SCENE IV." I would have broke mine eyestrings," &c.

IN Arthur Golding's Translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1567) there is a description which might have suggested to Shakspere this beautiful passage:

"She lifting up her watery eyes beheld her husband stand Upon the hatches, making signs by becking with his hand: And she made signs to him again. And after that the land Was far removed from the ship, and that the sight began To be unable to discern the face of any man,

As long as ere she could she look'd upon the rowing keel. And when she could no longer time for distance ken it weel She looked still upon the sails that flashed with the wind Upon the mast. And when she could the sails no longer find,

She gat her to her empty bed with sad and sorry heart."

2 SCENE VI. "Whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather those flowers."

The Queen, distilling herbs for wicked purposes, is a striking contrast to the benevolent Friar in Romeo and Juliet. Shakspere has beautifully indicated the philosophy of the use or abuse by man of Nature's productions, in the Friar's soliloquy :

"For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse."

3 SCENE VI. "Your highness Shall from this practice but make hard your heart."

Dr. Johnson, in that spirit of kindness which essentially belonged to his nature, remarks upon this passage:-" The thought would probably have been more amplified had our author lived to be shocked with such experiments as have been published in later times by a race of men who have practised tortures without pity, and related them without shame, and are yet suffered to erect their heads among human beings." We are by no means

sure, however, that Shakspere meant to apply a sweeping denunciation to such experiments upon the power of particular medicines. There can be no doubt that, the medical art being wholly tentative, it becomes in some cases a positive duty of a scientific experimenter to inflict pain upon an inferior animal for the ultimate purpose of assuaging pain or curing disease. It is the useless repetition of such experiments which makes hard the heart. It is the exhibition of such experiments in the lecture room which is "noisome and infectious." The Queen was unauthorised by her position to

"Try the forces

Of these thy compounds on such creatures as We count not worth the hanging."

4 SCENE VII.-" Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight."

Every one will remember the noble passage in 'Paradise Regained,' book iii.:—

"He saw them in their forms of battle rang'd,

How quick they wheel'd, and flying behind them shot Sharp sleet of arrowy show'rs against the face Of their pursuers, and overcame by flight." The editors of Milton refer to parallel passages in Virgil and Horace as amongst the images with which our great epic poet was familiar. The commentators of Shakspere suffer his line to pass without a single observation. In the same scene we have the following most characteristic expression in the mouth of a Roman :

"As common as the stairs That mount the Capitol."

Upon this Steevens remarks, "Shakspere has bestowed some ornament on the proverbial phrase, as common as the highway."" Shakspere's phrase proves, amidst a thousand similar proofs, his perfect familiarity with all the knowledge that was necessary to make his characters speak appropriately with reference to their social position.

SCENE I.-Court before Cymbeline's Palace.

Enter CLOTEN and Two Lords.

Clo. Was there ever man had such luck! when I kissed the jack, upon an up-cast to be hit away! I had a hundred pound on 't: And then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing; as if I borrowed mine oaths of him, and might not spend them at my pleasure.

1 Lord. What got he by that? You have broke his pate with your bowl.

2 Lord. If his wit had been like him that broke it, it would have run all out.

[Aside.

Clo. When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths: Ha?

a This is usually pointed, "when I kiss'd the jack upon an upcast, to be hit away." But the jack was kiss'd by Cloten's bowl, and the up-cast of another bowler hit it away. The same technical expressions of kiss and cast are used by Rowley, in "A Woman never vex'd: "-"This city bowler has kiss'd the mistress at the first cast."

2 Lord. No, my lord; nor [Aside.] crop the ears of them.

Clo. Whoreson dog!-I give him satisfaction? 'Would he had been one of my rank! 2 Lord. To have smelt like a fool. [Aside. Clo. I am not vexed more at any thing in the earth,-A pox on't! I had rather not be so noble as I am. They dare not fight with me, because of the queen my mother: every jackslave hath his belly full of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that no body can match.

2 Lord. You are cock and capon too; and you crow, cock, with your comb on. [Aside. Clo. Sayest thou?

2 Lord. It is not fit your lordship should undertake every companion that you give offence to.

Companion is used here, and in other passages of Shakspere in the same sense as fellow is at present. Sir Hugh Evans denounces the host of the Garter as a "scurvy. cogging companion."

Clo. No, I know that: but it is fit I should

commit offence to my inferiors.

2 Lord. Ay, it is fit for your lordship only. Clo. Why, so I

say.

1 Lord. Did you hear of a stranger that's come to court to-night?

Clo. A stranger! and I not know on 't!

2 Lord. He's a strange fellow himself, and knows it not. [Aside.

1 Lord. There's an Italian come; and, 't is thought, one of Leonatus' friends.

Clo. Leonatus! a banished rascal; and he's another, whatsoever he he. Who told you of this stranger?

1 Lord. One of your lordship's pages.

Clo. Is it fit I went to look upon him? Is there no derogation in 't?

1 Lord. You cannot derogate, my lord. Clo. Not easily, I think.

2 Lord. You are a fool granted; therefore your issues, being foolish, do not derogate.

[Aside.

Clo. Come, I'll go see this Italian: What I have lost to-day at bowls I'll win to-night of him. Come, go.

