set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned, and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It is as if the hand of Titian had been employed to give grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. Shakespear has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical Holofernes 'as too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it'; and nothing can be more marked than the difference when he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed on himself, 'as light as bird from brake,' and speaks in his own person. We think, for instance, that in the following soliloquy the poet has fairly got the start of Queen Elizabeth and her maids of honour :— 'Biron. O and I forsooth in love, I that have been love's whip; And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop? With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes; Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan : The character of Biron drawn by Rosaline and that which Biron gives of Boyet are equally happy. The observations on the use and abuse of study, and on the power of beauty to quicken the understanding as well as the senses, are excellent. The scene which has the greatest dramatic effect is that in which Biron, the king, Longaville, and Dumain, successively detect each other and are detected in their breach of their vow and in their profession of attachment to their several mistresses, in which they suppose themselves to be overheard by no one. The reconciliation between these lovers and their sweethearts is also very good, and the penance which Rosaline imposes on Biron, before he can expect to gain her consent to marry him, full of propriety and beauty. 'Rosaline. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, To weed this wormwood from your faithful brain; You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, T'enforce the pained impotent to smile. Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death ? Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. Rosaline. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools: A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it; never in the tongue Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, And I will have you, and that fault withal; But, if they will not, throw away that spirit, And I shall find you empty of that fault, Right joyful of your reformation. Biron. A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall, The famous cuckoo-song closes the play: but we shall add no more criticisms: the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.' MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING THIS admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till of late years. Mr. Garrick's Benedick was one of his most celebrated characters; and Mrs. Jordan, we have understood, played Beatrice very delightfully. The serious part is still the most prominent here, as in other instances that we have noticed. Hero is the principal figure in the piece, and leaves an indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her tenderness, and the hard trial of her love. The passage in which Claudio first makes a confession of his affection towards her, conveys as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can well be imagined. 'Oh, my lord, When you went onward with this ended action, That lik'd, but had a rougher task in hand In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity. 'Claudio. No, Leonato, I never tempted her with word too large, Bashful sincerity, and comely love. Hero. And seem'd I ever otherwise to you? Claudio. Out on thy seeming, I will write against it: You seem to me as Dian in her orb, As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Venus, or those pamper'd animals That rage in savage sensuality. Hero. Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide? Hero. True! O God!' The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about by one of those temporary consignments to the grave of which Shakespear seems to have been fond. He has perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in the following lines: 'Friar. She dying, as it must be so maintain'd, That what we have we prize not to the worth, And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparel'd in more precious habit, More moving, delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, The principal comic characters in MUCH ADO ABOUT Nothing, Benedick and Beatrice, are both essences in their kind. His character as a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony is no less happily effected by the pretended story of Beatrice's love for him. It is hard to say which of the two scenes is the best, that of the trick which is thus practised on Benedick, or that in which Beatrice is prevailed on to take pity on him by overhearing her cousin and her maid declare (which they do on purpose) that he is dying of love for her. There is something delightfully picturesque in the manner in which Beatrice is described as coming to hear the plot which is contrived against herself— "For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs In consequence of what she hears (not a word of which is true) she exclaims when these good-natured informants are gone, 'What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee; Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand; For others say thou dost deserve; and I And Benedick, on his part, is equally sincere in his repentance with equal reason, after he has heard the grey-beard, Leonato, and his friend, Monsieur Love,' discourse of the desperate state of his supposed inamorata. "This can be no trick; the conference was sadly borne.-They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady; it seems her affections have the full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censur'd: they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her; they say too, that she will rather die than give any sign of affection.-I did never think to marry: I must not seem proud-happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending. They say, the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness: and virtuous;-'tis so, I cannot reprove it: and wise-but for loving me: -by my troth it is no addition to her wit;-nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her.—I may chance to have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have rail'd so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth, that he cannot endure in his age.-Shall quips, and sentences, and these paper bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his humour? No: the world must be peopled. When I said, I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were marry'd.-Here comes Beatrice: by this day, she's a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her. The beauty of all this arises from the characters of the persons so entrapped. Benedick is a professed and staunch enemy to marriage, and gives very plausible reasons for the faith that is in him. And as to Beatrice, she persecutes him all day with her jests (so that he could hardly think of being troubled with them at night) she not only turns him but all other things into jest, and is proof against everything serious. 'Hero. 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, Ursula. Sure, I think so; And therefore, certainly, it were not good |