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"MOTH.

All hail, the richest beauties on the earth!
BOYET. Beauties no richer than rich taffeta."

Act V., Scene 2. The allusion in the last line is to the taffeta masks that the ladies wore to conceal themselves. Boyet sneers at the absurdity of complimenting them on those charms which were masked.

"Veal, quoth the Dutchman :—is not veal a calf?" Act V., Scene 2. By veal is probably meant well, sounded as foreigners usually pronounce that word, and introduced merely for the sake of the subsequent question. In the play of "DR. DODDY POLL," the same joke occurs :

"Doctor. Hans, my very special friend, fait and trot me be right glad for see you veale.

Hans. What do you make a calf of me, master doctor?"

"Well, better wils have worn plain statute caps." Act V., Scene 2. In the 13th of Elizabeth (1571), an Act was passed "For the continuance of making and wearing woollen caps, in behalf of the trade of cappers," providing that all above the age of six years (except the nobility, and some others) should, on Sabbath-days and holidays, wear caps of wool, knit, thicked, and dressed in England, upon penalty of ten groats. These were probably the "statute-caps" alluded to: and the meaning of the passage in the text is-"Better wits may be found among the plain citizens." In Marston's "DUTCH COURTESAN," Mrs. Mulligrub says-"Though my husband be a citizen, and his cap's made of wool, yet I have wit."

"Write, 'Lord have mercy on us,' on those three;
They are infected, in their heart it lies."

Act V., Scene 2. This inscription was put upon the door of the houses infected with the plague, to which Biron compares the love of himself and his companions; and pursuing the metaphor, finds the tokens likewise on the ladies.

"Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear."

Act V., Scene 2.

"You force not" is the same with "you make no difficulty." This is a very just observation. The crime which has been once committed is committed again with less reluctance.-JOHNSON.

"The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy:

A bare throw at novum; and the whole world again
Cannot prick out five such, take each one in his vein."

Act V., Scene 2.

Novum was a game at dice, properly called novem quinque, from the principal throws being nine and five.

If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it should be this. Yet we should be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, that mighty potentate of nonsense; or his page, that handful of wit; with Nathaniel the curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute after dinner, on "the golden cadences of poetry;" with Costard the clown, or Dull the constable. Biron is too accomplished a character to be lost to the world, and yet he could not appear without his fellow-courtiers and the King; and if we were to leave out the ladies, the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So that we believe we must let the whole play stand as it is, and we shall hardly venture to "set a mark of reprobation on it." Still we have some objections to the style, which we think savours more of the pedantic spirit of Shakspere's time, than of his own genius,-more of controversial divinity, and the logic of Peter Lombard, than of the inspiration of the muse. It transports us quite as much to the manners of the court, and the quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes of nature, or the fairy land of his own imagination.

Shakspere has set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned; and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It is as if the hand of Titian had been employed to give grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. Shakspere has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical Holofernes, "as too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, too peregrinate, as I may call it;" and nothing can be more marked than the difference when he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed on himself, "as light as bird from brake," and speaks in his own person.-HAZLITT.

In this play, which all the editors have concurred to censure, and some have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confessed that there are many passages mean, childish, and vulgar; and some which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are scattered through the whole many sparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakspere.-JOHNSON.

This is one of Shakspere's early plays, and the author's youth is certainly perceivable, not only in the style and manner of the versification, but in the lavish superfluity displayed in the execution: the uninterrupted succession of quibbles, equivoques, and sallies of every description. "The sparks of wit fly about in such profusion that they form complete fireworks, and the dialogue for the most part re sembles the bustling collision and banter of passing masks at a carnival."-(Schlegel.) The scene in which the King and his companions detect each other's breach of their mutual vow, is capitally contrived. The discovery of Biron's love-letter while rallying his friends, and the manner in which he extricates himself, by ridiculing the folly of the vow, are admirable.-SINGER.

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T has been generally agreed that there was once an actual Golden Age of virtue and happiness; but each successive generation has been sufficiently either modest or infelicitous to admit that they ought decidedly to place the blissful period long anterior to their own experience. Frail humanity has, however, clung to the tradition with praiseworthy tenacity; and various nations have applied the term, in a secondary sense, to the most flourishing period of their literature. With us, the phrase is usually identified with the era of Elizabeth; and Shakspere's "As YOU LIKE IT" will ever form one of its most precious and conspicuous remains. Transported to the sunny glades of Arden, we "fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the Golden world;" while a feeling of peace, benevolence, and sylvan simplicity, seems (as Sancho says of sleep) "to cover us all over like a cloak." Rosalind ranks among the best, or rather is the chief, of

Shakspere's comic heroines. She is one of those irresistible charmers in whom gaiety and sensibility contrast and relieve each other with all the harmonious variety of an exquisite musical instrument. Her friend, the gentle Celia, represents those invaluable, though comparatively passive, creatures who are often seen in nature, gracefully clinging with entire trust and devotion to some fellow-mortal of superior intellect or greater decision of character; amply rewarded for all they can do or suffer with the simple presence of the beloved object, and a thousand times overpaid by kindness and sympathy.

Orlando is not perhaps, in general, sufficiently appreciated. He may be regarded as a perfect model of the intrinsic gentleman-modest, humane, and forgiving; yet wise, sensitive, and courageous. This is just the character that an enthusiastic girl like Rosalind would be likely to comprehend intuitively, and to fall in love with at a first interview. His humble friend and benefactor, fine old Adam, is almost unique in appropriate beauty of delineation. Every sentence he utters is indicative of sound sense and native goodness of heart. The banished Duke is worthy to complete this genial trio of unworldly beings. He is replete with the best kind of wisdom,-that which, having learned to estimate worldly men and worldly objects at their genuine value, has yet imbibed no bitterness of spirit in the trying process. Jacques also is of noble nature:-he seems (like many kindred philanthropists, who have often been thought misanthropes by society, and sometimes by themselves) to quarrel with mankind principally because they will not be so happy as he thinks they might be, and would wish to see them. Touchstone is certainly the most amusing and intellectual of Shakspere's Fools. His weapons are ever bright, pointed, and ready for action. He is at anybody's service for an encounter of jest, and always comes off conqueror. The sylvan Duke exactly paints him :-"He uses his folly like a stalking-horse; and under the presentation of that, he shoots his wit."

The numerous minor characters in this wondrous drama are all enriched with the most skilful touches of poetry and nature. Altogether, the play will ever afford one of his sweetest repasts to the intellectual reader; and furnish, possibly, not the weakest of barriers to the encroachments of those harsher feelings that sometimes force an entrance even into the generous mind, from its inevitable exposure to what our peerless Rosalind so aptly calls "the briars of this working-day world." "As You LIKE IT" was first published in the original folio of 1623. are founded on the novel of "ROSALYNDE," by Lodge (1590).

Many of the incidents

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