Had I been old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or blasted in my bud, he might have show'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some shadow of dislike: but to prefer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the poor glow-worm light of some faint jewels<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the light of love, and soul of beauty&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O how it vexes me! He is no soldier:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All honorable soldiers are Love's servants.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is a merchant, a mere wandering merchant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Servile to gain; he trades for poor commodities,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And makes his conquests thefts! Some fortunate captains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That quarter with him, and are truly valiant.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have flung the name of "Happy C&aelig;sar" on him;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Himself ne'er won it. He's so base and covetous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He'll sell his sword for gold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ARSINOE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">This is too bitter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, I could curse myself, that was so foolish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So fondly childish, to believe his tongue&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His promising tongue&mdash;ere I could catch his temper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd trash enough to have cloyed his eyes withal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(His covetous eyes,) such as I scorn to tread on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Richer than e'er he saw yet, and more tempting;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had I known he'd stoop'd at that, I'd saved mine honor&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had been happy still! But let him take it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And let him brag how poorly I'm rewarded;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let him go conquer still weak wretched ladies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love has his angry quiver too, his deadly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when he finds scorn, armed at the strongest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am a fool to fret thus for a fool,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An old blind fool too! I lose my health; I will not,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not cry; I will not honor him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With tears diviner than the gods he worships;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not take the pains to curse a poor thing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">EROS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do not; you shall not need.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">Would I were prisoner<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To one I hate, that I might anger him!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will love any man to break the heart of him!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any that has the heart and will to kill him!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ARSINOE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Take some fair truce.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">I will go study mischief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And put a look on, arm'd with all my cunnings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall meet him like a basilisk, and strike him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love! put destroying flame into mine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into my smiles deceits, that I may torture him&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may make him love to death, and laugh at him<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Enter</i> APOLLODORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">APOLLODORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">C&aelig;sar commends his service to your grace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His service? What's his service?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">EROS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i32">Pray you be patient<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The noble C&aelig;sar loves still.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i32">What's his will?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">APOLLODORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He craves access unto your highness.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i36">No;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say no; I will have none to trouble me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ARSINOE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good sister!&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">None, I say. I will be private.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would thou hadst flung me into Nilus, keeper,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When first thou gav'st consent to bring my body<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this unthankful C&aelig;sar!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">APOLLODORUS.<br /><br /></span>
+<span class="i24">'Twas your will, madam.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay more, your charge upon me, as I honor'd you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You know what danger I endur'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">Take this, [<i>giving a jewel</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And carry it to that lordly C&aelig;sar sent thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's a new love, a handsome one, a rich one,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One that will hug his mind: bid him make love to it:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell the ambitious broker this will suffer&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Enter</i> C&AElig;SAR.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">APOLLODORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He enters.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">How!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">I do not use to wait, lady<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where I am, all the doors are free and open.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I guess so by your rudeness.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">You're not angry?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things of your tender mould should be most gentle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should you frown? Good gods, what a set anger<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you forc'd into your face! Come, I must temper you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What a coy smile was there, and a disdainful!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How like an ominous flash it broke out from you!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Defend me, love! Sweet, who has anger'd you?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Show him a glass! That false face has betray'd me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That base heart wrong'd me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Be more sweetly angry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wrong'd you, fair?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Away with your foul flatteries;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are too gross! But that I dare be angry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with as great a god as C&aelig;sar is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To show how poorly I respect his memory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not speak to you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Pray you, undo this riddle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tell me how I've vexed you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i32">Let me think first,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether I may put on patience<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That will with honor suffer me. Know I hate you!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let that begin the story. Now I'll tell you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But do it mildly: in a noble lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Softness of spirit, and a sober nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That moves like summer winds, cool, and blows sweetness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shows blessed, like herself.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">And that great blessedness.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You first reap'd of me; till you taught my nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a rude storm, to talk aloud and thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep was not gentler than my soul, and stiller.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You had the spring of my affections,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my fair fruits I gave you leave to taste of;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You must expect the winter of mine anger.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You flung me off&mdash;before the court disgraced me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in the pride I appear'd of all my beauty&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appear'd your mistress; took unto your eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The common strumpet, love of hated lucre,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Courted with covetous heart the slave of nature,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave all your thoughts to gold, that men of glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And minds adorned with noble love, would kick at!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soldiers of royal mark scorn such base purchase;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beauty and honor are the marks they shoot at.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I spake to you then, I courted you, and woo'd you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Called you dear C&aelig;sar, hung about you tenderly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was proud to appear your friend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">You have mistaken me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But neither eye, nor favor, not a smile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was I blessed back withal, but shook off rudely,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as you had been sold to sordid infamy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You fell before the images of treasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in your soul you worship'd. I stood slighted;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgotten, and contemned; my soft embraces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And those sweet kisses which you called Elysium<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As letters writ in sand, no more remember'd;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The name and glory of your Cleopatra<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laugh'd at, and made a story to your captains!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall I endure?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">You are deceived in all this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon my life you are; 'tis your much tenderness.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No, no; I love not that way; you are cozen'd;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I love with as much ambition as a conqueror,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where I love will triumph!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">So you shall:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart shall be the chariot that shall bear you:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All I have won shall wait upon you. By the gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bravery of this woman's mind has fir'd me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear mistress, shall I but this once&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i36">How! C&aelig;sar!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I let slip a second vanity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That gives thee hope?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">You shall be absolute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And reign alone as queen; you shall be any thing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Farewell, unthankful!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Stay!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">I will not.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+<span class="i38">I command.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Command, and go without, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I do command <i>thee</i> be my slave forever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And vex, while I laugh at thee!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">C&AElig;SAR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus low, beauty&mdash;&mdash;      [<i>He kneels</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CLEOPATRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is too late; when I have found thee absolute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The man that fame reports thee, and to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May be I shall think better. Farewell, conqueror!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">(<i>Exit.</i>)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now this is magnificent poetry, but this is not Cleopatra, this is not
+"the gipsey queen." The sentiment here is too profound, the majesty too
+real, and too lofty. Cleopatra could be great by fits and starts, but
+never sustained her dignity upon so high a tone for ten minutes
+together. The Cleopatra of Fletcher reminds us of the antique colossal
+statue of her in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> the Vatican, all grandeur and grace. Cleopatra in
+Dryden's tragedy is like Guido's dying Cleopatra in the Pitti Palace,
+tenderly beautiful. Shakspeare's Cleopatra is like one of those graceful
+and fantastic pieces of antique Arabesque, in which all anomalous shapes
+and impossible and wild combinations of form are woven together in
+regular confusion and most harmonious discord: and such, we have reason
+to believe, was the living woman herself, when she existed upon this
+earth.</p>
+
+
+<h3>OCTAVIA.</h3>
+
+<p>I do not understand the observation of a late critic, that in this play
+"Octavia is only a dull foil to Cleopatra." Cleopatra requires no foil,
+and Octavia is not dull, though in a moment of jealous spleen, her
+accomplished rival gives her that epithet.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> It is possible that her
+beautiful character, if brought more forward and colored up to the
+historic portrait, would still be eclipsed by the dazzling splendor of
+Cleopatra's; for so I have seen a flight of fireworks blot out for a
+while the silver moon and ever-burning stars. But here the subject of
+the drama being the love of Antony and Cleopatra,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> Octavia is very
+properly kept in the background, and far from any competition with her
+rival: the interest would otherwise have been unpleasantly divided, or
+rather Cleopatra herself must have served but as a foil to the tender,
+virtuous, dignified, and generous Octavia, the very <i>beau ideal</i> of a
+noble Roman lady:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Admired Octavia, whose beauty claims<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No worse a husband than the best of men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose virtues and whose general graces speak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That which none else can utter.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dryden has committed a great mistake in bringing Octavia and her
+children on the scene, and in immediate contact with Cleopatra. To have
+thus violated the truth of history<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> might have been excusable, but to
+sacrifice the truth of nature and dramatic propriety, to produce a mere
+stage effect, was unpardonable. In order to preserve the unity of
+interest, he has falsified the character of Octavia as well as that of
+Cleopatra:<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> he has presented us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> with a regular scolding-match
+between the rivals, in which they come sweeping up to each other from
+opposite sides of the stage, with their respective trains, like two
+pea-hens in a passion. Shakspeare would no more have brought his
+captivating, brilliant, but meretricious Cleopatra into immediate
+comparison with the noble and chaste simplicity of Octavia, than a
+connoisseur in art would have placed Canova's Dansatrice, beautiful as
+it is, beside the Athenian Melpomene, or the Vestal of the Capitol.</p>
+
+<p>The character of Octavia is merely indicated in a few touches, but every
+stroke tells. We see her with "downcast eyes sedate and sweet, and looks
+demure,"&mdash;with her modest tenderness and dignified submission&mdash;the very
+antipodes of her rival! Nor should we forget that she has furnished one
+of the most graceful similes in the whole compass of poetry, where her
+soft equanimity in the midst of grief is compared to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">The swan's down feather<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That stands upon the swell at flood of tide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And neither way inclines.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The fear which, seems to haunt the mind of Cleopatra, lest she should be
+"chastised by the sober eye" of Octavia, is exceedingly characteristic
+of the two women: it betrays the jealous pride of her, who was conscious
+that she had forfeited all real claim to respect; and it places Octavia
+before us in all the majesty of that virtue which could strike a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> kind
+of envying and remorseful awe even into the bosom of Cleopatra. What
+would she have thought and felt, had some soothsayer foretold to her the
+fate of her own children, whom she so tenderly loved? Captives, and
+exposed to the rage of the Roman populace, they owed their existence to
+the generous, admirable Octavia, in whose mind there entered no particle
+of littleness. She received into her house the children of Antony and
+Cleopatra, educated them with her own, treated them with truly maternal
+tenderness, and married them nobly.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, to complete the contrast, the death of Octavia should be put in
+comparison with that of Cleopatra.</p>
+
+<p>After spending several years in dignified retirement, respected as the
+sister of Augustus, but more for her own virtues, Octavia lost her
+eldest son Marcellus, who was expressively called the "Hope of Rome."
+Her fortitude gave way under this blow, and she fell into a deep
+melancholy, which gradually wasted her health. While she was thus
+declining into death, occurred that beautiful scene, which has never
+yet, I believe, been made the subject of a picture, but should certainly
+be added to my gallery, (if I had one,) and I would hang it opposite to
+the dying Cleopatra. Virgil was commanded by Augustus to read aloud to
+his sister that book of the Eneid in which he had commemorated the
+virtues and early death of the young Marcellus. When he came to the
+lines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This youth, the blissful vision of a day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall just be shown on earth, then snatch'd away, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The mother covered her face, and burst into tears. But when Virgil
+mentioned her son by name, ("Tu Marcellus eris,") which he had artfully
+deferred till the concluding lines, Octavia, unable to control her
+agitation, fainted away. She afterwards, with a magnificent spirit,
+ordered the poet a gratuity of ten thousand sesterces for each line of
+the panegyric.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> It is probable that the agitation she suffered on
+this occasion hastened the effects of her disorder; for she died soon
+after, (of grief, says the historian,) having survived Antony about
+twenty years.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VOLUMNIA.</h3>
+
+<p>Octavia, however, is only a beautiful sketch, while in Volumnia,
+Shakspeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in the
+true antique spirit, and finished in every part. Although Coriolanus is
+the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the
+final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother, Volumnia, and
+the power she exercised over his mind, by which, according to the story,
+"she saved Rome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> and lost her son." Her lofty patriotism, her patrician
+haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit,
+are exhibited with the utmost power of effect; yet the truth of female
+nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigor,
+is without harshness.</p>
+
+<p>I shall begin by illustrating the relative position and feelings of the
+mother and son; as these are of the greatest importance in the action of
+the drama, and consequently most prominent in the characters. Though
+Volumnia is a Roman matron, and though her country owes its salvation to
+her, it is clear that her maternal pride and affection are stronger even
+than her patriotism. Thus when her son is exiled, she burst into an
+imprecation against Rome and its citizens:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now the red pestilence strikes all trades in Rome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And occupations perish!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here we have the impulses of individual and feminine nature,
+overpowering all national and habitual influences. Volumnia would never
+have exclaimed like the Spartan mother, of her dead son, "Sparta has
+many others as brave as he;" but in a far different spirit she says to
+the Romans,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Ere you go, hear this:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As far as doth the Capitol exceed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The meanest house in Rome, so far my son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom you have banished, does exceed you all.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the very first scene, and before the introduction of the principal
+personages, one citizen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> observes to another that the military exploits
+of Marcius were performed, not so much for his country's sake "as to
+please his mother." By this admirable stroke of art, introduced with
+such simplicity of effect, our attention is aroused, and we are prepared
+in the very outset of the piece for the important part assigned to
+Volumnia, and for her share in producing the catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>In the first act we have a very graceful scene, in which the two Roman
+ladies, the wife and mother of Coriolanus, are discovered at their
+needle-work, conversing on his absence and danger, and are visited by
+Valeria:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">The noble sisters of Publicola,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's curded by the frost from purest snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hangs on Dian's temple!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Over this little scene Shakspeare, without any display of learning, has
+breathed the very spirit of classical antiquity. The haughty temper of
+Volumnia, her admiration of the valor and high bearing of her son, and
+her proud but unselfish love for him, are finely contrasted with the
+modest sweetness, he conjugal tenderness, and the fond solicitude of his
+wife Virgilia.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">When yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">womb; when youth with comeliness pluck'd all gaze his way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">when, for a day of king's entreaties, a mother should not<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">sell him an hour from her beholding&mdash;considering how honor<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">would become such a person;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> that it was no better than<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">stir,&mdash;was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter&mdash;I<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">VIRGILIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">But had he died in the business, madam? how then?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Then his good report should have been my son; I therein<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">thine and my good Marcius, I had rather eleven die nobly for<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Enter a</i> <span class="smcap">Gentlewoman</span>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Madam, the lady Valeria is come to visit you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">VIRGILIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Beseech you, give me leave to retire myself.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Indeed you shall not.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methinks I hear hither your husband's drum:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See him pluck Aufidius down by the hair:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As children from a bear, the Volces shunning him:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Come on, you cowards! you were got in fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though you were born in Rome." His bloody brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like to a harvest-man, that's task'd to mow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or all, or lose his hire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VIRGILIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Away, you fool! it more becomes a man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At Grecian swords contending. Tell Valeria<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are fit to bid her welcome.       [<i>Exit Gent.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VIRGILIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He'll beat Aufidius's head below his knee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tread upon his neck.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This distinction between the two females is as interesting and beautiful
+as it is well sustained. Thus when the victory of Coriolanus is
+proclaimed, Menenius asks, "Is he wounded?"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VIRGILIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O no, no, no!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes, he is wounded&mdash;I thank the gods for it!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And when he returns victorious from the wars, his high-spirited mother
+receives him with blessings and applause&mdash;his gentle wife with "gracious
+silence" and with tears.</p>
+
+<p>The resemblance of temper in the mother and the son, modified as it is
+by the difference of sex, and by her greater age and experience, is
+exhibited with admirable truth. Volumnia, with all her pride and spirit,
+has some prudence and self-command; in her language and deportment all
+is matured and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> matronly. The dignified tone of authority she assumes
+towards her son, when checking his headlong impetuosity, her respect and
+admiration for his noble qualities, and her strong sympathy even with
+the feelings she combats, are all displayed in the scene in which she
+prevails on him to soothe the incensed plebeians.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">Pray be counsell'd:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have a heart as little apt as yours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But yet a brain that leads my use of anger<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To better vantage.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MENENIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">Well said, noble woman:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The violent fit o' the time craves it as physic<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which I can scarcely bear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORIOLANUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">What must I do?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MENENIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Return to the tribunes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORIOLANUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Well.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What then? what then?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MENENIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Repent what you have spoke.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORIOLANUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For them? I cannot do it to the gods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must I then do't to them?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">You are too absolute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though therein you can never be too noble,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when extremities speak.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">I pr'ythee now, my son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus far having stretch'd it, (here be with them)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy knee bussing the stones, (for in such business<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Action is eloquent, and the eyes of the ignorant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More learned than the ears,) waving thy head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now humble, as the ripest mulberry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That will not hold the handling. Or, say to them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou hast power and person.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MENENIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">This but done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even as she speaks, why all their hearts were yours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For they have pardons, being asked, as free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As words to little purpose.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">Pr'ythee now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go, and be rul'd: although I know thou hadst rather<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than flatter him in a bower.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MENENIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only fair speech.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">COMINIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">I think 'twill serve, if he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can thereto frame his spirit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">He must, and will:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pr'ythee, now say you will, and go about it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORIOLANUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Must I go show them my unbarb'd sconce? Must I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With my base tongue give to my noble heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lie, that it must bear? Well, I will do't;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet were there but this single plot to lose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And throw it against the wind. To the market-place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have put me now to such a part, which never<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall discharge to the life.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I pr'ythee now, sweet son, as thou hast said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My praises made thee first a soldier, so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have my praise for this, perform a part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast not done before.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORIOLANUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Well, I must do't:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away, my disposition, and possess me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some harlot's spirit!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">I will not do't:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by my body's action, teach my mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A most inherent baseness.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">VOLUMNIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">At thy choice, then:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than thou of them. Come all to ruin: let<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy dangerous stoutness: for I mock at death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But owe thy pride thyself.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CORIOLANUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Pray be content;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mother, I am going to the market place&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chide me no more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When the spirit of the mother and the son are brought into immediate
+collision, he yields before her; the warrior who stemmed alone the whole
+city of Corioli, who was ready to face "the steep Tarpeian death, or at
+wild horses' heels,&mdash;vagabond exile&mdash;flaying," rather than abate one jot
+of his proud will&mdash;shrinks at her rebuke. The haughty, fiery,
+overbearing temperament of Coriolanus, is drawn in such forcible and
+striking colors, that nothing can more impress us with the real grandeur
+and power of Volumnia's character, than his boundless submission to her
+will&mdash;his more than filial tenderness and respect.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">You gods! I prate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the most noble mother of the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave unsaluted. Sink my knee i' the earth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy deep duty more impression show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than that of common sons!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When his mother appears before him as a suppliant, he exclaims,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My mother bows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if Olympus to a molehill should<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In supplication nod.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Here the expression of reverence, and the magnificent image in which it
+is clothed, are equally characteristic both of the mother and the son.</p>
+
+<p>Her aristocratic haughtiness is a strong trait in Volumnia's manner and
+character, and her supreme contempt for the plebeians, whether they are
+to be defied or cajoled, is very like what I have heard expressed by
+some high-born and high-bred women of our own day.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">I muse my mother<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does not approve me further, who was wont<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To call them woollen vassals; things created<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In congregations; to yawn, be still, and wonder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When one but of my ordinance stood up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To speak of peace or war.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And Volumnia reproaching the tribunes,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">'Twas you incensed the rabble&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I can of those mysteries which Heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will not have earth to know.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is all the Roman spirit in her exultation when the trumpets sound
+the return of Coriolanus.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Hark! the trumpets!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These are the ushers of Marcius: before him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And in her speech to the gentle Virgilia, who is weeping her husband's
+banishment&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Leave this faint puling! and lament as I do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In anger&mdash;Juno-like!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>But the triumph of Volumnia's character, the full display of all her
+grandeur of soul, her patriotism, her strong affections, and her sublime
+eloquence, are reserved for her last scene, in which she pleads for the
+safety of Rome, and wins from her angry son that peace which all the
+swords of Italy and her confederate arms could not have purchased. The
+strict and even literal adherence to the truth of history is an
+additional beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Her famous speech, beginning "Should we be silent and not speak," is
+nearly word for word from Plutarch, with some additional graces of
+expression, and the charm of metre superadded. I shall give the last
+lines of this address, as illustrating that noble and irresistible
+eloquence which was the crowning ornament of the character. One
+exquisite touch of nature, which is distinguished by italics, was beyond
+the rhetorician and historian, and belongs only to the poet.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Speak to me, son;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast affected the fine strains of honor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To imitate the graces of the gods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think'st thou it honorable for a nobleman<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still to remember wrongs? Daughter, speak you:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps thy childishness may move him more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than can our reasons. There is no man in the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More bound to his mother; yet here he lets me prate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like one i' the stocks. Thou hast never in thy life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Show'd thy dear mother any courtesy;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>When she, (poor hen!) fond of no second brood,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Has cluck'd thee to the wars, and safely home,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Laden with honor.</i> Say my request's unjust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spurn me back: but, if it be not so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thou restrain'st from me the duty which<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a mother's part belongs. He turns away:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down, ladies: let us shame him with our knees.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To his surname Coriolanus 'longs more pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than pity to our prayers; down, and end;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the last; so will we home to Rome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And die among our neighbors. Nay, behold us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This boy, that cannot tell what he would have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But kneels, and holds up hands, for fellowship,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does reason our petition with more strength<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than thou hast to deny't.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p>
+<p>It is an instance of Shakspeare's fine judgment, that after this
+magnificent and touching piece of eloquence, which saved Rome, Volumnia
+should speak no more, for she could say nothing that would not
+deteriorate from the effect thus left on the imagination. She is at last
+dismissed from our admiring gaze amid the thunder of grateful
+acclamations&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Behold, our patroness,&mdash;the life of Rome.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>CONSTANCE.</h3>
+
+<p>We have seen that in the mother of Coriolanus, the principal qualities
+are exceeding pride, self-will, strong maternal affection, great power
+of imagination, and energy of temper. Precisely the same qualities enter
+into the mind of Constance of Bretagne: but in her these qualities are
+so differently modified by circumstances and education, that not even in
+fancy do we think of instituting a comparison between the Gothic
+grandeur of Constance, and the more severe and classical dignity of the
+Roman matron.</p>
+
+<p>The scenes and circumstances with which Shakspeare has surrounded
+Constance, are strictly faithful to the old chronicles, and are as
+vividly as they are accurately represented. On the other hand, the hints
+on which the character has been constructed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> are few and vague; but the
+portrait harmonizes so wonderfully with its historic background, and
+with all that later researches have discovered relative to the personal
+adventures of Constance, that I have not the slightest doubt of its
+individual truth. The result of a life of strange vicissitude; the
+picture of a tameless will, and high passions, forever struggling in
+vain against a superior power: and the real situation of women in those
+chivalrous times, are placed before us in a few noble scenes. The manner
+in which Shakspeare has applied the scattered hints of history to the
+formation of the character, reminds us of that magician who collected
+the mangled limbs which had been dispersed up and down, reunited them
+into the human form, and reanimated them with the breathing and
+conscious spirit of life.</p>
+
+<p>Constance of Bretagne was the only daughter and heiress of Conan IV.,
+Duke of Bretagne; her mother was Margaret of Scotland, the eldest
+daughter of Malcolm IV.: but little mention is made of this princess in
+the old histories; but she appears to have inherited some portion of the
+talent and spirit of her father, and to have transmitted them to her
+daughter. The misfortunes of Constance may be said to have commenced
+before her birth, and took their rise in the misconduct of one of her
+female ancestors. Her great-grandmother Matilda, the wife of Conan III.,
+was distinguished by her beauty and imperious temper, and not less by
+her gallantries. Her husband, not thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> proper to repudiate her
+during his lifetime, contented himself with disinheriting her son Hoel,
+whom he declared illegitimate; and bequeathed his dukedom to his
+daughter Bertha, and her husband Allan the Black, Earl of Richmond, who
+were proclaimed and acknowledged Duke and Duchess of Bretagne.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Hoel, so far from acquiescing in his father's will, immediately
+levied an army to maintain his rights, and a civil war ensued between
+the brother and sister, which lasted for twelve or fourteen years.
+Bertha, whose reputation was not much fairer than that of her mother
+Matilda, was succeeded by her son Conan IV.; he was young, and of a
+feeble, vacillating temper, and after struggling for a few years against
+the increasing power of his uncle Hoel, and his own rebellious barons,
+he called in the aid of that politic and ambitious monarch, Henry II. of
+England. This fatal step decided the fate of his crown and his
+posterity; from the moment the English set foot in Bretagne, that
+miserable country became a scene of horrors and crimes&mdash;oppression and
+perfidy on the one hand, unavailing struggles on the other. Ten years of
+civil discord ensued, during which the greatest part of Bretagne was
+desolated, and nearly a third of the population carried off by famine
+and pestilence. In the end, Conan was secured in the possession of his
+throne by the assistance of the English king, who, equally subtle and
+ambitious, contrived in the course of this warfare to strip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> Conan of
+most of his provinces by successive treaties; alienate the Breton nobles
+from their lawful sovereign, and at length render the Duke himself the
+mere vassal of his power.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of these scenes of turbulence and bloodshed was Constance
+born, in the year 1164. The English king consummated his perfidious
+scheme of policy, by seizing on the person of the infant princess,
+before she was three years old, as a hostage for her father. Afterwards,
+by contracting her in marriage to his third son, Geoffrey Plantagenet,
+he ensured, as he thought, the possession of the duchy of Bretagne to
+his own posterity.</p>
+
+<p>From this time we hear no more of the weak, unhappy Conan, who, retiring
+from a fruitless contest, hid himself in some obscure retreat: even the
+date of his death is unknown. Meanwhile Henry openly claimed the duchy
+in behalf of his son Geoffrey and the Lady Constance; and their claims
+not being immediately acknowledged, he invaded Bretagne with a large
+army, laid waste the country, bribed or forced some of the barons into
+submission, murdered or imprisoned others, and, by the most treacherous
+and barbarous policy, contrived to keep possession of the country he had
+thus seized. However, in order to satisfy the Bretons, who were attached
+to the race of their ancient sovereigns, and to give some color to his
+usurpation, he caused Geoffrey and Constance to be solemnly crowned at
+Rennes, as Duke and Duchess of Bretagne. This was in the year 1169<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> when
+Constance was five, and Prince Geoffrey about eight, years old. His
+father, Henry, continued to rule, or rather to ravage and oppress, the
+country in their name for about fourteen years, during which period we
+do not hear of Constance. She appears to have been kept in a species of
+constraint as a hostage rather than a sovereign; while her husband
+Geoffrey, as he grew up to manhood, was too much engaged in keeping the
+Bretons in order, and disputing his rights with his father, to think
+about the completion of his union with Constance, although his sole
+title to the dukedom was properly and legally in right of his wife. At
+length, in 1182, the nuptials were formally celebrated, Constance being
+then in her nineteenth year. At the same time, she was recognized as
+Duchess of Bretagne <i>de son chef</i>, (that is, in her own right,) by two
+acts of legislation, which are still preserved among the records of
+Bretagne, and bear her own seal and signature.</p>
+
+<p>Those domestic feuds which embittered the whole life of Henry II., and
+at length broke his heart, are well known. Of all his sons, who were in
+continual rebellion against him, Geoffrey was the most undutiful, and
+the most formidable: he had all the pride of the Plantagenets,&mdash;all the
+warlike accomplishments of his two elder brothers, Henry and Richard;
+and was the only one who could compete with his father in talent,
+eloquence, and dissimulation. No sooner was he the husband of Constance,
+and in possession of the throne of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> Bretagne, than he openly opposed his
+father; in other words, he maintained the honor and interests of his
+wife and her unhappy country against the cruelties and oppression of the
+English plunderers.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> About three years after his marriage, he was
+invited to Paris for the purpose of concluding a league, offensive and
+defensive, with the French king: in this journey he was accompanied by
+the Duchess Constance, and they were received and entertained with royal
+magnificence. Geoffrey, who excelled in all chivalrous accomplishments,
+distinguished himself in the tournaments which were celebrated on the
+occasion; but unfortunately, after an encounter with a French knight,
+celebrated for his prowess, he was accidentally flung from his horse,
+and trampled to death in the lists before he could be extricated.</p>
+
+<p>Constance, being now left a widow, returned to Bretagne, where her
+barons rallied round her, and acknowledged her as their sovereign. The
+Salique law did not prevail in Bretagne, and it appears that in those
+times the power of a female to possess and transmit the rights of
+sovereignty had been recognized in several instances; but Constance is
+the first woman who exercised those rights in her own person. She had
+one daughter, Elinor, born in the second year of her marriage, and a few
+months after her husband's death she gave birth to a son. The States of
+Bretagne were filled with exultation; they required that the infant
+prince should not bear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> the name of his father,&mdash;a name which Constance,
+in fond remembrance of her husband, would have bestowed on him&mdash;still
+less that of his grandfather Henry; but that of Arthur, the redoubted
+hero of their country, whose memory was worshipped by the populace.
+Though the Arthur of romantic and fairy legends&mdash;the Arthur of the round
+table, had been dead for six centuries, they still looked for his second
+appearance among them, according to the prophecy of Merlin; and now,
+with fond and short-sighted enthusiasm, fixed their hopes on the young
+Arthur as one destined to redeem the glory and independence of their
+oppressed and miserable country. But in the very midst of the rejoicings
+which succeeded the birth of the prince, his grandfather, Henry II.,
+demanded to have the possession and guardianship of his person; and on
+the spirited refusal of Constance to yield her son into his power, he
+invaded Bretagne with a large army, plundering, burning, devastating the
+country as he advanced. He seized Rennes, the capital, and having by the
+basest treachery obtained possession of the persons both of the young
+duchess and her children, he married Constance forcibly to one of his
+own favorite adherents, Randal de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, and
+conferred on him the duchy of Bretagne, to be held as a fief of the
+English crown.</p>
+
+<p>The Earl of Chester, though a brave knight and one of the greatest
+barons of England, had no pretensions to so high an alliance; nor did he
+possess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> any qualities or personal accomplishments which might have
+reconciled Constance to him as a husband. He was a man of diminutive
+stature and mean appearance, but of haughty and ferocious manners, and
+unbounded ambition.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> In a conference between this Earl of Chester and
+the Earl of Perche, in Lincoln cathedral, the latter taunted Randal with
+his insignificant person, and called him contemptuously "<i>Dwarf</i>."
+"Sayst thou so!" replied Randal; "I vow to God and our Lady, whose
+church this is, that ere long I will seem to thee high as that steeple!"
+He was as good as his word, when, on ascending the throne of Brittany,
+the Earl of Perche became his vassal.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot know what measures were used to force this degradation on the
+reluctant and high-spirited Constance; it is only certain that she never
+considered her marriage in the light of a sacred obligation, and that
+she took the first opportunity of legally breaking from a chain which
+could scarcely be considered as legally binding. For about a year she
+was obliged to allow this detested husband the title of Duke of
+Bretagne, and he administered the government without the slightest
+reference to her will, even in form, till 1189, when Henry II. died,
+execrating himself and his undutiful children. Whatever great and good
+qualities this monarch may have possessed, his conduct in Bretagne was
+uniformly detestable. Even the unfilial behavior of his sons may be
+extenuated; for while he spent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> his life, and sacrificed his peace, and
+violated every principle of honor and humanity to compass their
+political aggrandizement, he was guilty of atrocious injustice towards
+them, and set them a bad example in his own person.</p>
+
+<p>The tidings of Henry's death had no sooner reached Bretagne than the
+barons of that country rose with one accord against his government,
+banished or massacred his officers, and, sanctioned by the Duchess
+Constance, drove Randal de Blondeville and his followers from Bretagne;
+he retired to his earldom of Chester, there to brood over his injuries,
+and meditate vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, Richard I. ascended the English throne. Soon
+afterwards he embarked on his celebrated expedition to the Holy Land,
+having previously declared Prince Arthur, the only son of Constance,
+heir to all his dominions.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p>
+
+<p>His absence, and that of many of her own turbulent barons and
+encroaching neighbors, left to Constance and her harassed dominions a
+short interval of profound peace. The historians of that period,
+occupied by the warlike exploits of the French and English kings in
+Palestine, make but little mention of the domestic events of Europe
+during their absence; but it is no slight encomium on the character of
+Constance, that Bretagne flourished under her government, and began to
+recover from the effects of twenty years of desolating war. The seven
+years during which she ruled as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> independent sovereign, were not
+marked by any events of importance; but in the year 1196 she caused her
+son Arthur, then nine years of age, to be acknowledged Duke of Bretagne
+by the States, and associated him with herself in all the acts of
+government.</p>
+
+<p>There was more of maternal fondness than policy in this measure, and it
+cost her dear. Richard, that royal firebrand, had now returned to
+England: by the intrigues and representations of Earl Randal, his
+attention was turned to Bretagne. He expressed extreme indignation that
+Constance should have proclaimed her son Duke of Bretagne, and her
+partner in power, without his consent, he being the feudal lord and
+natural guardian of the young prince. After some excuses and
+representations on the part of Constance, he affected to be pacified,
+and a friendly interview was appointed at Pontorson, on the frontiers of
+Normandy.</p>
+
+<p>We can hardly reconcile the cruel and perfidious scenes which follow
+with those romantic and chivalrous associations which illustrate the
+memory of C&oelig;ur-de-Lion&mdash;the friend of Blondel, and the antagonist of
+Saladin. Constance, perfectly unsuspicious of the meditated treason,
+accepted the invitation of her brother-in-law, and set out from Rennes
+with a small but magnificent retinue to join him at Pontorson. On the
+road, and within sight of the town, the Earl of Chester was posted with
+a troop of Richard's soldiery, and while the Duchess prepared to enter
+the gates, where she expected to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> be received with honor and welcome, he
+suddenly rushed from his ambuscade, fell upon her and her suite, put the
+latter to flight, and carried off Constance to the strong Castle of St.
+Jaques de Beuvron, where he detained her a prisoner for eighteen months.
+The chronicle does not tell us how Randal treated his unfortunate wife
+during this long imprisonment. She was absolutely in his power; none of
+her own people were suffered to approach her, and whatever might have
+been his behavior towards her, one thing alone is certain, that so far
+from softening her feelings towards <i>him</i>, it seems to have added
+tenfold bitterness to her abhorrence and her scorn.</p>
+
+<p>The barons of Bretagne sent the Bishop of Rennes to complain of this
+violation of faith and justice, and to demand the restitution of the
+Duchess. Richard meanly evaded and temporized: he engaged to restore
+Constance to liberty on certain conditions; but this was merely to gain
+time. When the stipulated terms were complied with, and the hostages
+delivered, the Bretons sent a herald to the English king, to require him
+to fulfil his part of the treaty, and restore their beloved Constance.
+Richard replied with insolent defiance, refused to deliver up either the
+hostages or Constance, and marched his army into the heart of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>All that Bretagne had suffered previously was as nothing compared to
+this terrible invasion; and all that the humane and peaceful government
+of Constance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> had effected during seven years was at once annihilated.
+The English barons and their savage and mercenary followers spread
+themselves through the country, which they wasted with fire and sword.
+The castles of those who ventured to defend themselves were razed to the
+ground; the towns and villages plundered and burnt, and the wretched
+inhabitants fled to the caves and forests; but not even there could they
+find an asylum; by the orders, and in the presence of Richard, the woods
+were set on fire, and hundreds either perished in the flames, or were
+suffocated in the smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Constance, meanwhile, could only weep in her captivity over the miseries
+of her country, and tremble with all a mother's fears for the safety of
+her son. She had placed Arthur under the care of William Desroches, the
+seneschal of her palace, a man of mature age, of approved valor, and
+devotedly attached to her family. This faithful servant threw himself,
+with his young charge, into the fortress of Brest, where he for some
+time defied the power of the English king.</p>
+
+<p>But notwithstanding the brave resistance of the nobles and people of
+Bretagne, they were obliged to submit to the conditions imposed by
+Richard. By a treaty concluded in 1198, of which the terms are not
+exactly known, Constance was delivered from her captivity, though not
+from her husband; but in the following year, when the death of Richard
+had restored her to some degree of independence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> the first use she made
+of it was to <i>divorce herself</i> from Randal. She took this step with her
+usual precipitancy, not waiting for the sanction of the Pope, as was the
+custom in those days; and soon afterwards she gave her hand to Guy,
+Count de Thouars, a man of courage and integrity, who for some time
+maintained the cause of his wife and her son against the power of
+England. Arthur was now fourteen, and the legitimate heir of all the
+dominions of his uncle Richard. Constance placed him under the
+guardianship of the king of France, who knighted the young prince with
+his own hand, and solemnly swore to defend his rights against his
+usurping uncle John.</p>
+
+<p>It is at this moment that the play of King John opens; and history is
+followed as closely as the dramatic form would allow, to the death of
+John. The real fate of poor Arthur, after he had been abandoned by the
+French, and had fallen into the hands of his uncle, is now ascertained;
+but according to the chronicle from which Shakspeare drew his materials,
+he was killed in attempting to escape from the castle of Falaise.
+Constance did not live to witness this consummation of her calamities;
+within a few months after Arthur was taken prisoner, in 1201, she died
+suddenly, before she had attained her thirty-ninth year; but the cause
+of her death is not specified.</p>
+
+<p>Her eldest daughter Elinor, the legitimate heiress of England, Normandy,
+and Bretagne, died in captivity; having been kept a prisoner in Bristol<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+Castle from the age of fifteen. She was at that time so beautiful, that
+she was called proverbially, "La belle Bretonne," and by the English the
+"Fair Maid of Brittany." She, like her brother Arthur, was sacrificed to
+the ambition of her uncles.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two daughters of Constance by Guy de Thouars, the eldest, Alice,
+became Duchess of Bretagne, and married the Count de Dreux, of the royal
+blood of France. The sovereignty of Bretagne was transmitted through her
+descendants in an uninterrupted line, till, by the marriage of the
+celebrated Anne de Bretagne with Charles VIII. of France, her dominions
+were forever united with the French monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>In considering the real history of Constance, three things must strike
+us as chiefly remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>First, that she is not accused of any vice, or any act of injustice or
+violence; and this praise, though poor and negative, should have its due
+weight, considering the scanty records that remain of her troubled life,
+and the period at which she lived&mdash;a period in which crimes of the
+darkest dye were familiar occurrences. Her father, Conan, was considered
+as a gentle and amiable prince&mdash;"gentle even to feebleness;" yet we are
+told that on one occasion he acted over again the tragedy of Ugolino and
+Ruggiero, when he shut up the Count de Dol, with his two sons and his
+nephew, in a dungeon, and deliberately starved them to death; an event
+recorded without any particular comment by the old chroniclers of
+Bretagne. It also appears that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> during those intervals when Constance
+administered the government of her states with some degree of
+independence, the country prospered under her sway, and that she
+possessed at all times the love of her people and the respect of her
+nobles.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, no imputation whatever has been cast on the honor of Constance
+as a wife and as a woman. The old historians, who have treated in a very
+unceremonious style the levities of her great-grandmother Matilda, her
+grandmother Bertha, her godmother Constance, and her mother-in-law
+Elinor, treat the name and memory of our Lady Constance with uniform
+respect.</p>
+
+<p>Her third marriage, with Guy de Thouars, has been censured as impolitic,
+but has also been defended; it can hardly, considering her age, and the
+circumstances in which she was placed, be a just subject of reproach.
+During her hated union with Randal de Blondeville, and the years passed
+in a species of widowhood, she conducted herself with propriety: at
+least I can find no reason to judge otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, we are struck by the fearless, determined spirit, amounting at
+times to rashness, which Constance displayed on several occasions, when
+left to the free exercise of her own power and will; yet we see how
+frequently, with all this resolution and pride of temper, she became a
+mere instrument in the hands of others, and a victim to the superior
+craft or power of her enemies. The inference is unavoidable; there must
+have existed in the mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> of Constance, with all her noble and amiable
+qualities, a deficiency somewhere, a want of firmness, a want of
+judgment or wariness, and a total want of self-control.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the play of King John, the three principal characters are the King,
+Falconbridge, and Lady Constance. The first is drawn forcibly and
+accurately from history: it reminds us of Titian's portrait of C&aelig;sar
+Borgia, in which the hatefulness of the subject is redeemed by the
+masterly skill of the artist,&mdash;the truth, and power, and wonderful
+beauty of the execution. Falconbridge is the spirited creation of the
+poet.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> Constance is certainly an historical personage; but the form
+which, when we meet it on the record of history, appears like a pale
+indistinct shadow, half melted into its obscure background, starts
+before us into a strange relief and palpable breathing reality upon the
+page of Shakspeare.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever we think of Constance, it is in her maternal character. All the
+interest which she excites in the drama turns upon her situation as the
+mother of Arthur. Every circumstance in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> which she is placed, every
+sentiment she utters, has a reference to him, and she is represented
+through the whole of the scenes in which she is engaged, as alternately
+pleading for the rights, and trembling for the existence of her son.</p>
+
+<p>The same may be said of the Merope. In the four tragedies of which her
+story forms the subject,<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> we see her but in one point of view,
+namely, as a mere impersonation of the maternal feeling. The poetry of
+the situation is every thing, the character nothing. Interesting as she
+is, take Merope out of the circumstances in which she is placed,&mdash;take
+away her son, for whom she trembles from the first scene to the last,
+and Merope in herself is nothing; she melts away into a name, to which
+we can fix no other characteristic by which to distinguish her. We
+recognize her no longer. Her position is that of an agonized mother; and
+we can no more fancy her under a different aspect, than we can imagine
+the statue of Niobe in a different attitude.</p>
+
+<p>But while we contemplate the character of Constance, she assumes before
+us an individuality perfectly distinct from the circumstances around
+her. The action calls forth her maternal feelings, and places them in
+the most prominent point of view: but with Constance, as with a real
+human being,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> the maternal affections are a powerful instinct, modified
+by other faculties, sentiments, and impulses, making up the individual
+character. We think of her as a mother, because, as a mother distracted
+for the loss of her son, she is immediately presented before us, and
+calls forth our sympathy and our tears; but we infer the rest of her
+character from what we see, as certainly and as completely as if we had
+known her whole course of life.</p>
+
+<p>That which strikes us as the principal attribute of Constance is
+<i>power</i>&mdash;power of imagination, of will, of passion, of affection, of
+pride: the moral energy, that faculty which is principally exercised in
+self-control, and gives consistency to the rest, is deficient; or
+rather, to speak more correctly, the extraordinary development of
+sensibility and imagination, which lends to the character its rich
+poetical coloring, leaves the other qualities comparatively subordinate.
+Hence it is that the whole complexion of the character, notwithstanding
+its amazing grandeur, is so exquisitely feminine. The weakness of the
+woman, who by the very consciousness of that weakness is worked up to
+desperation and defiance, the fluctuations of temper and the bursts of
+sublime passion, the terrors, the impatience, and the tears, are all
+most true to feminine nature. The energy of Constance not being based
+upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide of passion.
+Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and is excited into frenzy
+by sorrow and disappointment while neither from her towering pride, nor
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> strength of intellect, can she borrow patience to submit, or
+fortitude to endure. It is, therefore, with perfect truth of nature,
+that Constance is first introduced as pleading for peace.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Stay for an answer to your embassy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Lord Chatillon may from England bring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That right in peace, which here we urge in war;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then we shall repent each drop of blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That hot, rash haste so indirectly shed.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And that the same woman, when all her passions are roused by the sense
+of injury, should afterwards exclaim,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">War, war! No peace! peace is to me a war!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That she should be ambitious for her son, proud of his high birth and
+royal rights, and violent in defending them, is most natural; but I
+cannot agree with those who think that in the mind of Constance,
+<i>ambition</i>&mdash;that is, the love of dominion for its own sake&mdash;is either a
+strong motive or a strong feeling: it could hardly be so where the
+natural impulses and the ideal power predominate in so high a degree.
+The vehemence with which she asserts the just and legal rights of her
+son is that of a fond mother and a proud-spirited woman, stung with the
+sense of injury, and herself a reigning sovereign,&mdash;by birth and right,
+if not in fact: yet when bereaved of her son, grief not only "fills the
+room up of her absent child," but seems to absorb every other faculty
+and feeling&mdash;even pride and anger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> It is true that she exults over him
+as one whom nature and fortune had destined to be <i>great</i>, but in her
+distraction for his loss, she thinks of him only as her "Pretty Arthur."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No other feeling can be traced through the whole of her frantic scene:
+it is grief only, a mother's heart-rending, soul-absorbing grief, and
+nothing else. Not even indignation, or the desire of revenge, interfere
+with its soleness and intensity. An ambitious woman would hardly have
+thus addressed the cold, wily Cardinal:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If that be true, I shall see my boy again:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To him that did but yesterday suspire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was not such a gracious creature born.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now will canker eat my bud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chase the native beauty from his cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he will look as hollow as a ghost;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As dim and merge as an ague's fit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so he'll die; and rising so again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I shall meet him in the court of heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall not know him: therefore never, never.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must I behold my pretty Arthur more!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The bewildered pathos and poetry of this address could be natural in no
+woman, who did not unite, like Constance, the most passionate
+sensibility with the most vivid imagination.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is true that Queen Elinor calls her on one occasion, "ambitious
+Constance;" but the epithet is rather the natural expression of Elinor's
+own fear and hatred than really applicable.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> Elinor, in whom age had
+subdued all passions but ambition, dreaded the mother of Arthur as her
+rival in power, and for that reason only opposed the claims of the son:
+but I conceive, that in a woman yet in the prime of life, and endued
+with the peculiar disposition of Constance, the mere love of power would
+be too much modified by fancy and feeling to be called a <i>passion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, it is not pride, nor temper, nor ambition, nor even maternal
+affection, which in Constance gives the prevailing tone to the whole
+character; it is the predominance of imagination. I do not mean in the
+conception of the dramatic portrait, but in the temperament of the woman
+herself. In the poetical, fanciful, excitable cast of her mind, in the
+<i>excess</i> of the ideal power, tinging all her affections, exalting all
+her sentiments and thoughts, and animating the expression of both,
+Constance can only be compared to Juliet.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, it is through the power of imagination that when
+under the influence of excited temper, Constance is not a mere incensed
+woman; nor does she, in the style of Volumnia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> "lament in anger,
+Juno-like," but rather like a sibyl in a fury. Her sarcasms come down
+like thunderbolts. In her famous address to Austria&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That bloody spoil! thou slave! thou wretch! thou coward! &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>it is as if she had concentrated the burning spirit of scorn, and dashed
+it in his face: every word seems to blister where it falls. In the
+scolding scene between her and Queen Elinor, the laconic insolence of
+the latter is completely overborne by the torrent of bitter contumely
+which bursts from the lips of Constance, clothed in the most energetic,
+and often in the most figurative expressions.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let me make answer; Thy usurping son.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out insolent! thy bastard shall be king,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My bed was ever to thy son as true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thine was to thy husband; and this boy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Liker in feature to his father Geffrey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than thou and John in manners: being as like<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As rain to water, or devil to his dam.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His father never was so true begot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Come to thy grandam, child.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do child; go to its grandam, child:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give grandam kingdom, and its grandam will<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's a good grandam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ARTHUR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">Good my mother, peace!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would that I were low laid in my grave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not worth this coil that's made for me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now shame upon you, whe'r she does or no!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, with these crystal beads heav'n shall be bribed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To do him justice, and revenge on you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurp<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dominations, royalties, and rights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's son<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Infortunate in nothing but in thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou unadvised scold, I can produce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A will that bars the title of thy son.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A woman's will&mdash;a canker'd grandam's will!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">KING PHILIP.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Peace, lady: pause, or be more moderate.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And in a very opposite mood, when struggling with the consciousness of
+her own helpless situation, the same susceptible and excitable fancy
+still predominates:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I am sick, and capable of fears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A woman, naturally born to fears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though thou now confess thou didst but jest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With my vexed spirits, I cannot take a truce,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they will quake and tremble all this day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What means that hand upon that breast of thine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fellow, begone! I cannot brook thy sight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This news hath made thee a most ugly man!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is the power of imagination which gives so peculiar a tinge to the
+maternal tenderness of Constance; she not only loves her son with the
+fond instinct of a mother's affection, but she loves him with her
+poetical imagination, exults in his beauty and his royal birth, hangs
+over him with idolatry, and sees his infant brow already encircled with
+the diadem. Her proud spirit, her ardent enthusiastic fancy, and her
+energetic self-will, all combine with her maternal love to give it that
+tone and character which belongs to her only: hence that most beautiful
+address to her son, which coming from the lips of Constance, is as full
+of nature and truth as of pathos and poetry, and which we could hardly
+sympathize with in any other:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ARTHUR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I do beseech you, madam, be content.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CONSTANCE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not care&mdash;I then would be content;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To tread down fair respect of sovereignty.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is this exceeding vivacity of imagination which in the end turns
+sorrow to frenzy. Constance is not only a bereaved and doating mother,
+but a generous woman, betrayed by her own rash confidence; in whose mind
+the sense of injury mingling with the sense of grief, and her impetuous
+temper conflicting with her pride, combine to overset her reason; yet
+she is not mad: and how admirably, how forcibly she herself draws the
+distinction between the frantic violence of uncontrolled feeling and
+actual madness!&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou art not holy to belie me so;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, if I could, what grief should I forget!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not only has Constance words at will, and fast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> as the passionate
+feelings rise in her mind they are poured forth with vivid, overpowering
+eloquence; but, like Juliet, she may be said to speak in pictures. For
+instance:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a proud river peering o'er its bounds.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And throughout the whole dialogue there is the same overflow of
+eloquence, the same splendor of diction, the same luxuriance of imagery;
+yet with an added grandeur, arising from habits of command, from the
+age, the rank, and the matronly character of Constance. Thus Juliet
+pours forth her love like a muse in a rapture: Constance raves in her
+sorrow like a Pythoness possessed with the spirit of pain. The love of
+Juliet is deep and infinite as the boundless sea: and the grief of
+Constance is so great, that nothing but the round world itself is able
+to sustain it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For grief is proud and makes his owner stout.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me, and to the state of my great grief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let kings assemble, for my grief's so great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no supporter but the huge firm earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can hold it up. Here I and Sorrow sit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here is my throne,&mdash;bid kings come bow to it!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>An image more majestic, more wonderfully sublime, was never presented to
+the fancy; yet almost equal as a flight of poetry is her apostrophe to
+the heavens;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Arm, arm, ye heavens, against these perjured kings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A widow calls!&mdash;be husband to me, heavens!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then with a passion would I shake the world!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not only do her thoughts start into images, but her feelings become
+persons: grief haunts her as a living presence:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Grief fills the room up of my absent child;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remembers me of all his gracious parts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then have I reason to be fond of grief.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And death is welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as
+Juliet <i>saw</i> "the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one
+ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered
+fancy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">O amiable, lovely death!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hate and terror to prosperity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I will kiss thy detestable bones;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And right these fingers with thy household worms;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be a carrion monster like thyself;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O come to me!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy.
+Majesty is also the characteristic of Hermione: but what a difference
+between <i>her</i> silent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the eloquent
+grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth
+clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but
+absolutely electrify us!</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, it may be said that pride and maternal affection form the
+basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us; but that
+these passions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, assume
+their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of
+intellect and fancy. It is the energy of passion which lends the
+character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination
+throughout which dilates it into magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be
+found in the parts of Juliet and Constance; the most splendid, perhaps,
+excepting only the parts of Lear and Othello; and for the same
+reason,&mdash;that Lear and Othello as men, and Juliet and Constance as
+women, are distinguished by the predominance of the same
+faculties,&mdash;passion and imagination.</p>
+
+<p>The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially
+interfering with the truth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> of the situation, is the entire omission of
+the character of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance is incorrectly
+represented as in a state of widowhood, at a period when, in point of
+fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place
+just at the period of the opening of the drama; that Guy de Thouars
+played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the
+death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this personage,
+altogether superfluous in the action, would have completely destroyed
+the dramatic interest of the situation;&mdash;and what a situation! One more
+magnificent was never placed before the mind's eye than that of
+Constance, when, deserted and betrayed, she stands alone in her despair,
+amid her false friends and her ruthless enemies!<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> The image of the
+mother-eagle, wounded and bleeding to death, yet stretched over her
+young in an attitude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are
+clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity
+of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the
+grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that
+mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy
+of Philip: between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold,
+subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely
+Louis; the still unconquered spirit of that wrangling queen, old Elinor;
+the bridal loveliness and modesty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> of Blanche; the boyish grace and
+innocence of young Arthur; and Constance in the midst of them, in all
+the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and
+passion, helpless at once and desperate,&mdash;form an assemblage of figures,
+each perfect in its kind, and, taken all together, not surpassed for the
+variety, force, and splendor of the dramatic and picturesque effect.</p>
+
+
+<h3>QUEEN ELINOR.</h3>
+
+<p>Elinor of Guienne, and Blanche of Castile, who form part of the group
+around Constance, are sketches merely, but they are strictly historical
+portraits, and full of truth and spirit.</p>
+
+<p>At the period when Shakspeare has brought these three women on the scene
+together, Elinor of Guienne (the daughter of the last Duke of Guienne
+and Aquitaine, and like Constance, the heiress of a sovereign duchy) was
+near the close of her long, various, and unquiet life&mdash;she was nearly
+seventy: and, as in early youth, her violent passions had overborne both
+principle and policy, so in her old age we see the same character, only
+modified by time; her strong intellect and love of power, unbridled by
+conscience or principle, surviving when other passions were
+extinguished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>, and rendered more dangerous by a degree of subtlety and
+self-command to which her youth had been a stranger. Her personal and
+avowed hatred for Constance, together with its motives, are mentioned by
+the old historians. Holinshed expressly says, that Queen Elinor was
+mightily set against her grandson Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy
+conceived against his mother, than by any fault of the young prince, for
+that she knew and dreaded the high spirit of the Lady Constance.</p>
+
+<p>Shakspeare has rendered this with equal spirit and fidelity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">QUEEN ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What now, my son! have I not ever said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How that ambitious Constance would not cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till she had kindled France and all the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the right and party of her son?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This might have been prevented and made whole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With very easy arguments of love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which now the manage of two kingdoms must<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">KING JOHN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our strong possession and our right for us!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">QUEEN ELINOR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your strong possession much more than your right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or else it must go wrong with you and me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much my conscience whispers in your ear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Queen Elinor preserved to the end of her life her influence over her
+children, and appears to have merited their respect. While intrusted
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> the government, during the absence of Richard I., she ruled with a
+steady hand, and made herself exceedingly popular; and as long as she
+lived to direct the counsels of her son John, his affairs prospered. For
+that intemperate jealousy which converted her into a domestic firebrand,
+there was at least much cause, though little excuse. Elinor had hated
+and wronged the husband of her youth,<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> and she had afterwards to
+endure the negligence and innumerable infidelities of the husband whom
+she passionately loved:<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>&mdash;"and so the whirligig of time brought in
+his revenges." Elinor died in 1203, a few months after Constance, and
+before the murder of Arthur&mdash;a crime which, had she lived, would
+probably never have been consummated; for the nature of Elinor, though
+violent, had no tincture of the baseness and cruelty of her son.</p>
+
+
+<h3>BLANCHE.</h3>
+
+<p>Blanche of Castile was the daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile, and the
+grand-daughter of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> Elinor. At the time that she is introduced into the
+drama, she was about fifteen, and her marriage with Louis VIII., then
+Dauphin, took place in the abrupt manner here represented. It is not
+often that political marriages have the same happy result. We are told
+by the historians of that time, that from the moment Louis and Blanche
+met, they were inspired by a mutual passion, and that during a union of
+more than twenty-six years they were never known to differ, nor even
+spent more than a single day asunder.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p>
+
+<p>In her exceeding beauty and blameless reputation; her love for her
+husband, and strong domestic affections; her pride of birth and rank;
+her feminine gentleness of deportment; her firmness of temper; her
+religious bigotry; her love of absolute power, and her upright and
+conscientious administration of it, Blanche greatly resembled Maria
+Theresa of Austria. She was, however, of a more cold and calculating
+nature; and in proportion as she was less amiable as a woman, did she
+rule more happily for herself and others. There cannot be a greater
+contrast than between the acute understanding, the steady temper, and
+the cool intriguing policy of Blanche, by which she succeeded in
+disuniting and defeating the powers arrayed against her and her infant
+son, and the rash confiding temper and susceptible imagination of
+Constance, which rendered herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> and her son easy victims to the fraud
+or ambition of others. Blanche, during forty years, held in her hands
+the destinies of the greater part of Europe, and is one of the most
+celebrated names recorded in history&mdash;but in what does she survive to us
+except in a name? Nor history, nor fame, though "trumpet-tongued," could
+do for <i>her</i> what Shakspeare and poetry have done for Constance. The
+earthly reign of Blanche is over, her sceptre broken, and her power
+departed. When will the reign of Constance cease? when will <i>her</i> power
+depart? Not while this world is a world, and there exists in it human
+souls to kindle at the touch of genius, and human hearts to throb with
+human sympathies!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There is no female character of any interest in the play of Richard II.
+The Queen (Isabelle of France) enacts the same passive part in the drama
+that she does in history.</p>
+
+<p>The same remark applies to Henry IV. In this admirable play there is no
+female character of any importance; but Lady Percy, the wife of Hotspur,
+is a very lively and beautiful sketch: she is sprightly, feminine, and
+fond; but without any thing energetic or profound, in mind or in
+feeling. Her gayety and spirit in the first scenes, are the result of
+youth and happiness, and nothing can be more natural than the utter
+dejection and brokenness of heart which follow her husband's death: she
+is no heroine for war or tragedy; she has no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> thought of revenging her
+loss; and even her grief has something soft and quiet in its pathos. Her
+speech to her father-in-law, Northumberland, in which she entreats him
+"not to go to the wars," and at the same time pronounces the most
+beautiful eulogium on her heroic husband, is a perfect piece of feminine
+eloquence, both in the feeling and in the expression.</p>
+
+<p>Almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy's celebrated address to her
+husband, beginning,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and that of Portia to Brutus, in Julius C&aelig;sar,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">... You've ungently, Brutus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stol'n from my bed.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The situation is exactly similar, the topics of remonstrance are nearly
+the same; the sentiments and the style as opposite as are the characters
+of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently accustomed to win more from
+her fiery lord by caresses than by reason: he loves her in his rough way
+"as Harry Percy's wife," but she has no real influence over him: he has
+no confidence in her.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY PERCY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">... In faith,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About this title, and hath sent for you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To line his enterprise, but if you go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">HOTSPUR.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So far afoot, I shall be weary, love!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The whole scene is admirable, but unnecessary here, because it
+illustrates no point of character in her. Lady Percy has no <i>character</i>,
+properly so called; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and
+faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's
+fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties,
+scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly
+dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's
+thoughts, and proves it too</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I grant I am a woman, but withal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I grant I am a woman, but withal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A woman well reputed&mdash;Cato's daughter.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think you, I am no stronger than my sex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being so father'd and so husbanded?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BRUTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You are my true and honorable wife:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That visit my sad heart!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is
+but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see
+an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of
+heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by
+profession, and in reality the reverse&mdash;acting deeds against his nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
+by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same
+profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and
+timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity,
+which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The
+fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own
+fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch
+relates, that on the day on which C&aelig;sar was assassinated, Portia
+appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her
+emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has
+rendered this circumstance literally.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why dost thou stay?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LUCIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">To know my errand, madam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">PORTIA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I would have had thee there and here again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O constancy! be strong upon my side:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">... Ah me! how weak a thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not
+well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> in
+the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she
+might not shake <i>his</i> fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a
+chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she
+stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length
+burst into a passion of tears.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p>
+
+<p>If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have
+been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or
+external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of
+sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the <i>philosophy</i> of Portia
+and the <i>heroism</i> of her death, certainly mistook the character
+altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not
+deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took
+place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed
+feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented
+it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BRUTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CASSIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Of your philosophy you make no use,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">If you give place to accidental evils.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BRUTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CASSIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ha!&mdash;Portia?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BRUTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She is dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">CASSIUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O insupportable and touching loss&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon what sickness?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">BRUTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Impatient of my absence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had made themselves so strong&mdash;(for with her death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These tidings came)&mdash;<i>with this she fell distract</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So much for woman's philosophy!</p>
+
+
+<h3>MARGARET OF ANJOU.</h3>
+
+<p>Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal
+evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally
+written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> with
+considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr.
+Warburton,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism
+convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be
+convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the <i>unanswerable</i>.
+"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a
+case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that
+the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more
+of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of
+Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery,
+bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action,
+and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that
+there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as
+Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most
+skeptical.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p><p>Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the
+character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those
+who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most
+conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters,
+we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not
+always equal, but he had not two <i>manners</i>, as they say of painters. I
+discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit
+in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors,
+but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very
+unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these
+tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and
+consistency&mdash;but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so
+well in what true greatness of spirit consisted&mdash;who could excite our
+respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us
+a heroine without a touch of heroism; he would not have portrayed a
+high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest
+vicissitudes of fortune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+have broken the most masculine spirit, with unshaken constancy, yet left
+her without a single personal quality which would excite our interest in
+her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of
+history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen,
+the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere "Amazonian trull," with
+every coarser feature of depravity and ferocity; he would have redeemed
+her from unmingled detestation; he would have breathed into her some of
+his own sweet spirit&mdash;he would have given the woman a soul.</p>
+
+<p>The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all
+other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in
+stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that
+after the espousals of Henry and Margaret, "the king's friends fell from
+him; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves; the
+Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten;
+many thousands slain; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son
+slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as
+she was received with pomp and triumph."</p>
+
+<p>This passage seems to have furnished the groundwork of the character as
+it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret is
+portrayed with all the exterior graces of her sex; as bold and artful,
+with spirit to dare, resolution to act, and fortitude to endure; but
+treacherous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> haughty, dissembling, vindictive, and fierce. The bloody
+struggle for power in which she was engaged, and the companionship of
+the ruthless iron men around her, seem to have left her nothing of
+womanhood but the heart of a mother&mdash;that last stronghold of our
+feminine nature! So far the character is consistently drawn: it has
+something of the power, but none of the flowing ease of Shakspeare's
+manner. There are fine materials not well applied; there is poetry in
+some of the scenes and speeches; the situations are often exceedingly
+poetical; but in the character of Margaret herself, there is not an atom
+of poetry. In her artificial dignity, her plausible wit, and her endless
+volubility, she would remind us of some of the most admired heroines of
+French tragedy, but for that unlucky box on the ear which she gives the
+Duchess of Gloster,&mdash;a violation of tragic decorum, which of course
+destroys all parallel.</p>
+
+<p>Having said thus much, I shall point out some of the finest and most
+characteristic scenes in which Margaret appears. The speech in which she
+expresses her scorn of her meek husband, and her impatience of the power
+exercised by those fierce overbearing barons, York, Salisbury, Warwick,
+Buckingham, is very fine, and conveys as faithful an idea of those
+feudal times as of the woman who speaks. The burst of female spite with
+which she concludes, is admirable&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not all these lords do vex me half so much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wife.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strangers in court do take her for the queen:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She bears a duke's revenues on her back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in her heart she scorns our poverty.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall I not live to be avenged on her?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Contemptuous base-born callet as she is!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She vaunted 'mongst her minions t'other day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The very train of her worst wearing gown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was better worth than all my father's lands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Her intriguing spirit, the facility with which she enters into the
+murderous confederacy against the good Duke Humphrey, the artful
+plausibility with which she endeavours to turn suspicion from
+herself&mdash;confounding her gentle consort by mere dint of words&mdash;are
+exceedingly characteristic, but not the less revolting.</p>
+
+<p>Her criminal love for Suffolk (which is a dramatic incident, not an
+historic fact) gives rise to the beautiful parting scene in the third
+act; a scene which it is impossible to read without a thrill of emotion,
+hurried away by that power and pathos which forces us to sympathize with
+the eloquence of grief, yet excites not a momentary interest either for
+Margaret or her lover. The ungoverned fury of Margaret in the first
+instance, the manner in which she calls on Suffolk to curse his enemies,
+and then shrinks back overcome by the violence of the spirit she had
+herself evoked, and terrified by the vehemence of his imprecations; the
+transition in her mind from the extremity of rage to tears<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> and melting
+fondness, have been pronounced, and justly, to be in Shakspeare's own
+manner.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Go, speak not to me&mdash;even now begone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loather a hundred times to part than die:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>which is followed by that beautiful and intense burst of passion from
+Suffolk&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tis not the hand I care for, wert thou hence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wilderness is populous enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So Suffolk had thy heavenly company:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For where thou art, there is the world itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With every several pleasure in the world;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where thou art not, desolation!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the third part of Henry the Sixth, Margaret, engaged in the terrible
+struggle for her husband's throne, appears to rather more advantage. The
+indignation against Henry, who had pitifully yielded his son's
+birthright for the privilege of reigning unmolested during his own life,
+is worthy of her, and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here
+inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of
+the Duke of York; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty
+with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner,&mdash;the bitterness
+of her mockery, and the unwomanly malignity with which she presents him
+with the napkin stained with the blood of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> youngest son, and "bids
+the father wipe his eyes withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion
+and horror. York replies in the celebrated speech, beginning&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She-wolf of France, and worse than wolves of France,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and taunts her with the poverty of her father, the most irritating topic
+he could have chosen.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless the adage must be verified,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That beggars, mounted, ride their horse to death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The contrary doth make thee wondered at.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis government that makes them seem divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The want thereof makes thee abominable.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the child<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bid the father wipe his face withal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted such a speech could be
+answered only in one way&mdash;with her dagger's point&mdash;and thus she answers
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It is some comfort to reflect that this trait of ferocity is not
+historical: the body of the Duke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> of York was found, after the battle,
+among the heaps of slain, and his head struck off: but even this was not
+done by the command of Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>In another passage, the truth and consistency of the character of
+Margaret are sacrificed to the march of the dramatic action, with a very
+ill effect. When her fortunes were at the very lowest ebb, and she had
+sought refuge in the court of the French king, Warwick, her most
+formidable enemy, upon some disgust he had taken against Edward the
+Fourth, offered to espouse her cause; and proposed a match between the
+prince her son and his daughter Anne of Warwick&mdash;the "gentle Lady Anne,"
+who figures in Richard the Third. In the play, Margaret embraces the
+offer without a moment's hesitation:<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> we are disgusted by her
+versatile policy, and a meanness of spirit in no way allied to the
+magnanimous forgiveness of her terrible adversary. The Margaret of
+history sternly resisted this degrading expedient. She could not, she
+said, pardon from her heart the man who had been the primary cause of
+all her misfortunes. She mistrusted Warwick, despised him for the
+motives of his revolt from Edward, and considered that to match her son
+into the family of her enemy from mere policy was a species of
+degradation. It took Louis the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> Eleventh, with all his art and
+eloquence, fifteen days to wring a reluctant consent, accompanied with
+tears, from this high-hearted woman.</p>
+
+<p>The speech of Margaret to her council of generals before the battle of
+Tewksbury, (Act v. scene 5,) is as remarkable a specimen of false
+rhetoric, as her address to the soldiers, on the eve of the fight, is of
+true and passionate eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>She witnesses the final defeat of her army, the massacre of her
+adherents, and the murder of her son; and though the savage Richard
+would willingly have put an end to her misery, and exclaims very
+pertinently&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why should she live to fill the world with words?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she is dragged forth unharmed, a woful spectacle of extremest
+wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we
+compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter
+of her son, to the ravings of Constance, we shall perceive where
+Shakspeare's genius did <i>not</i> preside, and where it <i>did</i>. Margaret, in
+bold defiance of history, but with fine dramatic effect, is introduced
+again in the gorgeous and polluted court of Edward the Fourth. There she
+stalks around the seat of her former greatness, like a terrible phantom
+of departed majesty, uncrowned, unsceptered, desolate, powerless&mdash;or
+like a vampire thirsting for blood&mdash;or like a grim prophetess of evil,
+imprecating that ruin on the head of her enemies, which she lived to see
+realized. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> scene following the murder of the princes in the Tower,
+in which Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York sit down on the ground
+bewailing their desolation, and Margaret suddenly appears from behind
+them, like the very personification of woe, and seats herself beside
+them revelling in their despair, is, in the general conception and
+effect grand and appalling.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">THE DUCHESS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, Harry's wife, triumph not in my woes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God witness with me, I have wept for thine!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">QUEEN MARGARET.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now I cloy me with beholding it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Young York he is but boot, because both they<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Match not the high perfection of my loss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy Clarence he is dead, that stabb'd my Edward;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the beholders of this tragic play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Untimely smother'd in their dusky graves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only reserv'd their factor, to buy souls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And send them thither. But at hand, at hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ensues his piteous and unpitied end;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar for him: saints pray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have him suddenly convey'd from hence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may live to say, The dog is dead.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p>
+<p>She should have stopped here; but the effect thus powerfully excited is
+marred and weakened by so much superfluous rhetoric, that we are tempted
+to exclaim with the old Duchess of York&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why should calamity be full of words?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>QUEEN KATHERINE OF ARRAGON.</h3>
+
+<p>To have a just idea of the accuracy and beauty of this historical
+portrait, we ought to bring immediately before us those circumstances of
+Katherine's life and times, and those parts of her character, which
+belong to a period previous to the opening of the play. We shall then be
+better able to appreciate the skill with which Shakspeare has applied
+the materials before him.</p>
+
+<p>Katherine of Arragon, the fourth and youngest daughter of Ferdinand,
+King of Arragon, and Isabella of Castile, was born at Alcala, whither
+her mother had retired to winter after one of the most terrible
+campaigns of the Moorish war&mdash;that of 1485.</p>
+
+<p>Katherine had derived from nature no dazzling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> qualities of mind, and no
+striking advantages of person. She inherited a tincture of Queen
+Isabella's haughtiness and obstinacy of temper, but neither her beauty
+nor her splendid talents. Her education under the direction of that
+extraordinary mother, had implanted in her mind the most austere
+principles of virtue, the highest ideas of female decorum, the most
+narrow and bigoted attachment to the forms of religion, and that
+excessive pride of birth and rank, which distinguished so particularly
+her family and her nation. In other respects, her understanding was
+strong, and her judgment clear. The natural turn of her mind was simple,
+serious, and domestic, and all the impulses of her heart kindly and
+benevolent. Such was Katherine; such, at least, she appears on a
+reference to the chronicles of her times, and particularly from her own
+letters, and the papers written or dictated by herself which relate to
+her divorce; all of which are distinguished by the same artless
+simplicity of style, the same quiet good sense, the same resolute, yet
+gentle spirit and fervent piety.</p>
+
+<p>When five years old, Katherine was solemnly affianced to Arthur, Prince
+of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII.; and in the year 1501, she landed
+in England, after narrowly escaping shipwreck on the southern coast,
+from which every adverse wind conspired to drive her. She was received
+in London with great honor, and immediately on her arrival united to the
+young prince. He was then fifteen and Katherine in her seventeenth
+year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Arthur, as it is well known, survived his marriage only five months; and
+the reluctance of Henry VII. to refund the splendid dowry of the
+Infanta, and forego the advantages of an alliance with the most powerful
+prince of Europe, suggested the idea of uniting Katherine to his second
+son Henry; after some hesitation, a dispensation was procured from the
+Pope, and she was betrothed to Henry in her eighteenth year. The prince,
+who was then only twelve years old, resisted as far as he was able to do
+so, and appears to have really felt a degree of horror at the idea of
+marrying his brother's widow. Nor was the mind of King Henry at rest; as
+his health declined, his conscience reproached him with the equivocal
+nature of the union into which he had forced his son; and the vile
+motives of avarice and expediency which had governed him on this
+occasion. A short time previous to his death, he dissolved the
+engagement, and even caused Henry to sign a paper in which he solemnly
+renounced all idea of a future union with the Infanta. It is observable,
+that Henry signed this paper with reluctance, and that Katherine,
+instead of being sent back to her own country, still remained in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>It appears that Henry, who was now about seventeen, had become
+interested for Katherine, who was gentle and amiable. The difference of
+years was rather a circumstance in her favor; for Henry was just at that
+age, when a youth is most likely to be captivated by a woman older than
+himself: and no sooner was he required to renounce her, than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> the
+interest she had gradually gained in his affections, became, by
+opposition, a strong passion. Immediately after his father's death, he
+declared his resolution to take for his wife the Lady Katherine of
+Spain, and none other; and when the matter was discussed in council, it
+was urged that, besides the many advantages of the match in a political
+point of view, she had given so "much proof of virtue, and sweetness of
+condition, as they knew not where to parallel her." About six weeks
+after his accession, June 3, 1509, the marriage was celebrated with
+truly royal splendor, Henry being then eighteen, and Katherine in her
+twenty-fourth year.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said with truth, that if Henry had died while Katherine was
+yet his wife, and Wolsey his minister, he would have left behind him the
+character of a magnificent, popular, and accomplished prince, instead of
+that of the most hateful ruffian and tyrant who ever swayed these
+realms. Notwithstanding his occasional infidelities, and his impatience
+at her midnight vigils, her long prayers, and her religious austerities,
+Katherine and Henry lived in harmony together. He was fond of openly
+displaying his respect and love for her; and she exercised a strong and
+salutary influence over his turbulent and despotic spirit. When Henry
+set out on his expedition to France, in 1513, he left Katherine regent
+of the kingdom during his absence, with full powers to carry on the war
+against the Scots; and the Earl of Surrey at the head of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> army, as
+her lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine&mdash;the pacific,
+domestic, and unpretending Katherine&mdash;describing herself as having "her
+heart set to war," and "horrible busy" with making "standards, banners,
+badges, scarfs, and the like."<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> Nor was this mere silken
+preparation&mdash;mere dalliance with the pomp and circumstance of war; for
+within a few weeks afterwards, her general defeated the Scots in the
+famous battle of Floddenfield, where James IV. and most of his nobility
+were slain.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></p>
+
+<p>Katherine's letter to Henry, announcing this event, so strikingly
+displays the piety and tenderness, the quiet simplicity, and real
+magnanimity of her character, that there cannot be a more apt and
+beautiful illustration of the exquisite truth and keeping of
+Shakspeare's portrait.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+
+<p>My Lord Howard hath sent me a letter, open to your Grace,
+within one of mine, by the which ye shall see at length the
+great victory that our Lord hath sent your subjects in your
+absence: and for this cause, it is no need herein to trouble
+your Grace with long writing; but to my thinking this battle
+hath been to your Grace, and all your realm, the greatest
+honor that could be, and more than ye should win all the
+crown of France, thanked be God for it! And I am sure your
+Grace forgetteth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> not to do this, which shall be cause to
+send you many more such great victories, as I trust he shall
+do. My husband, for haste, with Rougecross, I could not send
+your Grace the piece of the king of Scots' coat, which John
+Glyn now bringeth. In this your Grace shall see how I can
+keep my promise, sending you for your banners a king's coat.
+I thought to send himself unto you, but our Englishmen's
+hearts would not suffer it. It should have been better for
+him to have been in peace than have this reward, but all
+that God sendeth is for the best. My Lord of Surrey, my
+Henry, would fain know your pleasure in the burying of the
+king of Scots' body, for he hath written to me so. With the
+next messenger, your Grace's pleasure may be herein known.
+And with this I make an end, praying God to send you home
+shortly; for without this, no joy here can be
+accomplished&mdash;and for the same I pray. And now go to our
+Lady at Walsyngham, that I promised so long ago to see.</p>
+
+<p>At Woburn, the 16th day of September, (1513.)</p>
+
+<p>I send your Grace herein a bill, found in a Scottishman's
+purse, of such things as the French king sent to the said
+king of Scots, to make war against you, beseeching you to
+send Mathew hither as soon as this messenger cometh with
+tidings of your Grace.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your humble wife and true servant,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12"><span class="smcap">Katherine</span>.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span></p>
+<p>The legality of the king's marriage with Katherine remained undisputed
+till 1527. In the course of that year, Anna Bullen first appeared at
+court, and was appointed maid of honor to the queen; and then, and not
+till then, did Henry's union with his brother's wife "creep too near his
+conscience." In the following year, he sent special messengers to Rome,
+with secret instructions: they were required to discover (among other
+"hard questions") whether, if the queen entered a religious life, the
+king might have the Pope's dispensation to marry again; and whether if
+the king (for the better inducing the queen thereto) would enter himself
+into a religious life, the Pope would dispense with the king's vow, and
+leave her there?</p>
+
+<p>Poor Katherine! we are not surprised to read that when she understood
+what was intended against her, "she labored with all those passions
+which jealousy of the king's affection, sense of her own honor, and the
+legitimation of her daughter, could produce, laying in conclusion the
+whole fault on the Cardinal." It is elsewhere said, that Wolsey bore the
+queen ill-will, in consequence of her reflecting with some severity on
+his haughty temper, and very unclerical life.</p>
+
+<p>The proceedings were pending for nearly six years, and one of the causes
+of this long delay, in spite of Henry's impatient and despotic
+character, is worth noting. The old Chronicle tells us, that though the
+men generally, and more particularly the priests and the nobles sided
+with Henry in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> matter, yet all the ladies of England were against
+it. They justly felt that the honor and welfare of no woman was secure
+if, after twenty years of union, she might be thus deprived of all her
+rights as a wife; the clamor became so loud and general, that the king
+was obliged to yield to it for a time, to stop the proceedings, and to
+banish Anna Bullen from the court.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Campeggio, called by Shakspeare Campeius, arrived in England in
+October, 1528. He at first endeavored to persuade Katherine to avoid the
+disgrace and danger of contesting her marriage, by entering a religious
+house; but she rejected his advice with strong expressions of disdain.
