Chapter M: Goursey (4)

_Phil._ Nay, then, I finde this goes well forward still.
Mother, give me your hand,--give me yours to[o]; 220
Be not so loath; some good thing I must do;
But lay your torches by, I like not them;
Come, come, deliver them unto your men:
Give me your hands.--So, now, sir, heere I stand,
Holding two angrie women in my hand: 225
And I must please them both; I could please tone,[1938]
But it is hard when there is two to one,
Especially of women; but tis so,
They shall be pleasd whether they will or no.--
Which will come first? what, both give back! ha, neither! 230
Why, then, yond may helpe that come both together.[1939]
So, stand still, stand[1940] but a little while,
And see how I your angers will beguile.
Well, yet there is no hurt; why, then, let me
Joyne these two hands, and see how theil agree: [_They kiss._] 235
Peace, peace! they crie; looke how they friendly kisse!
Well, all this while there is no harme in this:
Are not these two twins? twins should be both alike,
If tone speakes faire, the tother should not strike:
Jesus, these warriours will not offer blowes! 240
Why, then, tis strange that you two should be foes.
O, yes, youle say, your weapons are your tongues;
Touch lip with lip, and they are bound from wrongs:
Go to, imbrace, and say, if you be friends,
That heere the angrie womens quarrels ends. [_They embrace._] 245

_Mi. Gou._ Then heere it ends, if mistres Barnes say so.

_Mi. Bar._ If you say, I, I list not to say, no.

_M. Gou._ If they be friends, by promise we agree.

_M. Bar._ And may this league of friendship ever be!

_Phil._ What saist thou, Franke? doth not this fall out well? 250

_Fran._ Yes, if my Mall were heere, then all were well.

_Enter_ SIR RAPHE SMITH _with_ MALL [_who stands aside_].

_Raph._ Yonder they be, Mall: stay, stand close, and stur not,
Untill I call.--God save yee, gentlemen!

_M. Bar._ What, sir Raph Smith! you are a welcome man:
We wondred when we heard you were abroad. 255

_Raph._ Why, sir, how heard yee that I was abroad?

_M. Bar._ By your man.

_Raph._ My man! where is he?

_Will._ Heere.

_Raph._ O, yee are a trustie squire! 260

_Nic._ It had bin better, and he had said, a sure carde.

_Phil._ Why, sir?

_Nic._ Because it is the proverbe.

_Phil._ Away, yee asse!

_Nic._ An asse goes a foure legs; I go of two, Christ crosse. 265

_Phi._ Hold your tongue.

_Nic._ And make no more adoe.

_M. Gou._ Go to, no more adoe.--Gentle sir Raphe,
Your man is not in fault for missing you,
For he mistooke by us, and we by him. 270

_Raph._ And I by you; which now I well perceive.
But tell me, gentlemen, what made yee all
Be from your beds this night, and why thus late
Are your wives walking heere about the fields:[1941]
Tis strange to see such women of accoumpt 275
Heere; but I gesse some great occasion.

_M. Gour._ Faith, this occasion, sir: women will jarre;
And jarre they did to day, and so they parted;
We knowing womens mallice let alone
Will, canker like, eate farther in their hearts, 280
Did seeke a sodaine cure, and thus it was,--
A match betweene his daughter and my sonne:
No sooner motioned but twas agreed,
And they no sooner saw but wooed and likte:
They have it sought to crosse, and crosse it thus. 285

_Rap._ Fye, mistresse Barnes, and mistresse Goursey both;
The greatest sinne wherein your soules may sinne,
I thinke, is this, in crossing of true love:
Let me perswade yee.

_Mi. Bar._ Sir, we are perswaded, 290
And I and mistresse Goursey are both friends;
And, if my daughter were but found againe,
Who now is missing, she had my consent
To be disposd off to her owne content.

_Raph._ I do rejoyce that what I thought to doe, 295
Ere I begin, I finde already done:
Why, this will please your friends at Abington.--
Franke, if thou seekst that way, there thou shalt finde
Her, whom I holde the comfort of thy minde.

_Mall._ [_coming forward_]. He shall not seeke me; I will seeke
him out, 300
Since of my mothers graunt I need not doubt.

_Mi. Bar._ Thy mother graunts, my girle, and she doth pray
To send unto you both a joyfull day!

_Hodg._ Nay, mistresse Barnes, I wish her better; that those joyfull
dayes may be turned to joyfull nights. 305

_Coom._ Faith, tis a pretty wench, and tis pitty but she should
have him.

_Nich._ And, mistresse Mary, when yee go to bed, God send you
good rest, and a peck a fleas in your nest, every one as big as
Francis! 310

_Phil._ Well said, wisdome: God send thee wise children!

_Nich._ And you more money.

_Phil._ I, so wish I.

_Nich._ Twill be a good while ere you wish your skin full of ilet
holes.

_Phil._ Franke, harke ye: brother, now your woings doone, 315
The next thing now you do is for a sonne;
I prithe, for, i faith, I should be glad
To have myselfe cald nunckle, and thou dad.--
Well, sister, if that Francis play the man,
My mother must be grandam, and you mam.-- 320
To it, Francis,--to it, sister!--God send yee joy!
Tis fine to sing, "dansey, my owne sweete boye!"

_Fra._ Well, sir, jest on.

_Phil._ Nay, sir,[1942] do you jest on.

_M. Bar._ Well, may she proove a happy wife to him! 325

_M. Gou._ And may he proove as happy unto her!

_Raph._ Well, gentlemen, good hap betide them both!
Since twas my hap thus happily to meete,
To be a witnesse of this sweete contract,
I doe rejoyce; wherefore, to have this joye 330
Longer present with me, I do request
That all of you will be my promist guests:
This long nights labour dooth desire some rest,
Besides this wished end; therefore, I pray,
Let me deteine yee but a dinner time: 335
Tell me, I pray, shall I obtaine so much?

_M. Bar._ Gentle sir Raphe, your courtesie is such
As may impose commaund unto us all;
We will be thankfull bolde at your request.

_Phil._ I pray, sir Raph, what cheere shall we have? 340

_S. Raph._ I faith, countrie fare, mutton and veale,
Perchance a ducke or goose.

_Mal._ Oh, I am sick!

_All._ How now, Mall? whats the matter?

_Mal._ Father and mother, if you needs would know, 345
He nam'd a goose, which is my stomacks foe.

_Phil._ Come, come, she is with childe of some od jest,
And now shees sicke till that she bring[1943] it foorth.

