to banish the Count, on account of her presence, from his native land and ancestral castle. She resolves to go: Hel. Nothing in France, until he has no wife! And angels officed all: I will be gone, All's Well that Ends Well, act iii. scene 2. She goes to Florence disguised as a pilgrim. Here nothing is talked of but the heroic deeds of the young French captain of cavalry, Bertram, Count of Roussillon. She makes the acquaintance of a beautiful Florentine, Diana, and her mother, and hears from them that the Count has fallen in love with the girl, and pursues her with a passionate suit she steadfastly resists. Helena's quick eye detects that here may be the opportunity she is seeking. She discovers herself to the women, and promises a rich reward if they will aid her in her bold plan. The young girl must promise to receive the Count in her chamber, but only at the hour of most profound darkness, and after he has given her the family ring which had never left his finger. Led by his blind unreasoning passion, he fulfils the conditions, and finds in Diana's chamber, without perceiving the exchange, Helena, who passionately returns his embrace, and gives him a ring she received from the King of France. Their meeting has the consequence she hoped, but for a time she remains concealed, until the right moment comes, and meantime she spreads a report of her death. She travels with Diana and her mother, of whom she does not wish to lose sight, as they are her most important witnesses. At last a favourable opportunity offers at Roussillon Castle, whither the King of France has gone to meet Bertram, returned from Florence full of glory. After many comic adventures, difficult to relate, Helena proves that the two conditions are fulfilled, and Bertram acknowledges her as his wife. He assures her that when he heard of her death he recognised her worth, and was filled with love and regret. But Bertram showed his real character too clearly for us to trust him; still we do not feel uneasy concerning the happiness of the young married pair. Helena's love is so deep, her strength of character, and especially her tact, so great, that we are convinced she will exert a purifying and ennobling influence over her husband, and so enchain his affections that, in time, when, by prudence, energy, and steadfastness, she has, through much suffering, reached her wished-for goal, she will be able truly to say, "All's well that ends well." "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" Hermia-Helena-Titania The fantastic play Shakespeare called A Midsummer Night's Dream was written between the years 1594 and 1596, and apparently, like the Tempest and Henry VIII., for some high court festivity. A wonderfully beautiful passage is worded in direct homage to the Virgin Queen Elizabeth. Oberon says to his attendant sprite Puck: Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, Fetch me that flower. A Midsummer Night's Dream, act ii. scene 1. A merry fantastic fairy piece, constructed on a very simple action. Theseus, king of Athens, orders Philistratus, the ruler of his revels, to do everything that can be done to make his nuptials with Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, as gay.and brilliant as possible. There comes before Theseus, Egeus, and complains of his daughter Hermia, who despises Demetrius, the husband he has chosen for her, and whom until now she has looked upon with favour, and has chosen instead Lysander, who has won her heart with poems, flowers, and such like things. Hermia is described as a beautiful little personage, already "a vixen when she went to school," now positively headstrong in her new fancy, defying all threats. She prefers a cloister to Demetrius, in spite of his tender love, in spite of his outward and inward superiority to Lysander. The tall slender Helena, whom Demetrius formerly courted, still loves him tenderly, although he has turned to the tiny Hermia, who despises him. Thus we see Helena running after Demetrius, who will not listen to her, but runs after Hermia, who will not listen to him. Strife also has broken out between the rulers of the realm of Faery, Oberon and Titania, partly through jealousy, as each accuses the other of preferring respectively Theseus and Hippolyta, partly on account of a little Indian boy whom they both wish to own. The fairy queen uses her tongue so sharply that the king leaves her in anger. He revenges himself by squeezing upon her eyelids, while she sleeps, the juice of a flower which has the effect of making her fall in love with the first creature she sees on waking. A 4 group of Athenian mechanics has assembled in the wood to rehearse a dramatic performance they intend to act at the king's wedding. The drollest personage among them, the weaver Bottom, is the being who first meets Titania's eyes, after he has been decorated by Puck with an ass's head. Hence ensues a comic scene not without importance. Fancy and imagination predominate in this play. Titania loves an ass because she idealises him. From the same source spring the perpetual changes in the loves of Demetrius and Helena, Hermia and Lysander, which are only symbolically due to3 the working of the wonder-flower. The piece is rightly called a dream; a fantastic dream-world is brought before us, in which the hard and fast laws of actual existence are disregarded, and everything is possible, even the impossible. There is no need of any regular description or discussion of the characters in such a play. The personages do not act of themselves; they, and all they say and do, are in the power of the magician, who flings them about as he likes. Hence there is no need of a careful characterisation of the two girls; it is only necessary to mention their divergence.2 Hermia appeals in many ways to our sympathy; she is saucy, resolute even towards the king, who gives her the choice of obeying her father and marrying Demetrius, or of spending her life in a lonely cloister: So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act i. scene 1. She determines to fly with Lysander, to be married in some place not subject to the stern Athenian law. Helena is rather lachrymose, and unpleasantly sentimental, but none the less, like Hermia, she has a sharp and bitter tongue. She has learned from Hermia that she is going to meet Lysander in the wood to consult about their flight. When Helena, to please Demetrius, betrays them, it is still her I own doing, because she is not yet under magic influence. But when Demetrius seeks and finds the fugitive pair in the forest, when Helena runs after him, when Puck, either by mistake or out of mischief, makes the most absurd blunders with the juice of the wonder-flower; when, after all, through the same magic influence, they are once more brought into the right relations, everything is all jumbled wildly and unconsciously together. These people do not act of their own free will, so there is no question of characterising their action. In the world of magic there is neither logic nor consequence. But beside this wonderworld, the poem contains a masterly piece of pure realism, the play of the Athenian workmen, a parody on the condition of the London stage. Its charm lies in its comically effective contrasts, which set forth in the drollest manner, in the midst of the pure poetry of the drama, the "most lamentable comedy of the very cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe," and places the actors thereof in ordinary everyday shape, and in the most natural fashion before our eyes. 66 'ROMEO AND JULIET" Juliet-Lady Capulet-The Nurse Lessing, in his Dramaturgy, when criticising Voltaire's Zaire, says that an art critic ably remarked that love himself dictated this tragedy to Voltaire. He had better have said: Gallantry. I know but one tragedy in which love. himself seems to have helped, and that is Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It is true that Voltaire makes his enamoured Zaire express her feelings in refined and appropriate phrases, but what are these phrases beside the living picture of all the smallest, most secret struggles through which love steals into the soul, all the unobtrusive victories he wins there, all the power and art with which he subdues every other passion, until he becomes the absolute tyrant of every opinion and desire? The passion of love is its groundwork. The play has been called the "high anthem of love." Mrs. Jameson says: "In Shake |