+"I am," said she, "the king's true wife, and to him married; and if all
+doctors were dead, or law or learning far out of men's minds at the time
+of our marriage, yet I cannot think that the court of Rome, and the
+whole church of England, would have consented to a thing unlawful and
+detestable as you call it. Still I say I am his wife, and for him will I
+pray."</p>
+
+<p>About two years afterwards, Wolsey died, (in November, 1530;)&mdash;the king
+and queen met for the last time on the 14th of July, 1531. Until that
+period, some outward show of respect and kindness had been maintained
+between them; but the king then ordered her to repair to a private
+residence, and no longer to consider herself as his lawful wife. "To
+which the virtuous and mourning queen replied no more than this, that to
+whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> place she removed, nothing could remove her from being the
+king's wife. And so they bid each other farewell; and from this time the
+king never saw her more."<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> He married Anna Bullen in 1532, while the
+decision relating to his former marriage was still pending. The sentence
+of divorce to which Katherine never would submit, was finally pronounced
+by Cranmer in 1533; and the unhappy queen, whose health had been
+gradually declining through these troubles of heart, died January 29,
+1536, in the fiftieth year of her age.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the action of the play of Henry VIII. includes events which
+occurred from the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, to the
+death of Katherine in 1536. In making the death of Katherine precede the
+birth of Queen Elizabeth, Shakspeare has committed an anachronism, not
+only pardonable, but necessary. We must remember that the construction
+of the play required a happy termination; and that the birth of
+Elizabeth, before or after the death of Katherine, involved the question
+of her legitimacy. By this slight deviation from the real course of
+events, Shakspeare has not perverted historic facts, but merely
+sacrificed them to a higher principle; and in doing so has not only
+preserved dramatic propriety, and heightened the poetical interest, but
+has given a strong proof both of his delicacy and his judgment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If we also call to mind that in this play Katherine is properly the
+heroine, and exhibited from first to last as the very "queen of earthly
+queens;" that the whole interest is thrown round her and Wolsey&mdash;the one
+the injured rival, the other the enemy of Anna Bullen&mdash;and that it was
+written in the reign and for the court of Elizabeth, we shall yet
+farther appreciate the moral greatness of the poet's mind, which
+disdained to sacrifice justice and the truth of nature to any
+time-serving expediency.</p>
+
+<p>Schlegel observes somewhere, that in the literal accuracy and apparent
+artlessness with which Shakspeare has adapted some of the events and
+characters of history to his dramatic purposes, he has shown equally his
+genius and his wisdom. This, like most of Schlegel's remarks, is
+profound and true; and in this respect Katherine of Arragon may rank as
+the triumph of Shakspeare's genius and his wisdom. There is nothing in
+the whole range of poetical fiction in any respect resembling or
+approaching her; there is nothing comparable, I suppose, but Katherine's
+own portrait by Holbein, which, equally true to the life, is yet as far
+inferior as Katherine's person was inferior to her mind. Not only has
+Shakspeare given us here a delineation as faithful as it is beautiful,
+of a peculiar modification of character; but he has bequeathed us a
+precious moral lesson in this proof that virtue alone,&mdash;(by which I mean
+here the union of truth or conscience with benevolent affection&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>
+one the highest law, the other the purest impulse of the soul,)&mdash;that
+such virtue is a sufficient source of the deepest pathos and power with
+out any mixture of foreign or external ornament: for who but Shakspeare
+would have brought before us a queen and a heroine of tragedy, stripped
+her of all pomp of place and circumstance, dispensed with all the usual
+sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding
+intellect; and without any appeal to our imagination, without any
+violation of historical truth, or any sacrifices of the other dramatic
+personages for the sake of effect, could depend on the moral principle
+alone, to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and
+elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses of our
+nature!</p>
+
+<p>The character, when analyzed, is, in the first place, distinguished by
+<i>truth</i>. I do not only mean its truth to nature, or its relative truth
+arising from its historic fidelity and dramatic consistency, but <i>truth</i>
+as a quality of the soul; this is the basis of the character. We often
+hear it remarked that those who are themselves perfectly true and
+artless, are in this world the more easily and frequently deceived&mdash;a
+common-place fallacy: for we shall ever find that truth is as undeceived
+as it is undeceiving, and that those who are true to themselves and
+others, may now and then be mistaken, or in particular instances duped
+by the intervention of some other affection or quality of the mind; but
+they are generally free from illusion, and they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> seldom imposed upon
+in the long run by the shows of things and superfices of characters. It
+is by this integrity of heart and clearness of understanding, this light
+of truth within her own soul, and not through any acuteness of
+intellect, that Katherine detects and exposes the real character of
+Wolsey, though unable either to unravel his designs, or defeat them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">... My lord, my lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am a simple woman, much too weak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">T' oppose your cunning.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She rather intuitively feels than knows his duplicity, and in the
+dignity of her simplicity she towers above his arrogance as much as she
+scorns his crooked policy. With this essential truth are combined many
+other qualities, natural or acquired, all made out with the same
+uncompromising breadth of execution and fidelity of pencil, united with
+the utmost delicacy of feeling. For instance, the apparent contradiction
+arising from the contrast between Katherine's natural disposition and
+the situation in which she is placed; her lofty Castilian pride and her
+extreme simplicity of language and deportment; the inflexible resolution
+with which she asserts her right, and her soft resignation to unkindness
+and wrong; her warmth of temper breaking through the meekness of a
+spirit subdued by a deep sense of religion; and a degree of austerity
+tinging her real benevolence;&mdash;all these qualities, opposed yet
+harmonizing, has Shakspeare placed before us in a few admirable scenes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Katherine is at first introduced as pleading before the king in behalf
+of the commonalty, who had been driven by the extortions of Wolsey into
+some illegal excesses. In this scene, which is true to history, we have
+her upright reasoning mind, her steadiness of purpose, her piety and
+benevolence, placed in a strong light. The unshrinking dignity with
+which she opposes without descending to brave the Cardinal, the stern
+rebuke addressed to the Duke of Buckingham's surveyor, are finely
+characteristic; and by thus exhibiting Katherine as invested with all
+her conjugal rights and influence, and royal state, the subsequent
+situations are rendered more impressive. She is placed in the first
+instance on such a height in our esteem and reverence, that in the midst
+of her abandonment and degradation, and the profound pity she afterwards
+inspires, the first effect remains unimpaired, and she never falls
+beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of the second act we are prepared for the proceedings
+of the divorce, and our respect for Katherine heightened by the general
+sympathy for "the good queen," as she is expressively entitled, and by
+the following beautiful eulogium on her character uttered by the Duke of
+Norfolk:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He (Wolsey) counsels a divorce&mdash;a loss of her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That like a jewel hath hung twenty years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About his neck, yet never lost her lustre.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her that loves him with that excellence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That angels love good men with; even of her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will bless the King!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The scene in which Anna Bullen is introduced as expressing her grief and
+sympathy for her royal mistress, is exquisitely graceful.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">Here's the pang that pinches;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His highness having liv'd so long with her, and she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So good a lady, that no tongue could ever<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pronounce dishonor of her,&mdash;by my life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She never knew harm-doing. O now, after<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So many courses of the sun enthron'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still growing in a majesty and pomp,&mdash;the which<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To leave is a thousand-fold more bitter, than<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis sweet at first to acquire,&mdash;after this process,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To give her the avaunt! it is a pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would move a monster.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OLD LADY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Hearts of most hard temper<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Melt and lament for her.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANNE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">O, God's will! much better<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She ne'er had known pomp: though it be temporal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance, panging<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As soul and body's severing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">OLD LADY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">Alas, poor lady!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She's a stranger now again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">ANNE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">So much the more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must pity drop upon her. Verily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I swear 'tis better to be lowly born,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And range with humble livers in content,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wear a golden sorrow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How completely, in the few passages appropriated to Anna Bullen, is her
+character portrayed! with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she
+sketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, her levity, her extreme
+mobility, her sweetness of disposition, her tenderness of heart, and, in
+short, all her <i>femalities</i>! How nobly has Shakspeare done justice to
+the two women, and heightened our interest in both, by placing the
+praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen! and how characteristic
+of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her
+mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly
+pomp, thus betraying her own disposition:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For she that had all the fair parts of woman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Affected eminence, wealth, and sovereignty.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed, "a
+sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should
+immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen&mdash;"No, good
+troth! not for all the riches under heaven!"&mdash;and not long afterwards
+ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal
+mistress had been so cruelly divorced!&mdash;how natural! The portrait is not
+less true and masterly than that of Katherine; but the character is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>
+overborne by the superior moral firmness and intrinsic excellence of the
+latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the
+beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Katherine's trial
+at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty
+at her coronation, is placed immediately before the dying scene of
+Katherine; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakspeare has
+constantly avoided all personal collision between the two characters;
+nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the
+procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed.</p>
+
+<p>To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial scene is given nearly
+verbatim from the old chronicles and records; but the dryness and
+harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the
+genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the
+historical authorities, that when the affair was first agitated in
+council, Katherine replied to the long expositions and theological
+sophistries of her opponents with resolute simplicity and composure: "I
+am a woman, and lack wit and learning to answer these opinions; but I am
+sure that neither the king's father nor my father would have
+condescended to our marriage, if it had been judged unlawful. As to your
+saying that I should put the cause to eight persons of this realm, for
+quietness of the king's conscience, I pray Heaven to send his Grace a
+quiet conscience and this shall be your answer, that I say I am his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>
+lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, though not worthy of it; and
+in this point I will abide, till the court of Rome, which was privy to
+the beginning, have made a final ending of it."<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p>
+
+<p>Katherine's appearance in the court at Blackfriars, attended by a noble
+troop of ladies and prelates of her counsel, and her refusal to answer
+the citation, are historical.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> Her speech to the king&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir, I beseech you do me right and justice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to bestow your pity on me, &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is taken word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank
+verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy
+for Shakspeare to have exalted his own skill, by throwing a coloring of
+poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or
+sentiment; but by adhering to the calm argumentative simplicity of
+manner and diction natural to the woman, he has preserved the truth of
+character without lessening the pathos of the situation. Her challenging
+Wolsey as a "foe to truth," and her very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> expressions, "I utterly
+refuse,&mdash;yea, from my soul <i>abhor</i> you for my judge," are taken from
+fact. The sudden burst of indignant passion towards the close of this
+scene,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">In one who ever yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had stood to charity, and displayed the effects<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of disposition gentle, and of wisdom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'ertopping woman's power;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is taken from nature, though it occurred on a different occasion.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the circumstance of her being called back after she had appealed
+from the court, and angrily refusing to return, is from the life. Master
+Griffith, on whose arm she leaned, observed that she was called: "On,
+on," quoth she; "it maketh no matter, for it is no indifferent court for
+me, therefore I will not tarry. Go on your ways."<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p>
+
+<p>King Henry's own assertion, "I dare to say, my lords, that for her
+womanhood, wisdom, nobility, and gentleness, never prince had such
+another wife, and therefore if I would willingly change her I were not
+wise," is thus beautifully paraphrased by Shakspeare:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That man i' the world, who shall report he has<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A better wife, let him in nought be trusted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For speaking false in that! Thou art, alone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Obeying in commanding; and thy parts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The queen of earthly queens. She is noble born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, like her true nobility, she has<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Carried herself towards me.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The annotators on Shakspeare have all observed the close resemblance
+between this fine passage&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i34">Sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am about to weep; but, thinking that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The daughter of a king&mdash;my drops of tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll turn to sparks of fire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the speech of Hermione&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am not prone to weeping as our sex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commonly are, the want of which vain dew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That honorable grief lodged here, which burns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worse than tears drown.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But these verbal gentlemen do not seem to have felt that the resemblance
+is merely on the surface, and that the two passages could not possibly
+change places, without a manifest violation of the truth of character.
+In Hermione it is pride of sex merely: in Katherine it is pride of place
+and pride of birth. Hermione, though so superbly majestic, is perfectly
+independent of her regal state: Katherine, though so meekly pious, will
+neither forget hers, nor allow it to be forgotten by others for a
+moment. Hermione,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> when deprived of that "crown and comfort of her
+life," her husband's love, regards all things else with despair and
+indifference except her feminine honor: Katherine, divorced and
+abandoned, still with true Spanish pride stands upon respect, and will
+not bate one atom of her accustomed state</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Though unqueened, yet like a queen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And daughter to a king, inter me!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The passage&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A fellow of the royal bed, that owns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A moiety of the throne&mdash;a great king's daughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">... here standing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who please to come to hear,<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>would apply nearly to both queens, yet a single sentiment&mdash;nay, a single
+sentence&mdash;could not possibly be transferred from one character to the
+other. The magnanimity, the noble simplicity, the purity of heart, the
+resignation in each&mdash;how perfectly equal in degree! how diametrically
+opposite in kind!<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span></p><p>Once more to return to Katherine.</p>
+
+<p>We are told by Cavendish, that when Wolsey and Campeggio visited the
+queen by the king's order she was found at work among her women, and
+came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging
+about her neck; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she interrupted
+him, saying, "Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you;
+although I understand Latin." "Forsooth then," quoth my lord, "madam, if
+it please your grace, we come both to know your mind, how ye be disposed
+to do in this matter between the king and you, and also to declare
+secretly our opinions and our counsel unto you, which we have intended
+of very zeal and obedience that we bear to your grace." "My lords, I
+thank you then," quoth she, "of your good wills; but to make answer to
+your request I cannot so suddenly, for I was set among my maidens at
+work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a
+longer deliberation, and a better head than mine to make answer to so
+noble wise men as ye be. I had need of good counsel in this case, which
+toucheth me so near; and for any counsel or friendship that I can find
+in England, they are nothing to my purpose or profit. Think you, I pray
+you, my lords, will any Englishmen counsel, or be friendly unto me,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>
+against the king's pleasure, they being his subjects? Nay, forsooth, my
+lords! and for my counsel, in whom I do intend to put my trust, they be
+not here; they be in Spain, in my native country.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> Alas! my lords, I
+am a poor woman lacking both wit and understanding sufficiently to
+answer such approved wise men as ye be both, in so weighty a matter. I
+pray you to extend your good and indifferent minds in your authority
+unto me, for I am a simple woman, destitute and barren of friendship and
+counsel, here in a foreign region; and as for your counsel, I will not
+refuse, but be glad to hear."</p>
+
+<p>It appears, also, that when the Archbishop of York and Bishop Tunstall
+waited on her at her house near Huntingdon, with the sentence of the
+divorce, signed by Henry, and confirmed by act of parliament, she
+refused to admit its validity, she being Henry's wife, and not his
+subject. The bishop describes her conduct in his letter: "She being
+therewith in great choler and agony, and always interrupting our words,
+declared that she would never leave the name of queen, but would persist
+in accounting herself the king's wife till death."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> When the official
+letter containing minutes of their conference was shown to her, she
+seized a pen, and dashed it angrily across every sentence in which she
+was styled <i>Princess-dowager</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If now we turn to that inimitable scene between Katherine and the two
+cardinals, (act iii. scene 1,) we shall observe how finely Shakspeare
+has condensed these incidents, and unfolded to us all the workings of
+Katherine's proud yet feminine nature. She is discovered at work with
+some of her women&mdash;she calls for music "to soothe her soul grown sad
+with troubles"&mdash;then follows the little song, of which the sentiment is
+so well adapted to the occasion, while its quaint yet classic elegance
+breathes the very spirit of those times, when Surrey loved and sung.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">SONG.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Orpheus with his lute-made trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the mountain-tops that freeze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bow themselves when he did sing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To his music, plants and flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever sprung, as sun and showers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There had made a lasting spring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Every thing that heard him play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even the billows of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hung their heads and then lay by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sweet music is such art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Killing care, and grief of heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fall asleep, on hearing, die.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They are interrupted by the arrival of the two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> cardinals. Katherine's
+perception of their subtlety&mdash;her suspicion of their purpose&mdash;her sense
+of her own weakness and inability to contend with them, and her mild
+subdued dignity, are beautifully represented; as also the guarded
+self-command with which she eludes giving a definitive answer; but when
+they counsel her to that which she, who knows Henry, feels must end in
+her ruin, then the native temper is roused at once, or, to use
+Tunstall's expression, "the choler and the agony," burst forth in words.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is this your christian counsel? Out upon ye!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no king can corrupt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">WOLSEY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Your rage mistakes us.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">QUEEN KATHERINE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mend them, for shame, my lords: is this your comfort<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With the same force of language, and impetuous yet dignified feeling,
+she asserts her own conjugal truth and merit, and insists upon her
+rights.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Have I liv'd thus long, (let me speak myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since virtue finds no friends,) a wife, a true one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A woman, (I dare say, without vain-glory,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never yet branded with suspicion?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I, with all my full affections,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still met the king&mdash;lov'd him next heaven, obey'd him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Been out of fondness superstitious to him&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Almost forgot my prayers to content him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And am I thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To give up willingly that noble title<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your master wed me to: nothing but death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall e'er divorce my dignities.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this burst of unwonted passion is immediately followed by the
+natural reaction; it subsides into tears, dejection, and a mournful
+self-compassion.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Would I had never trod this English ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What will become of me now, wretched lady?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am the most unhappy woman living.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! poor wenches! where are now your fortunes?<br /></span>
+<span class="i16">[<i>To her women</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shipwrecked upon a kingdom, where no pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Almost no grave allowed me! Like the lily that once<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll hang my head and perish.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson observes on this scene, that all Katherine's distresses
+could not save her from a quibble on the word <i>cardinal</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Holy men I thought ye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When we read this passage in connection with the situation and
+sentiment, the scornful play upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> words is not only appropriate and
+natural, it seems inevitable. Katherine, assuredly, is neither an
+imaginative nor a witty personage; but we all acknowledge the truism,
+that anger inspires wit, and whenever there is passion there is poetry.
+In the instance just alluded to, the sarcasm springs naturally out from
+the bitter indignation of the moment. In her grand rebuke of Wolsey, in
+the trial scene, how just and beautiful is the gradual elevation of her
+language, till it rises into that magnificent image&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You have by fortune and his highness' favors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gone slightly o'er low steps, and now are mounted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where powers are your retainers, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the depth of her affliction, the pathos as naturally clothes itself
+in poetry.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Like the lily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll hang my head and perish.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But these, I believe, are the only instances of imagery throughout; for,
+in general, her language is plain and energetic. It has the strength and
+simplicity of her character, with very little metaphor and less wit.</p>
+
+<p>In approaching the last scene of Katherine's life, I feel as if about to
+tread within a sanctuary, where nothing befits us but silence and tears;
+veneration so strives with compassion, tenderness with awe.<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span></p>
+<p>We must suppose a long interval to have elapsed since Katherine's
+interview with the two cardinals. Wolsey was disgraced, and poor Anna
+Bullen at the height of her short-lived prosperity. It was Wolsey's fate
+to be detested by both queens. In the pursuance of his own selfish and
+ambitious designs, he had treated both with perfidy; and one was the
+remote, the other the immediate, cause of his ruin.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p>
+
+<p>The ruffian king, of whom one hates to think,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> was bent on forcing
+Katherine to concede her rights, and illegitimize her daughter, in favor
+of the offspring of Anna Bullen: she steadily refused, was declared
+contumacious, and the sentence of divorce pronounced in 1533. Such of
+her attendants as persisted in paying her the honors due to a queen were
+driven from her household; those who consented to serve her as
+princess-dowager, she refused to admit into her presence; so that she
+remained unattended, except by a few women, and her gentleman usher,
+Griffith. During the last eighteen months of her life, she resided at
+Kimbolton. Her nephew, Charles V., had offered her an asylum and
+princely treatment; but Katherine, broken in heart, and declining in
+health, was unwilling to drag the spectacle of her misery and
+degradation into a strange country: she pined in her loneliness,
+deprived of her daughter, receiving no consolation from the pope, and no
+redress from the emperor. Wounded pride, wronged affection, and a
+cankering jealousy of the woman preferred to her, (which though it never
+broke out into unseemly words, is enumerated as one of the causes of her
+death,) at length wore out a feeble frame. "Thus," says the chronicle,
+"Queen Katherine fell into her last sickness; and though the king sent
+to comfort her through Chapuys, the emperor's ambassador, she grew worse
+and worse; and finding death now coming, she caused a maid attending on
+her to write to the king to this effect:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My most dear Lord, King, and Husband;</p>
+
+<p>"The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the
+love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to
+prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever; for
+which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many
+troubles: but I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise; for the
+rest, I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good
+father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must intreat you also to
+respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they
+being but three, and all my other servants a year's pay besides their
+due, lest otherwise they be unprovided for: lastly, I make this vow,
+that mine eyes desire you above all things.&mdash;Farewell!"<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p>
+
+<p>She also wrote another letter to the ambassador, desiring that he would
+remind the king of her dying request, and urge him to do her this last
+right.</p>
+
+<p>What the historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty
+of Katherine's closing scene we need not dwell; for that requires no
+illustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips,
+Shakspeare has given them added grace, and pathos, and tenderness,
+without injuring their truth and simplicity: the feelings, and almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>
+the manner of expression, are Katherine's own. The severe justice with
+which she draws the character of Wolsey is extremely characteristic! the
+benign candor with which she listens to the praise of him "whom living
+she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious
+enthusiasm!&mdash;the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that
+sad music she called her knell; her awakening from the vision of
+celestial joy to find herself still on earth&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Spirits of peace! where are ye? are ye gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>how unspeakably beautiful! And to consummate all in one final touch of
+truth and nature, we see that consciousness of her own worth and
+integrity which had sustained her through all her trials of heart, and
+that pride of station for which she had contended through long
+years,&mdash;which had become more dear by opposition, and by the
+perseverance with which she had asserted it,&mdash;remaining the last strong
+feeling upon her mind, to the very last hour of existence.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i13">When I am dead, good wench,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me be used with honor: strew me over<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With maiden flowers, that all the world may know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then lay me forth: although unqueen'd, yet like<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can no more.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>In the epilogue to this play,<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> it is recommended&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To the merciful construction of good women,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For <i>such a one</i> we show'd them:<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>alluding to the character of Queen Katherine. Shakspeare has, in fact,
+placed before us a queen and a heroine, who in the first place, and
+above all, is a <i>good</i> woman; and I repeat, that in doing so, and in
+trusting for all his effect to truth and virtue, he has given a sublime
+proof of his genius and his wisdom;&mdash;for which, among many other
+obligations, we women remain his debtors.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LADY MACBETH.</h3>
+
+<p>I doubt whether the epithet <i>historical</i> can properly apply to the
+character of Lady Macbeth; for though the subject of the play be taken
+from history, we never think of her with any reference to historical
+associations, as we do with regard to Constance, Volumnia, Katherine of
+Arragon, and others. I remember reading some critique, in which Lady
+Macbeth was styled the "<i>Scottish queen</i>;" and methought the title, as
+applied to <i>her</i> sounded like a vulgarism. It appears that the real wife
+of Macbeth,&mdash;she who lives only in the obscure record of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> an obscure
+age, bore the very unmusical appellation of Graoch, and was instigated
+to the murder of Duncan, not only by ambition, but by motives of
+vengeance. She was the grand-daughter of Kenneth the Fourth, killed in
+1003, fighting against Malcolm the Second, the Father of Duncan. Macbeth
+reigned over Scotland from the year 1039 to 1056&mdash;but what is all this
+to the purpose? The sternly magnificent creation of the poet stands
+before us independent of all these aids of fancy: she is Lady Macbeth;
+as such she lives, she reigns, and is immortal in the world to
+imagination. What earthly title could add to her grandeur? what human
+record or attestation strengthen our impression of her reality?</p>
+
+<p>Characters in history move before us like a procession of figures in
+<i>basso relievo</i>: we see one side only, that which the artist chose to
+exhibit to us; the rest is sunk in the block: the same characters in
+Shakspeare are like the statues <i>cut out</i> of the block, fashioned,
+finished, tangible in every part: we may consider them under every
+aspect, we may examine them on every side. As the classical times, when
+the garb did not make the man, were peculiarly favorable to the
+development and delineation of the human form, and have handed down to
+us the purest models of strength and grace&mdash;so the times in which
+Shakspeare lived were favorable to the vigorous delineation of natural
+character. Society was not then one vast conventional masquerade of
+manners. In his revelations, the accidental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> circumstances are to the
+individual character, what the drapery of the antique statue is to the
+statue itself; it is evident, that, though adapted to each other, and
+studied relatively, they were also studied separately. We trace through
+the folds the fine and true proportions of the figure beneath: they seem
+and are independent of each other to the practised eye, though carved
+together from the same enduring substance; at once perfectly distinct
+and eternally inseparable. In history we can but study character in
+relation to events, to situation and circumstances, which disguise and
+encumber it: we are left to imagine, to infer, what certain people must
+have been, from the manner in which they have acted or suffered.
+Shakspeare and nature bring us back to the true order of things; and
+showing us what the human being <i>is</i>, enable us to judge of the possible
+as well as the positive result in acting and suffering. Here, instead of
+judging the individual by his actions, we are enabled to judge of
+actions by a reference to the individual. When we can carry this power
+into the experience of real life, we shall perhaps be more just to one
+another, and not consider ourselves aggrieved, because we cannot gather
+figs from thistles and grapes from thorns.</p>
+
+<p>In the play or poem of Macbeth, the interest of the story is so
+engrossing, the events so rapid and so appalling, the accessories so
+sublimely conceived and so skilfully combined, that it is difficult to
+detach Lady Macbeth from the dramatic situation, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> consider her apart
+from the terrible associations of our first and earliest impressions. As
+the vulgar idea of a Juliet&mdash;that all-beautiful and heaven-gifted child
+of the south&mdash;is merely a love-sick girl in white satin, so the
+common-place idea of Lady Macbeth, though endowed with the rarest
+powers, the loftiest energies, and the profoundest affections, is
+nothing but a fierce, cruel woman, brandishing a couple of daggers, and
+inciting her husband to butcher a poor old king.</p>
+
+<p>Even those who reflect more deeply are apt to consider rather the mode
+in which a certain character is manifested, than the combination of
+abstract qualities making up that individual human being; so what should
+be last, is first; effects are mistaken for causes, qualities are
+confounded with their results, and the perversion of what is essentially
+good, with the operation of positive evil. Hence it is, that those who
+can feel and estimate the magnificent conception and poetical
+development of the character, have overlooked the grand moral lesson it
+conveys; they forget that the crime of Lady Macbeth terrifies us in
+proportion as we sympathize with her; and that this sympathy is in
+proportion to the degree of pride, passion, and intellect, we may
+ourselves possess. It is good to behold and to tremble at the possible
+result of the noblest faculties uncontrolled or perverted. True it is,
+that the ambitious women of these civilized times do not murder sleeping
+kings: but are there, therefore, no Lady Macbeths in the world? no women
+who, under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> the influence of a diseased or excited appetite for power or
+distinction, would sacrifice the happiness of a daughter, the fortunes
+of a husband, the principles of a son, and peril their own souls?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The character of Macbeth is considered as one of the most complex in the
+whole range of Shakspeare's dramatic creations. He is represented in the
+course of the action under such a variety of aspects; the good and evil
+qualities of his mind are so poised and blended, and instead of being
+gradually and successively developed, evolve themselves so like shifting
+lights and shadows playing over the "unstable waters," that his
+character has afforded a continual and interesting subject of analysis
+and contemplation. None of Shakspeare's personages have been treated of
+more at large; none have been more minutely criticized and profoundly
+examined. A single feature in his character&mdash;the question, for instance,
+as to whether his courage be personal or constitutional, or excited by
+mere desperation&mdash;has been canvassed, asserted, and refuted, in two
+masterly essays.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the character of Lady Macbeth resolves itself into
+few and simple elements. The grand features of her character are so
+distinctly and prominently marked, that, though acknowledged to be one
+of the poet's most sublime creations, she has been passed over with
+comparatively few words: generally speaking, the commentators seem to
+have considered Lady Macbeth rather with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> reference to her husband, and
+as influencing the action of the drama, than as an individual conception
+of amazing power, poetry, and beauty: or if they do individualize her,
+it is ever with those associations of scenic representation which Mrs.
+Siddons has identified with the character. Those who have been
+accustomed to see it arrayed in the form and lineaments of that
+magnificent woman, and developed with her wonder-working powers, seem
+satisfied to leave it there, as if nothing more could be said or
+added.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the generation which beheld Mrs. Siddons in her glory is passing
+away, and we are again left to our own unassisted feelings, or to all
+the satisfaction to be derived from the sagacity of critics and the
+reflections of commentators. Let us turn to them for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson, who seems to have regarded her as nothing better than a
+kind of ogress, tells us, in so many words, that "Lady Macbeth is merely
+detested." Schlegel dismisses her in haste, as a species of female fury.
+In the two essays on Macbeth already mentioned, she is passed over with
+one or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> two slight allusions. The only justice that has yet been done to
+her is by Hazlitt, in the "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays." Nothing
+can be finer than his remarks as far as they go, but his plan did not
+allow him sufficient space to work out his own conception of the
+character, with the minuteness it requires. All that he says is just in
+sentiment, and most eloquent in the expression; but in leaving some of
+the finest points altogether untouched, he has also left us in doubt
+whether he even felt or perceived them; and this masterly criticism
+stops short of the <i>whole</i> truth&mdash;it is a little superficial, and a
+little too harsh.</p>
+
+<p>In the mind of Lady Macbeth, ambition is represented as the ruling
+motive, an intense over-mastering passion, which is gratified at the
+expense of every just and generous principle, and every feminine
+feeling. In the pursuit of her object, she is cruel, treacherous, and
+daring. She is doubly, trebly dyed in guilt and blood; for the murder
+she instigates is rendered more frightful by disloyalty and ingratitude,
+and by the violation of all the most sacred claims of kindred and
+hospitality. When her husband's more kindly nature shrinks from the
+perpetration of the deed of horror, she, like an evil genius, whispers
+him on to his damnation. The full measure of her wickedness is never
+disguised, the magnitude and atrocity of her crime is never extenuated,
+forgotten, or forgiven, in the whole course of the play. Our judgment is
+not bewildered, nor our moral feeling insulted, by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> sentimental
+jumble of great crimes and dazzling virtues, after the fashion of the
+German school and of some admirable writers of our own time. Lady
+Macbeth's amazing power of intellect, her inexorable determination of
+purpose, her superhuman strength of nerve, render her as fearful in
+herself as her deeds are hateful; yet she is not a mere monster of
+depravity, with whom we have nothing in common, nor a meteor whose
+destroying path we watch in ignorant affright and amaze. She is a
+terrible impersonation of evil passions and mighty powers, never so far
+removed from our own nature as to be cast beyond the pale of our
+sympathies; for the woman herself remains a woman to the last&mdash;still
+linked with her sex and with humanity.</p>
+
+<p>This impression is produced partly by the essential truth in the
+conception of the character, and partly by the manner in which it is
+evolved; by a combination of minute and delicate touches, in some
+instances by speech, in others by silence: at one time by what is
+revealed, at another by what we are left to infer. As in real life, we
+perceive distinctions in character we cannot always explain, and receive
+impressions for which we cannot always account, without going back to
+the beginning of an acquaintance, and recalling many and trifling
+circumstances&mdash;looks, and tones, and words: thus, to explain that hold
+which Lady Macbeth, in the midst of all her atrocities, still keeps upon
+our feelings, it is necessary to trace minutely the action of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> play,
+as far as she is concerned in it, from its very commencement to its
+close.</p>
+
+<p>We must bear in mind, that the first idea of murdering Duncan is not
+suggested by Lady Macbeth to her husband: it springs within <i>his</i> mind,
+and is revealed to us, before his first interview with his wife,&mdash;before
+she is introduced or even alluded to.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">This supernatural soliciting<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why hath it given me earnest of success,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the use of nature?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It will be said, that the same "horrid suggestion" presents itself
+spontaneously to her, on the reception of his letter; or rather, that
+the letter itself acts upon her mind as the prophecy of the Weird
+Sisters on the mind of her husband, kindling the latent passion for
+empire into a quenchless flame. We are prepared to see the train of
+evil, first lighted by hellish agency, extend itself to <i>her</i> through
+the medium of her husband; but we are spared the more revolting idea
+that it originated with her. The guilt is thus more equally divided than
+we should suppose, when we hear people pitying "the noble nature of
+Macbeth," bewildered and goaded on to crime, solely or chiefly by the
+instigation of his wife.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is true that she afterwards appears the more active agent of the two;
+but it is less through her pre&euml;minence in wickedness than through her
+superiority of intellect. The eloquence&mdash;the fierce, fervid eloquence
+with which she bears down the relenting and reluctant spirit of her
+husband, the dexterous sophistry with which she wards off his
+objections, her artful and affected doubts of his courage&mdash;the sarcastic
+manner in which she lets fall the word coward&mdash;a word which no man can
+endure from another, still less from a woman, and least of all from a
+woman he loves&mdash;and the bold address with which she removes all
+obstacles, silences all arguments, overpowers all scruples, and marshals
+the way before him, absolutely make us shrink before the commanding
+intellect of the woman, with a terror in which interest and admiration
+are strangely mingled.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hath he ask'd for me?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i31">Know you not, he has?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We will proceed no farther in this business;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hath honored me of late, and I have bought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Golden opinions from all sorts of people,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not cast aside so soon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">Was the hope drunk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wakes it now, to look so green and pale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At what it did so freely? From this time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be the same in thine own act and valor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou art in desire? Would'st thou have that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And live a coward in thine own esteem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Letting I dare not wait upon I would,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the poor cat i' the adage?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+<span class="i29">Pr'ythee, peace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I dare do all that may become a man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who dares do more, is none.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i29">What beast was it then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That made you break this enterprise to me?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When you durst do it, then you were a man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, to be more than what you were, you would<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did then adhere, and yet you would make both;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have made themselves, and that their fitness now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would, while it were smiling in my face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn, as you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have done to this.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">If we should fail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i32">We fail.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But screw your courage to the sticking-place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we'll not fail.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Again, in the murdering scene, the obdurate inflexibility of purpose
+with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of their project, and
+her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated
+disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is
+produced rather by the exertion of a strong power over herself, than by
+absolute depravity of disposition and ferocity of temper. This
+impression of her character is brought home at once to our very hearts
+with the most profound knowledge of the springs of nature within us, the
+most subtle mastery over their various operations, and a feeling of
+dramatic effect not less wonderful. The very passages in which Lady
+Macbeth displays the most savage and relentless determination, are so
+worded as to fill the mind with the idea of sex, and place the <i>woman</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>
+before us in all her dearest attributes, at once softening and refining
+the horror, and rendering it more intense. Thus, when she reproaches her
+husband for his weakness&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">From this time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such I account thy love!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Again,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Come to my woman's breasts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And take my milk for gall, ye murdering ministers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no compunctions visitings of nature<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shake my fell purpose, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To love the babe that milks me, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And lastly, in the moment of extremest horror comes that unexpected
+touch of feeling, so startling, yet so wonderfully true to nature&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Had he not resembled my father as he slept,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had done it!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus in one of Weber's or Beethoven's grand symphonies, some unexpected
+soft minor chord or passage will steal on the ear, heard amid the
+magnificent crash of harmony, making the blood pause, and filling the
+eye with unbidden tears.</p>
+
+<p>It is particularly observable, that in Lady Macbeth's concentrated,
+strong-nerved ambition, the ruling passion of her mind, there is yet a
+touch of womanhood: she is ambitious less for herself than for her
+husband. It is fair to think this, because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> we have no reason to draw
+any other inference either from her words or actions. In her famous
+soliloquy, after reading her husband's letter, she does not once refer
+to herself. It is of him she thinks: she wishes to see her husband on
+the throne, and to place the sceptre within <i>his</i> grasp. The strength of
+her affections adds strength to her ambition. Although in the old story
+of Boethius we are told that the wife of Macbeth "burned with
+unquenchable desire to bear the name of queen," yet in the aspect under
+which Shakspeare has represented the character to us, the selfish part
+of this ambition is kept out of sight. We must remark also, that in Lady
+Macbeth's reflections on her husband's character, and on that milkiness
+of nature, which she fears "may impede him from the golden round," there
+is no indication of female scorn: there is exceeding pride, but no
+egotism in the sentiment or the expression;&mdash;no want of wifely and
+womanly respect and love for <i>him</i>, but on the contrary, a sort of
+unconsciousness of her own mental superiority, which she betrays rather
+than asserts, as interesting in itself as it is most admirably conceived
+and delineated.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What thou art promised:&mdash;Yet do I fear thy nature;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To catch the nearest way. Thou would'st be great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Art not without ambition; but without<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The illness should attend it. What thou would'st highly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'dst have, great Glamis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That which cries, <i>Thus thou must do, if thou have it;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And that which rather thou dost fear to do,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Than wishest should be undone</i>. Hie thee hither,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And chastise with the valor of my tongue</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>All that impedes thee from the golden round,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Which fate and metaphysical<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> aid doth seem</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To have thee crowned withal</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor is there any thing vulgar in her ambition: as the strength of her
+affections lends to it something profound and concentrated, so her
+splendid imagination invests the object of her desire with its own
+radiance. We cannot trace in her grand and capacious mind that it is the
+mere baubles and trappings of royalty which dazzle and allure her: hers
+is the sin of the "star-bright apostate," and she plunges with her
+husband into the abyss of guilt, to procure for "all their days and
+nights sole sovereign sway and masterdom." She revels, she luxuriates in
+her dream of power. She reaches at the golden diadem, which is to sear
+her brain; she perils life and soul for its attainment, with an
+enthusiasm as perfect, a faith as settled, as that of the martyr, who
+sees at the stake, heaven and its crowns of glory opening upon him.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Greater than both, by the all-hail <i>hereafter</i>!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy letters have transported me beyond<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This ignorant present, and I feel now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The future in the instant!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is surely the very rapture of ambition! and those who have heard
+Mrs. Siddons pronounce the word <i>hereafter</i>, cannot forget the look, the
+tone, which seemed to give her auditors a glimpse of that awful
+<i>future</i>, which she, in her prophetic fury, beholds upon the instant.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the text before us: Lady Macbeth having proposed the
+object to herself, and arrayed it with an ideal glory, fixes her eye
+steadily upon it, soars far above all womanish feelings and scruples to
+attain it, and stoops upon her victim with the strength and velocity of
+a vulture; but having committed unflinchingly the crime necessary for
+the attainment of her purpose, she stops there. After the murder of
+Duncan, we see Lady Macbeth, during the rest of the play, occupied in
+supporting the nervous weakness and sustaining the fortitude of her
+husband; for instance, Macbeth is at one time on the verge of frenzy,
+between fear and horror, and it is clear that if she loses her
+self-command, both must perish:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One cried, <i>God bless us!</i> and, <i>Amen!</i> the other,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Listening their fear, I could not say, <i>Amen!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When they did say, <i>God bless us!</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Consider it not so deeply!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But wherefore could not I pronounce, amen?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had most need of blessing, and amen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stuck in my throat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i17">These deeds must not be thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After these ways: so, it will make us mad.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Methought I heard a voice cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sleep no more," &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What do you mean? who was it that thus cried?<br /></span>
+<span class="i13">Why, worthy Thane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You do unbend your noble strength, to think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So brainsickly of things.&mdash;Go, get some water, &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Afterwards, in act iii., she is represented as muttering to herself,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i27">Nought's had, all's spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When our desire is got without content;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>yet immediately addresses her moody and conscience-stricken husband&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sorriest fancies your companions making?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With them they think on? Things without remedy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should be without regard; what's done, is done.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But she is nowhere represented as urging him on to new crimes, so far
+from it, that when Macbeth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> darkly hints his purposed assassination of
+Banquo, and she inquires his meaning, he replies,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i5">Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till thou approve the deed.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The same may be said of the destruction of Macduff's family. Every one
+must perceive how our detestation of the woman had been increased, if
+she had been placed before us as suggesting and abetting those
+additional cruelties into which Macbeth is hurried by his mental
+cowardice.</p>
+
+<p>If my feeling of Lady Macbeth's character be just to the conception of
+the poet, then she is one who could steel herself to the commission of a
+crime from necessity and expediency, and be daringly wicked for a great
+end, but not likely to perpetrate gratuitous murders from any vague or
+selfish fears. I do not mean to say that the perfect confidence existing
+between herself and Macbeth could possibly leave her in ignorance of his
+actions or designs: that heart-broken and shuddering allusion to the
+murder of Lady Macduff (in the sleeping scene) proves the contrary:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But she is nowhere brought before us in immediate connection with these
+horrors, and we are spared any flagrant proof of her participation in
+them. This may not strike us at first, but most undoubtedly has an
+effect on the general bearing of the character, considered as a whole.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another more obvious and pervading source of interest arises from that
+bond of entire affection and confidence which, through the whole of this
+dreadful tissue of crime and its consequences, unites Macbeth and his
+wife; claiming from us an involuntary respect and sympathy, and shedding
+a softening influence over the whole tragedy. Macbeth leans upon her
+strength, trusts in her fidelity, and throws himself on her tenderness.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She sustains him, calms him, soothes him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i36">Come on;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The endearing epithets, the terms of fondness in which he addresses her,
+and the tone of respect she invariably maintains towards him, even when
+most exasperated by his vacillation of mind and his brain-sick terrors,
+have, by the very force of contrast, a powerful effect on the fancy.</p>
+
+<p>By these tender redeeming touches we are impressed with a feeling that
+Lady Macbeth's influence over the affections of her husband, as a wife
+and a woman, is at least equal to her power over him as a superior mind.
+Another thing has always struck me. During the supper scene, in which
+Macbeth is haunted by the spectre of the murdered Banquo, and his reason
+appears unsettled by the extremity of his horror and dismay, her
+indignant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> rebuke, her low whispered remonstrance, the sarcastic
+emphasis with which she combats his sick fancies, and endeavors to
+recall him to himself, have an intenseness, a severity, a bitterness,
+which makes the blood creep.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i31">Are you a man?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which might appall the devil.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">O proper stuff!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the very painting of your fear:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Impostors to true fear) would well become<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A woman's story, at a winter's fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Authoriz'd by her grandam! Shame itself!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why do you make such faces? When all's done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You look but on a stool.<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">What! quite unmann'd in folly?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet when the guests are dismissed, and they are left alone, she says no
+more, and not a syllable of reproach or scorn escapes her: a few words
+in submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose,
+are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and of
+tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond
+expression: it is one of the most masterly and most beautiful traits of
+character in the whole play.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lastly, it is clear that in a mind constituted like that of Lady
+Macbeth, and not utterly depraved and hardened by the habit of crime,
+conscience must wake some time or other, and bring with it remorse
+closed by despair, and despair by death. This great moral retribution
+was to be displayed to us&mdash;but how? Lady Macbeth is not a woman to start
+at shadows; she mocks at air-drawn daggers; she sees no imagined
+spectres rise from the tomb to appall or accuse her.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> The towering
+bravery of <i>her</i> mind disdains the visionary terrors which haunt her
+weaker husband. We know, or rather we feel, that she who could give a
+voice to the most direful intent, and call on the spirits that wait on
+mortal thoughts to "unsex her," and "stop up all access and passage of
+remorse"&mdash;to that remorse would have given nor tongue nor sound; and
+that rather than have uttered a complaint, she would have held her
+breath and died. To have given her a confidant, though in the partner of
+her guilt, would have been a degrading resource, and have disappointed
+and enfeebled all our previous impressions of her character; yet justice
+is to be done, and we are to be made acquainted with that which the
+woman herself would have suffered a thousand deaths of torture rather
+than have betrayed. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> the sleeping scene we have a glimpse into the
+depths of that inward hell: the seared brain and broken heart are laid
+bare before us in the helplessness of slumber. By a judgment the most
+sublime ever imagined, yet the most unforced, natural, and inevitable,
+the sleep of her who murdered sleep is no longer repose, but a
+condensation of resistless horrors which the prostrate intellect and
+powerless will can neither baffle nor repel. We shudder and are
+satisfied; yet our human sympathies are again touched: we rather sigh
+over the ruin than exult in it; and after watching her through this
+wonderful scene with a sort of fascination, we dismiss the unconscious,
+helpless, despair-stricken murderess, with a feeling which Lady Macbeth,
+in her waking strength, with all her awe-commanding powers about her,
+could never have excited.</p>
+
+<p>It is here especially we perceive that sweetness of nature which in
+Shakspeare went hand in hand with his astonishing powers. He never
+confounds that line of demarcation which eternally separates good from
+evil, yet he never places evil before us without exciting in some way a
+consciousness of the opposite good which shall balance and relieve it.</p>
+
+<p>I do deny that he has represented in Lady Macbeth a woman "<i>naturally
+cruel</i>,"<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> "<i>invariably savage</i>,"<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> or endued with "<i>pure demoniac
+firmness</i>."<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> If ever there could have existed a woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> to whom such
+phrases could apply&mdash;a woman without touch of modesty, pity or
+fear,&mdash;Shakspeare knew that a thing so monstrous was unfit for all the
+purposes of poetry. If Lady Macbeth had been <i>naturally</i> cruel, she
+needed not so solemnly to have abjured all pity, and called on the
+spirits that wait on mortal thoughts to <i>unsex</i> her; nor would she have
+been loved to excess by a man of Macbeth's character; for it is the
+sense of intellectual energy and strength of will overpowering her
+feminine nature, which draws from him that burst of intense admiration&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i21">Bring forth men children only,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thy undaunted metal should compose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing but males.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If she had been <i>invariably</i> savage, her love would not have comforted
+and sustained her husband in his despair, nor would her uplifted dagger
+have been arrested by a dear and venerable image rising between her soul
+and its fell purpose. If endued with <i>pure demoniac firmness</i>, her
+woman's nature would not, by the reaction, have been so horribly
+avenged, she would not have died of remorse and despair.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We cannot but observe that through the whole of the dialogue
+appropriated to Lady Macbeth, there is something very peculiar and
+characteristic in the turn of expression: her compliments, when she is
+playing the hostess or the queen, are elaborately elegant and
+verbose: but, when in earnest, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> speaks in short energetic
+sentences&mdash;sometimes abrupt, but always full of meaning; her thoughts
+are rapid and clear, her expressions forcible, and the imagery like
+sudden flashes of lightning: all the foregoing extracts exhibit this,
+but I will venture one more, as an immediate illustration.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">My dearest love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Duncan comes here to-night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i25">And when goes hence?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To-morrow,&mdash;as he purposes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">LADY MACBETH.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i31">O never<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall sun that morrow see!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy face, my thane, is as a book, where men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May read strange matters;&mdash;to beguile the time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your tongue, your hand; look like the innocent flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But be the serpent under it.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What would not the firmness, the self-command, the enthusiasm, the
+intellect, the ardent affections of this woman have performed, if
+properly directed? but the object being unworthy of the effort, the end
+is disappointment, despair, and death.</p>
+
+<p>The power of religion could alone have controlled such a mind; but it is
+the misery of a very proud, strong, and gifted spirit, without sense of
+religion, that instead of looking upward to find a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> superior, looks
+round and sees all things as subject to itself. Lady Macbeth is placed
+in a dark, ignorant, iron age; her powerful intellect is slightly tinged
+with its credulity and superstition, but she has no religious feeling to
+restrain the force of will. She is a stern fatalist in principle and
+action&mdash;"what is done, is done," and would be done over again under the
+same circumstances; her remorse is without repentance, or any reference
+to an offended Deity; it arises from the pang of a wounded conscience,
+the recoil of the violated feelings of nature: it is the horror of the
+past, not the terror of the future; the torture of self-condemnation,
+not the fear of judgment; it is strong as her soul, deep as her guilt,
+fatal as her resolve, and terrible as her crime.</p>
+
+<p>If it should be objected to this view of Lady Macbeth's character, that
+it engages our sympathies in behalf of a perverted being&mdash;and that to
+leave her so strong a power upon our feelings in the midst of such
+supreme wickedness, involves a moral wrong, I can only reply in the
+words of Dr. Channing, that "in this and the like cases our interest
+fastens on what is <i>not</i> evil in the character&mdash;that there is something
+kindling and ennobling in the consciousness, however awakened, of the
+energy which resides in mind; and many a virtuous man has borrowed new
+strength from the force, constancy, and dauntless courage of evil
+agents."<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span></p>
+<p>This is true; and might he not have added, that many a powerful and
+gifted spirit has learnt humility and self-government, from beholding
+how far the energy which resides in mind may be degraded and perverted?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In general, when a woman is introduced into a tragedy to be the
+presiding genius of evil in herself, or the cause of evil to others, she
+is either too feebly or too darkly portrayed; either crime is heaped on
+crime, and horror on horror, till our sympathy is lost in incredulity,
+or the stimulus is sought in unnatural or impossible situations, or in
+situations that ought to be impossible, (as in the Myrrha or the Cenci,)
+or the character is enfeebled by a mixture of degrading propensities and
+sexual weakness, as in Vittoria Corombona. But Lady Macbeth, though so
+supremely wicked, and so consistently feminine, is still kept aloof from
+all base alloy. When Shakspeare created a female character purely
+detestable, he made her an accessory, never a principal. Thus Regan and
+Goneril are two powerful sketches of selfishness, cruelty, and
+ingratitude; we abhor them whenever we see or think of them, but we
+think very little about them, except as necessary to the action of the
+drama. They are to cause the madness of Lear, and to call forth the
+filial devotion of Cordelia, and their depravity is forgotten in its
+effects. A comparison has been made between Lady Macbeth and the Greek
+Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon of Eschylus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> The Clytemnestra of
+Sophocles is something more in Shakspeare's spirit, for she is something
+less impudently atrocious; but, considered as a woman and an individual,
+would any one compare this shameless adulteress, cruel murderess, and
+unnatural mother, with Lady Macbeth? Lady Macbeth herself would
+certainly shrink from the approximation.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Electra of Sophocles comes nearer to Lady Macbeth as a poetical
+conception, with this strong distinction, that she commands more respect
+and esteem, and less sympathy. The murder in which she participates is
+ordained by the oracle&mdash;is an act of justice, and therefore less a
+murder than a sacrifice. Electra is drawn with magnificent simplicity
+and intensity of feeling and purpose, but there is a want of light, and
+shade, and relief. Thus the scene in which Orestes stabs his mother
+within her chamber, and she is heard pleading for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> mercy, while Electra
+stands forward listening exultingly to her mother's cries, and urging
+her brother to strike again, "another blow! another!" &amp;c. is terribly
+fine, but the horror is too shocking, too <i>physical</i>&mdash;if I may use such
+an expression: it will not surely bear a comparison with the murdering
+scene in Macbeth, where the exhibition of various passions&mdash;the
+irresolution of Macbeth, the bold determination of his wife, the deep
+suspense, the rage of the elements without, the horrid stillness within,
+and the secret feeling of that infernal agency which is ever present to
+the fancy, even when not visible on the scene&mdash;throw a rich coloring of
+poetry over the whole, which does not take from "the present horror of
+the time," and yet relieves it. Shakspeare's blackest shadows are like
+those of Rembrandt; so intense, that the gloom which brooded over Egypt
+in her day of wrath was pale in comparison&mdash;yet so transparent that we
+seem to see the light of heaven through their depth.</p>
+
+<p>In the whole compass of dramatic poetry, there is but one female
+character which can be placed near that of Lady Macbeth; the <span class="smcap">Medea</span>. Not
+the vulgar, voluble fury of the Latin tragedy,<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> nor the Medea in a
+hoop petticoat of Corneille, but the genuine Greek Medea,&mdash;the Medea of
+Euripides.<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span></p><p>There is something in the <i>Medea</i> which seizes irresistibly on the
+imagination. Her passionate devotion to Jason, for whom she had left her
+parents and country&mdash;to whom she had given all, and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Would have drawn the spirit from her breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had he but asked it, sighing forth her soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into his bosom;<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the wrongs and insults which drive her to desperation&mdash;the horrid
+refinement of cruelty with which she plans and executes her revenge upon
+her faithless husband&mdash;the gush of fondness with which she weeps over
+her children, whom in the next moment she devotes to destruction in a
+paroxysm of insane fury, carry the terror and pathos of tragic situation
+to their extreme height. But if we may be allowed to judge through the
+medium of a translation, there is a certain hardness in the manner of
+treating the character, which in some degree defeats the effect. Medea
+talks too much: her human feelings and superhuman power are not
+sufficiently blended. Taking into consideration the different impulses
+which actuate Medea and Lady Macbeth, as love, jealousy, and revenge on
+the one side, and ambition on the other, we expect to find more of
+female nature in the first than in the last: and yet the contrary is the
+fact: at least, my own impression as far as a woman may judge of a
+woman, is, that although the passions of Medea are more feminine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> the
+character is less so; we seem to require more feeling in her
+fierceness, more passion in her frenzy; something less of poetical
+abstraction,&mdash;less art, fewer words: her delirious vengeance we might
+forgive, but her calmness and subtlety are rather revolting.</p>
+
+<p>These two admirable characters, placed in contrast to each other, afford
+a fine illustration of Schlegel's distinction between the ancient or
+Greek drama, which he compares to sculpture, and the modern or romantic
+drama, which he compares to painting. The gothic grandeur, the rich
+chiaroscuro, and deep-toned colors of Lady Macbeth, stand thus opposed
+to the classical elegance and mythological splendor, the delicate yet
+inflexible outline of the Medea. If I might be permitted to carry this
+illustration still further, I would add, that there exists the same
+distinction between the Lady Macbeth and the Medea, as between the
+Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci and the Medusa of the Greek gems and bas
+reliefs. In the painting, the horror of the subject is at once exalted
+and softened by the most vivid coloring, and the most magical contrast
+of light and shade. We gaze&mdash;until, from the murky depths of the
+background, the serpent hair seems to stir and glitter as if instinct
+with life, and the head itself, in all its ghastliness and brightness,
+appears to rise from the canvass with the glare of reality. In the
+Medusa of sculpture, how different is the effect on the imagination! We
+have here the snakes convolving round the winged and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> graceful head: the
+brows contracted with horror and pain; but every feature is chiselled
+into the most regular and faultless perfection; and amid the gorgon
+terrors, there rests a marbly, fixed, supernatural grace, which, without
+reminding us for a moment of common life or nature, stands before us a
+presence, a power, and an enchantment!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Milton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> "That the treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, and
+the grief of Constance, had a real truth in history, sharpens the sense
+of pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the
+imagination. Something whispers us that we have no right to make a mock
+of calamities like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet
+and plaything of our fancies."&mdash;See Characters of Shakspeare's
+Plays.&mdash;To consider <i>thus</i> is not to consider <i>too</i> deeply, but not
+deeply <i>enough</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <i>Grave</i>, in the sense of mighty or potent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Fulvia, the first wife of Antony.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> The well-known violence and coarseness of Queen
+Elizabeth's manners, in which she was imitated by the women about her,
+may in Shakspeare's time have rendered the image of a royal virago less
+offensive and less extraordinary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> She was as good as her word. See the life of Antony in
+Plutarch.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> <i>i. e.</i> retinue.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> <i>i. e.</i> silver coins, from the Spanish <i>plata</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Cleopatra replies to the first word she hears on
+recovering her sense, "No more <i>an empress</i>, but a mere woman!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> <i>i. e.</i> sedate determination.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Johnson</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> The Cleopatra of Jodelle was the first regular French
+tragedy: the last French tragedy on the same subject was the Cl&eacute;opatre
+of Marmontel. For the representation of this tragedy Vaucanson, the
+celebrated French mechanist, invented an automaton asp, which crawled
+and hissed to the life,&mdash;to the great delight of the Parisians. But it
+appears that neither Vaucanson's asp, nor Clairon, could save Cl&eacute;opatre
+from a deserved fate. Of the English tragedies, one was written by the
+Countess of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sydney; and is, I
+believe, the first instance in our language, of original dramatic
+writing, by female.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> "The sober eye of dull Octavia."&mdash;Act v. scene 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Octavia was never in Egypt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> "The Octavia of Dryden is a much more important personage
+than in the Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspeare. She is, however, more
+cold and unamiable, for in the very short scenes in which the Octavia of
+Shakspeare is introduced, she is placed in rather an interesting point
+of view. But Dryden has himself informed us that he was apprehensive
+that the justice of a wife's claim would draw the audience to her side,
+and lessen their interest in the lover and the mistress. He seems
+accordingly to have studiously lowered the character of the injured
+Octavia who, in her conduct to her husband, shows much duty and little
+love." Sir W. Scott (in the same fine piece of criticism prefixed to
+Dryden's All for Love) gives the preference to Shakspeare's Cleopatra.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> In all, about two thousand pounds.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> The corresponding passage in the old English Plutarch runs
+thus: "My son, why dost thou not answer me? Dost thou think it good
+altogether to give place unto thy choler and revenge, and thinkest thou
+it not honesty for thee to grant thy mother's request in so weighty a
+cause? Dost thou take it honorable for a nobleman to remember the wrongs
+and injuries done him, and dost not in like case think it an honest
+nobleman's part to be thankful for the goodness that parents do show to
+their children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear
+unto them? No man living is more bound to show himself thankful in all
+parts and respects than thyself, who so universally showest all
+ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken of thy country,
+exacting grievous payments upon them in revenge of the injuries offered
+thee; besides, thou hast not hitherto showed thy poor mother any
+courtesy. And, therefore, it is not only honest, but due unto me, that
+without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of
+thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade ye to it, to what purpose do
+I defer my last hope?" And with these words, herself, his wife, and
+children, fell down upon their knees before him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> Daru, Histoire de Bretagne.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> Sir Peter Leycester's Antiquities of Chester.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> By the treaty of Messina, 1190</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Malone says, that "In expanding the character of the
+bastard, Shakspeare seems to have proceeded on the following slight hint
+in an old play on the story of King John:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Next them a bastard of the king's deceased&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hardy wild-head, rough and venturous."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+It is easy to <i>say</i> this; yet who but Shakspeare could have expanded the
+last line into a Falconbridge?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> The Greek Merope, which was esteemed one of the finest of
+the tragedies of Euripides, is unhappily lost; those of Maffei, Alfieri,
+and Voltaire, are well known. There is another Merope in Italian, which
+I have not seen: the English Merope is merely a bad translation from
+Voltaire.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> "Queen Elinor saw that if he were king, how his mother
+Constance would look to bear the most rule in the realm of England, till
+her son should come of a lawful age to govern of himself."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Holinshed</span>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> King John, Act iii, Scene 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Louis VII. of France, whom she was accustomed to call, in
+contempt, <i>the monk</i>. Elinor's adventures in Syria, whither she
+accompanied Louis on the second Crusade, would form a romance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Henry II. of England. It is scarcely necessary to observe
+that the story of Fair Rosamond, as far as Elinor is concerned, is a
+mere invention of some ballad-maker of later times.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> Mezerai.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the
+extreme point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of
+Nisida, and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretta which now
+deforms it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building
+itself, as it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses and fig-trees
+which embosom it, looks beautiful at a distance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> "The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster,"
+in two parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about 1590.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan
+of Arc, as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, because I
+do not in my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly,
+because in representing her according to the vulgar English traditions,
+as half sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by
+pleasure and ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature,
+justice, and common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated
+the character nobly: but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the
+victim of love, instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I
+think, a serious error in judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize
+with Madame de Sta&euml;l's defence of him on this particular point. There
+was no occasion for this deviation from the truth of things, and from
+the dignity and spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast,
+with her religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her
+melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine
+bearing in all her exploits, (for though she so often led the van of
+battle unshrinking, while death was all around her, she never struck a
+blow, nor stained her consecrated sword with blood,&mdash;another point in
+which Schiller has wronged her,) this heroine and martyr, over whose
+last moments we shed burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet
+to be treated as a Dramatic character, and I know but one person capable
+of doing this.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> See Henry VI. Part III. Act. iii. sc. 3&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">QUEEN MARGARET.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warwick, these words have turned my hate to love,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I forgive and quite forget old faults,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And joy that thou becom'st King Henry's friend.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Horace Walpole observes, that "it is evident from the
+conduct of Shakspeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their
+Lancasterian prejudices even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In his
+play of Richard the Third, he seems to deduce the woes of the house of
+York from the curses which Queen Margaret had vented against them; and
+he could not give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right
+in her to utter them."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> See her letters in Ellis's Collection.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Under similar circumstances, one of Katherine's
+predecessors, Philippe of Hainault, had gained in her husband's absence
+the battle of Neville Cross, in which David Bruce was taken prisoner.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Ellis's Collection. We must keep in mind that Katherine
+was a foreigner, and till after she was seventeen, never spoke or wrote
+a word of English.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Hall's Chronicle</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Hall's Chronicle, p. 781.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> The court at Blackfriars sat on the 28th of May, 1529.
+"The queen being called, accompanied by the four bishops and others of
+her counsel, and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following
+her; and after her obeisance, sadly and with great gravity, she appealed
+from them to the court of Rome."&mdash;<i>See Hall and Cavendish's Life of
+Wolsey.</i>
+</p><p>
+The account which Hume gives of this scene is very elegant; but after
+the affecting <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> of the old chroniclers, it is very cold and
+unsatisfactory.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> "The queen answered the Duke of Suffolk very highly and
+obstinately, with many high words: and suddenly, in a fury she departed
+from him into her privy chamber."&mdash;<i>Vide Hall's Chronicle</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> Cavendish's Life of Wolsey.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> Winter's Tale, act iii. scene 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> I have constantly abstained from considering any of these
+characters with a reference to the theatre; yet I cannot help remarking,
+that if Mrs. Siddons, who excelled equally in Hermione and Katherine,
+and threw such majesty of demeanor, such power, such picturesque effect,
+into both, could likewise feel and convey the infinite contrast between
+the ideal grace, the classical repose and imaginative charm thrown round
+Hermione, and the matter-of-fact, artless, prosaic nature of Katherine;
+between the poetical grandeur of the former, and the moral dignity of
+the latter,&mdash;then she certainly exceeded all that I could have imagined
+possible, even to <i>her</i> wonderful powers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> This affecting passage is thus rendered by Shakspeare:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Nay, forsooth, my friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They that must weigh out my afflictions&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They that my trust must grow to, live not here&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are, as all my other comforts, far hence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In mine own country, lords.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><br /></span>
+<span class="i26"><i>Henry VIII.</i> <i>act</i> iii. <i>sc.</i> 1<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Dr. Johnson is of opinion, that this scene "is above any
+other part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any
+other poet, tender and pathetic; without gods, or furies, or poisons, or
+precipices; without the help of romantic circumstances; without
+improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of
+tumultuous misery."
+</p><p>
+I have already observed, that in judging of Shakspeare's characters as
+of persons we meet in real life, we are swayed unconsciously by our own
+habits and feelings, and our preference governed, more or less, by our
+individual prejudices or sympathies. Thus, Dr. Johnson, who has not a
+word to bestow on Imogen, and who has treated poor Juliet as if she had
+been in truth "the very beadle to an amorous sigh," does full justice to
+the character of Katherine, because the logical turn of his mind, his
+vigorous intellect, and his austere integrity, enabled him to appreciate
+its peculiar beauties: and, accordingly, we find that he gives it, not
+only unqualified, but almost exclusive admiration: he goes so far as to
+assert, that in this play the genius of Shakspeare comes in and goes out
+with Katherine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> It will be remembered, that in early youth Anna Bullen
+was betrothed to Lord Henry Percy, who was passionately in love with
+her. Wolsey, to serve the king's purposes, broke off this match, and
+forced Percy into an unwilling marriage with Lady Mary Talbot. "The
+stout Earl of Northumberland," who arrested Wolsey at York, was this
+very Percy; he was chosen for his mission by the interference of Anna
+Bullen&mdash;a piece of vengeance truly feminine in its mixture of sentiment
+and spitefulness; and every way characteristic of the individual woman.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> The king is said to have wept on reading this letter, and
+her body being interred at Peterbro', in the monastery, for honor of her
+memory it was preserved at the dissolution, and erected into a bishop's
+see.&mdash;<i>Herbert's Life of Henry VIII.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Written, (as the commentators suppose,) not by
+Shakspeare, but by Ben Jonson.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Mrs. Siddons left among her papers an analysis of the
+character of Lady Macbeth, which I have never seen: but I have heard her
+say, that after playing the part for thirty years, she never read it
+without discovering in it something new. She had an idea that Lady
+Macbeth must from her Celtic origin have been a small, fair, blue-eyed
+woman. Bonduca, Fredegonde, Brunehault, and other Amazons of the gothic
+ages were of this complexion; yet I cannot help fancying Lady Macbeth
+dark, like Black Agnes of Douglas&mdash;a sort of Lady Macbeth in her way.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> In her impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth, Mrs.
+Siddons adopted successively three different intonations in giving the
+words <i>we fail</i>. At first a quick contemptuous interrogation&mdash;"<i>we
+fail?</i>" Afterwards with the note of admiration&mdash;<i>we fail!</i> and an accent
+of indignant astonishment, laying the principal emphasis on the word
+<i>we</i>&mdash;<i>we</i> fail! Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced is the true
+reading&mdash;we fail. with the simple period, modulating her voice to a
+deep, low, resolute tone, which settled the issue at once&mdash;as though she
+had said, "if we fail, why then we fail, and all is over." This is
+consistent with the dark fatalism of the character and the sense of the
+line following, and the effect was sublime, almost awful.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> <i>Metaphysical</i> is here used in the sense of spiritual or
+preternatural.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Mrs. Siddons, I believe, had an idea that Lady Macbeth
+beheld the spectre of Banquo in the supper scene, and that her
+self-control and presence of mind enabled her to surmount her
+consciousness of the ghastly presence. This would be superhuman, and I
+do not see that either the character or the text bear out this
+supposition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Cumberland.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Professor Richardson.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> Foster's Essays.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> See Dr. Channing's remarks on Satan, in his essay "On the
+Character and Writings of Milton."&mdash;<i>Works</i>, p 181.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> The vision of Clytemnestra the night before she is
+murdered, in which she dreams that she has given birth to a dragon, and
+that, in laying it to her bosom, it draws blood instead of milk, has
+been greatly admired; but I suppose that those who most admire it would
+not place it in comparison with Lady Macbeth's sleeping scene. Lady
+Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, is a domestic Lady Macbeth; but the
+development being in the narrative, not the dramatic form, it follows
+hence that we have a masterly portrait, not a complete individual: and
+the relief of poetry and sympathy being wanting, the detestation she
+inspires is so unmixed as to be almost intolerable: consequently the
+character, considered in relation to the other personages of the story,
+is perfect; but abstractedly, it is imperfect; a basso relievo&mdash;not a
+statue.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> Attributed to Seneca.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> A comparison has already been made in an article in the
+"Reflector." It will be seen on a reference to that very masterly Essay,
+that I differ from the author in his conception of Lady Macbeth's
+character.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> Appollonius Rhodius.&mdash;<i>Vide</i> Elton's Specimens of the
+Classic Poets.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE END.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Books by Mrs. Anna Jameson</h2>
+
+
+<p>THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN: <span class="smcap">Moral, Poetical, and Historical.</span></p>
+
+<p>THE DIARY OF AN ENNUY&Eacute;E.</p>
+
+<p>MEMOIRS OF THE LOVES OF THE POETS. Biographical Sketches of Women
+celebrated in Ancient and Modern Poetry.</p>
+
+<p>STUDIES, STORIES, AND MEMOIRS.</p>
+
+<p>SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. With a Steel Engraving of
+Raphael's Madonna del San Sisto.</p>
+
+<p>MEMOIRS OF THE EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS (Cimabue to Bassano).</p>
+
+<p>LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA as represented in the Fine Arts.</p>
+
+<p>SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. In two volumes.</p>
+
+<p>LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS as represented in the Fine Arts. Forming
+the Second Series of Sacred and Legendary Art.</p>
+
+<p>Each volume, 16mo, $1.25; the ten volumes, in box, $12.50; half calf,
+$25.00; tree calf, $35.00.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Co., <i>Publishers</i>, <span class="smcap">Boston and New York</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,14125 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Characteristics of Women
+       Moral, Poetical, and Historical
+
+Author: Anna Jameson
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2008 [EBook #26152]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN
+
+MORAL, POETICAL, AND HISTORICAL
+
+BY
+
+MRS. JAMESON
+
+_From the last London Edition_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press,
+Cambridge 1889
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+TO THE NEW EDITION.
+
+
+In preparing for the press a new edition of this little work, the author
+has endeavored to render it more worthy of the approbation and kindly
+feeling with which it has been received; she cannot better express her
+sense of both than by justifying, as far as it is in her power, the
+cordial and flattering tone of all the public criticisms. It is to the
+great name of SHAKSPEARE, that bond of sympathy among all who speak his
+language, and to the subject of the work, not to its own merits, that
+she attributes the success it has met with,--success the more
+delightful, because, in truth, it was from the very first, so entirely
+unlooked for, as to be a matter of surprise as well as of pleasure and
+gratitude.
+
+In this edition there are many corrections, and some additions which the
+author hopes may be deemed improvements. She has been induced to insert
+several quotations at length, which were formerly only referred to, from
+observing that however familiar they may be to the mind of the reader,
+they are always recognized with pleasure--like dear domestic faces; and
+if the memory fail at the moment to recall the lines or the sentiment to
+which the attention is directly required, few like to interrupt the
+course of thought, or undertake a journey from the sofa or garden-seat
+to the library, to hunt out the volume, the play, the passage, for
+themselves.
+
+When the first edition was sent to press, the author contemplated
+writing the life of Mrs. Siddons, with a reference to her art; and
+deferred the complete development of the character of Lady Macbeth, till
+she should be able to illustrate it by the impersonation and commentary
+of that grand and gifted actress; but the task having fallen into other
+hands, the analysis of the character has been almost entirely rewritten,
+as at first conceived, or rather restored to its original form.
+
+This little work, as it now stands, forms only part of a plan which the
+author hopes, if life be granted her, to accomplish;--at all events,
+life, while it is spared, shall be devoted to its fulfilment.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                              Page
+INTRODUCTION                                     8
+
+CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.
+Portia                                          53
+Isabella                                        83
+Beatrice                                        99
+Rosalind                                       110
+
+CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION.
+Juliet                                         119
+Helena                                         153
+Perdita                                        172
+Viola                                          181
+Ophelia                                        187
+Miranda                                        207
+
+CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS.
+Hermione                                       219
+Desdemona                                      240
+Imogen                                         259
+Cordelia                                       280
+
+HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.
+Cleopatra                                      302
+Octavia                                        341
+Volumnia                                       345
+Constance of Bretagne                          357
+Elinor of Guienne                              387
+Blanche of Castile                             389
+Margaret of Anjou                              396
+Katharine of Arragon                           407
+Lady Macbeth                                   437
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+_Scene--A Library._
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You will not listen to me?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I do, with all the deference which befits a gentleman when a lady holds
+forth on the virtues of her own sex.
+
+    He is a parricide of his mother's name,
+    And with an impious hand murders her fame,
+    That wrongs the praise of women; that dares write
+    Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite
+    The milk they lent us.
+                       Yours was the nobler birth,
+    For you from man were made--man but of earth--
+    The son of dust!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+What's this?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+"Only a rhyme I learned from one I talked withal;" 'tis a quotation from
+some old poet that has fixed itself in my memory--from Randolph, I
+think.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+'Tis very justly thought, and very politely quoted, and my best courtesy
+is due to him and to you:--but now will you listen to me?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+With most profound humility.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Nay, then! I have done, unless you will lay aside these mock airs of
+gallantry, and listen to me for a moment! Is it fair to bring a
+second-hand accusation against me, and not attend to my defence?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Well, I will be serious.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Do so, and let us talk like reasonable beings.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Then tell me, (as a reasonable woman you will not be affronted with the
+question,) do you really expect that any one will read this little book
+of yours?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I might answer, that it has been a great source of amusement and
+interest to me for several months, and that so far I am content: but no
+one writes a book without a hope of finding readers, and I shall find a
+few. Accident first made me an authoress; and not now, nor ever, have I
+written to flatter any prevailing fashion of the day for the sake of
+profit, though this is done, I know, by many who have less excuse for
+thus coining their brains. This little book was undertaken without a
+thought of fame or money: out of the fulness of my own heart and soul
+have I written it. In the pleasure it has given me, in the new and
+various views of human nature it has opened to me, in the beautiful and
+soothing images it has placed before me, in the exercise and improvement
+of my own faculties, I have already been repaid: if praise or profit
+come beside, they come as a surplus. I should be gratified and grateful,
+but I have not sought for them, nor worked for them. Do you believe
+this?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I do: in this I cannot suspect you of affectation, for the profession of
+disinterestedness is uncalled for, and the contrary would be too far
+countenanced by the custom of the day to be matter of reserve or
+reproach. But how could you (saving the reverence due to a
+lady-authoress, and speaking as one reasonable being to another) choose
+such a threadbare subject?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I presume you have written a book to maintain the superiority of your
+sex over ours; for so I judge by the names at the heads of some of your
+chapters; women fit indeed to inlay heaven with stars, but, pardon me,
+very unlike those who at present walk upon this earth.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Very unlike the fine ladies of your acquaintance, I grant you; but as to
+maintaining the superiority, or speculating on the rights of
+women--nonsense! why should you suspect me of such folly?--it is quite
+out of date. Why should there be competition or comparison?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Both are ill-judged and odious; but did you ever meet with a woman of
+the world, who did not abuse most heartily the whole race of men?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Did you ever talk with a man of the world, who did not speak with levity
+or contempt of the whole human race of women?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Perhaps I might answer like Voltaire--"Helas ils pourraient bien avoir
+raison tous deux." But do you thence infer that both are good for
+nothing?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Thence I infer that the men of the world and the women of the world are
+neither of them--good for much.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+And you have written a book to make them better?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Heaven forbid! else I were only fit for the next lunatic asylum. Vanity
+run mad never conceived such an impossible idea.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Then, in a few words, what is the subject, and what the object, of your
+book?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I have endeavoured to illustrate the various modifications of which the
+female character is susceptible, with their causes and results. My life
+has been spent in observing and thinking; I have had, as you well know,
+more opportunities for the first, more leisure for the last, than have
+fallen to the lot of most people. What I have seen, felt, thought,
+suffered, has led me to form certain opinions. It appears to me that the
+condition of women in society, as at present constituted, is false in
+itself, and injurious to them,--that the education of women, as at
+present conducted, is founded in mistaken principles, and tends to
+increase fearfully the sum of misery and error in both sexes; but I do
+not choose presumptuously to fling these opinions in the face of the
+world, in the form of essays on morality, and treatises on education. I
+have rather chosen to illustrate certain positions by examples, and
+leave my readers to deduce the moral themselves, and draw their own
+inferences.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+And why have you not chosen your examples from real life? you might
+easily have done so. You have not been a mere spectator, or a mere
+actor, but a lounger behind the scenes of existence--have even assisted
+in preparing the puppets for the stage: you might have given us an
+epitome of your experience, instead of dreaming over Shakspeare.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I might so, if I had chosen to become a female satirist, which I will
+never be.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+You would, at least, stand a better chance of being read.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I am not sure of that. The vile taste for satire and personal gossip
+will not be eradicated, I suppose, while the elements of curiosity and
+malice remain in human nature; but as a fashion of literature, I think
+it is passing away;--at all events it is not my _forte_. Long experience
+of what is called "the world," of the folly, duplicity, shallowness,
+selfishness, which meet us at every turn, too soon unsettles our
+youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it
+were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions and retire from
+the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys our
+belief--it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and
+happiness; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes
+us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of goodness; it teaches us to
+consider _self_ as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which
+all motives are to be referred.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But this being so, we must either revolve with these earthly natures,
+and round the same centre, or seek a sphere for ourselves, and dwell
+apart.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I trust it is not necessary to do either. While we are yet young, and
+the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us
+a world within, we cannot look fairly on the world without:--all things
+then are good. When first we throw ourselves forth, and meet burs and
+briars on every side, which stick in our very hearts;--and fair tempting
+fruits which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with
+impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm hour,
+when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern
+their true bearings; when the perception of evil, or sorrow, or sin,
+brings also the perception of some opposite good, which awakens our
+indulgence, or the knowledge of the cause which excites our pity. Thus
+it is with me. I can smile,--nay, I can laugh still, to see folly,
+vanity, absurdity, meanness, exposed by scornful wit, and depicted by
+others in fictions light and brilliant. But these very things, when I
+encounter the reality, rather make me sad than merry, and take away all
+the inclination, if I had the power, to hold them up to derision.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Unless, by doing so, you might correct them.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Correct them! Show me that one human being who has been made essentially
+better by satire! O no, no! there is something in human nature which
+hardens itself against the lash--something in satire which excites only
+the lowest and worst of our propensities. That avowal in Pope--
+
+                   I must be proud to see
+    Men not afraid of God, afraid of me!
+
+--has ever filled me with terror and pity--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+From its truth perhaps?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+From its arrogance,--for the truth is, that a vice never corrected a
+vice. Pope might be proud of the terror he inspired in those who feared
+no God in whom vanity was stronger than conscience: but that terror made
+no individual man better; and while he indulged his own besetting sin,
+he administered to the malignity of others. Your professed satirists
+always send me to think upon the opposite sentiment in Shakspeare, on
+"the mischievous foul sin of chiding sin." I remember once hearing a
+poem of Barry Cornwall's, (he read it to me,) about a strange winged
+creature that, having the lineaments of a man, yet preyed on a man, and
+afterwards coming to a stream to drink, and beholding his own face
+therein, and that he had made his prey of a creature like himself, pined
+away with repentance. So should those do, who having made themselves
+mischievous mirth out of the sins and sorrows of others, remembering
+their own humanity, and seeing within themselves the same lineaments--so
+should _they_ grieve and pine away, self-punished.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+'Tis an old allegory, and a sad one--and but too much to the purpose.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I abhor the spirit of ridicule--I dread it and I despise it. I abhor it
+because it is in direct contradiction to the mild and serious spirit of
+Christianity; I fear it, because we find that in every state of society
+in which it has prevailed as a fashion, and has given the tone to the
+manners and literature, it marked the moral degradation and approaching
+destruction of that society; and I despise it, because it is the usual
+resource of the shallow and the base mind, and, when wielded by the
+strongest hand with the purest intentions, an inefficient means of good.
+The spirit of satire reversing the spirit of mercy which is twice
+blessed, seems to me twice accursed;--evil in those who indulge it--evil
+to those who are the objects of it.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+"Peut-etre fallait-il que la punition des imprudens et des faibles fut
+confiee a la malignite, car la pure vertu n'eut jamais ete assez
+cruelle."
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+That is a woman's sentiment.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+True--it _was_; and I have pleasure in reminding you that a female
+satirist by profession is yet an anomaly in the history of our
+literature, as a female schismatic is yet unknown in the history of our
+religion. But to what do you attribute the number of satirical women we
+meet in society?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Not to our nature; but to a state of society in which the levelling
+spirit of _persiflage_ has been long a fashion; to the perverse
+education which fosters it; to affections disappointed or unemployed,
+which embitter the temper; to faculties misdirected or wasted, which
+oppress and irritate the mind; to an utter ignorance of ourselves, and
+the common lot of humanity, combined with quick and refined perceptions
+and much superficial cultivation; to frivolous habits, which make
+serious thought a burden, and serious feeling a bane if suppressed, if
+betrayed, a ridicule. Women, generally speaking, are by nature too much
+subjected to suffering in many forms--have too much of fancy and
+sensibility, and too much of that faculty which some philosophers call
+_veneration_, to be naturally satirical. I have known but one woman
+eminently gifted in mind and person, who is also distinguished for
+powers of satire as bold as merciless; and she is such a compound of all
+that nature can give of good, and all that society can teach of evil--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+That she reminds us of the dragon of old, which was generated between
+the sunbeams from heaven and the slime of earth.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+No such thing. Rather of the powerful and beautiful fairy Melusina, who
+had every talent and every charm under heaven but once in so many hours
+was fated to become a serpent. No, I return to my first position. It is
+not by exposing folly and scorning fools, that we make other people
+wiser, or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and
+examples of the kindly and generous affections--to show how the human
+soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering--to prove how much of
+possible good may exist in things evil and perverted--how much hope
+there is for those who despair--how much comfort for those whom a
+heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so
+put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit
+of the day--O would I could do this!
