Chapter VI: Part 6

The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these only; they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She is so perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda--even one of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations--there is not one of them that could sustain the comparison for a moment; not one that would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this "Eve of an enchanted Paradise."

What, then, has Shakspeare done?--"O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man!"--he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex; he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural; and the only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature of elemental light and air, that "ran upon the winds, rode the curl'd clouds, and in the colors of the rainbow lived," Miranda herself appears a palpable reality; a woman, "breathing thoughtful breath," a woman, walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a heart as frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom.

I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar grace. She resembles nothing upon earth; but do we therefore compare her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain or the ocean?--oread or dryad fleet, sea-maid, or naiad of the stream? We cannot think of them together. Miranda is a consistent, natural, human being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace, and purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only is she exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she _could_ not possibly be otherwise than as she is portrayed. She has never beheld one of her own sex; she has never caught from society one imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in her enchanted solitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her father, the princely magician; her companions have been the rocks and woods, the many-shaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars; her playmates the ocean billows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran rippling to kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over her head, ministered duteous to her every wish, and presented before her pageants of beauty and grandeur. The very air, made vocal by her father's art, floated in music around her. If we can presuppose such a situation with all its circumstances, do we not behold in the character of Miranda not only the credible, but the natural, the necessary results of such a situation? She retains her woman's heart, for that is unalterable and inalienable, as a part of her being; but her deportment, her looks, her language, her thoughts--all these, from the supernatural and poetical circumstances around her, assume a cast of the pure ideal; and to us, who are in the secret of her human and pitying nature, nothing can be more charming and consistent than the effect which she produces upon others, who never having beheld any thing resembling her, approach her as "a wonder," as something celestial:--

Be sure! the goddess on whom these airs attend!

And again:--

What is this maid?
Is she the goddess who hath severed us,
And brought us thus together?

And Ferdinand exclaims, while gazing on her,

My spirits as in a dream are all bound up!
My father's loss, the weakness that I feel,
The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats,
To whom I am subdued, are but light to me
Might I but through my prison once a day
Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth
Let liberty make use of, space enough
Have I in such a prison.

Contrasted with the impression of her refined and dignified beauty, and its effect on all beholders, is Miranda's own soft simplicity, her virgin innocence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and language of society. It is most natural that in a being thus constituted, the first tears should spring from compassion, "suffering with those that she saw suffer:"--

O the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perished.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er
It should the good ship so have swallowed,
And the freighting souls within her;

and that her first sigh should be offered to a love at once fearless and submissive, delicate and fond. She has no taught scruples of honor like Juliet; no coy concealments like Viola; no assumed dignity standing in its own defence. Her bashfulness is less a quality than an instinct; it is like the self-folding of a flower, spontaneous and unconscious. I suppose there is nothing of the kind in poetry equal to the scene between Ferdinand and Miranda. In Ferdinand, who is a noble creature, we have all the chivalrous magnanimity with which man, in a high state of civilization, disguises his real superiority, and does humble homage to the being of whose destiny he disposes; while Miranda, the mere child of nature, is struck with wonder at her own new emotions. Only conscious of her own weakness as a woman, and ignorant of those usages of society which teach us to dissemble the real passion, and assume (and sometimes abuse) an unreal and transient power, she is equally ready to place her life, her love, her service beneath his feet.

MIRANDA.

Alas, now! pray you,
Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoined to pile!
Pray set it down and rest you: when this burns,
'Twill weep for having weary'd you. My father
Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself:
He's safe for these three hours.

FERDINAND.

O most dear mistress,
The sun will set before I shall discharge
What I must strive to do.

MIRANDA.

If you'll sit down,
I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that,
I'll carry it to the pile.

FERDINAND.

No, precious creature;
I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
Than you should such dishonor undergo,
While I sit lazy by.

MIRANDA.

It would become me
As well as it does you; and I should do it
With much more ease; for my good will is to it,
And yours against.

* * * *

MIRANDA.

You look wearily.

FERDINAND.

No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night. I do beseech you,
(Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,)
What is your name?

MIRANDA.

Miranda. O my father
I have broke your 'hest to say so!

FERDINAND.

Admir'd Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration; worth
What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard: and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
And put it to the foil. But you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best!

MIRANDA.