_Mal._ A jest, quoth you! well, brother, if it be,
I feare twill proove an earnest unto me.-- 350
Goose, said ye, sir? Oh, that same very name
Hath in it much variety of shame!
Of all the birds that ever yet was seene,
I would not have them graze upon this greene;
I hope they will not, for this crop is poore, 355
And they may pasture upon greater store:
But yet tis pittie that they let them passe,
And like a common bite the Muses grasse.
Yet this I feare; if Franke and I should kisse,
Some creeking goose would chide us with a hisse: 360
I meane not that goose that sings it knowes not what;[1944]
Tis not that hisse when one saies, 'hist, come hither';
Nor that same hisse that setteth dogges together;
Nor that same hisse that by a fire doth stand,
And hisseth T. or F.[1945] upon the hand; 365
But tis a hisse, and Ile unlace my cote,
For I should sound[1946] sure, if I heard that note,
And then 'greene ginger for the greene goose' cries,
Serves not the turne,--I turn'd the white of eyes.
The _rosa-solis_[1947] yet that makes me live 370
Is favour[1948] that these gentlemen may give;
But if they be displeased, then pleasde am I,
To yeeld my selfe a hissing death to dye:
Yet I hope heeres none consents to kill,
But kindly take the favour of good will. 375
If any thing be in the pen to blame,
Then here stand I to blush the writers shame:
If this be bad, he promises a better;
Trust him, and he will proove a right true debter. [_Exeunt._]

FOOTNOTES:

[1618] E., Act I. Sc. 1. No division into acts and scenes in Qtos.

[1619] Prospects, views. Dyce.

[1620] Q 1, _be_.

[1621] Absolute, perfect. Dyce.

[1622] Ay; so also in l. 23 _et passim_.

[1623] Dyce suggests for the metre, 'He will.' But more probably 'Heele' was a monosyllable, and 'bolde' (Q 1, 'bould') a dissyllable. According to the editor of the _Oxford Glossary_ "bold" is so pronounced at the present day.

[1624] Backgammon; cf. Shakesp. _L. L. L_. V., ii. 326.

[1625] The audience were to suppose that the stage now represented an orchard; for be it remembered that there was no movable painted scenery in the theatres at the time when this play was produced. Dyce.

[1626] Q 1, 'rubbers,' as frequently used.

[1627] Q 1, 'sneik up'--be hanged.

[1628] Q 1, 'women;' but Barnes is addressing his wife. Dy. refers to l. 147; and to l. 177, where both Qtos. have 'woman.'

[1629] The angel-noble was a gold coin worth from a third to half a sovereign; the royal or rose-noble, 10_s._

[1630] Q 1, 'women.'

[1631] Q 2, _far't_.

[1632] A term of the game.

[1633] So Dy. Qtos. _better_.

[1634] hit.

[1635] Dyce reads, 'it is'; but probably in prov. pron. 'know' was then, as frequently now, a dissyllable.

[1636] Q 2, _Forsoorh_.

[1637] Q 2, 'for such a' appended to line 202.

[1638] Q 2, 'in this absurdnes' appended to line 217.

[1639] cannot help it withal.

[1640] Q 1, 'Affoorde.'

[1641] So Qtos. Dy. suggests '_do_ impart'; cf. next line.

[1642] Note the anapæstic swing.

[1643] Qtos. append l. 258 to l. 257.

[1644] Dyce cuts lines 1-6 into a kind of blank verse.

[1645] Qtos., ll. 33 and 34 as one.

[1646] Dy., qy. 'tacke'? But, of course, the boy uttered the 'tchick' with which one urges a horse.

[1647] Taught her to _tread the ring_,--to perform various movements in different directions within a ring marked out on a piece of ground. Dyce.

[1648] champaign.

[1649] A tagged lace used to attach the hose or breeches to the doublet. Dyce.

[1650] sole, or oblate surface.

[1651] Qtos., ll 110 and 111 as one.

[1652] Q 1, 'th'art.'

[1653] Dy., qy. 'Wher.'

[1654] Q 2, _phethe._

[1655] Q 1, 'in the.'

[1656] ll. 162-165, 167-171, 174-176, 181-184, printed as verse in the originals.

[1657] Q 2, _Wirl._

[1658] Not in Q 1.

[1659] Names of taverns. Ellis.

[1660] H. and E., "yee lye--the Hornes," as if a tavern name. But Qtos., as above,--"You are lying about the horns, I have none."

[1661] your sword.

[1662] So Dyce. Qtos., _me_,--_my_.

[1663] Dy. suggests 'He is'; but qy. 'Coo-ums'?

[1664] quality, humour.

[1665] Dy. suggests 'he will.'

[1666] crewel.

[1667] The originals run, "Bridelaces sir his hat, and all greene hat"; so Dyce. Ellis, silently, "Bridelaces, sir--and his hat all green." It _may_ have been written, "Bridelaces, sir. His hat'--an all," etc. Coomes parades his wedding trophies.

[1668] So Dy. from Q 1; but not in Q 2.

[1669] E., Act II. Sc. 1.

[1670] H. and E., 'indiscreet.'

[1671] So Dy.; Qtos., 'vassailes.'

[1672] ll. 31 and 32 as one in Qtos.

[1673] Q 2, _me_.

[1674] Q 2, _effect_.

[1675] Q 1, 'womens.'

[1676] Qy. 'for _an._' Dyce.

[1677] discipline.

[1678] Read, for the metre, 'She is.' Dyce.

[1679] God's.

[1680] Dy. suggests 'red'; H. and E. adopt.

[1681] Q 1, 'tother yeere.'

[1682] Q 2, _restained_.

[1683] Dy., H., E. 'have beene.'

[1684] See p. 464 _n_ (_F. B._, vii. 74).

[1685] Qtos., _apprehend_,--but certainly Mall had spoken with sufficient plainness. Dyce.

[1686] nature.

[1687] The fate of old maids; cf. Shakesp. _T. of S._ II. 1.

[1688] Q 1, _nay_.

[1689] Little Milton is about eight miles northeast of Abingdon, across the fields. Great Milton is about a mile farther north.

[1690] The common dress of a servingman. Dyce.

[1691] Qtos., 'you,'--which, perhaps, is the right reading, some word having dropt out after it. Qy. thus;--

"_Mis. Bar._ Mistresse flurt, you _mean_,
Foule strumpet, light a loue, short heeles! Mistresse Goursey
Call her," etc. Dyce. H. and E., 'yea.'

