MIRANDA.

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.

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 springToo 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 keepAs 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 ispassing 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 tendersOf 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 payWhich are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearlyOr (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 loveIn 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 forthHave you so slander any moment's leisureAs to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet,Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.OPHELIA.I shall obey, my lord.

POLONIUS.

What is between you? give me up the truth!

OPHELIA.

He hath, my lord, of late, made many tendersOf 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 payWhich are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearlyOr (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 loveIn 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 forthHave you so slander any moment's leisureAs 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 philosophicalspeculations, 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 brothersCould 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 eventswhen 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 andphilosophy, 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, becausehe 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 preciselythe 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 currentof 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 soinocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I lovedyou not.OPHELIA.I was the more deceived.

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 soinocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I lovedyou 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 feelingsin 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 isinsane. 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 towonder, 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 characterof 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!

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 alonecould 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 aheart 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 shecouldnot 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 herpageants 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 meMight I but through my prison once a dayBehold this maid: all corners else o' the earthLet liberty make use of, space enoughHave 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 knockAgainst my very heart. Poor souls! they perished.Had I been any god of power, I wouldHave sunk the sea within the earth, or e'erIt 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 herown 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 hadBurnt 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 fatherIs 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 dischargeWhat 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 meAs well as it does you; and I should do itWith 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 meWhen 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 fatherI have broke your 'hest to say so!FERDINAND.Admir'd Miranda!Indeed the top of admiration; worthWhat's dearest to the world! Full many a ladyI have eyed with best regard: and many a timeThe harmony of their tongues hath into bondageBrought my too diligent ear: for several virtuesHave I liked several women; never anyWith so full soul, but some defect in herDid quarrel with the noblest grace she owedAnd put it to the foil. But you, O you,So perfect and so peerless, are createdOf every creature's best!MIRANDA.I do not knowOne of my sex: no woman's face remember,Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seenMere that I may call men, than you, good friend,And my dear father. How features are abroadI am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,(The jewel in my dower,) I would not wishAny companion in the world but you;Nor can imagination form a shape,Besides yourself, to like of—But I prattleSomething too wildly, and my father's preceptsTherein forget.FERDINAND.I am, in my conditionA prince, Miranda—I do think a king—(I would, not so!) and would no more endureThis wooden slavery, than I would sufferThe flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speakThe very instant that I saw you, didMy 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 soundAnd crown what I profess with kind event,If I speak true: if hollowly, invertWhat 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 youMIRANDA.At mine unworthiness, that dare not offerWhat 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 fellowYou may deny me; but I'll be your servantWhether 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 farewellTill half an hour hence.

MIRANDA.

Alas, now! pray you,Work not so hard: I would the lightning hadBurnt 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 fatherIs 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 dischargeWhat 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 meAs well as it does you; and I should do itWith 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 meWhen 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 fatherI have broke your 'hest to say so!

FERDINAND.

Admir'd Miranda!Indeed the top of admiration; worthWhat's dearest to the world! Full many a ladyI have eyed with best regard: and many a timeThe harmony of their tongues hath into bondageBrought my too diligent ear: for several virtuesHave I liked several women; never anyWith so full soul, but some defect in herDid quarrel with the noblest grace she owedAnd put it to the foil. But you, O you,So perfect and so peerless, are createdOf every creature's best!

MIRANDA.

I do not knowOne of my sex: no woman's face remember,Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seenMere that I may call men, than you, good friend,And my dear father. How features are abroadI am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,(The jewel in my dower,) I would not wishAny companion in the world but you;Nor can imagination form a shape,Besides yourself, to like of—But I prattleSomething too wildly, and my father's preceptsTherein forget.

FERDINAND.

I am, in my conditionA prince, Miranda—I do think a king—(I would, not so!) and would no more endureThis wooden slavery, than I would sufferThe flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speakThe very instant that I saw you, didMy 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 soundAnd crown what I profess with kind event,If I speak true: if hollowly, invertWhat 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 offerWhat 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 fellowYou may deny me; but I'll be your servantWhether 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 farewellTill 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 manyfairy 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, thatwe 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 speakavec 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 heroinepar excellenceof 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 awoman. 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 detestablegrossièreté, 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 worldOf pretty fond adoptious ChristendomsThat blinking Cupid gossips.—Act i Scene1The 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 togetherThoughts 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 withinA 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 brainComes 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 Œdipus 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.

[17]Lord Byron remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speakavec 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 heroinepar excellenceof 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 awoman. 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 detestablegrossièreté, 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 worldOf pretty fond adoptious ChristendomsThat blinking Cupid gossips.—Act i Scene1The courtly poets of Elizabeth's time, who copied the Italian sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits.

[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 worldOf pretty fond adoptious ChristendomsThat blinking Cupid gossips.—Act i Scene1

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 togetherThoughts 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 withinA 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 brainComes 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.

[27]

Perhaps 'tis pretty to force togetherThoughts 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 withinA 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 brainComes 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.

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 Œdipus 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 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 publictrial 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

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