2 Lord. I'll attend your lordship.

[Exeunt CLOTEN and first Lord. That such a crafty devil as is his mother Should yield the world this ass! a woman, that Bears all down with her brain; and this her son Cannot take two from twenty for his heart, And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess, Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur'st! Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern'd; A mother hourly coining plots; a wooer, More hateful than the foul expulsion is Of thy dear husband. From that horrid act Of the divorce he'd make, the heavens hold firm The walls of thy dear honour; keep unshak'd That temple, thy fair mind; that thou may'st stand,

To enjoy thy banish'd lord, and this great land!

eyes are weak:

Fold down the leaf where I have left: To bed:
Take not away the taper, leave it burning;
And if thou canst awake by four o' the clock,
I prithee, call me. Sleep hath seiz'd me wholly.
[Exit Lady.
To your protection I commend me, gods!
From fairies, and the tempters of the night,
Guard me, beseech ye!

[Sleeps. IACHIMO, from the trunk. Iach. The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd sense

Repairs itself by rest: Our Tarquin thus
Did softly press the rushes,' ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded -Cytherea,
How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh
lily!

And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!

But kiss; one kiss !-Rubies unparagon'd,
How dearly they do 't-T is her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: The flame o' the

taper

Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids,

To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd
With blue of heaven's own tinct-But my de-
sign

a This celebrated passage has produced some difference of opinion amongst the commentators. First, Capell says, of the word windows, "the poet's meaning is shutters." Hanmer changed the word to "curtains." The window is the aperture through which light and air are admitted to a room -sometimes closed, at other times opened. It is the winddoor. We have the word in Romeo and Juliet, similarly applied

"Thy eye's windows fall

Like death, when he shuts up the day of life." Capell then goes on to say, that the "white and azure" refer to the white skin, generally, laced with blue veins. Secondly, Malone thinks that the epithets apply to the "enclosed lights"-the eyes. Lastly, Warburton decides that the eye-lids were intended. We are disposed to agree with him. The eye-lid of an extremely fair young woman is often of a tint that may be properly called "white and azure;" which is produced by the net-work of exceedingly fine veins that runs through and colours that beautiful structure. Shakspere has described this peculiarity in his Venus and Adonis

"Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth." And in The Winter's Tale, we have

"Violets atm,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes." But in the text before us, the eye-lids are not only of a "white

To note the chamber. I will write all down: Such and such pictures:-There the window: Such

The adornment of her bed :-The arras, figures," Why, such, and such :-And the contents o' the story.

her!

Ah, but some natural notes about her body
Above ten thousand meaner moveables
Would testify, to enrich mine inventory.
O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying!-Come off, come off;
[Taking off her bracelet.
As slippery, as the Gordian knot was hard!
'Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly,
As strongly as the conscience does within,
To the madding of her lord. On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip. Here's a voucher,
Stronger than ever law could make this secret
Will force him think I have pick'd the lock, and
ta'en

The treasure of her honour. No more.-' -To what end?

Why should I write this down, that's riveted, Screw'd to my memory? She hath been reading late

The tale of Tereus; here the leaf's turned down
Where Philomel gave up ;-I have enough:
To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it.
Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that
dawning

May bare the raven's eye! I lodge in fear;
Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.
[Clock strikes.

One, two, three,-Time, time!

[Goes into the trunk. The scene closes.

and azure" hue, but they are also "lac'd with blue of heaven's own tinct "-marked with the deeper blue of the larger veins. The description is here as accurate as it is beautiful. It cannot apply with such propriety to the eye, which certainly is not lac'd with blue; nor to the skin generally, which would not be beautiful as "white and azure." It is, to our minds, one of the many examples of Shakspere's extreme accuracy of observation, and of his transcendant power of making the exact and the poeticai blend with, and support. each other.

a M. Mason would read "the arras-figures; " but Iachimo subsequently describes, not only the figures of the arras, but its particular quality

"Tapestry of silk and silver; the story Proud Cleopatra," &c.

b The original reads, may beare the raven's eye." Theobald corrected it to bare. We are not quite sure of the propriety of the correction, though we are unwilling to disturb the received text. To bare the raven's eye, is to open the raven's eye-the eye of one of the earliest waking and the quickest-seeing of birds. The predatory habits of the raven require that he should be up before the shepherd is about with his flocks; and his piercing eye at once leads him where the feeble lamb lies in some hollow a ready victim, or where the leveret has crept abroad in the grey of the morning from the safe form of its mother. The dauning may bare that eye; or the dawning may bear, may sustain, may be distinct enough to endure the proof of that acute vision.

SCENE III-Without the Palace, under Imogen's Apartment.

Enter CLOTEN and Lords.

1 Lord. Your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most coldest that ever turned up ace. Clo. It would make any man cold to lose.

1 Lord. But not every man patient after the noble temper of your lordship. You are most hot and furious when you win.

Clo. Winning will put any man into courage. If I could get this foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough. It's almost morning, is 't not? 1 Lord. Day, my lord.

Clo. I would this music would come: I am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate.

vice.

e Calves'-guts. So the old copy. Rowe changed this to cats' guts, and he has been since followed. The word cats'gut-or catgut-is essentially modern. We believe that there is not an example of it in any old author. In Bacon's Natural History we have a passage in which gut-a musical string made of an animal substance-is thus spoken of"A viol should have a lay of wire-strings below, close to the belly, and the strings of guts mounted upon a bridge." Why not, then, calves'-guts, as well as cats'-guts? We know not how the name catgut arose, for cats have as little to do with the production of such strings as mice have. At any rate, if the text of Shakspere is an authority that such strings were made from calves, we are not called upon to destroy the record by insisting that they ought to have been made from cats,