[1692] Q 2, _more_.

[1693] Q 1, _tell_.

[1694] vile.

[1695] Qtos., _forlorne_.

[1696] Q 1, _the_.

[1697] Q 1, _Thaust._

[1698] Q 2, _no_.

[1699] Q 2 appends this to the preceding line.

[1700] Q 2, _father_.

[1701] Q 2, _repeats_.

[1702] Q 1, 'Gads.'

[1703] Qtos., _His_.

[1704] Qy., "Franke he is young"? compare the preceding line but one. Dyce.

[1705] Qtos., no comma. Qy., 'rime-rotten.'

[1706] _sprüche_: rare.

[1707] By our lady.

[1708] miser.

[1709] Q 1, _ma_.

[1710] As who should say, "Your company is indifferent to me." So in _Mother Bombie_, "Farewell frost, my fortune naught me cost," and Ray's _Proverbs_: "F.f., Nothing got nor nothing lost."

[1711] Q 1, _faith in_.

[1712] Qtos., _some_.

[1713] Qtos., _treason_.

[1714] vomits.

[1715] A quantity of ten: one-twentieth of a last.

[1716] So Q 2. Dy., etc., 'knave.'

[1717] Qtos., _But_.

[1718] Struck by a tramp vessel?

[1719] Cf. _Haml._ I. ii., "A beast that wants discourse of reason," and III. i., "the mould of form."

[1720] Q 1, _cehape_.

[1721] Perhaps the word squints at two contemporary significations: cart-horse: squeamish eater.

[1722] Not in Q 1.

[1723] Q 1, 'drinke.'

[1724] Q 1, _Nich._

[1725] Cf. Du., _vrolijk zijn_, 'to be jolly,' and Heywood and Brome, _Lanc. Witches_, "what, all lustick, all froligozene." _New Eng. Dic._ Q 2 reads 'Nicke _Frolagozene_' _sc._ 'Nick _Jovial_.'

[1726] Omitted in Q 2.

[1727] until.--Ought not the passage to stand as follows?--

"no, I will not;
_Nor_ waite while one comes out to answere _me_," Dyce.

[1728] Q 2, _to_.

[1729] ll. 6-10, printed as prose, Q 2. So also ll. 17-22, save that the initial letter of each line, except 22, is capitalized.

[1730] H. and E, gratuitously, 'shackles.'

[1731] Qtos., _seeme_.

[1732] excess; cf. Scotch 'scouth'; free swing.

[1733] Q 1, _fathers_.

[1734] Qtos., _to_.

[1735] Q 1, _than_.

[1736] Qtos., _Franke_.

[1737] be wi' ye.

[1738] Q 2, 'judged.'

[1739] Dy.; qy., 'unto.'

[1740] Q 1, _maister_.

[1741] Q 2, _baun_.

[1742] Q 2, _ye_.

[1743] Q 1, _craft_.

[1744] So Q 2; but Dy., H., E., transpose these lines.

[1745] broadsword.

[1746] H., 'garden-butt.'

[1747] the sharp point in the centre. Dyce.

[1748] Q 1, _and_.

[1749] Qtos., _out_.

[1750] brave.

[1751] Q 2, _Gourseys_.

[1752] manlike.

[1753] Cf. _M. of V._, II. ii., dialogue between Gobbo's conscience and the fiend.

[1754] the parson.

[1755] E., Act III. Sc. 1.

[1756] A line missing, to rhyme with 'elfes.' Hazlitt.

[1757] forester.

[1758] A barrow; also a burrow when of rabbits, as in Sc. X, l. 9. Here it is probably a misprint for bevvie = bevy. So E.

[1759] Q 1, _me._

[1760] Q 1, 'th.'

[1761] Qtos., _he_.

[1762] Q 2, 'doe.'

[1763] Q 1, _thee_.

[1764] Q 1, 'thorowly.'

[1765] Q 2, 'may.'

[1766] Q 2, _I_.

[1767] Q 2, _chanke_.

[1768] Q 1, sound, _i.e._ swoon.

[1769] bow down before intellects of small merit.

[1770] Qtos., _wone_.

[1771] An _I_ of the Christ-cross row or alphabet.

[1772] pigsney. Cent. Dict. But Dyce: a term of endearment, formed, perhaps, from _pink_, to wink, to contract the eyelids.

[1773] Qtos., _sower_.

[1774] dear.

[1775] beat, urge.

[1776] Q 2, 'would have.'

[1777] Cf. _M.N.D._, I. i. 70-72; II. ii. 162-163

[1778] rowed.

[1779] Q 2 prints ll. 117-120 as prose, but with initial capitals.

[1780] Qtos. _patient_.

[1781] So H. and E.; but Qtos. 'thy.'

[1782] Q 1, _cheesse_.

[1783] Q 2, After previous line.

[1784] Q 1, _to_.

[1785] Some word, or words, have dropt out here. The lines ought to be arranged thus:--

"God send ye both good speed!--
Gods Lord, my mother!--_Quickly_ stand aside,
And closely too, least that you be espied." Dyce.

The missing foot before 'stand' may indicate the dramatic pause for surprise. See my _Appendix_ to _Greene_ (Metres).

[1786] Dy., H., E., 'forgot.'

[1787] Read, for the metre, "Shee is." Dyce.

[1788] Cf. _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. v. 141.

[1789] Eds. 'Philip.'

[1790] Q 2, _Mather_.

[1791] Q 2, 'deny.'

[1792] Read, for the metre, "is it." Dyce.

[1793] Q 1, _mistrurst_.

[1794] Q. 2, _Mi Gou_.

[1795] So Qtos. Eds., 'confederate.' But the plural is idiomatic: as 'he has gone _partners_ with Philip.'

[1796] Occurs here in Qtos. (to warn the actors to be in readiness for coming on the stage). Dyce.

[1797] Q 2, 'to.'

[1798] Carfax (_quadrifurcus_), the centre of Oxford, at the junction of Cornmarket, St. Aldate's, Queen St., and the High.

[1799] Q 2, _Oppoint_.

[1800] fine.

[1801] Q 2, _offection_.

[1802] Q 2, _huge_.

[1803] _Sc._, self-willed.

[1804] A common proverbial expression: "_Beggars bush_," says Ray, "being a tree notoriously known, on the left hand of the London road from Huntington to Caxton." _Proverbs_, p. 244, ed. 1768. Dyce.