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+On the same principle, I suppose, that they have changed the treatment
+of lunatics; and whereas they used to condemn poor distempered wretches
+to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waistcoat, they now send
+them to sunshine and green fields, to wander in gardens among birds and
+flowers, and soothe them with soft music and kind flattering speech.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You laugh at me! perhaps I deserve it.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+No, in truth; I am a little amused, but most honestly attentive: and
+perhaps wish I could think more like you. But to proceed: I allow that
+with this view of the case, you could not well have chosen your
+illustrations from real life; but why not from history?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+As far as history could guide me, I have taken her with me in one or two
+recent publications, which all tend to the same object. Nor have I here
+lost sight of her; but I have entered on a land where she alone is not
+to be trusted, and may make a pleasant companion but a most fallacious
+guide. To drop metaphor: history informs us that such things have been
+done or have occurred; but when we come to inquire into motives and
+characters, it is the most false and partial and unsatisfactory
+authority we can refer to. Women are illustrious in history, not from
+what they have been in themselves, but generally in proportion to the
+mischief they have done or caused. Those characters best fitted to my
+purpose are precisely those of which history never heard, or disdains to
+speak; of those which have been handed down to us by many different
+authorities under different aspects we cannot judge without prejudice;
+in others there occur certain chasms which it is difficult to supply;
+and hence inconsistencies we have no means of reconciling, though
+doubtless they _might_ be reconciled if we knew the whole, instead of a
+part.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But instance--instance!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Examples crowd upon me; but take the first that occurs. Do you remember
+that Duchesse de Longueville, whose beautiful picture we were looking at
+yesterday?--the heroine of the Fronde?--think of that woman--bold,
+intriguing, profligate, vain, ambitious, factious!--who made men rebels
+with a smile;--or if that were not enough, the lady was not scrupulous,
+apparently without principle as without shame, nothing was _too_ much!
+And then think of the same woman protecting the virtuous philosopher
+Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned; and from motives which her
+worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even
+to her own servants--preparing his food herself, watching for his
+safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her
+discretion, her disinterested benevolence, not only defied danger, (that
+were little to a woman of her temper,) but endured a lengthened trial,
+all the ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continual
+self-control, and the thousand small daily sacrifices which, to a vain,
+dissipated, proud, impatient woman, must have been hard to bear. Now if
+Shakspeare had drawn the character of the Duchesse de Longueville, he
+would have shown us the same individual woman in both situations:--for
+the same being, with the same faculties, and passions, and powers, it
+surely was: whereas in history, we see in one case a fury of discord, a
+woman without modesty or pity; and in the other an angel of
+benevolence, and a worshipper of goodness; and nothing to connect the
+two extremes in our fancy.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But these are contradictions which we meet on every page of history,
+which make us giddy with doubt, or sick with belief, and are the proper
+subjects of inquiry for the moralist and the philosopher.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I cannot say that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help
+_me_ out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found
+solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight;
+the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I
+found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are
+complete individuals, whose hearts and souls are laid open before us:
+all may behold, and all judge for themselves.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But all will not judge alike.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+No; and herein lies a part of their wonderful truth. We hear
+Shakspeare's men and women discussed, praised and dispraised, liked,
+disliked, as real human beings; and in forming our opinions of them, we
+are influenced by our own characters, habits of thought, prejudices,
+feelings, impulses, just as we are influenced with regard to our
+acquaintances and associates.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+But we are then as likely to misconceive and misjudge them.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes, if we had only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we
+can do with them what we cannot do with real people: we can unfold the
+whole character before us, stripped of all pretensions of self-love, all
+disguises of manner. We can take leisure to examine, to analyze, to
+correct our own impressions, to watch the rise and progress of various
+passions--we can hate, love, approve, condemn, without offence to
+others, without pain to ourselves.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+In this respect they may be compared to those exquisite anatomical
+preparations of wax, which those who could not without disgust and
+horror dissect a real specimen, may study, and learn the mysteries of
+our frame, and all the internal workings of the wondrous machine of
+life.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+And it is the safer and the better way--for us at least. But look--that
+brilliant rain-drop trembling there in the sunshine suggests to me
+another illustration. Passion, when we contemplate it through the
+medium of imagination, is like a ray of light transmitted through a
+prism; we can calmly, and with undazzled eye, study its complicate
+nature, and analyze its variety of tints; but passion brought home to us
+in its reality, through our own feelings and experience, is like the
+same ray transmitted through a lens,--blinding, burning, consuming where
+it falls.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Your illustration is the most poetical, I allow; but not the most just.
+But tell me, is the ground you have taken sufficiently large?--is the
+foundation you have chosen strong enough to bear the moral
+superstructure you raise upon it? You know the prevalent idea is, that
+Shakspeare's women are inferior to his men. This assertion is constantly
+repeated, and has been but tamely refuted.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Professor Richardson?--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+He is as dry as a stick, and his refutation not successful even as a
+piece of logic. Then it is not sufficient for critics to assert this
+inferiority and want of variety: they first assume the fallacy, then
+argue upon it. Cibber accounts for it from the circumstance that all the
+female parts in Shakspeare's time were acted by boys--there were no
+women on the stage; and Mackenzie, who ought to have known better, says
+that he was not so happy in his delineations of love and tenderness, as
+of the other passions; because, forsooth, the majesty of his genius
+could not stoop to the refinements of delicacy;--preposterous!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Stay! before we waste epithets of indignation, let us consider. If these
+people mean that Shakspeare's women are inferior in power to his men, I
+grant it at once; for in Shakspeare the male and female characters bear
+precisely the same relation to each other that they do in nature and in
+society--they are not equal in prominence or in power--they are
+subordinate throughout. Richardson remarks, that "if situation
+influences the mind, and if uniformity of conduct be frequently
+occasioned by uniformity of condition, there _must_ be a greater
+diversity of male than of female characters,"--which is true; add to
+this our limited sphere of action, consequently of experience,--the
+habits of self-control rendering the outward distinctions of character
+and passion less striking and less strong--all this we see in Shakspeare
+as in nature: for instance, Juliet is the most impassioned of the female
+characters, but what are _her_ passions compared to those which shake
+the soul of Othello?
+
+    "Even as the dew-drop on the myrtle-leaf
+    To the vex'd sea."
+
+Look at Constance, frantic for the loss of her son--then look at Lear,
+maddened by the ingratitude of his daughters: why it is the west wind
+bowing those aspen tops that wave before our window, compared to the
+tropic hurricane, when forests crash and burn, and mountains tremble to
+their bases!
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+True; and Lady Macbeth, with all her soaring ambition, her vigor of
+intellect, her subtlety, her courage, and her cruelty--what is she,
+compared to Richard III.?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I will tell you what she is--she is a woman. Place Lady Macbeth in
+comparison with Richard III., and you see at once the essential
+distinction between masculine and feminine ambition--though both in
+extreme, and overleaping all restraints of conscience or mercy. Richard
+says of himself, that he has "neither pity, love, nor fear:" Lady
+Macbeth is susceptible of all three. You smile! but that remains to be
+proved. The reason that Shakspeare's wicked women have such a singular
+hold upon our fancy, is from the consistent preservation of the feminine
+character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and
+intelligible--not like those monstrous caricatures we meet with in
+history--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+In history?--this is new!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes! I repeat, in history, where certain isolated facts and actions are
+recorded, without any relation to causes, or motives, or connecting
+feelings and pictures exhibited, from which the considerate mind turns
+in disgust, and the feeling heart has no relief but in positive, and I
+may add, reasonable incredulity. I have lately seen one of Correggio's
+finest pictures, in which the three Furies are represented, not as
+ghastly deformed hags, with talons and torches, and snaky hair, but as
+young women, with fine luxuriant forms and regular features, and a
+single serpent wreathing the tresses like a bandeau--but _such_
+countenances!--such a hideous expression of malice, cunning, and
+cruelty!--and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da
+Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa--
+
+    Where it is less the horror than the grace
+    Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone--
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    'Tis the melodious tints of beauty thrown
+    Athwart the hue of guilt and glare of pain,
+    That humanize and harmonize the strain.
+
+And Shakspeare, who understood all truth, worked out his conceptions on
+the same principle, having said himself, that "proper deformity shows
+not in the fiend so horrid as in women." Hence it is that whether he
+portrayed the wickedness founded in perverted power, as in Lady Macbeth;
+or the wickedness founded in weakness, as in Gertrude, Lady Anne, or
+Cressida, he is the more fearfully impressive, because we cannot claim
+for ourselves an exemption from the same nature, before which, in its
+corrupted state, we tremble with horror or shrink with disgust.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Do you remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought
+it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the
+scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel
+on your sex?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+They might have spared themselves the trouble. Lady Anne is just one of
+those women whom we see walking in crowds through the drawing-rooms of
+the world--the puppets of habit, the fools of fortune, without any
+particular inclination for vice, or any steady principle of virtue;
+whose actions are inspired by vanity, not affection, and regulated by
+opinion, not by conscience: who are good while there is no temptation to
+be otherwise, and ready victims of the first soliciting to evil. In the
+case of Lady Anne, we are startled by the situation: not three months a
+widow, and following to the sepulchre the remains of a husband and a
+father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them.
+In such a case it required perhaps either Richard or the arch-fiend
+himself to tempt her successfully; but in a less critical moment, a far
+less subtle and audacious seducer would have sufficed. Cressida is
+another modification of vanity, weakness, and falsehood, drawn in
+stronger colors. The world contains many Lady Annes and Cressidas,
+polished and refined externally, whom chance and vanity keep right, whom
+chance and vanity lead wrong, just as it may happen. When we read in
+history of the enormities of certain women, perfect scarecrows and
+ogresses, we can safely, like the Pharisee in Scripture, hug ourselves
+in our secure virtue, and thank God that we are not as others are--but
+the wicked women in Shakspeare are portrayed with such perfect
+consistency and truth, that they leave us no such resource--they
+frighten us into reflection--they make us believe and tremble. On the
+other hand, his amiable women are touched with such exquisite
+simplicity--they have so little external pretensions--and are so unlike
+the usual heroines of tragedy and romance, that they delight us more
+"than all the nonsense of the beau-ideal!" We are flattered by the
+perception of our own nature in the midst of so many charms and virtues:
+not only are they what we could wish to be, or ought to be, but what we
+persuade ourselves we might be, or would be, under a different and a
+happier state of things, and, perhaps, some time or other _may_ be. They
+are not stuck up, like the cardinal virtues, all in a row, for us to
+admire and wonder at--they are not mere poetical abstractions--nor (as
+they have been termed) mere abstractions of the affections,--
+
+    But common clay ta'en from the common earth.
+    Moulded by God, and tempered by the tears
+    Of angels, to the perfect form of--_woman_.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Beautiful lines!--Where are they?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I quote from memory, and I am afraid inaccurately, from a poem of Alfred
+Tennyson's.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Well, between argument, and sentiment, and logic, and poetry, you are
+making out a very plausible case. I think with you that, in the
+instances you have mentioned, (as Lady Macbeth and Richard, Juliet, and
+Othello, and others,) the want of comparative power is only an
+additional excellence; but to go to an opposite extreme of delineation,
+we must allow that there is not one of Shakspeare's women that, as a
+dramatic character, can be compared to Falstaff.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+No; because any thing like Falstaff in the form of woman--any such
+compound of wit, sensuality, and selfishness, unchecked by the moral
+sentiments and the affections, and touched with the same vigorous
+painting, would be a gross and monstrous caricature. If it could exist
+in nature, we might find it in Shakspeare; but a moment's reflection
+shows us that it would be essentially an impossible combination of
+faculties in a female.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+It strikes me, however, that his humorous women are feebly drawn, in
+comparison with some of the female wits of other writers.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Because his women of wit and humor are not introduced for the sole
+purpose of saying brilliant things, and displaying the wit of the
+author; they are, as I will show you, real, natural women, in whom _wit_
+is only a particular and occasional modification of intellect. They are
+all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral
+agents; and _then_ witty, as if by accident, or as the Duchesse de
+Chaulnes said of herself, "par la grace de Dieu." As to humor, it is
+carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly; in the termagant Catherine;
+in Maria, in "Twelfth Night;" in Juliet's nurse; in Mrs. Ford and Mrs.
+Page. What can exceed in humorous naivete, Mrs. Quickly's upbraiding
+Falstaff, and her concluding appeal--"Didst thou not kiss me, and bid me
+fetch thee thirty shillings?" Is it not exquisite--irresistible? Mrs.
+Ford and Mrs. Page are both "merry wives," but how perfectly
+discriminated! Mrs. Ford has the most good nature--Mrs. Page is the
+cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief
+in her mirth. In all these instances I allow that the humor is more or
+less vulgar; but a humorous woman, whether in high or low life has
+always a tinge of vulgarity.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I should like to see that word _vulgar_ properly defined, and its
+meaning limited--at present it is the most arbitrary word in the
+language.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes, like the word romantic, it is a convenient "exploding word," and in
+its general application signifies nothing more than "see how much finer
+I am than other people!"[1] but in literature and character I shall
+adhere to the definition of Madame de Stael, who uses the word _vulgar_
+as the reverse of _poetical_. Vulgarity (as I wish to apply the word) is
+the _negative_ in all things. In literature, it is the total absence of
+elevation and depth in the ideas, and of elegance and delicacy in the
+expression of them. In character, it is the absence of truth,
+sensibility, and reflection. The vulgar in manner, is the result of
+vulgarity of character; it is grossness, hardness, or affectation.--If
+you would see how Shakspeare has discriminated, not only different
+degrees, but different kinds of plebeian vulgarity in women, you have
+only to compare the nurse in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Quickly. On the
+whole, if there are people who, taking the strong and essential
+distinction of sex into consideration, still maintain that Shakspeare's
+female characters are not, in truth, in variety, in power, equal to his
+men, I think I shall prove the contrary.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I observe that you have divided your illustrations into classes; but
+shades of character so melt into each other, and the various faculties
+and powers are so blended and balanced, that all classification must be
+arbitrary. I am at a loss to conceive where you have drawn the line;
+here, at the head of your first chapter, I find "Characters of
+Intellect"--do you call Portia intellectual, and Hermione and Constance
+not so?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I know that Schlegel has said that it is impossible to arrange
+Shakspeare's characters in classes: yet some classification was
+necessary for my purpose. I have therefore divided them into characters
+in which intellect and wit predominate; characters in which fancy and
+passion predominate; and characters in which the moral sentiments and
+affections predominate. The historical characters I have considered
+apart, as requiring a different mode of illustration. Portia I regard as
+a perfect model of an intellectual woman, in whom wit is tempered by
+sensibility, and fancy regulated by strong reflection. It is objected to
+her, to Beatrice, and others of Shakspeare's women, that the display of
+intellect is tinged with a coarseness of manner belonging to the age in
+which he wrote. To remark that the conversation and letters of
+high-bred and virtuous women of that time were more bold and frank in
+expression than any part of the dialogue appropriated to Beatrice and
+Rosalind, may excuse it to our judgment, but does not reconcile it to
+our taste. Much has been said, and more might be said on this
+subject--but I would rather not discuss it. It is a mere difference of
+manner which is to be regretted, but has nothing to do with the essence
+of the character.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I think you have done well in avoiding the topic altogether; but between
+ourselves, do you really think that the refinement of manner, the
+censorious, hypocritical, verbal scrupulosity, which is carried so far
+in this "picked age" of ours, is a true sign of superior refinement of
+taste, and purity of morals? Is it not rather a whiting of the
+sepulchre? I will not even allude to individual instances whom we both
+know, but does it not remind you, on the whole, of the tone of French
+manners previous to the revolution--that "decence," which Horace Walpole
+so admired,[2] veiling the moral degradation, the inconceivable
+profligacy of the higher classes?--Stay--I have not yet done--not to
+you, but _for_ you, I will add thus much;--our modern idea of delicacy
+apparently attaches more importance to words than to things--to manners
+than to morals. You will hear people inveigh against the improprieties
+of Shakspeare, with Don Juan, or one of those infernal French novels--I
+beg your pardon--lying on their toilet table. Lady Florence is shocked
+at the sallies of Beatrice, and Beatrice would certainly stand aghast to
+see Lady Florence dressed for Almack's; so you see that in both cases
+the fashion makes the indecorum. Let her ladyship new model her gowns!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Well, well, leave Lady Florence--I would rather hear you defend
+Shakspeare.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I think it is Coleridge who so finely observes that Shakspeare ever kept
+the high road of human life, whereon all travel, that he did not pick
+out by-paths of feeling and sentiment; in him we have no moral
+highwaymen, and sentimental thieves and rat-catchers, and interesting
+villains, and amiable, elegant adulteresses--_a-la-mode Germanorum_--no
+delicate entanglements of situation, in which the grossest images are
+presented to the mind disguised under the superficial attraction of
+style and sentiment. He flattered no bad passion, disguised no vice in
+the garb of virtue, trifled with with no just and generous principle. He
+can make us laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, yet still preserve our
+love for our fellow-beings, and our reverence for ourselves. He has a
+lofty and a fearless trust in his own powers, and in the beauty and
+excellence of virtue; and with his eye fixed on the lode-star of truth,
+steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other
+pilot we had been wrecked:--for instance, who but himself would have
+dared to bring into close contact two such characters as Iago and
+Desdemona? Had the colors in which he has arrayed Desdemona been one
+atom less transparently bright and pure, the charm had been lost; she
+could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the
+overpowering blackness of _his_ character must have passed over the
+sun-bright purity of _hers_. For observe that Iago's disbelief in the
+virtue of Desdemona is not pretended, it is real. It arises from his
+total want of faith in all virtue; he is no more capable of conceiving
+goodness than she is capable of conceiving evil. To the brutish
+coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears
+only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection, which saw
+"Othello's visage in his mind," only a perversion of taste; her bashful
+modesty, only a cloak for evil propensities; so he represents them with
+all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to
+listen to him. He rips her to pieces before us--he would have bedeviled
+an angel! yet such is the unrivalled, though passive delicacy of the
+delineation, that it can stand it unhurt, untouched! It is
+wonderful!--yet natural as it is wonderful! After all, there are people
+in the world, whose opinions and feelings are tainted by an habitual
+acquaintance with the evil side of society, though in action and
+intention they remain right; and who, without the real depravity of
+heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the
+character and productions of others.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Heaven bless me from such critics! yet if genius, youth, and innocence
+could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? I pity from my soul the
+persons you allude to--for to such minds there can exist few
+uncontaminated sources of pleasure either in nature or in art.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Ay--"the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them
+melancholy."[3] You pity them, and they will sneer at you. But what have
+we here?--"Characters of Imagination--Juliet--Viola;" are these romantic
+young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are
+they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this
+enlightened age?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+As warnings, of course--what else?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Against the dangers of romance?--but where are they? "Vraiment," as B.
+Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit a
+la maison." Where are they--these disciples of poetry and romance, these
+victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown
+roses--all conscience and tenderness--whom it is so necessary to guard
+against too much confidence in others, and too little in
+themselves--where are they?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young
+gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too
+enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too violent in their hatred
+of vice, too sincere in friendship, too faithful in love, too active and
+disinterested in the cause of truth--
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young
+people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of
+sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the
+romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought?
+Do _you_ bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm?
+Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed
+to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite
+philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to
+the few who are in danger of being misled by an excess of the generous
+impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be proclaimed
+by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no; there are young
+women in these days, but there is no such thing as youth--the bloom of
+existence is sacrificed to a fashionable education, and where we should
+find the rose-buds of the spring, we see only the fullblown, flaunting,
+precocious roses of the hot-bed.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Blame then that _forcing_ system of education, the most pernicious, the
+most mistaken, the most far-reaching in its miserable and mischievous
+effects, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up
+women in convents till they were married, and then launched them
+innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough; but not worse than a
+system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated
+girls, trained by knowing mothers, and all-accomplished governesses,
+with whom vanity and expediency take place of conscience and
+affection--(in other words, of romance)--"frutto senile in sul giovenil
+fiore;" with feelings and passions suppressed or contracted, not
+governed by higher faculties and purer principles; with whom
+opinion--the same false honor which sends men out to fight duels--stands
+instead of the strength and the light of virtue within their own souls.
+Hence the strange anomalies of artificial society--girls of sixteen who
+are models of manner miracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who
+sneer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and
+matrons of forty, who, when the passions should be tame and wait upon
+the judgment, amaze the world and put us to confusion with their doings.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Or turn politicians to vary the excitement--How I hate political women!
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Why do you hate them?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Because they are mischievous.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+But why are they mischievous?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Why!--why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all
+mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs
+in this world, than a woman run mad with politics. The number of
+political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and
+drawing-rooms are the _foyers_ of party-spirit, is another trait of
+resemblance between the state of society now, and that which existed at
+Paris before the revolution.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+And do you think, like some interesting young lady in Miss Edgeworth's
+tales, that "women have nothing to do with politics?" Do you mean to say
+that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of
+legislation, or of feeling an interest in the government and welfare of
+their country, or of perceiving and sympathizing in the progress of
+great events?--That they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do
+feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer
+source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of
+egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of the
+noblest kind.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I agree in all this; and all this does not mitigate my horror of
+political women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and
+absurd. If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine
+coteries!--but you never talk politics.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me; but I prefer
+listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect
+education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads
+the memory, while it fetters the judgment. Women, however well read in
+history, never generalize in politics; never argue on any broad or
+general principle; never reason from a consideration of past events,
+their causes and consequences. But they are always political through
+their affections, their prejudices, their personal _liaisons_, their
+hopes, their fears.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+If it were no worse, I could stand it; for that is at least feminine.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partisans,
+such violent party women, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a
+woman _talk_ politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once
+the motive, the affection, the secret bias which swayed her opinions and
+inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so "difficult
+for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but
+justice only?"--how much more for woman!
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles,
+would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them
+some right to meddle with politics?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+It would cease in that case to be _meddling_, as you term it, for it
+would be legitimized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical
+ladies, and quote Lord Byron--but O leave those angry common-places to
+others!--they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you,
+that women have achieved enough to silence them forever,[4] and how
+often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments
+which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her
+qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will
+be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers
+and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation of their
+powers of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery
+by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Well--till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the
+province of politics to ourselves. I see here you have treated of a very
+different class of beings, "_women in whom the affections and the moral
+sentiments predominate_." Are there many such, think you, in the world?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Yes, many such; the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet
+and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect, and less observed;
+it is more common, too, therefore less remarked; but in women it
+generally gives the prevailing tone to the character, except where
+vanity has been made the ruling motive.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Except! I admire your exception! You make in this case the rule the
+exception. Look round the world.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You are not one of those with whom that common phrase "the world"
+signifies the circle, whatever and wherever that may be, which limits
+our individual experience--as a child considers the visible horizon as
+the bounds which shut in the mighty universe. Believe me, it is a sorry,
+vulgar kind of wisdom, if it be wisdom--a shallow and confined
+philosophy, if it be philosophy--which resolves all human motives and
+impulses into egotism in one sex, and vanity in the other. Such may be
+the way of _the world_, as it is called--the result of a very artificial
+and corrupt state of society, but such is not general nature, nor female
+nature. Would you see the kindly, self-sacrificing affections developed
+under their most honest but least poetical guise--displayed without any
+mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being
+thought vain?--you will see it, not among the prosperous, the high-born,
+the educated, "far, far removed from want, and grief, and fear," but
+among the poor, the miserable, the perverted--among those habitually
+exposed to all influences that harden and deprave.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I believe it--nay, I know it; but how should _you_ know it, or anything
+of the strange places of refuge which truth and nature have found in the
+two extremes of society?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+It is no matter what I have seen or known; and for the two extremes of
+society, I leave them to the author of Paul Clifford, and that most
+exquisite painter of living manners, Mrs. Gore. St. Giles's is no more
+_nature_ than St. James's. I wanted character in its essential truth,
+not mortified by particular customs, by fashion, by situation. I wished
+to illustrate the manner in which the affections would naturally display
+themselves in women--whether combined with high intellect, regulated by
+reflection, and elevated by imagination, or existing with perverted
+dispositions, or purified by the moral sentiments. I found all these in
+Shakspeare; his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm
+affections predominate, and triumph over shame, fear, pride, resentment,
+vanity, jealousy,--are particularly worthy of consideration, and perfect
+in their kind, because so quiet in their effect.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Several critics have remarked in general terms on those beautiful
+pictures of female friendship, and of the generous affection of women
+for each other, which we find in Shakspeare. Other writers, especially
+dramatic writers, have found ample food for wit and satiric delineation
+in the littleness of feminine spite and rivalry, in the mean spirit of
+competition, the petty jealousy of superior charms, the mutual slander
+and mistrust, the transient leagues of folly or selfishness miscalled
+friendship--the result of an education which makes vanity the ruling
+principle, and of a false position in society. Shakspeare, who looked
+upon women with the spirit of humanity, wisdom, and deep love, has done
+justice to their natural good tendencies and kindly sympathies. In the
+friendship of Beatrice and Hero, of Rosalind and Celia; in the
+description of the girlish attachment of Helena and Hermia, he has
+represented truth and generous affection rising superior to all the
+usual sources of female rivalry and jealousy; and with such force and
+simplicity, and obvious self-conviction, that he absolutely forces the
+same conviction on us.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Add to these the generous feeling of Viola for her rival Olivia; of
+Julia for her rival Sylvia; of Helena for Diana; of the old Countess for
+Helena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in
+Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought--(and
+when did he ever think other than the truth?)--that women have by nature
+"virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their
+sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satirists and
+fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is
+another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully
+represented--the distinction between masculine and feminine _courage_.
+A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated
+form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because
+it is not required of us, it is not one of the means through which we
+seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through
+our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our
+strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you
+remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his "blue thrum
+cap," and standing at her husband's side, unknown to him during a
+sea-fight? There she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot.
+Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her--"Good God,
+that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the
+acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage
+of Juliet, when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her
+own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the
+sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in
+piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel
+and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications
+of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth?--
+
+    My hands are of your color, but I shame
+    To wear a heart so white.
+
+And again,
+
+    A little water clears us of this deed,
+    How easy is it then!
+
+If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere
+firmness of nerve, what is it?
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Not _that_, at least, which apparently you deem it; you will find, if
+you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth
+very differently. Take these frightful passages with the context--take
+the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend
+of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian without any
+qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and
+tremble; but that which quenched _him_ lent her fire. The absolute
+necessity for self-command, the strength of her reason, and her love for
+her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the
+fear of detection, leaving her the full possession of her faculties.
+Recollect that the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference
+of a little water clearing the blood-stain from her hand, sees in
+imagination that hand forever reeking, forever polluted: and when reason
+is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature
+and womanhood, we behold her making unconscious efforts to wash out
+that "damned spot," and sighing, heart-broken, over that little hand
+which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+I hope you have given her a place among the women in whom the tender
+affections and moral sentiments predominate.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more
+accurate classification than placing her among the historical
+characters.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Apropos to the historical characters, I hope you have refuted that
+_insolent_ assumption, (shall I call it?) that Shakspeare tampered
+inexcusably with the truth of history. He is the truest of all
+historians. His anachronisms always remind me of those in the fine old
+Italian pictures; either they are insignificant, or, if properly
+considered, are really beauties; for instance, every one knows that
+Correggio's St. Jerome presenting his books to the Virgin, involves
+half-a-dozen anachronisms,--to say nothing of that heavenly figure of
+the Magdalen, in the same picture, kissing the feet of the infant
+Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination
+of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment
+and poetry that ever breathed and glowed from the canvas? You remember
+too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount
+Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the background? In these and a hundred
+other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity
+involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented,
+if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under every
+aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with
+Shakspeare and his anachronisms. The learned scorn of Johnson and some
+of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of
+Schlegel, seem in this case superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic
+oracle and Julio Romano contemporary--what does it signify? he committed
+no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a
+turtle-dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is
+true to the spirit and even to the _letter_ of history; where he
+deviates from the latter, the reason may be found in some higher beauty
+and more universal truth.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic
+character all the historic testimony I could collect relative to
+Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &c.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Analyzing the character of Cleopatra must have been something like
+catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more
+embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like
+intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and
+subjecting it to a chemical process.
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette.
+What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that
+ever were--or are? She would put Lady ---- herself to school. But now
+for the moral.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+The moral!--of what?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+Of your book. It has a moral, I suppose.
+
+                    ALDA.
+
+It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I
+have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently
+explained my own views, may I proceed?
+
+                    MEDON.
+
+If you please--I am prepared to listen in earnest.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See Foster's Essay on the application of the word
+_romantic_--_Essays_, vol. I
+
+[2] Correspondence, vol. iii.
+
+[3] An Oriental proverb
+
+[4] In our own time, Madame de Stael, Mrs. Somerville, Harriet
+Martineau, Mrs. Marcet; we need not go back to the Rolands and Agnesi,
+nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinson.
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.
+
+
+PORTIA.
+
+We hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that
+intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are
+common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it
+appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of
+woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical
+organization;--it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That
+certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or
+intellectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded
+in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this:
+in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and
+self-directed--more independent of the rest of the character, than we
+ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a
+much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.
+
+In thinking over all the distinguished women can at this moment call to
+mind, I recollect but one, who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied
+her sex, but the moral qualities had been first perverted.[5] It is from
+not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men of genius
+have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us exquisite and
+just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of women, as
+modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted to portray them
+with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they
+have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of
+intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have either suppressed
+the feminine attributes altogether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they
+have made them completely artificial.[6] Women distinguished for wit may
+sometimes appear masculine and flippant, but the cause must be sought
+elsewhere than in nature, who disclaims all such. Hence the witty and
+intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of
+some particular time; they are like some old portraits which can still
+amuse and please by the beauty of the workmanship, in spite of the
+graceless costume or grotesque accompaniments, but from which we turn to
+worship with ever new delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian--the
+saints and the virgins of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Millamants
+and Belindas, the Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles are out of date, while
+Portia and Rosalind, in whom nature and the feminine character are
+paramount, remain bright and fresh to the fancy as when first created.
+
+Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, and Rosalind, may be classed together, as
+characters of intellect, because, when compared with others, they are at
+once distinguished by their mental superiority. In Portia, it is
+intellect kindled into romance by a poetical imagination; in Isabel, it
+is intellect elevated by religious principle; in Beatrice, intellect
+animated by spirit; in Rosalind, intellect softened by sensibility. The
+wit which is lavished on each is profound, or pointed, or sparkling, or
+playful--but always feminine; like spirits distilled from flowers, it
+always reminds us of its origin; it is a volatile essence, sweet as
+powerful; and to pursue the comparison a step further the wit of Portia
+is like ottar of roses, rich and concentrated; that of Rosalind, like
+cotton dipped in aromatic vinegar; the wit of Beatrice is like sal
+volatile; and that of Isabel, like the incense wafted to heaven. Of
+these four exquisite characters, considered as dramatic and poetical
+conceptions, it is difficult to pronounce which is most perfect in its
+way, most admirably drawn, most highly finished. But if considered in
+another point of view, as women and individuals, as breathing realities,
+clothed in flesh and blood, I believe we must assign the first rank to
+Portia, as uniting in herself in a more eminent degree than the others,
+all the noblest and most lovable qualities that ever met together in
+woman; and presenting a complete personification of Petrarch's exquisite
+epitome of female perfection:--
+
+        Il vago spirito ardento,
+    E'n alto intelletto, un puro core.
+
+It is singular, that hitherto no critical justice has been done to the
+character of Portia; it is yet more wonderful, that one of the finest
+writers on the eternal subject of Shakspeare and his perfections, should
+accuse Portia of pedantry and affectation, and confess she is not a
+great favorite of his--a confession quite worthy of him, who avers his
+predilection for servant-maids, and his preference of the Fannys and the
+Pamelas over the Clementinas and Clarissas.[7] Schlegel, who has given
+several pages to a rapturous eulogy on the Merchant of Venice, simply
+designates Portia as a "rich, beautiful, clever heiress:"--whether the
+fault lie in the writer or translator, I do protest against the word
+clever.[8] Portia _clever!_ what an epithet to apply to this heavenly
+compound of talent, feeling, wisdom, beauty, and gentleness! Now would
+it not be well, if this common and comprehensive word were more
+accurately defined, or at least more accurately used? It signifies
+properly, not so much the possession of high powers, as dexterity in the
+adaptation of certain faculties (not necessarily of a high order) to a
+certain end or aim--not always the worthiest. It implies something
+common-place, inasmuch as it speaks the presence of the _active_ and
+_perceptive_, with a deficiency of the _feeling_ and _reflective_
+powers; and applied to a woman, does it not almost invariably suggest
+the idea of something we should distrust or shrink from, if not allied
+to a higher nature? The profligate French women, who ruled the councils
+of Europe in the middle of the last century, were clever women; and that
+_philosopheress_ Madame du Chatelet, who managed, at one and the same
+moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a
+calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman! If Portia had been
+created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe--if
+she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a
+means to baffle the Jew, she might have been pronounced a clever woman.
+But what Portia does, is forgotten in what she _is_. The rare and
+harmonious blending of energy, reflection, and feeling, in her fine
+character, make the epithet _clever_ sound like a discord as applied to
+_her_, and place her infinitely beyond the slight praise of Richardson
+and Schlegel, neither of whom appear to have fully comprehended her.
+
+These and other critics have been apparently so dazzled and engrossed by
+the amazing character of Shylock, that Portia has received less than
+justice at their hands; while the fact is, that Shylock is not a finer
+or more finished character in his way, than Portia is in hers. These two
+splendid figures are worthy of each other; worthy of being placed
+together within the same rich framework of enchanting poetry, and
+glorious and graceful forms. She hangs beside the terrible, inexorable
+Jew, the brilliant lights of her character set off by the shadowy power
+of his, like a magnificent beauty-breathing Titian by the side of a
+gorgeous Rembrandt.
+
+Portia is endued with her own share of those delightful qualities, which
+Shakspeare has lavished on many of his female characters; but besides
+the dignity, the sweetness, and tenderness which should distinguish her
+sex generally, she is individualized by qualities peculiar to herself;
+by her high mental powers, her enthusiasm of temperament, her decision
+of purpose, and her buoyancy of spirit. These are innate; she has other
+distinguishing qualities more external, and which are the result of the
+circumstances in which she is placed. Thus she is the heiress of a
+princely name and countless wealth; a train of obedient pleasures have
+ever waited round her; and from infancy she has breathed an atmosphere
+redolent of perfume and blandishment Accordingly there is a commanding
+grace, a highbred, airy elegance, a spirit of magnificence in all that
+she does and says, as one to whom splendor had been familiar from her
+very birth. She treads as though her footsteps had been among marble
+palaces, beneath roofs of fretted gold, o'er cedar floors and pavements
+of jasper and porphyry--amid gardens full of statues, and flowers, and
+fountains, and haunting music. She is full of penetrative wisdom, and
+genuine tenderness, and lively wit; but as she has never known want, or
+grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the
+sombre or the sad; her affections are all mixed up with faith, hope and
+joy; and her wit has not a particle of malevolence or causticity.
+
+It is well known that the Merchant of Venice is founded on two different
+tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner,
+Shakspeare has rejected altogether the character of the astutious Lady
+of Belmont with her magic potions, who figures in the Italian novel.
+With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licentious part of
+the story, which some of his contemporary dramatists would have seized
+on with avidity, and made the best or worst of it possible; and he has
+substituted the trial of the caskets from another source.[9] We are not
+told expressly where Belmont is situated; but as Bassanio takes ship to
+go thither from Venice, and as we find them afterwards ordering horses
+from Belmont to Padua, we will imagine Portia's hereditary palace as
+standing on some lovely promontory between Venice and Trieste,
+overlooking the blue Adriatic, with the Friuli mountains or the Euganean
+hills for its background, such as we often see in one of Claude's or
+Poussin's elysian landscapes. In a scene, in a home like this,
+Shakspeare, having first exorcised the original possessor, has placed
+his Portia; and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and moving
+circumstances of the story, become natural, probable, and necessary in
+connexion with her. That such a woman should be chosen by the solving of
+an enigma, is not surprising: herself and all around her, the scene, the
+country, the age in which she is placed, breathe of poetry, romance, and
+enchantment.
+
+    From the four quarters of the earth they come
+    To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint
+    The Hyrcanian desert, and the vasty wilds
+    Of wide Arabia, are as thoroughfares now,
+    For princes to come view fair Portia;
+    The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head
+    Spits in the face of heaven is no bar
+    To stop the foreign spirits; but they come
+    As o'er a brook to see fair Portia.
+
+The sudden plan which she forms for the release of her husband's friend,
+her disguise, and her deportment as the young and learned doctor, would
+appear forced and improbable in any other woman but in Portia are the
+simple and natural result of her character.[10] The quickness with which
+she perceives the legal advantage which may be taken of the
+circumstances; the spirit of adventure with which she engages in the
+masquerading, and the decision, firmness, and intelligence with which
+she executes her generous purpose, are all in perfect keeping, and
+nothing appears forced--nothing as introduced merely for theatrical
+effect.
+
+But all the finest parts of Portia's character are brought to bear in
+the trial scene. There she shines forth all her divine self. Her
+intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honorable
+principles, her best feelings as a woman, are all displayed. She
+maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her
+point in the end; yet the painful heart-thrilling uncertainty in which
+she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not
+contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two
+objects in view; to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her
+husband's honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of
+her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe
+the safety of Antonio to any thing rather than the legal quibble with
+which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she reserves as a
+last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock in the first
+instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and
+feelings. She must be understood from the beginning to the end as
+examining, with intense anxiety, the effect of her own words on his mind
+and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit, which she hopes
+to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to his
+mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence, which, with an irresistible
+and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from
+heaven:"--but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and
+unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these heavenly words
+upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks his avarice:
+
+    Shylock, there's _thrice_ thy money offered thee!
+
+Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to his avarice and his pity:
+
+                       Be merciful!
+    Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond.
+
+All that she says afterwards--her strong expressions, which are
+calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves--the
+reflections she interposes--her delays and circumlocution to give time
+for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself--all, all are
+premeditated and tend in the same manner to the object she has in view.
+Thus--
+
+    You must prepare your bosom for his knife.
+    Therefore lay bare your bosom!
+
+These two speeches, though addressed apparently to Antonio, are spoken
+_at_ Shylock, and are evidently intended to penetrate _his_ bosom. In
+the same spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh;
+and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready--
+
+    Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,
+    To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death!
+
+                        SHYLOCK.
+
+    Is it so nominated in the bond?
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    It is not so expressed--but what of that?
+    'Twere good you do so much, for _charity_.
+
+So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or
+to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew,
+that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His
+gentle, yet manly resignation--the deep pathos of his farewell, and the
+affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio--
+
+    Commend me to your honorable wife;
+    Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death, &c.
+
+are well calculated to swell that emotion, which through the whole scene
+must have been laboring suppressed within her heart.
+
+At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no
+longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent "to the last hour of
+act," springs on his victim--"A sentence come, prepare!" then the
+smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust, burst forth with an
+impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had at
+first affected;--particularly in the speech--
+
+    Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
+    Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more,
+    But just the pound of flesh; if thou tak'st more,
+    Or less than a just pound,--be it but so much
+    As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,
+    Or the division of the twentieth part
+    Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn
+    But in the estimation of a hair,--
+    Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
+
+But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler
+scorn and a more self-possessed exultation.
+
+It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of this
+marvellous scene, we must go along with Portia as well as with Shylock;
+we must understand her concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble
+motives, and pursue in our fancy the under current of feeling, working
+in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of Shylock's
+character,--his deadly and inexorable malice,--would be too oppressive;
+the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue
+too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this
+double source of interest and contemplation.
+
+I come now to that capacity for warm and generous affection, that
+tenderness of heart, which render Portia not less lovable as a woman,
+than admirable for her mental endowments. The affections are to the
+intellect, what the forge is to the metal; it is they which temper and
+shape it to all good purposes, and soften, strengthen, and purify it.
+What an exquisite stroke of judgment in the poet, to make the mutual
+passion of Portia and Bassanio, though unacknowledged to each other,
+anterior to the opening of the play! Bassanio's confession very properly
+comes first:--
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    In Belmont is a lady richly left,
+    And she is fair, and fairer than that word,
+    Of wond'rous virtues: sometimes from her eyes
+    I did receive fair speechless messages;
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+and prepares us for Portia's half betrayed, unconscious election of this
+most graceful and chivalrous admirer--
+
+                        NERISSA.
+
+    Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a
+    Venetian, a scholar, and a soldier, that came hither in
+    company of the Marquis of Montferrat?
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, so he was called.
+
+                        NERISSA.
+
+    True, madam; he of all the men that ever my foolish
+    eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair
+    lady.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    I remember him well; and I remember him worthy of
+    thy praise.
+
+Our interest is thus awakened for the lovers from the very first; and
+what shall be said of the casket-scene with Bassanio, where every line
+which Portia speaks is so worthy of herself, so full of sentiment and
+beauty, and poetry and passion? Too naturally frank for disguise, too
+modest to confess her depth of love while the issue of the trial remains
+in suspense, the conflict between love and fear, and maidenly dignity,
+cause the most delicious confusion that ever tinged a woman's cheek, or
+dropped in broken utterance from her lips.
+
+    I pray you, tarry, pause a day or two,
+    Before you hazard; for in choosing wrong,
+    I lose your company; therefore, forbear awhile;
+    There's something tells me, (but it is not love,)
+    I would not lose you; and you know yourself,
+    Hate counsels not in such a quality:
+    But lest you should not understand me well,
+    (And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought)
+    I would detain you here some month or two
+    Before you venture for me. I could teach you
+    How to choose right,--but then I am forsworn;--
+    So will I never be: so you may miss me;--
+    But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin,
+    That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
+    They have o'erlooked me, and divided me:
+    One half of me is yours, the other half yours,--
+    Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
+    And so all yours!
+
+The short dialogue between the lovers is exquisite.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+           Let me choose,
+    For, as I am, I live upon the rack.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess
+    What treason there is mingled with your love.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    None, but that ugly treason of mistrust,
+    Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love.
+    There may as well be amity and life
+    'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Ay! but I fear you speak upon the rack,
+    Where men enforced do speak any thing.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    Well then, confess, and live.
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+                             Confess and love
+    Had been the very sum of my confession!
+    O happy torment, when my torturer
+    Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
+
+A prominent feature in Portia's character is that confiding, buoyant
+spirit, which mingles with all her thoughts and affections. And here let
+me observe, that I never yet met in real life, nor ever read in tale or
+history, of any woman, distinguished for intellect of the highest
+order, who was not also remarkable for this trusting spirit, this
+hopefulness and cheerfulness of temper, which is compatible with the
+most serious habits of thought, and the most profound sensibility. Lady
+Wortley Montagu was one instance; and Madame de Stael furnishes another
+much more memorable. In her Corinne, whom she drew from herself, this
+natural brightness of temper is a prominent part of the character. A
+disposition to doubt, to suspect, and to despond, in the young, argues,
+in general, some inherent weakness, moral or physical, or some miserable
+and radical error of education; in the old, it is one of the first
+symptoms of age; it speaks of the influence of sorrow and experience,
+and foreshows the decay of the stronger and more generous powers of the
+soul. Portia's strength of intellect takes a natural tinge from the
+flush and bloom of her young and prosperous existence, and from her
+fervent imagination. In the casket-scene, she fears indeed the issue of
+the trial; on which more than her life is hazarded but while she
+trembles, her hope is stronger than her fear. While Bassanio is
+contemplating the caskets, she suffers herself to dwell for one moment
+on the possibility of disappointment and misery.
+
+    Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
+    Then if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
+    Fading in music: that the comparison
+    May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
+    And watery death-bed for him.
+
+Then, immediately follows that revulsion of feeling, so beautifully
+characteristic of the hopeful, trusting, mounting spirit of this noble
+creature.
+
+                            But he may win!
+    And what is music then?--then music is
+    Even as the flourish, when true subjects bow
+    To a new-crowned monarch: such it is
+    As are those dulcet sounds at break of day,
+    That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
+    And summon him to marriage. Now he goes
+    With no less presence, but with much more love
+    Than young Alcides, when he did redeem
+    The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
+    To the sea monster. I stand here for sacrifice.
+
+Here, not only the feeling itself, born of the elastic and sanguine
+spirit which had never been touched by grief, but the images in which it
+comes arrayed to her fancy,--the bridegroom waked by music on his
+wedding-morn,--the new-crowned monarch,--the comparison of Bassanio to
+the young Alcides, and of herself to the daughter of Laomedon,--are all
+precisely what would have suggested themselves to the fine poetical
+imagination of Portia in such a moment.
+
+Her passionate exclamations of delight, when Bassanio has fixed on the
+right casket, are as strong as though she had despaired before. Fear and
+doubt she could repel; the native elasticity of her mind bore up against
+them; yet she makes us feel, that, as the sudden joy overpowers her
+almost to fainting, the disappointment would as certainly have killed
+her.
+
+    How all the other passions fleet to air,
+    As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair,
+    And shudd'ring fear, and green-eyed jealousy?
+    O love! be moderate, allay thy ecstasy;
+    In measure rain thy joy scant this excess;
+    I feel too much thy blessing: make it less,
+    For fear I surfeit!
+
+Her subsequent surrender of herself in heart and soul, of her maiden
+freedom, and her vast possessions, can never be read without deep
+emotions; for not only all the tenderness and delicacy of a devoted
+woman, are here blended with all the dignity which becomes the princely
+heiress of Belmont, but the serious, measured self-possession of her
+address to her lover, when all suspense is over, and all concealment
+superfluous, is most beautifully consistent with the character. It is,
+in truth, an awful moment, that in which a gifted woman first discovers,
+that besides talents and powers, she has also passions and affections;
+when she first begins to suspect their vast importance in the sum of her
+existence; when she first confesses that her happiness is no longer in
+her own keeping, but is surrendered forever and forever into the
+dominion of another! The possession of uncommon powers of mind are so
+far from affording relief or resource in the first intoxicating
+surprise--I had almost said terror--of such a revolution, that they
+render it more intense. The sources of thought multiply beyond
+calculation the sources of feeling; and mingled, they rush together, a
+torrent deep as strong. Because Portia is endued with that enlarged
+comprehension which looks before and after, she does not feel the less,
+but the more: because from the height of her commanding intellect she
+can contemplate the force, the tendency, the consequences of her own
+sentiments--because she is fully sensible of her own situation, and the
+value of all she concedes--the concession is not made with less
+entireness and devotion of heart, less confidence in the truth and worth
+of her lover, than when Juliet, in a similar moment, but without any
+such intrusive reflections--any check but the instinctive delicacy of
+her sex, flings herself and her fortunes at the feet of her lover:
+
+    And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,
+    And follow thee, my lord, through all the world.[11]
+
+In Portia's confession, which is not breathed from a moonlit balcony,
+but spoken openly in the presence of her attendants and vassals, there
+is nothing of the passionate self-abandonment of Juliet, nor of the
+artless simplicity of Miranda, but a consciousness and a tender
+seriousness, approaching to solemnity, which are not less touching.
+
+    You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
+    Such as I am: though for myself alone,
+    I would not be ambitious in my wish,
+    To wish myself much better; yet, for you,
+    I would be trebled twenty times myself;
+    A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
+    More rich; that only to stand high in your account,
+    I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
+    Exceed account; but the full sum of me
+    Is sum of something; which to term in gross,
+    Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd,
+    Happy in this, she is not yet so old
+    But she may learn; and happier than this,
+    She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
+    Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit
+    Commits itself to yours to be directed,
+    As from her lord, her governor, her king.
+    Myself and what is mine, to you and yours
+    Is now converted. But now, I was the lord,
+    Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
+    Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,
+    This house, these servants, and this same myself,
+    Are yours, my lord.
+
+We must also remark that the sweetness, the solicitude, the subdued
+fondness which she afterwards displays, relative to the letter, are as
+true to the softness of her sex, as the generous self-denial with which
+she urges the departure of Bassanio, (having first given him a husband's
+right over herself and all her countless wealth,) is consistent with a
+reflecting mind, and a spirit at once tender, reasonable, and
+magnanimous.
+
+It is not only in the trial scene that Portia's acuteness, eloquence,
+and lively intelligence are revealed to us; they are displayed in the
+first instance, and kept up consistently to the end. Her reflections,
+arising from the most usual aspects of nature, and from the commonest
+incidents of life are in such a poetical spirit, and are at the same
+time so pointed, so profound, that they have passed into familiar and
+daily application, with all the force of proverbs.
+
+     If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do,
+     chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes'
+     palaces.
+
+     I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be
+     one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
+
+    The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
+    When neither is attended; and, I think,
+    The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
+    When every goose is cackling, would be thought
+    No better a musician than the wren.
+    How many things by season, seasoned are
+    To their right praise and true perfection!
+
+    How far that little candle throws his beams!
+    So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
+    A substitute shines as brightly as a king,
+    Until a king be by; and then his state
+    Empties itself, as doth an inland brook,
+    Into the main of waters.
+
+Her reflections on the friendship between her husband and Antonio are as
+full of deep meaning as of tenderness; and her portrait of a young
+coxcomb, in the same scene, is touched with a truth and spirit which
+show with what a keen observing eye she has looked upon men and things.
+
+    ----I'll hold thee any wager,
+    When we are both accouter'd like young men.
+    I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
+    And wear my dagger with the braver grace
+    And speak, between the change of man and boy
+    With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
+    Into a manly stride; and speak of frays,
+    Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies--
+    How honorable ladies sought my love,
+    Which I denying, they fell sick and died;
+    I could not do withal: then I'll repent,
+    And wish, for all that, that I had not killed them;
+    And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell,
+    That men should swear, I have discontinued school
+    Above a twelvemonth!
+
+And in the description of her various suitors, in the first scene with
+Nerissa, what infinite power, wit, and vivacity! She half checks herself
+as she is about to give the reins to her sportive humor: "In truth, I
+know it is a sin to be a mocker."--But if it carries her away, if is so
+perfectly good-natured, so temperately bright, so lady-like, it is ever
+without offence; and so far, most unlike the satirical, poignant,
+unsparing wit of Beatrice, "misprising what she looks on." In fact, I
+can scarce conceive a greater contrast than between the vivacity of
+Portia and the vivacity of Beatrice. Portia, with all her airy
+brilliance, is supremely soft and dignified; every thing she says or
+does, displays her capability for profound thought and feeling, as well
+as her lively and romantic disposition; and as I have seen in an Italian
+garden a fountain flinging round its wreaths of showery light, while the
+many-colored Iris hung brooding above it, in its calm and soul-felt
+glory; so in Portia the wit is ever kept subordinate to the poetry, and
+we still feel the tender, the intellectual, and the imaginative part of
+the character, as superior to, and presiding over its spirit and
+vivacity.
+
+In the last act, Shylock and his machinations being dismissed from our
+thoughts, and the rest of the _dramatis personae_ assembled together at
+Belmont, all our interest and all our attention are riveted on Portia,
+and the conclusion leaves the most delightful impression on the fancy.
+The playful equivoque of the rings, the sportive trick she puts on her
+husband, and her thorough enjoyment of the jest, which she checks just
+as it is proceeding beyond the bounds of propriety, show how little she
+was displeased by the sacrifice of her gift, and are all consistent with
+her bright and buoyant spirit. In conclusion; when Portia invites her
+company to enter her palace to refresh themselves after their travels,
+and talk over "these events at full," the imagination, unwilling to lose
+sight of the brilliant group, follows them in gay procession from the
+lovely moonlight garden to marble halls and princely revels, to splendor
+and festive mirth, to love and happiness.
+
+Many women have possessed many of those qualities which render Portia so
+delightful. She is in herself a piece of reality, in whose possible
+existence we have no doubt: and yet a human being, in whom the moral,
+intellectual, and sentient faculties should be so exquisitely blended
+and proportioned to each other; and these again, in harmony with all
+outward aspects and influences probably never existed--certainly could
+not now exist. A woman constituted like Portia, and placed in this age,
+and in the actual state of society, would find society armed against
+her; and instead of being like Portia, a gracious, happy, beloved, and
+loving creature, would be a victim, immolated in fire to that
+multitudinous Moloch termed Opinion. With her, the world without would
+be at war with the world within; in the perpetual strife, either her
+nature would "be subdued to the element it worked in," and bending to a
+necessity it could neither escape nor approve, lose at last something of
+its original brightness; or otherwise--a perpetual spirit of resistance,
+cherished as a safeguard, might perhaps in the end destroy the
+equipoise; firmness would become pride and self-assurance; and the soft,
+sweet, feminine texture of the mind, settle into rigidity. Is there then
+no sanctuary for such a mind?--Where shall it find a refuge from the
+world?--Where seek for strength against itself? Where, but in heaven?
+
+Camiola, in Massinger's Maid of Honor, is said to emulate Portia; and
+the real story of Camiola (for she is an historical personage) is very
+beautiful. She was a lady of Messina, who lived in the beginning of the
+fourteenth century; and was the contemporary of Queen Joanna, of
+Petrarch and Boccaccio. It fell out in those days, that Prince Orlando
+of Arragon, the younger brother of the King of Sicily, having taken the
+command of a naval armament against the Neapolitans, was defeated,
+wounded, taken prisoner, and confined by Robert of Naples (the father of
+Queen Joanna) in one of his strongest castles. As the prince had
+distinguished himself by his enmity to the Neapolitans, and by many
+exploits against them, his ransom was fixed at an exorbitant sum, and
+his captivity was unusually severe; while the King of Sicily, who had
+some cause of displeasure against his brother, and imputed to him the
+defeat of his armament, refused either to negotiate for his release, or
+to pay the ransom demanded.
+
+Orlando, who was celebrated for his fine person and reckless valour, was
+apparently doomed to languish away the rest of his life in a dungeon,
+when Camiola Turinga, a rich Sicilian heiress, devoted the half of her
+fortune to release him. But as such an action might expose her to evil
+comments, she made it a condition, that Orlando should marry her. The
+prince gladly accepted the terms, and sent her the contract of marriage,
+signed by his hand; but no sooner was he at liberty, than he refused to
+fulfil it, and even denied all knowledge of his benefactress.
+
+Camiola appealed to the tribunal of state, produced the written
+contract, and described the obligations she had heaped on this
+ungrateful and ungenerous man; sentence was given against him, and he
+was adjudged to Camiola, not only as her rightful husband, but as a
+property which, according to the laws of war in that age, she had
+purchased with her gold. The day of marriage was fixed; Orlando
+presented himself with a splendid retinue; Camiola also appeared,
+decorated as for her bridal; but instead of bestowing her hand on the
+recreant, she reproached him in the presence of all with his breach of
+faith, declared her utter contempt for his baseness; and then freely
+bestowing on him the sum paid for his ransom, as a gift worthy of his
+mean soul, she turned away, and dedicated herself and her heart to
+heaven. In this resolution she remained inflexible, though the king and
+all the court united in entreaties to soften her. She took the veil; and
+Orlando, henceforth regarded as one who had stained his knighthood, and
+violated his faith, passed the rest of his life as a dishonored man, and
+died in obscurity.
+
+Camiola, in "The Maid of Honor," is, like Portia, a wealthy heiress,
+surrounded by suitors, and "queen o'er herself:" the character is
+constructed upon the same principles, as great intellectual power,
+magnanimity of temper, and feminine tenderness; but not only do pain and
+disquiet, and the change induced by unkind and inauspicious influences,
+enter into this sweet picture to mar and cloud its happy beauty,--but
+the portrait itself may be pronounced out of drawing;--for Massinger
+apparently had not sufficient delicacy of sentiment to work out his own
+conception of the character with perfect consistency. In his adaptation
+of the story he represents the mutual love of Orlando and Camiola as
+existing previous to the captivity of the former, and on his part
+declared with many vows of eternal faith, yet she requires a written
+contract of marriage before she liberates him. It will perhaps be said
+that she has penetrated his weakness, and anticipates his falsehood:
+miserable excuse!--how could a magnanimous woman love a man, whose
+falsehood she believes but _possible_?--or loving him, how could she
+deign to secure herself by such means against the consequences?
+Shakspeare and Nature never committed such a solecism. Camiola doubts
+before she has been wronged; the firmness and assurance in herself
+border on harshness. What in Portia is the gentle wisdom of a noble
+nature, appears, in Camiola, too much a spirit of calculation: it savors
+a little of the counting house. As Portia is the heiress of Belmont, and
+Camiola a merchant's daughter, the distinction may be proper and
+characteristic, but it is not in favor of Camiola. The contrast may be
+thus illustrated:
+
+                         CAMIOLA.
+
+     You have heard of Bertoldo's captivity and the king's
+     neglect, the greatness of his ransom; _fifty thousand
+     crowns_, Adorni! _Two parts of my estate!_ Yet I so love the
+     gentleman, for to you I will confess my weakness, that I
+     purpose now, when he is forsaken by the king and his own
+     hopes, to ransom him.
+
+                    _Maid of Honor_, _Act. 3_.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    What sum owes he the Jew?
+
+                        BASSANIO.
+
+    For me--three thousand ducats.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    What! _no more!_
+    Pay him six thousand and deface the bond,
+    Double six thousand, and then treble that,
+    Before a friend of this description
+    Shall lose a hair thro' my Bassanio's fault.
+          ----You shall have gold
+    To pay the _petty debt_ twenty times o'er.
+
+                    _Merchant of Venice._
+
+Camiola, who is a Sicilian, might as well have been born at Amsterdam:
+Portia could have only existed in Italy. Portia is profound as she is
+brilliant; Camiola is sensible and sententious; she asserts her dignity
+very successfully; but we cannot for a moment imagine Portia as reduced
+to the necessity of asserting hers. The idiot Sylli, in "The Maid of
+Honor," who follows Camiola like one of the deformed dwarfs of old time,
+is an intolerable violation of taste and propriety, and it sensibly
+lowers our impression of the principal character. Shakspeare would never
+have placed Sir Andrew Aguecheek in constant and immediate approximation
+with such a woman as Portia.
+
+Lastly, the charm of the poetical coloring is wholly wanting in Camiola,
+so that when she is placed in contrast with the glowing eloquence, the
+luxuriant grace, the buoyant spirit of Portia, the effect is somewhat
+that of coldness and formality. Notwithstanding the dignity and the
+beauty of Massinger's delineation, and the noble self-devotion of
+Camiola, which I acknowledge and admire, the two characters will admit
+of no comparison as sources of contemplation and pleasure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is observable that something of the intellectual brilliance of Portia
+is reflected on the other female characters of the "Merchant of Venice,"
+so as to preserve in the midst of contrast a certain harmony and
+keeping. Thus Jessica, though properly kept subordinate, is certainly
+
+    A most beautiful pagan--a most sweet Jew.
+
+She cannot be called a sketch--or if a sketch, she is like one of those
+dashed off in glowing colors from the rainbow pallette of a Rubens; she
+has a rich tinge of orientalism shed over her, worthy of her eastern
+origin. In any other play, and in any other companionship than that of
+the matchless Portia, Jessica would make a very beautiful heroine of
+herself. Nothing can be more poetically, more classically fanciful and
+elegant, than the scenes between her and Lorenzo;--the celebrated
+moonlight dialogue, for instance, which we all have by heart. Every
+sentiment she utters interests us for her:--more particularly her
+bashful self-reproach, when flying in the disguise of a page;--
+
+    I am glad 'tis night, you do not look upon me,
+    For I am much asham'd of my exchange;
+    But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
+    The pretty follies that themselves commit;
+    For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
+    To see me thus transformed to a boy.
+
+And the enthusiastic and generous testimony to the superior graces and
+accomplishments of Portia comes with a peculiar grace from her lips.
+
+    Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match.
+    And on the wager lay two earthly women,
+    And Portia one, there must be something else
+    Pawned with the other; for the poor rude world
+    Hath not her fellow.
+
+We should not, however, easily pardon her for cheating her father with
+so much indifference, but for the perception that Shylock values his
+daughter far beneath his wealth.
+
+     I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in
+     her ear!--would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats
+     in her coffin!
+
+Nerissa is a good specimen of a common genus of characters; she is a
+clever confidential waiting-woman, who has caught a little of her lady's
+elegance and romance; she affects to be lively and sententious, falls in
+love, and makes her favor conditional on the fortune of the caskets, and
+in short mimics her mistress with good emphasis and discretion. Nerissa
+and the gay talkative Gratiano are as well matched as the incomparable
+Portia and her magnificent and captivating lover.
+
+
+ISABELLA.
+
+The character of Isabella, considered as a poetical delineation, is less
+mixed than that of Portia; and the dissimilarity between the two
+appears, at first view, so complete that we can scarce believe that the
+same elements enter into the composition of each. Yet so it is; they are
+portrayed as equally wise, gracious, virtuous, fair, and young; we
+perceive in both the same exalted principle and firmness of character;
+the same depth of reflection and persuasive eloquence; the same
+self-denying generosity and capability of strong affections; and we must
+wonder at that marvellous power by which qualities and endowments,
+essentially and closely allied, are so combined and modified as to
+produce a result altogether different. "O Nature! O Shakespeare! which
+of ye drew from the other?"
+
+Isabella is distinguished from Portia, and strongly individualized by a
+certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and
+purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is
+"severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have
+placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in
+such a man as Angelo--
+
+    O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
+    With saints dost bait thy hook!
+
+This impression of her character is conveyed from the very first, when
+Lucio, the libertine jester, whose coarse audacious wit checks at every
+feather, thus expresses his respect for her,--
+
+    I would not--though 'tis my familiar sin
+    With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest
+    Tongue far from heart--play with all virgins so.
+    I hold you as a thing enskyed, and sainted;
+    By your renouncement an immortal spirit,
+    And to be talked with in sincerity,
+    As with a saint.
+
+A strong distinction between Isabella and Portia is produced by the
+circumstances in which they are respectively placed. Portia is a
+high-born heiress, "Lord of a fair mansion, master of her servants,
+queen o'er herself;" easy and decided, as one born to command, and used
+to it. Isabella has also the innate dignity which renders her "queen
+o'er herself," but she has lived far from the world and its pomps and
+pleasures; she is one of a consecrated sisterhood--a novice of St.
+Clare; the power to command obedience and to confer happiness are to her
+unknown. Portia is a splendid creature, radiant with confidence, hope,
+and joy. She is like the orange-tree, hung at once with golden fruit and
+luxuriant flowers, which has expanded into bloom and fragrance beneath
+favoring skies, and has been nursed into beauty by the sunshine and the
+dews of heaven. Isabella is like a stately and graceful cedar, towering
+on some alpine cliff, unbowed and unscathed amid the storm. She gives
+us the impression of one who has passed under the ennobling discipline
+of suffering and self-denial: a melancholy charm tempers the natural
+vigor of her mind: her spirit seems to stand upon an eminence, and look
+down upon the world as if already enskyed and sainted; and yet when
+brought in contact with that world which she inwardly despises, she
+shrinks back with all the timidity natural to her cloistral education.
+
+This union of natural grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments
+of a recluse,--of austerity of life with gentleness of manner,--of
+inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashfulness of
+deportment, is delineated with the most beautiful and wonderful
+consistency. Thus when her brother sends to her, to entreat her
+mediation, her first feeling is fear, and a distrust in her own powers:
+
+    ... Alas! what poor ability's in me
+    To do him good?
+
+                        LUCIO.
+
+    Essay the power you have.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    My power, alas! I doubt.
+
+In the first scene with Angelo she seems divided between her love for
+her brother and her sense of his fault; between her self-respect and her
+maidenly bashfulness. She begins with a kind of hesitation "at war
+'twixt will and will not:" and when Angelo quotes the law, and insists
+on the justice of his sentence, and the responsibility of his station,
+her native sense of moral rectitude and severe principles takes the
+lead, and she shrinks back:--
+
+                              O just, but severe law!
+    I _had_ a brother then--Heaven keep your honor!
+                                  [_Retiring._
+
+Excited and encouraged by Lucio, and supported by her own natural
+spirit, she returns to the charge,--she gains energy and self-possession
+as she proceeds, grows more earnest and passionate from the difficulty
+she encounters, and displays that eloquence and power of reasoning for
+which we had been already prepared by Claudio's first allusion to her:--
+
+            ... In her youth
+    There is a prone and speechless dialect,
+    Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art,
+    When she will play with reason and discourse,
+    And well she can persuade.
+
+It is a curious coincidence that Isabella, exhorting Angelo to mercy,
+avails herself of precisely the same arguments, and insists on the
+self-same topics which Portia addresses to Shylock in her celebrated
+speech; but how beautifully and how truly is the distinction marked! how
+like, and yet how unlike! Portia's eulogy on mercy is a piece of
+heavenly rhetoric; it falls on the ear with a solemn measured harmony;
+it is the voice of a descended angel addressing an inferior nature: if
+not premeditated, it is at least part of a preconcerted scheme; while
+Isabella's pleadings are poured from the abundance of her heart in
+broken sentences, and with the artless vehemence of one who feels that
+life and death hang upon her appeal. This will be best understood by
+placing the corresponding passages in immediate comparison with each
+other.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
+    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
+    Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
+    It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
+    'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
+    The throned monarch better than his crown;
+    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
+    The attribute to awe and majesty,
+    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
+    But mercy is above this sceptred sway--
+    It is enthron'd in the hearts of kings.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+            Well, believe this,
+    No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
+    Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
+    The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe.
+    Become them with one half so good a grace
+    As mercy does.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+                  Consider this--
+    That in the course of justice, none of us
+    Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;
+    And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
+    The deeds of mercy.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+                              ... Alas! alas!
+    Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
+    And He, that might the 'vantage best have took,
+    Found out the remedy. How would you be,
+    If He, which is the top of judgment, should
+    But judge you as you are? O, think on that,
+    And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
+    Like man new made!
+
+The beautiful things which Isabella is made to utter, have, like the
+sayings of Portia, become proverbial; but in spirit and character they
+are as distinct as are the two women. In all that Portia says, we
+confess the power of a rich poetical imagination, blended with a quick
+practical spirit of observation, familiar with the surfaces of things;
+while there is a profound yet simple morality, a depth of religious
+feeling, a touch of melancholy, in Isabella's sentiments, and something
+earnest and authoritative in the manner and expression, as though they
+had grown up in her mind from long and deep meditation in the silence
+and solitude of her convent cell:--
+
+                      O it is excellent
+    To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
+    To use it like a giant.
+
+            Could great men thunder,
+    As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet:
+    For every pelting, petty officer
+    Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder
+    Merciful Heaven!
+    Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
+    Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
+    Than the soft myrtle. O but man, proud man!
+    Drest in a little brief authority,
+    Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
+    His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
+    Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
+    As make the angels weep.
+
+    Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them;
+    But in the less, foul profanation.
+    That in the captain's but a choleric word,
+    Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
+
+    Authority, although it err like others,
+    Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself
+    That skins the vice o' the top. Go to you, bosom;
+    Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
+    That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
+    A natural guiltiness such as his is,
+    Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
+    Against my brother's life.
+
+    Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
+    But graciously to know I am no better.
+
+    The sense of death is most in apprehension;
+    And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
+    In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
+    As when a giant dies.
+
+                            'Tis not impossible
+    But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,
+    May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute
+    As Angelo; even so may Angelo,
+    In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,
+    Be an arch villain.
+
+Her fine powers of reasoning, and that natural uprightness and purity
+which no sophistry can warp, and no allurement betray, are farther
+displayed in the second scene with Angelo.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    What would you do?
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    As much for my poor brother as myself;
+    That is, were I under the terms of death,
+    The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
+    And strip myself to death as to a bed
+    That, longing, I have been sick for, ere I'd yield
+    My body up to shame.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    Then must your brother die.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    And 'twere the cheaper way;
+    Better it were a brother died at once,
+    Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
+    Should die forever.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    Were you not then cruel as the sentence,
+    That you have slander'd so!
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Ignominy in ransom, and free pardon,
+    Are of two houses: lawful mercy is
+    Nothing akin to foul redemption.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
+    And rather proved the sliding of your brother
+    A merriment than a vice.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    O pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,
+    To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean:
+    I something do excuse the thing I hate,
+    For his advantage that I dearly love.
+
+Towards the conclusion of the play we have another instance of that
+rigid sense of justice, which is a prominent part of Isabella's
+character, and almost silences her earnest intercession for her brother,
+when his fault is placed between her plea and her conscience. The Duke
+condemns the villain Angelo to death, and his wife Mariana entreats
+Isabella to plead for him.
+
+              Sweet Isabel, take my part,
+    Lend me your knees, and all my life to come
+    I'll lend you all my life to do you service.
+
+Isabella remains silent, and Mariana reiterates her prayer.
+
+                        MARIANA.
+
+    Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me,
+    Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak all!
+    O Isabel! will you not lend a knee?
+
+Isabella, thus urged, breaks silence and appeals to the Duke, not with
+supplication, or persuasion, but with grave argument, and a kind of
+dignified humility and conscious power, which are finely characteristic
+of the individual woman.
+
+                        Most bounteous Sir,
+    Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
+    As if my brother liv'd; I partly think
+    A due sincerity govern'd his deeds
+    Till he did look on me; since it is so
+    Let him not die. My brother had but justice,
+    In that he did the thing for which he died.
+    For Angelo,
+    His art did not o'ertake his bad intent,
+    That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects.
+    Intents, but merely thoughts.
+
+In this instance, as in the one before mentioned, Isabella's
+conscientiousness is overcome by the only sentiment which ought to
+temper justice into mercy, the power of affection and sympathy.
+
+Isabella's confession of the general frailty of her sex, has a peculiar
+softness, beauty, and propriety. She admits the imputation with all the
+sympathy of woman for woman; yet with all the dignity of one who felt
+her own superiority to the weakness she acknowledges.
+
+                        ANGELO.
+
+    Nay, women are frail too.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
+    Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
+    Women! help heaven! men their creation mar
+    In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail,
+    For we are soft as our complexions are,
+    And credulous to false prints.
+
+Nor should we fail to remark the deeper interest which is thrown round
+Isabella, by one part of her character, which is betrayed rather than
+exhibited in the progress of the action; and for which we are not at
+first prepared, though it is so perfectly natural. It is the strong
+under-current of passion and enthusiasm flowing beneath this calm and
+saintly self-possession; it is the capacity for high feeling and
+generous and strong indignation, veiled beneath the sweet austere
+composure of the religious recluse, which, by the very force of
+contrast, powerfully impress the imagination. As we see in real life
+that where, from some external or habitual cause, a strong control is
+exercised over naturally quick feelings and an impetuous temper, they
+display themselves with a proportionate vehemence when that restraint is
+removed; so the very violence with which her passions burst forth, when
+opposed or under the influence of strong excitement, is admirably
+characteristic.
+
+Thus in her exclamation, when she first allows herself to perceive
+Angelo's vile design--
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Ha! little honor to be much believed,
+    And most pernicious purpose;--seeming!--seeming
+    I will proclaim thee, Angelo: look for it!
+    Sign me a present pardon for my brother,
+    Or with an outstretched throat I'll tell the world
+    Aloud, what man thou art!
+
+And again, where she finds that the "outward tainted deputy," has
+deceived her--
+
+    O I will to him, and pluck out his eyes!
+    Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!
+    Injurious world! most damned Angelo!
+
+She places at first a strong and high-souled confidence in her brother's
+fortitude and magnanimity, judging him by her own lofty spirit:
+
+                    I'll to my brother;
+    Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
+    Yet hath he in him such a mind of honor,
+    That had he twenty heads to tender down,
+    On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up
+    Before his sister should her body stoop
+    To such abhorr'd pollution.
+
+But when her trust in his honor is deceived by his momentary weakness,
+her scorn has a bitterness, and her indignation a force of expression
+almost fearful; and both are carried to an extreme, which is perfectly
+in character:
+
+    O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
+    Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
+    Is't not a kind of incest to take life
+    From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
+    Heaven shield, my mother play'd my father fair!
+    For such a warped slip of wilderness
+    Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance;
+    Die! perish! might but my bending down,
+    Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.
+    I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death.
+    No word to save thee.
+
+The whole of this scene with Claudio is inexpressibly grand in the
+poetry and the sentiment; and the entire play abounds in those passages
+and phrases which must have become trite from familiar and constant use
+and abuse, if their wisdom and unequalled beauty did not invest them
+with an immortal freshness and vigor, and a perpetual charm.
+
+The story of Measure for Measure is a tradition of great antiquity, of
+which there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible
+tragedy, the _Promos and Cassandra_ of George Whetstone, is supposed,
+from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the
+groundwork of the play; but the character of Isabella is, in conception
+and execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with
+infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation
+of Isabella, they award either silence or worse than silence. Johnson
+and the rest of the black-letter crew, pass over her without a word. One
+critic, a lady-critic too, whose name I will be so merciful as to
+suppress, treats Isabella as a coarse vixen. Hazlitt, with that strange
+perversion of sentiment and want of taste which sometimes mingle with
+his piercing and powerful intellect, dismisses Isabella with a slight
+remark, that "we are not greatly enamoured of her rigid chastity, nor
+can feel much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at
+another's expense." What shall we answer to such criticism? Upon what
+ground can we read the play from beginning to end, and doubt the
+angel-purity of Isabella, or contemplate her possible lapse from
+virtue? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a sin against the light of
+heaven.
+
+        Having waste ground enough,
+    Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,
+    And pitch our evils there?
+
+Professor Richardson is more just, and truly sums up her character as
+"amiable, pious, sensible, resolute, determined, and eloquent:" but his
+remarks are rather superficial.
+
+Schlegel's observations are also brief and general, and in no way
+distinguish Isabella from many other characters; neither did his plan
+allow him to be more minute. Of the play altogether, he observes very
+beautifully, "that the title Measure for Measure is in reality a
+misnomer, the sense of the whole being properly the triumph of mercy
+over strict justice:" but it is also true that there is "an original sin
+in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial
+interest in it."[12] Of all the characters, Isabella alone has our
+sympathy. But though she triumphs in the conclusion, her triumph is not
+produced in a pleasing manner. There are too many disguises and tricks,
+too many "by-paths and indirect crooked ways," to conduct us to the
+natural and foreseen catastrophe, which the Duke's presence throughout
+renders inevitable. This Duke seems to have a predilection for bringing
+about justice by a most unjustifiable succession of falsehoods and
+counterplots. He really deserves Lucio's satirical designation, who
+somewhere styles him "The Fantastical Duke of Dark Corners." But
+Isabella is ever consistent in her pure and upright simplicity, and in
+the midst of this simulation, expresses a characteristic disapprobation
+of the part she is made to play,
+
+    To speak so indirectly I am loth:
+    I would say the truth.[13]
+
+She yields to the supposed Friar with a kind of forced docility, because
+her situation as a religious novice, and his station, habit, and
+authority, as her spiritual director, demand this sacrifice. In the end
+we are made to feel that her transition from the convent to the throne
+has but placed this noble creature in her natural sphere: for though
+Isabella, as Duchess of Vienna, could not more command our highest
+reverence than Isabella, the novice of Saint Clare, yet a wider range of
+usefulness and benevolence, of trial and action, was better suited to
+the large capacity, the ardent affections, the energetic intellect, and
+firm principle of such a woman as Isabella, than the walls of a
+cloister. The philosophical Duke observes in the very first scene--
+
+            Spirits are not finely touched,
+    But to fine issues: nor nature never lends
+    The smallest scruple of her excellence,
+    But like a thrifty goddess she determines,
+    Herself the glory of a creditor,
+    Both thanks and use.[14]
+
+This profound and beautiful sentiment is illustrated in the character
+and destiny of Isabella. She says, of herself, that "she has spirit to
+act whatever her heart approves;" and what her heart approves we know.
+
+In the convent, (which may stand here poetically for any narrow and
+obscure situation in which such a woman might be placed,) Isabella would
+not have been unhappy, but happiness would have been the result of an
+effort, or of the concentration of her great mental powers to some
+particular purpose; as St. Theresa's intellect, enthusiasm, tenderness,
+restless activity, and burning eloquence, governed by one overpowering
+sentiment of devotion, rendered her the most extraordinary of saints.
+Isabella, like St. Theresa, complains that the rules of her order are
+not sufficiently severe, and from the same cause,--that from the
+consciousness of strong intellectual and imaginative power, and of
+overflowing sensibility, she desires a more "strict restraint," or, from
+the continual, involuntary struggle against the trammels imposed, feels
+its necessity.
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    And have you nuns no further privileges?
+
+                        FRANCISCA.
+
+    Are not these large enough?
+
+                        ISABELLA.
+
+    Yes, truly; I speak, not as desiring more,
+    But rather wishing a more strict restraint
+    Upon the sisterhood!
+
+Such women as Desdemona and Ophelia would have passed their lives in the
+seclusion of a nunnery, without wishing, like Isabella, for stricter
+bonds, or planning, like St. Theresa, the reformation of their order,
+simply, because any restraint would have been efficient, as far as
+_they_ were concerned. Isabella, "dedicate to nothing temporal," might
+have found resignation through self government, or have become a
+religious enthusiast: while "place and greatness" would have appeared to
+her strong and upright mind, only a more extended field of action, a
+trust and a trial. The mere trappings of power and state, the gemmed
+coronal, the ermined robe, she would have regarded as the outward
+emblems of her earthly profession; and would have worn them with as much
+simplicity as her novice's hood and scapular; still, under whatever
+guise she might tread this thorny world--the same "angel of light."
+
+
+BEATRICE.
+
+Shakspeare has exhibited in Beatrice a spirited and faithful portrait of
+the fine lady of his own time. The deportment, language, manners, and
+allusions, are those of a particular class in a particular age; but the
+individual and dramatic character which forms the groundwork, is
+strongly discriminated; and being taken from general nature, belongs to
+every age. In Beatrice, high intellect and high animal spirits meet, and
+excite each other like fire and air. In her wit (which is brilliant
+without being imaginative) there is a touch of insolence, not unfrequent
+in women when the wit predominates over reflection and imagination. In
+her temper, too, there is a slight infusion of the termagant; and her
+satirical humor plays with such an unrespective levity over all subjects
+alike, that it required a profound knowledge of women to bring such a
+character within the pale of our sympathy. But Beatrice, though wilful,
+is not wayward; she is volatile, not unfeeling. She has not only an
+exuberance of wit and gayety, but of heart, and soul, and energy of
+spirit; and is no more like the fine ladies of modern comedy,--whose wit
+consists in a temporary allusion, or a play upon words, and whose
+petulance is displayed in a toss of the head, a flirt of the fan, or a
+flourish of the pocket handkerchief,--than one of our modern dandies is
+like Sir Philip Sydney.
