privileges are violated. What she in vain claims as due to her virtues, she at last gains by a happy deception, which enables her to fulfil the apparently impossible condition to which the Count had tied the bestowal of his love.

But it is

clings to

In "All's Well," therefore, we have love again as the centre around which, within range of the comic view of things, the development of human affairs is made to revolve. It is not, however, conceived in so general and independent a light as in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona." The fundamental idea is drawn rather from its principal and, in short, its characteristic feature-freedom. One party chooses what circumstances deny, and the other rejects the best and fairest, merely because they are forced upon it. this very liberty that proves its weakness whenever it earth alone, and strays on one hand into undue pretension and error, and on the other into arbitrary wilfulness and blind pride. Helena pays the penalty of the intolerance and presumption which led her to deprive the object of her admiration of his right of free choice, which, in her own case, she exercised with so little restraint; notwithstanding her acquired rights, she must have recourse to a degrading artifice to gain possession of her own. The Count as wilfully refuses what nevertheless he had secretly longed for and desired; his freedom degenerates into caprice, because it is proud and arrogant, and is offended at being obliged to receive the very thing which it had hoped to be able freely to win. Once the victim of caprice, he soon loses for ever his natural nobleness of heart, and sinks into the premeditating deceiver and seducer, until at last he is himself deceived, and by a cheat restored to his better self. His unsuccessful wooing of Diana is a proof that love is as little to be restrained by promises and presents, as by merit and virtuous deeds. This singular concatenation of delusion, contradiction, and aberration in the human heart-this intrinsic and immediate union of love with faults and weaknesses, the most directly opposed to itself—the quick change of maidenly reserve into open wooing and compulsion, and conversely the transition of original inclination into morbid pride and contemptuous aversion; and, lastly, the equally sudden return of love upon mere idle and

* Act. V. Sc. 3.

external reasons-all these, resulting indeed from the most essential and divine attribute of love-its intrinsic freedom-exhibits it, whenever it looks not beyond earthly motives, as utterly losing itself amid the universal and all-embracing contingency of its temporal and finite existence. Contradiction, entanglement, and delusion, finally dissolve each other; and the true and just attain the preeminence. The effect is heightened, on the one hand, by the singular humour of the King, to make the Count's heart and hand the reward of his own love and gratitude to Helena; and on the other, Parolles, that little pendant to the great Falstaff, aptly displays the utter nakedness of pompous vanity and empty pride. Lastly, the marriage-mad Clown, puffed up with his visit to the court, declares that "he has no mind to Isbel, since he was at court. Our old ling and our Isbels o' the country are nothing like your old ling and your Isbels o' the court: the brains of his Cupid are knocked out, and he begins to love, as an old man loves money, with no stomach."

5. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.-TAMING OF

THE SHREW.

In "Much Ado About Nothing," as in most other comedies, a love-story forms the centre of interest, around which the whole plot revolves. And yet love itself is not the object, whose comic paralysis, by the dialectic of irony, the poet here proposes to exhibit. He rather seems to have drawn his ground-idea from a contemplation of the contrasts which human life presents between the reality of outward objects, and the perceptions of the inward subject -between that which the world really is, and that which it appears to those who yet live in it, and have experience of it. Love, as the ordinary occasion of mischances and complications, which, although in themselves insignificant and not uncommon, appear in a very different light to those immediately concerned in them, is merely the medium which the poet employs for projecting these contrasts on a luminous field. We are throughout sensible of their presence in the chief moments of the action. The most ordinary and insignificant matters and circumstances are arrayed in all the pomp of form, and by the personages of the drama, stuffed out with the

U

gravest possible importance. First of all, the bastard John's aversion for his brother the Prince of Arragon-for which no reasonable ground exists-as it began in nothing, so it ends in nothing. Then, as an intermezzo, Claudio's suspicion of Don Pedro's honesty in his vicarious wooing of Hero, whose effects are as grave as itself is groundless; for the unparalleled falsehood has no existence except in his own love-sick brain. The former, with the story of the loves of the two sworn focs of matrimony, Beatrice and Benedick, who keep up a perpetual skirmish of wit, and rail at everything like love or tenderness, are at last, by a very common trick, themselves caught in the meshes of love, and contract together that which they were wont to ridicule, with all the expenditure of wit and humour-form the ground-plan on which the leading idea of the piece is brought forward under different modifications; they are the moving side-pieces, which serve to vary the principal scene on which are depicted the unhappy disturbances in the history of the loves of Claudio and Hero. The intrigue is very superficial and lightly woven: an evil whim of the worthless John breaks, for a time at least, the loosely tied bond of love;—an event which, though it never ought to happen, is of daily occurrence. Mere appearances, without examination or inquiry, are at once invested with all the importance of truth by the parties whose dearest interests are at stake. A pretended death, and burialfriendship broken off, and challenge and defiance-follow each other, until that nothing, chance, brings the truth again to light, and inquiry at last leads to the vindication of injured innocence, and the appeasing of her wrongs by funeral horrors; upon which, Hero, who is supposed to be dead, comes forth from her hidingplace, and the whole closes in merry wedding festivities.