[1805] Q 2, _be dawbe._

[1806] refuse.

[1807] livery.

[1808] Common term for a small dagger, but, like 'bird-spit' in the next speech of Coomes, here used in contempt. Dyce.

[1809] The origin of this corrupted oath is unknown; Dy., H., and E. _N.E.D._ queries _dignesse_ = Goddes dignity. But the poet seems to be thinking of 'dine' = 'dinner'; hence Lord's meal, Lord's Supper. Cf. "God's board" for communion-table (Bk. Com. Prayer, 1549), and "God's bread" for the wafer, _G.G.N._, p. 219. That Coomes adopts this popular etymology is confirmed by the collocation of 'God's dines' with 'wafer-cake' (for the Eucharist) in Sc. xi. l. 206 of this play.

[1810] rabbit-warren.

[1811] horse.

[1812] 'an I.'

[1813] repent of his behaviour. Cf. Heywood, _If you know not_, etc., ed. 1874, I. 267 (Century). Dyce has "Nares (_Gloss_, in v.) mentions three places which still retain the name,--one between Oxford and Banbury, another close to Stafford, the third near Shrewsbury."

[1814] advice

[1815] So Q 2. Eds., 'an.'

[1816] Q 1, 'vpon.'

[1817] till.

[1818] E., Act IV. Sc. 1.

[1819] Q 2, _bother_.

[1820] A kind of net for catching rabbits,--usually stretched before their holes. Dyce.

[1821] Q 1, 'do.'

[1822] a young rabbit.

[1823] Q 1, 'you'r.'

[1824] Q 1, omits 'not'; but Q 2 is right: "Even if you won't speak I know you are lying in wait for me."

[1825] Qtos., _glimpes_.

[1826] exposed.

[1827] Q 1, _metamorphesie_. For the figure cf. _R. and J._, I. v., "Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear," etc.

[1828] Q 1, 'these.'

[1829] Q 1, _sbloud_.

[1830] nearer.

[1831] Not in Q 1.

[1832] The scene is therefore the grove where Sir Raph had engaged to await Will's return, Sc. vii.; not the warren, as E. has it.

[1833] E. mistakenly makes this 'Act IV. Sc. ii., _Another Part of the Warren_'; but Frank has run from the warren to the grove where Sir Raph is waiting for his bow.

[1834] Q 2, _bound_.

[1835] Q 2, _wouldn_.

[1836] So Q 2. Line wanting in Q 1.

[1837] Q 2 omits this line.

[1838] This stage-direction occurs after l. 75 in Qtos.

[1839] Qtos., _Sblould_.

[1840] Q 2, _clade_.

[1841] Q 1, _whench_.

[1842] Q 1, _asks_; Q 2, _aske_.

[1843] Q 1 omits.

[1844] Eds. substitute 'question,' evidently without sufficient reason.

[1845] Q 2 omits.

[1846] E. makes no new scene; but see Sc. X. l. 30.

[1847] goose. Q 1, _asgoe_.

[1848] Q 2, _Had_.

[1849] be wi're.

[1850] E. makes this 'Act IV., Sc. iii., _The Open Fields_'; but the present scene began with Philip's entry, forty-five lines earlier.

[1851] Of course 'mistress.'

[1852] Q 1, _clowdes_.

[1853] Not in Q 1.

[1854] Q 1, 'ho.'

[1855] Q 1, 'it.'

[1856] Q 1, _throwe_.

[1857] So Q 2. Eds. omit.

[1858] So Q 2. Q 1, 'for me.'

[1859] pent-house.

[1860] Q 1, _buze._

[1861] Q 1, 'stones.'

[1862] Q 1, 'should well.'

[1863] Q 1, "I haue had a Pumpe set vp, as good."

[1864] H. and E., 'lee-land.' But the context indicates 'lealand,' the open fields.

[1865] Perhaps he swore by our Lady of Walsingham,--in Norfolk. Dyce.

[1866] Whip-her-jenny: a game of cards. H.

[1867] Q 1, 'tripe-cheeke.'

[1868] Q 1, 'is _the_ best.'

[1869] "If I had only known in time!" Cf. _Secunda Pastorum_ (Towneley), l. 93.

[1870] Cf. _Secunda Pastorum_, l. 318.

[1871] Q 1, _his_.

[1872] So Qtos. H. and E. read 'dines.'

[1873] Qy. a proverbial allusion to the famous Brazen-head? Dyce.

[1874] See note, Sc. viii. l. 354.

[1875] H., 'Vintry.'

[1876] Q 1, _breath_.

[1877] Q 1 omits.

[1878] The hero of the popular German jest-book (_Eulenspiegel_), which was translated into English at a very early period; see Gifford's note on Jonson's _Works_, IV. 60, and Nare's _Gloss_. in V. Dyce.

[1879] Q 1, 'last': and 'lase.'

[1880] Q 1, 'silly.'

[1881] Q 1, 'shew.'

[1882] Q 2, _couriers_.

[1883] Q 2, _bandg._

[1884] By idiom 'bauble'; by sense 'babble.'

[1885] Q 2, _yon_.

[1886] Q 2, _swoses_.

[1887] random.

[1888] From the 'cunny greene' (see Sc. viii., end) having lost Nicholas and the torch _en route._ E. mistakenly includes this in the previous scene.

[1889] Qtos, _hap._

[1890] Q 2, 'out.'

[1891] spite.

[1892] The sham quarrel of Sc. xiv. l. 115.

[1893] So Q 2. Q 1 'a.'

[1894] Eds., 'foundst.'

[1895] Eds. omit.

[1896] Q 1, _tell_.

[1897] Blind-man's-buff.

[1898] Q 2 prints l. 105 as of fourteen syllables ending with "Hob man blind," and line 106 as of twelve syllables ending with "heere."

[1899] So Q 2. Q 1 omits.

[1900] E. makes this 'Act v., Sc. 1, _In the Fields_'; but Sir Raph frequents the grove, and Mall takes it in her flight across the fields from the cunny greene.

[1901] veil.

[1902] missed-way.

[1903] (I suppose) Buoys. Dyce.

[1904] So Qtos. Dy.: qy. 'fellow?' H. followed by E., "It is no envious fellow, out of grudge."

[1905] So Qtos. = 'why.' H. and E. read 'whe'er,' unnecessarily.

[1906] a deer lean and out of season. Dyce.

[1907] It has not seemed necessary to indicate that ll. 64, 65, 66-68, etc., constitute verses; so in nearly every scene.

