involuntarily brings the innermost thoughts of men to their lips, forces only lamentations from her. She says to the Cardinal:

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 sorrow eat my bud

And chase the native beauty from his cheek
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,

As dim and meagre 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.

King John, act iii. scene 4.

The unbounded liveliness of her imagination turns her grief to madness, and yet she is not mad. She says:

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!

Her eloquence rises to the highest flights of metaphor. Listen, for example, to these passages:

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;

For grief is proud, and makes his owner stoop.

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 sorrows sit;
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.
King John, act iii. scene I.

And

O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world;
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy

Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice,

Which scorns a modern invocation.—King John, act iii. scene 4.

Death will be welcome, but she paints him in hideous colours:

Death, death: 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 eyeballs in thy vaulty brows
And ring 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 smilest
And buss thee as thy wife. Misery's love,

O, come to me !—King John, act iii. scene 4.

Resuming this whole description, we find that pride and maternal love are the foundations of Constance's personality, but owing to her unusual intellectual capacity, the strength of her passions, and the powerful flights of her imagination, these qualities, which she has in common with others, are carried to a high, nay, a terrible pitch.

The other female characters of this play, old Queen Eleanor and the young Princess Blanche of Castile, are traced only in outline, but they are historically faithful. Eleanor is seventy; her passionate character, which led her in youth into many imprudences, is but slightly chastened by age. She has a strong understanding, but little education, and an uncontrolled appetite for power. The old chronicles say that she had a personal hatred for Constance, and that she transmitted this hatred to Arthur. Shakespeare has preserved these characteristics and portrayed them in masterly mode.

Blanche of Castile was the daughter of

King Alphonse of Castile and Eleanor's grandchild. Her marriage with the Dauphin Louis, afterwards Louis VIII., took place as suddenly as described in the play. She was marvellously beautiful; her reputation was unstained. She was proud of her lineage and rank, deeply religious, and filled with boundless desire to rule. Later on she played a great part in European history as Regent of France, and is one of the most celebrated women of her own or of any time.

"THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR "

Mistress Ford-Anne Page

This comedy, which furnished the material for Nicolai's popular opera, and which recently, owing to Verdi's work, has become the subject of universal attention, was the offspring of a wish expressed by Queen Elizabeth to "see the fat knight in love." The piece is full of unbridled fun, but I have always considered that, despite its coarse comic tone, it possesses a healthy moral kernel, from which modern playwrights might well take example. The wife of Master Ford, a Windsor burgher, is a worthy woman, devoted to her husband, but pleasure-loving and disposed to regard life from the cheerful side. This is greatly hindered by her husband's outrageous jealousy, on which account he torments her with whims and undeserved distrust. An opportunity occurs to avenge herself, and at the same time to punish the impudent advances and licentious proposals of the old knight Falstaff, who, through unfavourable circumstances, has come down in the world, and has formed a rascally plan to raise himself again by means of a double intrigue with two well-to-do women. The "Merry Wives" set to work with the double object of disgusting Ford with his jealous whims and of punishing the old libertine for his impudence in making improper proposals. Both schemes

succeed. Falstaff is twice invited to a rendezvous in the house of Mistress Ford, and twice falls into the trap. Twice is Master Ford warned of the rendezvous, and on both occasions the cunning women manage to get the fat knight away, once in the buck-basket, once disguised as an old woman. Ford, when he rages through the house, finding no one, becomes the subject of endless laughter and fun. Nevertheless-and herein I find a proof of the truly moral intention of the poet-the licentious admirer is made much more ridiculous than the husband, and is placed in much more unpleasant positions. Once he is thrown into a pond; once he is soundly beaten. The jealous husband, even when he has reason to be jealous, is made the object of scorn and laughter in the cynical French comedies of the present day. Side by side with this principal action runs, in Shakespearian fashion, a subordinate theme, which occurs in the house of the husband of the second "Merry Wife." Father and mother have each chosen a different consort for their daughter; she, however, who cannot endure either, cunningly manages to take occasion of the great final trick played on Falstaff to marry her favoured lover, young Fenton. It does not enter into my plan to speak of all the droll and comic incidents of this play, which contains many highly drastic and realistic characters. They would lose their force by dry recital. My task is confined to characterising the various female types-an easy one in this instance, as none of them present any psychological riddles for solution. The "Merry Wives" are healthy natures, full of cheerfulness and joyous life, who certainly go tolerably far in their practical jokes, but never act in a manner contrary to morality or true honour. Anne Page is a lovable innocent girl, gifted by nature with a rich dower of ability and skill to accompany her on life's path, whereby she finds herself in a position to defend and assure her happiness, as she conceives it, against the unreasonable plans of her parents.

"AS YOU LIKE IT"

Rosalind-Celia

A bright-tinted fantastic life unfolds itself before our eyes in the charming comedy which Shakespeare, we cannot imagine why, has entitled As You Like It. According to his favourite wont, he here causes two actions, related to each other in their nature, to run side by side, and in the end to unite into one. In two families quarrels have broken out between brothers. The younger brother of the rightful Duke has fled into the neighbouring forest of Ardennes, and there leads, with those nobles who have remained true, "a careless life as in the golden age." The daughter of the banished Duke, Rosalind, united in tender friendship to Celia, the daughter of the usurper, has yielded to the earnest request of her cousin and has remained at court On the other hand, there reigns dissension between the three sons of old Sir Rolan de Bois, recently demised, only here the elder brother wrongs the younger. The father has left to Orlando, the youngest of his three sons, only a small patrimony, but has charged Oliver, the eldest, to provide for his brothers' education. Oliver fulfils his father's trust only as regards Jaques, the second brother, and neglects Orlando in a manner which evokes his bitter complaints:

For my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept: for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth. . . . . I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.—ds You Like It, act i. scene 1.

....

Orlando rebels against this treatment, and, in an angry colloquy with his brother, demands the sum due to him under his father's will, in order to seek fortune on his own