I do not know
One of my sex: no woman's face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
Mere that I may call men, than you, good friend,
And my dear father. How features are abroad
I am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,
(The jewel in my dower,) I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you;
Nor can imagination form a shape,
Besides yourself, to like of--But I prattle
Something too wildly, and my father's precepts
Therein forget.

FERDINAND.

I am, in my condition
A prince, Miranda--I do think a king--
(I would, not so!) and would no more endure
This wooden slavery, than I would suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides,
To make me slave to it; and for your sake,
Am I this patient log-man.

MIRANDA.

Do you love me?

FERDINAND.

O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true: if hollowly, invert
What best is boded me, to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize, honor you.

MIRANDA.

I am a fool,
To weep at what I am glad of.

FERDINAND.

Wherefore weep you

MIRANDA.

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take,
What I shall die to want--But this is trifling:
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no!

FERDINAND.

My mistress, dearest!
And I thus humble ever.

MIRANDA.

My husband, then?

FERDINAND.

Ay, with a heart as willing,
As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand.

MIRANDA.

And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell
Till half an hour hence.

As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly claims her as "a thread of his own life--nay, that for which he lives." Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity, is one of the most sublime visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand, before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works through the agency of spirits: not by any evil and forbidden compact, but solely by superior might of intellect--by potent spells gathered from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagined:[46] and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and St. Leon, sink into common-places before the princely, the philosophic, the benevolent Prospero.

The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm,[47] brought back a most fearful account of those unknown islands, which they described as "a land of devils--a most prodigious and enchanted place, subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings." Such was the idea entertained of the "still-vext Bermoothes" in Shakspeare's age; but later travellers describe them as perfect regions of enchantment in a far different sense; as so many fairy Edens, clustered like a knot of gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round with groves of coral; in short, each island a tiny paradise, rich with perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed: so that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however lovely in nature and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize with the beautiful and wondrous reality.

There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon the occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most unhappy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity.

* * * * *

The characters which I have here classed together, as principally distinguished by the predominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to rise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda; the last being in comparison so refined, so elevated above all stain of earth, that we can only acknowledge her in connection with it through the emotions of sympathy she feels and inspires.

I remember, when I was in Italy, standing "at evening on the top of Fiesole," and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation, which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the earth to the sky, and immediately above this scene hung the soft crescent moon--alone, with all the bright heaven to herself; and as that sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of Miranda compared to that of Juliet.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Lord Byron remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speak _avec connaissance de fait_,) that they are the only women in the world capable of impressions, at once very sudden and very durable; which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves, and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and devotedness afterwards.--Both these traits of national character are exemplified in Juliet--_Moore's Life of Byron_, vol. ii. pp. 303, 338. 4to edit.

[18] _La seve de la vie_, is an expression used somewhere by Madame de Stael.

[19] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.

[20] I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character, which I have heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as the heroine _par excellence_ of amatory fiction--I mean the Julie of Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise; I protest against her altogether. As a creation of fancy the portrait is a compound of the most gross and glaring inconsistencies; as false and impossible to the reflecting and philosophical mind, as the fabled Syrens, Hamatryads and Centaurs to the eye of the anatomist. As a woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society; and if the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted. Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth, does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit into her, and then calls the "impetticoated" paradox a _woman_. He makes her a peg on which to hang his own visions and sentiments--and what sentiments! but that I fear to soil my pages, I would pick out a few of them, and show the difference between this strange combination of youth and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophistical prudery, and detestable _grossierete_, and our own Juliet. No! if we seek a French Juliet, we must go far--far back to the real Heloise, to her eloquence, her sensibility, her fervor of passion, her devotedness of truth. She, at least, married the man she loved, and loved the man she married, and more than died for him; but enough of both.

[21] Constant describes her beautifully--"Sa voix si douce au travers le bruit des armes, sa forme delicate au milieu de cet hommes tous couverts de fer, la purete de son ame opposee leurs calculs avides, son calme celeste qui contraste avec leurs agitations, remplissent le spectateur d'une emotion constante et melancolique, telle que ne la fait ressentir nulle tragedie ordinaire."

[22] Coleridge--preface to Wallenstein.

[23] In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona."

