'The result is not what she anticipated. With a certain irony, fate punishes Olivia for dismissing all her suitors with a coldness unnatural in her sex, by inspiring her with love for a being who can never respond to her passion, and who makes her suffer all the unsatisfied longings she has caused to others. At their first meeting she feels that this youth is destined to disturb the cold peace of her heart:

Methinks I feel this youth's perfections

With an invisible and subtle stealth

To creep in at mine eyes.-Twelfth Night, act i. scene 5.

She sends her steward to Viola with a ring, under pretext that it had been left as a gift from Viola's master, and that she would not keep it, as she was determined not to listen to his proposals. Viola, who had left no ring, understands the important and delicate nature of the situation, but her character helps her to overcome its doubtful side without causing her womanly modesty to suffer. I give her monologue, as it clearly paints her character, and especially as it shows us how differently she conducts herself from Rosalind when placed in a similar position in As You Like It. Viola does not feel saucily at ease in her man's clothes, like Rosalind. Her mind is not quite comfortable in this disguise. Though playing her part well, she never forgets, and never lets the spectator forget, that she is playing a part. After the steward has forced the ring upon her, and has left her alone, she says:

I left no ring with her: what means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her!
She made good view of me; indeed, so much,
That sure methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.

She loves me, sure; the cunning of her passion
Invites me in this churlish messenger.

None of my lord's ring! why, he sent her none.
I am the man: if it be so, as 'tis,

Poor lady, she were better love a dream.

Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper-false

In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we!
For such as we are made of, such we be.

How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly;
And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master's love;
As I am woman,-now alas the day!-
What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
O time! thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me to untie !

Twelfth Night, act ii, scene 2.

The feminine cowardice, which does not allow her even to feign a boldness appropriate to her dress, her shudder at the thought of drawing a sword, makes an uncommonly droll effect. Shakespeare plainly gives her the first place among the serious figures of this comedy, which is a masterpiece even in its most grotesque scenes. All the others must change their parts. The Duke is obliged to turn to Viola, the unmasked Cesario; Olivia, who through love's might is compelled to quit her assumed rôle of unnatural coldness, mistakes Sebastian for Cesario. Viola alone remains true to herself. She resembles a flower that has drawn the sunshine so deeply into its heart, that its beauty and perfume are everlasting.

"MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING"
Beatrice-Hero

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing is the most perfect of those Shakespearian characters in which a spirit of fun that borders on rashness is delightfully united with a heart of golden purity.

Beatrice and her masculine counterpart, Benedick, are two healthy natures, who quarrel perpetually only because they

feel irresistibly drawn to each other. The conspiracy, got up by their friends, to make these two fall in love, finds the work already accomplished, and can only hasten the development; for as soon as these persons approach each other and measure their strength, we recognise their natural affinities. The truth of the proverb, "Who loves, teases," is here proved with psychological skill. Before and during their first meeting, they betray by little touches that they feel a strong interest in each other., When a messenger announces to the Governor of Messina the victory of the Prince of Arragon, Beatrice immediately asks after Benedick, although she does so in a bitter, scornful, almost unfeminine tone which she always employs, until she recognises the love which has slumbered in her heart, and abandons the perpetual warfare against her real self. When Benedick returns with the victorious army, she attacks him straightway, though he has not paid her the slightest attention. She evidently cannot endure to be unnoticed by him; she irritates him by biting epigrams., Thus aroused, he answers in similar tones, and a lively word-war is soon waging between them, in which she overcomes him. Benedick shows himself in another light in the next scene, when young Claudio, a nobleman who has won laurels in the late campaign, declares himself enchanted by the charms of Hero, the daughter of Leonato, who, by contrast with Beatrice, is shy, silent, and maidenly. Benedick lets us see that he has a high idea of Beatrice's attractions, for he says, "There's her cousin, an she were not possessed by a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May exceeds the last of December." I do not therefore quite agree with Wilbrandt, who says, "Two people like Beatrice and Benedick, of different sexes, must irresistibly attract each other. They must begin by hating, because each is the natural opponent of the other, and end by loving, because each is the complement of the other." I would say rather, "These two splendid creatures understand very well that each is formed and intended to be the comple

ment of the other, but they defend themselves with all the power of their sharp intellect and their proud stiff-necked temperament against a love which seems to them a humiliation, a servitude. They crush with all their might the feeling already nascent, and hide it under the mask of hatred, seeking to master it by a war of wits. Beatrice must atone for her superiority in their wordy war by experiencing sharp pain later on, when her real feeling for Benedick becomes revealed to her, and breaks through the bounds she has carefully erected. She increases the sharpness and bitterness of her attacks only to subdue her real sentiments, and thus often oversteps womanly limits, for which she is afterwards punished by being all the more sharply attacked by love. She therefore falls straight into the trap when she hears that Benedick is deeply in love with her. The words she speaks after listening to the conversation of Leonato and Ursula, which is to confirm her belief in this, shows how under her hard bold outside beats a warm tender heart, that harbours something not at all like hatred for Benedick:

What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?

Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu !
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand :
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
To bind our loves up in a holy band;

For others say thou dost deserve, and I

Believe it better than reportingly.

Much Ado About Nothing, act iii. scene 1.

He, too, immediately feels the effect of the means employed. Each requires only the conviction of the other's love to bring them to a consciousness of their own unrecognised feelings. Because neither trusted the other, they strove to hide their sentiments behind apparent dislike, and to master love through a war of wits. Something of flattered vanity is, nevertheless, a factor in both cases. In Beatrice