+
+In Beatrice, Shakspeare has contrived that the poetry of the character
+shall not only soften, but heighten its comic effect. We are not only
+inclined to forgive Beatrice all her scornful airs, all her biting
+jests, all her assumption of superiority; but they amuse and delight us
+the more, when we find her, with all the headlong simplicity of a child,
+falling at once into the snare laid for her affections; when we see
+_her_, who thought a man of God's making not good enough for her, who
+disdained to be o'ermastered by "a piece of valiant dust," stooping like
+the rest of her sex, vailing her proud spirit, and taming her wild heart
+to the loving hand of him whom she had scorned, flouted, and misused,
+"past the endurance of a block." And we are yet more completely won by
+her generous enthusiastic attachment to her cousin. When the father of
+Hero believes the tale of her guilt; when Claudio, her lover, without
+remorse or a lingering doubt, consigns her to shame; when the Friar
+remains silent, and the generous Benedick himself knows not what to say,
+Beatrice, confident in her affections, and guided only by the impulses
+of her own feminine heart, sees through the inconsistency, the
+impossibility of the charge, and exclaims, without a moment's
+hesitation,
+
+    O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!
+
+Schlegel, in his remarks on the play of "Much Ado about nothing," has
+given us an amusing instance of that sense of reality with which we are
+impressed by Shakspeare's characters. He says of Benedick and Beatrice,
+as if he had known them personally, that the exclusive direction of
+their pointed raillery against each other "is a proof of a growing
+inclination." This is not unlikely; and the same inference would lead us
+to suppose that this mutual inclination had commenced before the opening
+of the play. The very first words uttered by Beatrice are an inquiry
+after Benedick, though expressed with her usual arch impertinence:--
+
+     I pray you, is Signior Montanto returned from the wars, or
+     no?
+
+     I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars?
+     But how many hath he killed? for indeed I promised to eat
+     all of his killing.
+
+And in the unprovoked hostility with which she falls upon him in his
+absence, in the pertinacity and bitterness of her satire, there is
+certainly great argument that he occupies much more of her thoughts than
+she would have been willing to confess, even to herself. In the same
+manner Benedick betrays a lurking partiality for his fascinating enemy;
+he shows that he has looked upon her with no careless eye, when he says,
+
+     There's her cousin, (meaning Beatrice,) an' she were not
+     possessed with a fury, excels her as much in beauty as the
+     first of May does the last of December.
+
+Infinite skill, as well as humor, is shown in making this pair of airy
+beings the exact counterpart of each other; but of the two portraits,
+that of Benedick is by far the most pleasing, because the independence
+and gay indifference of temper, the laughing defiance of love and
+marriage, the satirical freedom of expression, common to both, are more
+becoming to the masculine than to the feminine character. Any woman
+might love such a cavalier as Benedick, and be proud of his affection;
+his valor, his wit, and his gayety sit so gracefully upon him! and his
+light scoffs against the power of love are but just sufficient to render
+more piquant the conquest of this "heretic in despite of beauty." But a
+man might well be pardoned who should shrink from encountering such a
+spirit as that of Beatrice, unless, indeed, he had "served an
+apprenticeship to the taming school." The wit of Beatrice is less
+good-humored than that of Benedick; or, from the difference of sex,
+appears so. It is observable that the power is throughout on her side,
+and the sympathy and interest on his: which, by reversing the usual
+order of things, seems to excite us _against the grain_, if I may use
+such an expression. In all their encounters she constantly gets the
+better of him, and the gentleman's wits go off halting, if he is not
+himself fairly _hors de combat_. Beatrice, woman-like, generally has the
+first word, and will have the last. Thus, when they first meet, she
+begins by provoking the merry warfare:--
+
+     I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick;
+     nobody marks you.
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Is it possible Disdain should die, while she hath such meet
+     food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must
+     convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.
+
+It is clear that she cannot for a moment endure his neglect, and he can
+as little tolerate her scorn. Nothing that Benedick addresses to
+Beatrice personally can equal the malicious force of some of her
+attacks upon him: he is either restrained by a feeling of natural
+gallantry, little as she deserves the consideration due to her sex, (for
+a female satirist ever places herself beyond the pale of such
+forbearance,) or he is subdued by her superior volubility. He revenges
+himself, however, in her absence: he abuses her with such a variety of
+comic invective, and pours forth his pent-up wrath with such a ludicrous
+extravagance and exaggeration, that he betrays at once how deep is his
+mortification, and how unreal his enmity.
+
+In the midst of all this tilting and sparring of their nimble and fiery
+wits, we find them infinitely anxious for the good opinion of each
+other, and secretly impatient of each other's scorn: but Beatrice is the
+most truly indifferent of the two; the most assured of herself. The
+comic effect produced by their mutual attachment, which, however natural
+and expected, comes upon us with all the force of a surprise, cannot be
+surpassed: and how exquisitely characteristic the mutual avowal!
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Do not swear by it, and eat it.
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make him eat
+     it, that says, I love not you.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Will you not eat your word?
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     With no sauce that can be devised to it: I protest, I love
+     thee.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     Why, then, God forgive me!
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     What offence, sweet Beatrice?
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     You stayed me in a happy hour. I was about to protest, I
+     loved you.
+
+                         BENEDICK.
+
+     And do it with all thy heart.
+
+                         BEATRICE.
+
+     I love you with so much of my heart, that there is none left
+     to protest.
+
+But here again the dominion rests with Beatrice, and she appears in a
+less amiable light than her lover. Benedick surrenders his whole heart
+to her and to his new passion. The revulsion of feeling even causes it
+to overflow in an excess of fondness; but with Beatrice temper has still
+the mastery. The affection of Benedick induces him to challenge his
+intimate friend for her sake, but the affection of Beatrice does not
+prevent her from risking the life of her lover.
+
+The character of Hero is well contrasted with that of Beatrice, and
+their mutual attachment is very beautiful and natural. When they are
+both on the scene together, Hero has but little to say for herself:
+Beatrice asserts the rule of a master spirit, eclipses her by her mental
+superiority, abashes her by her raillery, dictates to her, answers for
+her, and would fain inspire her gentle-hearted cousin with some of her
+own assurance.
+
+     Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make a curtsey, and
+     say, "Father, as it please you;" but yet, for all that,
+     cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another
+     curtsey, and, "Father, as it please me."
+
+But Shakspeare knew well how to make one character subordinate to
+another, without sacrificing the slightest portion of its effect; and
+Hero, added to her grace and softness, and all the interest which
+attaches to her as the sentimental heroine of the play, possesses an
+intellectual beauty of her own. When she has Beatrice at an advantage,
+she repays her with interest, in the severe, but most animated and
+elegant picture she draws of her cousin's imperious character and
+unbridled levity of tongue. The portrait is a little overcharged,
+because administered as a corrective, and intended to be overheard.
+
+    But nature never fram'd a woman's heart
+    Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice:
+    Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
+    Misprising what they look on; and her wit
+    Values itself so highly, that to her
+    All matter else seems weak; she cannot love,
+    Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
+    She is so self-endeared.
+
+                        URSULA.
+
+    Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.
+
+                        HERO.
+
+    No: not to be so odd, and from all fashions,
+    As Beatrice is cannot be commendable:
+    But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,
+    She'd mock me into air: O she would laugh me
+    Out of myself, press me to death with wit.
+    Therefore let Benedick, like cover'd fire,
+    Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly:
+    It were a better death than die with mocks,
+    Which is as bad as die with tickling.
+
+Beatrice never appears to greater advantage than in her soliloquy after
+leaving her concealment "in the pleached bower where honeysuckles,
+ripened by the sun, forbid the sun to enter;" she exclaims, after
+listening to this tirade against herself,--
+
+    What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
+    Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?
+
+The sense of wounded vanity is lost in bitter feelings, and she is
+infinitely more struck by what is said in praise of Benedick, and the
+history of his supposed love for her than by the dispraise of herself.
+The immediate success of the trick is a most natural consequence of the
+self-assurance and magnanimity of her character; she is so accustomed to
+assert dominion over the spirits of others, that she cannot suspect the
+possibility of a plot laid against herself.
+
+A haughty, excitable, and violent temper is another of the
+characteristics of Beatrice; but there is more of impulse than of
+passion in her vehemence. In the marriage scene where she has beheld her
+gentle-spirited cousin,--whom she loves the more for those very
+qualities which are most unlike her own,--slandered, deserted, and
+devoted to public shame, her indignation, and the eagerness with which
+she hungers and thirsts after revenge, are, like the rest of her
+character, open, ardent, impetuous, but not deep or implacable. When she
+bursts into that outrageous speech--
+
+     Is he not approved in the height a villain that hath
+     slandered, scorned, dishonored my kinswoman? O that I were a
+     man! What! bear her in hand until they come to take hands;
+     and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander,
+     unmitigated rancor--O God, that I were a man! I would eat
+     his heart in the market-place!
+
+And when she commands her lover, as the first proof of his affection,
+"to kill Claudio," the very consciousness of the exaggeration,--of the
+contrast between the real good-nature of Beatrice and the fierce tenor
+of her language, keeps alive the comic effect, mingling the ludicrous
+with the serious. It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the point and
+vivacity of the dialogue, few of the speeches of Beatrice are capable of
+a general application, or engrave themselves distinctly on the memory;
+they contain more mirth than matter; and though wit be the predominant
+feature in the dramatic portrait, Beatrice more charms and dazzles us by
+what she is than by what she _says_. It is not merely her sparkling
+repartees and saucy jests, it is the soul of wit, and the spirit of
+gayety in forming the whole character,--looking out from her brilliant
+eyes, and laughing on her full lips that pout with scorn,--which we have
+before us, moving and full of life. On the whole, we dismiss Benedick
+and Beatrice to their matrimonial bonds rather with a sense of amusement
+than a feeling of congratulation or sympathy; rather with an
+acknowledgment that they are well-matched, and worthy of each other than
+with any well-founded expectation of their domestic tranquillity. If, as
+Benedick asserts, they are both "too wise to woo peaceably," it may be
+added that both are too wise, too witty, and too wilful to live
+peaceably together. We have some misgivings about Beatrice--some
+apprehensions that poor Benedick will not escape the "predestinated
+scratched face," which he had foretold to him who should win and wear
+this quick-witted and pleasant-spirited lady; yet when we recollect that
+to the wit and imperious temper of Beatrice is united a magnanimity of
+spirit which would naturally place her far above all selfishness, and
+all paltry struggles for power--when we perceive, in the midst of her
+sarcastic levity and volubility of tongue, so much of generous
+affection, and such a high sense of female virtue and honor, we are
+inclined to hope the best. We think it possible that though the
+gentleman may now and then swear, and the lady scold, the native
+good-humor of the one, the really fine understanding of the other, and
+the value they so evidently attach to each other's esteem, will ensure
+them a tolerable portion of domestic felicity, and in this hope we leave
+them.
+
+
+ROSALIND.
+
+I come now to Rosalind, whom I should have ranked before Beatrice,
+inasmuch as the greater degree of her sex's softness and sensibility,
+united with equal wit and intellect, give her the superiority as a
+woman; but that, as a dramatic character, she is inferior in force. The
+portrait is one of infinitely more delicacy and variety, but of less
+strength and depth. It is easy to seize on the prominent features in the
+mind of Beatrice, but extremely difficult to catch and fix the more
+fanciful graces of Rosalind. She is like a compound of essences, so
+volatile in their nature, and so exquisitely blended, that on any
+attempt to analyze them, they seem to escape us. To what else shall we
+compare her, all-enchanting as she is?--to the silvery summer clouds
+which, even while we gaze on them, shift their hues and forms dissolving
+into air, and light, and rainbow showers?--to the May-morning, flush
+with opening blossoms and roseate dews, and "charm of earliest
+birds?"--to some wild and beautiful melody, such as some shepherd boy
+might "pipe to Amarillis in the shade?"--to a mountain streamlet, now
+smooth as a mirror in which the skies may glass themselves, and anon
+leaping and sparkling in the sunshine--or rather to the very sunshine
+itself? for so her genial spirit touches into life and beauty whatever
+it shines on!
+
+But this impression, though produced by the complete development of the
+character, and in the end possessing the whole fancy, is not immediate.
+The first introduction of Rosalind is less striking than interesting; we
+see her a dependant, almost a captive, in the house of her usurping
+uncle; her genial spirits are subdued by her situation, and the
+remembrance of her banished father her playfulness is under a temporary
+eclipse.
+
+    I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry!
+
+_is_ an adjuration which Rosalind needed not when once at liberty, and
+sporting "under the greenwood tree." The sensibility and even
+pensiveness of her demeanor in the first instance, render her archness
+and gayety afterwards, more graceful and more fascinating.
+
+Though Rosalind is a princess, she is a princess of Arcady; and
+notwithstanding the charming effect produced by her first scenes, we
+scarcely ever think of her with a reference to them, or associate her
+with a court, and the artificial appendages of her rank. She was not
+made to "lord it o'er a fair mansion," and take state upon her like the
+all-accomplished Portia; but to breathe the free air of heaven, and
+frolic among green leaves. She was not made to stand the siege of daring
+profligacy, and oppose high action and high passion to the assaults of
+adverse fortune, like Isabel; but to "fleet the time carelessly as they
+did i' the golden age." She was not made to bandy wit with lords, and
+tread courtly measures with plumed and warlike cavaliers, like Beatrice;
+but to dance on the green sward, and "murmur among living brooks a music
+sweeter than their own."
+
+Though sprightliness is the distinguishing characteristic of Rosalind,
+as of Beatrice, yet we find her much more nearly allied to Portia in
+temper and intellect. The tone of her mind is, like Portia's, genial and
+buoyant: she has something, too, of her softness and sentiment; there is
+the same confiding abandonment of self in her affections; but the
+characters are otherwise as distinct as the situations are dissimilar.
+The age, the manners, the circumstance in which Shakspeare has placed
+his Portia, are not beyond the bounds of probability; nay, have a
+certain reality and locality. We fancy her a contemporary of the
+Raffaelles and the Ariostos; the sea-wedded Venice, its merchants and
+Magnificos,--the Rialto, and the long canals,--rise up before us when we
+think of her. But Rosalind is surrounded with the purely ideal and
+imaginative; the reality is in the characters and in the sentiments, not
+in the circumstances or situation. Portia is dignified, splendid, and
+romantic; Rosalind is playful, pastoral, and picturesque: both are in
+the highest degree poetical, but the one is epic and the other lyric.
+
+Every thing about Rosalind breathes of "youth and youth's sweet prime."
+She is fresh as the morning, sweet as the dew-awakened blossoms, and
+light as the breeze that plays among them. She is as witty, as voluble,
+as sprightly as Beatrice; but in a style altogether distinct. In both,
+the wit is equally unconscious; but in Beatrice it plays about us like
+the lightning, dazzling but also alarming; while the wit of Rosalind
+bubbles up and sparkles like the living fountain, refreshing all around.
+Her volubility is like the bird's song; it is the outpouring of a heart
+filled to overflowing with life, love, and joy, and all sweet and
+affectionate impulses. She has as much tenderness as mirth, and in her
+most petulant raillery there is a touch of softness--"By this hand, it
+will not hurt a fly!" As her vivacity never lessens our impression of
+her sensibility, so she wears her masculine attire without the slightest
+impugnment of her delicacy. Shakspeare did not make the modesty of his
+women depend on their dress, as we shall see further when we come to
+Viola and Imogen. Rosalind has in truth "no doublet and hose in her
+disposition." How her heart seems to throb and flutter under her page's
+vest! What depth of love in her passion for Orlando! whether disguised
+beneath a saucy playfulness, or breaking forth with a fond impatience,
+or half betrayed in that beautiful scene where she faints at the sight
+of his 'kerchief stained with his blood! Here her recovery of her
+self-possession--her fears lest she should have revealed her sex--her
+presence of mind, and quick-witted excuse--
+
+    I pray you, tell your brother how well I counterfeited.
+
+and the characteristic playfulness which seems to return so naturally
+with her recovered senses,--are all as amusing as consistent. Then how
+beautifully is the dialogue managed between herself and Orlando! how
+well she assumes the airs of a saucy page, without throwing off her
+feminine sweetness! How her wit flutters free as air over every subject!
+With what a careless grace, yet with what exquisite propriety!
+
+    For innocence hath a privilege in her
+    To dignify arch jests and laughing eyes.
+
+And if the freedom of some of the expressions used by Rosalind or
+Beatrice be objected to, let it be remembered that this was not the
+fault of Shakspeare or the women, but generally of the age. Portia,
+Beatrice, Rosalind, and the rest lived in times when more importance was
+attached to things than to words; now we think more of words than of
+things; and happy are we in these later days of super-refinement, if we
+are to be saved by our verbal morality. But this is meddling with the
+province of the melancholy Jaques, and our argument is Rosalind.
+
+The impression left upon our hearts and minds by the character of
+Rosalind--by the mixture of playfulness, sensibility, and what the
+French (and we for lack of a better expression) call _naivete_--is like
+a delicious strain of music. There is a depth of delight, and a subtlety
+of words to express that delight, which is enchanting. Yet when we call
+to mind particular speeches and passages, we find that they have a
+relative beauty and propriety, which renders it difficult to separate
+them from the context without injuring their effect She says some of the
+most charming things in the world, and some of the most humorous: but we
+apply them as phrases rather than as maxims, and remember them rather
+for their pointed felicity of expression and fanciful application, than
+for their general truth and depth of meaning. I will give a few
+instances:--
+
+     I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time--that I was
+     an Irish rat--which I can hardly remember.[15]
+
+     Good, my complexion! Dost thou think, though I am
+     caparisoned like a man, that I have a doublet and hose in my
+     disposition?
+
+     We dwell here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon
+     a petticoat.
+
+     Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well
+     a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why
+     they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so
+     ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
+
+     A traveller! By my faith you have great reason to be sad. I
+     fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then
+     to have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes
+     and poor hands.
+
+     Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you lisp, and wear
+     strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country;
+     be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for
+     making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think
+     you have swam in a gondola.
+
+     Break an hour's promise in love! He that will divide a
+     minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the
+     thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may
+     be said of him that Cupid hath clapp'd him o' the shoulder,
+     but I warrant him heart-whole.
+
+     Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten
+     them--but not for love.
+
+     I could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel, and
+     to cry like a woman; but I must comfort the weaker vessel,
+     as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to
+     petticoat.
+
+Rosalind has not the impressive eloquence of Portia, nor the sweet
+wisdom of Isabella. Her longest speeches are not her best; nor is her
+taunting address to Phebe, beautiful and celebrated as it is, equal to
+Phebe's own description of her. The latter, indeed, is more in
+earnest.[16]
+
+Celia is more quiet and retired: but she rather yields to Rosalind, than
+is eclipsed by her. She is as full of sweetness, kindness, and
+intelligence, quite as susceptible, and almost as witty, though she
+makes less display of wit. She is described as less fair and less
+gifted; yet the attempt to excite in her mind a jealousy of her lovelier
+friend, by placing them in comparison--
+
+    Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name;
+    And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous,
+    When she is gone--
+
+fails to awaken in the generous heart of Celia any other feeling than an
+increased tenderness and sympathy for her cousin. To Celia, Shakspeare
+has given some of the most striking and animated parts of the dialogue;
+and in particular, that exquisite description of the friendship between
+her and Rosalind--
+
+            If she be a traitor,
+    Why, so am I; we have still slept together,
+    Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,
+    And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
+    Still we were coupled and inseparable.
+
+The feeling of interest and admiration thus excited for Celia at the
+first, follows her through the whole play. We listen to her as to one
+who has made herself worthy of our love; and her silence expresses more
+than eloquence.
+
+Phebe is quite an Arcadian coquette; she is a piece of pastoral poetry.
+Audrey is only rustic. A very amusing effect is produced by the contrast
+between the frank and free bearing of the two princesses in disguise,
+and the scornful airs of the real Shepherdess. In the speeches of Phebe,
+and in the dialogue between her and Sylvius, Shakspeare has anticipated
+all the beauties of the Italian pastoral, and surpassed Tasso and
+Guarini. We find two among the most poetical passages of the play
+appropriated to Phebe; the taunting speech to Sylvius, and the
+description of Rosalind in her page's costume;--which last is finer than
+the portrait of Bathyllus in Anacreon.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist of the seventeenth century,
+painted one or two pictures, considered admirable as works of art, of
+which the subjects are the most vicious and barbarous conceivable. I
+remember one of these in the gallery of Florence, which I looked at
+once, but once, and wished then, as I do now, for the privilege of
+burning it to ashes.
+
+[6] Lucy Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, may be placed next to
+Desdemona; Diana Vernon is (comparatively) a failure as every woman will
+allow; while the masculine lady Geraldine in Miss Edgeworth's tale of
+Ennui, and the intellectual Corinne are consistent, essential women; the
+distinction is more easily felt than analyzed.
+
+[7] Hazlitt's Essays, vol. ii. p. 167.
+
+[8] I am informed that the original German word is _geistreiche_
+literally, _rich in soul or spirit_, a just and beautiful epithet. 2d.
+_Edit._
+
+[9] In the "Mercatante di Venezia" of Ser. Giovanni, we have the whole
+story of Antonio and Bassanio, and part of the story but not the
+character of Portia. The incident of the caskets is from the Gesta
+Romanorum.
+
+[10] In that age, delicate points of law were not determined by the
+ordinary judges of the provinces, but by doctors of law, who were called
+from Bologna, Padua, and other places celebrated for their legal
+colleges.
+
+[11] Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Scene 2
+
+[12] Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.
+
+[13] Act iv. Scene 5.
+
+[14] _Use_, i. e. usury, interest.
+
+[15] In Shakspeare's time, there were people In Ireland, (there may be
+so still, for aught I know,) who undertook to charm rats to death, by
+chanting certain verses which acted as a spell. "Rhyme them to death, as
+they do rats in Ireland," is a line in one of Ben Jonson's comedies;
+this will explain Rosalind's humorous allusion.
+
+[16] Rousseau could describe such a character as Rosalind, but failed to
+represent it consistently. "N'est-ce pas de ton coeur que viennent les
+graces de ton enjouement? Tes railleries sont des signes d'interet plus
+touchants que les compliments d'un autre. Tu caresses quand tu folatres.
+Tu ris, mais ton rire penetre l'ame; tu ris, mais tu fais pleurer de
+tendresse et je te vois presque toujours serieuse avec les indifferents"
+_Heloise._
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION.
+
+
+JULIET.
+
+O Love! thou teacher'--O Grief! thou tamer--and Time, thou healer of
+human hearts!--bring hither all your deep and serious revelations!--And
+ye too, rich fancies of unbruised, unbowed youth--ye visions of long
+perished hopes--shadows of unborn joys--gay colorings of the dawn of
+existence! whatever memory hath treasured up of bright and beautiful in
+nature or in art; all soft and delicate images--all lovely
+forms--divinest voices and entrancing melodies--gleams of sunnier skies
+and fairer climes,--Italian moonlights and airs that "breathe of the
+sweet south,"--now, if it be possible, revive to my imagination--live
+once more to my heart! Come, thronging around me, all inspirations that
+wait on passion, on power, on beauty; give me to tread, not bold, and
+yet unblamed, within the inmost sanctuary of Shakspeare's genius, in
+Juliet's moonlight bower, and Miranda's enchanted isle!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not without emotion, that I attempt to touch on the character of
+Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her--only to be
+exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them!--it is impossible
+to say any thing better; but it is possible to say something more. Such
+in fact is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet's
+character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth,
+and its variety. There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of
+purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a
+whole; and to attempt to analyze the impression thus conveyed at once to
+soul and sense, is as if while hanging over a half-blown rose, and
+revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder,
+leaflet by leaflet, the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet
+how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do
+justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in
+its beauty?
+
+Love, as a passion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting
+the axiom of Rochefoucauld, that there is but one love, though a
+thousand different copies, yet the true sentiment itself has as many
+different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not
+only modified by the individual character and temperament, but it is
+under the influence of climate and circumstance. The love that is calm
+in one moment, shall show itself vehement and tumultuous at another. The
+love that is wild and passionate in the south, is deep and
+contemplative in the north; as the Spanish or Roman girl perhaps poisons
+a rival, or stabs herself for the sake of a living lover, and the German
+or Russian girl pines into the grave for love of the false, the absent,
+or the dead. Love is ardent or deep, bold or timid, jealous or
+confiding, impatient or humble, hopeful or desponding--and yet there are
+not many loves, but one love.
+
+All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love or have
+loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The passion
+is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence. It is the
+soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life-blood along
+her veins, "blending with every atom of her frame." The love that is so
+chaste and dignified in Portia--so airy-delicate and fearless in
+Miranda--so sweetly confiding in Perdita--so playfully fond in
+Rosalind--so constant in Imogen--so devoted in Desdemona--so fervent in
+Helen--so tender in Viola,--is each and all of these in Juliet. All
+these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet
+self; or if she does, it is of the Gismunda, or the Lisetta, or the
+Fiammetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not in the character or
+circumstances, but in the truly Italian spirit, the glowing, national
+complexion of the portrait.[17]
+
+There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect in
+color consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How perfectly
+did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect! and how beautifully he
+has exemplified it in Juliet?
+
+    So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
+    As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows!
+
+Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are
+all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all
+discord: all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial life.
+Juliet, like Portia, is the foster child of opulence and splendor; she
+dwells in a fair city--she has been nurtured in a palace--she clasps her
+robe with jewels--she braids her hair with rainbow-tinted pearls; but in
+herself she has no more connection with the trappings around her, than
+the lovely exotic, transplanted from some Eden-like climate, has with
+the carved and gilded conservatory which has reared and sheltered its
+luxuriant beauty.
+
+But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or
+harsh. A tissue of beautiful poetry weaves together the principal
+figures, and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the
+costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most
+opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet
+are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are they,
+like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the
+darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of
+humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade
+of character in each, tends to the development of the sentiment which is
+the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly
+be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the splendid
+imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of genius, and
+the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as
+though Shakspeare had really transported himself into Italy, and had
+drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been
+said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not
+love-sick!" What a false idea would anything of the mere whining
+amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare--the
+noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet--with even less
+truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in "Twelfth
+Night" of the wan girl dying of love, "who pined in thought, and with a
+green and yellow melancholy," would never surely occur to us, when
+thinking on the enamored and impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love
+keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm
+into passion, passion into heroism! No, the whole sentiment of the play
+is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit of the
+south: it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of life, and of
+the very sap of life.[18] We have indeed the struggle of love against
+evil destinies, and a thorny world; the pain, the grief, the anguish,
+the terror, the despair; the aching adieu; the pang unutterable of
+parted affection; and rapture, truth, and tenderness trampled into an
+early grave: but still an Elysian grace lingers round the whole, and the
+blue sky of Italy bends over all!
+
+In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the
+drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its
+inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the passion which has
+taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity,
+the resistless violence of the torrent: but she is herself as "moving
+delicate," as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over
+it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which
+hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment
+is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughout, the
+individual part of the character in all its variety is developed, and
+marked with the nicest discrimination. For instance,--the simplicity of
+Juliet is very different from the simplicity of Miranda: her innocence
+is not the innocence of a desert island. The energy she displays does
+not once remind us of the moral grandeur of Isabel, or the intellectual
+power of Portia;--it is founded in the strength of passion, not in the
+strength of character:--it is accidental rather than inherent, rising
+with the tide of feeling or temper, and with it subsiding. Her romance
+is not the pastoral romance of Perdita, nor the fanciful romance of
+Viola; it is the romance of a tender heart and a poetical imagination.
+Her inexperience is not ignorance: she has heard that there is such a
+thing as falsehood, though she can scarcely conceive it. Her mother and
+her nurse have perhaps warned her against flattering vows and man's
+inconstancy; or she has even
+
+    ----Turned the tale by Ariosto told,
+    Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old!
+
+Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt--
+
+              Ah, gentle Romeo!
+    If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
+
+That conscious shrinking from her own confession--
+
+    Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny
+    What I have spoke!
+
+The ingenuous simplicity of her avowal--
+
+    Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
+    I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay,
+    So thou wilt woo--but else, not for the world!
+    In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
+    And therefore thou may'st think my 'havior light,
+    But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
+    Than those who have more cunning to be strange.
+
+And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which she throws herself for
+forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for
+the love she bears him--
+
+            Therefore pardon me,
+    And not impute this yielding to light love,
+    Which the dark night hath so discovered.
+
+In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with
+such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity,
+there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have
+infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the
+slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment: for she does not even wait
+to hear his asseverations;--
+
+    But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee
+    To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief.
+
+                        ROMEO.
+
+    So thrive my soul--
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    A thousand times, good night!
+
+But all these flutterings between native impulses and maiden fears
+become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up in the
+depth and enthusiasm of confiding love.
+
+    My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
+    My love as deep; the more I give to you
+    The more I have--for both are _infinite_!
+
+What a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no
+end to its affections! For "what was to hinder the thrilling tide of
+pleasure which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without
+stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without? What was to
+abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure which her heart
+had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger? What
+was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just
+rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet
+felt?"[19]
+
+Lord Byron's Haidee is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the
+development is epic, not dramatic.[20]
+
+I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of
+singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla
+of Schiller's Wallenstein; she is the German Juliet; far unequal,
+indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I know not if
+critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have
+had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he
+portrayed Thekla; but there are some striking points of coincidence,
+while the national distinction in the character of the passion leaves to
+Thekla a strong cast of originality.[21] The _Princess_ Thekla is, like
+Juliet, the heiress of rank and opulence; her first introduction to us,
+in her full dress and diamonds, does not impair the impression of her
+softness and simplicity. We do not think of them, nor do we sympathize
+with the complaint of her lover,--
+
+    The dazzle of the jewels which played round you
+    Hid the beloved from me.
+
+We almost feel the reply of Thekla before she utters it,--
+
+                            Then you saw me
+    Not with your heart, but with your eyes!
+
+The timidity of Thekla in her first scene, her trembling silence in the
+commencement, and the few words she addresses to her mother, remind us
+of the unobtrusive simplicity of Juliet's first appearance; but the
+impression is different; the one is the shrinking violet, the other the
+unexpanded rose-bud. Thekla and Max Piccolomini are, like Romeo and
+Juliet, divided by the hatred of their fathers. The death of Max, and
+the resolute despair of Thekla, are also points of resemblance; and
+Thekla's complete devotion, her frank yet dignified abandonment of all
+disguise, and her apology for her own unreserve, are quite in Juliet's
+style,--
+
+    I ought to be less open, ought to hide
+    My heart more from thee--so decorum dictates:
+    But where in this place wouldst thou seek for truth
+    If in my mouth thou didst not find it?
+
+The same confidence, innocence, and fervor of affection, distinguish
+both heroines; but the love of Juliet is more vehement, the love of
+Thekla is more calm, and reposes more on itself; the love of Juliet
+gives us the idea of infinitude, and that of Thekla of eternity: the
+love of Juliet flows on with an increasing tide, like the river pouring
+to the ocean; and the love of Thekla stands unalterable, and enduring as
+the rock. In the heart of Thekla love shelters as in a home; but in the
+heart of Juliet he reigns a crowned king,--"he rides on its pants
+triumphant!" As women, they would divide the loves and suffrages of
+mankind, but not as dramatic characters: the moment we come to look
+nearer, we acknowledge that it is indeed "rashness and ignorance to
+compare Schiller with Shakspeare."[22] Thekla is a fine conception in
+the German spirit, but Juliet is a lovely and palpable creation. The
+coloring in which Schiller has arrayed his Thekla is pale, sombre,
+vague, compared with the strong individual marking, the rich glow of
+life and reality, which distinguish Juliet. One contrast in particular
+has always struck me; the two beautiful speeches in the first interview
+between Max and Thekla, that in which she describes her father's
+astrological chamber, and that in which he replies with reflections on
+the influence of the stars, are said to "form in themselves a fine
+poem." They do so; but never would Shakspeare have placed such
+extraneous description and reflection in the mouths of _his_ lovers.
+Romeo and Juliet speak of themselves only; they see only themselves in
+the universe, all things else are as an idle matter. Not a word they
+utter, though every word is poetry--not a sentiment or description,
+though dressed in the most luxuriant imagery, but has a direct relation
+to themselves, or to the situation in which they are placed, and the
+feelings that engross them: and besides, it may be remarked of Thekla,
+and generally of all tragedy heroines in love, that, however beautifully
+and distinctly characterized, we see the passion only under one or two
+aspects at most, or in conflict with some one circumstance or contending
+duty or feeling. In Juliet alone we find it exhibited under every
+variety of aspect, and every gradation of feeling it could possibly
+assume in a delicate female heart: as we see the rose, when passed
+through the colors of the prism, catch and reflect every tint of the
+divided ray, and still it is the same sweet rose.
+
+I have already remarked the quiet manner in which Juliet steals upon us
+in her first scene, as the serene, graceful girl, her feelings as yet
+unawakened, and her energies all unknown to herself, and unsuspected by
+others. Her silence and her filial deference are charming:--
+
+    I'll look to like, if looking liking move;
+    But no more deep will I endart mine eye,
+    Than your consent shall give it strength to fly
+
+Much in the same unconscious way we are impressed with an idea of her
+excelling loveliness:--
+
+    Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
+
+and which could make the dark vault of death "a feasting presence full
+of light." Without any elaborate description, we behold Juliet, as she
+is reflected in the heart of her lover, like a single bright star
+mirrored in the bosom of a deep, transparent well. The rapture with
+which he dwells on the "white wonder of her hand;" on her lips,
+
+    That even in pure and vestal modesty
+    Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.
+
+And then her eyes, "two of the fairest stars in all the heavens!" In his
+exclamation in the sepulchre,
+
+    Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair!
+
+there is life and death, beauty and horror, rapture and anguish
+combined. The Friar's description of her approach,
+
+                           O, so light a step
+    Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint!
+
+and then her father's similitude,
+
+    Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
+    Upon the sweetest flower of all the field;--
+
+all these mingle into a beautiful picture of youthful, airy, delicate
+grace, feminine sweetness, and patrician elegance.
+
+And our impression of Juliet's loveliness and sensibility is enhanced,
+when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for
+another. His visionary passion for the cold, inaccessible Rosaline,
+forms but the prologue, the threshold, to the true--the real sentiment
+which succeeds to it. This incident, which is found in the original
+story, has been retained by Shakspeare with equal feeling and judgment;
+and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from prejudicing
+us against Romeo, by casting on him, at the outset of the piece, the
+stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in
+the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the portrait of the
+lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend
+Juliet herself? for in the original story we find that her attention is
+first attracted towards Romeo, by seeing him "fancy sick and pale of
+cheer," for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times
+every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first
+entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was
+selected to be his fancy's queen; and the more rigorous the beauty, and
+the more hopeless the love, the more honorable the slavery. To go about
+"metamorphosed by a mistress," as Speed humorously expresses it,[23]--to
+maintain her supremacy in charms at the sword's point; to sigh; to walk
+with folded arms; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show a careless
+desolation, was the fashion of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the
+Bayards, the Herberts of the time--all those who were the mirrors "in
+which the noble youth did dress themselves," were of this fantastic
+school of gallantry--the last remains of the age of chivalry; and it was
+especially prevalent in Italy. Shakspeare has ridiculed it in many
+places with exquisite humor; but he wished to show us that it has its
+serious as well as its comic aspect. Romeo, then, is introduced to us
+with perfect truth of costume, as the thrall of a dreaming, fanciful
+passion for the scornful Rosaline, who had forsworn to love; and on her
+charms and coldness, and on the power of love generally, he descants to
+his companions in pretty phrases, quite in the style and taste of the
+day.[24]
+
+    Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
+    O any thing, of nothing first create!
+    O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
+    Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
+
+    Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
+    Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lover's eyes;
+    Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lover's tears.
+
+But when once he has beheld Juliet, and quaffed intoxicating draughts of
+hope and love from her soft glance, how all these airy fancies fade
+before the soul-absorbing reality! The lambent fire that played round
+his heart, burns to that heart's very core. We no longer find him
+adorning his lamentations in picked phrases, or making a confidant of
+his gay companions: he is no longer "for the numbers that Petrarch
+flowed in;" but all is consecrated, earnest, rapturous, in the feeling
+and the expression. Compare, for instance, the sparkling antithetical
+passages just quoted, with one or two of his passionate speeches to or
+of Juliet:--
+
+                          Heaven is here,
+    Where Juliet lives! &c.
+
+    Ah Juliet! if the measure of thy joy
+    Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more
+    To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
+    This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue
+    Unfold the imagin'd happiness, that both
+    Receive in either by this dear encounter.
+
+    Come what sorrow may,
+    It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
+    That one short minute gives me in her sight.
+
+How different! and how finely the distinction is drawn! His first
+passion is indulged as a waking dream, a reverie of the fancy; it is
+depressing, indolent, fantastic; his second elevates him to the third
+heaven, or hurries him to despair. It rushes to its object through all
+impediments, defies all dangers, and seeks at last a triumphant grave,
+in the arms of her he so loved. Thus Romeo's previous attachment to
+Rosaline is so contrived as to exhibit to us another variety in that
+passion, which is the subject of the poem, by showing us the distinction
+between the fancied and the real sentiment. It adds a deeper effect to
+the beauty of Juliet; it interests us in the commencement for the tender
+and romantic Romeo; and gives an individual reality to his character, by
+stamping him like an historical, as well as a dramatic portrait, with
+the very spirit of the age in which he lived.[25]
+
+It may be remarked of Juliet as of Portia, that we not only trace the
+component qualities in each as they expand before us in the course of
+the action, but we seem to have known them previously, and mingle a
+consciousness of their past, with the interest of their present and
+their future. Thus, in the dialogue between Juliet and her parents, and
+in the scenes with the Nurse, we seem to have before us the whole of her
+previous education and habits: we see her, on the one hand, kept in
+severe subjection by her austere parents; and on the other, fondled and
+spoiled by a foolish old nurse--a situation perfectly accordant with the
+manners of the time. Then Lady Capulet comes sweeping by with her train
+of velvet, her black hood, her fan, and her rosary--the very
+_beau-ideal_ of a proud Italian matron of the fifteenth century, whose
+offer to poison Romeo in revenge for the death of Tybalt, stamps her
+with one very characteristic trait of the age and country. Yet she loves
+her daughter; and there is a touch of remorseful tenderness in her
+lamentation over her, which adds to our impression of the timid softness
+of Juliet, and the harsh subjection in which she has been kept:--
+
+    But one, poor one!--one poor and loving child,
+    But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
+    And cruel death hath catched it from my sight!
+
+Capulet, as the jovial, testy old man, the self willed, violent,
+tyrannical father,--to whom his daughter is but a property, the appanage
+of his house, and the object of his pride,--is equal as a portrait: but
+both must yield to the Nurse, who is drawn with the most wonderful power
+and discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the
+magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the
+marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coarseness, we
+start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity,
+mixed with the dotage and petulance of age--her subserviency, her
+secrecy, and her total want of elevated principle, or even common
+honesty--are brought before us like a living and palpable truth.
+
+Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty
+parents, and her plebeian nurse, not only throw into beautiful relief
+her own native softness and elegance, but are at once the cause and the
+excuse of her subsequent conduct. She trembles before her stern mother
+and her violent father: but, like a petted child, alternately cajoles
+and commands her nurse. It is her old foster-mother who is the
+confidante of her love. It is the woman who cherished her infancy, who
+aids and abets her in her clandestine marriage. Do we not perceive how
+immediately our impression of Juliet's character would have been
+lowered, if Shakspeare had placed her in connection with any
+common-place dramatic waiting-woman?--even with Portia's adroit Nerissa,
+or Desdemona's Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the
+sweetness and dignity of Juliet's character are preserved inviolate to
+the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of
+passion.
+
+The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is
+exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We
+behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and
+weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action
+of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged
+girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves"
+had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those
+bursts of vehement feeling, which prepare us for the climax of passion
+at the catastrophe; in her invectives against Romeo, when she hears of
+the death of Tybalt; in her indignation when the nurse echoes those
+reproaches, and the rising of her temper against unwonted
+contradiction:--
+
+                        NURSE.
+
+    Shame come to Romeo!
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+              Blistered be thy tongue,
+    For such a wish! he was not born to shame.
+
+Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent
+exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover:--
+
+    Upon _his_ brow Shame is ashamed to sit,
+    For 'tis a throne where Honor may be crown'd
+    Sole monarch of the universal earth!
+
+And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to
+the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and
+self-reproach--
+
+    Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
+    When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it?
+
+With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at
+first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse
+is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose
+energies are yet untried.
+
+    Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
+    Upon so soft a subject as myself.
+
+While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompass her, she
+clings to it. She appeals to her father--to her mother--
+
+    Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
+    Hear me with patience but to speak one word!
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
+    Delay this marriage for a month,--a week!
+
+And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the
+helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual
+dependence--
+
+    O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented?
+    Some comfort, nurse!
+
+The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these
+events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry
+Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness
+of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does
+not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous
+amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which
+take possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own
+superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    Speakest thou from thy heart?
+
+                        NURSE.
+
+    Aye, and from my soul too;--or else
+    Beshrew them both!
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+                       Amen!
+
+This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood--
+
+              Go, counsellor!
+    Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain!
+
+and the calm, concentrated force of her resolve,
+
+    If all else fail,--myself have power to die;
+
+have a sublime pathos. It appears to me also an admirable touch of
+nature, considering the master-passion which, at this moment, rules in
+Juliet's soul, that she is as much shocked by the nurse's dispraise of
+her lover, as by her wicked, time-serving advice.
+
+This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet
+assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl, puts on the wife
+and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from
+oppression. It is idle to criticize her dissembling submission to her
+father and mother; a higher duty has taken place of that which she owed
+to them; a more sacred tie has severed all others. Her parents are
+pictured as they are, that no feeling for them may interfere in the
+slightest degree with our sympathy for the lovers. In the mind of Juliet
+there is no struggle between her filial and her conjugal duties, and
+there ought to be none. The Friar, her spiritual director, dismisses her
+with these instructions:--
+
+    Go home,--be merry,--give consent
+    To marry Paris;
+
+and she obeys him. Death and suffering in every horrid form she is ready
+to brave, without fear or doubt, "to live an unstained wife:" and the
+artifice to which she has recourse, which she is even instructed to use,
+in no respect impairs the beauty of the character; we regard it with
+pain and pity; but excuse it, as the natural and inevitable consequence
+of the situation in which she is placed. Nor should we forget, that the
+dissimulation, as well as the courage of Juliet, though they spring from
+passion, are justified by principle:--
+
+    My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;
+    How shall my faith return again to earth,
+    Unless that husband send it me from heaven?
+
+In her successive appeals to her father, her mother, her nurse, and the
+Friar, she seeks those remedies which would first suggest themselves to
+a gentle and virtuous nature, and grasps her dagger only as the last
+resource against dishonor and violated faith;--
+
+    God join'd my heart with Romeo's,--thou our hands.
+    And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,
+    Shall be the label to another deed,
+    Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
+    Turn to another,--_this_ shall slay them both!
+
+Thus, in the very tempest and whirlwind of passion and terror,
+preserving, to a certain degree, that moral and feminine dignity which
+harmonizes with our best feelings, and commands our unreproved sympathy.
+
+I reserve my remarks on the catastrophe, which demands separate
+consideration; and return to trace from the opening, another and
+distinguishing trait in Juliet's character.
+
+In the extreme vivacity of her imagination, and its influence upon the
+action, the language, the sentiments of the drama, Juliet resembles
+Portia; but with this striking difference. In Portia, the imaginative
+power, though developed in a high degree, is so equally blended with the
+other intellectual and moral faculties, that it does not give us the
+idea of excess. It is subject to her nobler reason; it adorns and
+heightens all her feelings; it does not overwhelm or mislead them. In
+Juliet, it is rather a part of her southern temperament, controlling and
+modifying the rest of her character; springing from her sensibility,
+hurried along by her passions, animating her joys, darkening her
+sorrows, exaggerating her terrors, and, in the end, overpowering her
+reason. With Juliet, imagination is, in the first instance, if not the
+source, the medium of passion; and passion again kindles her
+imagination. It is through the power of imagination that the eloquence
+of Juliet is so vividly poetical; that every feeling, every sentiment
+comes to her, clothed in the richest imagery, and is thus reflected from
+her mind to ours. The poetry is not here the mere adornment, the outward
+garnishing of the character; but its result, or rather blended with its
+essence. It is indivisible from it, and interfused through it like
+moonlight through the summer air. To particularize is almost impossible,
+since the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Juliet is one rich
+stream of imagery: she speaks in pictures and sometimes they are crowded
+one upon another--thus in the balcony scene--
+
+    I have no joy of this contract to-night:
+    It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
+    Too like the lightning which doth cease to be
+    Ere one can say it lightens.
+
+    This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
+    May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
+
+Again,
+
+                         O for a falconer's voice
+    To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
+    Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud,
+    Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,
+    And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine
+    With repetition of my Romeo's name.
+
+Here there are three images in the course of six lines. In the same
+scene, the speech of twenty-two lines, beginning,
+
+    Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
+
+contains but one figurative expression, _the mask of night_; and every
+one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar
+propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause
+of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the
+situation and in the feeling of the moment; where confusion, and
+anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play
+of the imagination would be checked and subdued for the time.
+
+In the soliloquy of the second act, where she is chiding at the nurse's
+delay:--
+
+    O she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts,
+    That ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,
+    Driving back shadows over low'ring hills:
+    Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love,
+    And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings!
+
+How beautiful! how the lines mount and float responsive to the sense!
+She goes on--
+
+    Had she affections, and warm youthful blood,
+    She'd be as swift in motion as a ball;
+    My words should bandy her to my sweet love,
+    And his to me!
+
+The famous soliloquy, "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds," teems with
+luxuriant imagery. The fond adjuration, "Come night! come Romeo! _come
+thou day in night_!" expresses that fulness of enthusiastic admiration
+for her lover, which possesses her whole soul; but expresses it as only
+Juliet could or would have expressed it,--in a bold and beautiful
+metaphor. Let it be remembered, that, in this speech, Juliet is not
+supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidante; and I
+confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in
+those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery, yet more
+gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful "Hymn to the
+Night," breathed out by Juliet in the silence and solitude of her
+chamber. She is thinking aloud; it is the young heart "triumphing to
+itself in words." In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls
+upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost
+infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the
+imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is
+thrown over the whole; and her impatience, to use her own expression, is
+truly that of "a child before a festival, that hath new robes and may
+not wear them." It is at the very moment too that her whole heart and
+fancy are abandoned to blissful anticipation, that the nurse enters with
+the news of Romeo's banishment; and the immediate transition from
+rapture to despair has a most powerful effect.
+
+It is the same shaping spirit of imagination which, in the scene with
+the Friar, heaps together all images of horror that ever hung upon a
+troubled dream.
+
+    O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
+    From off the battlements of yonder tower,
+    Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
+    Where serpents are--chain me with roaring bears,
+    Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house
+    O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones;
+    Or bid me go into a new made grave;
+    Or hide me with a dead man in his shroud;--
+    Things that to hear them told have made me tremble
+
+But she immediately adds,--
+
+    And I will do it without fear or doubt,
+    To live an unstained wife to my sweet love!
+
+In the scene where she drinks the sleeping potion, although her spirit
+does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid
+fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till
+gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise,
+the horror rises to frenzy--her imagination realizes its own hideous
+creations, and she _sees_ her cousin Tybalt's ghost.[26]
+
+In particular passages this luxuriance of fancy may seem to wander into
+excess. For instance,--
+
+    O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face!
+    Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
+    Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
+    Dove-feather'd raven! wolfish ravening lamb, &c.
+
+Yet this highly figurative and antithetical exuberance of language is
+defended by Schlegel on strong and just grounds; and to me also it
+appears natural, however critics may argue against its taste or
+propriety.[27] The warmth and vivacity of Juliet's fancy, which plays
+like a light over every part of her character--which animates every line
+she utters--which kindles every thought into a picture, and clothes her
+emotions in visible images, would naturally, under strong and unusual
+excitement, and in the conflict of opposing sentiments, run into some
+extravagance of diction.[28]
+
+With regard to the termination of the play, which has been a subject of
+much critical argument, it is well known that Shakspeare, following the
+old English versions, has departed from the original story of Da
+Porta;[29] and I am inclined to believe that Da Porta, in making Juliet
+waken from her trance while Romeo yet lives, and in his terrible final
+scene between the lovers, has himself departed from the old tradition,
+and, as a romance, has certainly improved it; but that which is
+effective in a narrative, is not always calculated for the drama, and I
+cannot but agree with Schlegel, that Shakspeare has done well and wisely
+in adhering to the old story. Can we doubt for a moment that he who has
+given us the catastrophe of Othello, and the tempest scene in Lear,
+might also have adopted these additional circumstances of horror in the
+fate of the lovers, and have so treated them as to harrow up our very
+soul--had it been his object to do so? But apparently it was _not_. The
+tale is one,
+
+    Such as, once heard, in gentle heart destroys
+    All pain but pity.
+
+It is in truth a tale of love and sorrow, not of anguish and terror. We
+behold the catastrophe afar off with scarcely a wish to avert it. Romeo
+and Juliet _must_ die; their destiny is fulfilled; they have quaffed off
+the cup of life, with all its infinite of joys and agonies, in one
+intoxicating draught. What have they to do more upon this earth? Young,
+innocent, loving and beloved, they descend together into the tomb: but
+Shakspeare has made that tomb a shrine of martyred and sainted affection
+consecrated for the worship of all hearts,--not a dark charnel vault,
+haunted by spectres of pain, rage, and desperation. Romeo and Juliet are
+pictured lovely in death as in life; the sympathy they inspire does not
+oppress us with that suffocating sense of horror, which in the altered
+tragedy makes the fall of the curtain a relief; but all pain is lost in
+the tenderness and poetic beauty of the picture. Romeo's last speech
+over his bride is not like the raving of a disappointed boy: in its deep
+pathos, its rapturous despair, its glowing imagery, there is the very
+luxury of life and love. Juliet, who had drunk off the sleeping potion
+in a fit of frenzy, wakes calm and collected--
+
+    I do remember well where I should be,
+    And there I am--Where is my Romeo?
+
+The profound slumber in which her senses have been steeped for so many
+hours has tranquillized her nerves, and stilled the fever in her blood;
+she wakes "like a sweet child who has been dreaming of something
+promised to it by its mother," and opens her eyes to ask for it--
+
+    ... Where is my Romeo?
+
+she is answered at once,--
+
+    Thy husband in thy bosom here lies dead.
+
+This is enough: she sees at once the whole horror of her situation--she
+sees it with a quiet and resolved despair--she utters no reproach
+against the Friar--makes no inquiries, no complaints, except that
+affecting remonstrance--
+
+    O churl--drink all, and leave no friendly drop
+    To help me after!
+
+All that is left to her is to die, and she dies. The poem, which opened
+with the enmity of the two families, closes with their reconciliation
+over the breathless remains of their children; and no violent,
+frightful, or discordant feeling is suffered to mingle with that soft
+impression of melancholy left within the heart, and which Schlegel
+compares to one long, endless sigh.
+
+"A youthful passion," says Goethe, (alluding to one of his own early
+attachments,) "which is conceived and cherished without any certain
+object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it
+rises calmly in a brilliant track, and seems to mix, and even to dwell
+for a moment, with the stars of heaven; but at length it falls--it
+bursts--consuming and destroying all around, even as itself expires."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To conclude: love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of
+passion and imagination and accordingly, to one of these, or to both,
+all the qualities of Juliet's mind and heart (unfolding and varying as
+the action of the drama proceeds) may be finally traced; the former
+concentrating all those natural impulses, fervent affections and high
+energies, which lend the character its internal charm, its moral power
+and individual interest: the latter diverging from all those splendid
+and luxuriant accompaniments which invest it with its external glow, its
+beauty, its vigor, its freshness, and its truth.
+
+With all this immense capacity of affection and imagination, there is a
+deficiency of reflection and of moral energy arising from previous habit
+and education: and the action of the drama, while it serves to develope
+the character, appears but its natural and necessary result. "Le mystere
+de l'existence," said Madame de Stael to her daughter, "c'est le rapport
+de nos erreurs avec nos peines."
+
+
+HELENA.
+
+In the character of Juliet we have seen the passionate and the
+imaginative blended in an equal degree, and in the highest conceivable
+degree as combined with delicate female nature. In Helena we have a
+modification of character altogether distinct; allied, indeed, to Juliet
+as a picture of fervent, enthusiastic, self-forgetting love, but
+differing wholly from her in other respects; for Helen is the union of
+strength of passion with strength of character.
+
+"To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions, and yet be able to
+preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable
+heart amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is
+perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and
+rarest endowment of humanity."[30] Such a character, almost as difficult
+to delineate in fiction as to find in real life, has Shakspeare given us
+in Helena; touched with the most soul-subduing pathos, and developed
+with the most consummate skill.
+
+Helena, as a woman, is more passionate than imaginative; and, as a
+character, she bears the same relation to Juliet that Isabel bears to
+Portia. There is equal unity of purpose and effect, with much less of
+the glow of imagery and the external coloring of poetry in the
+sentiments, language, and details. It is passion developed under its
+most profound and serious aspect; as in Isabella, we have the serious
+and the thoughtful, not the brilliant side of intellect. Both Helena and
+Isabel are distinguished by high mental powers, tinged with a melancholy
+sweetness; but in Isabella the serious and energetic part of the
+character is founded in religious principle; in Helena it is founded in
+deep passion.
+
+There never was, perhaps, a more beautiful picture of a woman's love,
+cherished in secret, not self-consuming in silent languishment--not
+pining in thought--not passive and "desponding over its idol"--but
+patient and hopeful, strong in its own intensity, and sustained by its
+own fond faith. The passion here reposes upon itself for all its
+interest; it derives nothing from art or ornament or circumstance; it
+has nothing of the picturesque charm or glowing romance of Juliet;
+nothing of the poetical splendor of Portia, or the vestal grandeur of
+Isabel. The situation of Helena is the most painful and degrading in
+which a woman can be placed. She is poor and lowly; she loves a man who
+is far her superior in rank, who repays her love with indifference, and
+rejects her hand with scorn. She marries him against his will; he leaves
+her with contumely on the day of their marriage, and makes his return to
+her arms depend on conditions apparently impossible.[31] All the
+circumstances and details with which Helena is surrounded, are shocking
+to our feelings and wounding to our delicacy: and yet the beauty of the
+character is made to triumph over all: and Shakspeare, resting for all
+his effect on its internal resources and its genuine truth and
+sweetness, has not even availed himself of some extraneous advantages
+with which Helen is represented in the original story. She is the
+Giletta di Narbonna of Boccaccio. In the Italian tale, Giletta is the
+daughter of a celebrated physician attached to the court of Roussillon;
+she is represented as a rich heiress, who rejects many suitors of worth
+and rank, in consequence of her secret attachment to the young Bertram
+de Roussillon. She cures the King of France of a grievous distemper, by
+one of her fathers prescriptions; and she asks and receives as her
+reward the young Count of Roussillon as her wedded husband. He forsakes
+her on their wedding day, and she retires, by his order, to his
+territory of Roussillon. There she is received with honor, takes state
+upon her in her husband's absence as the "lady of the land," administers
+justice, and rules her lord's dominions so wisely and so well, that she
+is universally loved and reverenced by his subjects. In the mean time,
+the Count, instead of rejoining her, flies to Tuscany, and the rest of
+the story is closely followed in the drama. The beauty, wisdom, and
+royal demeanor of Giletta are charmingly described, as well as her
+fervent love for Bertram. But Helena, in the play, derives no dignity or
+interest from place or circumstance, and rests for all our sympathy and
+respect solely upon the truth and intensity of her affections. She is
+indeed represented to us as one
+
+    Whose beauty did astonish the survey
+    Of richest eyes: whose words all ears took captive;
+    Whose dear perfection, hearts that scorn'd to serve.
+    Humbly called mistress.
+
+As her dignity is derived from mental power, without any alloy of pride,
+so her humility has a peculiar grace. If she feels and repines over her
+lowly birth, it is merely as an obstacle which separates her from the
+man she loves. She is more sensible to his greatness than her own
+littleness: she is continually looking from herself up to him, not from
+him down to herself. She has been bred up under the same roof with him;
+she has adored him from infancy. Her love is not "th' infection taken in
+at the eyes," nor kindled by youthful romance: it appears to have taken
+root in her being; to have grown with her years; and to have gradually
+absorbed all her thoughts and faculties, until her fancy "carries no
+favor in it but Bertram's," and "there is no living, none, if Bertram be
+away."
+
+It may be said that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not
+justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him
+with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr.
+Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena
+like a coward, and leaves her like a profligate. This is much too
+severe; in the first place, there is no necessity that we _should_
+reconcile ourselves to him. In this consists a part of the wonderful
+beauty of the character of Helena--a part of its womanly truth, which
+Johnson, who accuses Bertram, and those who so plausibly defend him, did
+not understand. If it never happened in real life, that a woman, richly
+endued with heaven's best gifts, loved with all her heart, and soul, and
+strength, a man unequal to or unworthy of her, and to whose faults
+herself alone was blind--I would give up the point: but if it be in
+nature, why should it not be in Shakspeare? We are not to look into
+Bertram's character for the spring and source of Helena's love for him,
+but into her own. She loves Bertram,--because she loves him!--a woman's
+reason,--but here, and sometimes elsewhere, all-sufficient.
+
+And although Helena tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction
+stronger than reason tells her that she does not: her love is like a
+religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted
+her thoughts is forever before her; to despair would be a crime,--it
+would be to cast herself away and die. The faith of her affection,
+combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things
+possible makes them so. It could say to the mountain of pride which
+stands between her and her hopes, "Be thou removed!" and it is removed.
+This is the solution of her behavior in the marriage scene, where
+Bertram, with obvious reluctance and disdain, accepts her hand, which
+the king, his feudal lord and guardian, forces on him. Her maidenly
+feeling is at first shocked, and she shrinks back--
+
+    That you are well restor'd, my lord, I am glad:
+    Let the rest go.
+
+But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity, and dash the cup
+from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the
+treasure for which she has ventured both life and honor, when it is just
+within her grasp? Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by
+the public disclosure of her preference, be thrust back into shame, "to
+blush out the remainder of her life," and die a poor, lost, scorned
+thing? This would be very pretty and interesting and characteristic in
+Viola or Ophelia, but not at all consistent with that high determined
+spirit, that moral energy, with which Helena is portrayed. Pride is the
+only obstacle opposed to her. She is not despised and rejected as a
+woman, but as a poor physician's daughter; and this, to an understanding
+so clear, so strong, so just as Helena's, is not felt as an unpardonable
+insult. The mere pride of rank and birth is a prejudice of which she
+cannot comprehend the force, because her mind towers so immeasurably
+above it; and, compared to the infinite love which swells within her own
+bosom, it sinks into nothing. She cannot conceive that he, to whom she
+has devoted her heart and truth, her soul, her life, her service, must
+not one day love her in return; and once her own beyond the reach of
+fate, that her cares, her caresses, her unwearied patient tenderness,
+will not at last "win her lord to look upon her"--
+
+    ... For time will bring on summer,
+    When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns,
+    And be as sweet as sharp.
+
+It is this fond faith which, hoping all things, enables her to endure
+all things:--which hallows and dignifies the surrender of her woman's
+pride, making it a sacrifice on which virtue and love throw a mingled
+incense.
+
+The scene in which the Countess extorts from Helen the confession of her
+love, must, as an illustration, be given here. It is perhaps, the finest
+in the whole play, and brings out all the striking points of Helen's
+character, to which I have already alluded. We must not fail to remark,
+that though the acknowledgment is wrung from her with an agony which
+seems to convulse her whole being, yet when once she has given it solemn
+utterance, she recovers her presence of mind, and asserts her native
+dignity. In her justification of her feelings and her conduct, there is
+neither sophistry, nor self-deception, nor presumption, but a noble
+simplicity, combined with the most impassioned earnestness; while the
+language naturally rises in its eloquent beauty, as the tide of feeling,
+now first let loose from the bursting heart, comes pouring forth in
+words. The whole scene is wonderfully beautiful.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+    What is your pleasure, madam?
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    You know, Helen, I am a mother to you.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+    Mine honorable mistress.
+
+                        COUNTESS
+
+                       Nay, a mother;
+    Why not a mother? When I said a mother,
+    Methought you saw a serpent: what's in mother,
+    That you start at it? I say, I am your mother:
+    And put you in the catalogue of those
+    That were enwombed mine: 'tis often seen,
+    Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
+    A native slip to us from foreign seeds.
+    You ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan,
+    Yet I express to you a mother's care;--
+    God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood,
+    To say, I am thy mother? What's the matter
+    That this distempered messenger of wet,
+    The many-color'd Iris, rounds thine eye?
+    Why?--that you are my daughter?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                   That I am not.
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    I say, I am your mother.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                    Pardon, madam:
+    The Count Roussillon cannot be my brother:
+    I am from humble, he from honor'd name;
+    No note upon my parents, his all noble:
+    My master, my dear lord he is: and I
+    His servant live, and will his vassal die:
+    He must not be my brother.
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+                Nor I your mother?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+    You are my mother, madam; would you were
+    (So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,)
+    Indeed my mother, or, were you both our mothers,
+    I care no more for, than I do for Heaven,[32]
+    So I were not his sister; can't no other,
+    But I, your daughter, he must be my brother?
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law;
+    God shield, you mean it not! daughter and mother
+    So strive upon your pulse: what, pale again?
+    My fear hath catch'd your fondness: now I see
+    The mystery of your loneliness, and find
+    Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 'tis gross
+    You love my son; invention is asham'd,
+    Against the proclamation of thy passion,
+    To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true;
+    But tell me, then, 'tis so:--for, look, thy cheeks
+    Confess it, one to the other.
+                               Speak, is't so?
+    If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue!
+    If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee,
+    As heaven shall work in me for thy avail,
+    To tell me truly.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+               Good madam, pardon me!
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Do you love my son?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                    Your pardon, noble mistress!
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Love you my son?
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                   Do not you love him, madam?
+
+                        COUNTESS.
+
+    Go not about; my love hath in't a bond,
+    Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose
+    The state of your affection; for your passions
+    Have to the full appeach'd.
+
+                        HELENA.
+
+                  Then I confess
+    Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,
+    That before you, and next unto high heaven,
+    I love your son:--
+    My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love
+    Be not offended; for it hurts not him,
+    That he is loved of me; I follow him not
+    By any token of presumptuous suit;
+    Nor would I have him till I do deserve him:
+    Yet never know how that desert should be.
+    I know I love in vain; strive against hope;
+    Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve,
+    I still pour in the waters of my love,
+    And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like,
+    Religious in mine error, I adore
+    The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
+    But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,
+    Let not your hate encounter with my love,
+    For loving where you do: but, if yourself,
+    Whose aged honor cites a virtuous youth,
+    Did ever in so true a flame of liking,
+    Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian
+    Was both herself and love; O then give pity
+    To her, whose state is such, that cannot choose
+    But lend and give, where she is sure to lose;
+    That seeks not to find that her search implies,
+    But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.
+
+This old Countess of Roussillon is a charming sketch. She is like one of
+Titian's old women, who still, amid their wrinkles, remind us of that
+soul of beauty and sensibility, which must have animated them when
+young. She is a fine contrast to Lady Capulet--benign, cheerful, and
+affectionate; she has a benevolent enthusiasm, which neither age, nor
+sorrow, nor pride can wear away. Thus, when she is brought to believe
+that Helen nourishes a secret attachment for her son, she observes--
+
+    Even so it was with me when I was young!
+                                This thorn
+    Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong,
+    It is the show and seal of nature's truth,
+    When love's strong passion is impress'd in youth.
+
+Her fond, maternal love for Helena, whom she has brought up: her pride
+in her good qualities overpowering all her own prejudices of rank and
+birth, are most natural in such a mind; and her indignation against her
+son, however strongly expressed, never forgets the mother.
+
+                        What angel shall
+    Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive
+    Unless _her_ prayers, whom heaven delights to hear
+    And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
+    Of greatest justice.
+                        Which of them both
+    Is dearest to me--I have no skill in sense
+    To make distinction.
+
+This is very skilfully, as well as delicately conceived. In rejecting
+those poetical and accidental advantages which Giletta possesses in the
+original story, Shakspeare has substituted the beautiful character of
+the Countess; and he has contrived, that, as the character of Helena
+should rest for its internal charm on the depth of her own affections,
+so it should depend for its _external_ interest on the affection she
+inspires. The enthusiastic tenderness of the old Countess, the
+admiration and respect of the King, Lafeu, and all who are brought in
+connection with her, make amends for the humiliating neglect of Bertram;
+and cast round Helen that collateral light, which Giletta in the story
+owes to other circumstances, striking indeed, and well imagined, but not
+(I think) so finely harmonizing with the character.
+
+It is also very natural that Helen, with the intuitive discernment of a
+pure and upright mind, and the penetration of a quick-witted woman,
+should be the first to detect the falsehood and cowardice of the boaster
+Parolles, who imposes on every one else.
+
+It has been remarked, that there is less of poetical imagery in this
+play than in many of the others. A certain solidity in Helen's character
+takes place of the ideal power; and with consistent truth of keeping,
+the same predominance of feeling over fancy, of the reflective over the
+imaginative faculty, is maintained through the whole dialogue. Yet the
+finest passages in the serious scenes are those appropriated to her;
+they are familiar and celebrated as quotations, but fully to understand
+their beauty and truth, they should be considered relatively to her
+character and situation; thus, when in speaking of Bertram, she says,
+"that he is one to whom she wishes well," the consciousness of the
+disproportion between her words and her feelings draws from her this
+beautiful and affecting observation, so just in itself, and so true to
+her situation, and to the sentiment which fills her whole heart:--
+
+                            'Tis pity
+    That wishing well had not a body in't
+    Which might be felt: that we the poorer born,
+    Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
+    Might with effects of them follow our friends,
+    And act what we must only think, which never
+    Returns us thanks.
+
+Some of her general reflections have a sententious depth and a
+contemplative melancholy, which remind us of Isabella:--
+
+    Our remedies oft in themselves do lie
+    Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
+    Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
+    Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
+
+    Impossible be strange events to those
+    That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose
+    What hath been cannot be.
+
+    He that of greatest works is finisher,
+    Oft does them by the weakest minister;
+    So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
+    When judges have been babes.
+
+    Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
+    Where most it promises; and oft it hits,
+    Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.
+
+Her sentiments in the same manner are remarkable for the union of
+profound sense with the most passionate feeling; and when her language
+is figurative, which is seldom, the picture presented to us is
+invariably touched either with a serious, a lofty, or a melancholy
+beauty. For instance:--
+
+                It were all one
+    That I should love a bright particular star,
+    And think to wed it--he's so far above me.
+
+And when she is brought to choose a husband from among the young lords
+at the court, her heart having already made its election, the
+strangeness of that very privilege for which she had ventured all,
+nearly overpowers her, and she says beautifully:--
+
+    The blushes on my cheeks thus whisper me,
+    "We blush that thou shouldst choose;--but be refused,
+    Let the white death sit on that cheek for ever
+    We'll ne'er come there again!"
+
+In her soliloquy after she has been forsaken by Bertram, the beauty lies
+in the intense feeling, the force and simplicity of the expressions.
+There is little imagery, and wherever it occurs, it is as bold as it is
+beautiful, and springs out of the energy of the sentiment, and the
+pathos of the situation. She has been reading his cruel letter.
+
+    _Till I have no wife I have nothing in France._
+    'Tis bitter!
+    Nothing in France, until he has no wife!
+    Thou shalt have none, Roussillon, none in France,
+    Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I
+    That chase thee from thy country, and expose
+    Those tender limbs of thine to the event
+    Of the none-sparing war? And is it I
+    That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou
+    Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark
+    Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,
+    That ride upon the violent speed of fire,
+    Fly with false aim! move the still-piercing air,
+    That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord!
+    Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;
+    Whoever charges on his forward breast,
+    I am the caitiff that do hold him to it;
+    And though I kill him not, I am the cause
+    His death was so effected; better 'twere
+    I met the ravin lion when he roared
+    With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere
+    That all the miseries which nature owes,
+    Were mine at once.
+
+                          No, no, although
+    The air of paradise did fan the house,
+    And angels officed all; I will be gone.
+
+Though I cannot go the length of those who have defended Bertram on
+almost every point, still I think the censure which Johnson has passed
+on the character is much too severe. Bertram is certainly not a pattern
+hero of romance, but full of faults such as we meet with every day in
+men of his age and class. He is a bold, ardent, self-willed youth, just
+dismissed into the world from domestic indulgence, with an excess of
+aristocratic and military pride, but not without some sense of true
+honor and generosity. I have lately read a defence of Bertram's
+character, written with much elegance and plausibility. "The young
+Count," says this critic, "comes before us possessed of a good heart,
+and of no mean capacity, but with a haughtiness which threatens to dull
+the kinder passions, and to cloud the intellect. This is the inevitable
+consequence of an illustrious education. The glare of his birthright has
+dazzled his young faculties. Perhaps the first words he could
+distinguish were from the important nurse, giving elaborate directions
+about his lordship's pap. As soon as he could walk, a crowd of
+submissive vassals doffed their caps, and hailed his first appearance on
+his legs. His spelling book had the arms of the family emblazoned on the
+cover. He had been accustomed to hear himself called the great, the
+mighty son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A
+succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion;
+and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in
+his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible.
+To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win
+fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the
+great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality
+with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them
+alone for the world's observance. Thus in his own person he discovers
+there is something better than mere hereditary honors; and his heart is
+prepared to acknowledge that the entire devotion of a Helen's love is of
+more worth than the court-bred smiles of a princess."[33]
+
+It is not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should
+revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or
+that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose
+despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens
+him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit
+himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the
+time to be called _cowardice_. Such forced marriages were not uncommon
+even in our own country, when the right of wardship, now vested in the
+Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel
+despotism by the sovereign.
+
+There is an old ballad, in which the king bestows a maid of low degree
+on a noble of his court, and the undisguised scorn and reluctance of the
+knight and the pertinacity of the lady, are in point.
+
+    He brought her down full forty pound
+      Tyed up within a glove,
+    "Fair maid, I'll give the same to thee,
+      Go seek another love."
+
+    "O I'll have none of your gold," she said,
+      "Nor I'll have none of your fee;
+    But your fair bodye I must have,
+      The king hath granted me."
+
+    Sir William ran and fetched her then,
+      Five hundred pounds in gold,
+    Saying, "Fair maid, take this to thee,
+      My fault will ne'er be told."
+
+    "'Tis not the gold that shall me tempt,"
+      These words then answered she;
+    "But your own bodye I must have,
+      The king hath granted me."
+
+    "Would I had drank the water clear,
+      When I did drink the wine,
+    Rather than my shepherd's brat
+      Should be a ladye of mine!"[34]
+
+Bertram's disgust at the tyranny which has made his freedom the payment
+of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not
+towards him--whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown
+and untried--might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her
+on the very day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry
+boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily
+defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him.
+The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not,
+indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his
+misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not withstanding the
+clever defence that has been made for him, he has our pardon rather than
+our sympathy; and for mine own part, I could find it easier to love
+Bertram as Helena does, than to excuse him; her love for him is his best
+excuse.
+
+
+PERDITA.
+
+In Viola and Perdita the distinguishing traits are the same--sentiment
+and elegance; thus we associate them together, though nothing can be
+more distinct to the fancy than the Doric grace of Perdita, compared to
+the romantic sweetness of Viola. They are created out of the same
+materials, and are equal to each other in the tenderness, delicacy, and
+poetical beauty of the conception. They are both more imaginative than
+passionate; but Perdita is the more imaginative of the two. She is the
+union of the pastoral and romantic with the classical and poetical, as
+if a dryad of the woods had turned shepherdess. The perfections with
+which the poet has so lavishly endowed her, sit upon her with a certain
+careless and picturesque grace, "as though they had fallen upon her
+unawares." Thus Belphoebe, in the Fairy Queen, issues from the
+flowering forest with hair and garments all besprinkled with the leaves
+and blossoms they had entangled in their flight; and so arrayed by
+chance and "heedless hap," takes all hearts with "stately presence and
+with princely port,"--most like to Perdita!
+
+The story of Florizel and Perdita is but an episode in the "Winter's
+Tale;" and the character of Perdita is properly kept subordinate to that
+of her mother, Hermione: yet the picture is perfectly finished in every
+part;--Juliet herself is not more firmly and distinctly drawn. But the
+coloring in Perdita is more silvery light and delicate; the pervading
+sentiment more touched with the ideal; compared with Juliet, she is like
+a Guido hung beside a Georgione, or one of Paesiello's airs heard after
+one of Mozart's.
+
+The qualities which impart to Perdita her distinct individuality, are
+the beautiful combination of the pastoral with the elegant--of
+simplicity with elevation--of spirit with sweetness. The exquisite
+delicacy of the picture is apparent. To understand and appreciate its
+effective truth and nature, we should place Perdita beside some of the
+nymphs of Arcadia, or the Chloris' and Sylvias of the Italian pastorals,
+who, however graceful in themselves, when opposed to Perdita, seem to
+melt away into mere poetical abstractions;--as, in Spenser, the fair but
+fictitious Florimel, which the subtle enchantress had moulded out of
+snow, "vermeil tinctured," and informed with an airy spirit, that knew
+"all wiles of woman's wits," fades and dissolves away, when placed next
+to the real Florimel, in her warm, breathing, human loveliness.
+
+Perdita does not appear till the fourth act, and the whole of the
+character is developed in the course of a single scene, (the third,)
+with a completeness of effect which leaves nothing to be
+required--nothing to be supplied. She is first introduced in the
+dialogue between herself and Florizel, where she compares her own lowly
+state to his princely rank, and expresses her fears of the issue of
+their unequal attachment. With all her timidity and her sense of the
+distance which separates her from her lover, she breathes not a single
+word which could lead us to impugn either her delicacy or her dignity.
+
+                        FLORIZEL.
+
+    These your unusual weeds to each part of you
+    Do give a life--no shepherdess, but Flora
+    Peering in April's front; this your sheep-shearing
+    Is as the meeting of the petty gods,
+    And you the queen on't.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+    Sir, my gracious lord,
+    To chide at your extremes it not becomes me;
+    O pardon that I name them: your high self,
+    The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured
+    With a swain's bearing; and me, poor lowly maid,
+    Most goddess-like prank'd up:--but that our feasts
+    In every mess have folly, and the feeders
+    Digest it with a custom, I should blush
+    To see you so attired; sworn, I think
+    To show myself a glass.
+
+The impression of her perfect beauty and airy elegance of demeanor is
+conveyed in two exquisite passages:--
+
+                 What you do
+    Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
+    I'd have you do it ever. When you sing,
+    I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms,
+    Pray so, and for the ordering your affairs
+    To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
+    A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
+    Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
+    No other function.
+
+                   I take thy hand; this hand
+    As soft as dove's down, and as white as it;
+    Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow,
+    That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er.
+
+The artless manner in which her innate nobility of soul shines forth
+through her pastoral disguise, is thus brought before us at once:--
+
+    This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
+    Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems,
+    But smacks of something greater than herself;
+    Too noble for this place.
+
+Her natural loftiness of spirit breaks out where she is menaced and
+reviled by the King, as one whom his son has degraded himself by merely
+looking on; she bears the royal frown without quailing; but the moment
+he is gone, the immediate recollection of herself, and of her humble
+state, of her hapless love, is full of beauty, tenderness, and nature:--
+
+              Even here undone!
+    I was much afeard: for once or twice,
+    I was about to speak; and tell him plainly
+    The self-same sun, that shines upon his court
+    Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
+    Looks on alike.
+
+                  Will't please, you Sir, be gone?
+    I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
+    Of your own state take care; this dream of mine--
+    Being now awake--I'll queen it no inch further,
+    But milk my ewes, and weep.
+
+             How often have I told you 'twould be thus
+    How often said, my dignity would last
+    But till 'twere known!
+
+                        FLORIZEL.
+
+                      It cannot fail, but by
+    The violation of my faith; and then
+    Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together
+    And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks.
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may
+    Be thereat glean'd! for all the sun sees, or
+    The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide
+    In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath
+    To thee, my fair beloved!
+
+Perdita has another characteristic, which lends to the poetical delicacy
+of the delineation a certain strength and moral elevation, which is
+peculiarly striking. It is that sense of truth and rectitude, that
+upright simplicity of mind, which disdains all crooked and indirect
+means, which would not stoop for an instant to dissemblance, and is
+mingled with a noble confidence in her love and in her lover. In this
+spirit is her answer to Camilla, who says, courtier like,--
+
+                          Besides, you know
+    Prosperity's the very bond of love;
+    Whose fresh complexion, and whose heart together
+    Affliction alters.
+
+To which she replies,--
+
+                    One of these is true;
+    I think, affliction may subdue the cheek,
+    But not take in the mind.
+
+In that elegant scene where she receives the guests at the
+sheep-shearing, and distributes the flowers, there is in the full flow
+of the poetry, a most beautiful and striking touch of individual
+character: but here it is impossible to mutilate the dialogue.
+
+                        Reverend sirs,
+    For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
+    Seeming and savor all the winter long;
+    Grace and remembrance be to you both,
+    And welcome to our shearing!
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+                            Shepherdess,
+    (A fair one are you,) well you fit our ages
+    With flowers of winter.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+                    Sir, the year growing ancient,
+    Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
+    Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season
+    Are our carnations, and streaked gilliflowers,
+    Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
+    Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
+    To get slips of them.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+              Wherefore, gentle maiden,
+    Do you neglect them?
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+              For I have heard it said,
+    There is an art, which in their piedness, shares
+    With great creating nature.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+               Say there be;
+    Yet nature is made better by no mean
+    But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art
+    Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
+    That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
+    A gentle scion to the wildest stock;
+    And make conceive a bark of baser kind
+    By bud of nobler race. This is an art
+    Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
+    The art itself is nature.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+                So it is.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+    Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers,
+    And do not call them bastards.
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+                I'll not put
+    The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;
+    No more than were I painted, I would wish
+    This youth should say 'twere well.
+
+It has been well remarked of this passage, that Perdita does not attempt
+to answer the reasoning of Polixenes: she gives up the argument, but,
+woman-like, retains her own opinion, or rather, her sense of right,
+unshaken by his sophistry. She goes on in a strain of poetry, which
+comes over the soul like music and fragrance mingled: we seem to inhale
+the blended odors of a thousand flowers, till the sense faints with
+their sweetness; and she concludes with a touch of passionate sentiment,
+which melts into the very heart:--
+
+                     O Proserpina!
+    For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
+    From Dis's wagon! daffodils,
+    That come before the swallow dares, and take
+    The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
+    But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
+    Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
+    That die unmarried, ere they can behold
+    Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
+    Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
+    The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
+    The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
+    To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend
+    To strew him o'er and o'er.
+
+                        FLORIZEL.
+
+                 What! like a corse?
+
+                        PERDITA.
+
+    No, like a bank, for Love to lie and play on;
+    Not like a corse: or if,--not to be buried,
+    But quick, and in mine arms!