[24] There is an allusion to this court language of love in "All Well that Ends Well," where Helena says,--

There shall your master have a thousand loves--
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign;
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear,
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcut,
His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
Of pretty fond adoptious Christendoms
That blinking Cupid gossips.--ACT I SCENE 1

The courtly poets of Elizabeth's time, who copied the Italian sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits.

[25] Since this was written, I have met with some remarks of a similar tendency in that most interesting book, "The Life of Lord E. Fitzgerald."

[26] Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she has placed before herself in the most fearful colors all its possible consequences, is compared by Schlegel to the famous story of Alexander and his physician.

[27]

Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm!
Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty,
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do?

COLERIDGE.

These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet's wild exclamations against Romeo.

[28] "The censure," observes Schlegel, "originates in a fanciless way of thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that does not suit its tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day life; but energetic passions electrify the whole mental powers and will, consequently, in highly-favored natures, express themselves in an ingenious and figurative manner."

[29] The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakspeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. "Juliet, a noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with his dagger." This note, which furnishes, in brief, the whole argument of Shakspeare's play, might possibly have made the first impression on his fancy. In the novel of Da Porta the catastrophe is altogether different. After the death of Romeo, the Friar Lorenzo endeavors to persuade Juliet to leave the fatal monument. She refuses; and throwing herself back on the dead body of her husband, she resolutely holds her breath and dies.--"E voltatasi al giacente corpo di Romeo, il cui capo sopra un origliere, che con lei uell' arca era stato lasciato, posto aveva; gli occhi meglio rinchiusi avendogli, e di lagrime il freddo volto bagnandogli, disse;" Che debbo senza di te in vita piu fare, signor mio? e che altro mi resta verso te se non colla mia morte seguirti? "E detto questo, la sua gran sciagura nell' animo recatasi, e la perdita del caro amante ricordandosi, deliberando di piu non vivere, raccolto a se il fiato, e per buono spazio tenutolo, e poscia con un gran grido fuori mandandolo, sopra il morto corpo, morta ricadde."

There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden--once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory of Juliet.

When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "_dans le genre romantique_," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring.

[30] Foster's Essays

[31] I have read somewhere that the play of which Helena is the heroine, (All's Well that Ends Well,) was at first entitled by Shakspeare "Love's Labor Won." Why the title was altered or by whom I cannot discover.

[32] i. e. I care as much for as I do for heaven.

[33] New Monthly Magazine, vol. iv.

[34] Percy's Reliques.

[35] i. e. _canzons_, songs

[36] Percy's Reliques, vol. iii.--see the ballad of the "Lady turning Serving Man."

[37] By this word, as used here, I would be understood to mean that inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to the good, the beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar, the violent, and the false;--that which we see diffused externally over the form and movements, where there is perfect innocence and unconsciousness, as in children.

[38] _i. e._ In the story of the drama; for in the original "History of Amleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his materials, there is a woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce Amleth, but not even the germ of the character of Ophelia.

[39] In the Oedipus Coloneus

[40] "And recks not his own read," _i. e._ heeds not his own lesson.

[41] Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 11.

[42] Act iii. scene 1.

[43] Goethe. See the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister

[44] The Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides.

[45] Goethe

[46] Such as Cornelius Agrippa, Michael Scott, Dr. Dee. The last was the contemporary of Shakspeare.

[47] In 1609, about three years before Shakspeare produced the Tempest, which, though placed first in all the editions of his works, was one of the last of his dramas.

CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS

HERMIONE.

Characters in which the affections and the moral qualities predominate over fancy and all that bears the name of passion, are not, when we meet with them in real life, the most striking and interesting, nor the easiest to be understood and appreciated; but they are those on which, in the long run, we repose with increasing confidence and ever-new delight. Such characters are not easily exhibited in the colors of poetry, and when we meet with them there, we are reminded of the effect of Raffaelle's pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds assures us, that it took him three weeks to discover the beauty of the frescos in the Vatican; and many, if they spoke the truth, would prefer one of Titian's or Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less there is of marked expression or vivid color in a countenance or character, the more difficult to delineate it in such a manner as to captivate and interest us: but when this is done, and done to perfection, it is the miracle of poetry in painting, and of painting in poetry. Only Raffaelle and Correggio have achieved it in one case, and only Shakspeare in the other.

