ment for her, and refuses to hear of any bond between them, indignantly repudiating the idea of marriage. She forces him, by command of the king, to espouse her. After the compulsory ceremony which unites them, he immediately repulses her, making their marital union dependent on conditions which seem impossible. "When thou canst get the ring from my finger that never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband, but in such a then write I never." Her position is not only unhappy, it offends our taste, and yet her character rises in inward sincerity, touching nobility, and beauty, above the unworthiness of her condition. Shakespeare drew his fable from Boccaccio's tales. Giletta of Narbonne, the daughter of a celebrated physician at the court of Roussillon, is a rich heiress. She refuses many distinguished and aristocratic suitors because she secretly loves the young Count Bertram of Roussillon. The King of France has fallen into a grievous sickness, which resists the skill of the best physicians. Giletta has inherited from her father an infallible remedy for this disease. As a reward for curing the king she asks for Count Bertram's hand. He is obliged to give it by the king's command. But on the marriage-day he repulses her, and sends her to his castle of Roussillon, where she is received with demonstrations of honour. During her husband's absence she holds the reins of government and wins all hearts by her wisdom and kindness. The Count flies to Tuscany, and the rest of the story is the same as in the drama. Giletta's gifts, her beauty, her intellect, the wisdom with which she conducts the regency fallen into her hands, her passionate love for Bertram, are described in the tale with all Boccaccio's delicious skill. But the Helena of the play surpasses his heroine in attraction, for the reason that the dramatist makes our sympathy depend not on the outward circumstances in which she finds herself, but upon the essence of her being, upon the power and energy of

K

her emotions. Notwithstanding her dignity of demeanour, she is free from any suspicion of haughtiness, her amiable and unassuming modesty is one of her greatest charms. She by no means considers her low birth as a subject for humiliation. On the contrary, she holds that, as the daughter of a celebrated and respected physician, she has reason to be prouder than the highest noble who boasts a long line of ancestors. She only rebels at her low birth because owing to prevailing prejudices she is thereby irrevocably severed from the man who possesses her heart, and in whose company she has grown up. Her love for this companion of her youth has grown with her growth, and has so overpowered all her thoughts and emotions, that her whole being is really nothing but love for Bertram, and if Bertram is taken out of her life, her life will go after him. It impresses us agreeably, we admit, that the object of this boundless, stainless, soulful, selfless love, in his pride, heartlessness, and caprice, is not worthy of such devotion. But Helena does not look on him with the eyes of the impartial reader or spectator, but with those of her own idealising fancy, which has set him up as the ideal of perfect manliness. Bertram has been very severely handled by English critics. Doctor Johnson says, "I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram, who marries Helena as a coward and leaves her as a profligate." But for the judgment of the play or of his character it is perfectly indifferent whether Dr. Johnson, and the whole pack of English critics, can reconcile themselves to Bertram or not. The only question is, whether Helena, according to her character, as the poet develops it, can forgive him; if such an ending as he has given to the play is in contradiction to universal psychological truth, and to the emotional working of the nature of the female sex. And here Shakespeare has shown once more his intimate knowledge of the deepest springs of the human, the female heart. With calm superiority he rises above critics who, like Johnson, altogether condemn Bertram, deeming him

unworthy of the love and forgiveness of Helena, and above those (and they are not a few) who have set themselves the task of whitewashing Bertram, seeking excuses for his conduct in order to explain Helena's devotion and to justify her forgiveness. Both schools of criticism have misunderstood Shakespeare. This great reader of the human heart knew right well that logic and womanly passion are two very different things. He knew well that the most perfect and lovable women, gifted with every bodily charm, with every intellectual superiority, with every outward advantage of position, give their affections to men entirely unworthy in every respect. In spite of all opposition from those who surround them, they hold fast by this love, even when the unworthiness of the beloved object has been proved again and again, and when they have been themselves wounded, nay, maltreated by the man they worship. Therefore it is useless to try and explain Helena's devotion by making out Bertram better than he seems, in order to prove that the woman's love is not contradictory to psychological possibility or probability. It is also a wrong to the poet, when he is accused, because of Bertram's unsympathetic character, of having shocked our sense of psychological possibility and probability in making a creature so womanly and worthy of love as he depicts Helena capable of loving and forgiving a man who seems to us so unamiable. Helena loves Bertram, not because he is worthy, but just because she loves him, and that is a reason with which, as far as the female sex is concerned, we are only too often forced to declare ourselves content. One of the most beautiful scenes is that in which the Countess of Roussillon, Bertram's mother, forces Helena to confess her love. We give it here, because all the most prominent and most amiable features of Helena's character are displayed in it, and also because it brings before us in the Countess of Roussillon an important female character worthy of our attention:

Hel. What is your pleasure, madaın ?
Count.

I am a mother to you.

Hel. Mine honourable mistress.
Count.

You know, Helen,

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
Το say I am thy mother? What's the matter,
That this distemper'd messenger of wet,
The many-colour'd Iris, rounds thine eye?
Why? that you are my daughter?

Hel. 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,

So I were not his sister. Can't no other,

But I your daughter, he must be my brother?

Count. 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 ashamed,
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, th' one to th' other; and thine eyes
See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours
That in their kind they speak it; only sin

And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue,

That truth should be suspected. Speak, is't so?
If it be so, you have wound a goodly clew;
If it be not, forswear't; howe'er, I charge thee,
As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,
To tell me truly.

Hel.

Good madam, pardon me!

Count. Do you love my son?

Hel. Your pardon, noble mistress!

Count. Love you my son?

Hel. Do not you love him, madam?

Count. 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.

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 intenible sieve

I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose 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 honour 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!

All's Well that Ends Well, act i. scene 3.

The confession of her love is drawn from her by force, she struggles against it, her whole being is shaken; but when at last the irresistible pressure put upon her by the