+
+This love of truth, this _conscientiousness_, which forms so distinct a
+feature in the character of Perdita, and mingles with its picturesque
+delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, is maintained consistently to
+the last. When the two lovers fly together from Bohemia, and take refuge
+in the court of Leontes, the real father of Perdita, Florizel presents
+himself before the king with a feigned tale, in which he has been
+artfully instructed by the old counsellor Camillo. During this scene,
+Perdita does not utter a word. In the strait in which they are placed,
+she cannot deny the story which Florizel relates--she will not confirm
+it. Her silence, in spite of all the compliments and greetings of
+Leontes, has a peculiar and characteristic grace and, at the conclusion
+of the scene, when they are betrayed, the truth bursts from her as if
+instinctively, and she exclaims, with emotion,--
+
+    The heavens set spies upon us--will not have
+    Our contract celebrated.
+
+After this scene, Perdita says very little. The description of her
+grief, while listening to the relation of her mother's death,--
+
+     "One of the prettiest touches of all, was, when at the
+     relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came
+     by it, how attentiveness wounded her daughter: till from one
+     sign of dolor to another, she did, with an _alas_! I would
+     fain say, bleed  tears:"--
+
+her deportment too as she stands gazing on the statue of Hermione, fixed
+in wonder, admiration and sorrow, as if she too were marble--
+
+                  O royal piece!
+    There's magic in thy majesty, which has
+    From thy admiring daughter ta'en the spirits,
+    Standing like stone beside thee!
+
+are touches of character conveyed indirectly, and which serve to give a
+more finished effect to this beautiful picture.
+
+
+VIOLA.
+
+As the innate dignity of Perdita pierces through her rustic disguise, so
+the exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs over her masculine attire.
+Viola is, perhaps, in a degree less elevated and ideal than Perdita, but
+with a touch of sentiment more profound and heart-stirring; she is
+"deep-learned in the lore of love,"--at least theoretically,--and speaks
+as masterly on the subject as Perdita does of flowers.
+
+                        DUKE.
+
+            How dost thou like this tune?
+
+                        VIOLA.
+
+    It gives a very echo to the seat
+    Where love is thron'd.
+
+And again,
+
+    If I did love you in my master's flame,
+    With such a suffering, such a deadly life--
+    in your denial I would find no sense,
+    I would not understand it.
+
+                        OLIVIA.
+
+              Why, what would you do?
+
+                        VIOLA.
+
+    Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
+    And call upon my soul within the house;
+    Write loyal cantons[35] of contemned love,
+    And sing them loud even in the dead of night.
+    Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
+    And make babbling gossip of the air
+    Cry out, Olivia! O you should not rest
+    Between the elements of air and earth,
+    But you should pity me.
+
+                        OLIVIA.
+
+                     You might do much.
+
+The situation and the character of Viola have been censured for their
+want of consistency and probability; it is therefore worth while to
+examine how far this criticism is true. As for her situation in the
+drama, (of which she is properly the heroine,) it is shortly this. She
+is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria: she is alone and without
+protection in a strange country. She wishes to enter into the service of
+the Countess Olivia; but she is assured that this is impossible; "for
+the lady having recently lost an only and beloved brother, has abjured
+the sight of men, has shut herself up in her palace, and will admit no
+kind of suit." In this perplexity Viola remembers to have heard her
+father speak with praise and admiration of Orsino, the Duke of the
+country; and having ascertained that he is not married, and that
+therefore his court is not a proper asylum for her in her feminine
+character, she attires herself in the disguise of a page, as the best
+protection against uncivil comments, till she can gain some tidings of
+her brother.
+
+If we carry our thoughts back to a romantic and chivalrous age, there is
+surely sufficient probability here for all the purposes of poetry. To
+pursue the thread of Viola's destiny;--she is engaged in the service of
+the Duke, whom she finds "fancy-sick" for the love of Olivia. We are
+left to infer, (for so it is hinted in the first scene,) that this
+Duke--who with his accomplishments, and his personal attractions, his
+taste for music, his chivalrous tenderness, and his unrequited love, is
+really a very fascinating and poetical personage, though a little
+passionate and fantastic--had already made some impression on Viola's
+imagination; and when she comes to play the confidante, and to be loaded
+with favors and kindness in her assumed character, that she should be
+touched by a passion made up of pity, admiration, gratitude, and
+tenderness, does not, I think, in any way detract from the genuine
+sweetness and delicacy of her character, for "_she never told her
+love_."
+
+Now all this, as the critic wisely observes, may not present a very just
+picture of life; and it may also fail to impart any moral lesson for the
+especial profit of well-bred young ladies; but is it not in truth and in
+nature? Did it ever fail to charm or to interest, to seize on the
+coldest fancy, to touch the most insensible heart?
+
+Viola then is the chosen favorite of the enamoured Duke, and becomes his
+messenger to Olivia, and the interpreter of his sufferings to that
+inaccessible beauty. In her character of a youthful page, she attracts
+the favor of Olivia, and excites the jealousy of her lord. The situation
+is critical and delicate; but how exquisitely is the character of Viola
+fitted to her part, carrying her through the ordeal with all the inward
+and spiritual grace of modesty. What beautiful propriety in the
+distinction drawn between Rosalind and Viola! The wild sweetness, the
+frolic humor which sports free and unblamed amid the shades of Ardennes,
+would ill become Viola, whose playfulness is assumed as part of her
+disguise as a court-page, and is guarded by the strictest delicacy. She
+has not, like Rosalind, a saucy enjoyment in her own incognito; her
+disguise does not sit so easily upon her; her heart does not beat freely
+under it. As in the old ballad, where "Sweet William" is detected
+weeping in secret over her "man's array,"[36] so in Viola, a sweet
+consciousness of her feminine nature is for ever breaking through her
+masquerade:--
+
+    And on her cheek is ready with a blush
+    Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
+    The youthful Phoebus.
+
+She plays her part well, but never forgets nor allows us to forget, that
+she is playing a part.
+
+                        OLIVIA.
+
+    Are you a comedian?
+
+                        VIOLA.
+
+    No, my profound heart! and yet by the very fangs of
+    malice I swear, I am not that I play!
+
+And thus she comments on it:--
+
+    Disguise, I see thou art wickedness,
+    Wherein the pregnant enemy does much;
+    How easy is it for the proper false
+    In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
+    Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we.
+
+The feminine cowardice of Viola, which will not allow her even to affect
+a courage becoming her attire,--her horror at the idea of drawing a
+sword, is very natural and characteristic; and produces a most humorous
+effect, even at the very moment it charms and interests us.
+
+Contrasted with the deep, silent, patient love of Viola for the Duke, we
+have the lady-like wilfulness of Olivia; and her sudden passion, or
+rather fancy, for the disguised page, takes so beautiful a coloring of
+poetry and sentiment, that we do not think her forward. Olivia is like a
+princess of romance, and has all the privileges of one; she is, like
+Portia, high born and high bred, mistress over her servants--but not
+like Portia, "queen o'er herself." She has never in her life been
+opposed; the first contradiction, therefore, rouses all the woman in
+her, and turns a caprice into a headlong passion; yet she apologizes for
+herself.
+
+    I have said too much unto a heart of stone,
+    And laid mine honor too unchary out;
+    There's something in me that reproves my fault;
+    But such a headstrong potent fault it is,
+    That it but mocks reproof!
+
+And in the midst of her self-abandonment, never allows us to contemn,
+even while we pity her:--
+
+    What shall you ask of me that I'll deny.
+    That honor, saved, may upon asking give?
+
+The distance of rank which separates the Countess from the youthful
+page--the real sex of Viola--the dignified elegance of Olivia's
+deportment, except where passion gets the better of her pride--her
+consistent coldness towards the Duke--the description of that "smooth,
+discreet, and stable bearing" with which she rules her household--her
+generous care for her steward Malvolio, in the midst of her own
+distress,--all these circumstances raise Olivia in our fancy, and render
+her caprice for the page a source of amusement and interest, not a
+subject of reproach. _Twelfth Night_ is a genuine comedy;--a perpetual
+spring of the gayest and the sweetest fancies. In artificial society men
+and women are divided into castes and classes, and it is rarely that
+extremes in character or manners can approximate. To blend into one
+harmonious picture the utmost grace and refinement of sentiment, and
+the broadest effects of humor; the most poignant wit, and the most
+indulgent benignity;--in short, to bring before us in the same scene,
+Viola and Olivia, with Malvolio and Sir Toby, belonged only to Nature
+and to Shakspeare.
+
+
+OPHELIA.
+
+A woman's affections, however strong, are sentiments, when they run
+smooth; and become passions only when opposed.
+
+In Juliet and Helena, love is depicted as a passion, properly so called;
+that is, a natural impulse, throbbing in the heart's blood, and mingling
+with the very sources of life;--a sentiment more or less modified by the
+imagination; a strong abiding principle and motive, excited by
+resistance, acting upon the will, animating all the other faculties, and
+again influenced by them. This is the most complex aspect of love, and
+in these two characters, it is depicted in colors at once the most
+various, the most intense, and the most brilliant.
+
+In Viola and Perdita, love, being less complex, appears more refined;
+more a sentiment than a passion--a compound of impulse and fancy, while
+the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The
+same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of
+Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer
+Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, love
+takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the whole piece; it
+is scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a
+reverie, which a fairy spell dissolves or fixes at pleasure.
+
+But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as
+combined with female nature; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has
+portrayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a
+manner latent, if existing; in whom love is an unconscious impulse, and
+imagination lends the external charm and hue, not the internal power; in
+whom the feminine character appears resolved into its very elementary
+principles--as modesty, grace,[37] tenderness. _Without_ these a woman
+is no woman, but a thing which, luckily, wants a name yet; _with_ these,
+though every other faculty were passive or deficient, she might still be
+herself. These are the inherent qualities with which God sent us into
+the world: they may be perverted by a bad education--they may be
+obscured by harsh and evil destinies--they may be overpowered by the
+development of some particular mental power, the predominance of some
+passion--but they are never wholly crushed out of the woman's soul,
+while it retains those faculties which render it responsible to its
+Creator. Shakspeare then has shown us that these elemental feminine
+qualities, modesty, grace, tenderness, when expanded under genial
+influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature:
+such is Miranda. When thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and
+amid the trammels and corruptions of society, without energy to resist,
+or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation.
+
+Ophelia--poor Ophelia! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast
+among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the
+thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before
+her! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the
+wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear--like the
+exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms--like the
+snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth--like
+the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses--such
+is the character of Ophelia: so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a
+touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and
+worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply.
+The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret
+which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as
+upon her own. Her sorrows ask not words but tears; and her madness has
+precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of
+real insanity, if brought before us: we feel inclined to turn away, and
+veil our eyes in reverential pity and too painful sympathy.
+
+Beyond every character that Shakspeare has drawn, (Hamlet alone
+excepted,) that of Ophelia makes us forget the poet in his own creation.
+Whenever we bring her to mind, it is with the same exclusive sense of
+her real existence, without reference to the wondrous power which called
+her into life. The effect (and what an effect!) is produced by means so
+simple, by strokes so few, and so unobtrusive, that we take no thought
+of them. It is so purely natural and unsophisticated, yet so profound in
+its pathos, that, as Hazlitt observes, it takes us back to the old
+ballads; we forget that, in its perfect artlessness, it is the supreme
+and consummate triumph of art.
+
+The situation of Ophelia in the story,[38] is that of a young girl who,
+at an early age, is brought from a life of privacy into the circle of a
+court--a court such as we read of in those early times, at once rude,
+magnificent, and corrupted. She is placed immediately about the person
+of the queen, and is apparently her favorite attendant. The affection
+of the wicked queen for this gentle and innocent creature, is one of
+those beautiful redeeming touches, one of those penetrating glances into
+the secret springs of natural and feminine feeling which we find only in
+Shakspeare. Gertrude, who is not so wholly abandoned but that there
+remains within her heart some sense of the virtue she has forfeited,
+seems to look with a kind yet melancholy complacency on the lovely being
+she has destined for the bride of her son; and the scene in which she is
+introduced as scattering flowers on the grave of Ophelia, is one of
+those effects of contrast in poetry, in character and in feeling, at
+once natural and unexpected; which fill the eye, and make the heart
+swell and tremble within itself--like the nightingales singing in the
+grove of the Furies in Sophocles.[39]
+
+Again, in the father of Ophelia, the Lord Chamberlain Polonius--the
+shrewd, wary, subtle, pompous, garrulous old courtier--have we not the
+very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it
+could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as
+possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when
+she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect
+purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed
+on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it
+necessary to warn her simplicity, give her lessons of worldly wisdom,
+and instruct her "to be scanter of her maiden presence," for that
+Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the
+better to beguile," we feel at once that it comes too late; for from the
+moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and
+vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny.
+Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young,
+and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct
+which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it was--and I watched
+it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird hither and thither, with its
+silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a
+few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewildered, into the
+turbid wave beneath, and was swallowed up forever. It reminded me then
+of the fate of Ophelia; and now when I think of her, I see again before
+me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm.
+It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence,
+and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with
+such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her
+person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own
+feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she
+has strength to bear them; and love and grief together rend and shatter
+the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a
+crystal vase. She says very little, and what she does say seems rather
+intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart; yet in those
+few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and
+with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul
+with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems
+innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the
+cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and
+Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as
+distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of the north,
+whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more
+conscious of being loved than of loving; and yet, alas! loving in the
+silent depths of her young heart far more than she is loved.
+
+When her brother warns her against Hamlet's importunities--
+
+    For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,
+    Hold it a fashion, and a toy of blood,
+    A violet in the youth of primy nature,
+    Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,
+    The perfume and the suppliance of a minute--
+    No more!
+
+she replies with a kind of half consciousness--
+
+             No more but so?
+
+                        LAERTES.
+
+         Think it no more.
+
+He concludes his admonition with that most beautiful passage, in which
+the soundest sense, the most excellent advice, is conveyed in a strain
+of the most exquisite poetry.
+
+    The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
+    If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
+    Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes.
+    The canker galls the infants of the spring
+    Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd:
+    And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
+    Contagious blastments are most imminent.
+
+She answers with the same modesty, yet with a kind of involuntary
+avowal, that his fears are not altogether without cause:--
+
+    I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
+    As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
+    Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
+    Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
+    Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine,
+    Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
+    And recks not his own read.[40]
+
+When her father, immediately afterwards, catechizes her on the same
+subject, he extorts from her, in short sentences, uttered with bashful
+reluctance, the confession of Hamlet's love for her, but not a word of
+her love for him. The whole scene is managed with inexpressible
+delicacy: it is one of those instances, common in Shakspeare, in which
+we are allowed to perceive what is passing in the mind of a person,
+without any consciousness on their part. Only Ophelia herself is unaware
+that while she is admitting the extent of Hamlet's courtship, she is
+also betraying how deep is the impression it has made, how entire the
+love with which it is returned.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    What is between you? give me up the truth!
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders
+    Of his affection to me.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Affection! poh! you speak like a green girl,
+    Unsifted in such perilous circumstances.
+    Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;
+    That you have taken these tenders for true pay
+    Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly
+    Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
+    Wronging it thus) you'll tender me a fool.
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    My lord, he hath importun'd me with love
+    In honorable fashion.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
+    With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
+
+                        POLONIUS.
+
+    Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.
+            This is for all:
+    would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
+    Have you so slander any moment's leisure
+    As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet,
+    Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.
+
+                        OPHELIA.
+
+    I shall obey, my lord.
+
+Besides its intrinsic loveliness, the character of Ophelia has a
+relative beauty and delicacy when considered in relation to that of
+Hamlet, which is the delineation of a man of genius in contest with the
+powers of this world. The weakness of volition, the instability of
+purpose, the contemplative sensibility, the subtlety of thought, always
+shrinking from action, and always occupied in "thinking too precisely on
+the event," united to immense intellectual power, render him unspeakably
+interesting: and yet I doubt whether any woman, who would have been
+capable of understanding and appreciating such a man, would have
+passionately loved him. Let us for a moment imagine any one of
+Shakspeare's most beautiful and striking female characters in immediate
+connection with Hamlet. The gentle Desdemona would never have despatched
+her household cares in haste, to listen to his philosophical
+speculations, his dark conflicts with his own spirit. Such a woman as
+Portia would have studied him; Juliet would have pitied him; Rosalind
+would have turned him over with a smile to the melancholy Jacques;
+Beatrice would have laughed at him outright; Isabel would have reasoned
+with him; Miranda could but have wondered at him: but Ophelia loves him.
+Ophelia, the young, fair, inexperienced girl, facile to every
+impression, fond in her simplicity, and credulous in her innocence,
+loves Hamlet; not from what he is in himself, but for that which appears
+to her--the gentle, accomplished prince, upon whom she has been
+accustomed to see all eyes fixed in hope and admiration, "the expectancy
+and rose of the fair state," the star of the court in which she moves,
+the first who has ever whispered soft vows in her ear: and what can be
+more natural?
+
+But it is not singular, that while no one entertains a doubt of
+Ophelia's love for Hamlet--though never once expressed by herself, or
+asserted by others, in the whole course of the drama--yet it is a
+subject of dispute whether Hamlet loves Ophelia, though she herself
+allows that he had importuned her with love, and "had given countenance
+to his suit with almost all the holy vows of heaven;" although in the
+letter which Polonius intercepted, Hamlet declares that he loves her
+"best, O most best!"--though he asserts himself, with the wildest
+vehemence,--
+
+    I lov'd Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
+    Could not, with all their quantity of love,
+    Make up my sum:
+
+--still I have heard the question canvassed; I have even heard it denied
+that Hamlet did love Ophelia. The author of the finest remarks I have
+yet seen on the play and character of Hamlet, leans to this opinion. As
+the observations I allude to are contained in a periodical publication,
+and may not be at hand for immediate reference, I shall indulge myself
+(and the reader no less) by quoting the opening paragraphs of this noble
+piece of criticism, upon the principle, and for the reason I have
+already stated in the introduction.
+
+"We take up a play, and ideas come rolling in upon us, like waves
+impelled by a strong wind. There is in the ebb and flow of Shakspeare's
+soul all the grandeur of a mighty operation of nature; and when we think
+or speak of him, it should be with humility where we do not understand,
+and a conviction that it is rather to the narrowness of our own mind
+than to any failing in the art of the great magician, that we ought to
+attribute any sense of weakness, which may assail us during the
+contemplation of his created worlds.
+
+"Shakspeare himself, had he even been as great a critic as a poet, could
+not have written a regular dissertation upon Hamlet. So ideal, and yet
+so real an existence, could have been shadowed out only in the colors of
+poetry. When a character deals solely or chiefly with this world and its
+events when it acts and is acted upon by objects that have a palpable
+existence, we see it distinctly, as if it were cast in a material mould,
+as if it partook of the fixed and settled lineaments of the things on
+which it lavishes its sensibilities and its passions. We see in such
+cases the vision of an individual soul, as we see the vision of an
+individual countenance. We can describe both, and can let a stranger
+into our knowledge. But how tell in words, so pure, so fine, so ideal an
+abstraction as Hamlet? We can, indeed, figure to ourselves generally his
+princely form, that outshone all others in manly beauty, and adorn it
+with the consummation of all liberal accomplishment. We can behold in
+every look, every gesture, every motion, the future king,--
+
+    The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,
+    Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state;
+    The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
+    Th' observ'd of all observers.
+
+"But when we would penetrate into his spirit, meditate on those things
+on which he meditates, accompany him even unto the brink of eternity,
+fluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, soar with him into the
+purest and serenest regions of human thought, feel with him the curse of
+beholding iniquity, and the troubled delight of thinking on innocence,
+and gentleness, and beauty; come with him from all the glorious dreams
+cherished by a noble spirit in the halls of wisdom and philosophy, of a
+sudden into the gloomy courts of sin, and incest, and murder; shudder
+with him over the broken and shattered fragments of all the fairest
+creations of his fancy,--be borne with him at once, from calm, and
+lofty, and delighted speculations, into the very heart of fear, and
+horror, and tribulations,--have the agonies and the guilt of our mortal
+world brought into immediate contact with the world beyond the grave,
+and the influence of an awful shadow hanging forever on our
+thoughts,--be present at a fearful combat between all the stirred-up
+passions of humanity in the soul of man, a combat in which one and all
+of these passions are alternately victorious and overcome; I say, that
+when we are thus placed and acted upon, how is it possible to draw a
+character of this sublime drama, or of the mysterious being who is its
+moving spirit? In him, his character and situation, there is a
+concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity. There is
+scarcely a trait of frailty or of grandeur, which may have endeared to
+us our most beloved friends in real life, that is not to be found in
+Hamlet. Undoubtedly Shakspeare loved him beyond all his other creations.
+Soon as he appears on the stage we are satisfied: when absent we long
+for his return. This is the only play which exists almost altogether in
+the character of one single person. Who ever knew a Hamlet in real life?
+yet who, ideal as the character is, feels not its reality? This is the
+wonder. We love him not, we think of him, not because he is witty,
+because he was melancholy, because he was filial; but we love him
+because he existed, and was himself. This is the sum total of the
+impression. I believe that, of every other character either in tragic or
+epic poetry, the story makes part of the conception; but of Hamlet, the
+deep and permanent interest is the conception of himself. This seems to
+belong, not to the character being more perfectly drawn, but to there
+being a more intense conception of individual human life than perhaps
+any other human composition. Here is a being with springs of thought,
+and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search. These springs rise
+from an unknown depth, and in that depth there seems to be a oneness of
+being which we cannot distinctly behold, but which we believe to be
+there; and thus irreconcilable circumstances, floating on the surface of
+his actions, have not the effect of making us doubt the truth of the
+general picture."[41]
+
+This is all most admirable, most eloquent, most true! but the critic
+subsequently declares, that "there is nothing in Ophelia which could
+make her the object of an engrossing passion to so majestic a spirit as
+Hamlet."
+
+Now, though it be with reluctance, and even considerable mistrust of
+myself, that I differ from a critic who can thus feel and write, I do
+not think so:--I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for
+Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely the kind of love which such
+a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia.
+
+When the heathen would represent their Jove as clothed in all his
+Olympian terrors, they mounted him on the back of an eagle, and armed
+him with the lightnings; but when in Holy Writ the Supreme Being is
+described as coming in his glory, He is upborne on the wings of
+cherubim, and his emblem is the dove. Even so our blessed religion,
+which has revealed deeper mysteries in the human soul than ever were
+dreamt of by philosophy till she went hand-in-hand with faith, has
+taught us to pay that worship to the symbols of purity and innocence,
+which in darker times was paid to the manifestations of power: and
+therefore do I think that the mighty intellect, the capacious, soaring,
+penetrating genius of Hamlet may be represented, without detracting from
+its grandeur, as reposing upon the tender virgin innocence of Ophelia,
+with all that deep delight with which a superior nature contemplates the
+goodness which is at once perfect in itself, and of itself unconscious.
+That Hamlet regards Ophelia with this kind of tenderness,--that he loves
+her with a love as intense as can belong to a nature in which there is,
+(I think,) much more of contemplation and sensibility than action or
+passion--is the feeling and conviction with which I have always read the
+play of Hamlet.
+
+As to whether the mind of Hamlet be, or be not, touched with
+madness--this is another point at issue among critics, philosophers, ay,
+and physicians. To me it seems that he is not so far disordered as to
+cease to be a responsible human being--that were too pitiable: but
+rather that his mind is shaken from its equilibrium, and bewildered by
+the horrors of his situation--horrors which his fine and subtle
+intellect, his strong imagination, and his tendency to melancholy, at
+once exaggerate, and take from him the power either to endure, or "by
+opposing, end them." We do not see him as a lover, nor as Ophelia first
+beheld him; for the days when he importuned her with love were before
+the opening of the drama--before his father's spirit revisited the
+earth; but we behold him at once in a sea of troubles, of perplexities,
+of agonies, of terrors. Without remorse, he endures all its horrors;
+without guilt, he endures all its shame. A loathing of the crime he is
+called on to revenge, which revenge is again abhorrent to his nature,
+has set him at strife with himself; the supernatural visitation has
+perturbed his soul to its inmost depths; all things else, all interests,
+all hopes, all affections, appear as futile, when the majestic shadow
+comes lamenting from its place of torment "to shake him with thoughts
+beyond the reaches of his soul!" His love for Ophelia is then ranked by
+himself among those trivial, fond records which he has deeply sworn to
+erase from his heart and brain. He has no thought to link his terrible
+destiny with hers: he cannot marry her: he cannot reveal to her, young,
+gentle, innocent as she is, the terrific influences which have changed
+the whole current of his life and purposes. In his distraction he
+overacts the painful part to which he had tasked himself; he is like
+that judge of the Areopagus, who being occupied with graver matters,
+flung from him the little bird which had sought refuge in his bosom, and
+with such angry violence, that unwittingly he killed it.
+
+In the scene with Hamlet,[42] in which he madly outrages her and
+upbraids himself, Ophelia says very little: there are two short
+sentences in which she replies to his wild, abrupt discourse:--
+
+                         HAMLET.
+
+     I did love you once.
+
+                         OPHELIA.
+
+     Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
+
+                         HAMLET.
+
+     You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so
+     inocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved
+     you not.
+
+                         OPHELIA.
+
+     I was the more deceived.
+
+Those who ever heard Mrs. Siddons read the play of Hamlet, cannot forget
+the world of meaning, of love, of sorrow, of despair, conveyed in these
+two simple phrases. Here, and in the soliloquy afterwards, where she
+says,--
+
+    And I of ladies most deject and wretched,
+    That sucked the honey of his music vows,
+
+are the only allusions to herself and her own feelings in the course of
+the play; and these, uttered almost without consciousness on her own
+part, contain the revelation of a life of love, and disclose the secret
+burthen of a heart bursting with its own unuttered grief. She believes
+Hamlet crazed; she is repulsed, she is forsaken, she is outraged, where
+she had bestowed her young heart, with all its hopes and wishes; her
+father is slain by the hand of her lover, as it is supposed, in a
+paroxysm of insanity: she is entangled inextricably in a web of horrors
+which she cannot even comprehend, and the result seems inevitable.
+
+Of her subsequent madness, what can be said? What an affecting--what an
+astonishing picture of a mind utterly, hopelessly wrecked!--past
+hope--past cure! There is the frenzy of excited passion--there is the
+madness caused by intense and continued thought--there is the delirium
+of fevered nerves; but Ophelia's madness is distinct from these: it is
+not the suspension, but the utter destruction of the reasoning powers;
+it is the total imbecility which, as medical people well know,
+frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance is
+frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is _insane_. Her sweet mind lies in
+fragments before us--a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies;
+her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to
+sadness--each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old
+ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her
+infancy--are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can
+only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture
+that we can endure to dwell upon it:--
+
+    Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
+    She turns to favor and to prettiness.
+
+That in her madness she should exchange her bashful silence for empty
+babbling, her sweet maidenly demeanor for the impatient restlessness
+that spurns at straws, and say and sing precisely what she never would
+or could have uttered had she been in possession of her reason, is so
+far from being an impropriety, that it is an additional stroke of
+nature. It is one of the symptoms of this species of insanity, as we are
+assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance in the case of a
+young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, and whose
+malady arose from a similar cause.
+
+The whole action of this play sweeps past us like a torrent, which
+hurries along in its dark and resistless course all the personages of
+the drama towards a catastrophe that is not brought about by human will,
+but seems like an abyss ready dug to receive them, where the good and
+the wicked are whelmed together.[43] As the character of Hamlet has been
+compared, or rather contrasted, with the Greek Orestes, being like him,
+called on to avenge a crime by a crime, tormented by remorseful doubts,
+and pursued by distraction, so, to me, the character of Ophelia bears a
+certain relation to that of the Greek Iphigenia,[44] with the same
+strong distinction between the classical and the romantic conception of
+the portrait. Iphigenia led forth to sacrifice, with her unresisting
+tenderness, her mournful sweetness, her virgin innocence, is doomed to
+perish by that relentless power, which has linked her destiny with
+crimes and contests, in which she has no part but as a sufferer; and
+even so, poor Ophelia, "divided from herself and her fair judgment,"
+appears here like a spotless victim offered up to the mysterious and
+inexorable fates.
+
+"For it is the property of crime to extend its mischiefs over innocence,
+as it is of virtue to extend its blessings over many that deserve them
+not, while frequently the author of one or the other is not, as far as
+we can see, either punished or rewarded."[45] But there's a heaven above
+us!
+
+
+MIRANDA.
+
+We might have deemed it impossible to go beyond Viola, Perdita, and
+Ophelia, as pictures of feminine beauty; to exceed the one in tender
+delicacy, the other in ideal grace, and the last in simplicity,--if
+Shakspeare had not done this; and he alone could have done it. Had he
+never created a Miranda, we should never have been made to feel how
+completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each
+other.
+
+The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of
+womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these only;
+they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She is so
+perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but
+ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda--even one
+of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations--there is not one
+of them that could sustain the comparison for a moment; not one that
+would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into
+immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this "Eve of an
+enchanted Paradise."
+
+What, then, has Shakspeare done?--"O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the
+man!"--he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex;
+he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate
+spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural; and the
+only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is
+Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature
+of elemental light and air, that "ran upon the winds, rode the curl'd
+clouds, and in the colors of the rainbow lived," Miranda herself appears
+a palpable reality; a woman, "breathing thoughtful breath," a woman,
+walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a heart as
+frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom.
+
+I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of
+womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar
+grace. She resembles nothing upon earth; but do we therefore compare
+her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the
+fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain or the
+ocean?--oread or dryad fleet, sea-maid, or naiad of the stream? We
+cannot think of them together. Miranda is a consistent, natural, human
+being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace, and
+purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only is she
+exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she
+_could_ not possibly be otherwise than as she is portrayed. She has
+never beheld one of her own sex; she has never caught from society one
+imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in
+her enchanted solitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and
+its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her
+father, the princely magician; her companions have been the rocks and
+woods, the many-shaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars; her
+playmates the ocean billows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran
+rippling to kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over
+her head, ministered duteous to her every wish, and presented before
+her pageants of beauty and grandeur. The very air, made vocal by her
+father's art, floated in music around her. If we can presuppose such a
+situation with all its circumstances, do we not behold in the character
+of Miranda not only the credible, but the natural, the necessary results
+of such a situation? She retains her woman's heart, for that is
+unalterable and inalienable, as a part of her being; but her deportment,
+her looks, her language, her thoughts--all these, from the supernatural
+and poetical circumstances around her, assume a cast of the pure ideal;
+and to us, who are in the secret of her human and pitying nature,
+nothing can be more charming and consistent than the effect which she
+produces upon others, who never having beheld any thing resembling her,
+approach her as "a wonder," as something celestial:--
+
+    Be sure! the goddess on whom these airs attend!
+
+And again:--
+
+                  What is this maid?
+    Is she the goddess who hath severed us,
+    And brought us thus together?
+
+And Ferdinand exclaims, while gazing on her,
+
+    My spirits as in a dream are all bound up!
+    My father's loss, the weakness that I feel,
+    The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats,
+    To whom I am subdued, are but light to me
+    Might I but through my prison once a day
+    Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth
+    Let liberty make use of, space enough
+    Have I in such a prison.
+
+Contrasted with the impression of her refined and dignified beauty, and
+its effect on all beholders, is Miranda's own soft simplicity, her
+virgin innocence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and
+language of society. It is most natural that in a being thus
+constituted, the first tears should spring from compassion, "suffering
+with those that she saw suffer:"--
+
+                    O the cry did knock
+    Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perished.
+    Had I been any god of power, I would
+    Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er
+    It should the good ship so have swallowed,
+    And the freighting souls within her;
+
+and that her first sigh should be offered to a love at once fearless and
+submissive, delicate and fond. She has no taught scruples of honor like
+Juliet; no coy concealments like Viola; no assumed dignity standing in
+its own defence. Her bashfulness is less a quality than an instinct; it
+is like the self-folding of a flower, spontaneous and unconscious. I
+suppose there is nothing of the kind in poetry equal to the scene
+between Ferdinand and Miranda. In Ferdinand, who is a noble creature, we
+have all the chivalrous magnanimity with which man, in a high state of
+civilization, disguises his real superiority, and does humble homage to
+the being of whose destiny he disposes; while Miranda, the mere child of
+nature, is struck with wonder at her own new emotions. Only conscious of
+her own weakness as a woman, and ignorant of those usages of society
+which teach us to dissemble the real passion, and assume (and sometimes
+abuse) an unreal and transient power, she is equally ready to place her
+life, her love, her service beneath his feet.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                    Alas, now! pray you,
+    Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
+    Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoined to pile!
+    Pray set it down and rest you: when this burns,
+    'Twill weep for having weary'd you. My father
+    Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself:
+    He's safe for these three hours.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                    O most dear mistress,
+    The sun will set before I shall discharge
+    What I must strive to do.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                              If you'll sit down,
+    I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that,
+    I'll carry it to the pile.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                            No, precious creature;
+    I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
+    Than you should such dishonor undergo,
+    While I sit lazy by.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                        It would become me
+    As well as it does you; and I should do it
+    With much more ease; for my good will is to it,
+    And yours against.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                           You look wearily.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+    No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me
+    When you are by at night. I do beseech you,
+    (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,)
+    What is your name?
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                          Miranda. O my father
+    I have broke your 'hest to say so!
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                              Admir'd Miranda!
+    Indeed the top of admiration; worth
+    What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady
+    I have eyed with best regard: and many a time
+    The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
+    Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
+    Have I liked several women; never any
+    With so full soul, but some defect in her
+    Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
+    And put it to the foil. But you, O you,
+    So perfect and so peerless, are created
+    Of every creature's best!
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                             I do not know
+    One of my sex: no woman's face remember,
+    Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
+    Mere that I may call men, than you, good friend,
+    And my dear father. How features are abroad
+    I am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,
+    (The jewel in my dower,) I would not wish
+    Any companion in the world but you;
+    Nor can imagination form a shape,
+    Besides yourself, to like of--But I prattle
+    Something too wildly, and my father's precepts
+    Therein forget.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                    I am, in my condition
+    A prince, Miranda--I do think a king--
+    (I would, not so!) and would no more endure
+    This wooden slavery, than I would suffer
+    The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak
+    The very instant that I saw you, did
+    My heart fly to your service; there resides,
+    To make me slave to it; and for your sake,
+    Am I this patient log-man.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                             Do you love me?
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+    O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound
+    And crown what I profess with kind event,
+    If I speak true: if hollowly, invert
+    What best is boded me, to mischief! I,
+    Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
+    Do love, prize, honor you.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                            I am a fool,
+    To weep at what I am glad of.
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                                  Wherefore weep you
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+    At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
+    What I desire to give; and much less take,
+    What I shall die to want--But this is trifling:
+    And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
+    The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;
+    And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
+    I am your wife, if you will marry me;
+    If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
+    You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
+    Whether you will or no!
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+                              My mistress, dearest!
+    And I thus humble ever.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+                            My husband, then?
+
+                        FERDINAND.
+
+    Ay, with a heart as willing,
+    As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand.
+
+                        MIRANDA.
+
+    And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell
+    Till half an hour hence.
+
+As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a
+lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with
+propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly
+claims her as "a thread of his own life--nay, that for which he lives."
+Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral
+worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity, is one of the most sublime
+visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand,
+before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works
+through the agency of spirits: not by any evil and forbidden compact,
+but solely by superior might of intellect--by potent spells gathered
+from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with
+his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and
+astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagined:[46]
+and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and St. Leon, sink
+into common-places before the princely, the philosophic, the benevolent
+Prospero.
+
+The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the
+Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his
+companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm,[47] brought
+back a most fearful account of those unknown islands, which they
+described as "a land of devils--a most prodigious and enchanted place,
+subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings." Such was the
+idea entertained of the "still-vext Bermoothes" in Shakspeare's age; but
+later travellers describe them as perfect regions of enchantment in a
+far different sense; as so many fairy Edens, clustered like a knot of
+gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish
+luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round
+with groves of coral; in short, each island a tiny paradise, rich with
+perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and
+ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed:
+so that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked
+mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however
+lovely in nature and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize
+with the beautiful and wondrous reality.
+
+There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is
+rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon
+the occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest
+daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly
+necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most
+unhappy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was
+one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The characters which I have here classed together, as principally
+distinguished by the predominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to
+rise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda;
+the last being in comparison so refined, so elevated above all stain of
+earth, that we can only acknowledge her in connection with it through
+the emotions of sympathy she feels and inspires.
+
+I remember, when I was in Italy, standing "at evening on the top of
+Fiesole," and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val
+d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive
+grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation,
+which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving
+with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth
+seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple
+shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in
+the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint
+perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted
+upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the
+earth to the sky, and immediately above this scene hung the soft
+crescent moon--alone, with all the bright heaven to herself; and as that
+sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of
+Miranda compared to that of Juliet.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[17] Lord Byron remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speak _avec
+connaissance de fait_,) that they are the only women in the world
+capable of impressions, at once very sudden and very durable; which, he
+adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes afterwards,
+how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social
+position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves,
+and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the
+whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and
+devotedness afterwards.--Both these traits of national character are
+exemplified in Juliet--_Moore's Life of Byron_, vol. ii. pp. 303, 338.
+4to edit.
+
+[18] _La seve de la vie_, is an expression used somewhere by Madame de
+Stael.
+
+[19] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.
+
+[20] I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character, which I
+have heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as the heroine _par
+excellence_ of amatory fiction--I mean the Julie of Rousseau's Nouvelle
+Heloise; I protest against her altogether. As a creation of fancy the
+portrait is a compound of the most gross and glaring inconsistencies; as
+false and impossible to the reflecting and philosophical mind, as the
+fabled Syrens, Hamatryads and Centaurs to the eye of the anatomist. As a
+woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society; and if
+the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has
+garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense
+and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted.
+Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth,
+does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit
+into her, and then calls the "impetticoated" paradox a _woman_. He makes
+her a peg on which to hang his own visions and sentiments--and what
+sentiments! but that I fear to soil my pages, I would pick out a few of
+them, and show the difference between this strange combination of youth
+and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophistical prudery, and
+detestable _grossierete_, and our own Juliet. No! if we seek a French
+Juliet, we must go far--far back to the real Heloise, to her eloquence,
+her sensibility, her fervor of passion, her devotedness of truth. She,
+at least, married the man she loved, and loved the man she married, and
+more than died for him; but enough of both.
+
+[21] Constant describes her beautifully--"Sa voix si douce au travers le
+bruit des armes, sa forme delicate au milieu de cet hommes tous couverts
+de fer, la purete de son ame opposee leurs calculs avides, son calme
+celeste qui contraste avec leurs agitations, remplissent le spectateur
+d'une emotion constante et melancolique, telle que ne la fait ressentir
+nulle tragedie ordinaire."
+
+[22] Coleridge--preface to Wallenstein.
+
+[23] In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona."
+
+[24] There is an allusion to this court language of love in "All Well
+that Ends Well," where Helena says,--
+
+     There shall your master have a thousand loves--
+     A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign;
+     A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear,
+     His humble ambition, proud humility,
+     His jarring concord, and his discord dulcut,
+     His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
+     Of pretty fond adoptious Christendoms
+     That blinking Cupid gossips.--ACT I SCENE 1
+
+The courtly poets of Elizabeth's time, who copied the Italian
+sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits.
+
+[25] Since this was written, I have met with some remarks of a similar
+tendency in that most interesting book, "The Life of Lord E.
+Fitzgerald."
+
+[26] Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she has placed
+before herself in the most fearful colors all its possible consequences,
+is compared by Schlegel to the famous story of Alexander and his
+physician.
+
+[27]
+
+     Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
+     Thoughts so all unlike each other;
+     To mutter and mock a broken charm,
+     To dally with wrong that does no harm!
+     Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty,
+     At each wild word to feel within
+     A sweet recoil of love and pity.
+     And what if in a world of sin
+     (O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
+     Such giddiness of heart and brain
+     Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
+     So talks as it's most used to do?
+
+                    COLERIDGE.
+
+These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet's wild
+exclamations against Romeo.
+
+[28] "The censure," observes Schlegel, "originates in a fanciless way of
+thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that does not suit its
+tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural
+pathos which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and nowise
+elevated above every-day life; but energetic passions electrify the
+whole mental powers and will, consequently, in highly-favored natures,
+express themselves in an ingenious and figurative manner."
+
+[29] The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a
+popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakspeare
+wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful
+love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. "Juliet, a noble
+maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord
+Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned
+himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with
+his dagger." This note, which furnishes, in brief, the whole argument of
+Shakspeare's play, might possibly have made the first impression on his
+fancy. In the novel of Da Porta the catastrophe is altogether different.
+After the death of Romeo, the Friar Lorenzo endeavors to persuade Juliet
+to leave the fatal monument. She refuses; and throwing herself back on
+the dead body of her husband, she resolutely holds her breath and
+dies.--"E voltatasi al giacente corpo di Romeo, il cui capo sopra un
+origliere, che con lei uell' arca era stato lasciato, posto aveva; gli
+occhi meglio rinchiusi avendogli, e di lagrime il freddo volto
+bagnandogli, disse;" Che debbo senza di te in vita piu fare, signor mio?
+e che altro mi resta verso te se non colla mia morte seguirti? "E detto
+questo, la sua gran sciagura nell' animo recatasi, e la perdita del caro
+amante ricordandosi, deliberando di piu non vivere, raccolto a se il
+fiato, e per buono spazio tenutolo, e poscia con un gran grido fuori
+mandandolo, sopra il morto corpo, morta ricadde."
+
+There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to
+make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says
+Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a
+degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the
+date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed
+sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate
+conventual garden--once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The
+situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as
+their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its
+amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the
+very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory of Juliet.
+
+When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "_dans le genre
+romantique_," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring.
+
+[30] Foster's Essays
+
+[31] I have read somewhere that the play of which Helena is the heroine,
+(All's Well that Ends Well,) was at first entitled by Shakspeare "Love's
+Labor Won." Why the title was altered or by whom I cannot discover.
+
+[32] i. e. I care as much for as I do for heaven.
+
+[33] New Monthly Magazine, vol. iv.
+
+[34] Percy's Reliques.
+
+[35] i. e. _canzons_, songs
+
+[36] Percy's Reliques, vol. iii.--see the ballad of the "Lady turning
+Serving Man."
+
+[37] By this word, as used here, I would be understood to mean that
+inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to the good, the
+beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar, the violent,
+and the false;--that which we see diffused externally over the form and
+movements, where there is perfect innocence and unconsciousness, as in
+children.
+
+[38] _i. e._ In the story of the drama; for in the original "History of
+Amleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his materials, there is a
+woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce Amleth, but
+not even the germ of the character of Ophelia.
+
+[39] In the Oedipus Coloneus
+
+[40] "And recks not his own read," _i. e._ heeds not his own lesson.
+
+[41] Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 11.
+
+[42] Act iii. scene 1.
+
+[43] Goethe. See the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister
+
+[44] The Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides.
+
+[45] Goethe
+
+[46] Such as Cornelius Agrippa, Michael Scott, Dr. Dee. The last was the
+contemporary of Shakspeare.
+
+[47] In 1609, about three years before Shakspeare produced the Tempest,
+which, though placed first in all the editions of his works, was one of
+the last of his dramas.
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS
+
+
+HERMIONE.
+
+Characters in which the affections and the moral qualities predominate
+over fancy and all that bears the name of passion, are not, when we meet
+with them in real life, the most striking and interesting, nor the
+easiest to be understood and appreciated; but they are those on which,
+in the long run, we repose with increasing confidence and ever-new
+delight. Such characters are not easily exhibited in the colors of
+poetry, and when we meet with them there, we are reminded of the effect
+of Raffaelle's pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds assures us, that it took
+him three weeks to discover the beauty of the frescos in the Vatican;
+and many, if they spoke the truth, would prefer one of Titian's or
+Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less
+there is of marked expression or vivid color in a countenance or
+character, the more difficult to delineate it in such a manner as to
+captivate and interest us: but when this is done, and done to
+perfection, it is the miracle of poetry in painting, and of painting in
+poetry. Only Raffaelle and Correggio have achieved it in one case, and
+only Shakspeare in the other.
+
+When, by the presence or the agency of some predominant and exciting
+power, the feelings and affections are upturned from the depths of the
+heart, and flung to the surface, the painter or the poet has but to
+watch the workings of the passions, thus in a manner made visible, and
+transfer them to his page or his canvas, in colors more or less
+vigorous: but where all is calm without and around, to dive into the
+profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie
+hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions
+of the heart, patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few
+graceful touches place before us the distinct and visible result,--to do
+this demanded power of another and a rarer kind.
+
+There are several of Shakspeare's characters which are especially
+distinguished by this profound feeling in the conception, and subdued
+harmony of tone in the delineation. To them may be particularly applied
+the ingenious simile which Goethe has used to illustrate generally all
+Shakspeare's characters, when he compares them to the old-fashioned
+batches in glass cases, which not only showed the index pointing to the
+hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index in motion.
+
+Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations
+nearly similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can
+render that situation striking and interesting. They are all gentle,
+beautiful, and innocent; all are models of conjugal submission, truth,
+and tenderness, and all are victims of the unfounded jealousy of their
+husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance ceases;
+the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and
+the characters, which are as different as it is possible to imagine,
+conceived and discriminated with a power of truth and a delicacy of
+feeling yet more astonishing.
+
+Critically speaking, the character of Hermione is the most simple in
+point of dramatic effect, that of Imogen is the most varied and complex.
+Hermione is most distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude,
+Desdemona by her gentleness and refined grace, while Imogen combines all
+the best qualities of both, with others which they do not possess;
+consequently she is, as a character, superior to either; but considered
+as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual taste.
+
+Hermione is the heroine of the first three acts of the Winter's Tale.
+She is the wife of Leontes, king of Sicilia, and though in the prime of
+beauty and womanhood, is not represented in the first bloom of youth.
+Her husband on slight grounds suspects her of infidelity with his friend
+Polixenes, king of Bohemia; the suspicion once admitted, and working on
+a jealous, passionate, and vindictive mind, becomes a settled and
+confirmed opinion. Hermione is thrown into a dungeon; her new-born
+infant is taken from her, and by the order of her husband, frantic with
+jealousy, exposed to death on a desert shore; she is herself brought to
+a public trial for treason and incontinency, defends herself nobly, and
+is pronounced innocent by the oracle. But at the very moment that she is
+acquitted, she learns the death of the prince her son, who
+
+    Conceiving the dishonor of his mother,
+    Had straight declined, drooped, took it deeply,
+    Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself,
+    Threw off his spirit, appetite, and sleep,
+    And downright languished.
+
+She swoons away with grief, and her supposed death concludes the third
+act. The last two acts are occupied with the adventures of her daughter
+Perdita; and with the restoration of Perdita to the arms of her mother,
+and the reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes, the piece concludes.
+
+Such, in few words, is the dramatic situation. The character of Hermione
+exhibits what is never found in the other sex, but rarely in our
+own--yet sometimes;--dignity without pride, love without passion, and
+tenderness without weakness. To conceive a character in which there
+enters so much of the negative, required perhaps no rare and astonishing
+effort of genius, such as created a Juliet, a Miranda, or a Lady
+Macbeth; but to delineate such a character in the poetical form, to
+develop it through the medium of action and dialogue, without the aid of
+description: to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious beauty, its
+unimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon
+our sympathy and our imagination; and out of this exterior calm,
+produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and
+internal power:--it is this which renders the character of Hermione one
+of Shakspeare's masterpieces.
+
+Hermione is a queen, a matron, and a mother: she is good and beautiful,
+and royally descended. A majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious
+simplicity, an easy, unforced, yet dignified self-possession, are in all
+her deportment, and in every word she utters. She is one of those
+characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, that "still waters
+run deep." Her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind the
+sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment, are like the springs
+that feed the mountain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and
+inexhaustible.
+
+Shakspeare has conveyed (as is his custom) a part of the character of
+Hermione in scattered touches and through the impressions which she
+produces on all around her. Her surpassing beauty is alluded to in few
+but strong terms:--
+
+                          This jealousy
+    Is for a precious creature; as she is rare
+    Must it be great.
+    Praise her but for this her out-door form,
+    'Which, on my faith, deserves high speech--'
+
+    If one by one you wedded all the world,
+    Or from the all that are, took something good
+    To make a perfect woman; she you killed
+    Would be unparalleled.
+
+    I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes,
+    Have taken treasure from her lips--
+                        --and left them
+    More rich for what they yielded.
+
+The expressions "most sacred lady," "dread mistress," "sovereign," with
+which she is addressed or alluded to, the boundless devotion and respect
+of those around her, and their confidence in her goodness and innocence,
+are so many additional strokes in the portrait.
+
+                        For her, my lord,
+    I dare my life lay down, and will do't, sir,
+    Please you t' accept it, that the queen is spotless
+    I' the eyes of heaven, and to you.
+
+    Every inch of woman in the world,
+    Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false,
+    If she be so.
+    I would not be a stander-by to hear
+    My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
+    My present vengeance taken!
+
+The mixture of playful courtesy, queenly dignity, and lady-like
+sweetness, with which she prevails on Polixenes to prolong his visit, is
+charming.
+
+                        HERMIONE.
+
+                You'll stay!
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+    No, madam.
+
+                        HERMIONE.
+
+                Nay, but you will.
+
+                        POLIXENES.
+
+    I may not, verily.
+
+
+                        HERMIONE.
+
+                      Verily!
+    You put me off with limber vows; but I,
+    Tho' you would seek t' unsphere the stars with oaths
+    Should still say, "Sir, no going!" Verily,
+    You shall _not_ go! A lady's verily is
+    As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet?
+    Force me to keep you as a prisoner,
+    Not like a guest?
+
+And though the situation of Hermione admits but of few general
+reflections, one little speech, inimitably beautiful and characteristic,
+has become almost proverbial from its truth. She says:--
+
+              One good deed, dying tongueless,
+    Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that.
+    Our praises are our wages; you may ride us
+    With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere
+    With spur we heat an acre.
+
+She receives the first intimation of her husband's jealous suspicions
+with incredulous astonishment. It is not that, like Desdemona, she does
+not or cannot understand; but she _will_ not. When he accuses her more
+plainly, she replies with a calm dignity:--
+
+              Should a villain say so--
+    The most replenished villain in the world--
+    He were as much more villain: you, my lord,
+    Do but mistake.
+
+This characteristic composure of temper never forsakes her; and yet it
+is so delineated that the impression is that of grandeur, and never
+borders upon pride or coldness: it is the fortitude of a gentle but a
+strong mind, conscious of its own innocence. Nothing can be more
+affecting than her calm reply to Leontes, who, in his jealous rage,
+heaps insult upon insult, and accuses her before her own attendants, as
+no better "than one of those to whom the vulgar give bold titles."
+
+                How will this grieve you,
+    When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that
+    You have thus published me! Gentle my lord,
+    You scarce can right me thoroughly then, to say
+    You _did_ mistake.
+
+Her mild dignity and saint-like patience, combined as they are with the
+strongest sense of the cruel injustice of her husband, thrill us with
+admiration as well as pity; and we cannot but see and feel, that for
+Hermione to give way to tears and feminine complaints under such a blow,
+would be quite incompatible with the character. Thus she says of
+herself, as she is led to prison:--
+
+                There's some ill planet reigns:
+    I must be patient till the heavens look
+    With an aspect more favorable. Good my lords,
+    I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
+    Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
+    Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
+    That honorable grief lodged here, that burns
+    Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lords
+    With thought so qualified as your charities
+    Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
+    The king's will be performed.
+
+When she is brought to trial for supposed crimes, called on to defend
+herself, "standing to prate and talk for life and honor, before who
+please to come and hear," the sense of her ignominious situation--all
+its shame and all its horror press upon her, and would apparently crush
+even _her_ magnanimous spirit, but for the consciousness of her own
+worth and innocence, and the necessity that exists for asserting and
+defending both.
+
+                 If powers divine
+    Behold our human actions, (as they do),
+    I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make
+    False accusation blush, and tyranny
+    Tremble at patience.
+
+                 *   *   *   *
+
+                 For life, I prize it
+    As I weigh grief, which I would spare. For honor--
+    'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
+    And only that I stand for.
+
+Her earnest, eloquent justification of herself, and her lofty sense of
+female honor, are rendered more affecting and impressive by that
+chilling despair that contempt for a life which has been made bitter to
+her through unkindness, which is betrayed in every word of her speech,
+though so calmly characteristic. When she enumerates the unmerited
+insults which have been heaped upon her, it is without asperity or
+reproach, yet in a tone which shows how completely the iron has entered
+her soul. Thus, when Leontes threatens her with death:--
+
+                Sir, spare your threats;
+    The bug which you would fright me with, I seek.
+    To me can life be no commodity;
+    The crown and comfort of my life, your favor,
+    I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
+    But know not how it went. My second joy,
+    The first-fruits of my body, from his presence
+    I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort--
+    Starr'd most unluckily!--is from my breast,
+    The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
+    Haled out to murder. Myself on every post
+    Proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred,
+    The childbed privilege denied, which 'longs
+    To women of all fashion. Lastly, hurried
+    Here to this place, i' the open air, before
+    I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,
+    Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
+    That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed,
+    But yet hear this; mistake me not. No! life,
+    I prize it not a straw:--but for mine honor.
+    (Which I would free,) if I shall be condemned
+    Upon surmises; all proof sleeping else,
+    But what your jealousies awake; I tell you,
+    'Tis rigor and not law.
+
+The character of Hermione is considered open to criticism on one point.
+I have heard it remarked that when she secludes herself from the world
+for sixteen years, during which time she is mourned as dead by her
+repentant husband, and is not won to relent from her resolve by his
+sorrow, his remorse, his constancy to her memory; such conduct, argues
+the critic, is unfeeling as it is inconceivable in a tender and virtuous
+woman. Would Imogen have done so, who is so generously ready to grant a
+pardon before it be asked? or Desdemona, who does not forgive because
+she cannot even resent? No, assuredly; but this is only another proof of
+the wonderful delicacy and consistency with which Shakspeare has
+discriminated the characters of all three. The incident of Hermione's
+supposed death and concealment for sixteen years, is not indeed very
+probable in itself, nor very likely to occur in every-day life. But
+besides all the probability necessary for the purposes of poetry, it has
+all the likelihood it can derive from the peculiar character of
+Hermione, who is precisely the woman who could and would have acted in
+this manner. In such a mind as hers, the sense of a cruel injury,
+inflicted by one she had loved and trusted, without awakening any
+violent anger or any desire of vengeance, would sink deep--almost
+incurably and lastingly deep. So far she is most unlike either Imogen or
+Desdemona, who are portrayed as much more flexible in temper; but then
+the circumstances under which she is wronged are very different, and far
+more unpardonable. The self-created, frantic jealousy of Leontes is very
+distinct from that of Othello, writhing under the arts of Iago: or that
+of Posthumus, whose understanding has been cheated by the most damning
+evidence of his wife's infidelity. The jealousy which in Othello and
+Posthumus is an error of judgment, in Leontes is a vice of the blood;
+he suspects without cause, condemns without proof; he is without
+excuse--unless the mixture of pride, passion, and imagination, and the
+predisposition to jealousy with which Shakspeare has portrayed him, be
+considered as an excuse. Hermione has been openly insulted: he to whom
+she gave herself, her heart, her soul, has stooped to the weakness and
+baseness of suspicion; has doubted her truth, has wronged her love, has
+sunk in her esteem, and forfeited her confidence. She has been branded
+with vile names; her son, her eldest hope, is dead--dead through the
+false accusation which has stuck infamy on his mother's name; and her
+innocent babe, stained with illegitimacy, disowned and rejected, has
+been exposed to a cruel death. Can we believe that the mere tardy
+acknowledgment of her innocence could make amends for wrongs and agonies
+such as these? or heal a heart which must have bled inwardly, consumed
+by that untold grief, "which burns worse than tears drown?" Keeping in
+view the peculiar character of Hermione, such as she is delineated, is
+she one either to forgive hastily or forget quickly? and though she
+might, in her solitude, mourn over her repentant husband, would his
+repentance suffice to restore him at once to his place in her heart: to
+efface from her strong and reflecting mind the recollection of his
+miserable weakness? or can we fancy this high-souled woman--left
+childless through the injury which has been inflicted on her, widowed in
+heart by the unworthness of him she loved, a spectacle of grief to
+all--to her husband a continual reproach and humiliation--walking
+through the parade of royalty in the court which had witnessed her
+anguish, her shame, her degradation, and her despair? Methinks that the
+want of feeling, nature, delicacy, and consistency, would lie in such an
+exhibition as this. In a mind like Hermione's, where the strength of
+feeling is founded in the power of thought, and where there is little of
+impulse or imagination,--"the depth, but not the tumult of the
+soul,"[48]--there are but two influences which predominate over the
+will,--time and religion. And what then remained, but that, wounded in
+heart and spirit, she should retire from the world?--not to brood over
+her wrongs, but to study forgiveness, and wait the fulfilment of the
+oracle which had promised the termination of her sorrows. Thus a
+premature reconciliation would not only have been painfully inconsistent
+with the character; it would also have deprived us of that most
+beautiful scene, in which Hermione is discovered to her husband as the
+statue or image of herself. And here we have another instance of that
+admirable art, with which the dramatic character is fitted to the
+circumstances in which it is placed: that perfect command over her own
+feelings, that complete self-possession necessary to this extraordinary
+situation, is consistent with all that we imagine of Hermione: in any
+other woman it would be so incredible as to shock all our ideas of
+probability.
+
+This scene, then, is not only one of the most picturesque and striking
+instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama,
+but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as
+it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love,
+the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the
+astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her
+mother like one entranced, looks as if she were also turned to marble.
+There is here one little instance of tender remembrance in Leontes,
+which adds to the charming impression of Hermione's character.
+
+    Chide me, dear stone! that I may say indeed
+    Thou art Hermione; or rather thou art she
+    In thy not chiding, for she was as tender
+    As infancy and grace.
+
+                     Thus she stood,
+    Even with such life of majesty--warm life--
+    As now it coldly stands--when first I woo'd her!
+
+The effect produced on the different persons of the drama by this living
+statue--an effect which at the same moment is, and is _not_
+illusion--the manner in which the feelings of the spectators become
+entangled between the conviction of death and the impression of life,
+the idea of a deception and the feeling of a reality; and the exquisite
+coloring of poetry and touches of natural feeling with which the whole
+is wrought up, till wonder, expectation, and intense pleasure, hold our
+pulse and breath suspended on the event,--are quite inimitable.
+
+The expressions used here by Leontes,--
+
+                    Thus she stood,
+    Even with such life of majesty--_warm life_.
+      The fixture of her eye has motion in't.
+      And we are mock'd by art!
+
+And by Polixines,--
+
+    The very life seems warm upon her lip,
+
+appear strangely applied to a statue, such as we usually imagine it--of
+the cold colorless marble; but it is evident that in this scene Hermione
+personates one of those images or effigies, such as we may see in the
+old gothic cathedrals, in which the stone, or marble, was colored after
+nature. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these effigies, either at
+Basle or at Fribourg, which made me start: the figure was large as life;
+the drapery of crimson, powdered with stars of gold; the face and eyes,
+and hair, tinted after nature, though faded by time: it stood in a
+gothic niche, over a tomb, as I think, and in a kind of dim uncertain
+light. It would have been very easy for a living person to represent
+such an effigy, particularly if it had been painted by that "rare
+Italian master, Julio Romano,"[49] who, as we are informed, was the
+reputed author of this wonderful statue.
+
+The moment when Hermione descends from her pedestal, to the sound of
+soft music, and throws herself without speaking into her husband's arms,
+is one of inexpressible interest. It appears to me that her silence
+during the whole of this scene (except where she invokes a blessing on
+her daughter's head) is in the finest taste as a poetical beauty,
+besides being an admirable trait of character. The misfortunes of
+Hermione, her long religious seclusion, the wonderful and almost
+supernatural part she has just enacted, have invested her with such a
+sacred and awful charm, that any words put into her mouth, must, I
+think, have injured the solemn and profound pathos of the situation.
+
+There are several among Shakspeare's characters which exercise a far
+stronger power over our feelings, our fancy, our understanding, than
+that of Hermione; but not one,--unless perhaps Cordelia,--constructed
+upon so high and pure a principle. It is the union of gentleness with
+power which constitutes the perfection of mental grace. Thus among the
+ancients, with whom the _graces_ were also the _charities_, (to show,
+perhaps, that while form alone may constitute beauty, sentiment is
+necessary to grace,) one and the same word signified equally _strength_
+and _virtue_. This feeling, carried into the fine arts, was the secret
+of the antique grace--the grace of repose. The same eternal nature--the
+same sense of immutable truth and beauty, which revealed this sublime
+principle of art to the ancient Greeks, revealed it to the genius of
+Shakspeare; and the character of Hermione, in which we have the same
+largeness of conception and delicacy of execution,--the same effect of
+suffering without passion, and grandeur without effort, is an instance,
+I think, that he felt within himself, and by intuition, what we study
+all our lives in the remains of ancient art. The calm, regular,
+classical beauty of Hermione's character is the more impressive from the
+wild and gothic accompaniments of her story, and the beautiful relief
+afforded by the pastoral and romantic grace which is thrown around her
+daughter Perdita.
+
+The character of Paulina, in the Winter's Tale, though it has obtained
+but little notice, and no critical remark, (that I have seen,) is yet
+one of the striking beauties of the play: and it has its moral too. As
+we see running through the whole universe that principle of contrast
+which may be called the life of nature, so we behold it every where
+illustrated in Shakspeare: upon this principle he has placed Emilia
+beside Desdemona, the nurse beside Juliet; the clowns and dairy-maids,
+and the merry peddler thief Autolycus round Florizel and Perdita;--and
+made Paulina the friend of Hermione.
+
+Paulina does not fill any ostensible office near the person of the
+queen, but is a lady of high rank in the court--the wife of the Lord
+Antigones. She is a character strongly drawn from real and common
+life--a clever, generous, strong-minded, warmhearted woman, fearless in
+asserting the truth, firm in her sense of right, enthusiastic in all her
+affections: quick in thought, resolute in word, and energetic in action;
+but heedless, hot-tempered, impatient, loud, bold, voluble, and
+turbulent of tongue; regardless of the feelings of those for whom she
+would sacrifice her life, and injuring from excess of zeal those whom
+she most wishes to serve. How many such are there in the world! But
+Paulina, though a very termagant, is yet a poetical termagant in her
+way; and the manner in which all the evil and dangerous tendencies of
+such a temper are placed before us, even while the individual character
+preserves the strongest hold upon our respect and admiration, forms an
+impressive lesson, as well as a natural and delightful portrait.
+
+In the scene, for instance, where she brings the infant before Leontes,
+with the hope of softening him to a sense of his injustice--"an office
+which," as she observes, "becomes a woman best"--her want of
+self-government, her bitter, inconsiderate reproaches, only add, as we
+might easily suppose, to his fury.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                      I say I come
+    From your good queen!
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    Good queen!
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    Good queen, my lord, good queen: I say good queen;
+    And would by combat make her good, so were I
+    A man, the worst about you.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    Force her hence.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes,
+    First hand me: on mine own accord I'll off;
+    But first I'll do mine errand. The good queen
+    (For she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter--
+    Here 'tis; commends it to your blessing.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+                                Traitors!
+    Will you not push her out! Give her the bastard.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                                Forever
+    Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
+    Tak'st up the princess by that forced baseness
+    Which he has put upon't!
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    He dreads his wife.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    So, I would _you_ did; then 'twere past all doubt
+    You'd call your children your's.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+                          A callat,
+    Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,
+    And now baits me!--this brat is none of mine.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                                    It is yours,
+    And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
+    So like you, 'tis the worse.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+                                      A gross hag!
+    And lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd,
+    That wilt not stay her tongue.
+
+                        ANTIGONES.
+
+                Hang all the husbands
+    That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself
+    Hardly one subject.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    Once more, take her hence.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    A most unworthy and unnatural lord
+    Can do no more.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    I'll have thee burn'd.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+                                 I care not:
+    It is an heretic that makes the fire,
+    Not she which burns in't.
+
+Here, while we honor her courage and her affection, we cannot help
+regretting her violence. We see, too, in Paulina, what we so often see
+in real life, that it is not those who are most susceptible in their own
+temper and feelings, who are most delicate and forbearing towards the
+feelings of others. She does not comprehend, or will not allow for the
+sensitive weakness of a mind less firmly tempered than her own. There
+is a reply of Leontes to one of her cutting speeches, which is full of
+feeling, and a lesson to those, who, with the best intentions in the
+world, force the painful truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated
+heart.
+
+                        PAULINA.
+
+    If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
+    Or, from the all that are, took something good
+    To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
+    Would be unparallel'd.
+
+                        LEONTES.
+
+    I think so. Kill'd!
+    She I kill'd? I did so: but thou strik'st me
+    Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
+    Upon thy tongue, as in my thought. Now, good now,
+    Say so but seldom.
+
+                        CLEOMENES.
+
+    Not at all, good lady:
+    You might have spoken a thousand things that would
+    Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd
+    Your kindness better.
+
+We can only excuse Paulina by recollecting that it is a part of her
+purpose to keep alive in the heart of Leontes the remembrance of his
+queen's perfections, and of his own cruel injustice. It is admirable,
+too, that Hermione and Paulina, while sufficiently approximated to
+afford all the pleasure of contrast, are never brought too nearly in
+contact on the scene or in the dialogue;[50] for this would have been a
+fault in taste, and have necessarily weakened the effect of both
+characters:--either the serene grandeur of Hermione would have subdued
+and overawed the fiery spirit of Paulina, or the impetuous temper of the
+latter must have disturbed in some respect our impression of the calm,
+majestic, and somewhat melancholy beauty of Hermione.
+
+
+DESDEMONA.
+
+The character of Hermione is addressed more to the imagination; that of
+Desdemona to the feelings. All that can render sorrow majestic is
+gathered round Hermione; all that can render misery heart-breaking is
+assembled round Desdemona. The wronged but self-sustained virtue of
+Hermione commands our veneration; the injured and defenceless innocence
+of Desdemona so wrings the soul, "that all for pity we could die."
+
+Desdemona, as a character, comes nearest to Miranda, both in herself as
+a woman, and in the perfect simplicity and unity of the delineation; the
+figures are differently draped--the proportions are the same. There is
+the same modesty, tenderness, and grace; the same artless devotion in
+the affections, the same predisposition to wonder, to pity, to admire;
+the same almost ethereal refinement and delicacy; but all is pure poetic
+nature within Miranda and around her: Desdemona is more associated with
+the palpable realities of every-day existence, and we see the forms and
+habits of society tinting her language and deportment; no two beings can
+be more alike in character--nor more distinct as individuals.
+
+The love of Desdemona for Othello appears at first such a violation of
+all probabilities, that her father at once imputes it to magic, "to
+spells and mixtures powerful o'er the blood."
+
+                        She, in spite of nature,
+    Of years, of country, credit, every thing,
+    To fall in love with what she feared to look on!
+
+And the devilish malignity of Iago, whose coarse mind cannot conceive an
+affection founded purely in sentiment, derives from her love itself a
+strong argument against her.
+
+    Ay, there's the point, as to be bold with you,
+    Not to affect any proposed matches
+    Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
+    Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends,[51] &c.
+
+Notwithstanding this disparity of age, character, country, complexion,
+we, who are admitted into the secret, see her love rise naturally and
+necessarily out of the leading propensities of her nature.
+
+At the period of the story a spirit of wild adventure had seized all
+Europe. The discovery of both Indies was yet recent; over the shores of
+the western hemisphere still fable and mystery hung, with all their dim
+enchantments, visionary terrors, and golden promises! perilous
+expeditions and distant voyages were every day undertaken from hope of
+plunder, or mere love of enterprise; and from these the adventurers
+returned with tales of "Antres vast and desarts wild--of cannibals that
+did each other eat--of Anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow
+beneath their shoulders." With just such stories did Raleigh and
+Clifford, and their followers return from the New World: and thus by
+their splendid or fearful exaggerations, which the imperfect knowledge
+of those times could not refute, was the passion for the romantic and
+marvellous nourished at home, particularly among the women. A cavalier
+of those days had no nearer no surer way to his mistress's heart, than
+by entertaining her with these wondrous narratives. What was a general
+feature of his time, Shakspeare seized and adapted to his purpose with
+the most exquisite felicity of effect. Desdemona, leaving her household
+cares in haste, to hang breathless on Othello's tales, was doubtless a
+picture from the life; and her inexperience and her quick imagination
+lend it an added propriety: then her compassionate disposition is
+interested by all the disastrous chances, hair-breadth 'scapes, and
+moving accidents by flood and field, of which he has to tell; and her
+exceeding gentleness and timidity, and her domestic turn of mind, render
+her more easily captivated by the military renown, the valor, and lofty
+bearing of the noble Moor--
+
+    And to his honors and his valiant parts
+    Does she her soul and fortunes consecrate.
+
+The confession and the excuse for her love is well placed in the mouth
+of Desdemona, while the history of the rise of that love, and of his
+course of wooing, is, with the most graceful propriety, as far as she is
+concerned, spoken by Othello, and in her absence. The last two lines
+summing up the whole--
+
+    She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
+    And I loved her that she did pity them--
+
+comprise whole volumes of sentiment and metaphysics.
+
+Desdemona displays at times a transient energy, arising from the power
+of affection, but gentleness gives the prevailing tone to the
+character--gentleness in its excess--gentleness verging on
+passiveness--gentleness, which not only cannot resent,--but cannot
+resist.
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Then of so gentle a condition!
+
+                        IAGO.
+
+    Ay! too gentle.
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Nay, that's certain
+
+Here the exceeding softness of Desdemona's temper is turned against her
+by Iago, so that it suddenly strikes Othello in a new point of view, as
+the inability to resist temptation; but to us who perceive the character
+as a whole, this extreme gentleness of nature is yet delineated with
+such exceeding refinement, that the effect never approaches to
+feebleness. It is true that _once_ her extreme timidity leads her in a
+moment of confusion and terror to prevaricate about the fatal
+handkerchief. This handkerchief, in the original story of Cinthio, is
+merely one of those embroidered handkerchiefs which were as fashionable
+in Shakspeare's time as in our own; but the minute description of it as
+"lavorato alla morisco sottilissimamente,"[52] suggested to the poetical
+fancy of Shakspeare one of the most exquisite and characteristic
+passages in the whole play. Othello makes poor Desdemona believe that
+the handkerchief was a talisman.
+
+              There's magic in the web of it.
+    A sibyl, that had numbered in the world
+    The sun to make two hundred compasses,
+    In her prophetic fury sew'd the work:
+    The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,
+    And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful
+    Conserv'd of maidens' hearts.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Indeed! is't true?
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Most veritable, therefore look to't well.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Then would to heaven that I had never seen it!
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Ha! wherefore!
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Why do you speak so startingly and rash?
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Is't lost,--Is't gone? Speak, is it out of the way?
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Heavens bless us!
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Say you?
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    It is not lost--but what an' if it were?
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Ha!
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    I say it is not lost.
+
+                        OTHELLO.
+
+    Fetch it, let me see it.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    Why so I can, sir, but I will not now, &c.
+
+Desdemona, whose soft credulity, whose turn for the marvellous, whose
+susceptible imagination had first directed her thoughts and affections
+to Othello, is precisely the woman to be frightened out of her senses by
+such a tale as this, and betrayed by her fears into a momentary
+tergiversation. It is most natural in such a being, and shows us that
+even in the sweetest natures there can be no completeness and
+consistency without moral energy.[53]
+
+With the most perfect artlessness, she has something of the instinctive,
+unconscious address of her sex; as when she appeals to her father--
+
+    So much duty as my mother show'd
+    To you, preferring you before her father,
+    So much I challenge, that I may profess
+    Due to the Moor, my lord.
+
+And when she is pleading for Cassio--
+
+                    What! Michael Cassio!
+    That came a wooing with you; and many a time.
+    When I have spoken of you disparagingly,
+    Hath ta'en your part?
+
+In persons who unite great sensibility and lively fancy, I have often
+observed this particular species of address, which is always unconscious
+of itself, and consists in the power of placing ourselves in the
+position of another, and imagining, rather than perceiving, what is in
+their hearts. We women have this _address_ (if so it can be called)
+naturally, but I have seldom met with it in men. It is not inconsistent
+with extreme simplicity of character, and quite distinct from that kind
+of art which is the result of natural acuteness and habits of
+observation--quick to perceive the foibles of others, and as quick to
+turn them to its own purposes; which is always conscious of itself, and,
+if united with strong intellect, seldom perceptible to others. In the
+mention of her mother, and the appeal to Othello's self-love, Desdemona
+has no design formed on conclusions previously drawn; but her intuitive
+quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, lead her more safely to
+the same results, and the distinction is as truly as it is delicately
+drawn.
+
+When Othello first outrages her in a manner which appears inexplicable,
+she seeks and finds excuses for him. She is so innocent that not only
+she cannot believe herself suspected, but she cannot conceive the
+existence of guilt in others.
+
+              Something, sure, of state,
+    Either from Venice, or some unhatch'd practice
+    Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,
+    Hath puddled his clear spirit.
+                      'Tis even so--
+    Nay, we must think, men are not gods,
+    Nor of them look for such observances
+    As fit the bridal.
+
+And when the direct accusation of crime is flung on her in the vilest
+terms, it does not anger but stun her, as if it transfixed her whole
+being; she attempts no reply, no defence; and reproach or resistance
+never enters her thought.
+
+    Good friend, go to him--for by this light of heaven
+    I know not how I lost him: here I kneel:--
+    If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,
+    Either in discourse of thought or actual deed;
+    Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
+    Delighted them in any other form;
+    Or that I do not yet, and ever did,
+    And ever will, though he do shake me off
+    To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,
+    Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,
+    And his unkindness may defeat my life,
+    But never taint my love.
+
+And there is one stroke of consummate delicacy surprising, when we
+remember the latitude of expression prevailing in Shakspeare's time, and
+which he allowed to his other women generally: she says, on recovering
+from her stupefaction--
+
+    Am I that name, Iago?
+
+                        IAGO.
+
+    What name, sweet lady?
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    That which she says my lord did say I was.
+
+So completely did Shakspeare enter into the angelic refinement of the
+character.
+
+Endued with that temper which is the origin of superstition in love as
+in religion,--which, in fact makes love itself a religion,--she not
+only does not utter an upbraiding, but nothing that Othello does or
+says, no outrage, no injustice, can tear away the charm with which her
+imagination had invested him, or impair her faith in his honor; "Would
+you had never seen him!" exclaims Emilia.
+
+                        DESDEMONA.
+
+    So would not I!--my love doth so approve him,
+    That even his stubbornness, his checks and frowns
+    Have grace and favor in them.
+
+There is another peculiarity, which, in reading the play of Othello, we
+rather feel than perceive: through the whole of the dialogue
+appropriated to Desdemona, there is not one general observation. Words
+are with her the vehicle of sentiment, and never of reflection; so that
+I cannot find throughout a sentence of general application. The same
+remark applies to Miranda: and to no other female character of any
+importance or interest; not even to Ophelia.
+
+The rest of what I wished to say of Desdemona, has been anticipated by
+an anonymous critic, and so beautifully, so justly, so eloquently
+expressed, that I with pleasure erase my own page, to make room for his.
+
+"Othello," observes this writer, "is no love story; all that is below
+tragedy in the passion of love, is taken away at once, by the awful
+character of Othello; for such he seems to us to be designed to be. He
+appears never as a lover, but at once as a husband: and the relation of
+his love made dignified, as it is a husband's justification of his
+marriage, is also dignified, as it is a soldier's relation of his stern
+and perilous life. His love itself, as long as it is happy, is perfectly
+calm and serene--the protecting tenderness of a husband. It is not till
+it is disordered, that it appears as a passion: then is shown a power in
+contention with itself--a mighty being struck with death, and bringing
+up from all the depths of life convulsions and agonies. It is no
+exhibition of the power of the passion of love, but of the passion of
+life, vitally wounded, and self over-mastering. If Desdemona had been
+really guilty, the greatness would have been destroyed, because his love
+would have been unworthy, false. But she is good, and his love is most
+perfect, just, and good. That a man should place his perfect love on a
+wretched thing, is miserably debasing, and shocking to thought; but that
+loving perfectly and well, he should by hellish human circumvention be
+brought to distrust and dread, and abjure his own perfect love, is most
+mournful indeed--it is the infirmity of our good nature wrestling in
+vain with the strong powers of evil. Moreover, he would, had Desdemona
+been false, have been the mere victim of fate; whereas he is now in a
+manner his own victim. His happy love was heroic tenderness; his injured
+love is terrible passion, and disordered power, engendered within itself
+to its own destruction, is the height of all tragedy.
+
+"The character of Othello is perhaps the most greatly drawn, the most
+heroic of any of Shakspeare's actors; but it is, perhaps, that one also
+of which his reader last acquires the intelligence. The intellectual and
+warlike energy of his mind--his tenderness of affection--his loftiness
+of spirit--his frank, generous magnanimity--impetuosity like a
+thunderbolt--and that dark, fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting
+even his imagination,--compose a character entirely original, most
+difficult to delineate, but perfectly delineated."
+
+Emilia in this play is a perfect portrait from common life, a
+masterpiece in the Flemish style: and though not necessary as a
+contrast, it cannot be but that the thorough vulgarity, the loose
+principles of this plebeian woman, united to a high degree of spirit,
+energetic feeling, strong sense and low cunning, serve to place in
+brighter relief the exquisite refinement, the moral grace, the
+unblemished truth, and the soft submission of Desdemona.
+
+On the other perfections of this tragedy, considered as a production of
+genius--on the wonderful characters of Othello and Iago--on the skill
+with which the plot is conducted, and its simplicity which a
+word unravels,[54] and on the overpowering horror of the
+catastrophe--eloquence and analytical criticism have been exhausted; I
+will only add, that the source of the pathos throughout--of that pathos
+which at once softens and deepens the tragic effect--lies in the
+character of Desdemona. No woman differently constituted could have
+excited the same intense and painful compassion, without losing
+something of that exalted charm, which invests her from beginning to
+end, which we are apt to impute to the interest of the situation, and to
+the poetical coloring, but which lies, in fact, in the very essence of
+the character. Desdemona, with all her timid flexibility and soft
+acquiescence, is not weak; for the negative alone is weak; and the mere
+presence of goodness and affection implies in itself a species of power;
+power without consciousness, power without effort, power with
+repose--that soul of grace!