When, by the presence or the agency of some predominant and exciting power, the feelings and affections are upturned from the depths of the heart, and flung to the surface, the painter or the poet has but to watch the workings of the passions, thus in a manner made visible, and transfer them to his page or his canvas, in colors more or less vigorous: but where all is calm without and around, to dive into the profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions of the heart, patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few graceful touches place before us the distinct and visible result,--to do this demanded power of another and a rarer kind.

There are several of Shakspeare's characters which are especially distinguished by this profound feeling in the conception, and subdued harmony of tone in the delineation. To them may be particularly applied the ingenious simile which Goethe has used to illustrate generally all Shakspeare's characters, when he compares them to the old-fashioned batches in glass cases, which not only showed the index pointing to the hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index in motion.

Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations nearly similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can render that situation striking and interesting. They are all gentle, beautiful, and innocent; all are models of conjugal submission, truth, and tenderness, and all are victims of the unfounded jealousy of their husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance ceases; the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and the characters, which are as different as it is possible to imagine, conceived and discriminated with a power of truth and a delicacy of feeling yet more astonishing.

Critically speaking, the character of Hermione is the most simple in point of dramatic effect, that of Imogen is the most varied and complex. Hermione is most distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude, Desdemona by her gentleness and refined grace, while Imogen combines all the best qualities of both, with others which they do not possess; consequently she is, as a character, superior to either; but considered as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual taste.

Hermione is the heroine of the first three acts of the Winter's Tale. She is the wife of Leontes, king of Sicilia, and though in the prime of beauty and womanhood, is not represented in the first bloom of youth. Her husband on slight grounds suspects her of infidelity with his friend Polixenes, king of Bohemia; the suspicion once admitted, and working on a jealous, passionate, and vindictive mind, becomes a settled and confirmed opinion. Hermione is thrown into a dungeon; her new-born infant is taken from her, and by the order of her husband, frantic with jealousy, exposed to death on a desert shore; she is herself brought to a public trial for treason and incontinency, defends herself nobly, and is pronounced innocent by the oracle. But at the very moment that she is acquitted, she learns the death of the prince her son, who

Conceiving the dishonor of his mother,
Had straight declined, drooped, took it deeply,
Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself,
Threw off his spirit, appetite, and sleep,
And downright languished.

She swoons away with grief, and her supposed death concludes the third act. The last two acts are occupied with the adventures of her daughter Perdita; and with the restoration of Perdita to the arms of her mother, and the reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes, the piece concludes.

Such, in few words, is the dramatic situation. The character of Hermione exhibits what is never found in the other sex, but rarely in our own--yet sometimes;--dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness without weakness. To conceive a character in which there enters so much of the negative, required perhaps no rare and astonishing effort of genius, such as created a Juliet, a Miranda, or a Lady Macbeth; but to delineate such a character in the poetical form, to develop it through the medium of action and dialogue, without the aid of description: to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious beauty, its unimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon our sympathy and our imagination; and out of this exterior calm, produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and internal power:--it is this which renders the character of Hermione one of Shakspeare's masterpieces.

Hermione is a queen, a matron, and a mother: she is good and beautiful, and royally descended. A majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious simplicity, an easy, unforced, yet dignified self-possession, are in all her deportment, and in every word she utters. She is one of those characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, that "still waters run deep." Her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind the sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment, are like the springs that feed the mountain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and inexhaustible.

Shakspeare has conveyed (as is his custom) a part of the character of Hermione in scattered touches and through the impressions which she produces on all around her. Her surpassing beauty is alluded to in few but strong terms:--

This jealousy
Is for a precious creature; as she is rare
Must it be great.
Praise her but for this her out-door form,
'Which, on my faith, deserves high speech--'

If one by one you wedded all the world,
Or from the all that are, took something good
To make a perfect woman; she you killed
Would be unparalleled.

I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes,
Have taken treasure from her lips--
--and left them
More rich for what they yielded.

The expressions "most sacred lady," "dread mistress," "sovereign," with which she is addressed or alluded to, the boundless devotion and respect of those around her, and their confidence in her goodness and innocence, are so many additional strokes in the portrait.

For her, my lord,
I dare my life lay down, and will do't, sir,
Please you t' accept it, that the queen is spotless
I' the eyes of heaven, and to you.

