"Why, good fellow, What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live? Or in my life what comfort, when I am Dead to my husband? Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's clothes, and suggests "a course pretty and full of view," by which she may "haply be near the residence of Posthumus," she exclaims: "O, for such means! Though peril to my modesty, not death on't, I would adventure." And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must change "Fear and niceness, The handmaids of all women, or more truly, she interrupts him hastily- I see into thy end, and am almost In her journey thus disguised to Milford Haven, she loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully— Thou'rt one o' the false ones: now I think on thee, At point to sink for food." 2 She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a footboy to serve a Roman officer, when she has donc all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master 1 Scarcely so; for he speaks six lines after this, before she breaks in.-ED. [2 Act ii., sc. 6.] "And when With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave, Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh, And leaving so his service, follow you, So please you entertain me." 1 Now this is the very religion of love. She all along relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she relies on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her "With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander, Out-sweeten'd not thy breath." 2 The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her bedchamber : "Cytherea, How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily! On her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' the bottom of a cowslip." 3 There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last [Act iv., sc. 2.J [2 Ibid.] 53 Act ii., sc. 2.] 1 image, a rich surfeit of the fancy, as that well-known passage beginning, "Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance," sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial. The character of Cloter, the conceited, booby lord, and rejected lover of Imogen, though not very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, is drawn with much humour and quaint extravagance. The description which Imogen gives of his unwelcome addresses to her: "Whose lovesuit hath been to me as fearful as a siege:" is enough to cure the most ridiculous lover of his folly. It is remarkable that though Cloten makes so poor a figure in love, he is described as assuming an air of consequence as the Queen's son in a council of state; and with all the absurdity of his person and manners, he is not without shrewdness in his observations. So true is it that folly is as often owing to a want of proper sentiments as to a want of understanding! The exclamation of the ancient critic: "O, Menander and Nature, which of you copied from the other!" would not be misapplied to Shakespear.* The other characters in this play are represented with great truth and accuracy, and as it happens in most of the author's works, there is not only the utmost keeping in each separate character; but in the casting of the different parts, and their relation to one another, there is an affinity and harmony, like what we may observe in the gradations of colour in a picture. The striking and powerful contrasts in which Shakespear abounds could not escape observation; but the use he makes of the principle of analogy to reconcile the greatest diversities [1 Act ii., sc. 5.1 2 This is a question which at present we are scarcely competent to decide, as the comic dramas of Menander have come down to us, unfortunately, in a very imperfect, or rather fragmentary shape. In his own day, and even so late as the time of Ovid, they enjoyed, it seems, great popularity.-ED. of character and to maintain a continuity of feeling throughout, has not been sufficiently attended to. In CYMBELINE, for instance, the principal interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of Imogen to her husband under the most trying circumstances. Now the other parts of the picture are filled up with subordinate examples of the same feeling, variously modified by different situations, and applied to the purposes of virtue or vice. The plot is aided by the amorous importunities of Cloten, by the persevering determination of lachimo to conceal the defeat of his project by a daring imposture: the faithful attachment of Pisanio to his mistress is an affecting accompaniment to the whole; the obstinate adherence to his purpose in Bellarius, who keeps the fate of the young princes so long a secret in resentment for the ungrateful return to his former services, the incorrigible wickedness of the Queen, and even the blind uxorious confidence of Cymbeline, are all so many lines of the same story, tending to the same point. The effect of this coincidence is rather felt than observed; and as the impression exists unconsciously in the mind of the reader, so it probably arose in the same manner in the mind of the author, not from design, but from the force of natural association, a particular train of thought suggesting different inflections of the same predominant feeling, melting into, and strengthening one another, like chords in music. The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, and the romantic scenes in which they appear, are a fine relief to the intrigues and artificial refinements of the court from which they are banished. Nothing can surpass the wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of the mountain life they lead. They follow the business of huntsmen, not of shepherds; and this is in keeping with the spirit of adventure and uncertainty in the rest of the story, and with the scenes in which they are afterwards called on to act. How admirably the youthful fire and impatience to emerge from their obscurity in the young princes is opposed to the cooler calculations and prudent resignation of their more experienced counsellor! How well the disadvantages of knowledge and of ignorance, of solitude and society, are placed against each other! 66 Guiderius. Out of your proof you speak: we, poor unfledg d, If quiet life be best; sweeter to you That have a sharper known; well corresponding Arviragus. What should we speak of When we are old as you? When we shall hear The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation is hardly satisfactory; for nothing can be an answer to hope, or the passion of the mind for unknown good, but experience. The forest of Arden in As you like it can alone compare with the mountain scenes in CYMBELINE: yet how different the contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising boldness and precarious mode of subsistence in the other! Shakespear not only lets us into the minds of his characters, but gives a tone and colour to the scenes he describes from the feelings of their supposed inhabitants He at the same time preserves the utmost propriety of action and passion, and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was equal to the greatest things, he was not above an attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant [Act iii., sc. 3.1 |