+
+I know a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the absence of intellectual
+power is never felt as a deficiency, nor the absence of energy of will
+as impairing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity, as a want
+of feeling: one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the sentiment of
+rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a
+necessary state of being, than an imposed law. No shade of sin or vanity
+has yet stolen over that bright innocence. No discord within has marred
+the loveliness without--no strife of the factitious world without has
+disturbed the harmony within. The comprehension of evil appears forever
+shut out, as if goodness had converted all things to itself; and all to
+the pure in heart must necessarily be pure. The impression produced is
+exactly that of the character of Desdemona; genius is a rare thing, but
+abstract goodness is rarer. In Desdemona, we cannot but feel that the
+slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have
+injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the
+first,--"an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final
+sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all
+truth! But, alas! to see her fluttering like a cherub in the talons of a
+fiend!--to see her--O poor Desdemona!
+
+
+IMOGEN.
+
+We come to Imogen. Others of Shakspeare's characters are, as dramatic
+and poetical conceptions, more striking, more brilliant, more powerful;
+but of all his women, considered as individuals rather than as heroines,
+Imogen is the most perfect. Portia and Juliet are pictured to the fancy
+with more force of contrast, more depth of light and shade; Viola and
+Miranda, with more aerial delicacy of outline; but there is no female
+portrait that can be compared to Imogen as a woman--none in which so
+great a variety of tints are mingled together into such perfect harmony.
+In her, we have all the fervor of youthful tenderness, all the romance
+of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of ideal grace,--the bloom of
+beauty, the brightness of intellect and the dignity of rank, taking a
+peculiar hue from the conjugal character which is shed over all, like a
+consecration and a holy charm. In Othello and the Winter's Tale, the
+interest excited for Desdemona and Hermione is divided with others: but
+in Cymbeline, Imogen is the angel of light, whose lovely presence
+pervades and animates the whole piece. The character altogether may be
+pronounced finer, more complex in its elements, and more fully developed
+in all its parts, than those of Hermione and Desdemona; but the position
+in which she is placed is not, I think, so fine--at least, not so
+effective, as a tragic situation.
+
+Shakspeare has borrowed the chief circumstances of Imogen's story from
+one of Boccaccio's tales.[55]
+
+A company of Italian merchants who are assembled in a tavern at Paris,
+are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives: all of them
+express themselves with levity, or skepticism, or scorn, on the virtue
+of women, except a young Genoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains,
+that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste
+than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments and the
+coarse raillery of another young merchant, Ambrogiolo, Bernabo proceeds
+to enumerate the various perfections and accomplishments of his Zinevra.
+He praises her loveliness, her submission, and her discretion--her skill
+in embroidery, her graceful service, in which the best trained page of
+the court could not exceed her; and he adds, as rarer accomplishments,
+that she could mount a horse, fly a hawk, write and read, and cast up
+accounts, as well as any merchant of them all. His enthusiasm only
+excites the laughter and mockery of his companions, particularly of
+Ambrogiolo, who, by the most artful mixture of contradiction and
+argument, rouses the anger of Bernabo, and he at length exclaims, that
+he would willingly stake his life, his head, on the virtue of his wife.
+This leads to the wager which forms so important an incident in the
+drama. Ambrogiolo bets one thousand florins of gold against five
+thousand, that Zinevra, like the rest of her sex, is accessible to
+temptation--that in less than three months he will undermine her virtue,
+and bring her husband the most undeniable proofs of her falsehood. He
+sets off for Genoa, in order to accomplish his purpose; but on his
+arrival, all that he learns, and all that he beholds with his own eyes,
+of the discreet and noble character of the lady, make him despair of
+success by fair means; he therefore has recourse to the basest
+treachery. By bribing an old woman in the service of Zinevra, he is
+conveyed to her sleeping apartment, concealed in a trunk, from which he
+issues in the dead of the night; he takes note of the furniture of the
+chamber, makes himself master of her purse, her morning robe, or cymar,
+and her girdle, and of a certain mark on her person. He repeats these
+observations for two nights, and, furnished with these evidences of
+Zinevra's guilt, he returns to Paris, and lays them before the wretched
+husband. Bernabo rejects every proof of his wife's infidelity except
+that which finally convinces Posthumus. When Ambrogiolo mentions the
+"mole, cinque-spotted," he stands like one who has received a poniard in
+his heart; without further dispute he pays down the forfeit, and filled
+with rage and despair both at the loss of his money and the falsehood of
+his wife, he returns towards Genoa; he retires to his country house, and
+sends a messenger to the city with letters to Zinevra, desiring that she
+would come and meet him, but with secret orders to the man to despatch
+her by the way. The servant prepares to execute his master's command,
+but overcome by her entreaties for mercy, and his own remorse, he spares
+her life, on condition that she will fly from the country forever. He
+then disguises her in his own cloak and cap, and brings back to her
+husband the assurance that she is killed, and that her body has been
+devoured by the wolves. In the disguise of a mariner, Zinevra then
+embarks on board a vessel bound to the Levant, and on arriving at
+Alexandria, she is taken into the service of the Sultan of Egypt, under
+the name of Sicurano; she gains the confidence of her master, who, not
+suspecting her sex, sends her as captain of the guard which was
+appointed for the protection of the merchants at the fair of Acre. Here
+she accidentally meets Ambrogiolo, and sees in his possession the purse
+and girdle, which she immediately recognizes as her own. In reply to her
+inquiries, he relates with fiendish exultation the manner in which he
+had obtained possession of them, and she persuades him to go back with
+her to Alexandria. She then sends a messenger to Genoa in the name of
+the Sultan, and induces her husband to come and settle in Alexandria. At
+a proper opportunity, she summons both to the presence of the Sultan,
+obliges Ambrogiolo to make a full confession of his treachery, and
+wrings from her husband the avowal of his supposed murder of herself:
+then falling at the feet of the Sultan discovers her real name and sex,
+to the great amazement of all. Bernabo is pardoned at the prayer of his
+wife, and Ambrogiolo is condemned to be fastened to a stake, smeared
+with honey, and left to be devoured by the flies and locusts. This
+horrible sentence is executed; while Zinevra, enriched by the presents
+of the Sultan, and the forfeit wealth of Ambrogiolo, returns with her
+husband to Genoa, where she lives in great honor and happiness, and
+maintains her reputation of virtue to the end of her life.
+
+These are the materials from which Shakspeare has drawn the dramatic
+situation of Imogen. He has also endowed her with several of the
+qualities which are attributed to Zinevra; but for the essential truth
+and beauty of the individual character, for the sweet coloring of
+pathos, and sentiment, and poetry interfused through the whole, he is
+indebted only to nature and himself.
+
+It would be a waste of words to refute certain critics who have accused
+Shakspeare of a want of judgment in the adoption of the story; of
+having transferred the manners of a set of intoxicated merchants and a
+merchant's wife to heroes and princesses, and of having entirely
+destroyed the interest of the catastrophe.[56] The truth is, that
+Shakspeare has wrought out the materials before him with the most
+luxuriant fancy and the most wonderful skill. As for the various
+anachronisms, and the confusion of names, dates, and manners, over which
+Dr. Johnson exults in no measured terms, the confusion is nowhere but in
+his own heavy obtuseness of sentiment and perception, and his want of
+poetical faith. Look into the old Italian poets, whom we read
+continually with still increasing pleasure; does any one think of
+sitting down to disprove the existence of Ariodante, king of Scotland?
+or to prove that the mention of Proteus and Pluto, baptism and the
+Virgin Mary, in a breath, amounts to an anachronism? Shakspeare, by
+throwing his story far back into a remote and uncertain age, has
+blended, by his "own omnipotent will," the marvellous, the heroic, the
+ideal, and the classical,--the extreme of refinement and the extreme of
+simplicity,--into one of the loveliest fictions of romantic poetry; and,
+to use Schlegel's expression, "has made the social manners of the latest
+times harmonize with heroic deeds, and even with the appearances of the
+gods."[57]
+
+But, admirable as is the conduct of the whole play, rich in variety of
+character and in picturesque incident, its chief beauty and interest is
+derived from Imogen.
+
+When Ferdinand tells Miranda that she was "created of every creature's
+best," he speaks like a lover, or refers only to her personal charms:
+the same expression might be applied critically to the character of
+Imogen; for, as the portrait of Miranda is produced by resolving the
+female character into its original elements, so that of Imogen unites
+the greatest number of those qualities which we imagine to constitute
+excellency in woman.
+
+Imogen, like Juliet, conveys to our mind the impression of extreme
+simplicity in the midst of the most wonderful complexity. To conceive
+her aright, we must take some peculiar tint from many characters, and so
+mingle them, that, like the combination of hues in a sunbeam, the effect
+shall be as one to the eye. We must imagine something of the romantic
+enthusiasm of Juliet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the
+dignified purity of Isabel, of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the
+self-possession and intellect of Portia--combined together so equally
+and so harmoniously, that we can scarcely say that one quality
+predominates over the other. But Imogen is less imaginative than Juliet,
+less spirited and intellectual than Portia, less serious than Helen and
+Isabel; her dignity is not so imposing as that of Hermione, it stands
+more on the defensive; her submission, though unbounded, is not so
+passive as that of Desdemona; and thus while she resembles each of
+these characters individually, she stands wholly distinct from all.
+
+It is true, that the conjugal tenderness of Imogen is at once the chief
+subject of the drama, and the pervading charm of her character; but it
+is not true, I think, that she is merely interesting from her tenderness
+and constancy to her husband. We are so completely let into the essence
+of Imogen's nature, that we feel as if we had known and loved her before
+she was married to Posthumus, and that her conjugal virtues are a charm
+superadded, like the color laid upon a beautiful groundwork. Neither
+does it appear to me, that Posthumus is unworthy of Imogen, or only
+interesting on Imogen's account. His character, like those of all the
+other persons of the drama, is kept subordinate to hers: but this could
+not be otherwise, for she is the proper subject--the heroine of the
+poem. Every thing is done to ennoble Posthumus, and justify her love for
+him; and though we certainly approve him more for her sake than for his
+own, we are early prepared to view him with Imogen's eyes; and not only
+excuse, but sympathize in her admiration of one
+
+    Who sat 'mongst men like a descended god.
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Who lived in court, which it is rare to do,
+    Most praised, most loved:
+    A sample to the youngest; to the more mature,
+    A glass that feated them.
+
+And with what beauty and delicacy is her conjugal and matronly
+character discriminated! Her love for her husband is as deep as Juliet's
+for her lover, but without any of that headlong vehemence, that
+fluttering amid hope, fear, and transport--that giddy intoxication of
+heart and sense, which belongs to the novelty of passion, which we feel
+once, and but once, in our lives. We see her love for Posthumus acting
+upon her mind with the force of an habitual feeling, heightened by
+enthusiastic passion, and hallowed by the sense of duty. She asserts and
+justifies her affection with energy indeed, but with a calm and
+wife-like dignity:--
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+    Thou took'st a beggar, would'st have made my throne
+    A seat for baseness.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                   No, I rather added a lustre to it
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+              O thou vile one!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                                      Sir,
+    It is your fault that I have loved Posthumus;
+    You bred him as my playfellow, and he is
+    A man worth any woman; overbuys me,
+    Almost the sum he pays.
+
+Compare also, as examples of the most delicate discrimination of
+character and feeling, the parting scene between Imogen and Posthumus,
+that between Romeo and Juliet, and that between Troilus and Cressida:
+compare the confiding matronly tenderness, the deep but resigned sorrow
+of Imogen, with the despairing agony of Juliet, and the petulant grief
+of Cressida.
+
+When Posthumus is driven into exile, he comes to take a last farewell of
+his wife:--
+
+                       IMOGEN.
+
+                      My dearest husband,
+    I something fear my father's wrath, but nothing
+    (Always reserved my holy duty) what
+    His rage can do on me. You must be gone,
+    And I shall here abide the hourly shot
+    Of angry eyes: not comforted to live,
+    But that there is this jewel in the world
+    That I may see again.
+
+                        POSTHUMUS.
+
+                      My queen! my mistress!
+    O, lady, weep no more! lest I give cause
+    To be suspected of more tenderness
+    Than doth become a man. I will remain
+    The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                  Should we be taking leave
+    As long a term as yet we have to live,
+    The loathness to depart would grow--Adieu!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Nay, stay a little:
+    Were you but riding forth to air yourself,
+    Such parting were too petty. Look here, love,
+    This diamond was my mother's; take it, heart
+    But keep it till you woo another wife,
+    When Imogen is dead!
+
+Imogen, in whose tenderness there is nothing jealous or fantastic, does
+not seriously apprehend that her husband will woo another wife when she
+is dead. It is one of those fond fancies which women are apt to express
+in moments of feeling, merely for the pleasure of hearing a protestation
+to the contrary. When Posthumus leaves her, she does not burst forth in
+eloquent lamentation; but that silent, stunning, overwhelming sorrow,
+which renders the mind insensible to all things else, is represented
+with equal force and simplicity.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    There cannot be a pinch in death
+    More sharp than this is.
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+                    O disloyal thing,
+    That should'st repair my youth; thou heapeat
+    A year's age on me!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                      I beseech you, sir,
+    Harm not yourself with your vexation; I
+    Am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare[58]
+    Subdues all pangs, all fears.
+
+                        CYMBELINE.
+
+                          Past grace? obedience?
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Past hope and in despair--that way past grace.
+
+In the same circumstances, the impetuous excited feelings of Juliet,
+and her vivid imagination, lend something far more wildly agitated, more
+intensely poetical and passionate to her grief.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    Art thou gone so? My love, my lord, my friend!
+    I must hear from thee every day i' the hour,
+    For in a minute there are many days--
+    O by this count I shall be much in years,
+    Ere I again behold my Romeo!
+
+                        ROMEO.
+
+    Farewell! I will omit no opportunity
+    That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    O! think'st thou we shall ever meet again?
+
+                        ROMEO.
+
+    I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve
+    For sweet discourses in our time to come.
+
+                        JULIET.
+
+    O God! I have an ill-divining soul:
+    Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
+    As one dead in the bottom of a tomb:
+    Either my eye-sight fails, or thou look'st pale.
+
+We have no sympathy with the pouting disappointment of Cressida, which
+is just like that of a spoilt child which has lost its sugar-plum,
+without tenderness, passions, or poetry: and, in short, perfectly
+characteristic of that vain, fickle, dissolute, heartless
+woman,--"unstable as water."
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    And is it true that I must go from Troy?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    A hateful truth.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+                      What, and from Troilus too?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    From Troy and Troilus.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+                          Is it possible?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    And suddenly.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    I must then to the Greeks?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+                              No remedy.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    A woeful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks!
+    When shall we see again?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    Hear me, my love. Be thou but true of heart--
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    I true! How now? what wicked deem is this?
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+    Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,
+    For it is parting from us;
+    I speak not, be thou true, as fearing thee;
+    For I will throw my glove to Death himself
+    That there's no maculation in thy heart:
+    But be thou true, say I, to fashion in
+    My sequent protestation. Be thou true,
+    And I will see thee.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+                        O heavens! be true again--
+    O heavens! you love me not.
+
+                        TROILUS.
+
+                    Die I a villain, then!
+    In this I do not call your faith in question,
+    So mainly as my merit--
+                        --But be not tempted.
+
+                        CRESSIDA.
+
+    Do you think I will?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the eagerness of Imogen to meet her husband there is all a wife's
+fondness, mixed up with the breathless hurry arising from a sudden and
+joyful surprise; but nothing of the picturesque eloquence, the ardent,
+exuberant, Italian imagination of Juliet, who, to gratify her
+impatience, would have her heralds thoughts;--press into her service the
+nimble pinioned doves, and wind-swift Cupids,--change the course of
+nature, and lash the steeds of Phoebus to the west. Imogen only thinks
+"one score of miles, 'twixt sun and sun," slow travelling for a lover,
+and wishes for a horse with wings--
+
+    O for a horse with wings! Hear'st thou, Pisanio?
+    He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me
+    How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs
+    May plod it in a week, why may not I
+    Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio,
+    (Who long'st like me, to see thy lord--who long'st--
+    O let me bate, but not like me--yet long'st,
+    But in a fainter kind--O not like me,
+    For mine's beyond beyond,) say, and speak thick--
+    (Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing
+    To the smothering of the sense)--how far is it
+    To this same blessed Milford? And by the way,
+    Tell me how Wales was made so happy, as
+    To inherit such a haven. But, first of all,
+    How we may steal from hence; and for the gap
+    That we shall make in time, from our hence going
+    And our return, to excuse. But first, how get hence.
+    Why should excuse be born, or e'er begot?
+    We'll talk of that hereafter. Pr'ythee speak,
+    How many score of miles may we well ride
+    'Twixt hour and hour?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                        One score, 'twixt sun and sun,
+    Madam, 's enough for you; and too much too.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Why, one that rode to his execution, man,
+    Could never go so slow!
+
+There are two or three other passages bearing on the conjugal tenderness
+of Imogen, which must be noticed for the extreme intensity of the
+feeling, and the unadorned elegance of the expression.
+
+    I would thou grew'st unto the shores o' the haven
+    And question'dst every sail: if he should write,
+    And I not have it, 'twere a paper lost
+    As offer'd mercy is. What was the last
+    That he spake to thee?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                          'Twas, His queen! his queen!
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Then wav'd his hankerchief?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                              And kiss'd it, madam.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    Senseless linen! happier therein than I!--
+    And that was all?
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                    No, madam; for so long
+    As he could make me with this eye or ear
+    Distinguish him from others, he did keep
+    The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief
+    Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind
+    Could best express how slow his soul sail'd on,
+    How swift his ship.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                      Thou should'st have made him
+    As little as a crow, or less, ere left
+    To after-eye him.
+
+                        PISANIO.
+
+                      Madam, so I did.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+    I would have broke my eye-strings; cracked them, but
+    To look upon him; till the diminution
+    Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
+    Nay, followed him, till he had melted from
+    The smallness of a gnat to air; and then
+    Have turn'd mine eye, and wept.
+
+Two little incidents, which are introduced with the most unobtrusive
+simplicity, convey the strongest impression of her tenderness for her
+husband, and with that perfect unconsciousness on her part, which adds
+to the effect. Thus when she has lost her bracelet--
+
+                            Go, bid my woman
+    Search for a jewel, that too casually,
+    Hath left my arm. It was thy master's: 'shrew me,
+    If I would lose it for a revenue
+    Of any king in Europe. I do think
+    I saw't this morning; confident I am,
+    Last night 'twas on mine arm--_I kiss'd it.
+    I hope it has not gone to tell my lord
+    That I kiss aught but he._
+
+It has been well observed, that our consciousness that the bracelet is
+really gone to bear false witness against her, adds an inexpressibly
+touching effect to the simplicity and tenderness of the sentiment.
+
+And again, when she opens her bosom to meet the death to which her
+husband has doomed her, she finds his letters preserved next her heart
+
+                                     What's here!
+    The letters of the loyal Leonatus?--
+    Soft, we'll no defence.
+
+The scene in which Posthumus stakes his ring on the virtue of his wife,
+and gives Iachimo permission to tempt her, is taken from the story. The
+baseness and folly of such conduct have been justly censured; but
+Shakspeare, feeling that Posthumus needed every excuse, has managed the
+quarrelling scene between him and Iachimo with the most admirable
+skill. The manner in which his high spirit is gradually worked up by the
+taunts of this Italian fiend, is contrived with far more probability,
+and much less coarseness, than in the original tale. In the end he is
+not the challenger, but the challenged; and could hardly (except on a
+moral principle, much too refined for those rude times) have declined
+the wager without compromising his own courage and his faith in the
+honor of Imogen.
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     I durst attempt it against any lady in the world.
+
+                         POSTHUMUS.
+
+     You are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion; and I
+     doubt not you sustain what you're worthy of, by your
+     attempt.
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     What's that?
+
+                         POSTHUMUS.
+
+     A repulse: though your _attempt_, as you call it, deserve
+     more--a punishment too.
+
+                         PHILARIO.
+
+     Gentlemen, enough of this. It came in too suddenly; let it
+     die as it was born, and I pray you be better acquainted.
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     Would I had put my estate and my neighbor's on the
+     approbation of what I have said!
+
+                         POSTHUMUS.
+
+     What lady would you choose to assail?
+
+                         IACHIMO.
+
+     Yours, whom in constancy you think stands so safe
+
+In the interview between Imogen and Iachimo, he does not begin his
+attack on her virtue by a direct accusation against Posthumus; but by
+dark hints and half-uttered insinuations, such as Iago uses to madden
+Othello, he intimates that her husband, in his absence from her, has
+betrayed her love and truth, and forgotten her in the arms of another.
+All that Imogen says in this scene is comprised in a few lines--a brief
+question, or a more brief remark. The proud and delicate reserve with
+which she veils the anguish she suffers, is inimitably beautiful. The
+strongest expression of reproach he can draw from her, is only, "My
+lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." When he continues in the same strain,
+she exclaims in an agony, "Let me hear no more." When he urges her to
+revenge, she asks, with all the simplicity of virtue, "How should I be
+revenged?" And when he explains to her how she is to be avenged, her
+sudden burst of indignation, and her immediate perception of his
+treachery, and the motive for it, are powerfully fine: it is not only
+the anger of a woman whose delicacy has been shocked, but the spirit of
+a princess insulted in her court.
+
+    Away! I do condemn mine ears, that have
+    So long attended thee. If thou wert honorable,
+    Thou would'st have told this tale for virtue not
+    For such an end thou seek'st, as base as strange
+    Thou wrong'st a gentleman, who is as far
+    From thy report as thou from honor; and
+    Solicit'st here a lady that disdains
+    Thee and the devil alike.
+
+It has been remarked, that "her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false
+imputation, and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes,
+and may show that where there is a real attachment to virtue, there is
+no need of an outrageous antipathy to vice."[59]
+
+This is true; but can we fail to perceive that the instant and ready
+forgiveness of Imogen is accounted for, and rendered more graceful and
+characteristic by the very means which Iachimo employs to win it? He
+pours forth the most enthusiastic praises of her husband, professes that
+he merely made this trial of her out of his exceeding love for
+Posthumus, and she is pacified at once; but, with exceeding delicacy of
+feeling, she is represented as maintaining her dignified reserve and her
+brevity of speech to the end of the scene.[60]
+
+We must also observe how beautifully the character of Imogen is
+distinguished from those of Desdemona and Hermione. When she is made
+acquainted with her husband's cruel suspicions, we see in her deportment
+neither the meek submission of the former, nor the calm resolute dignity
+of the latter. The first effect produced on her by her husband's letter
+is conveyed to the fancy by the exclamation of Pisanio, who is gazing on
+her as she reads.--
+
+    What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper
+    Has cut her throat already! No, 'tis slander,
+    Whose edge is sharper than the sword!
+
+And in her first exclamations we trace, besides astonishment and
+anguish, and the acute sense of the injustice inflicted on her, a flash
+of indignant spirit, which we do not find in Desdemona or Hermione
+
+    False to his bed!--What is it to be false?
+    To lie in watch there, and to think of him?
+    To weep 'twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,
+    To break it with a fearful dream of him,
+    And cry myself awake?--that's false to his bed,
+    Is it?
+
+This is followed by that affecting lamentation over the falsehood and
+injustice of her husband, in which she betrays no atom of jealousy or
+wounded self-love, but observes in the extremity of her anguish, that
+after _his_ lapse from truth, "all good seeming would be discredited,"
+and she then resigns herself to his will with the most entire
+submission.
+
+In the original story, Zinevra prevails on the servant to spare her, by
+her exclamations and entreaties for mercy. "The lady, seeing the
+poniard, and hearing those words, exclaimed in terror, 'Alas! have pity
+on me for the love of Heaven! do not become the slayer of one who never
+offended thee, only to pleasure another. God, who knows all things,
+knows that I have never done that which could merit such a reward from
+my husband's hand.'"
+
+Now let us turn to Shakspeare. Imogen says,--
+
+              Come, fellow, be thou honest;
+    Do thou thy master's bidding: when thou seest him,
+    A little witness my obedience. Look!
+    I draw the sword myself; take it, and hit
+    The innocent mansion of my love, my heart.
+    Fear not; 'tis empty of all things but grief:
+    Thy master is not there, who was, indeed,
+    The riches of it. Do his bidding; strike!
+
+The devoted attachment of Pisanio to his royal mistress, all through the
+piece, is one of those side touches by which Shakspeare knew how to give
+additional effect to his characters.
+
+Cloten is odious;[61] but we must not overlook the peculiar fitness and
+propriety of his character, in connection with that of Imogen. He is
+precisely the kind of man who would be most intolerable to such a woman.
+He is a fool,--so is Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek: but the folly
+of Cloten is not only ridiculous, but hateful; it arises not so much
+from a want of understanding as a total want of heart; it is the
+perversion of sentiment, rather than the deficiency of intellect; he has
+occasional gleams of sense, but never a touch of feeling. Imogen
+describes herself not only as "sprighted with a fool," but as "frighted
+and anger'd worse." No other fool but Cloten--a compound of the booby
+and the villain--could excite in such a mind as Imogen's the same
+mixture of terror, contempt, and abhorrence. The stupid, obstinate
+malignity of Cloten, and the wicked machinations of the queen--
+
+    A father cruel, and a step-dame false,
+    A foolish suitor to a wedded lady--
+
+justify whatever might need excuse in the conduct of Imogen--as her
+concealed marriage and her flight from her father's court--and serve to
+call out several of the most beautiful and striking parts of her
+character: particularly that decision and vivacity of temper, which in
+her harmonize so beautifully with exceeding delicacy, sweetness, and
+submission.
+
+In the scene with her detested suitor, there is at first a careless
+majesty of disdain, which is admirable.
+
+                         I am much sorry, sir,
+    You put me to forget a lady's manners,
+    By being so verbal;[62] and learn now, for all,
+    That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce,
+    By the very truth of it, I care not for you,
+    And am so near the lack of charity,
+    (T' accuse myself,) I hate you; which I had rather
+    You felt, than make 't my boast.
+
+But when he dares to provoke her, by reviling the absent Posthumus, her
+indignation heightens her scorn, and her scorn sets a keener edge on her
+indignation.
+
+                        CLOTEN.
+
+    For the contract you pretend with that base wretch,
+    One bred of alms, and fostered with cold dishes,
+    With scraps o' the court; it is no contract, none.
+
+                        IMOGEN.
+
+                      Profane fellow!
+    Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more,
+    But what thou art, besides, thou wert too base
+    To be his groom; thou wert dignified enough,
+    Even to the point of envy, if 'twere made
+    Comparative for your virtues, to be styl'd
+    The under hangman of his kingdom; and hated
+    For being preferr'd so well.
+
+    He never can meet more mischance than come
+    To be but nam'd of thee. His meanest garment
+    That ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer
+    In my respect, than all the hairs above thee.
+    Were they all made such men.
+
+One thing more must be particularly remarked because it serves to
+individualize the character from the beginning to the end of the poem.
+We are constantly sensible that Imogen, besides being a tender and
+devoted woman, is a princess and a beauty, at the same time that she is
+ever superior to her position and her external charms. There is, for
+instance, a certain airy majesty of deportment--a spirit of accustomed
+command breaking out every now and then--the dignity, without the
+assumption of rank and royal birth, which is apparent in the scene with
+Cloten and elsewhere; and we have not only a general impression that
+Imogen, like other heroines, is beautiful, but the peculiar style and
+character of her beauty is placed before us: we have an image of the
+most luxuriant loveliness, combined with exceeding delicacy, and even
+fragility of person: of the most refined elegance, and the most
+exquisite modesty, set forth in one or two passages of description; as
+when Iachimo is contemplating her asleep:--
+
+                                 Cytherea,
+    How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily.
+    And whiter than the sheets.
+
+                         'Tis her breathing that
+    Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper
+    Bows toward her; and would underpeep her lids
+    To see the enclos'd lights, now canopied
+    Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd
+    With blue of heaven's own tinct!
+
+The preservation of her feminine character under her masculine attire;
+her delicacy, her modesty, and her timidity, are managed with the same
+perfect consistency and unconscious grace as in Viola. And we must not
+forget that her "neat cookery," which is so prettily eulogized by
+Guiderius:--
+
+    He cuts out roots in characters,
+    And sauc'd our broths, as Juno had been sick,
+    And he her dieter,
+
+formed part of the education of a princess in those remote times.
+
+Few reflections of a general nature are put into the mouth of Imogen;
+and what she says is more remarkable for sense, truth, and tender
+feeling, than for wit, or wisdom, or power of imagination. The following
+little touch of poetry reminds us of Juliet:--
+
+                                Ere I could
+    Give him that parting kiss, which I had set
+    Between two charming words, comes in my father;
+    And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,
+    Shakes all our buds from growing.
+
+Her exclamation on opening her husband's letter reminds us of the
+profound and thoughtful tenderness of Helen:--
+
+    O learned indeed were that astronomer
+    That knew the stars, as I his characters!
+    He'd lay the future open.
+
+The following are more in the manner of Isabel:--
+
+                             Most miserable
+    Is the desire that's glorious: bless'd be those,
+    How mean soe'er, that have their honest wills,
+    That seasons comfort,
+                  Against self-slaughter
+    There is a prohibition so divine
+    That cravens my weak hand.
+
+    Thus may poor fools
+    Believe false teachers; though those that are betray'd
+    Do feel the reason sharply, yet the traitor
+    Stands in worse case of woe,
+    Are we not brothers?
+
+                So man and man should be;
+    But clay and clay differs in dignity,
+    Whose dust is both alike.
+
+                Will poor folks lie
+    That have afflictions on them, knowing 'tis
+    A punishment or trial? Yes: no wonder,
+    When rich ones scarce tell true: to lapse in fulness
+    Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood
+    Is worse in kings than beggars.
+
+The sentence which follows, and which I believe has become proverbial,
+has much of the manner of Portia, both in the thought and the
+expression:--
+
+    Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
+    Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume
+    Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;
+    In a great pool, a swan's nest; pr'ythee, think
+    There's livers out of Britain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The catastrophe of this play has been much admired for the peculiar
+skill with which all the various threads of interest are gathered
+together at last, and entwined with the destiny of Imogen. It may be
+added, that one of its chief beauties is the manner in which the
+character of Imogen is not only preserved, but rises upon us to the
+conclusion with added grace: her instantaneous forgiveness of her
+husband before he even asks it, when she flings herself at once into his
+arms--
+
+    Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?
+
+and her magnanimous reply to her father, when he tells her, that by the
+discovery of her two brothers she has lost a kingdom--
+
+    No--I have gain'd two worlds by it--
+
+clothing a noble sentiment in a noble image, give the finishing touches
+of excellence to this most enchanting portrait.
+
+On the whole, Imogen is a lovely compound of goodness, truth, and
+affection, with just so much of passion and intellect and poetry, as
+serve to lend to the picture that power and glowing richness of effect
+which it would otherwise have wanted; and of her it might be said, if we
+could condescend to quote from any other poet with Shakespeare open
+before us, that "her person was a paradise, and her soul the cherub to
+guard it."[63]
+
+
+CORDELIA.
+
+There is in the beauty of Cordelia's character an effect too sacred for
+words, and almost too deep for tears; within her heart is a fathomless
+well of purest affection, but its waters sleep in silence and
+obscurity,--never failing in their depth and never overflowing in their
+fulness. Every thing in her seems to lie beyond our view, and affects us
+in a manner which we feel rather than perceive. The character appears to
+have no surface, no salient points upon which the fancy can readily
+seize: there is little external development of intellect, less of
+passion, and still less of imagination. It is completely made out in the
+course of a few scenes, and we are surprised to find that in those few
+scenes there is matter for a life of reflection, and materials enough
+for twenty heroines. If Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies,
+Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and
+holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of
+selfishness and passion, approaches near to perfection; and in her
+adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action,
+may be pronounced altogether perfect. The character, to speak of it
+critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be comprehended
+at once, or easily; and in the same manner Cordelia, as a woman, is one
+whom we must have loved before we could have known her, and known her
+long before we could have known her truly.
+
+Most people, I believe, have heard the story of the young German artist
+Mueller, who, while employed in copying and engraving Raffaelle's Madonna
+del Sisto, was so penetrated by its celestial beauty, so distrusted his
+own power to do justice to it, that between admiration and despair he
+fell into a sadness; thence through the usual gradations, into a
+melancholy, thence into madness; and died just as he had put the
+finishing stroke to his own matchless work, which had occupied him for
+eight years. With some slight tinge of this concentrated kind of
+enthusiasm I have learned to contemplate the character of Cordelia; I
+have looked into it till the revelation of its hidden beauty, and an
+intense feeling of the wonderful genius which created it, have filled me
+at once with delight and despair. Like poor Mueller, but with more
+reason, I _do_ despair of ever conveying, through a different and
+inferior medium, the impression made on my own mind to the mind of
+another.
+
+Schlegel, the most eloquent of critics, concludes his remarks on King
+Lear with these words: "Of the heavenly beauty of soul of Cordelia, I
+will not venture to speak." Now if I attempt what Schlegel and others
+have left undone, it is because I feel that this general acknowledgment
+of her excellence can neither satisfy those who have studied the
+character, nor convey a just conception of it to the mere reader. Amid
+the awful, the overpowering interest of the story, amid the terrible
+convulsions of passion and suffering, and pictures of moral and physical
+wretchedness which harrow up the soul, the tender influence of Cordelia,
+like that of a celestial visitant, is felt and acknowledged without
+being quite understood. Like a soft star that shines for a moment from
+behind a stormy cloud and the next is swallowed up in tempest and
+darkness, the impression it leaves is beautiful and deep,--but vague.
+Speak of Cordelia to a critic or to a general reader, all agree in the
+beauty of the portrait, for all must feel it; but when we come to
+details, I have heard more various and opposite opinions relative to her
+than any other of Shakspeare's characters--a proof of what I have
+advanced in the first instance, that from the simplicity with which the
+character is dramatically treated, and the small space it occupies, few
+are aware of its internal power, or its wonderful depth of purpose.
+
+It appears to me that the whole character rests upon the two sublimest
+principles of human action, the love of truth and the sense of duty; but
+these, when they stand alone, (as in the Antigone,) are apt to strike us
+as severe and cold. Shakspeare has, therefore, wreathed them round with
+the dearest attributes of our feminine nature, the power of feeling and
+inspiring affection. The first part of the play shows us how Cordelia is
+loved, the second part how she can love. To her father she is the object
+of a secret preference, his agony at her supposed unkindness draws from
+him the confession, that he had loved her most, and "thought to set his
+rest on her kind nursery." Till then she had been "his best object, the
+argument of his praise, balm of his age, most best, most dearest!" The
+faithful and worthy Kent is ready to brave death and exile in her
+defence: and afterwards a farther impression of her benign sweetness is
+conveyed in a simple and beautiful manner, when we are told that "since
+the lady Cordelia went to France, her father's poor fool had much pined
+away." We have her sensibility "when patience and sorrow strove which
+should express her goodliest:" and all her filial tenderness when she
+commits her poor father to the care of the physician, when she hangs
+over him as he is sleeping, and kisses him as she contemplates the wreck
+of grief and majesty.
+
+    O my dear father! restoration hang
+    Its medicine on my lips: and let this kiss
+    Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
+    Have in thy reverence made!
+    Had you not been their father, these white flakes
+    Had challenged pity of them! Was this a face
+    To be exposed against the warring winds,
+    To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder
+    In the most terrible and nimble stroke
+    Of quick cross lightning? to watch, (poor perdu!)
+    With thin helm? mine enemy's dog,
+    Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
+    Against my fire.
+
+Her mild magnanimity shines out in her farewell to her sisters, of whose
+real character she is perfectly aware:--
+
+    Ye jewels of our father! with washed eyes
+    Cordelia leaves you! I know ye what ye are,
+    And like a sister, am most loath to call
+    Your faults as they are nam'd. Use well our father,
+    To your professed bosoms I commit him.
+    But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,
+    I would commend him to a better place;
+    So farewell to you both.
+
+                        GONERIL.
+
+    Prescribe not us our duties!
+
+The modest pride with which she replies to the Duke of Burgundy is
+admirable; this whole passage is too illustrative of the peculiar
+character of Cordelia, as well as too exquisite, to be mutilated
+
+                  I yet beseech your majesty,
+    (If, for I want that glib and oily heart,
+    To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend
+    I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known,
+    It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
+    No unchaste action, or dishonored step
+    That hath deprived me of your grace and favor;
+    But even for want of that, for which I am richer;
+    A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue
+    I am glad I have not, tho' not to have it
+    Hath lost me in your liking.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+                                Better thou
+    Hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better.
+
+                        FRANCE.
+
+    Is it but this? a tardiness of nature,
+    That often leaves the history unspoke
+    Which it intends to do?--My lord of Burgundy,
+    What say you to the lady? love is not love
+    When it is mingled with respects that stand
+    Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
+    She is herself a dowry.
+
+                        BURGUNDY.
+
+                            Royal Lear,
+    Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
+    And here I take Cordelia by the hand
+    Duchess of Burgundy.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.
+
+                        BURGUNDY.
+
+    I am sorry, then, you have lost a father
+    That you must lose a husband.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                 Peace be with Burgundy!
+    Since that respects of fortune are his love,
+    I shall not be his wife.
+
+                        FRANCE.
+
+    Fairest Cordelia! thou art more rich, being poor,
+    Most choice, forsaken, and most lov'd, despised!
+    Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.
+
+She takes up arms, "not for ambition, but a dear father's right." In her
+speech after her defeat, we have a calm fortitude and elevation of soul,
+arising from the consciousness of duty, and lifting her above all
+consideration of self. She observes,--
+
+                      We are not the first
+    Who with best meaning have incurred the worst!
+
+She thinks and fears only for her father.
+
+    For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;
+    Myself would else out-frown false fortune's frown.
+
+To complete the picture, her very voice is characteristic, "ever soft,
+gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman."
+
+But it will be said, that the qualities here exemplified--as
+sensibility, gentleness, magnanimity, fortitude, generous affection--are
+qualities which belong, in their perfection, to others of Shakspeare's
+characters--to Imogen, for instance, who unites them all; and yet Imogen
+and Cordelia are wholly unlike each other. Even though we should reverse
+their situations, and give to Imogen the filial devotion of Cordelia,
+and to Cordelia the conjugal virtues of Imogen, still they would remain
+perfectly distinct as women. What is it, then, which lends to Cordelia
+that peculiar and individual truth of character, which distinguishes her
+from every other human being?
+
+It is a natural reserve, a tardiness of disposition, "which often leaves
+the history unspoke which it intends to do;" a subdued quietness of
+deportment and expression, a veiled shyness thrown over all her
+emotions, her language and her manner; making the outward demonstration
+invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. Not only
+is the portrait singularly beautiful and interesting in itself, but the
+conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of
+the story, is rendered consistent and natural by the wonderful truth and
+delicacy with which this peculiar disposition is sustained throughout
+the play.
+
+In early youth, and more particularly if we are gifted with a lively
+imagination, such a character as that of Cordelia is calculated above
+every other to impress and captivate us. Any thing like mystery, any
+thing withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by
+awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half perceive
+and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed.
+But this feeling is a part of our young life: when time and years have
+chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor
+from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out
+of which we build a shrine for our idol--then do we seek, we ask, we
+thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness, which revives in
+us the withered affections and feelings, buried but not dead. Then the
+excess of love is welcomed, not repelled: it is gracious to us as the
+sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk, with its few green leaves.
+Lear is old--"fourscore and upward"--but we see what he has been in
+former days: the ardent passions of youth have turned to rashness and
+wilfulness: he is long passed that age when we are more blessed in what
+we bestow than in what we receive. When he says to his daughters, "I
+gave ye all!" we feel that he requires all in return, with a jealous,
+restless, exacting affection which defeats its own wishes. How many such
+are there in the world! How many to sympathize with the fiery, fond old
+man, when he shrinks as if petrified from Cordelia's quiet calm reply!
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+                        Now our joy,
+    Although the last not least--
+    What can you say to draw
+    A third more opulent than your sisters'? Speak!
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    Nothing, my lord.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Nothing!
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+             Nothing.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Nothing can come of nothing: speak again!
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    Unhappy that I am! I cannot heave
+    My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
+    According to my bond; nor more, nor less.
+
+Now this is perfectly natural. Cordelia has penetrated the vile
+characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious, that, in proportion as her
+own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross
+hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their "plaited
+cunning;" and would retire from all competition with what she so
+disdains and abhors,--even into the opposite extreme? In such a case, as
+she says herself--
+
+    What should Cordelia do?--love and be silent?
+
+For the very expressions of Lear--
+
+               What can you say to draw
+    A third more opulent than your sisters'?
+
+are enough to strike dumb forever a generous, delicate, but shy
+disposition, such as Cordelia's, by holding out a bribe for professions.
+
+If Cordelia were not thus portrayed, this deliberate coolness would
+strike us as verging on harshness or obstinacy; but it is beautifully
+represented as a certain modification of character, the necessary result
+of feelings habitually, if not naturally, repressed: and through the
+whole play we trace the same peculiar and individual disposition--the
+same absence of all display--the same sobriety of speech veiling the
+most profound affections--the same quiet steadiness of purpose--the same
+shrinking from all exhibition of emotion.
+
+"Tous les sentimens naturels ont leur pudeur," was a _viva voce_
+observation of Madame de Stael, when disgusted by the sentimental
+affectation of her imitators. This "pudeur," carried to an excess,
+appears to me the peculiar characteristic of Cordelia. Thus, in the
+description of her deportment when she receives the letter of the Earl
+of Kent, informing her of the cruelty of her sisters and the wretched
+condition of Lear, we seem to have her before us:--
+
+                        KENT.
+
+    Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief?
+
+                        GENTLEMAN.
+
+    Ay, sir, she took them, and read them in my presence
+    And now and then an ample tear stole down
+    Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen
+    Over her passion; who, most rebel-like
+    Sought to be king over her.
+
+                        KENT.
+
+    O then it moved her!
+
+                        GENTLEMAN.
+
+                        Not to a rage.
+    Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father
+    Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart,
+    Cried, _Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! Sisters!
+    What, i' the storm? i' the night?
+    Let pity not be believed._ Then she shook
+    The holy water from her heavenly eyes;
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                      Then away she started,
+    To deal with grief alone.
+
+Here the last line--the image brought before us of Cordelia starting
+away from observation, "to deal with grief alone," is as exquisitely
+beautiful as it is characteristic.
+
+But all the passages hitherto quoted must yield in beauty and power to
+that scene, in which her poor father recognizes her, and in the
+intervals of distraction asks forgiveness of his wronged child. The
+subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's character, her quiet but
+intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man,
+are brought before us in so few words, and at the same time sustained
+with such a deep intuitive knowledge of the innermost workings of the
+human heart, that as there is nothing surpassing this scene in
+Shakspeare himself, so there is nothing that can be compared to it in
+any other writer.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.
+    Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
+    Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
+    Do scald like molten lead.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                       Sir, do you know me?
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    You are a spirit, I know: when did you die?
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    Still, still far wide!
+
+                        PHYSICIAN.
+
+    He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight!
+    I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity
+    To see another thus. I know not what to say.
+    I will not swear these are my hands: Let's see.
+    I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured
+    Of my condition.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                      O look upon me, sir,
+    And hold your hands in benediction o'er me--
+    No, sir, you must not kneel.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+              Pray, do not mock me:
+    I am a very foolish, fond old man,
+    Fourscore and upwards; and to deal plainly with you,
+    I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
+    Methinks I should know you, and know this man,
+    Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
+    What place this is; and all the skill I have
+    Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
+    Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
+    For as I am a man, I think this lady
+    To be my child Cordelia.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+                              And so I am, I am.
+
+                        LEAR.
+
+    Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray you weep not
+    If you have poison for me I will drink it.
+    I know you do not love me; for your sisters
+    Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
+    You have some cause, they have not.
+
+                        CORDELIA.
+
+    No cause, no cause!
+
+As we do not estimate Cordelia's affection for her father by the
+coldness of her language, so neither should we measure her indignation
+against her sisters by the mildness of her expressions. What, in fact,
+can be more eloquently significant, and at the same time more
+characteristic of Cordelia, than the single line when she and her father
+are conveyed to their prison:--
+
+    Shall we not see these _daughters_ and these _sisters_?
+
+The irony here is so bitter and intense, and at the same time so quiet,
+so feminine, so dignified in the expression, that who but Cordelia would
+have uttered it in the same manner, or would have condensed such ample
+meaning into so few and simple words?
+
+We lose sight of Cordelia during the whole of the second and third, and
+great part of the fourth act; but towards the conclusion she reappears.
+Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness being carried to its
+extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, "like an engine wrenching
+our frame of nature from its fixed place," then, like a redeeming angel,
+she descends to mingle in the scene, "loosening the springs of pity in
+our eyes," and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of
+admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed
+terrible! wondrous terrible! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his
+arms, compassion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are left
+only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own
+sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the
+catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of
+absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for
+heaven--our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!--O who, after
+sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life
+prolonged? What replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?--a crown upon
+that old gray head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath?--on
+which the deep dread bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent
+their fury? O never, never!
+
+    Let him pass! he hates him
+    That would upon the rack of this rough world
+    Stretch him out longer.
+
+In the story of King Lear and his three daughters, as it is related in
+the "delectable and mellifluous" romance of Perceforest, and in the
+Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the conclusion is fortunate. Cordelia
+defeats her sisters, and replaces her father on his throne. Spenser, in
+his version of the story, has followed these authorities. Shakspeare has
+preferred the catastrophe of the old ballad, founded apparently on some
+lost tradition. I suppose it is by way of amending his errors, and
+bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been
+thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have
+altered Romeo and Juliet: they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia
+into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of
+the play--exit with drums and colors flying--to be married to Edgar. Now
+any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous
+impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be
+imagined. "I cannot conceive," says Schlegel, "what ideas of art and
+dramatic connection those persons have, who suppose we can at pleasure
+tack a double conclusion to a tragedy--a melancholy one for hard-hearted
+spectators, and a merry one for those of softer mould." The fierce
+manners depicted in this play, the extremes of virtue and vice in the
+persons, belong to the remote period of the story.[64] There is no
+attempt at character in the old narratives; Regan and Goneril are
+monsters of ingratitude, and Cordelia merely distinguished by her filial
+piety; whereas, in Shakspeare, this filial piety is an affection quite
+distinct from the qualities which serve to individualize the human
+being; we have a perception of innate character apart from all
+accidental circumstance: we see that if Cordelia had never known her
+father, had never been rejected from his love, had never been a born
+princess or a crowned queen, she would not have been less Cordelia; less
+distinctly _herself_; that is, a woman of a steady mind, of calm but
+deep affections, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved
+deportment.
+
+As to Regan and Goneril--"tigers, not daughters"--we might wish to
+regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable;
+but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for
+the prototype of Cordelia: there was a Julia Alpinula, the young
+priestess of Aventicum,[65] who, unable to save her father's life by the
+sacrifice of her own, died with him--"_infelix patris, infelix
+proles_"--but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter,
+too. I remember seeing at Genoa, Guido's "Pieta Romana," in which the
+expression of the female bending over the aged parent, who feeds from
+her bosom, is perfect,--but it is not a Cordelia: only Raffaelle could
+have painted Cordelia.
+
+But the character which at once suggests itself in comparison with
+Cordelia, as the heroine of filial tenderness and piety, is certainly
+the Antigone of Sophocles. As poetical conceptions, they rest on the
+same basis: they are both pure abstractions of truth, piety, and natural
+affection; and in both, love, as a passion, is kept entirely out of
+sight: for though the womanly character is sustained, by making them the
+objects of devoted attachment, yet to have portrayed them as influenced
+by passion, would have destroyed that unity of purpose and feeling which
+is one source of power; and, besides, have disturbed that serene purity
+and grandeur of soul, which equally distinguishes both heroines. The
+spirit, however, in which the two characters are conceived, is as
+different as possible; and we must not fail to remark, that Antigone,
+who plays a principal part in two fine tragedies, and is distinctly and
+completely made out, is considered as a masterpiece, the very triumph of
+the ancient classical drama; whereas, there are many among Shakspeare's
+characters which are equal to Cordelia as dramatic conceptions, and
+superior to her in finishing of outline, as well as in the richness of
+the poetical coloring.
+
+When Oedipus, pursued by the vengeance of the gods, deprived of sight
+by his own mad act, and driven from Thebes by his subjects and his sons,
+wanders forth, abject and forlorn, he is supported by his daughter
+Antigone; who leads him from city to city, begs for him, and pleads for
+him against the harsh, rude men, who, struck more by his guilt than his
+misery, would drive him from his last asylum. In the opening of the
+"Oedipus Coloneus," where the wretched old man appears leaning on his
+child, and seats himself in the consecrated Grove of the Furies, the
+picture presented to us is wonderfully solemn and beautiful. The
+patient, duteous tenderness of Antigone; the scene in which she pleads
+for her brother Polynices, and supplicates her father to receive his
+offending son; her remonstrance to Polynices, when she entreats him not
+to carry the threatened war into his native country, are finely and
+powerfully delineated; and in her lamentation over Oedipus, when he
+perishes in the mysterious grove, there is a pathetic beauty, apparent
+even through the stiffness of the translation.
+
+    Alas! I only wished I might have died
+    With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
+    For longer life?
+    O I was fond of misery with him;
+    E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved
+    When he was with me. O my dearest father,
+    Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,
+    Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
+    Wert dear, and shalt be ever.
+    --Even as he wished he died,
+    In a strange land--for such was his desire--
+    A shady turf covered his lifeless limbs,
+    Nor unlamented fell! for O these eyes,
+    My father, still shall weep for thee, nor time
+    E'er blot thee from my memory.
+
+The filial piety of Antigone is the most affecting part of the tragedy
+of "Oedipus Coloneus:" her sisterly affection, and her heroic
+self-devotion to a religious duty, form the plot of the tragedy called
+by her name. When her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had slain
+each other before the walls of Thebes, Creon issued an edict forbidding
+the rites of sepulture to Polynices, (as the invader of his country,)
+and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know
+the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as
+alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon
+hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave,
+enters in the first scene, announcing her fixed resolution to brave the
+threatened punishment: her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril
+of such an undertaking, and endeavors to dissuade her from it, on which
+Antigone replies:--
+
+    Wert thou to proffer what I do not ask--
+    Thy poor assistance--I would scorn it now;
+    Act as thou wilt, I'll bury him myself:
+    Let me perform but that, and death is welcome.
+    I'll do the pious deed, and lay me down
+    By my dear brother; loving and beloved,
+    We'll rest together.
+
+She proceeds to execute her generous purpose; she covers with earth the
+mangled corse of Polynices, pours over it the accustomed libations, is
+detected in her pious office, and after nobly defending her conduct, is
+led to death by command of the tyrant: her sister Ismene, struck with
+shame and remorse, now comes forward to accuse herself as a partaker in
+the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and
+scornfully rejects her; and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation
+on the misery of perishing "without the nuptial song--a virgin and a
+slave," she dies _a l'antique_--she strangles herself to avoid a
+lingering death.
+
+Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her
+grave: but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether
+Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover.
+
+Thus it will be seen that in the Antigone there is a great deal of what
+may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry
+and character: she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs
+the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed
+before us as to _command_ our admiration. According to the classical
+ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the
+delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace,
+a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste and our
+understanding, while they fill and exalt the imagination: but in
+Cordelia it is not the external coloring or form, it is not what she
+says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and
+suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism
+of Cordelia is more passive and tender--it melts into our heart; and in
+the veiled loveliness and unostentatious delicacy of her character,
+there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and
+less elaborate than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our
+admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her
+austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the
+Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of
+the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath
+th' almighty dove?" and as that heavenly form is connected with our
+human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or
+maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she
+not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her
+filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48]
+
+                    ----The gods approve
+     The depth, and not the tumult of the soul.
+
+                              WORDSWORTH.
+
+"Il pouvait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de l'orage sans son
+coeur," was finely observed of Madame de Stael in her maturer years; it
+would have been true of Hermione at any period of her life.
+
+[49] Winter's Tale, act v scene 11
+
+[50] Only in the last scene, when, with solemnity befitting the
+occasion, Paulina invokes the majestic figure to "descend, and be stone
+no more," and where she presents her daughter to her. "Turn, good lady!
+our Perdita is found."
+
+[51] Act iii, scene 3.
+
+[52] Which being interpreted into modern English, means, I believe,
+nothing more than that the pattern was what we now call _arabesque_.
+
+[53] There is an incident in the original tale, "Il Moro di Venezia,"
+which could not well be transferred to the drama, but which is very
+effective, and adds, I think, to the circumstantial horrors of the
+story. Desdemona does not accidentally drop the handkerchief; it is
+stolen from her by Iago's little child, an infant of three years old,
+whom he trains and bribes to the theft. The love of Desdemona for this
+child, her little playfellow--the pretty description of her taking it in
+her arms and caressing it, while it profits by its situation to steal
+the handkerchief from her bosom, are well imagined, and beautifully
+told; and the circumstance of Iago employing his own innocent child as
+the instrument of his infernal villany, adds a deeper, and, in truth an
+unnecessary touch of the fiend, to his fiendish character.
+
+[54] Consequences are so linked together, that the exclamation of
+Emilia,
+
+     O thou dull Moor!--That handkerchief thou speakest of
+     I found by fortune, and did give my husband!--
+
+is sufficient to reveal to Othello the whole history of his ruin.
+
+[55] Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Giornata, 2do.
+
+[56] _Vide_ Dr. Johnson, and Dunlop's History of Fiction.
+
+[57] See Hazlitt and Schlegel on the catastrophe of Cymbeline.
+
+[58] More rare--_i. e._ more exquisitely poignant.
+
+[59] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.
+
+[60] _Vide_ act 1. scene 7.
+
+[61] The character of Cloten has been pronounced by some unnatural, by
+others inconsistent, and by others obsolete. The following passage
+occurs in one of Miss Seward's letters, vol. iii p. 246: "It is curious
+that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten, have given
+the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of
+countenance, the shuffling gait, the burst of voice, the bustling
+insignificance, the fever and ague fits of valor, the froward
+tetchiness, the unprincipled malice, and, what is more curious, those
+occasional gleams of good sense amidst the floating clouds of folly
+which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which, in the
+character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in
+character; but in the some-time Captain C----, I saw that the portrait
+of Cloten was not out of nature."
+
+[62] i. e. _full of words_.
+
+[63] Dryden.
+
+[64] King Lear may be supposed to have lived about one thousand years
+before the Christian era, being the forth or fifth in descent from King
+Brut, the great-grandson of AEneas, and the fabulous founder of the
+kingdom of Britain.
+
+[65] She is commemorated by Lord Byron. _Vide_ Childe Harold Canto iii.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.
+
+
+CLEOPATRA.
+
+I cannot agree with one of the most philosophical of Shakspeare's
+critics, who has asserted "that the actual truth of particular events,
+in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure
+as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all,
+it is equally just with regard to characters: and in either case can we
+admit it? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which
+Shakspeare has treated the received and admitted truths of history--I
+mean according to the imperfect knowledge of his time--is admirable; his
+inaccuracies are few: his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction
+between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be
+wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury of
+history, to debase its purity,--new-stamp it arbitrarily with effigies
+and legends of his own devising and then attempt to pass it current,
+like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners: he only
+rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened it, so that history herself
+has been known to receive it back as sterling.
+
+Truth, wherever manifested, should be sacred: so Shakspeare deemed, and
+laid no profane hand upon her altars. But tragedy--majestic tragedy, is
+worthy to stand before the sanctuary of Truth, and to be the priestess
+of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue
+amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the
+changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily
+subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within;"[66]--whatever is
+pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the
+perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl
+and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the
+interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the
+serious sorrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived,
+suffered and acted upon this earth, to array them in her rich and
+stately robes, and present them before us as powers evoked from dust and
+darkness, to awaken the generous sympathies, the terror or the pity of
+mankind. It does not add to the pain, as far as tragedy is a source of
+emotion, that the wrongs and sufferings represented, the guilt of Lady
+Macbeth, the despair of Constance, the arts of Cleopatra, and the
+distresses of Katherine, had a real existence; but it adds infinitely to
+the moral effect, as a subject of contemplation and a lesson of
+conduct.[67]
+
+I shall be able to illustrate these observations more fully in the
+course of this section, in which we will consider those characters which
+are drawn from history; and first, Cleopatra.
+
+Of all Shakspeare's female characters, Miranda and Cleopatra appear to
+me the most wonderful. The first, unequalled as a poetic conception; the
+latter, miraculous as a work of art. If we could make a regular
+classification of his characters, these would form the two extremes of
+simplicity and complexity; and all his other characters would be found
+to fill up some shade or gradation between these two.
+
+Great crimes, springing from high passions, grafted on high qualities,
+are the legitimate source of tragic poetry. But to make the extreme of
+littleness produce an effect like grandeur--to make the excess of
+frailty produce an effect like power--to heap up together all that is
+most unsubstantial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till
+the worthlessness be lost in the magnitude, and a sense of the sublime
+spring from the very elements of littleness,--to do this, belonged only
+to Shakspeare that worker of miracles. Cleopatra is a brilliant
+antithesis, a compound of contradictions, of all that we most hate,
+with what we most admire. The whole character is the triumph of the
+external over the innate; and yet like one of her country's
+hieroglyphics, though she present at first view a splendid and
+perplexing anomaly, there is deep meaning and wondrous skill in the
+apparent enigma, when we come to analyze and decipher it. But how are we
+to arrive at the solution of this glorious riddle, whose dazzling
+complexity continually mocks and eludes us? What is most astonishing in
+the character of Cleopatra is its antithetical construction--its
+_consistent inconsistency_, if I may use such an expression--which
+renders it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles.
+It will, perhaps, be found on the whole, that vanity and the love of
+power predominate; but I dare not say it _is_ so, for these qualities
+and a hundred others mingle into each other, and shift and change, and
+glance away, like the colors in a peacock's train.
+
+In some others of Shakspeare's female characters, also remarkable for
+their complexity, (Portia and Juliet, for instance,) we are struck with
+the delightful sense of harmony in the midst of contrast, so that the
+idea of unity and simplicity of effect is produced in the midst of
+variety; but in Cleopatra it is the absence of unity and simplicity
+which strikes us; the impression is that of perpetual and irreconcilable
+contrast. The continual approximation of whatever is most opposite in
+character, in situation, in sentiment, would be fatiguing, were it not
+so perfectly natural: the woman herself would be distracting, if she
+were not so enchanting.
+
+I have not the slightest doubt that Shakspeare's Cleopatra is the real
+historical Cleopatra--the "Rare Egyptian"--individualized and placed
+before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's
+wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of
+irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of
+imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her
+tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her
+magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of
+the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized,
+mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant
+impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy
+sorcery.
+
+What better proof can we have of the individual truth of the character
+than the admission that Shakspeare's Cleopatra produces exactly the same
+effect on us that is recorded of the real Cleopatra? She dazzles our
+faculties, perplexes our judgment, bewilders and bewitches our fancy;
+from the beginning to the end of the drama, we are conscious of a kind
+of fascination against which our moral sense rebels, but from which
+there is no escape. The epithets applied to her perpetually
+by Antony and others confirm this impression: "enchanting
+queen!"--"witch"--"spell"--"great fairy"--"cockatrice"--"serpent of old
+Nile"--"thou grave charm!"[68] are only a few of them; and who does not
+know by heart the famous quotations in which this Egyptian Circe is
+described with all her infinite seductions?
+
+                   Fie! wrangling queen!
+    Whom every thing becomes--to chide, to laugh,
+    To weep; whose every passion fully strives
+    To make itself, in thee, fair and admired.
+
+    Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
+    Her infinite variety:--
+                          For vilest things
+    Become themselves in her.
+
+And the pungent irony of Enobarbus has well exposed her feminine arts,
+when he says, on the occasion of Antony's intended departure,--
+
+     Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies
+     instantly: I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer
+     moment.
+
+                         ANTONY.
+
+     She is cunning past man's thought.
+
+                         ENOBARBUS.
+
+     Alack, sir, no! her passions are made of nothing but the
+     finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and
+     waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and
+     tempests than almanacs can report; this cannot be cunning
+     in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as
+     Jove.
+
+The whole secret of her absolute dominion over the facile Antony may be
+found in one little speech:--
+
+    See where he is--who's with him--what he does--
+    (I did not send you.) If you find him sad,
+    Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report
+    That I am sudden sick! Quick! and return.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Madam, methinks if you did love him dearly,
+    You do not hold the method to enforce
+    The like from him.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    What should I do, I do not?
+
+                       CHARMIAN.
+
+    In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Tempt him not too far.
+
+But Cleopatra is a mistress of her art, and knows better: and what a
+picture of her triumphant petulance, her imperious and imperial
+coquetry, is given in her own words!
+
+                  That time--O times!
+    I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night
+    I laughed him into patience: and next morn,
+    Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
+    Then put my tires and mantles on, whilst
+    I wore his sword, Philippan.
+
+When Antony enters full of some serious purpose which he is about to
+impart, the woman's perverseness, and the tyrannical waywardness with
+which she taunts him and plays upon his temper, are admirably depicted.
+
+    I know, by that same eye, there's some good news.
+    What says the married woman?[69] You may go;
+    Would she had never given you leave to come!
+    Let her not say, 'tis I that keep you here;
+    I have no power upon you; hers you are.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    The gods best know--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+               O, never was there queen
+    So mightily betray'd! Yet at the first,
+    I saw the treasons planted.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                              Cleopatra!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Why should I think you can be mine, and true,
+    Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,
+    Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness
+    To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
+    Which break themselves in swearing!
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                        Most sweet queen!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Nay, pray you, seek no color for your going,
+    But bid farewell, and go.
+
+She recovers her dignity for a moment at the news of Fulvia's death, as
+if roused by a blow:--
+
+    Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
+    It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?
+
+And then follows the artful mockery with which she tempts and provokes
+him, in order to discover whether he regrets his wife.
+
+                      O most false love!
+    Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill
+    With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see
+    In Fulvia's death, how mine receiv'd shall be.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    Quarrel no more; but be prepared to know
+    The purposes I bear: which are, or cease,
+    As you shall give th' advice. Now, by the fire
+    That quickens Nilus' shrine, I go from hence
+    Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war,
+    As thou affectest.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+            Cut my lace, Charmian, come--But
+    let it be. I am quickly ill, and well.
+    So Antony loves.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                My precious queen, forbear:
+    And give true evidence to his love which stands
+    An honorable trial.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                         So Fulvia told me.
+    I pr'ythee turn aside, and weep for her:
+    Then bid adieu to me, and say, the tears
+    Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene
+    Of excellent dissembling; and let it look
+    Like perfect honor.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                You'll heat my blood--no more.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    You can do better yet; but this is meetly.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    Now, by my sword--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                   And target--still he mends:
+    But this is not the best. Look, pr'ythee, Charmian,
+    How this Herculean Roman does become
+    The carriage of his chafe!
+
+This is, indeed, most "excellent dissembling;" but when she has fooled
+and chafed the Herculean Roman to the verge of danger, then comes that
+return of tenderness which secures the power she has tried to the
+utmost, and we have all the elegant, the poetical Cleopatra in her
+beautiful farewell.
+
+                  Forgive me!
+    Since my becomings kill me when they do not
+    Eye well to you. Your honor calls you hence,
+    Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,
+    And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword
+    Sit laurell'd victory; and smooth success
+    Be strew'd before your feet!
+
+Finer still are the workings of her variable mind and lively
+imagination, after Antony's departure; her fond repining at his absence,
+her violent spirit, her right royal wilfulness and impatience, as if it
+were a wrong to her majesty, an insult to her sceptre, that there should
+exist in her despite such things as space and time; and high treason to
+her sovereign power, to dare to remember what she chooses to forget
+
+    Give me to drink mandragora,
+    That I might sleep out this great gap of time
+    My Antony is away.
+
+                       O Charmian!
+    Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he,
+    Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?
+    O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
+    Do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?
+    The demi-Atlas of this earth--the arm
+    And burgonet of men. He's speaking now,
+    Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile?
+    For so he calls me.
+                        Met'st thou my posts?
+
+                        ALEXAS.
+
+    Ay, madam, twenty several messengers:
+    Why do you send so thick?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                   Who's born that day
+    When I forget to send to Antony,
+    Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian.
+    Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian,
+    Ever love Caesar so?
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+                        O that brave Caesar!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Be chok'd with such another emphasis!
+    Say, the brave Antony.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+                          The valiant Caesar!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth,
+    If thou with Caesar paragon again
+    My man of men!
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+                  By your most gracious pardon,
+    I sing but after you.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                         My salad days,
+    When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
+    To say as I said then. But, come away--
+    Get me some ink and paper: he shall have every day
+    A several greeting, or I'll unpeople Egypt.
+
+We learn from Plutarch, that it was a favorite amusement with Antony and
+Cleopatra to ramble through the streets at night, and bandy ribald jests
+with the populace of Alexandria. From the same authority, we know that
+they were accustomed to live on the most familiar terms with their
+attendants and the companions of their revels. To these traits we must
+add, that with all her violence, perverseness, egotism, and caprice,
+Cleopatra mingled a capability for warm affections and kindly feeling,
+or rather what we should call in these days, a constitutional
+_good-nature_; and was lavishly generous to her favorites and
+dependents. These characteristics we find scattered through the play;
+they are not only faithfully rendered by Shakspeare, but he has made the
+finest use of them in his delineation of manners. Hence the occasional
+freedom of her women and her attendants, in the midst of their fears and
+flatteries, becomes most natural and consistent: hence, too, their
+devoted attachment and fidelity, proved even in death. But as
+illustrative of Cleopatra's disposition, perhaps the finest and most
+characteristic scene in the whole play, is that in which the messenger
+arrives from Rome with the tidings of Antony's marriage with Octavia.
+She perceives at once with quickness that all is not well, and she
+hastens to anticipate the worst, that she may have the pleasure of being
+disappointed. Her impatience to know what she fears to learn, the
+vivacity with which she gradually works herself up into a state of
+excitement, and at length into fury, is wrought out with a force of
+truth which makes us recoil.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                              Antony's dead!
+    If thou say so, villain, thou kill'st thy mistress.
+    But well and free,
+    If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here
+    My bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings
+    Have lipp'd, and trembled kissing.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    First, madam, he is well.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Why, there's more gold. But, sirrah, mark! we use
+    To say, the dead are well: bring it to that,
+    The gold I give thee will I melt, and pour
+    Down thy ill-uttering throat.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Good madam, hear me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                        Well, go to, I will.
+    But there's no goodness in thy face. If Antony
+    Be free and healthful, why so tart a favor
+    To trumpet such good tidings? If not well,
+    Thou should'st come like a fury crown'd with snakes.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Wil't please you hear me?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak'st;
+    Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well,
+    Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him,
+    I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail
+    Rich pearls upon thee.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Madam, he's well.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                     Well said.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    And friends with Caesar.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                       Thou art an honest man.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Make thee a fortune from me.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+                           But yet, madam--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I do not like _but yet_--it does allay
+    The good precedence. Fie upon _but yet_:
+    _But yet_ is as a gaoler to bring forth
+    Some monstrous malefactor. Pr'ythee, friend,
+    Pour out thy pack of matter to mine ear,
+    The good and bad together. He's friends with Caesar
+    In state of health, thou say'st; and thou say'st free.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Free, madam! No: I made no such report,
+    He's bound unto Octavia.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    For what good turn?
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+              Madam he's married to Octavia.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    The most infectious pestilence upon thee!
+                        [_Strikes him down._
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Good madam, patience.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                  What say you? [_Strikes him again._
+    Hence horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes
+    Like balls before me--I'll unhair thine head--
+    Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stewed in brine
+    Smarting in ling'ring pickle.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+                                  Gracious madam!
+    I, that do bring the news, made not the match.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Say 'tis not so, a province I will give thee,
+    And make thy fortunes proud: the blow thou hadst
+    Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage;
+    And I will boot thee with what gift beside
+    Thy modesty can beg.
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+                          He's married, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Rogue, thou hast lived too long. [_Draws a dagger._
+
+                        MESSENGER.
+
+    Nay then I'll run.
+    What mean you, madam? I have made no fault. [_Exit._
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Good madam, keep yourself within yourself;
+    The man is innocent.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt.
+    Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures
+    Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again;
+    Though I am mad, I will not bite him--Call!
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    He is afraid to come.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                         I will not hurt him.
+    These hands do lack nobility, that they strike
+    A meaner than myself.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    In praising Antony I have dispraised Caesar.
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    Many times, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                     I am paid for't now--
+    Lead me from hence.
+    I faint. O Iras, Charmian--'tis no matter
+    Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him
+    Report the features of Octavia, her years,
+    Her inclination--let him not leave out
+    The color of her hair. Bring me word quickly.
+                            [_Exit Alex._
+
+    Let him forever go--let him not--Charmian,
+    Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,
+    T'other way he's a Mars. Bid you Alexas
+                            [_To Mardian._
+
+    Bring me word how tall she is. Pity me, Charmian.
+    But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.
+
+I have given this scene entire because I know nothing comparable to it
+The pride and arrogance of the Egyptian queen, the blandishment of the
+woman, the unexpected but natural transitions of temper and feeling, the
+contest of various passions, and at length--when the wild hurricane has
+spent its fury--the melting into tears, faintness, and languishment, are
+portrayed with the most astonishing power, and truth, and skill in
+feminine nature. More wonderful still is the splendor and force of
+coloring which is shed over this extraordinary scene. The mere idea of
+an angry woman beating her menial, presents something ridiculous or
+disgusting to the mind; in a queen or a tragedy heroine it is still more
+indecorous;[70] yet this scene is as far as possible from the vulgar or
+the comic. Cleopatra seems privileged to "touch the brink of all we
+hate" with impunity. This imperial termagant, this "wrangling queen,
+whom every thing becomes," becomes even her fury. We know not by what
+strange power it is, that in the midst of all these unruly passions and
+childish caprices, the poetry of the character, and the fanciful and
+sparkling grace of the delineation are sustained and still rule in the
+imagination; but we feel that it is so.
+
+I need hardly observe, that we have historical authority for the
+excessive violence of Cleopatra's temper. Witness the story of her
+boxing the ears of her treasurer, in presence of Octavius, as related by
+Plutarch. Shakspeare has made a fine use of this anecdote also towards
+the conclusion of the drama, but it is not equal in power to this scene
+with the messenger.
+
+The man is afterwards brought back, almost by force, to satisfy
+Cleopatra's jealous anxiety, by a description of Octavia:--but this
+time, made wise by experience, he takes care to adapt his information to
+the humors of his imperious mistress, and gives her a satirical picture
+of her rival. The scene which follows, in which Cleopatra--artful,
+acute, and penetrating as she is--becomes the dupe of her feminine spite
+and jealousy, nay, assists in duping herself; and after having cuffed
+the messenger for telling her truths which are offensive, rewards him
+for the falsehood which flatters her weakness--is not only an admirable
+exhibition of character, but a fine moral lesson.
+
+She concludes, after dismissing the messenger with gold and thanks,
+
+                  I repent me much
+    That I so harry'd him. Why, methinks by him
+    This creature's no such thing?
+
+                        CHARMIAN.
+
+    O nothing, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    The man hath seen some majesty, and should know!
+
+Do we not fancy Cleopatra drawing herself up with all the vain
+consciousness of rank and beauty as she pronounces this last line? and
+is not this the very woman who celebrated her own apotheosis,--who
+arrayed herself in the robe and diadem of the goddess Isis, and could
+find no titles magnificent enough for her children but those of _the
+Sun_ and _the Moon_?
+
+The despotism and insolence of her temper are touched in some other
+places most admirably. Thus, when she is told that the Romans libel and
+abuse her, she exclaims,--
+
+    Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
+    That speak against us!
+
+And when one of her attendants observes, that "Herod of Jewry dared not
+look upon her but when she were well pleased," she immediately replies,
+"That Herod's head I'll have."[71]
+
+When Proculeius surprises her in her monument, and snatches her poniard
+from her, terror, and fury, pride, passion, and disdain, swell in her
+haughty soul, and seem to shake her very being.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                   Where art thou, death?
+    Come hither, come! come, come and take a queen
+    Worth many babes and beggars!
+
+                        PROCULEIUS.
+
+    O temperance, lady?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Sir, I will eat no meat; I'll not drink, sir:
+    If idle talk will once be necessary.
+    I'll not sleep neither; this mortal house I'll ruin,
+    Do Caesar what he can! Know, sir, that I
+    Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court,
+    Nor once be chastis'd with the sober eye
+    Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up,
+    And show me to the shouting varletry
+    Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
+    Be gentle grave to me! Rather on Nilus' mud
+    Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies
+    Blow me into abhorring! Rather make
+    My country's high pyramids my gibbet,
+    And hang me up in chains!
+
+In the same spirit of royal bravado, but finer still, and worked up with
+a truly Oriental exuberance of fancy and imagery, is her famous
+description of Antony, addressed to Dolabella:--
+
+    Most noble empress you have heard of me?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I cannot tell.
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Assuredly, you know me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.
+    You laugh when boys, or women, tell their dreams
+    Is't not your trick?
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    I understand not, madam.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I dream'd there was an emperor Antony;
+    O such another sleep, that I might see
+    But such another man!
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    If it might please you--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck
+    A sun and moon; which kept their course, and lighted
+    The little O, the earth.
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Most sovereign creature--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    His legs bestrid the ocean: his reared arm
+    Crested the world; his voice was propertied
+    As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
+    But when he meant to quail or shake the orb
+    He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
+    There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas,
+    That grew the more by reaping. His delights
+    Were dolphin like; they show'd his back above
+    The element they liv'd in. In his livery[72]
+    Walk'd crowns and coronets; realms and islands were
+    As plates[73] dropp'd from his pocket.
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Cleopatra!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Think you there was, or might be, such a man
+    As this I dream'd of?
+
+                        DOLABELLA.
+
+    Gentle madam, no.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    You lie,--up to the hearing of the gods!
+
+There was no room left in this amazing picture for the display of that
+passionate maternal tenderness, which was a strong and redeeming feature
+in Cleopatra's historical character; but it is not left untouched, for
+when she is imprecating mischiefs on herself, she wishes, as the last
+and worst of possible evils, that "thunder may smite Caesarion!"
+
+In representing the mutual passion of Antony and Cleopatra as real and
+fervent, Shakspeare has adhered to the truth of history as well as to
+general nature. On Antony's side it is a species of infatuation, a
+single and engrossing feeling: it is, in short, the love of a man
+declined in years for a woman very much younger than himself, and who
+has subjected him to every species of female enchantment. In Cleopatra
+the passion is of a mixed nature, made up of real attachment, combined
+with the love of pleasure, the love of power, and the love of self. Not
+only is the character most complicated, but no one sentiment could have
+existed pure and unvarying in such a mind as hers; her passion in itself
+is true, fixed to one centre; but like the pennon streaming from the
+mast, it flutters and veers with every breath of her variable temper:
+yet in the midst of all her caprices, follies, and even vices, womanly
+feeling is still predominant in Cleopatra: and the change which takes
+place in her deportment towards Antony, when their evil fortune darkens
+round them, is as beautiful and interesting in itself as it is striking
+and natural. Instead of the airy caprice and provoking petulance she
+displays in the first scenes, we have a mixture of tenderness, and
+artifice, and fear, and submissive blandishment. Her behavior, for
+instance, after the battle of Actium, when she quails before the noble
+and tender rebuke of her lover, is partly female subtlety and partly
+natural feeling.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                     O my lord, my lord,
+    Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought
+    You would have follow'd.
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                Egypt, thou know'st too well
+    My heart was to the rudder tied by the strings,
+    And thou should'st tow me after. O'er my spirit
+    Thy full supremacy thou know'st; and that
+    Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
+    Command me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    O, my pardon?
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+                    Now I must
+    To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
+    And palter in the shifts of lowness; who
+    With half the bulk o' the world play'd as I pleas'd,
+    Making and marring fortunes. You did know
+    How much you were my conqueror; and that
+    My sword, made weak by my affection, would
+    Obey it on all cause.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    O pardon, pardon!
+
+                        ANTONY.
+
+    Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates
+    All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;
+    Even this repays me.
+
+It is perfectly in keeping with the individual character, that
+Cleopatra, alike destitute of moral strength and physical courage,
+should cower terrified and subdued before the masculine spirit of her
+lover, when once she has fairly roused it. Thus Tasso's Armida, half
+siren, half sorceress, in the moment of strong feeling, forgets her
+incantations, and has recourse to persuasion, to prayers, and to tears.
+
+    Lascia gl' incanti, e vuol provar se vaga
+    E supplice belta sia miglior maga.
+
+Though the poet afterwards gives us to understand that even in this
+relinquishment of art there was a more refined artifice.
+
+         Nella doglia amara
+    Gia tutte non oblia l' arti e le frodi.
+
+And something like this inspires the conduct of Cleopatra towards Antony
+in his fallen fortunes. The reader should refer to that fine scene,
+where Antony surprises Thyreus kissing her hand, "that kingly seal and
+plighter of high hearts," and rages like a thousand hurricanes.
+
+The character of Mark Antony, as delineated by Shakspeare, reminds me of
+the Farnese Hercules. There is an ostentatious display of power, an
+exaggerated grandeur, a colossal effect in the whole conception,
+sustained throughout in the pomp of the language, which seems, as it
+flows along, to resound with the clang of arms and the music of the
+revel. The coarseness and violence of the historic portrait are a little
+kept down; but every word which Antony utters is characteristic of the
+arrogant but magnanimous Roman, who "with half the bulk o' the world
+played as he pleased," and was himself the sport of a host of mad (and
+bad) passions, and the slave of a woman.
+
+History is followed closely in all the details of the catastrophe, and
+there is something wonderfully grand in the hurried march of events
+towards the conclusion. As disasters hem her round, Cleopatra gathers up
+her faculties to meet them, not with the calm fortitude of a great soul,
+but the haughty, tameless spirit of a wilful woman, unused to reverse or
+contradiction.
+
+Her speech, after Antony has expired in her arms, I have always regarded
+as one of the most wonderful in Shakspeare. Cleopatra is not a woman to
+grieve silently. The contrast between the violence of her passions and
+the weakness of her sex, between her regal grandeur and her excess of
+misery, her impetuous, unavailing struggles with the fearful destiny
+which has compassed her, and the mixture of wild impatience and pathos
+in her agony, are really magnificent. She faints on the body of Antony,
+and is recalled to life by the cries of her women:--
+
+                        IRAS.
+
+                Royal Egypt--empress!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    No more, but e'en a woman![74] and commanded
+    By such poor passion as the maid that milks,
+    And does the meanest chares.--It were for me
+    To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods:
+    To tell them that our world did equal theirs
+    Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught,
+    Patience is sottish, and impatience does
+    Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin
+    To rush into the secret house of death
+    Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?