[1908] Q 2, _oyure._

[1909] See note on _F. B._, i. 142.

[1910] Q 1, _wandring_.

[1911] So Dy. and other eds. Qtos., 'thy.'

[1912] E includes with preceding scene.

[1913] Dy., ''Tis.'

[1914] So Dy., etc., _i.e._ suffer. Qtos, _stole._

[1915] The order of ll. 20-21 is reversed in Q 2.

[1916] Q 1, _Being_.

[1917] Q 1, _enforc'st_.

[1918] Q 1, _same_.

[1919] spirit-dulling.

[1920] So Q 1. Q 2, _you_.

[1921] Q 1, _weere_.

[1922] Eds. divide line here.

[1923] So Q 2. Eds., 'women.'

[1924] Q 2, _it._

[1925] Qtos., _carerie_.

[1926] Q 1, 'shrowdly.'

[1927] So Dyce. Qtos. assign to Goursey. Perhaps Barnes lays his hand on Goursey who shakes it off. A scuffle appears to ensue: cf. ll. 161-163.

[1928] So Q 2. But Q 1, 'him,' which Dy., etc., for no sufficient reason prefer.

[1929] So Dy. Qtos., _be_.

[1930] Cf. _F.B._, viii. 75.

[1931] convince.

[1932] So Dy. Qtos., _mindes_.

[1933] So Q 1. Q 2 omits.

[1934] Qy., revoke. Cf. _F. B._, viii. 144, n.

[1935] Dyce thinks something has dropt out here.

[1936] Ought probably to be omitted. Dyce.

[1937] So Q 2; which is just as intelligible as the 'deliverie' of Q 1 and Eds.

[1938] the one.

[1939] H. and E. change, unnecessarily, to "yond help that both may come together."

[1940] Qy., _stand_ still? Dyce.

[1941] Q 1, _fileds_.

[1942] Q 2, _fie_.

[1943] Q 1, 'brings.'

[1944] A line, which rhymed with this one, has dropt out. Dyce. But H. begins a new line with 'Sings.'

[1945] Traitor or Felon. Dyce.

[1946] Swoon.

[1947] a cordial.

[1948] Q 2, 'favours.'

_William Shakespeare_

AS A COMIC DRAMATIST

_A Monograph by Edward
Dowden, LL. D., Professor
in Trinity College, Dublin._

SHAKESPEARE AS A COMIC DRAMATIST

=The Essentials of Shakespearian Comedy.=--The Comedies of Shakespeare, which form more than a third part of his dramatic work, belong to every period of his career as a writer, except one. During a few years, soon after the opening of the seventeenth century, he turned away from comedy, or rather he was drawn by some irresistible attraction to explore the tragic depths of life, and for a time its bright or variegated surface was lost to view. The results of his passionate inquisition of evil entered into the spirit of his latest plays, which we might name "romances" rather than "comedies," and hence the study of Shakespeare's lighter and brighter work cannot be wholly dissociated from the study of that in which terror and pity are the presiding powers.

To conceive Shakespearian comedy aright we must disconnect the word "comedy" from the associations derived from its adjectives "comic" and "comical"; we must recognize the fact that, though laughter is one of its incidents, laughter is not its end. Our chief living master of the carte and tierce of wit, Mr. George Meredith, describes folly as the natural prey of the comic spirit, "known to it in all her transformations, in every disguise; and it is with the springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox, that it gives her chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure of having her, allowing her no rest." Shakespeare's comedy includes the intellectual delight of chasing down folly and being in at the death, but this is not its main purpose. Nor is he eager to assume the part of the indignant moral satirist. It is not he but Ben Jonson, in the person of Asper, who announces that "with an armèd and resolvèd hand" he will

"Strip the ragged follies of their time
Naked as at their birth ...
... and with a whip of steel
Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs."

Shakespeare on occasions can wield the whip of steel, but it is when for a time he parts company with the spirit of comedy. Moral truth radiates through all the world of his creation, but he does not suppose that morality is served by being outrageously moral; in writing comedy he has more faith in sunshine as a sanative agent than in lightning and tempest. If he is ever contemptuous, it is because the pitifulness of such a baffled pretender as Parolles, or of such lean-witted conspirators as Antonio and Sebastian, admits of no other feeling. From personal satire he, unlike several of his contemporaries, wholly abstained, unless, indeed, the theory holds good, which finds in _Troilus and Cressida_ that purge given by the player Shakespeare--so Kempe tells Burbage in _The Return from Parnassus_--to the pestilent fellow, Ben Jonson.

Perhaps it is impossible to include under any single general conception works which differ from each other as widely as _The Comedy of Errors_, _Measure for Measure_, and _The Tempest_; but if we cannot seize it as a whole, we may see from a little distance this side and that of comedy as understood by Shakespeare. Its vital centre is not an idea, an abstraction, a doctrine, a moral thesis, but something concrete--persons involved in an action. When philosophical critics assure us that the theme of _The Merchant of Venice_ is expressed by the words _Summum jus, summa injuria_, or that it exhibits "man in relation to money," we admire the motto they discovered in their nut, and prefer the kernel in our own. The persons and the action are placed in some region, which is neither wholly one of fantasy nor yet one encumbered with the dross of actuality. Aery spirits, an earth-born Caliban, Robingoodfellow, the king and queen of Faery, may make their incursion into it, yet it is in the truest sense the haunt and home of "human mortals." The finer spirit of the poet's own age is forever present, but he makes no laborious effort to imitate life in the lower sense of reproducing contemporary manners. He turns away from his own country. Once--by command--Sir John Falstaff makes love to the laughing bourgeois wives of Windsor; but to comply with the necessity Shakespeare's comedy descends from verse to prose. Ben Jonson's invention is at home in Cob's Court and Picthatch, in the aisle of Paul's, or among the booths of Bartholomew Fair; having disguised the characters of his first important play under Italian names, he rightly christened them anew as Londoners. Shakespeare's imagination, throwing off the burden of the actual, desported itself in the Athenian moonlit wood and on the yellow sands of the enchanted island, under green boughs in Arden, in the garden at Belmont, in the palace of Illyria, at the shepherd's festival in Bohemia.