This contrast between the objective reality and the subjective apprehension of things is most amusingly set forth and embodied in the senseless and stupid Dogberry, who is continually contradicting himself-ordering at one moment what, however, in the next, he thinks had better be left undone, and praying that it may be written. down and remembered, that he is an ass. He is the very impersonation of the ground-idea: it is exhibited in him in immediate and vivid transparency, and consequently in full comic force. This contrast, which, agreeably to its nature, usually appears divided between

subject and object, is here combined-in Shakspeare's usual manner-in one individual, who forms the most laughable character of the piece. But besides, the part of Dogberry was even dramatically necessary for the detection of the rascality of John and his instruments, which forms the plot of the fable. The comic humour of chance chooses to employ the silliest and most ridiculous of simpletons to bring to light what no doubt lay near enough to the surface, but nevertheless escaped the discernment of the cleverest. It is therefore a grave misconception of the whole composition, to doubt the propriety of the parts of those doughty constables, Dogberry and his follower. He is equally, not to say more, necessary than all the other dramatic personages together.

There is, therefore, no superfluous part in the present any more than in any other piece. Each character is conceived and developed in exact agreement with the fundamental idea, and while all are shaped and modified by the living organization, of which they are integral members, they nevertheless retain their individuality, and an independent movement of their own. The characters, for instance, of Claudio and Don Pedro, whose conduct is certainly calculated to excite surprise, are nevertheless as rightly conceived as they are consistently carried out. Claudio, a brave and honourable soldier, belongs evidently to that large class of men who take up things hastily and warmly, and as soon cool again, and quickly drop what they perceive to be impracticable. His unhesitating credulity tallies well with the inconsiderate haste with which he enters into the engagement to marry Hero. His harsh treatment of the latter, the unamiable sternness with which he reserves his charge to the last moment, in order to put her to open shame at the very altar, are explicable, partly by the want of depth and the lightness of his hastily formed affection, and partly by the conviction that such a course is due to his own honour, and that it is a duty incumbent on him to expose to common rebuke all such examples of unchasteness and immodesty. Don Pedro, on the other hand, has no other motive for what he does than indulgent friendship; which only makes his case the worse, instead of amending it. He wishes to spend his time in doing good, and giving proof of his affection both for Claudio and for Leonato. In this light his conduct appears perfectly natural and consistent; it is, moreover,

necessary, as a background for Claudio and Benedick, and in order to afford a sufficient motive for the hasty concurrence of Leonato and his daughter with the suit of Claudio. Equally indispensable and natural are the character and behaviour of Don John. His reconciliation with his brother is merely constrained and apparent; he is thoroughly ill-disposed, and cherishes undying hatred in his bosom. The happiness of others is a pain to him, and he takes an evil joy in marring it; but in the present case his malice has a further gratification in defeating the wishes of his hated brother, offending his friends, and alienating their support. Shakspeare does not allow his characters to display unnecessarily all their inmost thoughts and aspirations, simply because the object for which they are introduced on the stage is to act and not to talk; the motives for all that they think and do must be drawn from their general behaviour and peculiar circumstances and positions. Viewed from this point, the command of Beatrice to Benedick, "Kill Claudio," which has given such general offence, appears in perfect keeping with the excitable and imperious character of this certainly unfeminine maiden, while they harmonize well with the spirit of the whole piece. Lastly, English critics, after Steevens, have reproached our poet with repeating himself, and playing off the same trick upon Beatrice and Benedick. But it is evident that this uniformity was required by the great resemblance which these two characters bear to each other, and also by the necessity of avoiding any further complication of a plot already sufficiently involved. For it is an indispensable qualification of a good comedy of intrigue, that the spectator should at any moment be able to take an easy survey of the whole progress of the action.

The very title of the piece prepares us for the nothingness of the final éclaircissement. However, the title of "Much Ado About Nothing" is not, it is obvious, to be understood in an external sense merely; it rather indicates the inherent nothingness of human life, whenever its hopes terminate in mere earthly interests and relations. Erery one of us makes much ado about nothing in this life, so long as he is unable, by the annihilation of the terrestrial nought, to attain to the eternal realities which he has