+    What, what? good cheer! why how now, Charmian?
+    My noble girls!--ah, women, women! look
+    Our lamp is spent, is out.
+    We'll bury him, and then what's brave, what's noble,
+    Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
+    And make death proud to take us.
+
+But although Cleopatra talks of dying "after the high Roman fashion" she
+fears what she most desires, and cannot perform with simplicity what
+costs her such an effort. That extreme physical cowardice, which was so
+strong a trait in her historical character, which led to the defeat of
+Actium, which made her delay the execution of a fatal resolve, till she
+had "tried conclusions infinite of _easy_ ways to die," Shakspeare has
+rendered with the finest possible effect, and in a manner which
+heightens instead of diminishing our respect and interest. Timid by
+nature, she is courageous by the mere force of will, and she lashes
+herself up with high-sounding words into a kind of false daring. Her
+lively imagination suggests every incentive which can spur her on to the
+deed she has resolved, yet trembles to contemplate. She pictures to
+herself all the degradations which must attend her captivity, and let
+it be observed, that those which she anticipates are precisely such as a
+vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would especially dread, and which
+only true virtue and magnanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have
+endured the loss of freedom; but to be led in triumph through the
+streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to Caesar with
+dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art; but "to be
+chastised" by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured
+Octavia--"rather a ditch in Egypt!"
+
+    If knife, drugs, serpents, have
+    Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe.
+    Your wife, Octavia, with her modest eyes,
+    And still conclusion,[75] shall acquire no honor
+    Demurring upon me.
+
+                       Now Iras, what think'st thou?
+    Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shall be shown
+    In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves,
+    With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall
+    Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
+    Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
+    And forc'd to drink their vapor.
+
+                        IRAS.
+
+                                    The gods forbid!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Nay, 'tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors
+    Will catch at us like strumpets; and scald rhymers
+    Ballad us out o' tune. The quick comedians
+    Extemporally will stage us, and present
+    Our Alexandrian revels. Antony
+    Shall be brought drunken forth; and I shall see
+    Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.
+
+She then calls for her diadem, her robes of state, and attires herself
+as if "again for Cydnus, to meet Mark Antony." Coquette to the last, she
+must make Death proud to take her, and die, "phoenix like," as she had
+lived, with all the pomp of preparation--luxurious in her despair.
+
+The death of Lucretia, of Portia, of Arria, and others who died "after
+the high Roman fashion," is sublime according to the Pagan ideas of
+virtue, and yet none of them so powerfully affect the imagination as the
+catastrophe of Cleopatra. The idea of this frail, timid, wayward woman,
+dying with heroism from the mere force of passion and will, takes us by
+surprise. The Attic elegance of her mind, her poetical imagination, the
+pride of beauty and royalty predominating to the last, and the sumptuous
+and picturesque accompaniments with which she surrounds herself in
+death, carry to its extreme height that effect of contrast which
+prevails through her life and character. No arts, no invention could add
+to the real circumstances of Cleopatra's closing scene. Shakspeare has
+shown profound judgment and feeling in adhering closely to the classical
+authorities; and to say that the language and sentiments worthily fill
+up the outline, is the most magnificent praise that can be given. The
+magical play of fancy and the overpowering fascination of the character
+are kept up to the last, and when Cleopatra, on applying the asp,
+silences the lamentations of her women:--
+
+                    Peace! peace!
+    Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
+    That sucks the nurse to sleep?--
+
+These few words--the contrast between the tender beauty of the image and
+the horror of the situation--produce an effect more intensely mournful
+than all the ranting in the world. The generous devotion of her women
+adds the moral charm which alone was wanting: and when Octavius hurries
+in too late to save his victim, and exclaims, when gazing on her--
+
+                    She looks like sleep--
+    As she would catch another Antony
+    In her strong toil of grace,
+
+the image of her beauty and her irresistible arts, triumphant even in
+death, is at once brought before us, and one masterly and comprehensive
+stroke consummates this most wonderful, most dazzling delineation.
+
+I am not here the apologist of Cleopatra's historical character, nor of
+such women as resemble her: I am considering her merely as a dramatic
+portrait of astonishing beauty, spirit, and originality. She has
+furnished the subject of two Latin, sixteen French, six English, and at
+least four Italian tragedies;[76] yet Shakspeare alone has availed
+himself of all the interest of the story, without falsifying the
+character. He alone has dared to exhibit the Egyptian queen with all her
+greatness and all her littleness--all her frailties of temper--all her
+paltry arts and dissolute passions--yet preserved the dramatic propriety
+and poetical coloring of the character, and awakened our pity for fallen
+grandeur, without once beguiling us into sympathy with guilt and error.
+Corneille has represented Cleopatra as a model of chaste propriety,
+magnanimity, constancy, and every female virtue; and the effect is
+almost ludicrous. In our own language, we have two very fine tragedies
+on the story of Cleopatra: in that of Dryden, which is in truth a noble
+poem, and which he himself considered his masterpiece, Cleopatra is a
+mere common-place "all-for-love" heroine, full of constancy and fine
+sentiments. For instance:--
+
+                                My love's so true,
+    That I can neither hide it where it is,
+    Nor show it where it is not. Nature meant me
+    A wife--a silly, harmless, household dove,
+    Fond without art, and kind without deceit.
+    But fortune, that has made a mistress of me,
+    Has thrust me out to the wild world, unfurnished
+    Of falsehood to be happy.
+
+Is this Antony's Cleopatra--the Circe of the Nile--the Venus of the
+Cydnus? _She_ never uttered any thing half so mawkish in her life.
+
+In Fletcher's "False One," Cleopatra is represented at an earlier period
+of her history: and to give an idea of the aspect under which the
+character is exhibited, (and it does not vary throughout the play,) I
+shall give one scene; if it be considered out of place, its extreme
+beauty will form its best apology.
+
+Ptolemy and his council having exhibited to Caesar all the royal
+treasures in Egypt, he is so astonished and dazzled at the view of the
+accumulated wealth, that he forgets the presence of Cleopatra, and
+treats her with negligence. The following scene between her and her
+sister Arsinoe occurs immediately afterwards.
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+    You're so impatient!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                        Have I not cause?
+    Women of common beauties and low births,
+    When they are slighted, are allowed their angers--
+    Why should not I, a princess, make him know
+    The baseness of his usage?
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+                              Yes, 'tis fit:
+    But then again you know what man--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                            He's no man!
+    The shadow of a greatness hangs upon him,
+    And not the virtue; he is no conqueror,
+    Has suffered under the base dross of nature;
+    Poorly deliver'd up his power to wealth.
+    The god of bed-rid men taught his eyes treason.
+    Against the truth of love he has rais'd rebellion
+    Defied his holy flames.
+
+                        EROS.
+
+                            He will fall back again
+    And satisfy your grace.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                            Had I been old,
+    Or blasted in my bud, he might have show'd
+    Some shadow of dislike: but to prefer
+    The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe,
+    And the poor glow-worm light of some faint jewels
+    Before the light of love, and soul of beauty--
+    O how it vexes me! He is no soldier:
+    All honorable soldiers are Love's servants.
+    He is a merchant, a mere wandering merchant,
+    Servile to gain; he trades for poor commodities,
+    And makes his conquests thefts! Some fortunate captains
+    That quarter with him, and are truly valiant.
+    Have flung the name of "Happy Caesar" on him;
+    Himself ne'er won it. He's so base and covetous,
+    He'll sell his sword for gold.
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+                                  This is too bitter.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    O, I could curse myself, that was so foolish.
+    So fondly childish, to believe his tongue--
+    His promising tongue--ere I could catch his temper.
+    I'd trash enough to have cloyed his eyes withal,
+    (His covetous eyes,) such as I scorn to tread on,
+    Richer than e'er he saw yet, and more tempting;
+    Had I known he'd stoop'd at that, I'd saved mine honor--
+    I had been happy still! But let him take it.
+    And let him brag how poorly I'm rewarded;
+    Let him go conquer still weak wretched ladies;
+    Love has his angry quiver too, his deadly,
+    And when he finds scorn, armed at the strongest--
+    I am a fool to fret thus for a fool,--
+    An old blind fool too! I lose my health; I will not,
+    I will not cry; I will not honor him
+    With tears diviner than the gods he worships;
+    I will not take the pains to curse a poor thing.
+
+                        EROS.
+
+    Do not; you shall not need.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                Would I were prisoner
+    To one I hate, that I might anger him!
+    I will love any man to break the heart of him!
+    Any that has the heart and will to kill him!
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+    Take some fair truce.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                          I will go study mischief,
+    And put a look on, arm'd with all my cunnings.
+    Shall meet him like a basilisk, and strike him.
+    Love! put destroying flame into mine eyes,
+    Into my smiles deceits, that I may torture him--
+    That I may make him love to death, and laugh at him
+
+    _Enter_ APOLLODORUS.
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+    Caesar commends his service to your grace
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    His service? What's his service?
+
+                        EROS.
+
+                                    Pray you be patient
+    The noble Caesar loves still.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                    What's his will?
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+    He craves access unto your highness.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA
+
+                                        No;--
+    Say no; I will have none to trouble me.
+
+                        ARSINOE.
+
+    Good sister!--
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                None, I say. I will be private.
+    Would thou hadst flung me into Nilus, keeper,
+    When first thou gav'st consent to bring my body
+    To this unthankful Caesar!
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+                            'Twas your will, madam.
+    Nay more, your charge upon me, as I honor'd you.
+    You know what danger I endur'd.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                  Take this, [_giving a jewel_,
+    And carry it to that lordly Caesar sent thee;
+    There's a new love, a handsome one, a rich one,--
+    One that will hug his mind: bid him make love to it:
+    Tell the ambitious broker this will suffer--
+
+    _Enter_ CAESAR.
+
+                        APOLLODORUS.
+
+    He enters.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+              How!
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                    I do not use to wait, lady
+    Where I am, all the doors are free and open.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    I guess so by your rudeness.
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                                You're not angry?
+    Things of your tender mould should be most gentle.
+    Why should you frown? Good gods, what a set anger
+    Have you forc'd into your face! Come, I must temper you.
+    What a coy smile was there, and a disdainful!
+    How like an ominous flash it broke out from you!
+    Defend me, love! Sweet, who has anger'd you?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Show him a glass! That false face has betray'd me--
+    That base heart wrong'd me!
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                              Be more sweetly angry.
+    I wrong'd you, fair?
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                        Away with your foul flatteries;
+    They are too gross! But that I dare be angry,
+    And with as great a god as Caesar is,
+    To show how poorly I respect his memory
+    I would not speak to you.
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                      Pray you, undo this riddle,
+    And tell me how I've vexed you.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                    Let me think first,
+    Whether I may put on patience
+    That will with honor suffer me. Know I hate you!
+    Let that begin the story. Now I'll tell you.
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+    But do it mildly: in a noble lady,
+    Softness of spirit, and a sober nature,
+    That moves like summer winds, cool, and blows sweetness,
+    Shows blessed, like herself.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                And that great blessedness.
+    You first reap'd of me; till you taught my nature,
+    Like a rude storm, to talk aloud and thunder,
+    Sleep was not gentler than my soul, and stiller.
+    You had the spring of my affections,
+    And my fair fruits I gave you leave to taste of;
+    You must expect the winter of mine anger.
+    You flung me off--before the court disgraced me--
+    When in the pride I appear'd of all my beauty--
+    Appear'd your mistress; took unto your eyes
+    The common strumpet, love of hated lucre,--
+    Courted with covetous heart the slave of nature,--
+    Gave all your thoughts to gold, that men of glory,
+    And minds adorned with noble love, would kick at!
+    Soldiers of royal mark scorn such base purchase;
+    Beauty and honor are the marks they shoot at.
+    I spake to you then, I courted you, and woo'd you,
+    Called you dear Caesar, hung about you tenderly,
+    Was proud to appear your friend--
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                            You have mistaken me.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    But neither eye, nor favor, not a smile
+    Was I blessed back withal, but shook off rudely,
+    And as you had been sold to sordid infamy,
+    You fell before the images of treasure,
+    And in your soul you worship'd. I stood slighted;
+    Forgotten, and contemned; my soft embraces,
+    And those sweet kisses which you called Elysium
+    As letters writ in sand, no more remember'd;
+    The name and glory of your Cleopatra
+    Laugh'd at, and made a story to your captains!
+    Shall I endure?
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                  You are deceived in all this;
+    Upon my life you are; 'tis your much tenderness.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    No, no; I love not that way; you are cozen'd;
+    I love with as much ambition as a conqueror,
+    And where I love will triumph!
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                                  So you shall:
+    My heart shall be the chariot that shall bear you:
+    All I have won shall wait upon you. By the gods,
+    The bravery of this woman's mind has fir'd me!
+    Dear mistress, shall I but this once----
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                        How! Caesar!
+    Have I let slip a second vanity
+    That gives thee hope?
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                              You shall be absolute,
+    And reign alone as queen; you shall be any thing.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+        Farewell, unthankful!
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+                            Stay!
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+                                I will not.
+
+                        CAESAR.
+                                          I command.
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    Command, and go without, sir,
+    I do command _thee_ be my slave forever,
+    And vex, while I laugh at thee!
+
+                        CAESAR.
+
+    Thus low, beauty----      [_He kneels_
+
+                        CLEOPATRA.
+
+    It is too late; when I have found thee absolute,
+    The man that fame reports thee, and to me,
+    May be I shall think better. Farewell, conqueror!
+
+    (_Exit._)
+
+Now this is magnificent poetry, but this is not Cleopatra, this is not
+"the gipsey queen." The sentiment here is too profound, the majesty too
+real, and too lofty. Cleopatra could be great by fits and starts, but
+never sustained her dignity upon so high a tone for ten minutes
+together. The Cleopatra of Fletcher reminds us of the antique colossal
+statue of her in the Vatican, all grandeur and grace. Cleopatra in
+Dryden's tragedy is like Guido's dying Cleopatra in the Pitti Palace,
+tenderly beautiful. Shakspeare's Cleopatra is like one of those graceful
+and fantastic pieces of antique Arabesque, in which all anomalous shapes
+and impossible and wild combinations of form are woven together in
+regular confusion and most harmonious discord: and such, we have reason
+to believe, was the living woman herself, when she existed upon this
+earth.
+
+
+OCTAVIA.
+
+I do not understand the observation of a late critic, that in this play
+"Octavia is only a dull foil to Cleopatra." Cleopatra requires no foil,
+and Octavia is not dull, though in a moment of jealous spleen, her
+accomplished rival gives her that epithet.[77] It is possible that her
+beautiful character, if brought more forward and colored up to the
+historic portrait, would still be eclipsed by the dazzling splendor of
+Cleopatra's; for so I have seen a flight of fireworks blot out for a
+while the silver moon and ever-burning stars. But here the subject of
+the drama being the love of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavia is very
+properly kept in the background, and far from any competition with her
+rival: the interest would otherwise have been unpleasantly divided, or
+rather Cleopatra herself must have served but as a foil to the tender,
+virtuous, dignified, and generous Octavia, the very _beau ideal_ of a
+noble Roman lady:--
+
+    Admired Octavia, whose beauty claims
+    No worse a husband than the best of men;
+    Whose virtues and whose general graces speak
+    That which none else can utter.
+
+Dryden has committed a great mistake in bringing Octavia and her
+children on the scene, and in immediate contact with Cleopatra. To have
+thus violated the truth of history[78] might have been excusable, but to
+sacrifice the truth of nature and dramatic propriety, to produce a mere
+stage effect, was unpardonable. In order to preserve the unity of
+interest, he has falsified the character of Octavia as well as that of
+Cleopatra:[79] he has presented us with a regular scolding-match
+between the rivals, in which they come sweeping up to each other from
+opposite sides of the stage, with their respective trains, like two
+pea-hens in a passion. Shakspeare would no more have brought his
+captivating, brilliant, but meretricious Cleopatra into immediate
+comparison with the noble and chaste simplicity of Octavia, than a
+connoisseur in art would have placed Canova's Dansatrice, beautiful as
+it is, beside the Athenian Melpomene, or the Vestal of the Capitol.
+
+The character of Octavia is merely indicated in a few touches, but every
+stroke tells. We see her with "downcast eyes sedate and sweet, and looks
+demure,"--with her modest tenderness and dignified submission--the very
+antipodes of her rival! Nor should we forget that she has furnished one
+of the most graceful similes in the whole compass of poetry, where her
+soft equanimity in the midst of grief is compared to
+
+                The swan's down feather
+    That stands upon the swell at flood of tide,
+    And neither way inclines.
+
+The fear which, seems to haunt the mind of Cleopatra, lest she should be
+"chastised by the sober eye" of Octavia, is exceedingly characteristic
+of the two women: it betrays the jealous pride of her, who was conscious
+that she had forfeited all real claim to respect; and it places Octavia
+before us in all the majesty of that virtue which could strike a kind
+of envying and remorseful awe even into the bosom of Cleopatra. What
+would she have thought and felt, had some soothsayer foretold to her the
+fate of her own children, whom she so tenderly loved? Captives, and
+exposed to the rage of the Roman populace, they owed their existence to
+the generous, admirable Octavia, in whose mind there entered no particle
+of littleness. She received into her house the children of Antony and
+Cleopatra, educated them with her own, treated them with truly maternal
+tenderness, and married them nobly.
+
+Lastly, to complete the contrast, the death of Octavia should be put in
+comparison with that of Cleopatra.
+
+After spending several years in dignified retirement, respected as the
+sister of Augustus, but more for her own virtues, Octavia lost her
+eldest son Marcellus, who was expressively called the "Hope of Rome."
+Her fortitude gave way under this blow, and she fell into a deep
+melancholy, which gradually wasted her health. While she was thus
+declining into death, occurred that beautiful scene, which has never
+yet, I believe, been made the subject of a picture, but should certainly
+be added to my gallery, (if I had one,) and I would hang it opposite to
+the dying Cleopatra. Virgil was commanded by Augustus to read aloud to
+his sister that book of the Eneid in which he had commemorated the
+virtues and early death of the young Marcellus. When he came to the
+lines--
+
+    This youth, the blissful vision of a day,
+    Shall just be shown on earth, then snatch'd away, &c.
+
+The mother covered her face, and burst into tears. But when Virgil
+mentioned her son by name, ("Tu Marcellus eris,") which he had artfully
+deferred till the concluding lines, Octavia, unable to control her
+agitation, fainted away. She afterwards, with a magnificent spirit,
+ordered the poet a gratuity of ten thousand sesterces for each line of
+the panegyric.[80] It is probable that the agitation she suffered on
+this occasion hastened the effects of her disorder; for she died soon
+after, (of grief, says the historian,) having survived Antony about
+twenty years.
+
+
+VOLUMNIA.
+
+Octavia, however, is only a beautiful sketch, while in Volumnia,
+Shakspeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in the
+true antique spirit, and finished in every part. Although Coriolanus is
+the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the
+final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother, Volumnia, and
+the power she exercised over his mind, by which, according to the story,
+"she saved Rome and lost her son." Her lofty patriotism, her patrician
+haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit,
+are exhibited with the utmost power of effect; yet the truth of female
+nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigor,
+is without harshness.
+
+I shall begin by illustrating the relative position and feelings of the
+mother and son; as these are of the greatest importance in the action of
+the drama, and consequently most prominent in the characters. Though
+Volumnia is a Roman matron, and though her country owes its salvation to
+her, it is clear that her maternal pride and affection are stronger even
+than her patriotism. Thus when her son is exiled, she burst into an
+imprecation against Rome and its citizens:--
+
+    Now the red pestilence strikes all trades in Rome,
+    And occupations perish!
+
+Here we have the impulses of individual and feminine nature,
+overpowering all national and habitual influences. Volumnia would never
+have exclaimed like the Spartan mother, of her dead son, "Sparta has
+many others as brave as he;" but in a far different spirit she says to
+the Romans,--
+
+                      Ere you go, hear this:
+    As far as doth the Capitol exceed
+    The meanest house in Rome, so far my son,
+    Whom you have banished, does exceed you all.
+
+In the very first scene, and before the introduction of the principal
+personages, one citizen observes to another that the military exploits
+of Marcius were performed, not so much for his country's sake "as to
+please his mother." By this admirable stroke of art, introduced with
+such simplicity of effect, our attention is aroused, and we are prepared
+in the very outset of the piece for the important part assigned to
+Volumnia, and for her share in producing the catastrophe.
+
+In the first act we have a very graceful scene, in which the two Roman
+ladies, the wife and mother of Coriolanus, are discovered at their
+needle-work, conversing on his absence and danger, and are visited by
+Valeria:--
+
+                 The noble sisters of Publicola,
+    The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,
+    That's curded by the frost from purest snow,
+    And hangs on Dian's temple!
+
+Over this little scene Shakspeare, without any display of learning, has
+breathed the very spirit of classical antiquity. The haughty temper of
+Volumnia, her admiration of the valor and high bearing of her son, and
+her proud but unselfish love for him, are finely contrasted with the
+modest sweetness, he conjugal tenderness, and the fond solicitude of his
+wife Virgilia.
+
+                         VOLUMNIA.
+
+     When yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my
+     womb; when youth with comeliness pluck'd all gaze his way;
+     when, for a day of king's entreaties, a mother should not
+     sell him an hour from her beholding--considering how honor
+     would become such a person; that it was no better than
+     picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not
+     stir,--was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like
+     to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he
+     returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter--I
+     sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child,
+     than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.
+
+                         VIRGILIA.
+
+     But had he died in the business, madam? how then?
+
+                         VOLUMNIA.
+
+     Then his good report should have been my son; I therein
+     would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a
+     dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than
+     thine and my good Marcius, I had rather eleven die nobly for
+     their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.
+
+     _Enter a_ GENTLEWOMAN.
+
+     Madam, the lady Valeria is come to visit you.
+
+                         VIRGILIA.
+
+     Beseech you, give me leave to retire myself.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    Indeed you shall not.
+    Methinks I hear hither your husband's drum:
+    See him pluck Aufidius down by the hair:
+    As children from a bear, the Volces shunning him:
+    Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus--
+    "Come on, you cowards! you were got in fear,
+    Though you were born in Rome." His bloody brow
+    With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes;
+    Like to a harvest-man, that's task'd to mow
+    Or all, or lose his hire.
+
+                        VIRGILIA.
+
+    His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    Away, you fool! it more becomes a man
+    Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba,
+    When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier
+    Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood
+    At Grecian swords contending. Tell Valeria
+    We are fit to bid her welcome.       [_Exit Gent._
+
+                        VIRGILIA.
+
+    Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    He'll beat Aufidius's head below his knee.
+    And tread upon his neck.
+
+This distinction between the two females is as interesting and beautiful
+as it is well sustained. Thus when the victory of Coriolanus is
+proclaimed, Menenius asks, "Is he wounded?"
+
+                        VIRGILIA.
+
+    O no, no, no!
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    Yes, he is wounded--I thank the gods for it!
+
+And when he returns victorious from the wars, his high-spirited mother
+receives him with blessings and applause--his gentle wife with "gracious
+silence" and with tears.
+
+The resemblance of temper in the mother and the son, modified as it is
+by the difference of sex, and by her greater age and experience, is
+exhibited with admirable truth. Volumnia, with all her pride and spirit,
+has some prudence and self-command; in her language and deportment all
+is matured and matronly. The dignified tone of authority she assumes
+towards her son, when checking his headlong impetuosity, her respect and
+admiration for his noble qualities, and her strong sympathy even with
+the feelings she combats, are all displayed in the scene in which she
+prevails on him to soothe the incensed plebeians.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                         Pray be counsell'd:
+    I have a heart as little apt as yours,
+    But yet a brain that leads my use of anger
+    To better vantage.
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+                       Well said, noble woman:
+    Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that
+    The violent fit o' the time craves it as physic
+    For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,
+    Which I can scarcely bear.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                              What must I do?
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+    Return to the tribunes.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                            Well.
+    What then? what then?
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+                          Repent what you have spoke.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+    For them? I cannot do it to the gods;
+    Must I then do't to them?
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                            You are too absolute,
+    Though therein you can never be too noble,
+    But when extremities speak.
+
+                         I pr'ythee now, my son,
+    Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand;
+    And thus far having stretch'd it, (here be with them)
+    Thy knee bussing the stones, (for in such business
+    Action is eloquent, and the eyes of the ignorant
+    More learned than the ears,) waving thy head,
+    Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart
+    Now humble, as the ripest mulberry,
+    That will not hold the handling. Or, say to them,
+    Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils
+    Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,
+    Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,
+    In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame
+    Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far
+    As thou hast power and person.
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+                             This but done,
+    Even as she speaks, why all their hearts were yours
+    For they have pardons, being asked, as free
+    As words to little purpose.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                             Pr'ythee now,
+    Go, and be rul'd: although I know thou hadst rather
+    Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf
+    Than flatter him in a bower.
+
+                        MENENIUS.
+
+    Only fair speech.
+
+                        COMINIUS.
+
+                       I think 'twill serve, if he
+    Can thereto frame his spirit.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                            He must, and will:
+    Pr'ythee, now say you will, and go about it.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+    Must I go show them my unbarb'd sconce? Must I
+    With my base tongue give to my noble heart
+    A lie, that it must bear? Well, I will do't;
+    Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
+    This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,
+    And throw it against the wind. To the market-place
+    You have put me now to such a part, which never
+    I shall discharge to the life.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+    I pr'ythee now, sweet son, as thou hast said,
+    My praises made thee first a soldier, so
+    To have my praise for this, perform a part
+    Thou hast not done before.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                              Well, I must do't:
+    Away, my disposition, and possess me
+    Some harlot's spirit!
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                          I will not do't:
+    Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
+    And by my body's action, teach my mind
+    A most inherent baseness.
+
+                        VOLUMNIA.
+
+                              At thy choice, then:
+    To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor,
+    Than thou of them. Come all to ruin: let
+    Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear
+    Thy dangerous stoutness: for I mock at death
+    With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list--
+    Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me
+    But owe thy pride thyself.
+
+                        CORIOLANUS.
+
+                              Pray be content;
+    Mother, I am going to the market place--
+    Chide me no more.
+
+When the spirit of the mother and the son are brought into immediate
+collision, he yields before her; the warrior who stemmed alone the whole
+city of Corioli, who was ready to face "the steep Tarpeian death, or at
+wild horses' heels,--vagabond exile--flaying," rather than abate one jot
+of his proud will--shrinks at her rebuke. The haughty, fiery,
+overbearing temperament of Coriolanus, is drawn in such forcible and
+striking colors, that nothing can more impress us with the real grandeur
+and power of Volumnia's character, than his boundless submission to her
+will--his more than filial tenderness and respect.
+
+                            You gods! I prate,
+    And the most noble mother of the world
+    Leave unsaluted. Sink my knee i' the earth--
+    Of thy deep duty more impression show
+    Than that of common sons!
+
+When his mother appears before him as a suppliant, he exclaims,--
+
+    My mother bows;
+    As if Olympus to a molehill should
+    In supplication nod.
+
+Here the expression of reverence, and the magnificent image in which it
+is clothed, are equally characteristic both of the mother and the son.
+
+Her aristocratic haughtiness is a strong trait in Volumnia's manner and
+character, and her supreme contempt for the plebeians, whether they are
+to be defied or cajoled, is very like what I have heard expressed by
+some high-born and high-bred women of our own day.
+
+                        I muse my mother
+    Does not approve me further, who was wont
+    To call them woollen vassals; things created
+    To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads
+    In congregations; to yawn, be still, and wonder
+    When one but of my ordinance stood up
+    To speak of peace or war.
+
+And Volumnia reproaching the tribunes,--
+
+                      'Twas you incensed the rabble--
+    Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth,
+    As I can of those mysteries which Heaven
+    Will not have earth to know.
+
+There is all the Roman spirit in her exultation when the trumpets sound
+the return of Coriolanus.
+
+                      Hark! the trumpets!
+    These are the ushers of Marcius: before him
+    He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.
+
+And in her speech to the gentle Virgilia, who is weeping her husband's
+banishment--
+
+    Leave this faint puling! and lament as I do
+    In anger--Juno-like!
+
+But the triumph of Volumnia's character, the full display of all her
+grandeur of soul, her patriotism, her strong affections, and her sublime
+eloquence, are reserved for her last scene, in which she pleads for the
+safety of Rome, and wins from her angry son that peace which all the
+swords of Italy and her confederate arms could not have purchased. The
+strict and even literal adherence to the truth of history is an
+additional beauty.
+
+Her famous speech, beginning "Should we be silent and not speak," is
+nearly word for word from Plutarch, with some additional graces of
+expression, and the charm of metre superadded. I shall give the last
+lines of this address, as illustrating that noble and irresistible
+eloquence which was the crowning ornament of the character. One
+exquisite touch of nature, which is distinguished by italics, was beyond
+the rhetorician and historian, and belongs only to the poet.
+
+                              Speak to me, son;
+    Thou hast affected the fine strains of honor,
+    To imitate the graces of the gods;
+    To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
+    And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
+    That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?
+    Think'st thou it honorable for a nobleman
+    Still to remember wrongs? Daughter, speak you:
+    He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy;
+    Perhaps thy childishness may move him more
+    Than can our reasons. There is no man in the world
+    More bound to his mother; yet here he lets me prate
+    Like one i' the stocks. Thou hast never in thy life
+    Show'd thy dear mother any courtesy;
+    _When she, (poor hen!) fond of no second brood,
+    Has cluck'd thee to the wars, and safely home,
+    Laden with honor._ Say my request's unjust,
+    And spurn me back: but, if it be not so,
+    Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee
+    That thou restrain'st from me the duty which
+    To a mother's part belongs. He turns away:
+    Down, ladies: let us shame him with our knees.
+    To his surname Coriolanus 'longs more pride,
+    Than pity to our prayers; down, and end;
+    This is the last; so will we home to Rome,
+    And die among our neighbors. Nay, behold us;
+    This boy, that cannot tell what he would have,
+    But kneels, and holds up hands, for fellowship,
+    Does reason our petition with more strength
+    Than thou hast to deny't.[81]
+
+It is an instance of Shakspeare's fine judgment, that after this
+magnificent and touching piece of eloquence, which saved Rome, Volumnia
+should speak no more, for she could say nothing that would not
+deteriorate from the effect thus left on the imagination. She is at last
+dismissed from our admiring gaze amid the thunder of grateful
+acclamations--
+
+    Behold, our patroness,--the life of Rome.
+
+
+CONSTANCE.
+
+We have seen that in the mother of Coriolanus, the principal qualities
+are exceeding pride, self-will, strong maternal affection, great power
+of imagination, and energy of temper. Precisely the same qualities enter
+into the mind of Constance of Bretagne: but in her these qualities are
+so differently modified by circumstances and education, that not even in
+fancy do we think of instituting a comparison between the Gothic
+grandeur of Constance, and the more severe and classical dignity of the
+Roman matron.
+
+The scenes and circumstances with which Shakspeare has surrounded
+Constance, are strictly faithful to the old chronicles, and are as
+vividly as they are accurately represented. On the other hand, the hints
+on which the character has been constructed, are few and vague; but the
+portrait harmonizes so wonderfully with its historic background, and
+with all that later researches have discovered relative to the personal
+adventures of Constance, that I have not the slightest doubt of its
+individual truth. The result of a life of strange vicissitude; the
+picture of a tameless will, and high passions, forever struggling in
+vain against a superior power: and the real situation of women in those
+chivalrous times, are placed before us in a few noble scenes. The manner
+in which Shakspeare has applied the scattered hints of history to the
+formation of the character, reminds us of that magician who collected
+the mangled limbs which had been dispersed up and down, reunited them
+into the human form, and reanimated them with the breathing and
+conscious spirit of life.
+
+Constance of Bretagne was the only daughter and heiress of Conan IV.,
+Duke of Bretagne; her mother was Margaret of Scotland, the eldest
+daughter of Malcolm IV.: but little mention is made of this princess in
+the old histories; but she appears to have inherited some portion of the
+talent and spirit of her father, and to have transmitted them to her
+daughter. The misfortunes of Constance may be said to have commenced
+before her birth, and took their rise in the misconduct of one of her
+female ancestors. Her great-grandmother Matilda, the wife of Conan III.,
+was distinguished by her beauty and imperious temper, and not less by
+her gallantries. Her husband, not thinking proper to repudiate her
+during his lifetime, contented himself with disinheriting her son Hoel,
+whom he declared illegitimate; and bequeathed his dukedom to his
+daughter Bertha, and her husband Allan the Black, Earl of Richmond, who
+were proclaimed and acknowledged Duke and Duchess of Bretagne.
+
+Prince Hoel, so far from acquiescing in his father's will, immediately
+levied an army to maintain his rights, and a civil war ensued between
+the brother and sister, which lasted for twelve or fourteen years.
+Bertha, whose reputation was not much fairer than that of her mother
+Matilda, was succeeded by her son Conan IV.; he was young, and of a
+feeble, vacillating temper, and after struggling for a few years against
+the increasing power of his uncle Hoel, and his own rebellious barons,
+he called in the aid of that politic and ambitious monarch, Henry II. of
+England. This fatal step decided the fate of his crown and his
+posterity; from the moment the English set foot in Bretagne, that
+miserable country became a scene of horrors and crimes--oppression and
+perfidy on the one hand, unavailing struggles on the other. Ten years of
+civil discord ensued, during which the greatest part of Bretagne was
+desolated, and nearly a third of the population carried off by famine
+and pestilence. In the end, Conan was secured in the possession of his
+throne by the assistance of the English king, who, equally subtle and
+ambitious, contrived in the course of this warfare to strip Conan of
+most of his provinces by successive treaties; alienate the Breton nobles
+from their lawful sovereign, and at length render the Duke himself the
+mere vassal of his power.
+
+In the midst of these scenes of turbulence and bloodshed was Constance
+born, in the year 1164. The English king consummated his perfidious
+scheme of policy, by seizing on the person of the infant princess,
+before she was three years old, as a hostage for her father. Afterwards,
+by contracting her in marriage to his third son, Geoffrey Plantagenet,
+he ensured, as he thought, the possession of the duchy of Bretagne to
+his own posterity.
+
+From this time we hear no more of the weak, unhappy Conan, who, retiring
+from a fruitless contest, hid himself in some obscure retreat: even the
+date of his death is unknown. Meanwhile Henry openly claimed the duchy
+in behalf of his son Geoffrey and the Lady Constance; and their claims
+not being immediately acknowledged, he invaded Bretagne with a large
+army, laid waste the country, bribed or forced some of the barons into
+submission, murdered or imprisoned others, and, by the most treacherous
+and barbarous policy, contrived to keep possession of the country he had
+thus seized. However, in order to satisfy the Bretons, who were attached
+to the race of their ancient sovereigns, and to give some color to his
+usurpation, he caused Geoffrey and Constance to be solemnly crowned at
+Rennes, as Duke and Duchess of Bretagne. This was in the year 1169 when
+Constance was five, and Prince Geoffrey about eight, years old. His
+father, Henry, continued to rule, or rather to ravage and oppress, the
+country in their name for about fourteen years, during which period we
+do not hear of Constance. She appears to have been kept in a species of
+constraint as a hostage rather than a sovereign; while her husband
+Geoffrey, as he grew up to manhood, was too much engaged in keeping the
+Bretons in order, and disputing his rights with his father, to think
+about the completion of his union with Constance, although his sole
+title to the dukedom was properly and legally in right of his wife. At
+length, in 1182, the nuptials were formally celebrated, Constance being
+then in her nineteenth year. At the same time, she was recognized as
+Duchess of Bretagne _de son chef_, (that is, in her own right,) by two
+acts of legislation, which are still preserved among the records of
+Bretagne, and bear her own seal and signature.
+
+Those domestic feuds which embittered the whole life of Henry II., and
+at length broke his heart, are well known. Of all his sons, who were in
+continual rebellion against him, Geoffrey was the most undutiful, and
+the most formidable: he had all the pride of the Plantagenets,--all the
+warlike accomplishments of his two elder brothers, Henry and Richard;
+and was the only one who could compete with his father in talent,
+eloquence, and dissimulation. No sooner was he the husband of Constance,
+and in possession of the throne of Bretagne, than he openly opposed his
+father; in other words, he maintained the honor and interests of his
+wife and her unhappy country against the cruelties and oppression of the
+English plunderers.[82] About three years after his marriage, he was
+invited to Paris for the purpose of concluding a league, offensive and
+defensive, with the French king: in this journey he was accompanied by
+the Duchess Constance, and they were received and entertained with royal
+magnificence. Geoffrey, who excelled in all chivalrous accomplishments,
+distinguished himself in the tournaments which were celebrated on the
+occasion; but unfortunately, after an encounter with a French knight,
+celebrated for his prowess, he was accidentally flung from his horse,
+and trampled to death in the lists before he could be extricated.
+
+Constance, being now left a widow, returned to Bretagne, where her
+barons rallied round her, and acknowledged her as their sovereign. The
+Salique law did not prevail in Bretagne, and it appears that in those
+times the power of a female to possess and transmit the rights of
+sovereignty had been recognized in several instances; but Constance is
+the first woman who exercised those rights in her own person. She had
+one daughter, Elinor, born in the second year of her marriage, and a few
+months after her husband's death she gave birth to a son. The States of
+Bretagne were filled with exultation; they required that the infant
+prince should not bear the name of his father,--a name which Constance,
+in fond remembrance of her husband, would have bestowed on him--still
+less that of his grandfather Henry; but that of Arthur, the redoubted
+hero of their country, whose memory was worshipped by the populace.
+Though the Arthur of romantic and fairy legends--the Arthur of the round
+table, had been dead for six centuries, they still looked for his second
+appearance among them, according to the prophecy of Merlin; and now,
+with fond and short-sighted enthusiasm, fixed their hopes on the young
+Arthur as one destined to redeem the glory and independence of their
+oppressed and miserable country. But in the very midst of the rejoicings
+which succeeded the birth of the prince, his grandfather, Henry II.,
+demanded to have the possession and guardianship of his person; and on
+the spirited refusal of Constance to yield her son into his power, he
+invaded Bretagne with a large army, plundering, burning, devastating the
+country as he advanced. He seized Rennes, the capital, and having by the
+basest treachery obtained possession of the persons both of the young
+duchess and her children, he married Constance forcibly to one of his
+own favorite adherents, Randal de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, and
+conferred on him the duchy of Bretagne, to be held as a fief of the
+English crown.
+
+The Earl of Chester, though a brave knight and one of the greatest
+barons of England, had no pretensions to so high an alliance; nor did he
+possess any qualities or personal accomplishments which might have
+reconciled Constance to him as a husband. He was a man of diminutive
+stature and mean appearance, but of haughty and ferocious manners, and
+unbounded ambition.[83] In a conference between this Earl of Chester and
+the Earl of Perche, in Lincoln cathedral, the latter taunted Randal with
+his insignificant person, and called him contemptuously "_Dwarf_."
+"Sayst thou so!" replied Randal; "I vow to God and our Lady, whose
+church this is, that ere long I will seem to thee high as that steeple!"
+He was as good as his word, when, on ascending the throne of Brittany,
+the Earl of Perche became his vassal.
+
+We cannot know what measures were used to force this degradation on the
+reluctant and high-spirited Constance; it is only certain that she never
+considered her marriage in the light of a sacred obligation, and that
+she took the first opportunity of legally breaking from a chain which
+could scarcely be considered as legally binding. For about a year she
+was obliged to allow this detested husband the title of Duke of
+Bretagne, and he administered the government without the slightest
+reference to her will, even in form, till 1189, when Henry II. died,
+execrating himself and his undutiful children. Whatever great and good
+qualities this monarch may have possessed, his conduct in Bretagne was
+uniformly detestable. Even the unfilial behavior of his sons may be
+extenuated; for while he spent his life, and sacrificed his peace, and
+violated every principle of honor and humanity to compass their
+political aggrandizement, he was guilty of atrocious injustice towards
+them, and set them a bad example in his own person.
+
+The tidings of Henry's death had no sooner reached Bretagne than the
+barons of that country rose with one accord against his government,
+banished or massacred his officers, and, sanctioned by the Duchess
+Constance, drove Randal de Blondeville and his followers from Bretagne;
+he retired to his earldom of Chester, there to brood over his injuries,
+and meditate vengeance.
+
+In the mean time, Richard I. ascended the English throne. Soon
+afterwards he embarked on his celebrated expedition to the Holy Land,
+having previously declared Prince Arthur, the only son of Constance,
+heir to all his dominions.[84]
+
+His absence, and that of many of her own turbulent barons and
+encroaching neighbors, left to Constance and her harassed dominions a
+short interval of profound peace. The historians of that period,
+occupied by the warlike exploits of the French and English kings in
+Palestine, make but little mention of the domestic events of Europe
+during their absence; but it is no slight encomium on the character of
+Constance, that Bretagne flourished under her government, and began to
+recover from the effects of twenty years of desolating war. The seven
+years during which she ruled as an independent sovereign, were not
+marked by any events of importance; but in the year 1196 she caused her
+son Arthur, then nine years of age, to be acknowledged Duke of Bretagne
+by the States, and associated him with herself in all the acts of
+government.
+
+There was more of maternal fondness than policy in this measure, and it
+cost her dear. Richard, that royal firebrand, had now returned to
+England: by the intrigues and representations of Earl Randal, his
+attention was turned to Bretagne. He expressed extreme indignation that
+Constance should have proclaimed her son Duke of Bretagne, and her
+partner in power, without his consent, he being the feudal lord and
+natural guardian of the young prince. After some excuses and
+representations on the part of Constance, he affected to be pacified,
+and a friendly interview was appointed at Pontorson, on the frontiers of
+Normandy.
+
+We can hardly reconcile the cruel and perfidious scenes which follow
+with those romantic and chivalrous associations which illustrate the
+memory of Coeur-de-Lion--the friend of Blondel, and the antagonist of
+Saladin. Constance, perfectly unsuspicious of the meditated treason,
+accepted the invitation of her brother-in-law, and set out from Rennes
+with a small but magnificent retinue to join him at Pontorson. On the
+road, and within sight of the town, the Earl of Chester was posted with
+a troop of Richard's soldiery, and while the Duchess prepared to enter
+the gates, where she expected to be received with honor and welcome, he
+suddenly rushed from his ambuscade, fell upon her and her suite, put the
+latter to flight, and carried off Constance to the strong Castle of St.
+Jaques de Beuvron, where he detained her a prisoner for eighteen months.
+The chronicle does not tell us how Randal treated his unfortunate wife
+during this long imprisonment. She was absolutely in his power; none of
+her own people were suffered to approach her, and whatever might have
+been his behavior towards her, one thing alone is certain, that so far
+from softening her feelings towards _him_, it seems to have added
+tenfold bitterness to her abhorrence and her scorn.
+
+The barons of Bretagne sent the Bishop of Rennes to complain of this
+violation of faith and justice, and to demand the restitution of the
+Duchess. Richard meanly evaded and temporized: he engaged to restore
+Constance to liberty on certain conditions; but this was merely to gain
+time. When the stipulated terms were complied with, and the hostages
+delivered, the Bretons sent a herald to the English king, to require him
+to fulfil his part of the treaty, and restore their beloved Constance.
+Richard replied with insolent defiance, refused to deliver up either the
+hostages or Constance, and marched his army into the heart of the
+country.
+
+All that Bretagne had suffered previously was as nothing compared to
+this terrible invasion; and all that the humane and peaceful government
+of Constance had effected during seven years was at once annihilated.
+The English barons and their savage and mercenary followers spread
+themselves through the country, which they wasted with fire and sword.
+The castles of those who ventured to defend themselves were razed to the
+ground; the towns and villages plundered and burnt, and the wretched
+inhabitants fled to the caves and forests; but not even there could they
+find an asylum; by the orders, and in the presence of Richard, the woods
+were set on fire, and hundreds either perished in the flames, or were
+suffocated in the smoke.
+
+Constance, meanwhile, could only weep in her captivity over the miseries
+of her country, and tremble with all a mother's fears for the safety of
+her son. She had placed Arthur under the care of William Desroches, the
+seneschal of her palace, a man of mature age, of approved valor, and
+devotedly attached to her family. This faithful servant threw himself,
+with his young charge, into the fortress of Brest, where he for some
+time defied the power of the English king.
+
+But notwithstanding the brave resistance of the nobles and people of
+Bretagne, they were obliged to submit to the conditions imposed by
+Richard. By a treaty concluded in 1198, of which the terms are not
+exactly known, Constance was delivered from her captivity, though not
+from her husband; but in the following year, when the death of Richard
+had restored her to some degree of independence, the first use she made
+of it was to _divorce herself_ from Randal. She took this step with her
+usual precipitancy, not waiting for the sanction of the Pope, as was the
+custom in those days; and soon afterwards she gave her hand to Guy,
+Count de Thouars, a man of courage and integrity, who for some time
+maintained the cause of his wife and her son against the power of
+England. Arthur was now fourteen, and the legitimate heir of all the
+dominions of his uncle Richard. Constance placed him under the
+guardianship of the king of France, who knighted the young prince with
+his own hand, and solemnly swore to defend his rights against his
+usurping uncle John.
+
+It is at this moment that the play of King John opens; and history is
+followed as closely as the dramatic form would allow, to the death of
+John. The real fate of poor Arthur, after he had been abandoned by the
+French, and had fallen into the hands of his uncle, is now ascertained;
+but according to the chronicle from which Shakspeare drew his materials,
+he was killed in attempting to escape from the castle of Falaise.
+Constance did not live to witness this consummation of her calamities;
+within a few months after Arthur was taken prisoner, in 1201, she died
+suddenly, before she had attained her thirty-ninth year; but the cause
+of her death is not specified.
+
+Her eldest daughter Elinor, the legitimate heiress of England, Normandy,
+and Bretagne, died in captivity; having been kept a prisoner in Bristol
+Castle from the age of fifteen. She was at that time so beautiful, that
+she was called proverbially, "La belle Bretonne," and by the English the
+"Fair Maid of Brittany." She, like her brother Arthur, was sacrificed to
+the ambition of her uncles.
+
+Of the two daughters of Constance by Guy de Thouars, the eldest, Alice,
+became Duchess of Bretagne, and married the Count de Dreux, of the royal
+blood of France. The sovereignty of Bretagne was transmitted through her
+descendants in an uninterrupted line, till, by the marriage of the
+celebrated Anne de Bretagne with Charles VIII. of France, her dominions
+were forever united with the French monarchy.
+
+In considering the real history of Constance, three things must strike
+us as chiefly remarkable.
+
+First, that she is not accused of any vice, or any act of injustice or
+violence; and this praise, though poor and negative, should have its due
+weight, considering the scanty records that remain of her troubled life,
+and the period at which she lived--a period in which crimes of the
+darkest dye were familiar occurrences. Her father, Conan, was considered
+as a gentle and amiable prince--"gentle even to feebleness;" yet we are
+told that on one occasion he acted over again the tragedy of Ugolino and
+Ruggiero, when he shut up the Count de Dol, with his two sons and his
+nephew, in a dungeon, and deliberately starved them to death; an event
+recorded without any particular comment by the old chroniclers of
+Bretagne. It also appears that, during those intervals when Constance
+administered the government of her states with some degree of
+independence, the country prospered under her sway, and that she
+possessed at all times the love of her people and the respect of her
+nobles.
+
+Secondly, no imputation whatever has been cast on the honor of Constance
+as a wife and as a woman. The old historians, who have treated in a very
+unceremonious style the levities of her great-grandmother Matilda, her
+grandmother Bertha, her godmother Constance, and her mother-in-law
+Elinor, treat the name and memory of our Lady Constance with uniform
+respect.
+
+Her third marriage, with Guy de Thouars, has been censured as impolitic,
+but has also been defended; it can hardly, considering her age, and the
+circumstances in which she was placed, be a just subject of reproach.
+During her hated union with Randal de Blondeville, and the years passed
+in a species of widowhood, she conducted herself with propriety: at
+least I can find no reason to judge otherwise.
+
+Lastly, we are struck by the fearless, determined spirit, amounting at
+times to rashness, which Constance displayed on several occasions, when
+left to the free exercise of her own power and will; yet we see how
+frequently, with all this resolution and pride of temper, she became a
+mere instrument in the hands of others, and a victim to the superior
+craft or power of her enemies. The inference is unavoidable; there must
+have existed in the mind of Constance, with all her noble and amiable
+qualities, a deficiency somewhere, a want of firmness, a want of
+judgment or wariness, and a total want of self-control.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the play of King John, the three principal characters are the King,
+Falconbridge, and Lady Constance. The first is drawn forcibly and
+accurately from history: it reminds us of Titian's portrait of Caesar
+Borgia, in which the hatefulness of the subject is redeemed by the
+masterly skill of the artist,--the truth, and power, and wonderful
+beauty of the execution. Falconbridge is the spirited creation of the
+poet.[85] Constance is certainly an historical personage; but the form
+which, when we meet it on the record of history, appears like a pale
+indistinct shadow, half melted into its obscure background, starts
+before us into a strange relief and palpable breathing reality upon the
+page of Shakspeare.
+
+Whenever we think of Constance, it is in her maternal character. All the
+interest which she excites in the drama turns upon her situation as the
+mother of Arthur. Every circumstance in which she is placed, every
+sentiment she utters, has a reference to him, and she is represented
+through the whole of the scenes in which she is engaged, as alternately
+pleading for the rights, and trembling for the existence of her son.
+
+The same may be said of the Merope. In the four tragedies of which her
+story forms the subject,[86] we see her but in one point of view,
+namely, as a mere impersonation of the maternal feeling. The poetry of
+the situation is every thing, the character nothing. Interesting as she
+is, take Merope out of the circumstances in which she is placed,--take
+away her son, for whom she trembles from the first scene to the last,
+and Merope in herself is nothing; she melts away into a name, to which
+we can fix no other characteristic by which to distinguish her. We
+recognize her no longer. Her position is that of an agonized mother; and
+we can no more fancy her under a different aspect, than we can imagine
+the statue of Niobe in a different attitude.
+
+But while we contemplate the character of Constance, she assumes before
+us an individuality perfectly distinct from the circumstances around
+her. The action calls forth her maternal feelings, and places them in
+the most prominent point of view: but with Constance, as with a real
+human being, the maternal affections are a powerful instinct, modified
+by other faculties, sentiments, and impulses, making up the individual
+character. We think of her as a mother, because, as a mother distracted
+for the loss of her son, she is immediately presented before us, and
+calls forth our sympathy and our tears; but we infer the rest of her
+character from what we see, as certainly and as completely as if we had
+known her whole course of life.
+
+That which strikes us as the principal attribute of Constance is
+_power_--power of imagination, of will, of passion, of affection, of
+pride: the moral energy, that faculty which is principally exercised in
+self-control, and gives consistency to the rest, is deficient; or
+rather, to speak more correctly, the extraordinary development of
+sensibility and imagination, which lends to the character its rich
+poetical coloring, leaves the other qualities comparatively subordinate.
+Hence it is that the whole complexion of the character, notwithstanding
+its amazing grandeur, is so exquisitely feminine. The weakness of the
+woman, who by the very consciousness of that weakness is worked up to
+desperation and defiance, the fluctuations of temper and the bursts of
+sublime passion, the terrors, the impatience, and the tears, are all
+most true to feminine nature. The energy of Constance not being based
+upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide of passion.
+Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and is excited into frenzy
+by sorrow and disappointment while neither from her towering pride, nor
+her strength of intellect, can she borrow patience to submit, or
+fortitude to endure. It is, therefore, with perfect truth of nature,
+that Constance is first introduced as pleading for peace.
+
+    Stay for an answer to your embassy,
+    Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood:
+    My Lord Chatillon may from England bring
+    That right in peace, which here we urge in war;
+    And then we shall repent each drop of blood,
+    That hot, rash haste so indirectly shed.
+
+And that the same woman, when all her passions are roused by the sense
+of injury, should afterwards exclaim,
+
+    War, war! No peace! peace is to me a war!
+
+That she should be ambitious for her son, proud of his high birth and
+royal rights, and violent in defending them, is most natural; but I
+cannot agree with those who think that in the mind of Constance,
+_ambition_--that is, the love of dominion for its own sake--is either a
+strong motive or a strong feeling: it could hardly be so where the
+natural impulses and the ideal power predominate in so high a degree.
+The vehemence with which she asserts the just and legal rights of her
+son is that of a fond mother and a proud-spirited woman, stung with the
+sense of injury, and herself a reigning sovereign,--by birth and right,
+if not in fact: yet when bereaved of her son, grief not only "fills the
+room up of her absent child," but seems to absorb every other faculty
+and feeling--even pride and anger. It is true that she exults over him
+as one whom nature and fortune had destined to be _great_, but in her
+distraction for his loss, she thinks of him only as her "Pretty Arthur."
+
+    O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
+    My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
+    My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!
+
+No other feeling can be traced through the whole of her frantic scene:
+it is grief only, a mother's heart-rending, soul-absorbing grief, and
+nothing else. Not even indignation, or the desire of revenge, interfere
+with its soleness and intensity. An ambitious woman would hardly have
+thus addressed the cold, wily Cardinal:--
+
+    And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say,
+    That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
+    If that be true, I shall see my boy again:
+    For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
+    To him that did but yesterday suspire,
+    There was not such a gracious creature born.
+    But now will canker eat my bud,
+    And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
+    And he will look as hollow as a ghost;
+    As dim and merge as an ague's fit;
+    And so he'll die; and rising so again,
+    When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
+    I shall not know him: therefore never, never.
+    Must I behold my pretty Arthur more!
+
+The bewildered pathos and poetry of this address could be natural in no
+woman, who did not unite, like Constance, the most passionate
+sensibility with the most vivid imagination.
+
+It is true that Queen Elinor calls her on one occasion, "ambitious
+Constance;" but the epithet is rather the natural expression of Elinor's
+own fear and hatred than really applicable.[87] Elinor, in whom age had
+subdued all passions but ambition, dreaded the mother of Arthur as her
+rival in power, and for that reason only opposed the claims of the son:
+but I conceive, that in a woman yet in the prime of life, and endued
+with the peculiar disposition of Constance, the mere love of power would
+be too much modified by fancy and feeling to be called a _passion_.
+
+In fact, it is not pride, nor temper, nor ambition, nor even maternal
+affection, which in Constance gives the prevailing tone to the whole
+character; it is the predominance of imagination. I do not mean in the
+conception of the dramatic portrait, but in the temperament of the woman
+herself. In the poetical, fanciful, excitable cast of her mind, in the
+_excess_ of the ideal power, tinging all her affections, exalting all
+her sentiments and thoughts, and animating the expression of both,
+Constance can only be compared to Juliet.
+
+In the first place, it is through the power of imagination that when
+under the influence of excited temper, Constance is not a mere incensed
+woman; nor does she, in the style of Volumnia, "lament in anger,
+Juno-like," but rather like a sibyl in a fury. Her sarcasms come down
+like thunderbolts. In her famous address to Austria--
+
+    O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame
+    That bloody spoil! thou slave! thou wretch! thou coward! &c.
+
+it is as if she had concentrated the burning spirit of scorn, and dashed
+it in his face: every word seems to blister where it falls. In the
+scolding scene between her and Queen Elinor, the laconic insolence of
+the latter is completely overborne by the torrent of bitter contumely
+which bursts from the lips of Constance, clothed in the most energetic,
+and often in the most figurative expressions.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Let me make answer; Thy usurping son.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Out insolent! thy bastard shall be king,
+    That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world!
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    My bed was ever to thy son as true,
+    As thine was to thy husband; and this boy
+    Liker in feature to his father Geffrey,
+    Than thou and John in manners: being as like
+    As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
+    My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think
+    His father never was so true begot;
+    It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+                        Come to thy grandam, child.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Do child; go to its grandam, child:
+    Give grandam kingdom, and its grandam will
+    Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:
+    There's a good grandam.
+
+                        ARTHUR.
+
+                            Good my mother, peace!
+    I would that I were low laid in my grave;
+    I am not worth this coil that's made for me.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Now shame upon you, whe'r she does or no!
+    His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shame,
+    Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes
+    Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee:
+    Ay, with these crystal beads heav'n shall be bribed
+    To do him justice, and revenge on you.
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!
+    Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurp
+    The dominations, royalties, and rights
+    Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's son
+    Infortunate in nothing but in thee.
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        ELINOR.
+
+    Thou unadvised scold, I can produce
+    A will that bars the title of thy son.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will--
+    A woman's will--a canker'd grandam's will!
+
+                        KING PHILIP.
+
+    Peace, lady: pause, or be more moderate.
+
+And in a very opposite mood, when struggling with the consciousness of
+her own helpless situation, the same susceptible and excitable fancy
+still predominates:--
+
+    Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me;
+    For I am sick, and capable of fears;
+    Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears
+    A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
+    A woman, naturally born to fears;
+    And though thou now confess thou didst but jest
+    With my vexed spirits, I cannot take a truce,
+    But they will quake and tremble all this day.
+    What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?
+    Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?
+    What means that hand upon that breast of thine?
+    Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,
+    Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds?
+    Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    Fellow, begone! I cannot brook thy sight--
+    This news hath made thee a most ugly man!
+
+It is the power of imagination which gives so peculiar a tinge to the
+maternal tenderness of Constance; she not only loves her son with the
+fond instinct of a mother's affection, but she loves him with her
+poetical imagination, exults in his beauty and his royal birth, hangs
+over him with idolatry, and sees his infant brow already encircled with
+the diadem. Her proud spirit, her ardent enthusiastic fancy, and her
+energetic self-will, all combine with her maternal love to give it that
+tone and character which belongs to her only: hence that most beautiful
+address to her son, which coming from the lips of Constance, is as full
+of nature and truth as of pathos and poetry, and which we could hardly
+sympathize with in any other:--
+
+                        ARTHUR.
+
+    I do beseech you, madam, be content.
+
+                        CONSTANCE.
+
+    If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,
+    Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,
+    Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,
+    Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious.
+    Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks,
+    I would not care--I then would be content;
+    For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou
+    Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.
+    But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy!
+    Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:
+    Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast,
+    And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O!
+    She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee;
+    She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John;
+    And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France
+    To tread down fair respect of sovereignty.
+
+It is this exceeding vivacity of imagination which in the end turns
+sorrow to frenzy. Constance is not only a bereaved and doating mother,
+but a generous woman, betrayed by her own rash confidence; in whose mind
+the sense of injury mingling with the sense of grief, and her impetuous
+temper conflicting with her pride, combine to overset her reason; yet
+she is not mad: and how admirably, how forcibly she herself draws the
+distinction between the frantic violence of uncontrolled feeling and
+actual madness!--
+
+    Thou art not holy to belie me so;
+    I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
+    My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
+    Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
+    I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were!
+    For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
+    O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
+
+Not only has Constance words at will, and fast as the passionate
+feelings rise in her mind they are poured forth with vivid, overpowering
+eloquence; but, like Juliet, she may be said to speak in pictures. For
+instance:--
+
+    Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum?
+    Like a proud river peering o'er its bounds.
+
+And throughout the whole dialogue there is the same overflow of
+eloquence, the same splendor of diction, the same luxuriance of imagery;
+yet with an added grandeur, arising from habits of command, from the
+age, the rank, and the matronly character of Constance. Thus Juliet
+pours forth her love like a muse in a rapture: Constance raves in her
+sorrow like a Pythoness possessed with the spirit of pain. The love of
+Juliet is deep and infinite as the boundless sea: and the grief of
+Constance is so great, that nothing but the round world itself is able
+to sustain it.
+
+    I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
+    For grief is proud and makes his owner stout.
+    To me, and to the state of my great grief
+    Let kings assemble, for my grief's so great,
+    That no supporter but the huge firm earth
+    Can hold it up. Here I and Sorrow sit;
+    Here is my throne,--bid kings come bow to it!
+
+An image more majestic, more wonderfully sublime, was never presented to
+the fancy; yet almost equal as a flight of poetry is her apostrophe to
+the heavens;--
+
+    Arm, arm, ye heavens, against these perjured kings
+    A widow calls!--be husband to me, heavens!
+
+And again--
+
+    O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth,
+    Then with a passion would I shake the world!
+
+Not only do her thoughts start into images, but her feelings become
+persons: grief haunts her as a living presence:
+
+    Grief fills the room up of my absent child;
+    Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
+    Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
+    Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
+    Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
+    Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
+
+And death is welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as
+Juliet _saw_ "the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one
+ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered
+fancy:--
+
+                O amiable, lovely death!
+    Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
+    Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
+    Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
+    And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
+    And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows;
+    And right these fingers with thy household worms;
+    And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust;
+    And be a carrion monster like thyself;
+    Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st,
+    And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,
+    O come to me!
+
+Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy.
+Majesty is also the characteristic of Hermione: but what a difference
+between _her_ silent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the eloquent
+grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth
+clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but
+absolutely electrify us!
+
+On the whole, it may be said that pride and maternal affection form the
+basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us; but that
+these passions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, assume
+their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of
+intellect and fancy. It is the energy of passion which lends the
+character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination
+throughout which dilates it into magnificence.
+
+Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be
+found in the parts of Juliet and Constance; the most splendid, perhaps,
+excepting only the parts of Lear and Othello; and for the same
+reason,--that Lear and Othello as men, and Juliet and Constance as
+women, are distinguished by the predominance of the same
+faculties,--passion and imagination.
+
+The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially
+interfering with the truth of the situation, is the entire omission of
+the character of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance is incorrectly
+represented as in a state of widowhood, at a period when, in point of
+fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place
+just at the period of the opening of the drama; that Guy de Thouars
+played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the
+death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this personage,
+altogether superfluous in the action, would have completely destroyed
+the dramatic interest of the situation;--and what a situation! One more
+magnificent was never placed before the mind's eye than that of
+Constance, when, deserted and betrayed, she stands alone in her despair,
+amid her false friends and her ruthless enemies![88] The image of the
+mother-eagle, wounded and bleeding to death, yet stretched over her
+young in an attitude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are
+clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity
+of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the
+grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that
+mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy
+of Philip: between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold,
+subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely
+Louis; the still unconquered spirit of that wrangling queen, old Elinor;
+the bridal loveliness and modesty of Blanche; the boyish grace and
+innocence of young Arthur; and Constance in the midst of them, in all
+the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and
+passion, helpless at once and desperate,--form an assemblage of figures,
+each perfect in its kind, and, taken all together, not surpassed for the
+variety, force, and splendor of the dramatic and picturesque effect.
+
+
+QUEEN ELINOR.
+
+Elinor of Guienne, and Blanche of Castile, who form part of the group
+around Constance, are sketches merely, but they are strictly historical
+portraits, and full of truth and spirit.
+
+At the period when Shakspeare has brought these three women on the scene
+together, Elinor of Guienne (the daughter of the last Duke of Guienne
+and Aquitaine, and like Constance, the heiress of a sovereign duchy) was
+near the close of her long, various, and unquiet life--she was nearly
+seventy: and, as in early youth, her violent passions had overborne both
+principle and policy, so in her old age we see the same character, only
+modified by time; her strong intellect and love of power, unbridled by
+conscience or principle, surviving when other passions were
+extinguished, and rendered more dangerous by a degree of subtlety and
+self-command to which her youth had been a stranger. Her personal and
+avowed hatred for Constance, together with its motives, are mentioned by
+the old historians. Holinshed expressly says, that Queen Elinor was
+mightily set against her grandson Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy
+conceived against his mother, than by any fault of the young prince, for
+that she knew and dreaded the high spirit of the Lady Constance.
+
+Shakspeare has rendered this with equal spirit and fidelity.
+
+                        QUEEN ELINOR.
+
+    What now, my son! have I not ever said,
+    How that ambitious Constance would not cease,
+    Till she had kindled France and all the world
+    Upon the right and party of her son?
+    This might have been prevented and made whole
+    With very easy arguments of love;
+    Which now the manage of two kingdoms must
+    With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.
+
+                        KING JOHN.
+
+    Our strong possession and our right for us!
+
+                        QUEEN ELINOR.
+
+    Your strong possession much more than your right;
+    Or else it must go wrong with you and me.
+    So much my conscience whispers in your ear--
+    Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear.
+
+Queen Elinor preserved to the end of her life her influence over her
+children, and appears to have merited their respect. While intrusted
+with the government, during the absence of Richard I., she ruled with a
+steady hand, and made herself exceedingly popular; and as long as she
+lived to direct the counsels of her son John, his affairs prospered. For
+that intemperate jealousy which converted her into a domestic firebrand,
+there was at least much cause, though little excuse. Elinor had hated
+and wronged the husband of her youth,[89] and she had afterwards to
+endure the negligence and innumerable infidelities of the husband whom
+she passionately loved:[90]--"and so the whirligig of time brought in
+his revenges." Elinor died in 1203, a few months after Constance, and
+before the murder of Arthur--a crime which, had she lived, would
+probably never have been consummated; for the nature of Elinor, though
+violent, had no tincture of the baseness and cruelty of her son.
+
+
+BLANCHE.
+
+Blanche of Castile was the daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile, and the
+grand-daughter of Elinor. At the time that she is introduced into the
+drama, she was about fifteen, and her marriage with Louis VIII., then
+Dauphin, took place in the abrupt manner here represented. It is not
+often that political marriages have the same happy result. We are told
+by the historians of that time, that from the moment Louis and Blanche
+met, they were inspired by a mutual passion, and that during a union of
+more than twenty-six years they were never known to differ, nor even
+spent more than a single day asunder.[91]
+
+In her exceeding beauty and blameless reputation; her love for her
+husband, and strong domestic affections; her pride of birth and rank;
+her feminine gentleness of deportment; her firmness of temper; her
+religious bigotry; her love of absolute power, and her upright and
+conscientious administration of it, Blanche greatly resembled Maria
+Theresa of Austria. She was, however, of a more cold and calculating
+nature; and in proportion as she was less amiable as a woman, did she
+rule more happily for herself and others. There cannot be a greater
+contrast than between the acute understanding, the steady temper, and
+the cool intriguing policy of Blanche, by which she succeeded in
+disuniting and defeating the powers arrayed against her and her infant
+son, and the rash confiding temper and susceptible imagination of
+Constance, which rendered herself and her son easy victims to the fraud
+or ambition of others. Blanche, during forty years, held in her hands
+the destinies of the greater part of Europe, and is one of the most
+celebrated names recorded in history--but in what does she survive to us
+except in a name? Nor history, nor fame, though "trumpet-tongued," could
+do for _her_ what Shakspeare and poetry have done for Constance. The
+earthly reign of Blanche is over, her sceptre broken, and her power
+departed. When will the reign of Constance cease? when will _her_ power
+depart? Not while this world is a world, and there exists in it human
+souls to kindle at the touch of genius, and human hearts to throb with
+human sympathies!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no female character of any interest in the play of Richard II.
+The Queen (Isabelle of France) enacts the same passive part in the drama
+that she does in history.
+
+The same remark applies to Henry IV. In this admirable play there is no
+female character of any importance; but Lady Percy, the wife of Hotspur,
+is a very lively and beautiful sketch: she is sprightly, feminine, and
+fond; but without any thing energetic or profound, in mind or in
+feeling. Her gayety and spirit in the first scenes, are the result of
+youth and happiness, and nothing can be more natural than the utter
+dejection and brokenness of heart which follow her husband's death: she
+is no heroine for war or tragedy; she has no thought of revenging her
+loss; and even her grief has something soft and quiet in its pathos. Her
+speech to her father-in-law, Northumberland, in which she entreats him
+"not to go to the wars," and at the same time pronounces the most
+beautiful eulogium on her heroic husband, is a perfect piece of feminine
+eloquence, both in the feeling and in the expression.
+
+Almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy's celebrated address to her
+husband, beginning,
+
+    O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?
+
+and that of Portia to Brutus, in Julius Caesar,
+
+    ... You've ungently, Brutus,
+    Stol'n from my bed.
+
+The situation is exactly similar, the topics of remonstrance are nearly
+the same; the sentiments and the style as opposite as are the characters
+of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently accustomed to win more from
+her fiery lord by caresses than by reason: he loves her in his rough way
+"as Harry Percy's wife," but she has no real influence over him: he has
+no confidence in her.
+
+                        LADY PERCY.
+
+    ... In faith,
+    I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.
+    I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir
+    About this title, and hath sent for you
+    To line his enterprise, but if you go--
+
+                        HOTSPUR.
+
+    So far afoot, I shall be weary, love!
+
+The whole scene is admirable, but unnecessary here, because it
+illustrates no point of character in her. Lady Percy has no _character_,
+properly so called; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and
+faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's
+fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties,
+scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly
+dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's
+thoughts, and proves it too
+
+    I grant I am a woman, but withal,
+    A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife,
+    I grant I am a woman, but withal,
+    A woman well reputed--Cato's daughter.
+    Think you, I am no stronger than my sex
+    Being so father'd and so husbanded?
+
+                      *   *   *   *
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    You are my true and honorable wife:
+    As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops
+    That visit my sad heart!
+
+Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is
+but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see
+an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of
+heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by
+profession, and in reality the reverse--acting deeds against his nature
+by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same
+profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and
+timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity,
+which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The
+fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own
+fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch
+relates, that on the day on which Caesar was assassinated, Portia
+appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her
+emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has
+rendered this circumstance literally.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,
+    Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.
+    Why dost thou stay?
+
+                        LUCIUS.
+
+                      To know my errand, madam.
+
+                        PORTIA.
+
+    I would have had thee there and here again,
+    Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.
+    O constancy! be strong upon my side:
+    Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
+    I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
+    ... Ah me! how weak a thing
+    The heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.
+
+There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not
+well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in
+the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she
+might not shake _his_ fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a
+chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she
+stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length
+burst into a passion of tears.[92]
+
+If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have
+been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or
+external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of
+sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the _philosophy_ of Portia
+and the _heroism_ of her death, certainly mistook the character
+altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not
+deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took
+place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed
+feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented
+it:--
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!
+
+                        CASSIUS.
+
+    Of your philosophy you make no use,
+    If you give place to accidental evils.
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead.
+
+                        CASSIUS.
+
+    Ha!--Portia?
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    She is dead.
+
+                        CASSIUS.
+
+    How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?
+    O insupportable and touching loss--
+    Upon what sickness?
+
+                        BRUTUS.
+
+    Impatient of my absence,
+    And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
+    Had made themselves so strong--(for with her death
+    These tidings came)--_with this she fell distract_,
+    And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.
+
+So much for woman's philosophy!
+
+
+MARGARET OF ANJOU.
+
+Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal
+evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally
+written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,[93] with
+considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr.
+Warburton, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism
+convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be
+convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the _unanswerable_.
+"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a
+case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that
+the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more
+of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of
+Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery,
+bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action,
+and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that
+there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as
+Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most
+skeptical.[94]
+
+Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the
+character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those
+who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most
+conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters,
+we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not
+always equal, but he had not two _manners_, as they say of painters. I
+discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit
+in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors,
+but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very
+unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these
+tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and
+consistency--but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so
+well in what true greatness of spirit consisted--who could excite our
+respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us
+a heroine without a touch of heroism; he would not have portrayed a
+high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest
+vicissitudes of fortune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would
+have broken the most masculine spirit, with unshaken constancy, yet left
+her without a single personal quality which would excite our interest in
+her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of
+history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen,
+the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere "Amazonian trull," with
+every coarser feature of depravity and ferocity; he would have redeemed
+her from unmingled detestation; he would have breathed into her some of
+his own sweet spirit--he would have given the woman a soul.
+
+The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all
+other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in
+stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that
+after the espousals of Henry and Margaret, "the king's friends fell from
+him; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves; the
+Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten;
+many thousands slain; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son
+slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as
+she was received with pomp and triumph."
+
+This passage seems to have furnished the groundwork of the character as
+it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret is
+portrayed with all the exterior graces of her sex; as bold and artful,
+with spirit to dare, resolution to act, and fortitude to endure; but
+treacherous, haughty, dissembling, vindictive, and fierce. The bloody
+struggle for power in which she was engaged, and the companionship of
+the ruthless iron men around her, seem to have left her nothing of
+womanhood but the heart of a mother--that last stronghold of our
+feminine nature! So far the character is consistently drawn: it has
+something of the power, but none of the flowing ease of Shakspeare's
+manner. There are fine materials not well applied; there is poetry in
+some of the scenes and speeches; the situations are often exceedingly
+poetical; but in the character of Margaret herself, there is not an atom
+of poetry. In her artificial dignity, her plausible wit, and her endless
+volubility, she would remind us of some of the most admired heroines of
+French tragedy, but for that unlucky box on the ear which she gives the
+Duchess of Gloster,--a violation of tragic decorum, which of course
+destroys all parallel.
+
+Having said thus much, I shall point out some of the finest and most
+characteristic scenes in which Margaret appears. The speech in which she
+expresses her scorn of her meek husband, and her impatience of the power
+exercised by those fierce overbearing barons, York, Salisbury, Warwick,
+Buckingham, is very fine, and conveys as faithful an idea of those
+feudal times as of the woman who speaks. The burst of female spite with
+which she concludes, is admirable--
+
+    Not all these lords do vex me half so much
+    As that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wife.
+    She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,
+    More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife.
+    Strangers in court do take her for the queen:
+    She bears a duke's revenues on her back,
+    And in her heart she scorns our poverty.
+    Shall I not live to be avenged on her?
+    Contemptuous base-born callet as she is!
+    She vaunted 'mongst her minions t'other day,
+    The very train of her worst wearing gown
+    Was better worth than all my father's lands,
+    Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.
+
+Her intriguing spirit, the facility with which she enters into the
+murderous confederacy against the good Duke Humphrey, the artful
+plausibility with which she endeavours to turn suspicion from
+herself--confounding her gentle consort by mere dint of words--are
+exceedingly characteristic, but not the less revolting.
+
+Her criminal love for Suffolk (which is a dramatic incident, not an
+historic fact) gives rise to the beautiful parting scene in the third
+act; a scene which it is impossible to read without a thrill of emotion,
+hurried away by that power and pathos which forces us to sympathize with
+the eloquence of grief, yet excites not a momentary interest either for
+Margaret or her lover. The ungoverned fury of Margaret in the first
+instance, the manner in which she calls on Suffolk to curse his enemies,
+and then shrinks back overcome by the violence of the spirit she had
+herself evoked, and terrified by the vehemence of his imprecations; the
+transition in her mind from the extremity of rage to tears and melting
+fondness, have been pronounced, and justly, to be in Shakspeare's own
+manner.
+
+    Go, speak not to me--even now begone.
+    O go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn'd
+    Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,
+    Loather a hundred times to part than die:
+    Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!
+
+which is followed by that beautiful and intense burst of passion from
+Suffolk--
+
+    'Tis not the hand I care for, wert thou hence;
+    A wilderness is populous enough,
+    So Suffolk had thy heavenly company:
+    For where thou art, there is the world itself,
+    With every several pleasure in the world;
+    And where thou art not, desolation!
+
+In the third part of Henry the Sixth, Margaret, engaged in the terrible
+struggle for her husband's throne, appears to rather more advantage. The
+indignation against Henry, who had pitifully yielded his son's
+birthright for the privilege of reigning unmolested during his own life,
+is worthy of her, and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here
+inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of
+the Duke of York; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty
+with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner,--the bitterness
+of her mockery, and the unwomanly malignity with which she presents him
+with the napkin stained with the blood of his youngest son, and "bids
+the father wipe his eyes withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion
+and horror. York replies in the celebrated speech, beginning--
+
+    She-wolf of France, and worse than wolves of France,
+    Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth--
+
+and taunts her with the poverty of her father, the most irritating topic
+he could have chosen.
+
+    Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?
+    It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen,
+    Unless the adage must be verified,
+    That beggars, mounted, ride their horse to death.
+    'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud;
+    But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small.
+    'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;
+    The contrary doth make thee wondered at.
+    'Tis government that makes them seem divine,
+    The want thereof makes thee abominable.
+
+       *   *   *   *
+
+    O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!
+    How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the child
+    To bid the father wipe his face withal,
+    And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?
+    Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,
+    Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!
+
+By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted such a speech could be
+answered only in one way--with her dagger's point--and thus she answers
+it.
+
+It is some comfort to reflect that this trait of ferocity is not
+historical: the body of the Duke of York was found, after the battle,
+among the heaps of slain, and his head struck off: but even this was not
+done by the command of Margaret.
+
+In another passage, the truth and consistency of the character of
+Margaret are sacrificed to the march of the dramatic action, with a very
+ill effect. When her fortunes were at the very lowest ebb, and she had
+sought refuge in the court of the French king, Warwick, her most
+formidable enemy, upon some disgust he had taken against Edward the
+Fourth, offered to espouse her cause; and proposed a match between the
+prince her son and his daughter Anne of Warwick--the "gentle Lady Anne,"
+who figures in Richard the Third. In the play, Margaret embraces the
+offer without a moment's hesitation:[95] we are disgusted by her
+versatile policy, and a meanness of spirit in no way allied to the
+magnanimous forgiveness of her terrible adversary. The Margaret of
+history sternly resisted this degrading expedient. She could not, she
+said, pardon from her heart the man who had been the primary cause of
+all her misfortunes. She mistrusted Warwick, despised him for the
+motives of his revolt from Edward, and considered that to match her son
+into the family of her enemy from mere policy was a species of
+degradation. It took Louis the Eleventh, with all his art and
+eloquence, fifteen days to wring a reluctant consent, accompanied with
+tears, from this high-hearted woman.
+
+The speech of Margaret to her council of generals before the battle of
+Tewksbury, (Act v. scene 5,) is as remarkable a specimen of false
+rhetoric, as her address to the soldiers, on the eve of the fight, is of
+true and passionate eloquence.
+
+She witnesses the final defeat of her army, the massacre of her
+adherents, and the murder of her son; and though the savage Richard
+would willingly have put an end to her misery, and exclaims very
+pertinently--
+
+    Why should she live to fill the world with words?
+
+she is dragged forth unharmed, a woful spectacle of extremest
+wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we
+compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter
+of her son, to the ravings of Constance, we shall perceive where
+Shakspeare's genius did _not_ preside, and where it _did_. Margaret, in
+bold defiance of history, but with fine dramatic effect, is introduced
+again in the gorgeous and polluted court of Edward the Fourth. There she
+stalks around the seat of her former greatness, like a terrible phantom
+of departed majesty, uncrowned, unsceptered, desolate, powerless--or
+like a vampire thirsting for blood--or like a grim prophetess of evil,
+imprecating that ruin on the head of her enemies, which she lived to see
+realized. The scene following the murder of the princes in the Tower,
+in which Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York sit down on the ground
+bewailing their desolation, and Margaret suddenly appears from behind
+them, like the very personification of woe, and seats herself beside
+them revelling in their despair, is, in the general conception and
+effect grand and appalling.
+
+                        THE DUCHESS.