The action corresponds with the environment. In the great tragedies Shakespeare may on rare occasions demand certain postulates at the outset. These having been granted, the plot evolves itself within the bounds of the credible. In _King Lear_ the opening scene puts some strain upon our imaginative belief, but Shakespeare received the legend as it had been handed down to him, and all that follows the opening scene--though the action is vast and monstrous--obeys an order and logic which compel our acquiescence. It is not always so, if we refuse its claims to fancy, in Shakespearian comedy. In a region which borders on the realm of fantasy we must be prepared to accept many happy surprises. Our desire for happiness inclines our hearts to a pleasant credulity; if chance at the right moment intervenes, it comes as our own embodied hope. When all and every one in Arden wood, save Jaques, are on their way to wedlock, like couples coming to the ark, we are not disposed to question the reality of that old religious man upon the borders of the forest who suddenly converts the usurping Duke, and turns back the mighty power which he had set on foot. We are grateful for such hermits and such convertites.

The characters again correspond in comedy with the environment and with the action. In tragedy character is either from the first fully formed and four-square, or, if it is developed by events, it develops in accordance with an internal law. Passion runs its inevitable course, like a great wave driven of the wind, and breaks with thunder upon the shoal of death. The human actors disappear; only the general order of the world and the eternal moral law endure. But in comedy the individual must be preserved, and must at the close enter into possession of happy days; if he has erred through folly or vice, his error has not been mortal; he may in the last scene of the fifth act swiftly change his moral disposition as he would change his outward garb. The traitor Proteus is suddenly restored to his better mind, and Valentine is generous enough to resign to the repentant traitor all his rights in Silvia. Bertram, who almost to the last entangles himself in a network of dastardly lies, is rescued from his dishonesty and foolish pride by a successful trick, and becomes the loyal husband of Helena. The Duke Orsino transfers his amorous homage from his "fancy's queen" Olivia to his "fancy's queen" Viola with a most convenient facility. Angelo discovers his own baseness in the moment when he perceives it is discovered by the world, and is straightway virtuous enough to bring the happiness required by a fifth act to the wronged Mariana. Even Iachimo--the Iago of a comedy--makes sorrowful confession of his villany, and restores the purloined bracelet and the ill-won ring. Such transformations as these indicate that even as regards character the law of comedy is a law of liberty. When it suits Shakespeare's purpose, the study of character can be profound and veracious; when occasion requires it, incident becomes all-important, and character yields to the requirements of the situation.

In truth, while it may be said that in Shakespearian tragedy character is fate, in Shakespearian comedy, among the contrasts and surprises which form so abundant a source of its vivacity, not the least effective contrast is that of character set over, as it were, against itself, not the least effective surprise is that of character entering upon new phases under the play of circumstance. The unity and logic of character may not in reality be impaired, but the unity is realized in and through diversity. In punning, a word is made to play a double part; it jostles its other self, and laughter ensues. What is so single and indivisible as personality? But if John is mistaken for Thomas, accident seems to triumph over law, and the incongruity arises of a doubled personal identity--the apparent and the real. Antipholus, of Syracuse, like the little woman of the nursery rhyme, whose sense of personality was dependent on the length of her petticoats, is almost persuaded that he is other than himself. If Viola disguises in doublet and hose, she secures by anticipation the victory of Sebastian over Olivia's heart, while in her own heart she endures a woman's hidden love for the Duke. One man in his brief time on Shakespeare's comic stage may play many parts. The ascetic scholars of Navarre are transformed into the most gallant of lovers and the most ingenious of sonneteers. Katherine the curst becomes more resolute in her wifely submission than she had been in her virgin _sauvagerie_. Signior Benedick, who challenged Cupid at the flight, in due time alters to Benedick, the married man; my dear Lady Disdain, in pity for him, and a little in pity for herself, has yielded upon great persuasion. If, as Montaigne teaches us, man is the most variable of animals, perhaps we learn as important a truth about human nature from Shakespeare's comedies as from his more profound study of the fatality of character and passion in the tragedies.

The essentials of Shakespearian comedy at its best are, after all, simple and obvious enough--a delightful story, conducted, in some romantic region, by gracious and gallant persons, thwarted or aided by the mirthful god, Circumstance, and arriving at a fortunate issue. Such would not serve as a description of the comedies of Ben Jonson. He is pleased to keep us during the greater part of five laborious acts in the company of knaves and gulls, and at the close, poetic justice is satisfied with the detection of folly and a general retribution descending on evil-doers. Shakespeare, in comedy, is no such remorseless justicer. Don John, the bastard, is reserved for punishment, but it shall be upon the morrow, and the punishment shall be such as the mirthful Benedick may devise. Parolles escapes lightly with the laughter of Lafeu, and mockery, qualified by a supper, will not afflict him beyond endurance. Lucio is condemned to marry the mother of his child, which is so dire an evil that all other forfeits are remitted. Sir John Falstaff will join the rest by Mistress Page's country fire in jesting at his own discomfiture. Even Shylock is not wholly overwhelmed; he shall have godfathers and a godmother at his baptism, and remain in possession of half his worldly goods. Sebastian may live and discover that he is morally superior to Caliban, the thief, and Stephano, the drunkard. Iachimo kneels and receives the free forgiveness of Posthumus.

But if Shakespeare, in comedy, is niggard of punishment, he is liberal in rewards. And since almost all the stories he chooses for his comic stage are stories of love and lovers, what grand reward can be reserved for the fifth act so fitting as the reward of love? In the seventeenth century masque amid all its mythological, fantastic, or humorous diversities, one point, or pivot, of the action remained fixed--the incidents must give occasion to a dance of the masquers. So in Shakespearian comedy we may, with almost equal certainty, reckon upon a marriage, or more marriages than one, in act, or in immediate prospect, before the curtain closes. Or, if not a marriage, for the lovers may be wedded lovers at the opening, then, after division, or separation of husband and wife, what we may call a remarriage, with misunderstandings cleared up and faults forgiven. When Shakespeare wrote his earlier plays he was himself young, and his gaze was fixed upon the future; exultant lovers begin their new life, and the song of joy is an epithalamium. When he wrote his latest plays, he was no longer young, and he thought of the blessedness of recovering the happy past, of knitting anew the strained or broken bonds of life, of connecting the former and the latter days in natural piety. Youth still must have its rapture; Florizel must win his royal shepherdess, queen of curds and cream; the nuptials of Ferdinand and Miranda, "these, our dear-beloved," must be duly solemnized at Naples; but Shakespeare's temper is no longer the temper of youth; he is of the company of Hermione and Prospero, and the music of the close is a grave and spiritual harmony.