Every inch of woman in the world,
Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false,
If she be so.
I would not be a stander-by to hear
My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
My present vengeance taken!

The mixture of playful courtesy, queenly dignity, and lady-like sweetness, with which she prevails on Polixenes to prolong his visit, is charming.

HERMIONE.

You'll stay!

POLIXENES.

No, madam.

HERMIONE.

Nay, but you will.

POLIXENES.

I may not, verily.

HERMIONE.

Verily!
You put me off with limber vows; but I,
Tho' you would seek t' unsphere the stars with oaths
Should still say, "Sir, no going!" Verily,
You shall _not_ go! A lady's verily is
As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet?
Force me to keep you as a prisoner,
Not like a guest?

And though the situation of Hermione admits but of few general reflections, one little speech, inimitably beautiful and characteristic, has become almost proverbial from its truth. She says:--

One good deed, dying tongueless,
Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that.
Our praises are our wages; you may ride us
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere
With spur we heat an acre.

She receives the first intimation of her husband's jealous suspicions with incredulous astonishment. It is not that, like Desdemona, she does not or cannot understand; but she _will_ not. When he accuses her more plainly, she replies with a calm dignity:--

Should a villain say so--
The most replenished villain in the world--
He were as much more villain: you, my lord,
Do but mistake.

This characteristic composure of temper never forsakes her; and yet it is so delineated that the impression is that of grandeur, and never borders upon pride or coldness: it is the fortitude of a gentle but a strong mind, conscious of its own innocence. Nothing can be more affecting than her calm reply to Leontes, who, in his jealous rage, heaps insult upon insult, and accuses her before her own attendants, as no better "than one of those to whom the vulgar give bold titles."

How will this grieve you,
When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that
You have thus published me! Gentle my lord,
You scarce can right me thoroughly then, to say
You _did_ mistake.

Her mild dignity and saint-like patience, combined as they are with the strongest sense of the cruel injustice of her husband, thrill us with admiration as well as pity; and we cannot but see and feel, that for Hermione to give way to tears and feminine complaints under such a blow, would be quite incompatible with the character. Thus she says of herself, as she is led to prison:--

There's some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favorable. Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honorable grief lodged here, that burns
Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lords
With thought so qualified as your charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
The king's will be performed.

When she is brought to trial for supposed crimes, called on to defend herself, "standing to prate and talk for life and honor, before who please to come and hear," the sense of her ignominious situation--all its shame and all its horror press upon her, and would apparently crush even _her_ magnanimous spirit, but for the consciousness of her own worth and innocence, and the necessity that exists for asserting and defending both.

If powers divine
Behold our human actions, (as they do),
I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make
False accusation blush, and tyranny
Tremble at patience.

* * * *

For life, I prize it
As I weigh grief, which I would spare. For honor--
'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.

Her earnest, eloquent justification of herself, and her lofty sense of female honor, are rendered more affecting and impressive by that chilling despair that contempt for a life which has been made bitter to her through unkindness, which is betrayed in every word of her speech, though so calmly characteristic. When she enumerates the unmerited insults which have been heaped upon her, it is without asperity or reproach, yet in a tone which shows how completely the iron has entered her soul. Thus, when Leontes threatens her with death:--

Sir, spare your threats;
The bug which you would fright me with, I seek.
To me can life be no commodity;
The crown and comfort of my life, your favor,
I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went. My second joy,
The first-fruits of my body, from his presence
I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort--
Starr'd most unluckily!--is from my breast,
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
Haled out to murder. Myself on every post
Proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred,
The childbed privilege denied, which 'longs
To women of all fashion. Lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i' the open air, before
I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed,
But yet hear this; mistake me not. No! life,
I prize it not a straw:--but for mine honor.
(Which I would free,) if I shall be condemned
Upon surmises; all proof sleeping else,
But what your jealousies awake; I tell you,
'Tis rigor and not law.