+
+    O, Harry's wife, triumph not in my woes;
+    God witness with me, I have wept for thine!
+
+                        QUEEN MARGARET.
+
+    Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge,
+    And now I cloy me with beholding it.
+    Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward;
+    Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward:
+    Young York he is but boot, because both they
+    Match not the high perfection of my loss.
+    Thy Clarence he is dead, that stabb'd my Edward;
+    And the beholders of this tragic play,
+    The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
+    Untimely smother'd in their dusky graves.
+    Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer,
+    Only reserv'd their factor, to buy souls
+    And send them thither. But at hand, at hand,
+    Ensues his piteous and unpitied end;
+    Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar for him: saints pray
+    To have him suddenly convey'd from hence.
+    Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,
+    That I may live to say, The dog is dead.[96]
+
+She should have stopped here; but the effect thus powerfully excited is
+marred and weakened by so much superfluous rhetoric, that we are tempted
+to exclaim with the old Duchess of York--
+
+    Why should calamity be full of words?
+
+
+QUEEN KATHERINE OF ARRAGON.
+
+To have a just idea of the accuracy and beauty of this historical
+portrait, we ought to bring immediately before us those circumstances of
+Katherine's life and times, and those parts of her character, which
+belong to a period previous to the opening of the play. We shall then be
+better able to appreciate the skill with which Shakspeare has applied
+the materials before him.
+
+Katherine of Arragon, the fourth and youngest daughter of Ferdinand,
+King of Arragon, and Isabella of Castile, was born at Alcala, whither
+her mother had retired to winter after one of the most terrible
+campaigns of the Moorish war--that of 1485.
+
+Katherine had derived from nature no dazzling qualities of mind, and no
+striking advantages of person. She inherited a tincture of Queen
+Isabella's haughtiness and obstinacy of temper, but neither her beauty
+nor her splendid talents. Her education under the direction of that
+extraordinary mother, had implanted in her mind the most austere
+principles of virtue, the highest ideas of female decorum, the most
+narrow and bigoted attachment to the forms of religion, and that
+excessive pride of birth and rank, which distinguished so particularly
+her family and her nation. In other respects, her understanding was
+strong, and her judgment clear. The natural turn of her mind was simple,
+serious, and domestic, and all the impulses of her heart kindly and
+benevolent. Such was Katherine; such, at least, she appears on a
+reference to the chronicles of her times, and particularly from her own
+letters, and the papers written or dictated by herself which relate to
+her divorce; all of which are distinguished by the same artless
+simplicity of style, the same quiet good sense, the same resolute, yet
+gentle spirit and fervent piety.
+
+When five years old, Katherine was solemnly affianced to Arthur, Prince
+of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII.; and in the year 1501, she landed
+in England, after narrowly escaping shipwreck on the southern coast,
+from which every adverse wind conspired to drive her. She was received
+in London with great honor, and immediately on her arrival united to the
+young prince. He was then fifteen and Katherine in her seventeenth
+year.
+
+Arthur, as it is well known, survived his marriage only five months; and
+the reluctance of Henry VII. to refund the splendid dowry of the
+Infanta, and forego the advantages of an alliance with the most powerful
+prince of Europe, suggested the idea of uniting Katherine to his second
+son Henry; after some hesitation, a dispensation was procured from the
+Pope, and she was betrothed to Henry in her eighteenth year. The prince,
+who was then only twelve years old, resisted as far as he was able to do
+so, and appears to have really felt a degree of horror at the idea of
+marrying his brother's widow. Nor was the mind of King Henry at rest; as
+his health declined, his conscience reproached him with the equivocal
+nature of the union into which he had forced his son; and the vile
+motives of avarice and expediency which had governed him on this
+occasion. A short time previous to his death, he dissolved the
+engagement, and even caused Henry to sign a paper in which he solemnly
+renounced all idea of a future union with the Infanta. It is observable,
+that Henry signed this paper with reluctance, and that Katherine,
+instead of being sent back to her own country, still remained in
+England.
+
+It appears that Henry, who was now about seventeen, had become
+interested for Katherine, who was gentle and amiable. The difference of
+years was rather a circumstance in her favor; for Henry was just at that
+age, when a youth is most likely to be captivated by a woman older than
+himself: and no sooner was he required to renounce her, than the
+interest she had gradually gained in his affections, became, by
+opposition, a strong passion. Immediately after his father's death, he
+declared his resolution to take for his wife the Lady Katherine of
+Spain, and none other; and when the matter was discussed in council, it
+was urged that, besides the many advantages of the match in a political
+point of view, she had given so "much proof of virtue, and sweetness of
+condition, as they knew not where to parallel her." About six weeks
+after his accession, June 3, 1509, the marriage was celebrated with
+truly royal splendor, Henry being then eighteen, and Katherine in her
+twenty-fourth year.
+
+It has been said with truth, that if Henry had died while Katherine was
+yet his wife, and Wolsey his minister, he would have left behind him the
+character of a magnificent, popular, and accomplished prince, instead of
+that of the most hateful ruffian and tyrant who ever swayed these
+realms. Notwithstanding his occasional infidelities, and his impatience
+at her midnight vigils, her long prayers, and her religious austerities,
+Katherine and Henry lived in harmony together. He was fond of openly
+displaying his respect and love for her; and she exercised a strong and
+salutary influence over his turbulent and despotic spirit. When Henry
+set out on his expedition to France, in 1513, he left Katherine regent
+of the kingdom during his absence, with full powers to carry on the war
+against the Scots; and the Earl of Surrey at the head of the army, as
+her lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine--the pacific,
+domestic, and unpretending Katherine--describing herself as having "her
+heart set to war," and "horrible busy" with making "standards, banners,
+badges, scarfs, and the like."[97] Nor was this mere silken
+preparation--mere dalliance with the pomp and circumstance of war; for
+within a few weeks afterwards, her general defeated the Scots in the
+famous battle of Floddenfield, where James IV. and most of his nobility
+were slain.[98]
+
+Katherine's letter to Henry, announcing this event, so strikingly
+displays the piety and tenderness, the quiet simplicity, and real
+magnanimity of her character, that there cannot be a more apt and
+beautiful illustration of the exquisite truth and keeping of
+Shakspeare's portrait.
+
+
+     SIR,
+
+     My Lord Howard hath sent me a letter, open to your Grace,
+     within one of mine, by the which ye shall see at length the
+     great victory that our Lord hath sent your subjects in your
+     absence: and for this cause, it is no need herein to trouble
+     your Grace with long writing; but to my thinking this battle
+     hath been to your Grace, and all your realm, the greatest
+     honor that could be, and more than ye should win all the
+     crown of France, thanked be God for it! And I am sure your
+     Grace forgetteth not to do this, which shall be cause to
+     send you many more such great victories, as I trust he shall
+     do. My husband, for haste, with Rougecross, I could not send
+     your Grace the piece of the king of Scots' coat, which John
+     Glyn now bringeth. In this your Grace shall see how I can
+     keep my promise, sending you for your banners a king's coat.
+     I thought to send himself unto you, but our Englishmen's
+     hearts would not suffer it. It should have been better for
+     him to have been in peace than have this reward, but all
+     that God sendeth is for the best. My Lord of Surrey, my
+     Henry, would fain know your pleasure in the burying of the
+     king of Scots' body, for he hath written to me so. With the
+     next messenger, your Grace's pleasure may be herein known.
+     And with this I make an end, praying God to send you home
+     shortly; for without this, no joy here can be
+     accomplished--and for the same I pray. And now go to our
+     Lady at Walsyngham, that I promised so long ago to see.
+
+     At Woburn, the 16th day of September, (1513.)
+
+     I send your Grace herein a bill, found in a Scottishman's
+     purse, of such things as the French king sent to the said
+     king of Scots, to make war against you, beseeching you to
+     send Mathew hither as soon as this messenger cometh with
+     tidings of your Grace.
+
+    Your humble wife and true servant,
+
+                KATHERINE.[99]
+
+The legality of the king's marriage with Katherine remained undisputed
+till 1527. In the course of that year, Anna Bullen first appeared at
+court, and was appointed maid of honor to the queen; and then, and not
+till then, did Henry's union with his brother's wife "creep too near his
+conscience." In the following year, he sent special messengers to Rome,
+with secret instructions: they were required to discover (among other
+"hard questions") whether, if the queen entered a religious life, the
+king might have the Pope's dispensation to marry again; and whether if
+the king (for the better inducing the queen thereto) would enter himself
+into a religious life, the Pope would dispense with the king's vow, and
+leave her there?
+
+Poor Katherine! we are not surprised to read that when she understood
+what was intended against her, "she labored with all those passions
+which jealousy of the king's affection, sense of her own honor, and the
+legitimation of her daughter, could produce, laying in conclusion the
+whole fault on the Cardinal." It is elsewhere said, that Wolsey bore the
+queen ill-will, in consequence of her reflecting with some severity on
+his haughty temper, and very unclerical life.
+
+The proceedings were pending for nearly six years, and one of the causes
+of this long delay, in spite of Henry's impatient and despotic
+character, is worth noting. The old Chronicle tells us, that though the
+men generally, and more particularly the priests and the nobles sided
+with Henry in this matter, yet all the ladies of England were against
+it. They justly felt that the honor and welfare of no woman was secure
+if, after twenty years of union, she might be thus deprived of all her
+rights as a wife; the clamor became so loud and general, that the king
+was obliged to yield to it for a time, to stop the proceedings, and to
+banish Anna Bullen from the court.
+
+Cardinal Campeggio, called by Shakspeare Campeius, arrived in England in
+October, 1528. He at first endeavored to persuade Katherine to avoid the
+disgrace and danger of contesting her marriage, by entering a religious
+house; but she rejected his advice with strong expressions of disdain.
+"I am," said she, "the king's true wife, and to him married; and if all
+doctors were dead, or law or learning far out of men's minds at the time
+of our marriage, yet I cannot think that the court of Rome, and the
+whole church of England, would have consented to a thing unlawful and
+detestable as you call it. Still I say I am his wife, and for him will I
+pray."
+
+About two years afterwards, Wolsey died, (in November, 1530;)--the king
+and queen met for the last time on the 14th of July, 1531. Until that
+period, some outward show of respect and kindness had been maintained
+between them; but the king then ordered her to repair to a private
+residence, and no longer to consider herself as his lawful wife. "To
+which the virtuous and mourning queen replied no more than this, that to
+whatever place she removed, nothing could remove her from being the
+king's wife. And so they bid each other farewell; and from this time the
+king never saw her more."[100] He married Anna Bullen in 1532, while the
+decision relating to his former marriage was still pending. The sentence
+of divorce to which Katherine never would submit, was finally pronounced
+by Cranmer in 1533; and the unhappy queen, whose health had been
+gradually declining through these troubles of heart, died January 29,
+1536, in the fiftieth year of her age.
+
+Thus the action of the play of Henry VIII. includes events which
+occurred from the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, to the
+death of Katherine in 1536. In making the death of Katherine precede the
+birth of Queen Elizabeth, Shakspeare has committed an anachronism, not
+only pardonable, but necessary. We must remember that the construction
+of the play required a happy termination; and that the birth of
+Elizabeth, before or after the death of Katherine, involved the question
+of her legitimacy. By this slight deviation from the real course of
+events, Shakspeare has not perverted historic facts, but merely
+sacrificed them to a higher principle; and in doing so has not only
+preserved dramatic propriety, and heightened the poetical interest, but
+has given a strong proof both of his delicacy and his judgment.
+
+If we also call to mind that in this play Katherine is properly the
+heroine, and exhibited from first to last as the very "queen of earthly
+queens;" that the whole interest is thrown round her and Wolsey--the one
+the injured rival, the other the enemy of Anna Bullen--and that it was
+written in the reign and for the court of Elizabeth, we shall yet
+farther appreciate the moral greatness of the poet's mind, which
+disdained to sacrifice justice and the truth of nature to any
+time-serving expediency.
+
+Schlegel observes somewhere, that in the literal accuracy and apparent
+artlessness with which Shakspeare has adapted some of the events and
+characters of history to his dramatic purposes, he has shown equally his
+genius and his wisdom. This, like most of Schlegel's remarks, is
+profound and true; and in this respect Katherine of Arragon may rank as
+the triumph of Shakspeare's genius and his wisdom. There is nothing in
+the whole range of poetical fiction in any respect resembling or
+approaching her; there is nothing comparable, I suppose, but Katherine's
+own portrait by Holbein, which, equally true to the life, is yet as far
+inferior as Katherine's person was inferior to her mind. Not only has
+Shakspeare given us here a delineation as faithful as it is beautiful,
+of a peculiar modification of character; but he has bequeathed us a
+precious moral lesson in this proof that virtue alone,--(by which I mean
+here the union of truth or conscience with benevolent affection--the
+one the highest law, the other the purest impulse of the soul,)--that
+such virtue is a sufficient source of the deepest pathos and power with
+out any mixture of foreign or external ornament: for who but Shakspeare
+would have brought before us a queen and a heroine of tragedy, stripped
+her of all pomp of place and circumstance, dispensed with all the usual
+sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding
+intellect; and without any appeal to our imagination, without any
+violation of historical truth, or any sacrifices of the other dramatic
+personages for the sake of effect, could depend on the moral principle
+alone, to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and
+elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses of our
+nature!
+
+The character, when analyzed, is, in the first place, distinguished by
+_truth_. I do not only mean its truth to nature, or its relative truth
+arising from its historic fidelity and dramatic consistency, but _truth_
+as a quality of the soul; this is the basis of the character. We often
+hear it remarked that those who are themselves perfectly true and
+artless, are in this world the more easily and frequently deceived--a
+common-place fallacy: for we shall ever find that truth is as undeceived
+as it is undeceiving, and that those who are true to themselves and
+others, may now and then be mistaken, or in particular instances duped
+by the intervention of some other affection or quality of the mind; but
+they are generally free from illusion, and they are seldom imposed upon
+in the long run by the shows of things and superfices of characters. It
+is by this integrity of heart and clearness of understanding, this light
+of truth within her own soul, and not through any acuteness of
+intellect, that Katherine detects and exposes the real character of
+Wolsey, though unable either to unravel his designs, or defeat them.
+
+              ... My lord, my lord,
+    I am a simple woman, much too weak
+    T' oppose your cunning.
+
+She rather intuitively feels than knows his duplicity, and in the
+dignity of her simplicity she towers above his arrogance as much as she
+scorns his crooked policy. With this essential truth are combined many
+other qualities, natural or acquired, all made out with the same
+uncompromising breadth of execution and fidelity of pencil, united with
+the utmost delicacy of feeling. For instance, the apparent contradiction
+arising from the contrast between Katherine's natural disposition and
+the situation in which she is placed; her lofty Castilian pride and her
+extreme simplicity of language and deportment; the inflexible resolution
+with which she asserts her right, and her soft resignation to unkindness
+and wrong; her warmth of temper breaking through the meekness of a
+spirit subdued by a deep sense of religion; and a degree of austerity
+tinging her real benevolence;--all these qualities, opposed yet
+harmonizing, has Shakspeare placed before us in a few admirable scenes.
+
+Katherine is at first introduced as pleading before the king in behalf
+of the commonalty, who had been driven by the extortions of Wolsey into
+some illegal excesses. In this scene, which is true to history, we have
+her upright reasoning mind, her steadiness of purpose, her piety and
+benevolence, placed in a strong light. The unshrinking dignity with
+which she opposes without descending to brave the Cardinal, the stern
+rebuke addressed to the Duke of Buckingham's surveyor, are finely
+characteristic; and by thus exhibiting Katherine as invested with all
+her conjugal rights and influence, and royal state, the subsequent
+situations are rendered more impressive. She is placed in the first
+instance on such a height in our esteem and reverence, that in the midst
+of her abandonment and degradation, and the profound pity she afterwards
+inspires, the first effect remains unimpaired, and she never falls
+beneath it.
+
+In the beginning of the second act we are prepared for the proceedings
+of the divorce, and our respect for Katherine heightened by the general
+sympathy for "the good queen," as she is expressively entitled, and by
+the following beautiful eulogium on her character uttered by the Duke of
+Norfolk:--
+
+
+    He (Wolsey) counsels a divorce--a loss of her
+    That like a jewel hath hung twenty years
+    About his neck, yet never lost her lustre.
+    Of her that loves him with that excellence
+    That angels love good men with; even of her,
+    That, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls,
+    Will bless the King!
+
+The scene in which Anna Bullen is introduced as expressing her grief and
+sympathy for her royal mistress, is exquisitely graceful.
+
+                      Here's the pang that pinches;
+    His highness having liv'd so long with her, and she
+    So good a lady, that no tongue could ever
+    Pronounce dishonor of her,--by my life
+    She never knew harm-doing. O now, after
+    So many courses of the sun enthron'd,
+    Still growing in a majesty and pomp,--the which
+    To leave is a thousand-fold more bitter, than
+    'Tis sweet at first to acquire,--after this process,
+    To give her the avaunt! it is a pity
+    Would move a monster.
+
+                        OLD LADY.
+
+                        Hearts of most hard temper
+    Melt and lament for her.
+
+                        ANNE.
+
+                            O, God's will! much better
+    She ne'er had known pomp: though it be temporal,
+    Yet if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce
+    It from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance, panging
+    As soul and body's severing.
+
+                        OLD LADY.
+
+                                Alas, poor lady!
+    She's a stranger now again.
+
+                        ANNE.
+
+                                So much the more
+    Must pity drop upon her. Verily,
+    I swear 'tis better to be lowly born,
+    And range with humble livers in content,
+    Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,
+    And wear a golden sorrow.
+
+How completely, in the few passages appropriated to Anna Bullen, is her
+character portrayed! with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she
+sketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, her levity, her extreme
+mobility, her sweetness of disposition, her tenderness of heart, and, in
+short, all her _femalities_! How nobly has Shakspeare done justice to
+the two women, and heightened our interest in both, by placing the
+praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen! and how characteristic
+of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her
+mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly
+pomp, thus betraying her own disposition:--
+
+    For she that had all the fair parts of woman,
+    Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet
+    Affected eminence, wealth, and sovereignty.
+
+That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed, "a
+sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should
+immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen--"No, good
+troth! not for all the riches under heaven!"--and not long afterwards
+ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal
+mistress had been so cruelly divorced!--how natural! The portrait is not
+less true and masterly than that of Katherine; but the character is
+overborne by the superior moral firmness and intrinsic excellence of the
+latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the
+beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Katherine's trial
+at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty
+at her coronation, is placed immediately before the dying scene of
+Katherine; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakspeare has
+constantly avoided all personal collision between the two characters;
+nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the
+procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed.
+
+To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial scene is given nearly
+verbatim from the old chronicles and records; but the dryness and
+harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the
+genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the
+historical authorities, that when the affair was first agitated in
+council, Katherine replied to the long expositions and theological
+sophistries of her opponents with resolute simplicity and composure: "I
+am a woman, and lack wit and learning to answer these opinions; but I am
+sure that neither the king's father nor my father would have
+condescended to our marriage, if it had been judged unlawful. As to your
+saying that I should put the cause to eight persons of this realm, for
+quietness of the king's conscience, I pray Heaven to send his Grace a
+quiet conscience and this shall be your answer, that I say I am his
+lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, though not worthy of it; and
+in this point I will abide, till the court of Rome, which was privy to
+the beginning, have made a final ending of it."[101]
+
+Katherine's appearance in the court at Blackfriars, attended by a noble
+troop of ladies and prelates of her counsel, and her refusal to answer
+the citation, are historical.[102] Her speech to the king--
+
+    Sir, I beseech you do me right and justice,
+    And to bestow your pity on me, &c. &c.
+
+is taken word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank
+verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy
+for Shakspeare to have exalted his own skill, by throwing a coloring of
+poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or
+sentiment; but by adhering to the calm argumentative simplicity of
+manner and diction natural to the woman, he has preserved the truth of
+character without lessening the pathos of the situation. Her challenging
+Wolsey as a "foe to truth," and her very expressions, "I utterly
+refuse,--yea, from my soul _abhor_ you for my judge," are taken from
+fact. The sudden burst of indignant passion towards the close of this
+scene,
+
+                      In one who ever yet
+    Had stood to charity, and displayed the effects
+    Of disposition gentle, and of wisdom
+    O'ertopping woman's power;
+
+is taken from nature, though it occurred on a different occasion.[103]
+
+Lastly, the circumstance of her being called back after she had appealed
+from the court, and angrily refusing to return, is from the life. Master
+Griffith, on whose arm she leaned, observed that she was called: "On,
+on," quoth she; "it maketh no matter, for it is no indifferent court for
+me, therefore I will not tarry. Go on your ways."[104]
+
+King Henry's own assertion, "I dare to say, my lords, that for her
+womanhood, wisdom, nobility, and gentleness, never prince had such
+another wife, and therefore if I would willingly change her I were not
+wise," is thus beautifully paraphrased by Shakspeare:--
+
+    That man i' the world, who shall report he has
+    A better wife, let him in nought be trusted,
+    For speaking false in that! Thou art, alone,
+    If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,
+    (Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,
+    Obeying in commanding; and thy parts,
+    Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,)
+    The queen of earthly queens. She is noble born,
+    And, like her true nobility, she has
+    Carried herself towards me.
+
+The annotators on Shakspeare have all observed the close resemblance
+between this fine passage--
+
+                                      Sir,
+    I am about to weep; but, thinking that
+    We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain
+    The daughter of a king--my drops of tears
+    I'll turn to sparks of fire.
+
+and the speech of Hermione--
+
+    I am not prone to weeping as our sex
+    Commonly are, the want of which vain dew
+    Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
+    That honorable grief lodged here, which burns
+    Worse than tears drown.
+
+But these verbal gentlemen do not seem to have felt that the resemblance
+is merely on the surface, and that the two passages could not possibly
+change places, without a manifest violation of the truth of character.
+In Hermione it is pride of sex merely: in Katherine it is pride of place
+and pride of birth. Hermione, though so superbly majestic, is perfectly
+independent of her regal state: Katherine, though so meekly pious, will
+neither forget hers, nor allow it to be forgotten by others for a
+moment. Hermione, when deprived of that "crown and comfort of her
+life," her husband's love, regards all things else with despair and
+indifference except her feminine honor: Katherine, divorced and
+abandoned, still with true Spanish pride stands upon respect, and will
+not bate one atom of her accustomed state
+
+              Though unqueened, yet like a queen
+    And daughter to a king, inter me!
+
+The passage--
+
+    A fellow of the royal bed, that owns
+    A moiety of the throne--a great king's daughter,
+                  ... here standing
+    To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore
+    Who please to come to hear,[105]
+
+would apply nearly to both queens, yet a single sentiment--nay, a single
+sentence--could not possibly be transferred from one character to the
+other. The magnanimity, the noble simplicity, the purity of heart, the
+resignation in each--how perfectly equal in degree! how diametrically
+opposite in kind![106]
+
+Once more to return to Katherine.
+
+We are told by Cavendish, that when Wolsey and Campeggio visited the
+queen by the king's order she was found at work among her women, and
+came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging
+about her neck; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she interrupted
+him, saying, "Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you;
+although I understand Latin." "Forsooth then," quoth my lord, "madam, if
+it please your grace, we come both to know your mind, how ye be disposed
+to do in this matter between the king and you, and also to declare
+secretly our opinions and our counsel unto you, which we have intended
+of very zeal and obedience that we bear to your grace." "My lords, I
+thank you then," quoth she, "of your good wills; but to make answer to
+your request I cannot so suddenly, for I was set among my maidens at
+work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a
+longer deliberation, and a better head than mine to make answer to so
+noble wise men as ye be. I had need of good counsel in this case, which
+toucheth me so near; and for any counsel or friendship that I can find
+in England, they are nothing to my purpose or profit. Think you, I pray
+you, my lords, will any Englishmen counsel, or be friendly unto me,
+against the king's pleasure, they being his subjects? Nay, forsooth, my
+lords! and for my counsel, in whom I do intend to put my trust, they be
+not here; they be in Spain, in my native country.[107] Alas! my lords, I
+am a poor woman lacking both wit and understanding sufficiently to
+answer such approved wise men as ye be both, in so weighty a matter. I
+pray you to extend your good and indifferent minds in your authority
+unto me, for I am a simple woman, destitute and barren of friendship and
+counsel, here in a foreign region; and as for your counsel, I will not
+refuse, but be glad to hear."
+
+It appears, also, that when the Archbishop of York and Bishop Tunstall
+waited on her at her house near Huntingdon, with the sentence of the
+divorce, signed by Henry, and confirmed by act of parliament, she
+refused to admit its validity, she being Henry's wife, and not his
+subject. The bishop describes her conduct in his letter: "She being
+therewith in great choler and agony, and always interrupting our words,
+declared that she would never leave the name of queen, but would persist
+in accounting herself the king's wife till death." When the official
+letter containing minutes of their conference was shown to her, she
+seized a pen, and dashed it angrily across every sentence in which she
+was styled _Princess-dowager_.
+
+If now we turn to that inimitable scene between Katherine and the two
+cardinals, (act iii. scene 1,) we shall observe how finely Shakspeare
+has condensed these incidents, and unfolded to us all the workings of
+Katherine's proud yet feminine nature. She is discovered at work with
+some of her women--she calls for music "to soothe her soul grown sad
+with troubles"--then follows the little song, of which the sentiment is
+so well adapted to the occasion, while its quaint yet classic elegance
+breathes the very spirit of those times, when Surrey loved and sung.
+
+                   SONG.
+
+    Orpheus with his lute-made trees,
+    And the mountain-tops that freeze,
+      Bow themselves when he did sing
+    To his music, plants and flowers
+    Ever sprung, as sun and showers
+      There had made a lasting spring.
+
+    Every thing that heard him play,
+    Even the billows of the sea,
+      Hung their heads and then lay by
+    In sweet music is such art,
+    Killing care, and grief of heart,
+      Fall asleep, on hearing, die.
+
+They are interrupted by the arrival of the two cardinals. Katherine's
+perception of their subtlety--her suspicion of their purpose--her sense
+of her own weakness and inability to contend with them, and her mild
+subdued dignity, are beautifully represented; as also the guarded
+self-command with which she eludes giving a definitive answer; but when
+they counsel her to that which she, who knows Henry, feels must end in
+her ruin, then the native temper is roused at once, or, to use
+Tunstall's expression, "the choler and the agony," burst forth in words.
+
+    Is this your christian counsel? Out upon ye!
+    Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge
+    That no king can corrupt.
+
+                        WOLSEY.
+
+            Your rage mistakes us.
+
+                        QUEEN KATHERINE.
+
+    The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye,
+    Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
+    But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye:
+    Mend them, for shame, my lords: is this your comfort
+    The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady?
+
+With the same force of language, and impetuous yet dignified feeling,
+she asserts her own conjugal truth and merit, and insists upon her
+rights.
+
+    Have I liv'd thus long, (let me speak myself,
+    Since virtue finds no friends,) a wife, a true one
+    A woman, (I dare say, without vain-glory,)
+    Never yet branded with suspicion?
+    Have I, with all my full affections,
+    Still met the king--lov'd him next heaven, obey'd him
+    Been out of fondness superstitious to him--
+    Almost forgot my prayers to content him,
+    And am I thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords, &c.
+
+    My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,
+    To give up willingly that noble title
+    Your master wed me to: nothing but death
+    Shall e'er divorce my dignities.
+
+And this burst of unwonted passion is immediately followed by the
+natural reaction; it subsides into tears, dejection, and a mournful
+self-compassion.
+
+    Would I had never trod this English ground,
+    Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it.
+    What will become of me now, wretched lady?
+    I am the most unhappy woman living.
+    Alas! poor wenches! where are now your fortunes?
+                    [_To her women_
+    Shipwrecked upon a kingdom, where no pity,
+    No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me!
+    Almost no grave allowed me! Like the lily that once
+    Was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,
+    I'll hang my head and perish.
+
+Dr. Johnson observes on this scene, that all Katherine's distresses
+could not save her from a quibble on the word _cardinal_.
+
+            Holy men I thought ye,
+    Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
+    But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye!
+
+When we read this passage in connection with the situation and
+sentiment, the scornful play upon the words is not only appropriate and
+natural, it seems inevitable. Katherine, assuredly, is neither an
+imaginative nor a witty personage; but we all acknowledge the truism,
+that anger inspires wit, and whenever there is passion there is poetry.
+In the instance just alluded to, the sarcasm springs naturally out from
+the bitter indignation of the moment. In her grand rebuke of Wolsey, in
+the trial scene, how just and beautiful is the gradual elevation of her
+language, till it rises into that magnificent image--
+
+    You have by fortune and his highness' favors,
+    Gone slightly o'er low steps, and now are mounted,
+    Where powers are your retainers, &c.
+
+In the depth of her affliction, the pathos as naturally clothes itself
+in poetry.
+
+                              Like the lily,
+    That was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,
+    I'll hang my head and perish.
+
+But these, I believe, are the only instances of imagery throughout; for,
+in general, her language is plain and energetic. It has the strength and
+simplicity of her character, with very little metaphor and less wit.
+
+In approaching the last scene of Katherine's life, I feel as if about to
+tread within a sanctuary, where nothing befits us but silence and tears;
+veneration so strives with compassion, tenderness with awe.[108]
+
+We must suppose a long interval to have elapsed since Katherine's
+interview with the two cardinals. Wolsey was disgraced, and poor Anna
+Bullen at the height of her short-lived prosperity. It was Wolsey's fate
+to be detested by both queens. In the pursuance of his own selfish and
+ambitious designs, he had treated both with perfidy; and one was the
+remote, the other the immediate, cause of his ruin.[109]
+
+The ruffian king, of whom one hates to think, was bent on forcing
+Katherine to concede her rights, and illegitimize her daughter, in favor
+of the offspring of Anna Bullen: she steadily refused, was declared
+contumacious, and the sentence of divorce pronounced in 1533. Such of
+her attendants as persisted in paying her the honors due to a queen were
+driven from her household; those who consented to serve her as
+princess-dowager, she refused to admit into her presence; so that she
+remained unattended, except by a few women, and her gentleman usher,
+Griffith. During the last eighteen months of her life, she resided at
+Kimbolton. Her nephew, Charles V., had offered her an asylum and
+princely treatment; but Katherine, broken in heart, and declining in
+health, was unwilling to drag the spectacle of her misery and
+degradation into a strange country: she pined in her loneliness,
+deprived of her daughter, receiving no consolation from the pope, and no
+redress from the emperor. Wounded pride, wronged affection, and a
+cankering jealousy of the woman preferred to her, (which though it never
+broke out into unseemly words, is enumerated as one of the causes of her
+death,) at length wore out a feeble frame. "Thus," says the chronicle,
+"Queen Katherine fell into her last sickness; and though the king sent
+to comfort her through Chapuys, the emperor's ambassador, she grew worse
+and worse; and finding death now coming, she caused a maid attending on
+her to write to the king to this effect:--
+
+"My most dear Lord, King, and Husband;
+
+"The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the
+love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to
+prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever; for
+which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many
+troubles: but I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise; for the
+rest, I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good
+father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must intreat you also to
+respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they
+being but three, and all my other servants a year's pay besides their
+due, lest otherwise they be unprovided for: lastly, I make this vow,
+that mine eyes desire you above all things.--Farewell!"[110]
+
+She also wrote another letter to the ambassador, desiring that he would
+remind the king of her dying request, and urge him to do her this last
+right.
+
+What the historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty
+of Katherine's closing scene we need not dwell; for that requires no
+illustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips,
+Shakspeare has given them added grace, and pathos, and tenderness,
+without injuring their truth and simplicity: the feelings, and almost
+the manner of expression, are Katherine's own. The severe justice with
+which she draws the character of Wolsey is extremely characteristic! the
+benign candor with which she listens to the praise of him "whom living
+she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious
+enthusiasm!--the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that
+sad music she called her knell; her awakening from the vision of
+celestial joy to find herself still on earth--
+
+    Spirits of peace! where are ye? are ye gone,
+    And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?
+
+how unspeakably beautiful! And to consummate all in one final touch of
+truth and nature, we see that consciousness of her own worth and
+integrity which had sustained her through all her trials of heart, and
+that pride of station for which she had contended through long
+years,--which had become more dear by opposition, and by the
+perseverance with which she had asserted it,--remaining the last strong
+feeling upon her mind, to the very last hour of existence.
+
+                 When I am dead, good wench,
+    Let me be used with honor: strew me over
+    With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
+    I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm me,
+    Then lay me forth: although unqueen'd, yet like
+    A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me
+    I can no more.--
+
+In the epilogue to this play,[111] it is recommended--
+
+    To the merciful construction of good women,
+    For _such a one_ we show'd them:
+
+alluding to the character of Queen Katherine. Shakspeare has, in fact,
+placed before us a queen and a heroine, who in the first place, and
+above all, is a _good_ woman; and I repeat, that in doing so, and in
+trusting for all his effect to truth and virtue, he has given a sublime
+proof of his genius and his wisdom;--for which, among many other
+obligations, we women remain his debtors.
+
+
+LADY MACBETH.
+
+I doubt whether the epithet _historical_ can properly apply to the
+character of Lady Macbeth; for though the subject of the play be taken
+from history, we never think of her with any reference to historical
+associations, as we do with regard to Constance, Volumnia, Katherine of
+Arragon, and others. I remember reading some critique, in which Lady
+Macbeth was styled the "_Scottish queen_;" and methought the title, as
+applied to _her_ sounded like a vulgarism. It appears that the real wife
+of Macbeth,--she who lives only in the obscure record of an obscure
+age, bore the very unmusical appellation of Graoch, and was instigated
+to the murder of Duncan, not only by ambition, but by motives of
+vengeance. She was the grand-daughter of Kenneth the Fourth, killed in
+1003, fighting against Malcolm the Second, the Father of Duncan. Macbeth
+reigned over Scotland from the year 1039 to 1056--but what is all this
+to the purpose? The sternly magnificent creation of the poet stands
+before us independent of all these aids of fancy: she is Lady Macbeth;
+as such she lives, she reigns, and is immortal in the world to
+imagination. What earthly title could add to her grandeur? what human
+record or attestation strengthen our impression of her reality?
+
+Characters in history move before us like a procession of figures in
+_basso relievo_: we see one side only, that which the artist chose to
+exhibit to us; the rest is sunk in the block: the same characters in
+Shakspeare are like the statues _cut out_ of the block, fashioned,
+finished, tangible in every part: we may consider them under every
+aspect, we may examine them on every side. As the classical times, when
+the garb did not make the man, were peculiarly favorable to the
+development and delineation of the human form, and have handed down to
+us the purest models of strength and grace--so the times in which
+Shakspeare lived were favorable to the vigorous delineation of natural
+character. Society was not then one vast conventional masquerade of
+manners. In his revelations, the accidental circumstances are to the
+individual character, what the drapery of the antique statue is to the
+statue itself; it is evident, that, though adapted to each other, and
+studied relatively, they were also studied separately. We trace through
+the folds the fine and true proportions of the figure beneath: they seem
+and are independent of each other to the practised eye, though carved
+together from the same enduring substance; at once perfectly distinct
+and eternally inseparable. In history we can but study character in
+relation to events, to situation and circumstances, which disguise and
+encumber it: we are left to imagine, to infer, what certain people must
+have been, from the manner in which they have acted or suffered.
+Shakspeare and nature bring us back to the true order of things; and
+showing us what the human being _is_, enable us to judge of the possible
+as well as the positive result in acting and suffering. Here, instead of
+judging the individual by his actions, we are enabled to judge of
+actions by a reference to the individual. When we can carry this power
+into the experience of real life, we shall perhaps be more just to one
+another, and not consider ourselves aggrieved, because we cannot gather
+figs from thistles and grapes from thorns.
+
+In the play or poem of Macbeth, the interest of the story is so
+engrossing, the events so rapid and so appalling, the accessories so
+sublimely conceived and so skilfully combined, that it is difficult to
+detach Lady Macbeth from the dramatic situation, or consider her apart
+from the terrible associations of our first and earliest impressions. As
+the vulgar idea of a Juliet--that all-beautiful and heaven-gifted child
+of the south--is merely a love-sick girl in white satin, so the
+common-place idea of Lady Macbeth, though endowed with the rarest
+powers, the loftiest energies, and the profoundest affections, is
+nothing but a fierce, cruel woman, brandishing a couple of daggers, and
+inciting her husband to butcher a poor old king.
+
+Even those who reflect more deeply are apt to consider rather the mode
+in which a certain character is manifested, than the combination of
+abstract qualities making up that individual human being; so what should
+be last, is first; effects are mistaken for causes, qualities are
+confounded with their results, and the perversion of what is essentially
+good, with the operation of positive evil. Hence it is, that those who
+can feel and estimate the magnificent conception and poetical
+development of the character, have overlooked the grand moral lesson it
+conveys; they forget that the crime of Lady Macbeth terrifies us in
+proportion as we sympathize with her; and that this sympathy is in
+proportion to the degree of pride, passion, and intellect, we may
+ourselves possess. It is good to behold and to tremble at the possible
+result of the noblest faculties uncontrolled or perverted. True it is,
+that the ambitious women of these civilized times do not murder sleeping
+kings: but are there, therefore, no Lady Macbeths in the world? no women
+who, under the influence of a diseased or excited appetite for power or
+distinction, would sacrifice the happiness of a daughter, the fortunes
+of a husband, the principles of a son, and peril their own souls?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The character of Macbeth is considered as one of the most complex in the
+whole range of Shakspeare's dramatic creations. He is represented in the
+course of the action under such a variety of aspects; the good and evil
+qualities of his mind are so poised and blended, and instead of being
+gradually and successively developed, evolve themselves so like shifting
+lights and shadows playing over the "unstable waters," that his
+character has afforded a continual and interesting subject of analysis
+and contemplation. None of Shakspeare's personages have been treated of
+more at large; none have been more minutely criticized and profoundly
+examined. A single feature in his character--the question, for instance,
+as to whether his courage be personal or constitutional, or excited by
+mere desperation--has been canvassed, asserted, and refuted, in two
+masterly essays.
+
+On the other hand, the character of Lady Macbeth resolves itself into
+few and simple elements. The grand features of her character are so
+distinctly and prominently marked, that, though acknowledged to be one
+of the poet's most sublime creations, she has been passed over with
+comparatively few words: generally speaking, the commentators seem to
+have considered Lady Macbeth rather with reference to her husband, and
+as influencing the action of the drama, than as an individual conception
+of amazing power, poetry, and beauty: or if they do individualize her,
+it is ever with those associations of scenic representation which Mrs.
+Siddons has identified with the character. Those who have been
+accustomed to see it arrayed in the form and lineaments of that
+magnificent woman, and developed with her wonder-working powers, seem
+satisfied to leave it there, as if nothing more could be said or
+added.[112]
+
+But the generation which beheld Mrs. Siddons in her glory is passing
+away, and we are again left to our own unassisted feelings, or to all
+the satisfaction to be derived from the sagacity of critics and the
+reflections of commentators. Let us turn to them for a moment.
+
+Dr. Johnson, who seems to have regarded her as nothing better than a
+kind of ogress, tells us, in so many words, that "Lady Macbeth is merely
+detested." Schlegel dismisses her in haste, as a species of female fury.
+In the two essays on Macbeth already mentioned, she is passed over with
+one or two slight allusions. The only justice that has yet been done to
+her is by Hazlitt, in the "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays." Nothing
+can be finer than his remarks as far as they go, but his plan did not
+allow him sufficient space to work out his own conception of the
+character, with the minuteness it requires. All that he says is just in
+sentiment, and most eloquent in the expression; but in leaving some of
+the finest points altogether untouched, he has also left us in doubt
+whether he even felt or perceived them; and this masterly criticism
+stops short of the _whole_ truth--it is a little superficial, and a
+little too harsh.
+
+In the mind of Lady Macbeth, ambition is represented as the ruling
+motive, an intense over-mastering passion, which is gratified at the
+expense of every just and generous principle, and every feminine
+feeling. In the pursuit of her object, she is cruel, treacherous, and
+daring. She is doubly, trebly dyed in guilt and blood; for the murder
+she instigates is rendered more frightful by disloyalty and ingratitude,
+and by the violation of all the most sacred claims of kindred and
+hospitality. When her husband's more kindly nature shrinks from the
+perpetration of the deed of horror, she, like an evil genius, whispers
+him on to his damnation. The full measure of her wickedness is never
+disguised, the magnitude and atrocity of her crime is never extenuated,
+forgotten, or forgiven, in the whole course of the play. Our judgment is
+not bewildered, nor our moral feeling insulted, by the sentimental
+jumble of great crimes and dazzling virtues, after the fashion of the
+German school and of some admirable writers of our own time. Lady
+Macbeth's amazing power of intellect, her inexorable determination of
+purpose, her superhuman strength of nerve, render her as fearful in
+herself as her deeds are hateful; yet she is not a mere monster of
+depravity, with whom we have nothing in common, nor a meteor whose
+destroying path we watch in ignorant affright and amaze. She is a
+terrible impersonation of evil passions and mighty powers, never so far
+removed from our own nature as to be cast beyond the pale of our
+sympathies; for the woman herself remains a woman to the last--still
+linked with her sex and with humanity.
+
+This impression is produced partly by the essential truth in the
+conception of the character, and partly by the manner in which it is
+evolved; by a combination of minute and delicate touches, in some
+instances by speech, in others by silence: at one time by what is
+revealed, at another by what we are left to infer. As in real life, we
+perceive distinctions in character we cannot always explain, and receive
+impressions for which we cannot always account, without going back to
+the beginning of an acquaintance, and recalling many and trifling
+circumstances--looks, and tones, and words: thus, to explain that hold
+which Lady Macbeth, in the midst of all her atrocities, still keeps upon
+our feelings, it is necessary to trace minutely the action of the play,
+as far as she is concerned in it, from its very commencement to its
+close.
+
+We must bear in mind, that the first idea of murdering Duncan is not
+suggested by Lady Macbeth to her husband: it springs within _his_ mind,
+and is revealed to us, before his first interview with his wife,--before
+she is introduced or even alluded to.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                         This supernatural soliciting
+    Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,
+    Why hath it given me earnest of success,
+    Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor--
+    If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,
+    Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
+    And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
+    Against the use of nature?
+
+It will be said, that the same "horrid suggestion" presents itself
+spontaneously to her, on the reception of his letter; or rather, that
+the letter itself acts upon her mind as the prophecy of the Weird
+Sisters on the mind of her husband, kindling the latent passion for
+empire into a quenchless flame. We are prepared to see the train of
+evil, first lighted by hellish agency, extend itself to _her_ through
+the medium of her husband; but we are spared the more revolting idea
+that it originated with her. The guilt is thus more equally divided than
+we should suppose, when we hear people pitying "the noble nature of
+Macbeth," bewildered and goaded on to crime, solely or chiefly by the
+instigation of his wife.
+
+It is true that she afterwards appears the more active agent of the two;
+but it is less through her preeminence in wickedness than through her
+superiority of intellect. The eloquence--the fierce, fervid eloquence
+with which she bears down the relenting and reluctant spirit of her
+husband, the dexterous sophistry with which she wards off his
+objections, her artful and affected doubts of his courage--the sarcastic
+manner in which she lets fall the word coward--a word which no man can
+endure from another, still less from a woman, and least of all from a
+woman he loves--and the bold address with which she removes all
+obstacles, silences all arguments, overpowers all scruples, and marshals
+the way before him, absolutely make us shrink before the commanding
+intellect of the woman, with a terror in which interest and admiration
+are strangely mingled.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+    He has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    Hath he ask'd for me?
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                   Know you not, he has?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    We will proceed no farther in this business;
+    He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
+    Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
+    Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
+    Not cast aside so soon.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                  Was the hope drunk,
+    Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since,
+    And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
+    At what it did so freely? From this time,
+    Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
+    To be the same in thine own act and valor,
+    As thou art in desire? Would'st thou have that
+    Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
+    And live a coward in thine own esteem;
+    Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
+    Like the poor cat i' the adage?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                                 Pr'ythee, peace
+    I dare do all that may become a man;
+    Who dares do more, is none.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                 What beast was it then,
+    That made you break this enterprise to me?
+    When you durst do it, then you were a man;
+    And, to be more than what you were, you would
+    Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place,
+    Did then adhere, and yet you would make both;
+    They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
+    Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
+    How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
+    I would, while it were smiling in my face,
+    Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
+    And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn, as you
+    Have done to this.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                                If we should fail.--
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                    We fail.[113]
+    But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
+    And we'll not fail.
+
+Again, in the murdering scene, the obdurate inflexibility of purpose
+with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of their project, and
+her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated
+disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is
+produced rather by the exertion of a strong power over herself, than by
+absolute depravity of disposition and ferocity of temper. This
+impression of her character is brought home at once to our very hearts
+with the most profound knowledge of the springs of nature within us, the
+most subtle mastery over their various operations, and a feeling of
+dramatic effect not less wonderful. The very passages in which Lady
+Macbeth displays the most savage and relentless determination, are so
+worded as to fill the mind with the idea of sex, and place the _woman_
+before us in all her dearest attributes, at once softening and refining
+the horror, and rendering it more intense. Thus, when she reproaches her
+husband for his weakness--
+
+                            From this time,
+    Such I account thy love!
+
+Again,
+
+
+                    Come to my woman's breasts,
+    And take my milk for gall, ye murdering ministers,
+    That no compunctions visitings of nature
+    Shake my fell purpose, &c.
+
+    I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis
+    To love the babe that milks me, &c.
+
+And lastly, in the moment of extremest horror comes that unexpected
+touch of feeling, so startling, yet so wonderfully true to nature--
+
+    Had he not resembled my father as he slept,
+    I had done it!
+
+Thus in one of Weber's or Beethoven's grand symphonies, some unexpected
+soft minor chord or passage will steal on the ear, heard amid the
+magnificent crash of harmony, making the blood pause, and filling the
+eye with unbidden tears.
+
+It is particularly observable, that in Lady Macbeth's concentrated,
+strong-nerved ambition, the ruling passion of her mind, there is yet a
+touch of womanhood: she is ambitious less for herself than for her
+husband. It is fair to think this, because we have no reason to draw
+any other inference either from her words or actions. In her famous
+soliloquy, after reading her husband's letter, she does not once refer
+to herself. It is of him she thinks: she wishes to see her husband on
+the throne, and to place the sceptre within _his_ grasp. The strength of
+her affections adds strength to her ambition. Although in the old story
+of Boethius we are told that the wife of Macbeth "burned with
+unquenchable desire to bear the name of queen," yet in the aspect under
+which Shakspeare has represented the character to us, the selfish part
+of this ambition is kept out of sight. We must remark also, that in Lady
+Macbeth's reflections on her husband's character, and on that milkiness
+of nature, which she fears "may impede him from the golden round," there
+is no indication of female scorn: there is exceeding pride, but no
+egotism in the sentiment or the expression;--no want of wifely and
+womanly respect and love for _him_, but on the contrary, a sort of
+unconsciousness of her own mental superiority, which she betrays rather
+than asserts, as interesting in itself as it is most admirably conceived
+and delineated.
+
+    Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
+    What thou art promised:--Yet do I fear thy nature;
+    It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,
+    To catch the nearest way. Thou would'st be great,
+    Art not without ambition; but without
+    The illness should attend it. What thou would'st highly
+    That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false.
+    And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'dst have, great Glamis,
+    That which cries, _Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
+    And that which rather thou dost fear to do,
+    Than wishest should be undone_. Hie thee hither,
+    That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
+    And chastise with the valor of my tongue
+    All that impedes thee from the golden round,
+    Which fate and metaphysical[114] aid doth seem
+    To have thee crowned withal
+
+Nor is there any thing vulgar in her ambition: as the strength of her
+affections lends to it something profound and concentrated, so her
+splendid imagination invests the object of her desire with its own
+radiance. We cannot trace in her grand and capacious mind that it is the
+mere baubles and trappings of royalty which dazzle and allure her: hers
+is the sin of the "star-bright apostate," and she plunges with her
+husband into the abyss of guilt, to procure for "all their days and
+nights sole sovereign sway and masterdom." She revels, she luxuriates in
+her dream of power. She reaches at the golden diadem, which is to sear
+her brain; she perils life and soul for its attainment, with an
+enthusiasm as perfect, a faith as settled, as that of the martyr, who
+sees at the stake, heaven and its crowns of glory opening upon him.
+
+    Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
+    Greater than both, by the all-hail _hereafter_!
+    Thy letters have transported me beyond
+    This ignorant present, and I feel now
+    The future in the instant!
+
+This is surely the very rapture of ambition! and those who have heard
+Mrs. Siddons pronounce the word _hereafter_, cannot forget the look, the
+tone, which seemed to give her auditors a glimpse of that awful
+_future_, which she, in her prophetic fury, beholds upon the instant.
+
+But to return to the text before us: Lady Macbeth having proposed the
+object to herself, and arrayed it with an ideal glory, fixes her eye
+steadily upon it, soars far above all womanish feelings and scruples to
+attain it, and stoops upon her victim with the strength and velocity of
+a vulture; but having committed unflinchingly the crime necessary for
+the attainment of her purpose, she stops there. After the murder of
+Duncan, we see Lady Macbeth, during the rest of the play, occupied in
+supporting the nervous weakness and sustaining the fortitude of her
+husband; for instance, Macbeth is at one time on the verge of frenzy,
+between fear and horror, and it is clear that if she loses her
+self-command, both must perish:--
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    One cried, _God bless us!_ and, _Amen!_ the other,
+    As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands.
+    Listening their fear, I could not say, _Amen!_
+    When they did say, _God bless us!_
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                          Consider it not so deeply!
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    But wherefore could not I pronounce, amen?
+    I had most need of blessing, and amen
+    Stuck in my throat.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                     These deeds must not be thought
+    After these ways: so, it will make us mad.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    Methought I heard a voice cry,
+    "Sleep no more," &c. &c.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+    What do you mean? who was it that thus cried?
+                 Why, worthy Thane,
+    You do unbend your noble strength, to think
+    So brainsickly of things.--Go, get some water, &c. &c.
+
+Afterwards, in act iii., she is represented as muttering to herself,
+
+                               Nought's had, all's spent,
+    When our desire is got without content;
+
+
+yet immediately addresses her moody and conscience-stricken husband--
+
+    How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,
+    Of sorriest fancies your companions making?
+    Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died
+    With them they think on? Things without remedy,
+    Should be without regard; what's done, is done.
+
+But she is nowhere represented as urging him on to new crimes, so far
+from it, that when Macbeth darkly hints his purposed assassination of
+Banquo, and she inquires his meaning, he replies,
+
+         Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
+    Till thou approve the deed.
+
+The same may be said of the destruction of Macduff's family. Every one
+must perceive how our detestation of the woman had been increased, if
+she had been placed before us as suggesting and abetting those
+additional cruelties into which Macbeth is hurried by his mental
+cowardice.
+
+If my feeling of Lady Macbeth's character be just to the conception of
+the poet, then she is one who could steel herself to the commission of a
+crime from necessity and expediency, and be daringly wicked for a great
+end, but not likely to perpetrate gratuitous murders from any vague or
+selfish fears. I do not mean to say that the perfect confidence existing
+between herself and Macbeth could possibly leave her in ignorance of his
+actions or designs: that heart-broken and shuddering allusion to the
+murder of Lady Macduff (in the sleeping scene) proves the contrary:--
+
+    The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?
+
+But she is nowhere brought before us in immediate connection with these
+horrors, and we are spared any flagrant proof of her participation in
+them. This may not strike us at first, but most undoubtedly has an
+effect on the general bearing of the character, considered as a whole.
+
+Another more obvious and pervading source of interest arises from that
+bond of entire affection and confidence which, through the whole of this
+dreadful tissue of crime and its consequences, unites Macbeth and his
+wife; claiming from us an involuntary respect and sympathy, and shedding
+a softening influence over the whole tragedy. Macbeth leans upon her
+strength, trusts in her fidelity, and throws himself on her tenderness.
+
+    O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
+
+She sustains him, calms him, soothes him--
+
+                                        Come on;
+    Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;
+    Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night.
+
+The endearing epithets, the terms of fondness in which he addresses her,
+and the tone of respect she invariably maintains towards him, even when
+most exasperated by his vacillation of mind and his brain-sick terrors,
+have, by the very force of contrast, a powerful effect on the fancy.
+
+By these tender redeeming touches we are impressed with a feeling that
+Lady Macbeth's influence over the affections of her husband, as a wife
+and a woman, is at least equal to her power over him as a superior mind.
+Another thing has always struck me. During the supper scene, in which
+Macbeth is haunted by the spectre of the murdered Banquo, and his reason
+appears unsettled by the extremity of his horror and dismay, her
+indignant rebuke, her low whispered remonstrance, the sarcastic
+emphasis with which she combats his sick fancies, and endeavors to
+recall him to himself, have an intenseness, a severity, a bitterness,
+which makes the blood creep.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                   Are you a man?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
+    Which might appall the devil.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                         O proper stuff!
+    This is the very painting of your fear:
+    This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,
+    Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts
+    (Impostors to true fear) would well become
+    A woman's story, at a winter's fire,
+    Authoriz'd by her grandam! Shame itself!
+    Why do you make such faces? When all's done
+    You look but on a stool.
+                   What! quite unmann'd in folly?
+
+Yet when the guests are dismissed, and they are left alone, she says no
+more, and not a syllable of reproach or scorn escapes her: a few words
+in submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose,
+are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and of
+tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond
+expression: it is one of the most masterly and most beautiful traits of
+character in the whole play.
+
+Lastly, it is clear that in a mind constituted like that of Lady
+Macbeth, and not utterly depraved and hardened by the habit of crime,
+conscience must wake some time or other, and bring with it remorse
+closed by despair, and despair by death. This great moral retribution
+was to be displayed to us--but how? Lady Macbeth is not a woman to start
+at shadows; she mocks at air-drawn daggers; she sees no imagined
+spectres rise from the tomb to appall or accuse her.[115] The towering
+bravery of _her_ mind disdains the visionary terrors which haunt her
+weaker husband. We know, or rather we feel, that she who could give a
+voice to the most direful intent, and call on the spirits that wait on
+mortal thoughts to "unsex her," and "stop up all access and passage of
+remorse"--to that remorse would have given nor tongue nor sound; and
+that rather than have uttered a complaint, she would have held her
+breath and died. To have given her a confidant, though in the partner of
+her guilt, would have been a degrading resource, and have disappointed
+and enfeebled all our previous impressions of her character; yet justice
+is to be done, and we are to be made acquainted with that which the
+woman herself would have suffered a thousand deaths of torture rather
+than have betrayed. In the sleeping scene we have a glimpse into the
+depths of that inward hell: the seared brain and broken heart are laid
+bare before us in the helplessness of slumber. By a judgment the most
+sublime ever imagined, yet the most unforced, natural, and inevitable,
+the sleep of her who murdered sleep is no longer repose, but a
+condensation of resistless horrors which the prostrate intellect and
+powerless will can neither baffle nor repel. We shudder and are
+satisfied; yet our human sympathies are again touched: we rather sigh
+over the ruin than exult in it; and after watching her through this
+wonderful scene with a sort of fascination, we dismiss the unconscious,
+helpless, despair-stricken murderess, with a feeling which Lady Macbeth,
+in her waking strength, with all her awe-commanding powers about her,
+could never have excited.
+
+It is here especially we perceive that sweetness of nature which in
+Shakspeare went hand in hand with his astonishing powers. He never
+confounds that line of demarcation which eternally separates good from
+evil, yet he never places evil before us without exciting in some way a
+consciousness of the opposite good which shall balance and relieve it.
+
+I do deny that he has represented in Lady Macbeth a woman "_naturally
+cruel_,"[116] "_invariably savage_,"[117] or endued with "_pure demoniac
+firmness_."[118] If ever there could have existed a woman to whom such
+phrases could apply--a woman without touch of modesty, pity or
+fear,--Shakspeare knew that a thing so monstrous was unfit for all the
+purposes of poetry. If Lady Macbeth had been _naturally_ cruel, she
+needed not so solemnly to have abjured all pity, and called on the
+spirits that wait on mortal thoughts to _unsex_ her; nor would she have
+been loved to excess by a man of Macbeth's character; for it is the
+sense of intellectual energy and strength of will overpowering her
+feminine nature, which draws from him that burst of intense admiration--
+
+                         Bring forth men children only,
+    For thy undaunted metal should compose
+    Nothing but males.
+
+If she had been _invariably_ savage, her love would not have comforted
+and sustained her husband in his despair, nor would her uplifted dagger
+have been arrested by a dear and venerable image rising between her soul
+and its fell purpose. If endued with _pure demoniac firmness_, her
+woman's nature would not, by the reaction, have been so horribly
+avenged, she would not have died of remorse and despair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We cannot but observe that through the whole of the dialogue
+appropriated to Lady Macbeth, there is something very peculiar and
+characteristic in the turn of expression: her compliments, when she is
+playing the hostess or the queen, are elaborately elegant and
+verbose: but, when in earnest, she speaks in short energetic
+sentences--sometimes abrupt, but always full of meaning; her thoughts
+are rapid and clear, her expressions forcible, and the imagery like
+sudden flashes of lightning: all the foregoing extracts exhibit this,
+but I will venture one more, as an immediate illustration.
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+                             My dearest love,
+    Duncan comes here to-night.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                             And when goes hence?
+
+                        MACBETH.
+
+    To-morrow,--as he purposes.
+
+                        LADY MACBETH.
+
+                                   O never
+    Shall sun that morrow see!
+    Thy face, my thane, is as a book, where men
+    May read strange matters;--to beguile the time,
+    Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye
+    Your tongue, your hand; look like the innocent flower,
+    But be the serpent under it.
+
+What would not the firmness, the self-command, the enthusiasm, the
+intellect, the ardent affections of this woman have performed, if
+properly directed? but the object being unworthy of the effort, the end
+is disappointment, despair, and death.
+
+The power of religion could alone have controlled such a mind; but it is
+the misery of a very proud, strong, and gifted spirit, without sense of
+religion, that instead of looking upward to find a superior, looks
+round and sees all things as subject to itself. Lady Macbeth is placed
+in a dark, ignorant, iron age; her powerful intellect is slightly tinged
+with its credulity and superstition, but she has no religious feeling to
+restrain the force of will. She is a stern fatalist in principle and
+action--"what is done, is done," and would be done over again under the
+same circumstances; her remorse is without repentance, or any reference
+to an offended Deity; it arises from the pang of a wounded conscience,
+the recoil of the violated feelings of nature: it is the horror of the
+past, not the terror of the future; the torture of self-condemnation,
+not the fear of judgment; it is strong as her soul, deep as her guilt,
+fatal as her resolve, and terrible as her crime.
+
+If it should be objected to this view of Lady Macbeth's character, that
+it engages our sympathies in behalf of a perverted being--and that to
+leave her so strong a power upon our feelings in the midst of such
+supreme wickedness, involves a moral wrong, I can only reply in the
+words of Dr. Channing, that "in this and the like cases our interest
+fastens on what is _not_ evil in the character--that there is something
+kindling and ennobling in the consciousness, however awakened, of the
+energy which resides in mind; and many a virtuous man has borrowed new
+strength from the force, constancy, and dauntless courage of evil
+agents."[119]
+
+This is true; and might he not have added, that many a powerful and
+gifted spirit has learnt humility and self-government, from beholding
+how far the energy which resides in mind may be degraded and perverted?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In general, when a woman is introduced into a tragedy to be the
+presiding genius of evil in herself, or the cause of evil to others, she
+is either too feebly or too darkly portrayed; either crime is heaped on
+crime, and horror on horror, till our sympathy is lost in incredulity,
+or the stimulus is sought in unnatural or impossible situations, or in
+situations that ought to be impossible, (as in the Myrrha or the Cenci,)
+or the character is enfeebled by a mixture of degrading propensities and
+sexual weakness, as in Vittoria Corombona. But Lady Macbeth, though so
+supremely wicked, and so consistently feminine, is still kept aloof from
+all base alloy. When Shakspeare created a female character purely
+detestable, he made her an accessory, never a principal. Thus Regan and
+Goneril are two powerful sketches of selfishness, cruelty, and
+ingratitude; we abhor them whenever we see or think of them, but we
+think very little about them, except as necessary to the action of the
+drama. They are to cause the madness of Lear, and to call forth the
+filial devotion of Cordelia, and their depravity is forgotten in its
+effects. A comparison has been made between Lady Macbeth and the Greek
+Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon of Eschylus. The Clytemnestra of
+Sophocles is something more in Shakspeare's spirit, for she is something
+less impudently atrocious; but, considered as a woman and an individual,
+would any one compare this shameless adulteress, cruel murderess, and
+unnatural mother, with Lady Macbeth? Lady Macbeth herself would
+certainly shrink from the approximation.[120]
+
+The Electra of Sophocles comes nearer to Lady Macbeth as a poetical
+conception, with this strong distinction, that she commands more respect
+and esteem, and less sympathy. The murder in which she participates is
+ordained by the oracle--is an act of justice, and therefore less a
+murder than a sacrifice. Electra is drawn with magnificent simplicity
+and intensity of feeling and purpose, but there is a want of light, and
+shade, and relief. Thus the scene in which Orestes stabs his mother
+within her chamber, and she is heard pleading for mercy, while Electra
+stands forward listening exultingly to her mother's cries, and urging
+her brother to strike again, "another blow! another!" &c. is terribly
+fine, but the horror is too shocking, too _physical_--if I may use such
+an expression: it will not surely bear a comparison with the murdering
+scene in Macbeth, where the exhibition of various passions--the
+irresolution of Macbeth, the bold determination of his wife, the deep
+suspense, the rage of the elements without, the horrid stillness within,
+and the secret feeling of that infernal agency which is ever present to
+the fancy, even when not visible on the scene--throw a rich coloring of
+poetry over the whole, which does not take from "the present horror of
+the time," and yet relieves it. Shakspeare's blackest shadows are like
+those of Rembrandt; so intense, that the gloom which brooded over Egypt
+in her day of wrath was pale in comparison--yet so transparent that we
+seem to see the light of heaven through their depth.
+
+In the whole compass of dramatic poetry, there is but one female
+character which can be placed near that of Lady Macbeth; the MEDEA. Not
+the vulgar, voluble fury of the Latin tragedy,[121] nor the Medea in a
+hoop petticoat of Corneille, but the genuine Greek Medea,--the Medea of
+Euripides.[122]
+
+There is something in the _Medea_ which seizes irresistibly on the
+imagination. Her passionate devotion to Jason, for whom she had left her
+parents and country--to whom she had given all, and
+
+    Would have drawn the spirit from her breast
+    Had he but asked it, sighing forth her soul
+    Into his bosom;[123]
+
+the wrongs and insults which drive her to desperation--the horrid
+refinement of cruelty with which she plans and executes her revenge upon
+her faithless husband--the gush of fondness with which she weeps over
+her children, whom in the next moment she devotes to destruction in a
+paroxysm of insane fury, carry the terror and pathos of tragic situation
+to their extreme height. But if we may be allowed to judge through the
+medium of a translation, there is a certain hardness in the manner of
+treating the character, which in some degree defeats the effect. Medea
+talks too much: her human feelings and superhuman power are not
+sufficiently blended. Taking into consideration the different impulses
+which actuate Medea and Lady Macbeth, as love, jealousy, and revenge on
+the one side, and ambition on the other, we expect to find more of
+female nature in the first than in the last: and yet the contrary is the
+fact: at least, my own impression as far as a woman may judge of a
+woman, is, that although the passions of Medea are more feminine, the
+character is less so; we seem to require more feeling in her
+fierceness, more passion in her frenzy; something less of poetical
+abstraction,--less art, fewer words: her delirious vengeance we might
+forgive, but her calmness and subtlety are rather revolting.
+
+These two admirable characters, placed in contrast to each other, afford
+a fine illustration of Schlegel's distinction between the ancient or
+Greek drama, which he compares to sculpture, and the modern or romantic
+drama, which he compares to painting. The gothic grandeur, the rich
+chiaroscuro, and deep-toned colors of Lady Macbeth, stand thus opposed
+to the classical elegance and mythological splendor, the delicate yet
+inflexible outline of the Medea. If I might be permitted to carry this
+illustration still further, I would add, that there exists the same
+distinction between the Lady Macbeth and the Medea, as between the
+Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci and the Medusa of the Greek gems and bas
+reliefs. In the painting, the horror of the subject is at once exalted
+and softened by the most vivid coloring, and the most magical contrast
+of light and shade. We gaze--until, from the murky depths of the
+background, the serpent hair seems to stir and glitter as if instinct
+with life, and the head itself, in all its ghastliness and brightness,
+appears to rise from the canvass with the glare of reality. In the
+Medusa of sculpture, how different is the effect on the imagination! We
+have here the snakes convolving round the winged and graceful head: the
+brows contracted with horror and pain; but every feature is chiselled
+into the most regular and faultless perfection; and amid the gorgon
+terrors, there rests a marbly, fixed, supernatural grace, which, without
+reminding us for a moment of common life or nature, stands before us a
+presence, a power, and an enchantment!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[66] Milton.
+
+[67] "That the treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, and the
+grief of Constance, had a real truth in history, sharpens the sense of
+pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination.
+Something whispers us that we have no right to make a mock of calamities
+like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and plaything
+of our fancies."--See Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.--To consider
+_thus_ is not to consider _too_ deeply, but not deeply _enough_.
+
+[68] _Grave_, in the sense of mighty or potent.
+
+[69] Fulvia, the first wife of Antony.
+
+[70] The well-known violence and coarseness of Queen Elizabeth's
+manners, in which she was imitated by the women about her, may in
+Shakspeare's time have rendered the image of a royal virago less
+offensive and less extraordinary.
+
+[71] She was as good as her word. See the life of Antony in Plutarch.
+
+[72] _i. e._ retinue.
+
+[73] _i. e._ silver coins, from the Spanish _plata_.
+
+[74] Cleopatra replies to the first word she hears on recovering her
+sense, "No more _an empress_, but a mere woman!"
+
+[75] _i. e._ sedate determination.--JOHNSON
+
+[76] The Cleopatra of Jodelle was the first regular French tragedy: the
+last French tragedy on the same subject was the Cleopatre of Marmontel.
+For the representation of this tragedy Vaucanson, the celebrated French
+mechanist, invented an automaton asp, which crawled and hissed to the
+life,--to the great delight of the Parisians. But it appears that
+neither Vaucanson's asp, nor Clairon, could save Cleopatre from a
+deserved fate. Of the English tragedies, one was written by the Countess
+of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sydney; and is, I believe, the
+first instance in our language, of original dramatic writing, by female.
+
+[77] "The sober eye of dull Octavia."--Act v. scene 2.
+
+[78] Octavia was never in Egypt.
+
+[79] "The Octavia of Dryden is a much more important personage than in
+the Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspeare. She is, however, more cold and
+unamiable, for in the very short scenes in which the Octavia of
+Shakspeare is introduced, she is placed in rather an interesting point
+of view. But Dryden has himself informed us that he was apprehensive
+that the justice of a wife's claim would draw the audience to her side,
+and lessen their interest in the lover and the mistress. He seems
+accordingly to have studiously lowered the character of the injured
+Octavia who, in her conduct to her husband, shows much duty and little
+love." Sir W. Scott (in the same fine piece of criticism prefixed to
+Dryden's All for Love) gives the preference to Shakspeare's Cleopatra.
+
+[80] In all, about two thousand pounds.
+
+[81] The corresponding passage in the old English Plutarch runs thus:
+"My son, why dost thou not answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether
+to give place unto thy choler and revenge, and thinkest thou it not
+honesty for thee to grant thy mother's request in so weighty a cause?
+Dost thou take it honorable for a nobleman to remember the wrongs and
+injuries done him, and dost not in like case think it an honest
+nobleman's part to be thankful for the goodness that parents do show to
+their children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear
+unto them? No man living is more bound to show himself thankful in all
+parts and respects than thyself, who so universally showest all
+ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken of thy country,
+exacting grievous payments upon them in revenge of the injuries offered
+thee; besides, thou hast not hitherto showed thy poor mother any
+courtesy. And, therefore, it is not only honest, but due unto me, that
+without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of
+thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade ye to it, to what purpose do
+I defer my last hope?" And with these words, herself, his wife, and
+children, fell down upon their knees before him.
+
+[82] _Vide_ Daru, Histoire de Bretagne.
+
+[83] _Vide_ Sir Peter Leycester's Antiquities of Chester.
+
+[84] By the treaty of Messina, 1190
+
+[85] Malone says, that "In expanding the character of the bastard,
+Shakspeare seems to have proceeded on the following slight hint in an
+old play on the story of King John:--
+
+     Next them a bastard of the king's deceased--
+     A hardy wild-head, rough and venturous."
+
+It is easy to _say_ this; yet who but Shakspeare could have expanded the
+last line into a Falconbridge?
+
+[86] The Greek Merope, which was esteemed one of the finest of the
+tragedies of Euripides, is unhappily lost; those of Maffei, Alfieri, and
+Voltaire, are well known. There is another Merope in Italian, which I
+have not seen: the English Merope is merely a bad translation from
+Voltaire.
+
+[87] "Queen Elinor saw that if he were king, how his mother Constance
+would look to bear the most rule in the realm of England, till her son
+should come of a lawful age to govern of himself."--HOLINSHED.
+
+[88] King John, Act iii, Scene 1.
+
+[89] Louis VII. of France, whom she was accustomed to call, in contempt,
+_the monk_. Elinor's adventures in Syria, whither she accompanied Louis
+on the second Crusade, would form a romance.
+
+[90] Henry II. of England. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the
+story of Fair Rosamond, as far as Elinor is concerned, is a mere
+invention of some ballad-maker of later times.
+
+[91] _Vide_ Mezerai.
+
+[92] When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the extreme
+point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of Nisida,
+and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretta which now deforms
+it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as
+it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses and fig-trees which embosom
+it, looks beautiful at a distance.
+
+[93] "The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster," in two
+parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about 1590.
+
+[94] I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc,
+as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in
+my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly, because in
+representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half
+sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and
+ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and
+common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character
+nobly: but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love,
+instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious
+error in judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madame de
+Stael's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion
+for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and
+spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast, with her
+religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her melancholy, her
+sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing in all her
+exploits, (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking,
+while death was all around her, she never struck a blow, nor stained her
+consecrated sword with blood,--another point in which Schiller has
+wronged her,) this heroine and martyr, over whose last moments we shed
+burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a
+Dramatic character, and I know but one person capable of doing this.
+
+[95] See Henry VI. Part III. Act. iii. sc. 3--
+
+               QUEEN MARGARET.
+
+     Warwick, these words have turned my hate to love,--
+     And I forgive and quite forget old faults,
+     And joy that thou becom'st King Henry's friend.
+
+
+[96] Horace Walpole observes, that "it is evident from the conduct of
+Shakspeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their Lancasterian
+prejudices even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In his play of Richard
+the Third, he seems to deduce the woes of the house of York from the
+curses which Queen Margaret had vented against them; and he could not
+give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right in her to
+utter them."
+
+[97] See her letters in Ellis's Collection.
+
+[98] Under similar circumstances, one of Katherine's predecessors,
+Philippe of Hainault, had gained in her husband's absence the battle of
+Neville Cross, in which David Bruce was taken prisoner.
+
+[99] Ellis's Collection. We must keep in mind that Katherine was a
+foreigner, and till after she was seventeen, never spoke or wrote a word
+of English.
+
+[100] Hall's Chronicle
+
+[101] Hall's Chronicle, p. 781.
+
+[102] The court at Blackfriars sat on the 28th of May, 1529. "The queen
+being called, accompanied by the four bishops and others of her counsel,
+and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following her; and after
+her obeisance, sadly and with great gravity, she appealed from them to
+the court of Rome."--_See Hall and Cavendish's Life of Wolsey._
+
+The account which Hume gives of this scene is very elegant; but after
+the affecting _naivete_ of the old chroniclers, it is very cold and
+unsatisfactory.
+
+[103] "The queen answered the Duke of Suffolk very highly and
+obstinately, with many high words: and suddenly, in a fury she departed
+from him into her privy chamber."--_Vide Hall's Chronicle_.
+
+[104] _Vide_ Cavendish's Life of Wolsey.
+
+[105] Winter's Tale, act iii. scene 2.
+
+[106] I have constantly abstained from considering any of these
+characters with a reference to the theatre; yet I cannot help remarking,
+that if Mrs. Siddons, who excelled equally in Hermione and Katherine,
+and threw such majesty of demeanor, such power, such picturesque effect,
+into both, could likewise feel and convey the infinite contrast between
+the ideal grace, the classical repose and imaginative charm thrown round
+Hermione, and the matter-of-fact, artless, prosaic nature of Katherine;
+between the poetical grandeur of the former, and the moral dignity of
+the latter,--then she certainly exceeded all that I could have imagined
+possible, even to _her_ wonderful powers.
+
+[107] This affecting passage is thus rendered by Shakspeare:--
+
+     Nay, forsooth, my friends,
+     They that must weigh out my afflictions--
+     They that my trust must grow to, live not here--
+     They are, as all my other comforts, far hence,
+     In mine own country, lords.
+
+          _Henry VIII._ _act_ iii. _sc._ 1
+
+
+[108] Dr. Johnson is of opinion, that this scene "is above any other
+part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any other
+poet, tender and pathetic; without gods, or furies, or poisons, or
+precipices; without the help of romantic circumstances; without
+improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of
+tumultuous misery."
+
+I have already observed, that in judging of Shakspeare's characters as
+of persons we meet in real life, we are swayed unconsciously by our own
+habits and feelings, and our preference governed, more or less, by our
+individual prejudices or sympathies. Thus, Dr. Johnson, who has not a
+word to bestow on Imogen, and who has treated poor Juliet as if she had
+been in truth "the very beadle to an amorous sigh," does full justice to
+the character of Katherine, because the logical turn of his mind, his
+vigorous intellect, and his austere integrity, enabled him to appreciate
+its peculiar beauties: and, accordingly, we find that he gives it, not
+only unqualified, but almost exclusive admiration: he goes so far as to
+assert, that in this play the genius of Shakspeare comes in and goes out
+with Katherine.
+
+[109] It will be remembered, that in early youth Anna Bullen was
+betrothed to Lord Henry Percy, who was passionately in love with her.
+Wolsey, to serve the king's purposes, broke off this match, and forced
+Percy into an unwilling marriage with Lady Mary Talbot. "The stout Earl
+of Northumberland," who arrested Wolsey at York, was this very Percy; he
+was chosen for his mission by the interference of Anna Bullen--a piece
+of vengeance truly feminine in its mixture of sentiment and
+spitefulness; and every way characteristic of the individual woman.
+
+[110] The king is said to have wept on reading this letter, and her body
+being interred at Peterbro', in the monastery, for honor of her memory
+it was preserved at the dissolution, and erected into a bishop's
+see.--_Herbert's Life of Henry VIII._
+
+[111] Written, (as the commentators suppose,) not by Shakspeare, but by
+Ben Jonson.
+
+[112] Mrs. Siddons left among her papers an analysis of the character of
+Lady Macbeth, which I have never seen: but I have heard her say, that
+after playing the part for thirty years, she never read it without
+discovering in it something new. She had an idea that Lady Macbeth must
+from her Celtic origin have been a small, fair, blue-eyed woman.
+Bonduca, Fredegonde, Brunehault, and other Amazons of the gothic ages
+were of this complexion; yet I cannot help fancying Lady Macbeth dark,
+like Black Agnes of Douglas--a sort of Lady Macbeth in her way.
+
+[113] In her impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Siddons
+adopted successively three different intonations in giving the words _we
+fail_. At first a quick contemptuous interrogation--"_we fail?_"
+Afterwards with the note of admiration--_we fail!_ and an accent of
+indignant astonishment, laying the principal emphasis on the word
+_we_--_we_ fail! Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced is the true
+reading--we fail. with the simple period, modulating her voice to a
+deep, low, resolute tone, which settled the issue at once--as though she
+had said, "if we fail, why then we fail, and all is over." This is
+consistent with the dark fatalism of the character and the sense of the
+line following, and the effect was sublime, almost awful.
+
+[114] _Metaphysical_ is here used in the sense of spiritual or
+preternatural.
+
+[115] Mrs. Siddons, I believe, had an idea that Lady Macbeth beheld the
+spectre of Banquo in the supper scene, and that her self-control and
+presence of mind enabled her to surmount her consciousness of the
+ghastly presence. This would be superhuman, and I do not see that either
+the character or the text bear out this supposition.
+
+[116] Cumberland.
+
+[117] Professor Richardson.
+
+[118] Foster's Essays.
+
+[119] See Dr. Channing's remarks on Satan, in his essay "On the
+Character and Writings of Milton."--_Works_, p 181.
+
+[120] The vision of Clytemnestra the night before she is murdered, in
+which she dreams that she has given birth to a dragon, and that, in
+laying it to her bosom, it draws blood instead of milk, has been greatly
+admired; but I suppose that those who most admire it would not place it
+in comparison with Lady Macbeth's sleeping scene. Lady Ashton, in the
+Bride of Lammermoor, is a domestic Lady Macbeth; but the development
+being in the narrative, not the dramatic form, it follows hence that we
+have a masterly portrait, not a complete individual: and the relief of
+poetry and sympathy being wanting, the detestation she inspires is so
+unmixed as to be almost intolerable: consequently the character,
+considered in relation to the other personages of the story, is perfect;
+but abstractedly, it is imperfect; a basso relievo--not a statue.
+
+[121] Attributed to Seneca.
+
+[122] A comparison has already been made in an article in the
+"Reflector." It will be seen on a reference to that very masterly Essay,
+that I differ from the author in his conception of Lady Macbeth's
+character.
+
+[123] Appollonius Rhodius.--_Vide_ Elton's Specimens of the Classic
+Poets.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+Books by Mrs. Anna Jameson
+
+
+THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN: MORAL, POETICAL, AND HISTORICAL.
+
+THE DIARY OF AN ENNUYEE.
+
+MEMOIRS OF THE LOVES OF THE POETS. Biographical Sketches of Women
+celebrated in Ancient and Modern Poetry.
+
+STUDIES, STORIES, AND MEMOIRS.
+
+SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. With a Steel Engraving of
+Raphael's Madonna del San Sisto.
+
+MEMOIRS OF THE EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS (Cimabue to Bassano).
+
+LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA as represented in the Fine Arts.
+
+SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. In two volumes.
+
+LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS as represented in the Fine Arts. Forming
+the Second Series of Sacred and Legendary Art.
+
+Each volume, 16mo, $1.25; the ten volumes, in box, $12.50; half calf,
+$25.00; tree calf, $35.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Houghton, Mifflin & Co., _Publishers_, BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson
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