Between the first scene and the last the path in comedy is beset with obstacles and dangers, past which love must find a way--"the course of true love never did run smooth." These may be either internal--some difficulty arising from character, or external--difference of blood or of rank, the choice of friends, slanderous tongues, rival passions, the spite of fortune. The resolution of the difficulty must be of a corresponding kind; temper, or rash determination, must yield to the predominance of love, or the external obstacles must be removed by well-directed effort, or by a happy turn of events. The young king of Navarre and his fellow-students are immured by their ascetic vow of culture; Isabella is all but ceremonially pledged to the life of religion; Olivia is secluded by her luxury of sentimental sorrow; Beatrice, born to be a lover, is at odds with love through her pride of independence and wilful mirth; Bertram has the young colt's pleasure in freedom, refuses to be ranged, and suffers from the haughty blindness of youth, which cannot recognize its own chief need and highest gain. All such rebels against love will be subdued in good time. On the other hand, it is her father who has decreed that Hermia shall be parted from Lysander; both father and mother have rival designs for marring the destiny of sweet Nan Page; a false friend and fickle lover separates Valentine and Silvia; a malignant plotter, who would avenge on all happy creatures the wrong of his own base birth, strikes down Hero with the blow of slander as she stands before the altar. But love has on its side gallantry and resource, loyalty and valour, the good powers of nature and the magic of the moonlit faery wood; and so, over the mountains and over the waves, love at last finds out a way.

Love being the central theme of Shakespearian comedy, laughter cannot be its principal end, and cruel or harsh laughter is almost necessarily excluded. But the laughter of joy rings out in the earlier and middle comedies, and a smile, beautiful in its wisdom and serenity, illuminates the comedies of his closing period. If satire is present, it is only on rare occasions a satire of manners; it deals rather with something universal, a satire of the fatuity of self-lovers, of the power which the human heart has of self-deception, or it is a genial mockery of the ineptitude of brainless self-importance, or the little languid lover's amorous endeavours, or the lumbering pace of heavy-witted ignorance, which cannot catch a common meaning, even by the tail; at its average rate of progress the idea whisks too swiftly from the view of such slow gazers.

_The dramatis personæ_ form a large and varied population, ranging in social rank from the king to the tinker and the bellows-mender. Princes, dukes, courtiers, pages, dissolute gallants, soldiers, sailors, shepherds, clowns, city mechanicals, the country justice, the constable and head-borough, the schoolmaster, the parson, the faithful old servant, the lively waiting-maid, roysterers, humourists, light-fingered rogues, foreign fantasticoes, middle-class English husbands and wives, Welshman, Frenchman, Spaniard, Italian, Jew, noble and gracious ladies, country wenches, courtesans, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, the maiden, the wife, the widow--all sorts and conditions of human mortals occupy the scene, while on this side enters Caliban, bearing his burden of pine-logs, and Ariel flies overhead upon the bat's back, on the other, the offended king of faery frowns upon Titania, and claims his pretty Eastern minion.

The characters are ordinarily ranged, with an excellent effect on dramatic perspective, in three groups or divisions. The lovers and their immediate friends or rivals occupy the middle plane. Above them are persons of influence or authority by virtue of age or rank, on whom in some measure the fortunes of the lovers depend. Below them are the humbler aiders and abettors of their designs, or subordinate figures lightly attached to the central action, yet sometimes playing into the hands of benevolent Chance, and always ready to diversify the scene, to enliven the stage, to afford a breathing-space between passages of high-wrought emotion, to fill an interval with glittering word-play or unconscious humour, to save romance from shrill intensity or too aerial ascension by the contact of reality. Shakespeare in comedy was hardly quite happy until he had found his Duke and his clown; then he had the space in which he could move at ease; love remains his central theme, but it is love which rises out of life; his principal figures are rendered more distinct, are seen more in the round, because they stand out from a rich and various background.

=Intrigue; and the Treatment of Materials.=--The intrigue of Shakespeare's comedies is seldom of his own creation. He understood by "invention" something finer or rarer than the construction of a plot. The greatest workers in literature--we must perhaps except Dante--have been the _trouvères_, the finders. To form a being out of the clay, and to breathe into its nostrils the breath of life is an act of creation in the finest sense of the word. What is material and mechanical Shakespeare willingly accepts from others; his range of invention is almost without limit, but it is invention in the spiritual world. No sufficient sources have been found for his earliest comedy--_Love's Labour's Lost_--and for what was perhaps his latest--_The Tempest_; it does not follow, however, that in these instances he varied from his customary practice. When Shakespeare dealt with the substantial matter of history, he remained upon his native soil, until through Plutarch he discovered Rome. No dramatist of his age is more truly an English patriot; no other evocation of the past in poem or play is so truly alive or so truly national as that effected in Shakespeare's series of chronicle histories; and with his English history he has connected his robustest piece of comedy--no romance of love, but a comedy of character, essentially national in its humour, its exultant mirth, its pathos, the chronicle history of King Falstaff on his tavern throne. But breathing the air of the English Renaissance, he turned away in his romantic comedies from his own country to Italy, the land of romance. Once--in _Cymbeline_--he is a debtor to Holinshed, but Holinshed has here to summon Boccaccio to his aid. Even _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, as far as we can trace its sources, is indebted for some of its laughable adventures to the Italian _novelle_. Twice Shakespeare borrowed the plots of comedies from tales by contemporary writers of England,--_As You Like It_ is founded upon Lodge's _Rosalynde_; _The Winter's Tale_, upon Greene's _Pandosto_. But although Lodge's story was in part derived from a poem of rough and humble incidents, characteristically English, it was transformed in his hands into a much-embroidered amorous pastoral of the Renaissance, and Greene's _Pandosto_ is equally a product of exotic southern culture.

Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, elder English dramas derived from Italian sources, Spanish pastoral romance--these furnished the booty on which Shakespeare laid hands with the right of a conqueror. He selected, omitted, altered, added, moulding the mass of material with plastic hands, which are gentle because they are strong. Frequently he complicates the intrigue; sometimes he entangles a secondary plot with the primary; sometimes he emends the ethics, or purifies the atmosphere, or saves some cherished character from dishonour; in many instances he creates new personages, who are the interpreters of his own wisdom or humour or gracious temper. Thus in _As You Like It_, though the loves of Orlando and Rosalind are transposed from the languid artificial pastoral of Lodge into the spirited wood-notes of Shakespeare, we look in vain through Lodge's romance for the sentimental-cynical Jaques, dilettante collector of curious experiences, for Touchstone, the courtier-clown, with his logic of nice distinctions, for Audrey, no Dresden-china shepherdess, but fascinating to her ingenious suitor by virtue of her robust charms and her flattering inferiority of brain. Again, in _Twelfth Night_ the character of Malvolio and of the whole group of his tormentors--Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Fabian, Feste, Maria--are added to his originals by Shakespeare. The languorous love-in-idleness of the Duke Orsino, and Olivia's sadness prepense demanded a contrast, and in Shakespeare's imagination sprang up this crew of toper and droll and slender-witted gentlemen, and mischief-loving maid, who seem to take hands and dance around the solemn figure of that deluded magnifico of domestics. To cite but one other example, how would _Much Ado about Nothing_ dwindle if Beatrice and Benedick, its brain of wit and pulse of gallantry, were to disappear from the scene! But these, and with them the office-bearing majesty of Dogberry, prince of constables, and the astute intelligence of goodman Verges ("an old man, sir; but honest as the skin between his brows") are engrafted by Shakespeare on the original of Bandello.

=Relation to Predecessors and Contemporaries.=--From his predecessors and early contemporaries Shakespeare doubtless learnt whatever it was in their power to teach; at the same time he started forth on ways of his own. In Lyly he saw how something of the ideality of the masque could be transferred to comedy; how comedy could escape from the grosser world of the actual to a realm of courtly classical fantasy; how action could be suspended to give scope for the play of sparkling or ingenious dialogue in prose; how dainty song could come to the aid of speech which threatened to grow tedious; how disguises of sex could lead to delicate and diverting confusions. But Shakespeare must have perceived the lack of human interest in Lyly's plays; the deficiency of action, which often causes the progress of the piece to languish or to cease; the slight or colourless characterization; the mechanical artificiality, and monotonous balance of certain elements in Euphuistic prose. What was sprightly and ingenious in Lyly's dialogue he preserved; but of Euphuism in the strict sense we find nothing in Shakespeare's plays, except a passage of mockery, appropriately introduced where Falstaff in the tavern discourses as a moralizing father to that well-bred youth, Prince Hal,--"For though the camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth the more it is wasted the sooner it wears." Nor, unless it be the passage describing Oberon's vision of Cupid aiming his shaft at the fair vestal throned in the West, does he follow Lyly in mythological allegory, which conceals and betrays contemporary persons and events.

In the comedies of Robert Greene examples already existed of the romantic tale of love and lovers handled in dramatic fashion. Amid the vulgar surroundings of his sorry London life, Greene preserved a certain purity of idyllic imagination. His comely maidens and loyal wives, tried and true, had shown how important and how attractive a part may be borne by women upon the comic stage. He had exhibited with some skill the art of connecting two intrigues--the primary and the subordinate. He had placed comic matter side by side with matter which approximated to tragic. He could pass from verse to prose, and could mingle with blank verse, sometimes brocaded with ornament but often fresh and sweet, easy rhymed couplets and such other arrangements of rhyme as Shakespeare practised in his early plays. But he often erred through an attempt at Marlowesque magnificence and through the pride and pomp of pseudo-classical decoration. He lacked that humour of good sense, directed upon oneself, which warns a writer when he is in danger of falling into absurdity. His ludicrous scenes do not always assist the more serious or romantic matter of the play; they are too much of the nature of an interlude or divertissement. His feeling for what is laughable was somewhat primitive and crude; a vigorous bout at quarter-staves, a lusty drubbing, the extravagant pranks of a mediæval devil, were simple and unfailing receipts to shake the ribs of the groundlings. If Shakespeare was a pupil of Greene's in comedy, he was an intelligent pupil, who knew what to remember and what to forget.

Except as regards the form of his verse and prose it cannot be said that Shakespeare, as a writer of comedy, was ever in a true sense in discipleship to any master. He found suggestions, and used them, but he took his own way. The history of his development consists in great measure in the gradual coalescing of the various faculties from which poetry may be derived. In his latest comedies intellect and emotion are fused together; wit has been taken up into moral wisdom; imagination in its highest reach is united with the simple, primary feelings of our humanity; gaiety and seriousness interpenetrate each other; tenderness and pity are alive in the breast of the comic Muse; the laughter is often the laughter of human sympathy and of a pathetic joy; if we smile at the quaint forms of the hieroglyph of life, we know that it has a deep and sacred meaning. From the outset Shakespeare thought of comedy as a mirror of human life, which should reflect things sad and serious as well as mirthful, and which by its magic power should convert pain into pleasure; but the two elements of Shakespearian comedy exist side by side in the earliest plays; they are not yet fused into one. In the main, Shakespeare at first relied upon his nimble brain, and aimed at exciting laughter by comic surprises, contrasts, and incongruities which lie upon the surface of things and are the offspring of accident rather than of character. His delight in wit-combats and word-play is a transference to language of the same feeling which made him delight in the errors and disguisings of his persons. There is a laughter which arises from no profounder cause than titillation; the harlequinade of words, leaping one over the other, parrying, riposting, and suddenly disappearing under a mask of invisibility, yet still striking, as it were, out of the shadow, serves as a titillation of the brain.

=Shakespeare's Development as a Comic Dramatist.=--In his earliest group of comedies, _Love's Labour's Lost_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, dating perhaps from about 1590 to about 1594, Shakespeare experimented in various directions. We might name the group that of his transformation plays. The comic surprise, the comic incongruity is that of man suddenly converted from his true to a false self or from a false self to a true. Human will is here the sport of nature or the sport of accident. Nothing is but what is not. The vowed students of Navarre are betrayed into the very opposite of their assumed selves by the power of nature and of love. Proteus, the servant of Julia, the comrade of Valentine, forsakes his mistress and his friend, and is as suddenly reconverted. The brothers Antipholus and the brothers Dromio are so shuffled together by the juggler Chance, that we question if any personal identity will survive and reëmerge at the close. Whether Lysander and Demetrius will awake the rival lovers of Helena or the rival lovers of Hermia, or whether Lysander will love Hermia and Demetrius Helena, depends on the merest luck of fairy-land. But nature and luck are on the side of love; all will be set right before the end. And because women lie closer to nature than men, and their affections hold the bent with the directness and certainty of nature, they are true and constant to themselves, neither deluding their hearts with pseudo-ideals, nor changed by the play of circumstances from what they are, but using their woman's wit and woman's will to attain their proper ends.