The character of Hermione is considered open to criticism on one point. I have heard it remarked that when she secludes herself from the world for sixteen years, during which time she is mourned as dead by her repentant husband, and is not won to relent from her resolve by his sorrow, his remorse, his constancy to her memory; such conduct, argues the critic, is unfeeling as it is inconceivable in a tender and virtuous woman. Would Imogen have done so, who is so generously ready to grant a pardon before it be asked? or Desdemona, who does not forgive because she cannot even resent? No, assuredly; but this is only another proof of the wonderful delicacy and consistency with which Shakspeare has discriminated the characters of all three. The incident of Hermione's supposed death and concealment for sixteen years, is not indeed very probable in itself, nor very likely to occur in every-day life. But besides all the probability necessary for the purposes of poetry, it has all the likelihood it can derive from the peculiar character of Hermione, who is precisely the woman who could and would have acted in this manner. In such a mind as hers, the sense of a cruel injury, inflicted by one she had loved and trusted, without awakening any violent anger or any desire of vengeance, would sink deep--almost incurably and lastingly deep. So far she is most unlike either Imogen or Desdemona, who are portrayed as much more flexible in temper; but then the circumstances under which she is wronged are very different, and far more unpardonable. The self-created, frantic jealousy of Leontes is very distinct from that of Othello, writhing under the arts of Iago: or that of Posthumus, whose understanding has been cheated by the most damning evidence of his wife's infidelity. The jealousy which in Othello and Posthumus is an error of judgment, in Leontes is a vice of the blood; he suspects without cause, condemns without proof; he is without excuse--unless the mixture of pride, passion, and imagination, and the predisposition to jealousy with which Shakspeare has portrayed him, be considered as an excuse. Hermione has been openly insulted: he to whom she gave herself, her heart, her soul, has stooped to the weakness and baseness of suspicion; has doubted her truth, has wronged her love, has sunk in her esteem, and forfeited her confidence. She has been branded with vile names; her son, her eldest hope, is dead--dead through the false accusation which has stuck infamy on his mother's name; and her innocent babe, stained with illegitimacy, disowned and rejected, has been exposed to a cruel death. Can we believe that the mere tardy acknowledgment of her innocence could make amends for wrongs and agonies such as these? or heal a heart which must have bled inwardly, consumed by that untold grief, "which burns worse than tears drown?" Keeping in view the peculiar character of Hermione, such as she is delineated, is she one either to forgive hastily or forget quickly? and though she might, in her solitude, mourn over her repentant husband, would his repentance suffice to restore him at once to his place in her heart: to efface from her strong and reflecting mind the recollection of his miserable weakness? or can we fancy this high-souled woman--left childless through the injury which has been inflicted on her, widowed in heart by the unworthness of him she loved, a spectacle of grief to all--to her husband a continual reproach and humiliation--walking through the parade of royalty in the court which had witnessed her anguish, her shame, her degradation, and her despair? Methinks that the want of feeling, nature, delicacy, and consistency, would lie in such an exhibition as this. In a mind like Hermione's, where the strength of feeling is founded in the power of thought, and where there is little of impulse or imagination,--"the depth, but not the tumult of the soul,"[48]--there are but two influences which predominate over the will,--time and religion. And what then remained, but that, wounded in heart and spirit, she should retire from the world?--not to brood over her wrongs, but to study forgiveness, and wait the fulfilment of the oracle which had promised the termination of her sorrows. Thus a premature reconciliation would not only have been painfully inconsistent with the character; it would also have deprived us of that most beautiful scene, in which Hermione is discovered to her husband as the statue or image of herself. And here we have another instance of that admirable art, with which the dramatic character is fitted to the circumstances in which it is placed: that perfect command over her own feelings, that complete self-possession necessary to this extraordinary situation, is consistent with all that we imagine of Hermione: in any other woman it would be so incredible as to shock all our ideas of probability.

This scene, then, is not only one of the most picturesque and striking instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama, but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love, the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her mother like one entranced, looks as if she were also turned to marble. There is here one little instance of tender remembrance in Leontes, which adds to the charming impression of Hermione's character.

Chide me, dear stone! that I may say indeed
Thou art Hermione; or rather thou art she
In thy not chiding, for she was as tender
As infancy and grace.

Thus she stood,
Even with such life of majesty--warm life--
As now it coldly stands--when first I woo'd her!

The effect produced on the different persons of the drama by this living statue--an effect which at the same moment is, and is _not_ illusion--the manner in which the feelings of the spectators become entangled between the conviction of death and the impression of life, the idea of a deception and the feeling of a reality; and the exquisite coloring of poetry and touches of natural feeling with which the whole is wrought up, till wonder, expectation, and intense pleasure, hold our pulse and breath suspended on the event,--are quite inimitable.

The expressions used here by Leontes,--

Thus she stood,
Even with such life of majesty--_warm life_.
The fixture of her eye has motion in't.
And we are mock'd by art!

And by Polixines,--

The very life seems warm upon her lip,

appear strangely applied to a statue, such as we usually imagine it--of the cold colorless marble; but it is evident that in this scene Hermione personates one of those images or effigies, such as we may see in the old gothic cathedrals, in which the stone, or marble, was colored after nature. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these effigies, either at Basle or at Fribourg, which made me start: the figure was large as life; the drapery of crimson, powdered with stars of gold; the face and eyes, and hair, tinted after nature, though faded by time: it stood in a gothic niche, over a tomb, as I think, and in a kind of dim uncertain light. It would have been very easy for a living person to represent such an effigy, particularly if it had been painted by that "rare Italian master, Julio Romano,"[49] who, as we are informed, was the reputed author of this wonderful statue.

The moment when Hermione descends from her pedestal, to the sound of soft music, and throws herself without speaking into her husband's arms, is one of inexpressible interest. It appears to me that her silence during the whole of this scene (except where she invokes a blessing on her daughter's head) is in the finest taste as a poetical beauty, besides being an admirable trait of character. The misfortunes of Hermione, her long religious seclusion, the wonderful and almost supernatural part she has just enacted, have invested her with such a sacred and awful charm, that any words put into her mouth, must, I think, have injured the solemn and profound pathos of the situation.

There are several among Shakspeare's characters which exercise a far stronger power over our feelings, our fancy, our understanding, than that of Hermione; but not one,--unless perhaps Cordelia,--constructed upon so high and pure a principle. It is the union of gentleness with power which constitutes the perfection of mental grace. Thus among the ancients, with whom the _graces_ were also the _charities_, (to show, perhaps, that while form alone may constitute beauty, sentiment is necessary to grace,) one and the same word signified equally _strength_ and _virtue_. This feeling, carried into the fine arts, was the secret of the antique grace--the grace of repose. The same eternal nature--the same sense of immutable truth and beauty, which revealed this sublime principle of art to the ancient Greeks, revealed it to the genius of Shakspeare; and the character of Hermione, in which we have the same largeness of conception and delicacy of execution,--the same effect of suffering without passion, and grandeur without effort, is an instance, I think, that he felt within himself, and by intuition, what we study all our lives in the remains of ancient art. The calm, regular, classical beauty of Hermione's character is the more impressive from the wild and gothic accompaniments of her story, and the beautiful relief afforded by the pastoral and romantic grace which is thrown around her daughter Perdita.

The character of Paulina, in the Winter's Tale, though it has obtained but little notice, and no critical remark, (that I have seen,) is yet one of the striking beauties of the play: and it has its moral too. As we see running through the whole universe that principle of contrast which may be called the life of nature, so we behold it every where illustrated in Shakspeare: upon this principle he has placed Emilia beside Desdemona, the nurse beside Juliet; the clowns and dairy-maids, and the merry peddler thief Autolycus round Florizel and Perdita;--and made Paulina the friend of Hermione.

Paulina does not fill any ostensible office near the person of the queen, but is a lady of high rank in the court--the wife of the Lord Antigones. She is a character strongly drawn from real and common life--a clever, generous, strong-minded, warmhearted woman, fearless in asserting the truth, firm in her sense of right, enthusiastic in all her affections: quick in thought, resolute in word, and energetic in action; but heedless, hot-tempered, impatient, loud, bold, voluble, and turbulent of tongue; regardless of the feelings of those for whom she would sacrifice her life, and injuring from excess of zeal those whom she most wishes to serve. How many such are there in the world! But Paulina, though a very termagant, is yet a poetical termagant in her way; and the manner in which all the evil and dangerous tendencies of such a temper are placed before us, even while the individual character preserves the strongest hold upon our respect and admiration, forms an impressive lesson, as well as a natural and delightful portrait.

In the scene, for instance, where she brings the infant before Leontes, with the hope of softening him to a sense of his injustice--"an office which," as she observes, "becomes a woman best"--her want of self-government, her bitter, inconsiderate reproaches, only add, as we might easily suppose, to his fury.

PAULINA.

I say I come
From your good queen!

LEONTES.

Good queen!

PAULINA.

Good queen, my lord, good queen: I say good queen;
And would by combat make her good, so were I
A man, the worst about you.

LEONTES.

Force her hence.

PAULINA.

Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes,
First hand me: on mine own accord I'll off;
But first I'll do mine errand. The good queen
(For she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter--
Here 'tis; commends it to your blessing.

LEONTES.

Traitors!
Will you not push her out! Give her the bastard.

PAULINA.

Forever
Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
Tak'st up the princess by that forced baseness
Which he has put upon't!

LEONTES.

He dreads his wife.

PAULINA.

So, I would _you_ did; then 'twere past all doubt
You'd call your children your's.

LEONTES.

A callat,
Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,
And now baits me!--this brat is none of mine.

PAULINA.

It is yours,
And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
So like you, 'tis the worse.

* * * *

LEONTES.

A gross hag!
And lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd,
That wilt not stay her tongue.

ANTIGONES.

Hang all the husbands
That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself
Hardly one subject.

LEONTES.

Once more, take her hence.

PAULINA.

A most unworthy and unnatural lord
Can do no more.

LEONTES.

I'll have thee burn'd.

PAULINA.

I care not:
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in't.

Here, while we honor her courage and her affection, we cannot help regretting her violence. We see, too, in Paulina, what we so often see in real life, that it is not those who are most susceptible in their own temper and feelings, who are most delicate and forbearing towards the feelings of others. She does not comprehend, or will not allow for the sensitive weakness of a mind less firmly tempered than her own. There is a reply of Leontes to one of her cutting speeches, which is full of feeling, and a lesson to those, who, with the best intentions in the world, force the painful truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated heart.

PAULINA.

If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
Or, from the all that are, took something good
To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
Would be unparallel'd.

LEONTES.

I think so. Kill'd!
She I kill'd? I did so: but thou strik'st me
Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
Upon thy tongue, as in my thought. Now, good now,
Say so but seldom.

CLEOMENES.

Not at all, good lady:
You might have spoken a thousand things that would
Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd
Your kindness better.

We can only excuse Paulina by recollecting that it is a part of her purpose to keep alive in the heart of Leontes the remembrance of his queen's perfections, and of his own cruel injustice. It is admirable, too, that Hermione and Paulina, while sufficiently approximated to afford all the pleasure of contrast, are never brought too nearly in contact on the scene or in the dialogue;[50] for this would have been a fault in taste, and have necessarily weakened the effect of both characters:--either the serene grandeur of Hermione would have subdued and overawed the fiery spirit of Paulina, or the impetuous temper of the latter must have disturbed in some respect our impression of the calm, majestic, and somewhat melancholy beauty of Hermione.

DESDEMONA.

The character of Hermione is addressed more to the imagination; that of Desdemona to the feelings. All that can render sorrow majestic is gathered round Hermione; all that can render misery heart-breaking is assembled round Desdemona. The wronged but self-sustained virtue of Hermione commands our veneration; the injured and defenceless innocence of Desdemona so wrings the soul, "that all for pity we could die."

Desdemona, as a character, comes nearest to Miranda, both in herself as a woman, and in the perfect simplicity and unity of the delineation; the figures are differently draped--the proportions are the same. There is the same modesty, tenderness, and grace; the same artless devotion in the affections, the same predisposition to wonder, to pity, to admire; the same almost ethereal refinement and delicacy; but all is pure poetic nature within Miranda and around her: Desdemona is more associated with the palpable realities of every-day existence, and we see the forms and habits of society tinting her language and deportment; no two beings can be more alike in character--nor more distinct as individuals.

The love of Desdemona for Othello appears at first such a violation of all probabilities, that her father at once imputes it to magic, "to spells and mixtures powerful o'er the blood."

She, in spite of nature,
Of years, of country, credit, every thing,
To fall in love with what she feared to look on!

And the devilish malignity of Iago, whose coarse mind cannot conceive an affection founded purely in sentiment, derives from her love itself a strong argument against her.

Ay, there's the point, as to be bold with you,
Not to affect any proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends,[51] &c.

Notwithstanding this disparity of age, character, country, complexion, we, who are admitted into the secret, see her love rise naturally and necessarily out of the leading propensities of her nature.